We cautiously crept up to the GP level: me and Zeus in front, followed by Ostin, Ian, and Taylor, with McKenna and Abigail bringing up the rear. The cameras inside the stairwell were panning back and forth like animals, heads up, watching for danger.
“Zeus, take those things out,” I whispered.
“On it.”
One by one Zeus blasted the cameras. Their blinking red lights went dark and they drooped, as if hanging their heads in defeat. Then the stairwell itself went dark.
“I think they’re trying to make this difficult,” Zeus said.
“No problem,” McKenna said. She began to glow again.
“McKenna,” I said, “stay close to the wall. You make an easy target.”
She pressed back against the wall.
“Ian, where are they?” I whispered.
“Three guards on GP, two guards on level one and six on two—three guarding the doors and three with Hatch and the children. They’ve abandoned the third floor. There are seven guards on four and three scientists. It looks like they’re preparing for a battle on the fourth floor.”
“They must have guessed that’s where we’re going,” I said.
As we came up to the first level, I whispered to Ian, “How close to the door are they?”
“One’s touching it, the other’s standing by the elevator.”
I put my hand on the door and pulsed. We could hear the guard’s gun hit the floor.
“Seventeen,” Ostin said.
Suddenly Ian shouted, “Move, move!”
We scattered. Bullets started ripping through the door.
When the gunfire paused, Zeus asked Ian, “Where is he?”
Ian pointed. Zeus shoved his finger through one of the holes and fired back with a bolt of electricity.
“Got him,” Ian said. “You are good.”
“Thanks,” Zeus said.
“Sixteen,” Ostin said. “We’re forty percent there.”
We approached the door to the second floor cautiously. Hatch was on level two and there were the electric children and six guards. Fortunately, with the stairwell cameras dead, they were blind to our movement.
On our way up to the third floor we had to step over the bodies of two of the guards from our first battle. They were still unconscious. McKenna and Abigail put on the guards’ bulletproof vests, even though they hung to the girl’s knees. Then Ostin and I handcuffed the guards and stripped them of their weapons. Ostin added one of their knives to his utility belt, which looked like a small sword on him. I took one of the rifles and jammed it between the door and the railing to keep the door from being opened behind us.
With each step, Ian looked from side to side as he kept track of everything going on in the building. My biggest fear was that Hatch would attack with Nichelle and the electric children, but with the exception of Tara, they kept their distance.
“He can’t risk them,” Zeus said to me. “The kids are too valuable. The guards are dispensable.”
We stopped on the stairwell between levels three and four. There was another guard’s body on the stairs. We stripped the guard of his weapons. We now had more than we could carry, so we dropped them down the stairwell. Ostin put on the guard’s bulletproof vest.
Ian groaned. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?” I said.
“On level four they’re setting up inside the door with a flamethrower.”
“A flamethrower?” Ostin asked. “If we open the door that will fill the whole stairwell.”
“It’s worse, they’ve even armed the scientists. Superman couldn’t make it through that door alive.”
I looked back down the stairwell. “I’ve got an idea. How many guards on three?”
“None, they’ve abandoned the floor.”
“You’re sure?”
He looked again. “Yes.”
“Ostin, how much smoke does one of these smoke grenades make?”
“Well, if they’re like the ones on the Discovery Channel, they’ll each produce forty thousand cubic feet of smoke in about thirty-five seconds.”
“How many cubic feet is the fourth floor?”
Ostin loved questions like that. “I estimate this place is about forty-four hundred square feet per floor, the ceiling’s about eight feet high, so, if my calculations are accurate that’s thirty-five thousand, two hundred cubic feet of space per floor.”
I grinned. “So twelve smoke grenades would cover it.”
“The smoke will be so thick they could chew it like bubble gum. But how do we get the smoke grenades up there?”
“No problem,” I said. “Follow me.”
We climbed back down to the third level—the floor of the electric children suites. Knowing that the cameras were still live, Zeus went inside alone to take out the cameras, while I explained the plan to everyone else. A minute later Zeus opened the stairwell door on three. “All clear. The cameras are dead.”
We all went inside.
Abigail and McKenna each called an elevator. When the elevators arrived they pushed the button for the fourth floor, then stepped back out and held the elevator doors open.
“Everyone ready?” I asked.
“Let’s roll,” Zeus said.
The elevators began to beep from being detained.
“Ostin?”
“Ready,” he shouted from the stairwell.
“Now!”
At my signal Ostin leaned out the stairwell door and threw a concussion grenade up to the fourth floor, while Abigail and McKenna pulled the pins on their smoke grenades, six apiece, threw them into the elevators, and let the elevators go. A half-minute later Ian started to laugh. “It’s working.” Smoke was filling the fourth level.
“Taylor, now!” I shouted.
Taylor began concentrating, trying to create as much general confusion as she could.
We could hear the guards and scientists above us in a state of panic.
“They’re running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off,” Ian said. “They’re climbing out the windows.”
Within five minutes the guards and scientists had completely vacated the floor. We went back to the stairwell. Smoke from our grenades had seeped into the stairwell and Ostin was covering his mouth and nose with his shirt, which he had pulled up through his vest.
“They’re all gone,” I said.
“Nine guards left,” Ostin said.
“How’s the smoke?” I asked Ian.
“It’s dissipating. Give it a few more minutes.”
I climbed past Ostin and tried the door. “It’s bolted shut,” I said. “Any ideas, Ostin?”
Suddenly the bolt slid and the door opened. Abigail and McKenna were standing there.
I looked at them curiously. “How’d you get up here?”
McKenna smiled. “We took the elevator.”
We covered our noses and walked into the room. The smoke had mostly dissipated but its odor hadn’t, leaving the room bathed in a pungent, sulfurous smell. Ostin stopped to look at the mounted guns they had facing the door. “Whoa. That’s a Barrett M182 anti-matériel rifle retrofitted with a M2A1-7 flamethrower.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Internet.”
“That’s one nasty gun,” Ian said, scratching his head.
“Ian, I’m going to release the prisoners,” I said. “Will you keep watch?”
“Sure thing.”
The command center was located at the front end of the floor, opposite from the stairwell we’d just come through. The room was open with large glass panels so that inside we could still see the stairwell and the rest of our group. There were two large consoles, each about the size of a car’s hood, and as loaded with buttons and switches as a jet cockpit.
“Man, this is cool,” Ostin said. “I need one of these in my room.”
The first console had fourteen small screens stacked on top of each other in five levels, the numbers corresponding with each level of the building except for the GP level, which was missing. The images on these screens, each numbered, were constantly changing, switching between more than a hundred security cameras. However, thanks to Zeus’s handiwork, only the first, second, and fourth floor monitors were completely live. Next to the screens was a long row of buttons allowing the operator to select and control any camera on the grounds.
“These are all the building’s security cameras,” I said to Ostin, pointing to a monitor. “See, there’s the main hall, the yard, and the students’ suites.”
“The students’ suites?” Zeus asked, walking into the room. “I completely took the third floor camera out.”
“Not all of them. There are still the ones in the bedrooms.”
“There are cameras in the bedrooms?” Zeus asked, looking surprised. “I didn’t know we were being watched all the time. That’s kind of… embarrassing.”
Unfortunately we had taken out all the cameras in the stairwell, which would have been useful to us now.
Taylor joined us in the command center.
The second console was entirely dedicated to the GP level. There was a bank of twenty-five small screens, each with a number, all surrounding one large, central monitor. On the small screens we could see the GPs. There was little movement in the cells; the prisoners were either lying on their beds or sitting on them. In one room a few were on the ground playing cards.
“Interesting,” Ostin said, watching them. “They’ve created their own sign language.”
All but two of the cells were full and most had more than one occupant, some as many as four.
On the main console there were twenty-five panels, each with three buttons, a toggle switch, a sliding switch, and two green diodes. In the center of the console was a microphone.
“Ostin, help me figure this out,” I said.
Ostin walked up behind me and looked over the console. “Each screen and panel corresponds with a cell and if you push the red button”—he reached over and pushed the red button on Cell 5 and the video image of two GPs playing cards on the small screen appeared on the central monitor—“you can enlarge the view of a single cell.” He pushed the button again and the image zoomed in still more. He did it until we could actually read the cards one of the prisoners held in his hand.
“That’s one way to cheat at cards,” Zeus said.
“And this toggle switch moves the camera.” Ostin pushed the button to the right and the camera panned right. “Man, I wish I had one of these.”
He looked at the buttons on the panels below the red one. They were labeled VOX, PL, and EC. EC had a sliding button beneath it. “VOX, of course, is the intercom system. PL…” Ostin rubbed his chin as he thought. “Pneumatic locks. The green light tells you that it’s locked. And EC would be electric collars. I’m guessing that the sliding button below them would intensify the severity of the shock; the green light signals that it’s on.”
“Look around for Jack,” I said.
“Is that him in 9?” Taylor said, pointing to a small screen. The man in the cell was lying on his back looking up at the ceiling.
I pushed the red button on 9 and the picture came up on the central monitor.
“Push it again,” Ostin said.
I pushed the button twice until the man’s face took half the screen. “That’s him,” Taylor said.
“I didn’t recognize him with the beard,” I said.
“Where’s Wade?” Ostin asked. “They’re not together?”
I honestly didn’t know if Wade was still alive. I hadn’t had the chance to tell them anything about what had happened to us. “Keep looking,” I said.
“There he is,” Ostin said. “In 11.”
I pushed the button on 11 and the image filled the screen. Wade wasn’t alone. There was another man in the same room.
“He’s almost across the hall from Jack,” I said.
I pushed the button on 9 again and the picture of Jack came back up on the center screen. I pushed the VOX button on the 9 panel. “Jack.”
He suddenly looked up toward the corner of the room.
“Jack, can you hear me?”
He looked around, as if trying to figure out where the voice had come from.
“Jack, it’s me, Michael. Are you okay?”
This time he nodded.
“I can’t hear anything,” I said to Ostin.
“He’s not speaking. He still has the electric collar on.”
“Right.” I looked down at the panel. “Which way should I push it to deactivate it?”
“Try pushing it to the right,” Taylor said.
I started to slide the switch to the right. Jack immediately grabbed his collar.
“Stop! Stop!” Ostin shouted.
“Sorry. My bad,” Taylor said into the microphone.
“Rules out the right,” I said.
I slid the switch to the left. The green light on the panel went off.
“I think you did it,” Ostin said.
“Jack,” I said into the microphone, “I think we’ve disarmed your collar. Try speaking.”
He looked nervous. “Michael,” he said in a raspy voice. A look of relief came across his face. “Thanks. Where are you?”
“We’ve escaped. We’ve taken control of the main command center. We’re going to unlock all the doors in the prison, but there are still three guards on your floor. We want you to get Wade and help us.”
“I don’t know where Wade is,” Jack said.
“He’s close. He’s in Cell 11. That’s directly across the hall, one cell to the right. I’m going to unlock your door, but don’t open it until I tell you to. Taylor, where are the guards?”
“There’s one coming down the hall toward 9.”
“Hold tight, Jack. Ostin, on my word, unlock Wade’s cell.”
“Got it.”
“He’s turning back,” Taylor said.
“Okay, Jack, be sure to shut your door so they don’t suspect anything.”
“Got it.”
“Ready. Go.” I pushed the PL button and a light on the panel turned green.
“Wait,” Jack said, “there’s no handle on the inside of the door. I can’t open it.”
“I got an idea,” Ostin said. He walked over to the other console, looked around for a moment, then pushed a button.
“The door just opened a little,” Jack said.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I turned on the hall air conditioner and created negative air—”
“That was smart,” Taylor said, cutting him off.
“Thanks.”
“Okay, where’s the guard, Taylor?”
“Still on the other end of the hall.”
“Ostin, open Cell 11.”
“Got it.”
“Okay, Jack. Go. Fast.”
Jack pried open his cell door, stepped out into the corridor, pulled his door shut, then pushed in the door at Cell 11. I hit the red button on 11 and the image took full screen. We watched the reunion. Wade stood as Jack entered and the other inmate just stared anxiously. “Ostin, shut off their collars. To the left.”
“Got it. Done.”
I pushed the VOX. “Jack, shut the door. We turned off the collars, but keep your voices down.”
Wade looked around, afraid to speak.
“It’s okay, you can talk,” Jack said.
“Who is that?” Wade asked.
“It’s Michael,” Jack said. “They’ve escaped.”
He looked at the camera. “You’re the man, Michael.”
“Can you take your collars off?”
“Yeah, they’re just buckled like a seat belt. Are you sure they’re turned off? Because the collars are programmed to go off on full if we try to take them off.”
“They’re off,” Ostin said, then turned to me and shrugged. “I think,” he said to me.
The three of them quickly removed their collars.
“Guys, here comes the guard,” Taylor said.
“Ostin, can you figure out how to shut off the lights on the floor?”
He went over to the other console. “Just a minute.” He quickly scanned the board. “I think this is it.”
“Jack, the guard is coming. When he passes your cell we’re going to shut off the lights. Can you and Wade jump him and drag him back into your cell?”
“My pleasure. Wade, you hit low, I’ll take his arms.”
“Count me in,” the other inmate said.
“We have night vision here,” I said, “so wait for our command.”
“Got it.”
“He’s nearing the cell,” Taylor said. “Okay, he’s past the cell.”
“Ostin, now,” I said.
The GP level screens all went dark. Suddenly the images on them changed from black to pale green, ghostlike images.
I whispered. “Jack, can you see anything?”
“No.”
“The guard is three feet to your right, directly in front of your old cell. He’s facing Cell 9. Open your door.”
He opened the door. The guard must have heard my voice and started to turn back.
“Now!”
The three of them blindly charged the guard. Wade hit first, wrapping his arms around the guard’s legs, while Jack knocked him over. The other inmate grabbed the guard around the neck. The guard was flailing around but had no idea who or what had hit him.
Truthfully, the attack didn’t look a whole lot different than back when Jack and his posse tried to pants me. The three of them dragged the guard back into their cell.
“Eight guards,” Ostin said.
“Lights on,” I said.
The lights came back on. The two remaining guards just looked around, confused by what had happened.
“Shut the door,” I said.
Wade pushed the door shut. The third inmate still had the guard by the throat, and Jack pinned his arms behind his back as Wade handcuffed him. Then Jack pulled off all the guard’s weapons, taking a rifle, Taser, and concussion grenade. He handed a pistol and a smoke grenade to Wade and the truncheon and Mace to the other inmate. The inmate immediately sprayed the Mace in the guard’s face. “Feels good, don’t it?”
The guard gasped and sputtered. “Don’t kill me.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Jack said to the guard. “You call for help and it will be the last thing you do.”
“Put a collar on him,” Ostin said into the microphone, “and we’ll reactivate it at full.”
“Gladly,” Jack said. He fastened one of the collars around the guard’s neck.
I slid the switch. “Reactivated,” I said.
“Welcome to the other side,” Jack said. He turned to the other inmate and put out his hand. “What’s your name?”
“Salvatore.”
“You did well, Salvatore.”
“Grazie.”
Zeus said, “If you can manually control the elevators, I can take out the front guard, while Jack takes out the other guard. Then we can start bringing the prisoners up here, bypassing the guards on two.”
“Brilliant. Except you better have Ian go with you, so you don’t walk into an ambush. Ostin, you’re in charge of the elevators. Abigail and McKenna, keep watch on the monitors.”
“What about me?” Taylor asked.
“Stay close to me,” I said. “I’m going to need your help.”
I got back on the speaker. “Jack, there are only eight guards left, and Hatch and six electric children. We’re going to start transporting all the prisoners up to the fourth floor and arm them. We’ve got a whole weapons depot up here. What will happen if I unlock all the doors?”
“They’re pretty keyed up,” he said. “Prison riot. Could turn ugly.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“There’re a few guys who could really help us, though.”
“How many?”
“Half dozen.”
“Okay, this is the plan. There are two guards still on your floor, one in each corridor. Ian and Zeus are going to come down the front elevator and take out the first guard. There’s a guard at the end of the corridor to your left. You’re going to have to keep him from helping out the other guard.”
Jack took out his grenade. “No problem.”
“When you’ve secured the floor, tell us where your friends are. Give the weapons you capture to the ones you trust and then start bringing them up here six at a time. I need you and Wade up here with us. Hatch may launch a counterattack up the stairwell.”
“Got it.”
Zeus and Ian walked over to the elevator. “We’re ready.”
“On it,” Ostin said. He opened the elevator door. “Level GL. I’m going to cut the lights again. Ian, when you get there tell Zeus where to fire. And stay away from the elevator door. The guard is still armed; he may just fire at the sound of the doors opening.”
“Got it.”
They stepped into the elevator. Ostin shut the door and sent them down. Then he again cut the lights on that level. We could see the guards on our screens freeze in their positions.
“Look!” Abigail said. “The stairwell door.”
Fire and sparks began shooting through the stairwell door. “Someone’s cutting their way in here,” I said.
“It must be Bryan,” McKenna said. “He can do that.”
“Taylor!” I shouted. “See what you can do to stop him!”
Taylor walked closer to the stairwell and focused her attention on the door. “Nothing’s happening.”
Ostin was still staring at his monitor. “Zeus and Ian have reached ground level,” he said.
There was a bright flash of lightning on the screen. “Seven guards,” Ostin shouted. “What’s Ian doing?”
On the monitor, Ian looked frantic. He ran down the hall toward Cell 11.
Already a full line had been cut through the door. “Michael!” Taylor shouted. “I can’t stop them!
“Ostin, who’s out there?”
“I can’t tell. Zeus shot out the cameras.”
I turned back to the console. “Ostin, lights up on GL.” I pushed the master VOX. “Jack, one of our guys, Ian, is about to come around the corner behind you. Don’t shoot him. Can you take the other guard out?”
Jack raised a hand. “On it. Do it, Wade.”
Wade threw a smoke grenade down to the end of the hall. The guard vanished behind a cloud of smoke.
“We’ve got you surrounded, man!” Jack shouted. “You’re the only one left. Surrender your weapon now or we start shooting.”
The choking guard threw his gun out ahead of him. “Don’t shoot. I surrender.”
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your back.” Jack turned back to Wade. “Get a collar.”
“Six guards left!” Ostin shouted.
Ian rounded the corner and pushed open the cell door. He was out of breath, “Michael, can you hear me?”
“I’m here,” I said.
He gasped out his warning. “It’s Bryan… he’s cutting through the… stairwell wall.”
“We can see the sparks. Is he wearing a helmet?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Taylor. “Get away from there. You can’t help.”
Just then Zeus walked into the cell behind Ian, carrying the guard’s weapons. “What’s going on?”
“Michael,” Ian said. “Bryan’s with Hatch and three guards. And he has Nichelle with him. They’re coming for you.”
