Casper, who had been sitting on Eli’s other shoulder, turned around and gave Roman the thumbs up. “Didn’t know about that power, did ya?”
So he was hiding another power… Roman returned his gaze to Captain Harwood, whose shoulders had relaxed some. He stepped forward and bent over a little so he could whisper into Eli’s ear. “How much more can you make them do?” he whispered.
“That’s it, just change their opinions. I’m sorry,” Eli said, turning to Roman, the light still shining behind his eyes.
“No, it’s enough; you’ve done well. Incredibly well. How long does it last?”
“It just turns off when I want it.”
“Good,” Roman said, looking back to the exemplars he’d fought earlier. Of everyone here, he knew he’d done the worst damage to the guy with heightened agility, who lay broken on the ground, his legs splayed in opposite directions. “I want you to quickly heal him and return.”
Roman waited for the young boy to move over to the man. Eli placed a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the blank look on his face, and soon, the exemplar was able to move his legs again.
Eli returned to Roman’s side and the ground began to move all around them, freeing the soldiers.
Soon, Roman was joined by Casper and Celia, and rather than tell Jorgen to take off Nadine’s cuffs, he did it himself with his ability.
“How long will the tests take?” he asked as he approached Captain Harwood, his hand extended.
The woman, who now wore her normal expression, shook his hand, her grip strong and tight. “It should only take a few hours, especially with our best techs on it. We’ll have you back in Centralia by the morning. You too, Agent Under,” she said to Nadine.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Psyched
This was it.
Kevin Blackbook was fully aware of what he was trying to do, and of how risky and stupid it was.
The information James Tew, his newly acquired telepath, had uncovered at the bar outside the prison was undeniably helpful. The fact that the telepath had even managed to imprint directions on one of the prison employees spoke wonders for his abilities.
Some telepaths were good while others merely had a telepathic function they excelled in, yet there were few who could do as much as James—especially once Kevin had learned the man also excelled in telekinetic combat.
Scarlett the teleporter had done well with the three recruits she’d found for their cause.
Ray, the tan-skinned strongman, would do what all strongmen did—smash and tear through anything that stood in their path, and act as a human shield if necessary.
And Zelda—well, Kevin knew the woman’s power would come in handy, especially if someone powerful stood in their way. The woman with the shaved head and tons of piercings was a force to be reckoned with, a Type II, possibly even a Type I depending on who was classifying her.
James, Ray, and Zelda. The three recruits weren’t interested in money as much as they were interested in the same damn thing Kevin wanted.
Healing.
“They’re waiting for us,” Obsidian said, the cat girl wearing her exemplar outfit, which hugged her body tightly. She was crouched on the toilet seat waiting for Kevin to finish putting his tights on, her slit eyes watching him closely.
It had been her idea to help him dress, and rather than jump right into helping him put his suit on, she’d pleasured Kevin for a moment first. He had stood before the mirror watching her, his sizeable girth slipping in and out of her mouth, a clawed finger pressed into his ass cheek giving him just a small amount of her neurotoxin.
She’d gone down on him to relax him some—her idea—and while Kevin had protested at first, he’d finally given in, oblivious to the fact that three people were waiting for him in the other room, ready to assault Prison South.
But that had been a few minutes ago, and now Kevin was all business. And as Obsidian checked her face one more, to make sure the spittle and cum was all gone, Kevin placed his hand on her shoulder and lightly squeezed it.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said again, his hand moving from her shoulder to the back of her head, where he feathered his fingers against her black hair.
“We’ll get through today, and we’ll get through tomorrow,” Obsidian said, looking at him through his reflection in the mirror.
“Yes, yes we will.”
Kevin let Obsidian leave the restroom first, and for a moment, he stood in front of the mirror gazing into his own dark eyes. He hadn’t shaved since stepping onto the rooftop at the immigration office.
Kevin hardly recognized himself anymore, especially in his black and turquoise garb.
There were dark bags under his eyes, a gauntness to his cheeks, lines on his forehead he swore hadn’t been there two weeks ago.
But this was who he was, and there really was no turning back.
His first plan, a foolhardy plan if there ever was one, had been to just go in through the front gate of the prison.
But James had learned through his mind-spying that the healer was being held in Cell Block F, which was underneath the prison, and Cell Block F happened to have an access point not far from the main dining area.
It was a guarded access point, but they’d have most of their work cut out for them by using the tunnels that supplied food to the kitchen and silently moving to Cell Block F from there.
The only problem left was their escape. They would actually have to bust out of the prison, through the wall that protected against teleporters, where Scarlett would whisk them away to safety. It was easier this way than to go back through the tunnels, especially considering the location of Cell Block F directly beneath the prison yard.
And as Kevin entered the living-room area of their hideout to find the others waiting for him, the thought that this was a suicide mission came to him again.
He was well aware of the risks, but he was also psyched to try something for once in his life, something he never could have fathomed just three weeks prior.
“It’s about time,” James said.
“Yes, we need to move to the tunnel’s entrance and go from there. I…” Kevin cleared his throat. “I just want to remind everyone to stick to the plan, no matter what we encounter down in Cell Block F. There’s no telling what Centralia is hiding from the general public, or what security they employ in that sector.”
“And securing the tunnels—is everyone ready for that?” Ray the strongman asked. “We can’t set off alarms too early.”
“Some banishment and some mind play,” Scarlett reminded him.
“That’s right,” the big man growled. “Just point at what I’m supposed to smash, who I’m supposed to fight, or who I’m supposed to protect, and I’ll do it. I’ll leave the big plans to you guys.”
“Thank you, Ray,” Obsidian said as she approached Kevin. “Today’s mission will be a success. I’m sure of it.”
“Pretty confident for a lady about to break into a maximum-security prison,” the woman named Zelda said. “And not just any maximum-security prison, the harshest prison in Centralia.”
“Confidence can be the difference between dying and living to fight another day. Isn’t that right, Kevin?” Obsidian asked, the tip of her tail lightly grazing against his side.
Kevin grunted. “That’s right, and I don’t know about all of you, but I’m fucking psyched.”
Chapter Fifty-Three: Break Out
There are some plans that just naturally fall into place, and this was one of them.
Kevin and his crew of fallen exemplars took out the guards at the entrance to the tunnels, two mind-warped by James and knocked out by Ray, one banished by Scarlett before she moved on to the front of the prison to prepare for teleportation transport once they broke out the other end.
Kevin knew he could trust the brunette fond of wearing black; she hadn’t let them down thus far, and she’d been a real help back at the immigration office. And even as they moved into the tunnel, Kevin couldn’t help but think of w
ho all this was for. Turquoise.
He just hoped they could get the healer and get out.
“It’s really good that I discovered these tunnels,” James bragged as they walked. “You might not know this, but they have guards at the front gate that wear telepath-proof helmets. They also have telepaths scan the entire area for any unregistered thoughts.”
“Unregistered thoughts?” Kevin shook his head, his eyes focused on the track in front of him, careful not to lose his footing. “That’s one way to describe them.”
“Again, something you shouldn’t worry about. I have all this covered. I’ve blocked all our thoughts—even yours, Zelda.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” the female exemplar at the rear quipped. “And I know how to deal with telepaths.”
James snorted. “Could have fooled me.”
Ray started to chuckle, loud and gruff.
“Quiet,” Obsidian hissed.
While everyone else moved in a single line, the cat girl went along the outer perimeter, occasionally hopping in front of the group or slipping to the back.
Kevin loved watching her move, more cat than human at times.
She moved from bipedal walking to all fours, her tail hanging in the air, reminding him of a comic book he’d seen as a kid with a cat moving along the top rail of a fence and only its tail visible from the other side.
Ray bumped into a pipe and dented it, the sound echoing down the tunnel as everyone tensed. They were quiet for a moment, the only other sound drips of water from a loose pipe overhead.
“Sorry,” Ray said under his breath. “I forget my strength sometimes.”
“Are you talking about muscles or vocal chords?” Zelda asked.
“Same difference.”
It wasn’t long until Kevin’s crew came to a brighter area of the tunnel, guards clearly at the top, a stairwell adjacent to a lift on the right.
“I’ve got them,” Obsidian whispered, and before anyone could stop her, she scaled to the top of the stairs, her body hidden from the guards by the swift way she moved. Still balancing with one hand on a bar of steel, she glanced around to see the first guard turn.
She was on his back a second later, driving her nails into his neck.
The other guard, clearly shaken by what he’d just seen, went for his radio, only to be taken out in the same way.
James was the first up the stairs, his hands at his sides as he wiped the guards’ minds.
“Less poison, more strategy,” the telepath said with a snarl to Obsidian.
“It worked, didn’t it?” she asked, baring her bloody teeth as she offered him a sinister smile.
“That’s beside the point.” James lifted his hand to a small receiver stuck in his ear. “We’re in,” he radioed to Scarlett.
Leave it to the Eastern Province to come up with such a clever way to communicate. The pieces all of them wore, which James had borrowed from a friend, were clearly of Eastern origin, notable in their slim design and functionality.
Kevin didn’t mind using Eastern tech; he just thought it was ironic how a place could be so poor yet have such good technology. It defied logic. But as he glanced down at his power-nullifying ring, he couldn’t help but feel some gratitude for what they’d come up with.
Rather than allow Obsidian to move into the kitchen and cause a stir, James simply looked through a glass panel on a rotating door, spotted his first mind slave, and went from there.
By the time they entered, everyone in the kitchen had moved into the storage closet, the door shut, the path forward completely clear.
“This way,” James said as he guided the group to a hallway outside the kitchen, then down a different stairwell from there.
They were in the prison proper now, but it was what Kevin recognized as a behind-the-scenes staging area, the only thing separating them from true criminals being a thick wall made of both lead and concrete.
James held them off for a moment as he peeked around a corner, a smile coming over his face followed by the thunk of a guard falling to the floor.
Kevin was happy to have James on their side. Like strongmen, telepaths were an essential part of any team, and having one who could use his powers with such versatility…
A door opened and a man in a lab coat stepped out.
Before he could speak, and before Obsidian could spring into action, a calm look came over the researcher’s face. He pointed to the end of the hallway at a single room protected by a metal door twice the size of any door Kevin had ever seen.
“Who else is on the floor?” Zelda asked, looking to the other rooms. “Exemplars, I mean.”
Rather than speak, the man simply raised a single finger.
“Only one?” Kevin asked, a rush of excitement causing him to sweat.
The Centralian researcher simply nodded.
“Good, let’s get her and go.” Kevin pressed to the front of the group and reached the giant door. “How…?”
Ray flexed his muscles just as the man in the lab coat produced a set of credentials.
“New policy.” James stepped aside to let the researcher pass. “Let’s try not to use our powers if we don’t have to. Well, I should clarify: you three shouldn’t use your powers,” he said, deliberately skipping Kevin. “I clearly know what I’m doing here.”
A mess of gray hair covered the woman’s face.
The healer was older, easily in her late sixties, frail, her face gaunt and her skin leathery. Kevin had seen healers before, when he was younger, but most had carried a timeless look about them, ageless even—he’d never seen one that looked so haggard.
“Are you okay?” he asked instinctively, moving past Obsidian to get a better look at the woman.
“Who?” The woman looked from Kevin to James. “Where… why are you here?”
“I’m James. This is Kevin.”
“Obsidian,” the cat girl said.
“Ray,” a low voice called from the back.
“Zelda,” came the final voice.
“Who?” the woman asked, peering at them as if she were looking at something in the distance.
“Do you even know why you’re here?” James asked, a concerned look painted across his face. He gulped, then placed a hand on the woman’s bony shoulder and stared long and hard at her for a moment. “She’s fried,” he finally said. “Doesn’t even know her own name.”
“They wiped her mind?”
“I don’t know what happened to her mind,” James said.
“But can she still heal?”
“Don’t know,” James began to say.
“May I?” Obsidian asked as she took Kevin’s arm. She then tensed her hand, and one of her nails lengthened. She pressed it to Kevin’s palm and sank it in, blood appearing instantly.
“Shit,” Kevin started to say, the pain and her neurotoxin reaching him at about the same time.
“Shhh…” Obsidian told him as she turned the bloody palm toward the woman. “Grandmother, please heal my friend.”
“Heal, yes,” the woman said, a look of realization coming across her face. “I’ll heal, dear.”
She took Kevin’s hand and focused on it, and the wound disappeared almost instantly, the blood drying in his palm. There was no light, or any other energy-related indication that she was done. The wound was simply healed, as if it had never existed in the first place.
“That’s so fucking beautiful.” James wiped his mouth, a grin forming on his face. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Yep, you’re coming with us,” Kevin told the woman as he guided her out the door.
“Where are we going?” she asked, no sign of protest.
“As planned?” Zelda asked.
Ray looked up at the ceiling as the others moved to his right, Kevin still leading the healer away from the center of the room. The strongman dropped to one knee, his shoulders heaving up and down as he took in deep breaths of air.
“Get back even further,” he said as he began to charge, a l
ight aura forming and circulating around his body.
They did as instructed, and after another moment of charging, Ray lifted off the ground, bursting through the ceiling and spinning his arms as he traveled upward, collecting some of the larger debris before it could fall.
There was dust, and definitely the sounds of crunching metal and cracking rock as he continued through to the top, but Ray got there, and once everything had settled, James moved into action.
He focused on Zelda, Kevin and the healer, alarms going off everywhere, more gravel falling past the three as they traveled up the hole Ray had just made.
Obsidian came next on her own, leaping and crawling her way to the top followed by James, who levitated out with his arms crossed over his chest.
Kevin blinked, noticing the Centralian guards moving on them with their staffs drawn.
They were in the courtyard that separated the prison from the teleportation-blocking wall, a workout yard of sorts.
His finger on the bottom of his ring, Kevin dropped to his stomach just as Obsidian had instructed him to do once they’d busted out of the ground.
Ray dropped to a knee to charge again, his focus on the teleporter-proof wall before them.
Zelda sprang into action alongside James, the woman absorbing the blasts being fired at her and returning them to the Centralian prison guards.
James lifted into the air, a telekinetic shield around him, his eyes blazing as he took the minds of a few of the approaching guards.
Their minds now his, the guards began firing on each other, chaos quickly taking over the yard as blasts went astray, chipping at the buildings while inmates screamed from inside their cells.
Cue the Centralian exemplars.
A pair of energy users with charged fists appeared on the right. They were fast, but Obsidian was faster, the cat girl flipping, twisting, and one-arm cartwheeling around them as she avoided their attacks and brought her toxic claws against exposed portions of their skin whenever she saw an opening.
One went down, a female with pink hair, and Obsidian moved to the other, latched on to the woman and dug her teeth into the guard’s neck.
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