The Escape

by Teyla Branton

  “Patrick?” I said. “I’m back. Let’s get out of here.”

  I saw him under the weak light, a mound slumped against the wall where we’d left him. He gave a muffled groan.

  “And go where?”

  Fear slammed my heart against my chest because it wasn’t Patrick who’d spoken, but Delia Vesey.

  “Wa ohhhh! Unnn!” This from Patrick, whose face turned toward me, silver tape covering his mouth.

  Delia laughed. “I knew you’d be back because you promised him when we took you to the lab. You still believe in promises. Guess what, so do I. Here’s my promise. If you leave here, my men will make sure Patrick is really and truly killed. We’d thought to use his genes, but we have other technopaths and with his current attitude, he won’t be much of a loss.”

  Shadows moved and I shifted the flashlight to reveal two Emporium hit men looming over Patrick, their heavy swords drawn. I still didn’t feel them on my mental senses, so Delia was masking them, and that meant breaking through their mind barriers with my regular ability would be almost impossible unless I concentrated on the link between them and Delia. But even if I severed that, she’d have plenty of time to give the kill order before I could try to stop them.

  “I take it you’re staying?” Delia turned on her own flashlight, which glinted off the pistol she aimed at my head.

  As a soldier, Ritter might say my best option would be to reach for Mari again and shift away, but knowing him as I did, I doubted he’d so easily allow Patrick to be murdered.

  If only Ritter were here now. Instinctively, I reached for him—and found him unshielded as if he’d been waiting for me. He was outside the compound and Ava was with him.

  Ritter? I asked. The connection was faint and strained.

  Relief in his mind, accompanied by self-recrimination that resounded above the aching wounds I felt in his body. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier.

  Through his eyes I saw huge trucks around him, disgorging police officers, SWAT teams, soldiers, and Secret Service. Who are these men?

  Ava, Jace, and I went to see the vice president. Oliver masked me to look like his son so we could get in. Mann took some convincing, and we sent a couple of Secret Service agents to the hospital, but he came through for us with this army when he realized we were serious about them holding his real son.

  There was a question to the thought, and I hurried to answer. Yes, he’s here, but there’s a problem. I sent him images of the freed prisoners heading to the lobby, and of Delia and her soldiers poised above Patrick.

  Channel Mari. Shift out! It was an order, as sharp as an ice pick.

  She’ll kill him if I do.

  We’ll get to him after we get through these men out here.

  You’ll be too late. Even if I channeled his ability, I was no match for three Emporium agents, and I didn’t have enough power left inside me to break through all their shields. If I wait for Delia to leave, you can free us both.

  I could see he wasn’t happy with the idea. Okay. But I’m coming for you.

  During my private conversation, Delia had motioned to the soldiers to pick up Patrick, and they’d dragged him to the door, forcing me at sword point to step aside so they could get him into the hallway. “After you, my dear,” Delia said to me, taking my flashlight and dropping it to the ground.

  Mentally, she was outside my shield—I could feel her like a moth hitting against a light—but I felt confident she couldn’t get in, the electricity I’d absorbed earlier having reinforced my shield reserves.

  Electricity.

  I couldn’t break through her shield, either, but maybe with a little more power I could—at least I would try once I got some space between Patrick and those swords. As we walked down the hallway, I reached for Brody and for the power lines. It was harder now because he was further away, but I made the link. No luck. The electricity hadn’t been restored.

  Through Brody’s eyes things now looked different. Objects glowed around bodies and cars and even from some of the closer buildings. Cell phones? Security alarms? I wondered. Experimentally, I began drawing them in. I felt Brody’s joy as he began helping me, his earlier fear dampened by my success with the generator. He was better at it than I was, and without the power lines, I needed his help. Yes, pull it in, I told him. I took it from him as fast as he gathered it. Compared to the power lines, it was a tiny trickle, but maybe I could find enough energy to get through Delia’s shield.

  There was no glowing from the people I could see around Brody or around the compound, so no one was using an ability. Only Delia glowed as I glanced behind me, not as brightly as the cell phone and the flashlight she carried, but like a candle in the darkness. I tried to suck in her personal energy, willing to risk further depleting myself. Nothing happened. Her shield had to be stopping the transfer.

  Something buzzed and Delia reached for her phone. “What? No.” The fury in her words made me hesitate in sucking the energy from her phone’s battery. “What about a helicopter? I see. Contact our people. Get our cover story ready. We are a simple research facility, and we were attacked. I will—”

  With a breath I absorbed the energy and her phone went dead. I was tempted to do the flashlight as well, but for now I wanted to see where we were going.

  “Stop!” Delia barked at the guards. “Change of plans. Go to the basement instead. We have a deposit to make.”

  A deposit?

  Reversing their path, the soldiers led us to a staircase I’d never seen before. They let Patrick’s feet bump on each stair as they went down.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. My connection with Brody strained at the distance, and I let it drop temporarily to preserve energy.

  “We’ve owned this building for many years,” Delia told me, “and because of its special properties, it sometimes comes in very handy. The original owner loved the idea of bomb shelters, so he built one here. Of course, from the outside, you can’t tell it’s there.”

  I fought down my unease as she led us to a huge furnace, where the guards dropped Patrick on the cold cement floor. He’d lost consciousness and I was grateful for his sake. Delia conferred with her men, keeping her gun on me. When they were finished, the soldiers went to the tall front panel of the furnace and opened it, pulling out the back wall of the panel to reveal a series of ropes. They grabbed onto one rope together, and a section of the cement floor to the left of the furnace began to rise slowly.

  “Of course he used a ladder to climb down inside,” Delia said as the narrow slab of foot-thick cement reached shoulder height, “and he stored shelves of food, but we don’t find those necessary.”

  One of the guards jumped into the hole left by the concrete and began tugging at something. Delia directed me closer as he opened a metal trapdoor about two square feet wide. A horrible, rotten stench wafted from the dark interior, making me choke.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  She pushed me closer. When I resisted, she motioned to the soldiers, who grabbed my shoulders and threw me inside. The back of my head banged hard against the edge of the metal opening as I fell into the deep hole, but my training helped me land on my feet.

  Inside, the stench was almost overwhelming, and I fell to my knees gagging. What was that smell? Like roadkill. Covering my nose and mouth with my hand, I staggered to my feet again, my head less than a foot from the ceiling. I peered into the darkness, aided only by the dim light from the narrow hole overhead. I couldn’t see much, but I had the feeling I was in a small room. Maybe ten by ten feet.

  Delia squatted near the opening and directed her flashlight downward. “I think you can stay here with Patrick for a time and then we’ll talk. You’ll be surprised what a little solitude can do for your attitude. Or, if you’re adamant, you can always end up like that.” She shifted the light onto a bulk several feet away from me. A two-foot long mass curled on a blanket, the ends oozing and rotted, the middle looking a lot like a shiny piece of hardened leather stretched over a ribbed
frame.

  Horror waved through me. “It’s human.”

  Delia laughed. “No, he’s Unbounded, of course. Been here over twenty years. Every now and then we open the door to let him absorb a bit just to keep regeneration possible. With my latest mind techniques it might even be worthwhile taking him out and putting him in a bath of tonic to help him regain consciousness. I’ll think about it. In the meantime, you’ll probably lose a little body mass to him as he instinctively absorbs from you. I’ll come back before it gets too bad.”

  I fought down panic. I’d heard of Unbounded dying of starvation in sealed containers, a gruesome, painful way to die, but I’d never imagined I would see it up close.

  “The focus points do everything they can to survive,” Delia mused, “including cannibalizing the rest of the body. I had one large woman last fifty years.”

  I leaned over and retched dryly while Delia laughed. Drops of blood hit the cement in front of me, almost indistinguishable in the dim light. When I touched the back of my head where it had hit the metal edge of the door on the way down, my hand came away wet.

  I’m okay, I told myself. Ritter was outside and I would tell him where I was. Or I’d connect with Mari and shift out as soon as Delia started to shut the metal door. Or even afterward as Mari didn’t seem to have problems shifting through metal or concrete. No need to act rashly or to embarrass myself by crying to Ritter. Yet.

  I pushed at Delia’s shield to see if the power I’d absorbed from Brody was enough to break through, but it wasn’t. Not even with the aid of an imaginary sai. She was stronger now, apparently having learned from my breach of her shield in the lab. I reached out to Brody, having to expend a precious amount of the power he’d already given me just to link that far. Hurry, I told him. I need more. I pulled in all he’d managed to gather.

  Delia reached down to fiddle with something inside the hole, and a soft hum filled the room. My connection with Brody abruptly ceased.

  I pushed out harder, reaching for him. Nothing.

  Delia’s light shined on my face. “Ah, by your expression, it looks like the generator for this room still works. We modified it a few years ago when we invented the shield technology. It’s been useful in dampening a variety of abilities as well as internal transmitter signals, which is helpful in making Unbounded stay where we put them. The fuel for this generator will eventually run out, but not until your friends are long gone. You won’t be able to tell them where you are, and even if we hadn’t disabled your transmitter, they couldn’t have tracked you. Stefan will be grateful I kept you safe.”

  She drew back and seconds later a bulk dropped through the opening, only slightly ruffling the invisible shield around the bomb shelter. Patrick fell on top of me, knocking me to the cement floor.

  “At least you’ll have company,” Delia said.

  I threw my thoughts hard at the shield, using all the power I’d stored. If I could break through a person’s mental shield, couldn’t I break through one generated by a machine?

  Ritter! Agony ripped at my mind, but for a brief instant I felt him.

  Or did I?

  My vision went dark.

  Was the darkness from expending too much energy? Or had they closed the trapdoor? I didn’t know. The smell of the leather bundle had grown worse, it seemed, or maybe that was the stench of my own fear.

  RITTER WOULD FIND ME. I knew he would. Every time I’d been trapped, he’d come. I had to make sure I was ready to meet him. Blindly, I rolled Patrick off my body and struggled to sit up, breathing through my mouth so the stench wouldn’t gag me. Feeling for Patrick’s pulse, I was satisfied that he was just out, not temporarily dead. After removing the tape on his mouth, I forced myself to start exploring my surroundings, avoiding the direction of the leathery mass. There wasn’t likely anything around to help me escape, or the other prisoner would have found it, but exploring was better than lying here in the dark, feeling the room closing in around me. Fortunately, I’d never minded small spaces, and maybe that’s what would preserve my sanity now.

  A quick exploration showed nothing in the room except rows of built-in shelves on one side and a cupboard with ropes that I assumed had something to do with lowering the cement slab from the inside. Nothing I could use to reach, much less try to pry open, the metal door so I could disengage the shield.

  My head ached and every muscle in my body protested movement, but I wouldn’t give in to despair. I forced myself to mentally reach out to the leathery mass that had once been a man. Sure enough, a dim life force still glowed within him, seeming to increase ever so slightly as I probed. Fascinated, I focused on him until the pounding in my head made me quit.

  My heartbeat sounded loud in my chest and despite my determination to remain calm, my anxiety began building. Maybe I’d better try to wake Patrick. Talking to him would be better than going crazy. In the end I decided to let him stay blissfully unaware.

  I had no way to mark the time that passed as I struggled not to collapse into a quivering ball of panic. When a faint shout broke the silence, I almost didn’t believe my ears. A second shout filled me with hope. I stood and yelled. “I’m in here! I’m in here! Down under the floor!” I tried to reach past the shield, but hot pain slicing into my skull warned that I had overreached my limit.

  Then the creaking sound of the metal door and Mari’s voice. “Erin, are you there? Oh, there you are. Ugh, what a stench!”

  I could tell she was staring down into the opening, but I couldn’t see her. My vision was gone, probably because of that last desperate effort to reach Ritter through the generator shield. No wonder I felt like collapsing into a pitiful ball.

  “Use my ability to shift out,” Mari called. “Ritter’s holding off the guys who put you here, but he needs us.”

  “There’s a shield,” I said as the shouting and clanging of weapons grew behind her. “Look for a button somewhere—”

  Like a breath, I felt the shield wink out of existence.

  “What about now? Hurry if you can. We stopped them from putting back the cement slab, but they seem pretty determined.”

  “Okay, I just need a moment.” I began absorbing as rapidly as possible, sucking in nutrients. I wished I could reach for Brody to get more power, but I didn’t seem to have enough mental energy to bridge the physical gap between us. At last, Mari’s anxious face came into view as new strength restored my sight. The cement slab was only a foot above her head. I shifted.

  Instead of appearing next to Mari, I materialized in the hallway near the lobby. As weak as I was, I would do Ritter no good, but here I should be able to contact Brody. Searching, I found him full of energy—and new fear. All around him lightning crackled in the sky, attracted by his pull.

  I’m here, I said. I can take it all. Energy poured through him into me. No more now, I warned Brody. Don’t take in any more.

  I don’t know if I can stop.

  You have to. Get a hold of yourself. You can do it. I knew what he wasn’t saying. That taking in the energy was addictive, an almost sensual high. I’d have to keep an eye on him so he didn’t blow up the building.

  I dropped our connection and shifted again, this time appearing next to Mari.

  “Oh, there you are. For a moment I was worried.” She handed me my sai. “We have no more bullets, but they don’t have any either. Jace brought these when we first came from the hotel, and I knew you’d want them.”

  The sound of fighting was louder now, moving our way. A flashlight had fallen to the ground, and humongous shadows danced on the wall near the stairs. I felt Ritter, his mind open to me like Mari’s had been, in spite of the danger with Delia around. Where was she? I reached out for her, but if she was anywhere nearby, I couldn’t sense her presence.

  “You distract one,” Mari said, “and I’ll get him with my knife.”

  Hefting a sai in each hand, I reached out to Ritter across the basement, channeling his ability. He came into sight at that moment, dwarfed by his own sha
dow on the wall. He was beauty in motion, fluid, exact, and deadly.

  “Here!” I shouted, running into the fray.

  Ritter’s thrill of combat, coupled with his relief at seeing me, flooded my senses. Added to the electric energy singing in my brain, it was a heady combination.

  A soldier turned to meet me, his sword coming down like a guillotine. I parried with the sai, first with the right and then the left, the lengths of the blades along the inside of my arms.

  Next, I twirled the blade out, trying to catch his sword between the hand guard and the blade so I could twist it from him. He faltered at the last moment, sending his blow toward my other side, but I anticipated and blocked him. It was all the distraction Mari needed. She appeared behind him, one arm wrapping around his torso almost like a lover. He slid to the ground.

  Ritter finished with his opponent at the same time. He rushed over to me, carrying a sword in one hand and a sai in the other. He looked like the devil’s avenging angel. Blood dripped from several deep cuts on his face, and the coat sleeve on his left arm had been torn completely off to reveal that the arm had been bandaged. Probably a souvenir from his visit to the vice president. The other sleeve and his pants sported numerous cuts.

  Without a word, the arm with the sai went around me and his mouth came down on mine, pushing my lips open and kissing me deeply. Need filled me, stirring up more electric currents that made delicious circuits to the most intimate parts of my body. For that moment there was nothing but the two of us. Nothing else mattered.

  We came up for breath and his eyes fell over me, taking in my borrowed outfit. “I really hope this isn’t where you confess some kinky fantasy about hotels.” His finger reached inside the rip in my skirt, running up the warmth of my thigh. “Though maybe that wouldn’t be too bad. Certainly looks better on you than mine did on me.”

  I grinned. “How’d you get inside?”

  Ritter shrugged. “Oliver masked me until I got through their lines, and then I climbed down through the roof.”

  “I shifted inside near Patrick’s cell,” Mari added. “You were already gone, but I followed the light and saw her take you down those stairs. That’s how we found you.”