Kinetics (18 page)

"I don't know who did it.  I intend
to find out." His expression scared me, I’ve never seen anyone that mad in
my life. 

Someone tried to kill one of us and it
was completely random.  Anyone of us could have picked up that antigrav
generator.  Furry flushed through my face as we started to creep through a
field low to the ground. 

We came to the fence on the outer
perimeter of the facility, "How should we get inside?  Getting out was
kind of explosive." Chrono looked over the small map that hovered over his
phone.

Arch took an all in one tool from one of
the many pockets on the vest and started to cut a slit in the fence.  We all
slipped inside, staying quiet, and still low to the ground. 

"There are two entrances.  Both
equally guarded." Silence pointed out.

"Which one is closest to our
ultimate goal?" I asked.

"The one at the back."

"Well I vote for that one."
Arch said. 

I noticed that even though he told Sam
that he chose his abilities over the gun it was still strapped to his hip.

We slid along the wall slowly towards
the rear of the facility.  It was an entrance they used for deliveries.  There
were two trucks parked with their engines running.  I assumed for deliveries
the next morning.  I didn’t see either driver which led me to believe that they
were sleeping in the cabs.

There were four guards two standing on
either side of the entrance.  They were different than the soldiers that cornered
us after we escaped.  These were wearing gas masks with glowing red eyes.  They
had all black armor that looked like plastic and some kind of rifle that I had
never seen before.

One of the guards had wandered off from
the others.

I looked over to ask Silence something
but he was gone.  I looked up and he was inches from the guard who had wandered
off by himself.  He reached up and grabbed the guard waving some kind of device
over the guard’s ear.  The guard immediately lost consciousness.  He drug the
body to a nearby wall.

Arch made his move once two of the
remaining guards rounded the wall to investigate.  He rushed them and took them
out with a single powerful bolt of energy.  Shift morphed into one of the
guards, we all joined Silence and the three dead bodies at the side of the
building. 

Shift joined the last guard at the entrance.

"What is going on?" the guard
asked Shift.

"Had to take a leak." She said
mimicking the man’s voice perfectly. 

"I'm going to have to report this."
the guard turned to walk away

“I was afraid of that.” Shift took her
chance to hit the guard in the back of the head.  The guard stumbled and caught
himself on the wall.  She put her arm around his head and held him until he
stopped struggling.  She drug the body to where the others were stacked. 

Chrono held out the storage case,
"You should take this from here."

I took it from him, and threw the strap
over my shoulder.  We used a keycard from one of the guard's bodies to unlock
the door.  Shift held her guard form, but made the blood vanish from her
clothes.

The hallway inside was quiet.

The lobby inside of the building was
eerily cheerful.  The walls in the lobby were a sterilized white and the lights
were bright and unnatural.  Cheerful elevator music played over the intercom
system.  The receptionist desk was empty.

"This place gives me the
creeps." I said keeping a close eye on the two doors leading from the
deeper parts of the facility into the lobby.

"Remember this is the lobby for the
power plant portion of the facility.  This lobby is the public area.  Aurora
has their image to maintain." Silence said.  He walked over to the desk,
and pulled the touch screen computer out of the desk.

“Why don’t people ask Aurora why they post
guards at the entrance of a simple power plant?” Shift asked.

“I guess most people just don’t care.”
Silence mumbled.

"What are you doing?" I joined
Silence behind the desk.

"I am going to download all of the
fire escape data.  With it, we may be able to find our way around the
facility." he plugged a cable into the computer, and then into his phone. 
The screen flashed the words
files located
and he pressed his finger to
the download button. 

"How do you know you can get it
with your phone?" I asked.

"Most of the current Aurora Tech is
built upon AdvaGen platforms.  We were able to recover a lot of AdvaGen
technology in the town." Silence explained.

"Is there any way that we could use
a terminal in one of the labs to download the information?" Arch asked.

"The terminals in each lab only
have access to the information pertaining to the subjects and projects in that
one lab.  To get all of the information in the facility we have to back up the
core." Silence said.  All of our watches beeped at the same time.  I
looked down and it said new maps available.  I pressed the screen and the map
displayed our location.

I navigated through the maps down to the
lowest level, "I'm guessing that this black area at the bottom here is the
computer core?" I said.

"I'd say that would be a good
guess." Silence looked at my watch.

"There are two elevator banks, each
with emergency stairs.  It looks like the stairwells stop one floor above the
level that the core is on." I looked down at the map.

"It would be nice if these nifty
little watches would tell us where all the guards are." Arch played with
the settings on his watch.

"I think that the facility will be
relatively unguarded.  Aurora is under the impression that we are stretched
very thin." Silence opened the door to the first hallway.  "Let's
just go down the closest stairwell."

We all entered the hallway and stuck
close to the wall.  Silence led the way and made sure that he was the forward
most person.

"What about the cameras?" I
asked looking at one that had just pointed right at us.

"You phone projects an
electromagnetic field that makes you and everything you touch invisible to
electronic recording devices.  This includes infrared." Silence said
waving to the camera then flipping the bird.

"Where did you get these toys?"
Arch asked looking at his phone.

"We either created it from scratch
or modified AdvaGen tech same as Aurora."

We rounded a corner as one of the guards
was making the last leg of his rounds.  He was walking away from us and had no
idea that we were behind him.  Silence pulled a small throwing knife from his
boot and threw it into the guards back.  Before the knife even made contact,
Silence was inches from the guard to catch him as he fell.

We drug the man into a closet and locked
the door. 

We got to the stairwell's doorway and
Shift held up the keycard she had from before.  Silence held out his arm and
stopped her, "Wait, that guard is supposed to be guarding the gate.  If
you swipe the card it will raise the alarm."

She tossed the card aside, "What
then?"

"This." He held up his phone. 

"What can the phone not do?" I
smiled.

"I'll let you know when I figure it
out." He held it up to the panel.  A blue light scanned the lock from the
top to the bottom.  Seemingly random numbers began to flash across the screen.

I looked down the hallway while the
phone was doing its thing to see a man in a janitor's uniform sweeping the
floor.  He whistled a catchy tune.

He stopped and looked up at me smiling. 
I tapped Silence on the shoulder, but when I looked back he had vanished into
thin air.

"What is it?" he matched my
gaze down the hall.

"Nothing." I said. 

A holographic key card, similar to the
one that Shift had, appeared hovering over Silence's phone.  He grabbed it and
swiped it in the reader.  The lock popped and then he pushed open the door. 

"Easy as that." he said showing
us into the stairwell.  When the door closed and locked behind us we were left
in complete darkness. 

"Where is the light switch?"
Chrono searched the walls blindly.

"The lights have sensors, and they
cannot see us." Silence said, "Grace, Ronnie you have the best
abilities for light."

I set my hands on fire and Ronnie forced
bolts of energy to run down his arms.  We started to walk down the stairs
taking them slowly.

When we reached the halfway point, the
door below us sprung opened and no less than a dozen Saber soldiers rushed into
the room.  They raised their guns and began firing in our direction.

Blackout was quick with her shield to
stop the bullets. 

"What the hell are these bullets
made of?  Each one weighs a ton." her eyes were already starting to bleed.

I jumped from the landing and fell like
a stone to the floor below.  When I hit the ground, I sent out a blast of fire
in all directions knocking all of the soldiers to the ground. 

The door at the top opened and the
soldiers began filing in following the others down the stairs.  Blackout had to
drop her shield.  Arch and Chrono were fighting the other soldiers.  Arch was
blasting them with bolts of energy and Chrono was slowing the bullet down with
time, knocking them out of the air. 

I walked out into the hallway below, a
familiar man stood at the end of the hall.

"Jolt is down here!" I yelled
back through the door.

He stood with his back to a door and his
arms crossed.  He knew what we had come for and he was here to stop us.

"Well, well if it isn't the
misfits.  Coming for the computer core?  Your little telepath should mind her
thoughts." He had a mad grin plastered on his face.  He stood alone at his
end of the hallway.

"Just get out of the way." I
yelled.

Blackout joined us in the hallway,
walking slowly, holding her head.

“Well if it isn’t our little information
portal.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Oh don’t worry.  You had no idea the
link went both ways when the other person was aware of what you are doing.”
Jolt cackled.

"You know what, this guy is
mine." Arch took a step forward in front of the group.  He took off running
down the hallway towards Jolt as fast as he could.  He held out both of his
arms and created two balls of energy. 

He threw them at Jolt.

Jolt caught the energy and combined them
into a single charge of energy and threw it back at Arch.  He was able to side
step the attack.  The energy crashed into the floor and blew a large whole into
the rooms below.

Jolt threw another ball of electricity
at Arch who was able to grab it while he jumped through the air landing on
Jolt's face.  Jolt screamed as the bolts of energy licked his face, burning
deep grooves into his flesh. 

Arch jumped up and took a few steps back
as Jolt yelled in pain.  He pushed himself up into a standing position using
bolts of electricity for more leverage.  Arch balled his fists waiting for the
second round.

"I have to say.  Your power has grown
exponentially since last time." Jolt spat blood onto the floor.

"Stop talking and fight." Arch
yelled.

They ran at each other.  Bolts of energy
carved scorched lines in the walls as they smashed into each other...  Every
punch, every kick, blasted with pure white bursts of electricity. 

Arch pinned Jolt onto his stomach and
held his arm behind his back, "Silence, Sear, go.  I will keep him busy as
long as I can!"

We ran past them, ducking the bolts of
energy that were destroying the walls around us.  When we got to the door, I
melted it without thinking twice and pushed the door open. 

Inside of the room was a round hatch.  I
tried to open it but it was locked, I didn’t want to damage anything below. 
There was a small panel on the wall beside us.  Silence went to work on the
lock.

Jolt and Arch were standing again, both
breathing heavily.  Arch attacked but Jolt was waiting for it.  He placed his
palm on Arch's chest; he gathered all of his remaining energy and blasted Arch
with all of it.

Arch flew across the room and smashed
into the wall behind the others.  A crater spread out behind him and he fell to
the floor.  He rolled onto his stomach and coughed.

"You are still not strong enough to
beat me." Jolt said standing over Arch's limp body.

He held his arms up over his head,
charging for one last attack.  He gathered up every last bit of energy and
brought it down.  Blackout came between the blast and Arch with a shield.  She
absorbed the energy, and then funneled it into Arch.

"No! No! What are you doing?"
Jolt said backing away.