Chapter 41:
Winter's plan
Henry Winter was sitting in his own quarters, the pleasantly appointed three-room cell he'd been locked in for all these years, when the escape alarm went off. And when he heard it, he smiled.
Winter walked over to the desk where he'd labored at for so many projects for Prevention's group, squirreled away from everyone and everything, building them better mouse traps, enhanced weapons, more efficient methods of changing the world. He pulled out a wrist cuff constructed from two watches and a circuit board and strapped it on. He tapped a few buttons and waited until a small green LED light lit up.
Somewhere in another part of the building, an inert suit of battle armor started to hum, its systems coming online for the first time in ages.
Winter then picked up an undersized leather case, a small luxury that had been given to him so long ago he barely remembered the circumstances, just a modest gift to make him feel less like an inmate and more like a professional as they shuffled from meeting to meeting. Inside, he tucked an object roughly the size and shape of an electric shaver — which, amusingly, was how it began its life — a slim laptop, a compact hard drive, several nondescript circuit boards, and a soldering iron. He adjusted his tie, slid on the nicest suit coat his captors had allowed him to have, and stepped out into the hallway. They rarely locked him in anymore. He was not, in their eyes, a threat these days.
Which was exactly the image Winter had been cultivating for a very, very long time.
He hobbled down the hallway on his cane at a brisk pace, thought about taking the stairs for secrecy's sake, but instead entered the elevator. Two prison guards were inside when the doors open.
"Everything okay, Mr. Winter?" they said. Both were dressed in body armor and carrying heavier weapons than usual.
"Heading upstairs," Winter said. "I'd much rather help than barricade myself in my room and hope for the best."
"Understood. Agent Prevention is in the main office," one guard said.
"I'll find her." Guess I really am a good inmate, he thought.
They reached the level Winter had wanted and he put a reassuring hand on one of the guards' shoulders. These were just regular men, good soldiers, he thought. It wasn't their fault they were being used in a game between multiple powers who couldn't ensure their safety.
"Be careful," he told the guard. "There's some awful people trapped here."
"It's what we're trained to do," the guard said. "You be safe, Mr. Winter."
"I will."
He thought about heading right to the armory, where the Coldwall unit he'd been quietly refurbishing was warming up and prepping for battle, but there was only so much he could do as one man in a suit. Instead, he entered a server room, punched in a security code to allow access which he he'd planted for his own use long ago and locked himself inside, overriding ordinary digital pass codes. He found a chair and made himself at home, pulling out his laptop and running a USB cord from his computer to the physical server of the Labyrinth. He realized there were dozens of these rooms throughout the facility, backups after backups, but he also knew that if he could crack into the system here, he could make an impact across the entire prison.
He called up the status of the current prisoner population to see who had escaped, hoping it was Solar, Entropy Emily, and Straylight making their way to the surface.
Then he saw what was happening throughout the building and his stomach twisted into a knot.
"This is a disaster," he said out loud. "Let's see what I can do to turn things around."
And then he could see what was about to happen at the front gates, and understood exactly what he had to do.
Chapter 42:
Trading blows
Titus let the rain soak him, his hood landing low over his face to hide his identity. Water pooled on the cement ground in front of the Labyrinth, running through his toes. The sensation of earth beneath his feet, even this cold, dead pavement, made him feel more alive. He let the spear Gabriel had given him rest on his shoulder in that casual, deadly way his teacher usually held his, fingers loose around the shaft, the metal point rising just above his head.
Two sentries approached, encased in dark, high-tech armor, their faces obscured behind gleaming helmets. When one spoke, his voice had the modulated grain of a radio signal.
"Do we even have to ask who you are?" the man said. The other sentry was clearly female, and both looked poised for a fight.
"We're here to pick up our friends," Titus said. "We heard they needed a ride."
The male sentry laughed, but the female spoke with simple authority.
"I'm sorry. We need you to come with us, sir," she said. "You're to be detained for questioning."
"You really don't want to force us to make you release them," Titus said.
He could hear the beast roaming around in the back of his mind growling, spoiling for a confrontation. It had been too long. He was hungry. Titus calmed those thoughts and waited.
The female sentry raised her arm and pointed her wrist at Titus's companion, Kate's height, Kate's shape, hidden beneath that heavy hooded parka.
"Sorry," the sentry said. "It's easier if you're tranquilized. This won't hurt."
She fired a dart out of a wrist-mounted weapon. The male sentry, simultaneously, walked quickly toward Titus, saying "I'm sorry, you'll have to surrender your . . . spear."
The dart struck the female who was Kate's height and Kate's shape with a metallic "plink" noise and fell harmlessly to the ground. By then, the female sentry was close enough for Titus's hooded companion to lift her leg up and launch a horse-kick with her robotic foot dead center into the sentry's chest, knocking the armored woman back twenty feet. The shrouded girl yanked off her parka, revealing the neon-mohawk and vicious grin of Bedlam, the cyborg already laughing as she prepared to charge her attacker again.
Titus, meanwhile, didn't give his sentry the time to fire a tranquilizer dart. He leapt, his spear clutched in one hand, soon his body fluidly transformed from human to monster, growing to almost twice his mass as his face elongated and turned into a toothy muzzle. He landed feet first on the sentry, pinning him to the ground with clawed feet, holding his spear point at the man's throat. Unnervingly, Titus watched as light glowed on the man's armor precisely where Titus had hit him and then it traced up his arms.
The sentry threw Titus halfway across the courtyard.
Titus hit the pavement rolling, instinct kicking in as he regained his feet and charged back at his opponent. He swung his weapon with the quick, easy movements he'd learned from Gabriel, using the breathing and mental exercises he'd practiced with Finnigan to help keep from going over the top into a rage. Every strike landed with the flat of the blade, and each time he could see the suit lighting up, registering hits. Meanwhile, the sentry fought back with hand-to-hand techniques that connected with more force than Titus was expecting, easily bruising his hulking frame. The blows grew more painful, and Titus watched the suit's glowing effect light up in his enemy's fists with every punch.
Across the courtyard, a different kind of battle was taking place. Bedlam was living up to her name, raining titanic punches down on her sentry, sending the woman rolling across the pavement with each strike. But the female sentry bounced back up faster with every punch, and she returned Bedlam blows with equal force. Titus peeked out of the corner of his eye as Bedlam crashed into a car, collapsing the roof in on itself. The female sentry's armor lit up like Christmas, glowing brighter with every attack Bedlam threw at her. The cyborg was a relentless brute force, tirelessly pressing her attacker, seemingly unable to register pain when she was tossed around like a doll by counterattacks.
Titus changed tactics, using the blunt sides of his spear to strike at the sentry's helmeted head. He was hoping if he could addle the man enough he might find some weak point in the armor, but even the helmet seemed to be absorbing the blows, though at least the sentry seemed unable to resist the reflex to protect his face, which Titus used to his advantage to at least get a breather from the man's counterattacks.
Then Titus felt himself rocked off his feet as Bedlam collided with him, the cyborg completely airborne when her attacker threw her bodily into the werewolf. The pair of heroes tangled and rolled together across the puddle-drenched pavement.
The male sentry pointed his wrist weapon at Titus to tranquilize him, but the movement was thwarted by a blast of blue-white light knocking his arm aside. Another blast sent the man sprawling across the courtyard.
Kate lanced out of the sky, a streak of blue-white energy, and slammed down mid-courtyard.
"They're wearing Distribution suits, Titus — hitting them is making them stronger," Kate yelled.
"This is no longer fun," Bedlam said, laughing as she slammed into the male sentry and threw him back at his female counterpart.
Titus shook himself off, projecting a spray of rainwater from his shoulders and joined Bedlam in pursuit of the sentries. On the upside, he thought, at least he didn't have to pull his punches for fear of hurting them.
Kate fired off two light-blasts at their attackers, the bolts flying easily over Bedlam's shoulders to strike each sentry square in the chest. She caught Titus's eye when he ran by and Kate whispered one word: "Time," before joining them in the fray.
Chapter 43:
The December Man
Jane, Billy, and Emily ran down the now red-lit corridor, trying to shout over the shrieking alarms.
"I thought you were kidding about opening up cell doors," Jane said.
"Why would I joke about something like that?" Emily said. She kept her fingers in her ears to block out the noise.
"What?" Billy said.
Jane ignored him.
"How many cells did you unlock?" Jane said.
"I don't know. Five, six? Nine?" Emily said.
"What?" Billy said.
Jane almost wanted to ask why Billy couldn't hear her when Emily could understand everything she'd said despite having a finger in each ear almost to the first knuckle, but she decided against it.
"How do you not know how many cells you unlocked?" she asked Emily instead.
"Do you know how hard it is to open a locked cell door with your brain while singing Elvis songs?" Emily said. "No, you don't, because you can't open a locked cell door with your brain."
"Really? You're going to sass me now?"
"Is there ever an inappropriate time for sass?" Emily said. "I think not, frankly."
Jane was about to tell Emily she was considering sassing her brain with her fist, but she was interrupted when they turned the corner and saw what appeared to be a giant ice sculpture working its way down the hall, leaving a trail of frost-bitten walls and floors behind him.
"Holy carp," Emily said.
"What? Oh!" Billy said. "Oh no."
Jane didn't wait for the others. She ran headlong into him, knowing he had to be one of the escaped inmates. It's our responsibility to put them back, she thought, as she swung a knockout punch at his face.
The man batted her aside and sent her sliding along the floor.
"Time for a bubble of — " Emily started, but then Jane's tobogganing body took her legs out from under her and both girls landed in a tangled mess on the floor. She threw her hands up in defeat. "I suppose this is what karma feels like."
Jane climbed back up to her feet and prepared for another attack, but Billy was charging in ahead of her, wielding a fire extinguisher he'd pulled from the wall, holding it over his head like a bludgeoning weapon. He smashed it into the ice man's forearm, who batted the weapon away, then grabbed Billy by the front of his clothes with his other hand. The ice creature lifted Billy so they were face to face, Billy's skin almost pressed against the larger mans' icicle beard.
"Brave little mouse," the man says. "But you need more than courage to stop the December Man."
"Are you talking about someone else?" Billy said, squirming. "Or are you another one of those crazy people who talks about himself in the third person?"
Jane could see Billy fussing with the device Winter had given him, the ice-blasting wrist weapon. It didn't seem like a particularly useful tool against a man made of ice, but she figured he must have been thinking of something, so she picked up the fire extinguisher Billy dropped and flung it like a missile at December Man's face. Her throw connected perfectly, smashing into his nose and splintering icicles from his beard completely. Strange, jagged gaps remained where beard particles once hung.
December Man threw Billy across the room with enough force that Jane heard him gasping for air after the wind was knocked out of him.
Jane punched December Man in the stomach, sending chips of ice flying. It didn't hurt to punch him despite his casing of ice, but she could sensed the lack of strength behind each blow. I have to get into the sun soon, she thought.
December Man tried to smash her with an over-handed slam, but she bounced out of the way, too fast for him to hit. She attempted a move Kate taught her, kicking him on the side of the knee to try to knock him off balance, and while it generated another storm of ice chips, December Man seemed otherwise completely unfazed. He backhanded her ferociously and Jane skittered across the floor again, only this time Emily caught her in a gentle bubble of float and cushioned the fall before she went crashing into anything.
December Man closed in on them, stomping with slow menace toward Jane and Emily while ignoring Billy, who was still struggling to breathe. Billy, not to be left out, pushed off the wall with his feet and scooted along the slick, icy floor, between December Man's legs toward the girls. Unfortunately, he didn't propel himself with enough force and came to a stop just underfoot. December Man raised one massive, ice-encased foot and moved to crush Billy. Emily employed a bubble of float to yank Billy out of the way just before a vicious stomp splintered the ice where he was a moment before.
The force from Emily's bubble sent Billy sliding quickly toward her, and Jane grabbed Billy by the scruff of the neck to keep him from slipping further down the hall.
"I have a plan," Billy said.
"Now I know we're in trouble," Emily said.
"How much do you have left in the tank, Jane?"
"Enough," Jane said. She felt weaker than she had in years, but she wouldn't let the others know, not now. "Full steam ahead."
"Can you expel one of your flame blasts, with your hands?" Billy said.
"I can," she said, not sure how much it would take out of her.
"Okay," Billy said.
December Man still plodded towards them, as if he had all the time in the world. Given how well the fight had been going for him, Jane thought, he had no reason to think otherwise.
"Em, see that spigot in the ceiling up there?"
"Spigot?" Emily said. "Did you really just use spigot in a sentence?"
"The spout, the thing, the sprinkler thing!" Billy said.
"I see it, I know what a spigot is, and there's no need to yell at me," Emily said.
"When Jane blasts December Man in the face with her fire, you yank that sprinkler with your bubble of float, get the water blasting."
"So your plan is to try to set him on fire, then extinguish that fire, and hope that wins us brownie points?" Emily said.
"Trust me."
"Our relationship has never been built on a foundation of trust, Billy," Emily said.
"Jane?" Billy said. "You good?"
"Ready," she said.
"Go," Billy said.
Jane jumped onto her feet and reached back as if she were throwing a fastball, even following through with a swinging leg and the full rotation of her shoulders the way that her adoptive father taught her when she was a kid on his farm. Old John Hawkins would have been proud of his daughter's form, she thought, and despite everything happening just then, Jane found herself terribly, terribly homesick.
Her throw hit home, splashing a melon-sized ball of flames into December Man's bearded face. He roared as his head exploded in a massive cloud of mist and condensation, the room suddenly steamy and fogged over.
Emily popped some part of the mechanism of the sprinkler, sending a heavy stream of water pouring over December Man like a bursting rain cloud. He hunched over as if the sprinklers were causing him physical pain, and that's when Billy made his move.
He aimed Winter's wrist-device at December Man and fired full blast, sending a shocking wave of arctic cold through the pouring sprinklers. Everything froze instantly — the room turned into a block of ice, the sprinklers themselves an umbrella of flash-frozen water. And encased in the middle of this in a solid block of lumpy ice was December Man, trapped by his own temperature control abilities trying to recover from Jane's fireball.
They heard the groan of ice moving as December Man struggled to reach for them, but the ice monster was frozen solid, unable to move, only able to stare at them with palpable hate.
"Well that was terrible," Billy said, flopping down on the ground.
Jane held out a hand to help pull him to his feet, and he accepted.
"One down, three, four, or possibly eight more to go?" Emily said.
"You couldn't have kept count?" Jane said.
"Just because I'm the smartest Indestructible doesn't mean I can sing and count at the same time. You try it."
Billy interrupted the back and forth with an exhausted sigh.
"What next, boss?" Billy said.
Jane put her hand on his shoulder as if to steady him, but found herself leaning on him for support rather than the other way around.
"You okay?" he asked.
"We have got to find Sam and get out of here," Jane said.
"Won't argue with that," Billy said. He gestured to the solid block of ice taking up most of the hallway in front of them. "But I think we need to try another elevator."