Planet Hero- Civilian

by M. A. Carlson

  “All clear,” I heard a voice say from the supply closet followed closely by the door closing. Another Time Compression and Teleport put me back into the supply closet, breathing easier.

  My stomach chose then to remind me that I hadn’t eaten in a while, my mind briefly going back to the kitchen. There was no telling how long I was going to need to hide out and sneak around. I was going to need food soon enough, but I would wait until it was safer. For now, I needed to keep up my search of the flying fortress. What I really needed was to find the control room . . . if there was one. And barring that, I needed to find the person with the ability that was controlling this place.

  I settled down in my little supply closet and went back to opening and closing keyhole-sized portals in the small gaps in the negation waves that were still covering the entire structure. If I was lucky, Terminus would tire out soon and I would be able to freely use my abilities. Even an 88th Milestone would get tired eventually, right? I sighed and leaned back in the cramped closet. I couldn’t count on that. I went back to trying to map out the fortress.

  In the late hours of the night, with the damnable negation field still active, I checked the kitchen again and found it empty. Then I needed to map out the airducts to find a path through the vents from my current location to the cafeteria. Eventually, I was able to teleport my way through the painfully cramped airducts until I was in the airducts above the kitchen, which now had a midnight-snacker raiding one of the industrial sized refrigerators. Naturally, he seemed to be in no hurry, like my time meant nothing to him.

  I laid in the vents, trying to control my breathing and checking in on the guard regularly when something caught my eye. The guard had a keycard that looked a lot like the one Kidnap had. It gave me an idea. A very risky idea, but one that might be worth that risk, especially as the guard was completely alone.

  I waited for him to bend low and took that moment to Teleport right behind him while he was so distracted. I set off a very small Void Burst next to his head to knock him out. Then I put my plan into action. On top of the refrigerator was a very large, very heavy looking, cast iron pot. With a little careful planning, I took the pot down and set the scene. I needed to smash him with the pot once to make it look real, but I was careful to not cause permanent damage. After that, I took his keycard. I knew it would eventually be discovered that I took the keycard. Hopefully by then, it would have been too late, and I’d have already escaped. On the other hand, I could have just taken the keycard from the idiot guard that only had access to the storage rooms and the bathroom. And speaking of bathroom, it had been a while.

  Luckily, I spotted the bathroom connected to the cafeteria and made use of it. And thanks to the newly acquired keycard, I didn’t even need to teleport through the vents to get to it.

  After that, I raided the pantry, focusing on dried meats and cheeses and even some fruit. I knew well enough that I wouldn’t be able to raid the kitchen daily. My only problem was storing all the food. I was worried about my sack of loot getting stuck in the airducts or getting squished against me. I ran out of time to ponder when I heard the guard groaning.

  Not wasting anymore time, I used Teleport to return to the airducts. Thus, I began the long trek back to my storage room. I made a mental note to look for a vacant room closer to the kitchens. Especially if it seemed like I was going to be stuck here longer.

  I tried to keep my eating light, making sure I didn’t leave any crumbs or trash behind. Then I leaned back, and closed my eyes, hoping I could get a little rest before the new day came and I would need to resume my search for an escape.

  Sleep didn’t come easy inside my supply closet. It was cramped and I was forced to lean up against a cold metal wall with my knees bent uncomfortably. No, it was more that every creak or groan of the metal and every footstep passing the door brought me back to full alertness. I think I got some sleep in there, but it was not restful.

  I spent another day stuck in that closet. Even after I found a vacant room not too far from the kitchen. I gave it that day just to make sure it was truly unoccupied. I could have given it more time, but I knew that the longer I took to escape, the more likely it would be for me to get caught.

  I searched through a great deal of the flying fortress as well. I found more supply rooms. Various occupied bedrooms and a few more hangars, though the hangar doors were still sealed up tight. I checked on Terminus regularly, mostly just to see if she was getting tired. She wasn’t. I did discover another elevator behind her throne. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but it wasn’t easily seen from the rooms entrance. Unfortunately, that was all I discovered. The elevator shafts were also pressurized, differently from the rest of the fortress but still an issue. Other than that, I figured out that the fortress was saucer shaped with five floors above me and three below me. It was also larger than I originally assume, at least over the 0.48-mile range of my portal ability.

  On day three, after I finally decided to relocate to the unoccupied bedroom, the one I discovered the previous day. From there, I continued my search through the facility. I even found a room with a view outside. I couldn’t see anything but the wilds for miles around, but it did give me the direction the fortress was travelling. Which gave me another idea. What if the fortress’s direction of travel indicated the front of it? And what if the control center was located in the front of the ship? I mean, they did need to see where they were going, right?

  So, with a destination in mind, I started trying to find my way to the front of the ship. The airducts and I had become well acquainted over the last day. I learned how to contort myself in just the right way that allowed me to breathe more easily. Unfortunately, my shoulders and neck did not appreciate it.

  The ‘front’ of the ship wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The saucer shaped ship had a bubble on the underside. A bubble that hosted almost a dozen people manning various stations that told me nothing about what any of them did. Though I suspected this was the command center I was looking for.

  Refraining from sighing, I settled in to my cramped airduct and started using keyhole portals again to start looking over the various terminals, looking for the button that would turn off the lockdown. I found the flight control systems, and communications systems and made a mental note of where they were located. I identified the captain of the ship, a 32nd Milestone elderly woman with silver hair. She didn’t appear to be much of a threat, but I still had no intention of tangling with her. In fact, most of the bridge crew were around the same Milestone. I was sure I could hurt a lot of them and do a lot of damage to the various systems. Unfortunately, it was just as likely I would crash the fortress as stop them.

  As I was scanning the machines, I saw a monitor that gave me pause. It looked like a security station with live camera images being cycled through on four different screens. I didn’t pay attention to the screens though. My focus was on the big red button that was currently depressed with a label below it that read ‘Lockdown’. All I needed to do was depress that button and I would be able to escape. Then I remembered the button was in a room filled with villains . . . henchmen that would need to be dealt with first. I supposed I could have opened a small portal and stuck a finger through very quickly in the hopes that I could push it before the portal got cut off and my finger with it. After that, a sufficiently sized Void Burst could destroy the terminal. If only I could move fast enough. Where was a squirbit when I needed one?

  Another look around the room again showed me there were two entrances. I could collapse the hallways outside of the room. But that would just trap me in the room with the henchmen. So, I would need to deal with them first. I had enough power to knock them all out, except that one or more of them might have enhanced physical resistance.

  What I really needed was a way to convince them to evacuate from the bridge of their own accord. Like a radiation leak or gas leak or something like that. It always worked in the movies. Though, this wasn’t exactly a movie as the airducts proved repea
tedly.

  There must be something else I could use.

  I looked again at the security station. As I did, one of the screens caught my eye. The images were focused on one room, flipping through different angles. It was a lab with six haggard looking people in lab coats. They looked absolutely exhausted. They were completely unwashed and looked like they had barely eaten in days. One of the women looked like she was about to keel over. She looked like she was suffering from dehydration in addition to the starvation. If she didn’t get medical help soon, she was likely to die.

  And then I saw it. The most terrifying thing about the room was the device hovering above a centralized table. It was the same device that brought me to Planet Hero. It was the power amplification device I saw on Dr. Portal when he appeared in my world. It looked like it was completed . . . or almost completed. I was little comforted by the fact that they still didn’t know how to make it safe. Hopefully, that would slow Terminus down.

  I wanted to tell myself that those engineers would be fine. That I could leave them there. That if I got to the heroes, they would be able to come and save those people. But I was a doctor. I could see the signs plain as day. Those people weren’t likely to live long enough for help to come. I gave a mental sigh. Apparently, I wasn’t quite ready to escape after all.

  27

  I really wished the display in the command center told me where the lab was hidden away. I had yet to find a map of the fortress printed anywhere, which also made me wonder how the guards never got lost. I focused in on the images of the lab. Specifically, I was looking for windows, but they showed nothing of exterior facing windows if there even were any. I was starting to suspect that the lab might be connected to the not quite hidden elevator in what I was calling the throne room.

  Even with my suspicions, I spent a few hours scouring as much of the flying fortress as I could. And sadly, I found nothing.

  I was out of options. I needed to get into that elevator and get up to those engineers, which meant I needed to actually get eyes on the elevator.

  First, I opened a keyhole sized portal outside of the elevator. There were no buttons to push to call the elevator. No visual keycard reader either. I didn’t even see a motion sensor.

  Closing the portal, I frowned and hummed in thought. I didn’t like the idea of opening a keyhole portal on the other side of that door without knowing where the elevator was. I had a bad feeling the shaft would be pressurized differently from the rest of the fortress to allow for it to travel faster. That didn’t change the fact that I would need to check.

  Mentally bracing myself, I waited for a gap in my Spatial Awareness and activated Time Compression. Once again, the world crawled by. I opened the small portal, orienting it upwards, hoping I would be able to get at least a brief glimpse.

  Blackness and a very powerful vacuum froze the air in my room as it whistled through the small Portal. I quickly cut off the Portal and let go of my Time Compression. I decided to give my Abilities at least a little time to recharge after glancing at the black and gold bars that indicated my energy levels. I was stalling opening another portal into the darkness. Unfortunately, I still needed to see where the elevator was. And more importantly, I needed to see the inside of it.

  I vaguely remember seeing flashlights in the storage closet I first hid inside of. Unfortunately, that would require a lot of teleporting through the airducts. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. It was what I needed to do.

  Once I acquired the flashlight and seeing as the supply closet was actually closer to the throne room, I sat down and opened a new portal. This time with the flashlight directed at it. Again, I felt the freezing of the air in the room as it was escaping into the vacuum of the elevator shaft. However, this time I was able to see the bottom of the elevator about fifty feet above the portal.

  I quickly cut off the portal and opened a new one, this time inside the elevator car. Just like the door to the shaft, the elevator car had no visual buttons or access panels. There was nothing I could see.

  Closing the portal again, I frowned more deeply. There must be a way up there. And it seemed that only Terminus knew what it was. That would mean watching her. A lot.

  After determining I wouldn’t be able to access the elevator with my portals, I moved on to watching Terminus. I peeked in on her every few minutes, just waiting for her to move. To do something. But she just sat on her throne, unmoving. My Spatial Awareness was always active if weakened by her Negation Ability. I kept trying to figure out what Terminus was doing. She never ate. Never slept. Eventually, I figured out she was cultivating, but I couldn’t understand what exactly she was doing. It almost felt like she was destroying her own Nanos as she drew more in . . . or she was feeding the new Nanos to her old Nanos . . . then it hit me. She was consuming the Nanos in the atmosphere to sustain herself. Or that’s what I thought she was doing. I couldn’t exactly be sure of what she was up to. I would ask Ward or someone else about it later . . . if I escaped.

  Still, I watched, hoping she would eventually move or do something.

  Finally, something happened. It was late afternoon and I was about to teleport to somewhere with a little more space to get something to eat when the elevator opened with a whisper. Someone came out of the elevator. I immediately teleported back into the airducts and then through them until I got to the vent that hung high above the throne room. It wasn’t the best view, but I could see the newcomer and more importantly, I could see directly into the elevator.

  The man who exited the elevator wore a butler’s uniform. His hair was combed crisply, and his face was completely clean shaven. He bowed low remaining silent.

  Eyes remaining shut, Terminus irritably snapped, “What do you want?”

  The butler straightened and said, “Madam, they believe they are done.”

  Terminus’s eyes snapped open, a cruel smile on her lips. Her impatience was obvious when she demanded, “Have they tested it yet?”

  “No, madam, they asked for a test subject,” the butler replied.

  “Test it on one of them,” Terminus snapped back.

  The butler cleared his throat then replied, “If madam recalls, your previous instructions included the direction that we were not to test the device on the engineers as they are necessary to ensuring proper functionality. As such, I believe it might be best if we refrain from testing it on them until we are sure it will work.”

  Terminus frowned, eventually saying, “Fine, fine, test it on one of the guards. They are easily replaced.”

  “If madam wishes it,” the butler bowed again and turned back to the closed elevator doors. He then pulled something from his pocket. It looked like a remote control. He lifted it toward the closed elevator door and a moment later, the doors slid silently open.

  This was it. This was my chance. But I needed to time it just right.

  The butler entered and turned to face the entrance. There was just enough space behind him. I waited until the door had nearly closed, then I activated my Time Compression once again. There was maybe a gap of a centimeter, maybe less and it was still closing even with time being slowed down. I teleported, appearing silently behind the butler. Time Compression cut and the doors closed with him none the wiser.

  I didn’t dare breathe or move. I needed at least a few seconds to be able to get a short burst of Time Compression.

  As the elevator moved up, I almost gasped when my Spatial Awareness felt something . . . unexpected. The Negation field suddenly came to an end, and I was free. With barely a thought, the butler was unconscious after a well place Void Burst did its job to perfection. I considered trying to grab what Nanos I could from him, but I had other priorities and I didn’t know how long I would have before someone sounded the alarm.

  I quickly went through the butler’s pockets for the remote to the elevator. Once it was in hand, I examined it closely. There were three unmarked buttons and no clear indication which was the top and which was the bottom, but it didn�
��t matter because at the moment, only the one in the middle was lit up green.

  I wasn’t sure how long it would take the elevator to reach its destination, so I figured I really shouldn’t let the Nanos go to waste. Naturally, that was when the elevator door slid open, revealing a single guard who looked rather surprised to see the unconscious butler and me. As soon as the barrel of his rifle began to raise, I hit him with a Void Burst from behind, slamming him into the wall. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  I knew immediately that I used too much power and quickly rushed to check on him. He was still breathing which was good. I then checked the back of his head and neck, looking for fractures that should have been there after such an impact. Thankfully, I didn’t detect anything, either with my hands or my Spatial Awareness.

  Then he groaned as if he was already waking up. I wanted to curse at my own stupidity. It was easy to forget that this was a world where people had superpowers. If this guard was already waking up, then he probably had increased physical resistance of at least Above Average, maybe even Below Good. I quickly hit him again with my weakest Void Burst right next to his temple. This time when I checked him over, I was confident he was unconscious and would remain that way for quite a while. I did feel a little bad about the concussion I just gave him.

  Finally, I looked left and right, down each side of the curving hallway. There was no sign anyone heard or saw me. I didn’t see anything immediately to either side and it didn’t seem like my very quick scuffle was noticed.

  I was strongly tempted to grab the Nanos I could from the two unconscious men, but once again, I wasn’t in any kind of position to be able to relax. I needed to take advantage of the freedom afforded to me before Terminus found out what I was up to. That is if she didn’t already have some idea. I shook the thought away. No, if she knew I was up here, she would have extended that field of hers to cover the area. I hoped she assumed I wouldn’t be able to get up here. And given she had no idea about my other abilities, that wasn’t hard to believe. Still, it would only take one radio call or whatever the equivalent was to let her know I was up here.