by Sybil Nelson
Chapter 27: Stupid Henchmen
I found the Selliwood Institute just where I’d left it, hidden in the side of a mountain in Colorado. I landed the jet in a cave to the south of the warehouse entrance that I’d blown up the week before. I poked around the computer in the console to see if I could find any information that would help me on this rescue mission. I pressed several buttons but only figured out how to make a cup of coffee and start a holographic game of Tetris.
I slammed my head down on the keyboard that slid out of the console. What was I thinking? I’m not smart enough to do this. Maybe if I had Tai by my side or something, she’d be able to handle the technological aspects. But I don’t have her. In fact, I might never see her again if I don’t figure out what to do and save her with the rest of my family.
I took some deep, cleansing breaths like my mother had taught me for meditation, and I tried to focus. I thought about the last time I was in the institute and tried to recall as much of it as I could.
It didn’t work. All I remembered was the cold, stainless steel room, a couple of unremarkable hallways, and the secret passageway that my father used to get me out. Not very helpful considering I had already blown up that wing of the building.
I tried not to panic as I searched my brain for an answer, but as time ticked on, I felt myself losing hope. Tears leaked from my eyes, and my throat tightened when, suddenly, it hit me. I sat up and looked around. Wiping the tears from my face, I remembered that right here in this very jet, my mother had shown me an image of the institute. She showed me the central control room. If I could bring that image back to my mind and do the mental equivalent of a zoom out on the picture, I’d have a complete blue print of the facility.
Thinking it would help jog my memory, I transferred from the pilot’s seat to the copilot’s seat where I had been sitting when she showed me. I focused on the central control room, its one entrance and exit, and the dozens of computers that lined the walls. Then I pulled back and saw the featureless corridors coming into view like a world slowly being built in The Sims.
Once I knew the layout of the institute, I felt a little more confident about what I had to do. I still didn’t know exactly where my family and Tai were located, but at least it was better than going in blind. I exited the jet and ran toward Selliwood.
My instincts kicked in as soon as I saw the armed men standing guard at the entrance. I hid behind a tank and planned my next move.
“I don’t know why we’re still here,” one of the guards said. “I’m supposed to be on vacation. It’s just a twelve-year-old girl. She’s no match for all of us. I don’t care what shoots out of her fingers.”
“Well, she did escape from us last week,” another one of them said.
“That’s because she had Specimen Q with her. She doesn’t have a chance on her own.”
“Speaking of Specimen Q, what are they going to do to her?”
“Not sure, but it’s bound to be painful.. She’s in the Detaining Quarters.”
“Sheesh. I wonder if they’re gonna let her live.”
“I doubt it.”
Detaining Quarters? That didn’t sound good. I searched the blue print in my mind and found the Detaining Quarters located in the North Wing of the Institute. I could follow a heating conduit straight there. But first, I had to get into the building.
I took aim and set three tanks on fire off in the distance. Then I hopped into the one I hid behind and started it up. Once it got going, I jumped out and ran in the opposite direction. The guards who weren’t distracted by the fire turned and started shooting at the moving tank. At that point, I didn’t even have to run for the entrance. I just strolled in through the front door.
Stupid henchmen.
The heating conduit was just wide enough for me to crawl into. I inched along through a heat so intense a normal human would have been dead in minutes. Thank goodness I wasn’t normal.
I made it about a hundred yards into the building when my sweater snagged a nail shooting out of the wall. I tried to tug it free, but it just got more caught up. I didn’t want to burn the stuck part away and ruin my sweater. I was still hoping Dad would somehow be able to wash out the blood stains and save it the same way he saved Josh’s football uniform after the twins wrote a threatening letter to the Teletubbies on it with a Sharpie.
The conduit was too narrow for me to easily squirm out of the sweater. I was working up a sweat trying to wiggle free. Finally, I just stopped moving, took a deep breath and tried to relax. That’s when I heard Colonel Selliwood’s voice.
“… experts in combat. They can defeat any opponent.”
“So where are all these specially trained soldiers? Why haven’t I seen them in action?” another voice said.
With a determined burst of energy, I finally twisted myself out of the sweater. Once out, I was easily able to free it from the nail. Then I crawled toward the voices. I looked through a vent and down into the room. It must have been Colonel Selliwood’s personal office.
“Mr. President, you’ve been in office for less than a year. I know you’ve had a busy start. I didn’t want to bore you with unnecessary details. Your predecessor was completely satisfied with my work,” Selliwood said to the president’s face on his computer screen. They were having some sort of digital meeting. I knew I needed to find my family, but I kinda felt like this was about to be a very important conversation.
“My predecessor has nothing to do with this. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you had with him, but I’d like to see with my own eyes what kind of operation you’re running. I can be there in the morning to have a face-to-face with these supposedly unstoppable fighting machines,” the president said.
“Mr. President, I’d hate for you to go through so much trouble. I—”
“Trouble? Do you want to know what troubles me, Colonel? These soldiers, whom I’ve never met, cost a reported $3 billion each in training.”
Selliwood was silent as I watched the president flip through some papers on his desk. “Forty-two years and $140 billion, yet I’m not aware of a single one of your so-called missions or how they’ve helped our country.”
“Sir, secrecy is imperative to our success and efficiency. Our operations are highly classified.”
“Highly classified? Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I apologize, sir.”
They stared at each other in a battle of wills for a few seconds. Finally, the president said, “I’m pulling your funding immediately. You are no longer a government-sponsored agency. When you can prove your necessity to this administration, maybe I’ll reconsider.”
“Mr. President, you don’t know what you’re doing. I assure you this outfit is vital to the safety of the country.”
“I assure you, Colonel Selliwood, I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m taking the money you’re wasting and placing it where it can do some actual good. You no longer work for the United States government. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Colonel Selliwood turned off his computer and spun his chair around so that I could see his face. I expected him to be totally ticked after that tongue-lashing, but instead that arrogant jerk just smiled maliciously.
“I think the president needs to know exactly how essential my research is,” he said to the dark emptiness of his room.
“Don’t you mean our research?” I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Mr. Witherall’s voice. I didn’t realize anyone else was in the room. I craned my neck and saw that he was sitting in a recliner in the corner.
“You know what we have to do,” Colonel Selliwood continued.
“Nine months ahead of schedule?”
“The president has left me no choice.”
“Well, then I better get to work on the final calculations.” Mr. Witherall stood. “I’ll see you at Crang.”
I didn’t know what Crang was or just what Selliwood and Witherall had to do, but I
knew I needed to stop them. First, I needed to save my family.
***
After five more minutes of crawling through heating ducts, I found my parents in a stainless steel room similar to the one I was in a few days ago. I looked in on them through a vent. My father was tied to a chair, his eyes bloodied and swollen shut. His face was almost unrecognizable from all the bruises.
My mother appeared fine physically, but she still had the glowing collar around her neck and she was attached to some contraption that obviously put her in an excruciating amount of pain. Probes and electrodes poked out of everywhere while her head hung forward limply.
What was worse was that my brothers and Tai were in the next room separated only by a glass window. They were forcing them to watch my parents’ torture.
Tai screamed and started crying when the gun from a guard made contact with my father’s face. Josh hugged the twins closer. My mother didn’t move. She had to be unconscious to not react to the attack on Dad. Please don’t die, Mom. I’m here. I’m going to save you.
I found the wires that sent electricity to the room and burned through them instantly shutting off the lights.
“Josh, what’s happening?” I heard Charlie cry.
Tears instantly welled in my eyes. I wanted let them know that everything was going to be okay but I couldn’t give away my location. I still needed the element of surprise in order to defeat the guards. In the complete blackness, I dropped through the ceiling and landed on one of the brutes who had been abusing my parents.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” he cried as I rained punches on his head.
“I can’t see anything. What’s going on?” the other one cried before firing his weapon toward us. I felt a stinging sensation in my arm right before the guard collapsed beneath me. I felt for his pulse. He was dead. Shot by his own friend.
“Ray, you there?” the guard said as I quietly crawled toward the sound of his voice. I could still hear the twins and Tai crying in the background. “You guys shut up over before I shoot you!,” he said.
That so was not going to happen.
I swept his legs out from under him. He fell to the ground with a thud. I kicked his gun away then picked him up and flung him against the wall. I knew he was unconscious. I threw him so hard he might’ve been dead. No one tortures my family like that.
I burned through my father’s ropes and then went to disconnect my mother from the device that had immobilized her.
“Good work, Priss,” Dad said before passing out. I laid him next to mom and then went to get Josh and Tai.
“Stand back,” I yelled at the window before kicking through the glass.
I tried to swallow back emotion as I hugged my brothers and my best friend. This wasn’t over. Once I had gotten everyone to safety maybe then I’d have time to cry tears of relief and joy. Until then, I was in fighter mode.
“Josh, carry Mom. Tai, hold the twins’ hands,” I commanded before picking up Dad. I knew we couldn’t go back the way I came. They wouldn’t be able to handle the heat. Instead, I lead everyone through the darkness and intricate pathways and halls of the Selliwood Institute. Even amidst the sirens and blinking emergency lights signifying someone had escaped, the guards never caught up with us. I blasted through walls, melted glass, and basically destroyed anything that got in our way until we reached freedom.
When we were almost back at the jet, I noticed my mother coming around.
“Get the others,” she whispered. “Save the children.”
“Everyone’s here, Mom. Me, Dad, Josh, Tai, and the twins. I saved everyone.”
“No, the children. Save the children.”
“What children?”
“She means the children in the institute,” Tai volunteered. “We saw them. There’s a bunch of them all wearing inhibitors.”
“Do you remember where?”
Tai shook her head.
“Think, Tai. I need a name or something. Did you see a sign or anything?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t—” I thought I saw tears welling in her eyes as she shook her head frantically. “What a minute. East. I remember something about east.”
“The east wing?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I think that could be it.”
I searched the blue print in my mind for the east wing and found something called the Containment Room. That had to be it. “I’m going back in,” I said, setting my dad on the ground. “Tai, try to figure out how to get those collars off of Josh and Mom.”
“Priss, don’t.” Josh gave me a knowing look. I knew he was thinking of his vision of my death, but I couldn’t let his worries stop me. There were kids in there, kids just like me, and they deserved a chance at a normal life. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I passed up this opportunity to help them.
Josh rested my mother’s limp body on the ground and then tried to block my path. He crossed his arms and puffed out his chest as if he stood a chance against me. “You’re not strong enough to stop me, Josh, so you might as well get out of my way.” He knew I was right. His shoulders slumped a little as he stepped aside to let me pass.
Before I got two steps away, I felt a hand on my arm. Josh pulled me into a hug and said, “Be careful.”
Chapter 28: Fighting Dirty
Getting back into to the facility wasn’t as easy as I thought. I checked the blue print in my mind as I circled the building. Every entrance had twice as many guards as before. Another distraction of tank fires probably wouldn’t work. They’d be on to that by now. If I had super speed I might be able to run right past them like Mom. But I didn’t have super speed, and no amount of sitting around and wishing would bring it about. If my mom was conscious, she’d probably tell me to not dwell on what I didn’t have or couldn’t change. I needed to focus and use my strengths.
I closed my eyes and studied the blueprints again. Maybe I’d missed something. There had to be another way in. Suddenly, I noticed a helicopter launch pad on the roof in the blue print. If they boarded helicopters from the roof, there had to be a way inside the building from the roof.
With the image still fresh in my mind, I found an isolated corner of the building between the north and west wings and then scaled a drainpipe to the roof. I ran past the two helicopters on the launch pad and toward a door that led to an emergency stairwell. I tried to open the door, but, of course, my life couldn’t be that easy. Not only was it locked and fire proof, but the reinforced steel was really going to do a number on my shoulder if I tried to bust through it. My shoulder still ached from ramming through the wall of my basement. I mean, I’m strong, but I’m not invincible. I was just a kid. I should’ve been home trading baseball cards, or playing video games, or picking out a tasty lip gloss that my boyfriend would enjoy.
Near tears, I put my head in my hands. This was too much. I couldn’t do it. But then suddenly, I felt very selfish. No matter how tired I was right now or how much my shoulder hurt, my life was a breeze compared to what those Selliwood kids had probably endured. I could practically hear my mother’s voice telling me to suck it up and do whatever it takes. That was just what I was going to do.
I took a few steps back in order to get a running start and crush the door. Just then, I heard footsteps and voices. I looked around and there was nowhere to hide. Without thinking, I flung myself over the side of the building, and held on to the edge with one hand. Once out of sight, I heard the door slam open. Someone was angry.
“I don’t understand why we’re leaving. We can’t let her get away.” I heard Xi’s distinctive British accent. I pulled myself up slightly and peered over the edge. Xi was storming toward one of the helicopters, followed by Witherall and two more specimens.
“Calm down, Xi. It’s not worth it. She’s probably long gone by now anyway. We need to concentrate on the next phase,” Witherall said.
“I just want to concentrate on pummeling that little red-headed rodent.” Xi took off her purse and wrapped the strap around her hand
. I could tell she wanted to rearrange my face with her fist. Honestly, I wanted to hop up there and scorch her psychotic tail again, but that wouldn’t be wise for several reasons. First, she had two other specimens with her and they were huge. I’d never fought more than one specimen at a time. I wouldn’t have a chance. Second, I didn’t have time to get into some petty revenge fight when there were children to save.
The door into the building was wide open. Xi had slammed it open so hard that it got stuck for a few seconds. As Witherall and the specimens lifted off in one of the helicopters, the door slowly creaked closed. I waited as long as I could without risking the door shutting, and then I hurled myself onto the roof and made a mad dash for it.
