by Lucas Flint
“Does that mean you changed your mind?” I said.
“No,” said Ivan. “I am still going to stay here. I just wanted to say goodbye and wish you luck.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think Rime and I will need it. This plan should go off without a hitch.”
“Perhaps, but it never hurts to have luck,” said Ivan. “It can sometimes mean the difference between success and failure. And you certainly cannot fail this mission, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement with broken legs.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Like all superheroes, I make my own luck.”
“Such an optimistic attitude,” said Ivan. “Even though I have been in America for thirty years, I still find myself surprised at the unrealistic optimism that you Americans often display.”
Before I could ask him what he meant by ‘unrealistic’ optimism, I heard the clanking of metal nearby. I looked over at the cell door and saw that it was open, which meant that Rime’s Ice Soldier had succeeded in entering the control center.
“Door’s open,” I said. I looked down at Ivan again. “Bye, Ivan. Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”
“I hope so,” said Ivan. “Good luck.”
I nodded at Ivan and then jumped off the side of the top bunk. I landed on the floor and walked over to the open doorway. I stuck my head out and looked up and down the hallway outside my cell, but I didn’t see any guards. Of course, we had chosen this time to escape specifically because of the lack of guards, but I was still pleased to see that the cell block was empty of them.
Tiptoeing out of the cell, I turned to the right and began walking as quickly and quietly as I could in the direction of the exit. Ivan had told me to go this way in order to reach the exit, so as long as I kept going in this general direction, I would be fine. As for Rime, he was on a different cell block than Ivan and I, but our paths would eventually intersect, so I didn’t worry about him right now.
I walked quietly so that I wouldn’t make any unnecessary sounds and wake up the other prisoners. I didn’t want any of the other prisoners shouting for the guards to come and apprehend me, because if they did, then that would make escape far more difficult than it was. Still, I really just wanted to run as fast as possible, because I was all too aware of our ten minute time limit. I could almost literally feel the time ticking, which encouraged me to pick up my pace.
I made my way down the cell blocks and down the stairs to the lower floors, not making any unnecessary sounds. Every now and then I’d hear movement in a nearby cell and would stop, thinking that one of the prisoners had awoken and would see me, but it always turned out to be a sleeping prisoner just adjusting his position on his bunk. Even though these stops were only for a couple of seconds, I hated them because I didn’t have that much time to waste.
When I got to the end of Cell Block E, I met Rime, who was coming from Cell Block F. We didn’t say anything when we met, because talking would risk waking up the others, but we did share a brief nod and made our way down the final hallway that would, according to Ivan, take us to the lobby, where we would reach the exit, and beyond that, the main gates of the walls. Once we got past the gates, we would be free. I could hardly wait.
We turned a corner in the hallway and found ourselves standing on the other side of the set of bars separating the rest of the prison from the lobby. The lobby was empty, dark, and quiet; there was no hint of anyone here besides ourselves, though it was too dark to tell for sure. A flat screen TV hung in one corner, but it was off, while the main doors of the prison were closed, but unlocked, if Rime’s Ice Soldier had been successful.
“This is it,” I whispered as we pushed open the door to the lobby, which creaked slightly on its hinges. “We’re nearly free. Just a few more feet and we’ll be—”
Rime slammed a hand over my mouth. “Shhh! Don’t jinx us.”
I nodded and Rime removed his hand from my mouth. “Sorry. Just getting very excited about this.”
“Wouldn’t get too excited if I were you, prisoner,” said a booming voice from somewhere within the shadows. “Because you will never see outside the walls of this prison ever again.”
All of a sudden, the lights in the lobby blasted on, causing Rime and I to raise our hands to protect our vision. At the same time, pellets suddenly exploded at our feet, creating great big clouds of yellow gas that caused Rime and I to cough and hack. The combination of the sudden light and yellow gas clouds made it almost impossible to see anything, but I could see the outlines of figures through the gas cloud.
A sudden weakness came over me, causing me to stagger. Rime actually fell to his hands and knees and stopped shivering, but now he looked too weak to stand on his own. I didn’t understand what was happening at first until I realized that we had been hit with powerless gas pellets, the exact same kind used by the guards of Ultimate Max.
And when the gas finally cleared enough for me to see our assailants, all my courage drained from me in an instant.
Warden Glass stood at the other end of the lobby, right between us and the exit. To his right was a tall, lanky man with burning fingers, most likely Burn Shot, the Chief of Security. And standing around them were twelve fully armed guards, each one aiming their guns full of powerless pellets at us. I didn’t know where all of these guys had come from, but they must have been hiding in the shadows of the lobby waiting for us.
“Glass,” I said. I coughed a few times. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you escapees, of course,” said Glass. He cracked his knuckles. “As the Warden of Ultimate Max, it’s my duty to ensure that no prisoner ever goes beyond the walls of this place.”
“How did you even know we’d be trying to make an escape attempt tonight?” I said. “We didn’t tell anyone else about it.”
“Mr. Apollo, before he left, warned me that you might try this,” said Glass. “So I gathered twelve of the best guards in this place, plus my Chief of Security, and set up this little ambush. It looks like I will have to thank Mr. Apollo for this tip next time I see him.”
“Why?” I said. I clutched my chest, because I was finding it harder to breathe with all of this powerless gas. “Why are you doing this? I’m innocent. I’m not supposed to be in here. Surely you know that.”
“It’s not my place to decide if you are guilty of any crimes or not,” Glass said. “All that matters is making sure that you and Rime do not escape. In Ultimate Max’s thirty years of service, only one prisoner has ever successfully escaped from its confines, and I intend to make sure that that number does not rise any higher tonight.”
“Then we’ll fight,” I said, raising my fists. “So you’d better move out of the way unless you want to get your skull cracked.”
Glass laughed. “So arrogant. You do realize that the powerless pellets just took away your powers, right? You two are just ordinary humans now. You couldn’t hurt us even if you tried.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Glass was right. If Rime and I still had our powers, I would have been willing to fight these guys even knowing what kind of power Glass had and what he did to prisoners who tried to escape, but without our powers, this entire plan would fall apart. We were now at the mercy of Glass and the guards, which meant that I might very well never see freedom again.
But I didn’t want to give up. We were so close to freedom that I could practically taste it. All we had to do was get past Glass and the guards, but without our powers, even that relatively simple task became an insurmountable impossibility. Maybe I should try to fight them anyway; it wasn’t like they were going to treat me nicely if I peacefully surrendered.
I looked down at Rime. His skin had become less blue and more white, which made him look very sick. He didn’t seem to be in any shape to fight, which meant that I couldn’t count on him to help.
So I ran at Glass, yelling, swinging my fists at him. Glass didn’t even move. He just smirked and raised his own fist. He threw his punch at me, b
ut I dodged it and tried to hit him with my own fists.
But then a fire bolt came out of nowhere and struck me in the chest. The burning flame ate away at the chest of my prison jumpsuit, causing me to cry out in pain. I patted out the flame as quickly as I could, but that meant letting down my guard, which allowed Glass to sock me in the face.
I crashed onto the floor and was then pinned there by one of Glass’s feet. He was much heavier than me; under ordinary circumstances, I would have been able to fling him off me, but because I was so weak and powerless, all I could do was lie there in pain. It didn’t help that he was stomping exactly where the fire had been burning, his weight making the burn wound hurt even more.
“I will admit, prisoner, that you have guts,” said Glass. “I was honestly surprised that you decided to try to attack me. I mean, you failed, but I can admire guts in anyone, even in prisoners trying to break free. Too many people nowadays—especially kids your age—just don’t have guts.”
Glass walked up to me and looked down at me, while Burn Shot was pointing his burning finger at me. “But regardless of whether you have ‘guts’ or not, I think you and Rime will get the solitary confinement treatment. That’s what you two deserve so that the other prisoners won’t get any ideas.”
“You mean you aren’t going to kill me?” I said.
Glass shook his head. “No. Cadmus Smith told me to keep you alive. Don’t see why, but since Cadmus is higher in the pecking order than me, I’ve got no choice but to obey.” Then he looked at Rime. “But he never said anything about Rime. Men! Bring him over here.”
A couple of the guards ran over to the cloud of powerless gas—which was already thinning out, barely visible in the air anymore—and dragged Rime next to me. They shoved Rime onto the floor and put the tips of their guns at the base of his neck, causing him to freeze.
“Rime, Rime, Rime,” said Glass with a chuckle. “I thought you’d already accepted your fate, but I can see that you thought you could use this boy to get your freedom so you can, what, kill again?”
“I … I just want to see my family,” said Rime, without looking up at Glass. “My little girl … she should be eleven now. I haven’t even see pictures of her yet.”
“I find that hilarious, coming from a man who’s in jail for killing another girl’s father,” said Glass. He looked at Burn Shot suddenly. “Who did he kill again? I find it hard to keep track of the reasons why these guys are in here.”
“Frederick Reynolds,” said Burn Shot without taking his burning finger away from me. “Superhuman activist.”
“Right,” said Glass, nodding. “Yeah, you killed that man and left his wife and daughter all on their own, so forgive me if I don’t exactly believe that you care about your own wife and daughter.”
Glass suddenly grabbed Rime’s neck and lifted him up off the ground. Rime struggled against Glass’s grip, but Glass just slapped him across the face and made him stop.
“So I’m just going to kill you here and now,” said Glass. “If anyone asks, I’ll just say it was to stop you from escaping. And it won’t exactly be a lie, because I know that if I spare you, you’ll just try again some other time. I’m not going to let you try again, though, because I believe in nipping problems in the bud, before they can grow into trees too big to cut down.”
“Please don’t,” I said, which was hard to say due to the pain in my chest. “He didn’t come up with the plan. I did.”
“So?” said Glass. “I don’t care who came up with it. An escapee is an escapee no matter what. And I’ve found that killing prisoners who try to escape is a great way to discourage anyone else who is thinking of trying it. That’s what I would have done to Master Chaos if I’d managed to get my hands on him.”
“But—” I grunted, cutting myself off, when Burn Shot pressed his foot down harder on my chest.
“I’m done talking,” said Glass. “So I’m just going to kill Rime and then have you put into solitary confinement with chains. You’ll be so chained up that you won’t even be able to scratch an itch on your nose.”
Then Glass looked at Rime and tightened his grip on his throat. I could already imagine what Glass was going to do; maybe turn Rime’s throat into glass and then shatter it, or maybe go all the way and turn his entire skull into glass. Either way, it was going to be a gruesome death.
But before Glass could turn even one inch of Rime’s skin into glass, echoes came from the hallway on the other side of the lobby’s doorway. At first, it sounded like the prison’s alarms going off, but as the sounds grew louder, they were more clearly voices. It sounded like a whole bunch of voices, all screaming and crashing together into an incomprehensible mess.
“Huh?” said Glass, lowering Rime and looking down that way. “What’s going on?” He looked at Burn Shot. “More guards coming?”
“Shouldn’t be,” said Burn Shot with a frown. “I didn’t ask anyone else to help us aside from these twelve.”
“Then what in Sam Hill is going—” said Glass, who was interrupted by a ball of flame launching out of the darkness of the shadows, hurtling over our heads, and landing directly in the center of the dozen guards standing around us.
The ball of flame exploded, knocking down the guards and even sending Burn Shot and Glass falling. The heat was intense, forcing me to cover my head with my arms, but I felt the flames eat at the sleeves of my prison jumpsuit. Still, my arms protected most of my face, and once the flames went away, I sat up and looked around.
All of the guards were down. Some of them—the ones who had taken the brunt of the blast—were clearly dead, their bodies and armor charred, while others were probably unconscious but badly wounded by the flame. Burn Shot lay on the floor next to me, a thin stream of blood leaking from where his head had cracked against the floor, while Glass was lying on his stomach, his head turned so I couldn’t see his face, but he was so still that I assumed that he was unconscious, maybe even dead.
I looked over at Rime. Rime was cowering with his hands over his head, but he seemed surprisingly unharmed. Maybe it was because Glass—whose body was actually smoking—had taken the brunt of the explosion, though there were a few burnt marks on Rime’s face and hands.
“W-What was that?” said Rime, his eyes wide. “Where did that explosion come from?”
“A gift from the Flame,” came a high, crazy voice behind us.
Rime and I looked over our shoulders. What hope had returned to my heart rapidly melted away again when I saw who was standing there:
It was Mimic, Steel Skin, Firespirit, Enor, Jawtooth, and Intellect. And they were all free.
Chapter Ten
I scrambled to my feet. I had no idea how these guys had gotten out of their cells or why they had saved us, but I could guess that it was because these guys wanted to kill me themselves. It was kind of weird how supervillains would get obsessed with wanting to be the ‘one’ to kill a particular superhero, but since the powerless gas still hadn’t worn off and my injuries from Burn Shot hadn’t healed yet, it didn’t seem so funny anymore. My chest burned when I rose, forcing me to cover it with a hand and cough before I looked at Mimic and the others.
“What are you guys doing here?” I said. “Come to kill me yourselves?”
Before any of my enemies could say anything, a familiar Russian voice cried, “Kevin!” and Ivan pushed his way past the others, even knocking Mimic to the floor without apologizing. Ivan walked up to me and Rime, a relieved smile on his face.
“I am so glad to see that we were in time,” said Ivan with a sigh. “I thought we might be too late and that Glass might just kill you both.”
“Ivan?” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to stay in our cell.”
“I was, but while in my cell, I heard some guards discussing how you and Rime were about to walk into a trap,” said Ivan. “I knew you needed help, so I went and freed these six on the condition that they help you in exchange for freedom from this place.”
“Yeah,” said Mimic, rising to his feet and dusting off his jumpsuit. “Don’t get the wrong idea, kid. We didn’t save you because we like you or anything. We did it just because Ivan threatened to give us all radiation poisoning if we didn’t.”
I looked at Ivan, who just shrugged and said, “What can I say? I might not be a supervillain anymore, but every now and then I will relapse into my old ways and threaten to nuke a city. Is not a problem.”
“Right,” I said. “Wait, does that mean that these guys are going to come with us?”
“That’s part of the deal we made with Ivan,” said Intellect in a cold voice. “He said that if we helped you, we would get our freedom. Or will he go back on his word?”
“Kevin, you must understand,” said Ivan, putting a hand on my shoulder before I could shout at him for being an idiot. “I know that you think these guys deserve to be here, but you will need their help to escape. There are clearly more important things to worry about right now than a few supervillains becoming free again; namely, White Lightning and Mastermind.”
I had to admit that Ivan had a point. While Mimic and the others were all scum who deserved to rot behind bars for the rest of their miserable lives, the fact was that they really weren’t the biggest threat to America or the world right now. White Lightning and Mastermind were. Besides, it wasn’t like I was in any position to beat them; my powers still hadn’t returned and I was in too much pain due to all of the fighting I’d done.
“Fine,” I said reluctantly. “They can come with us. What about you, Ivan? Are you coming with us, too?”
Ivan sighed and looked down at Glass. “I might as well, because when Glass awakes, he will probably kill whoever he can get his hands on. Besides, you will need someone to keep these guys in line, and every prisoner in Ultimate Max fears Nuclear Winter.”
Ivan looked over his shoulder at the others. “Right, guys?”
He said that in an incredibly threatening tone, causing Mimic and the others to nod quickly.
