The Deviant Underground (Time Bandit) (33 page)

“I understand that. Saving them all would be quite impossible, but Charge has a plan to at least give them a fighting chance.” Kathryn was about to speak, but Jonathan continued. “It should require no contact with anyone, so I believe that you will be safe. Plus, they won’t be expecting you to return, so you'll have the advantage of the element of surprise.”

“You have got to be kidding me! And what if I don't agree to do it?”

“Kathryn.” Jonathan had a calm and patient way of saying her name. “We need you. Our trapped brothers and sisters need you. They will die without your help.”

Kathryn paused for a second, conflicted. “SHIT!” She thrust the phone at Susan and stormed toward the car. She threw open the passenger's side door, found her cigarettes, lit one, and angrily slammed the car door closed. “Dammit! This is some bullshit,” she mumbled to herself as she inhaled deeply.

She heard Charge's heavy, solid footsteps as he approached her. “Hey, babe.” He touched her lightly on the shoulder and turned her to face him. “I know you're scared—”

“I'm not scared. I'm pissed because I just saw a guy shoot you at point blank range, and if I had been a millisecond later, I would have lost you forever.” She choked on her words and fought the tears that threatened to rise. She took another drag to calm herself. “And now you are telling me that we need to go back there and risk our lives for a bunch of strangers?”

“Baby,” Charge again stroked the side of her face, his one good eye looking at her earnestly, “we may not know those people personally, but they’re still deviants, just like us, and we can't leave them in there trapped. The government is conducting terrible, terrible experiments on them. Doing awful things to them . . .” Charge's voice cracked slightly, and pain and horror flashed across his face. She looked at his busted lip, broken nose, and swollen eye—partial evidence of what had been done to him. He took a deep breath and continued. “And we can't leave them without a opportunity to get free. We just can't.”

Charge's emotional plea touched Kathryn's heart. She was too overwhelmed to say anything, so she just nodded.

“Thanks, babe.” Charge drew her in close for the first time in so long. She wrapped her arms around him and lay her head against his chest. The sight of the bullet hovering inches in front of his head flashed through her mind. She gripped him even tighter.

Susan slowly walked up to them, hanging up the phone. “Are you ready?”

Kathryn sighed. “I guess so.” She looked up at him. “So where are we going?”

“The sub-basement,” he responded. “I need you to find the electrical room.”

***

The electrical room was easy to find. It was located directly underneath the interrogation rooms, and it was huge. Rows upon rows of ceiling-high electrical cabinets filled the sub-basement, and they all emitted a low-frequency hum that Kathryn found mildly irritating. Once in the room, Charge immediately strode over to the first large cabinet in front of them. He opened the grey door, revealing panels upon panels of circuit breakers, dials, buttons, and flashing lights. Kathryn had no idea what she was looking at, but Charge seemed to. He went up and down the aisles opening doors and moving on to the next cabinet in line. They followed slowly behind, saying nothing. Kathryn knew the room was empty, but being there made her nervous anyway.

Charge reached the middle of the room, opened up another cabinet door, and nodded. “Yeah, this is it.”

“What is it?” Kathryn asked. It looked just like all the other ones to her.

“This is the main conduit,” Charge explained. “Take this one down and the whole thing shuts down.”

Kathryn began to understand Charge's plan. “So you plan to shut the power off to the entire building?”

“Yeah.” Charge took a few steps back. “The locks to the prison doors are electric, and of course, those spot lights outside are powered by electricity as well. Shut down the power, and people have the opportunity to try to get out.”

“But what about the people in the hospital beds?” Kathryn remembered seeing many of them hooked up to monitors. “What if they need that stuff to keep them alive?”

“Hopefully, they don't.” Charge continued to stare at the circuitry in front of him. “Besides, the dark hallways will also give them a chance to get out.” Charge flexed his fingers and clenched and unclenched his fists. “Stand back.”

Kathryn and Susan took a few steps back. Charge glanced over his shoulder at them. “Farther,” he warned.

“I don't know about this, Charge. I mean, you’re pretty hurt.”

“I'm fine,” he said quietly. “Now get back.” Susan tugged at Kathryn's arm, drawing her back farther.

A ball of electricity sprung to life between Charge's hands. Kathryn watched in awe as it grew bigger and bigger. It cracked and sizzled with life and as it grew; the crackling became deafening, overpowering the persistent hum in the room. Kathryn held up her hand to shield her eyes from the intense blue-white light. Through the glow, Charge's face was set with concentration. His arms opened up wider and wider, and the ball grew with them. Kathryn and Susan instinctively took a few more steps back.

With a sudden deep, guttural yell, Charge hurled the ball of electricity toward the open cabinet. It exploded, causing Kathryn and Susan to shield their faces. Sparks flew around the room as the explosion migrated from cabinet to cabinet. The bang and roar from all of the short circuiting transformers was overpowering. Kathryn covered her ears, but the sound still pierced her brain. The smell of acrid, burning current was everywhere, stinging her nostrils and making her choke. The domino effect started by Charge zigzagged around the room, in front of her, behind her, and next to her on both sides. Over and over and over circuits popped and sizzled. Suddenly, the room plunged into darkness.

Even in the dark, the residual waves of electricity flashed. Like fireworks they exploded and rained down onto the concrete floor before the entire room grew silent.

“Damn, Charge.” Kathryn laughed as she removed her hands from her ears.

“Are you guys okay?” his voice whispered weakly in the darkness.

Worried, Kathryn groped her way forward. “Yeah, I'm fine. Susan?”

“Fine.” Susan's voice came from behind her.

Kathryn continued to walk slowly toward Charge's last position. “Charge? Where are you?”

“Right here.” His voice came from near the floor. Kathryn followed it, reached out, and touched his shoulder. He was on his knees.

“Are you okay, baby?” Kathryn gently touched his face in the dark.

“Yeah.” Charge's large hand covered hers.

Kathryn chuckled. “That was some show of power. I'm impressed.”

“Thanks,” he said weakly. “I think that did the trick.”

“Considering that I can't see shit, I would say that it did. Can you stand up?”

“Yeah.”

His cheek slipped away as he slowly rose. “Susan? Where are you? Let's go.” Kathryn held out her hand in the darkness.

“Wait.” Susan's voice came from a few feet in front of her. “We have one more thing to do.”

Kathryn’s anger rose again. “Oh, no. Not one more thing. Let's go NOW.”

“I'm serious, Kathryn,” Susan's voice was earnest in the darkness. “Jonathan's orders. Take us up to one of those executive offices you found. We need to get some information.”

“Dammit.” Kathryn grit her teeth, but she knew that it was no use arguing. Arguing just wasted time, and she was in a hurry to get out of there. “Fine, give me your hand.” Susan's hand found hers in the darkness. Kathryn reached over and grabbed Charge's arm and teleported the three of them up to the large corner office on the top floor.

That room was dark as well, but the windows allowed some of the pale night sky to illuminate the darkness. The front door of the office was wide open, revealing a dark and empty hallway. In the middle of the room was a desk, and on that desk was a laptop. The computer was open, but the screen was black.

“Grab that computer,” Susan said. She then investigated the large file cabinets behind them.

Kathryn led Charge to the office chair. “Sit here, baby. This won't take but a second.” He sat down slowly, the chair creaking in response. Kathryn closed the top of the computer and traced the power cord to the plug in the wall. She unplugged it, wrapped the cord around the laptop, and tucked it under her arm.

“Wow,” Susan said breathlessly as she thumbed through the files.

“What is it?”

Susan's answers didn’t come in the form of complete sentences. “Information. Science experiments. Abilities.” She took out one manila folder and opened it. “Categorized by gifts. Telepaths. Shape shifters. Telekinetics.” She looked down into the cabinet again. “Teleporters.”

“Seriously?” Kathryn was shocked at the possibility that there were other teleporters out there.

She pulled out another file. “Right here.”

The single click was so soft that Kathryn almost didn't hear it. Then again, she had no idea what pulling the hammer back on a gun sounded like. Instinctively, she turned toward the sound. In the darkness behind the front door, a silver-haired man stepped out of the shadows. The pale moon light from the windows glinted off the barrel of the handgun that was pointed at them.

“Step away from the cabinet and put the computer down,” he said steadily.

Kathryn was in shock for a second, but that shock slowly turned into amusement. She couldn’t help but to smile coldly at his show of bravery. He looked so puny and insignificant holding his ineffective handgun. Kathryn contemplated whether to freeze the man entirely or just the gun. She toyed with the notion of teasing him into firing it, freezing the bullet the moment it left the barrel. She thought about teleporting him many miles away from the facility, perhaps dropping him off in a desolate forest. The thought also crossed her mind to simply teleport him to the roof of the building and push him off.

Before she could act on any of her impulses, the man turned sharply towards the door of the office. His face became racked with horror, his mouth opening wide in a silent scream. His hands shook violently, and he fell to his knees, crouching down in fear. He began sobbing and slowly lifted his head again toward the empty threshold. Tears streamed down his face, and his lip quivered uncontrollably. He held up his empty hand in a gesture of pleading. “No,” he whispered hoarsely. “Please.” He then raised the gun up to his head and fired.

Kathryn jumped when the gun went off. In shock, she looked toward Susan, who simply smirked knowingly. “What did you do?”

Susan turned toward the cabinet and grabbed a handful of files. “Just made him see something he didn't want to,” she said nonchalantly. “Here.” She pushed a stack of files into Kathryn's arms. She struggled not to drop them. “Take these, Charge.” Susan gave another stack to Charge, who was still seated. Susan picked up another large stack for herself. “Okay,” she nodded. “Let's go.” Awkwardly, the three of them linked arms, and Kathryn teleported them all back to the rest stop.

With a bit of a struggle not to lose control of hundreds of pages of documents and a laptop, they got in the car and headed back east on I-50. Susan drove, Kathryn was in the passenger's side, and Charge was sharing the backseat with all of their stolen loot. “Damn, Susan,” Kathryn finally said after several minutes. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

Susan chuckled. “What can I say? I didn't want you and Charge to be the only ones having fun.” Kathryn lit a cigarette and put her head back. She couldn’t believe that they actually made it out of there alive. All of them.

“Where's the phone?” Susan asked. Kathryn heard rustling in the back.

“Right here.” Charge dialed. A few seconds later, Jonathan picked up. “We did it.” Kathryn couldn't hear Jonathan's exact words, but by his tone, he sounded pleased. Kathryn looked out of the window and saw the bright stars whizzing by. She hoped that Jonathan could get them on a red-eye flight back to LA. She didn't want to stay in DC a moment longer. “Okay, I'll tell them. Thanks.” Charge hung up the phone. “Turn around.”

Chapter Thirty Five

Kathryn sat up in shock. “What?”

“Turn around, Susan,” Charge repeated. “We're not flying out of DC.”

“Okay.” Susan turned on the car's signal light and made her way into the right-hand lane.

“What the hell are we doing now?” Kathryn was almost too tired to argue yet another change in plans.

“We're driving back to LA.”

“You know what?” Kathryn sighed. “I'm not even going to get pissed because I am too tired. I just want to know why the hell we are driving from one end of the country to the other when human beings have invented this little thing called an airplane that can get us there in a fraction of the time. Ever heard of it?”

“Because,” Charge said softly, “they know everything about us now, and we can't get our IDs checked at the airport because then they’ll most likely arrest us. We have to lay low.”

“Huh?” Kathryn turned in her seat to look at Charge. His swollen face was difficult to read in the darkness. “What are you talking about? Who is 'they?'“

“The government. Or least, whatever branch runs that facility,” Charge turned toward the window.

“Charge,” Kathryn said tenderly. “I have no idea what you are talking about. What do you mean the government knows everything about us?”