Chapter 19:
Breakout
Where are you headed?" Jane asked, watching Kate walking out of the control center in full uniform.
"I've got to do a street patrol. I've been negligent."
"Right now?"
"I'm the only one who does street-level patrolling. Someone has to do it."
"I just mean," Jane said. "We've got clues about who or what is making these people sick. We need you here."
Kate's mouth softened from a hard line into a gentle frown. She kept pace in direction of the landing bay, but then slowed to let Jane walk with her.
"Let me do this," Kate said. "It'll clear my head. I'm no use to you all wound up."
Jane nodded.
"You want company?"
Kate raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"I just mean you've got a few people looking for you. I'm offering to watch your back."
"No," Kate said. "No offense. Seriously. I just need a few hours alone. Maybe I'll come up with some way of figuring out this other thing if I can get some fresh air."
They looked at each other for a minute, an awkward, uncomfortable silence, and then Jane smiled.
"Watch your back," she said.
"I always do."
Kate hoped on one of the hoverbikes and took off. The dog, who had trotted down alongside them from the control room, barked at the bike and chased it a few feet until he realized he'd never catch it. Then Watson fixated on something behind Jane, one paw lifted off the floor.
"Oh no," Jane said. She spun around.
The pink-haired woman stood there, once again in that same olive green shirt, the same red sunglasses. She reached out to Jane like a person trying to catch a rapidly closing elevator door, flickered, and disappeared.
"Neal! Is there anyone else on board?"
"Only the dog, Designation: Solar," the computer said. "Who, I should add, has been marking his territory. I have had the auto-scrubbers clean up after him but I sense this only encourages him."
"Never mind."
Billy and Emily returned, both looking confused.
"What are you doing hanging around the landing bay?" Billy asked.
"Losing my mind," Jane said. "Did you find Sam?"
"We have confirmed Sam has a girlfriend," Emily said. "We don't know, however, where he is. We can assume he's not with that girlfriend though since she's looking for him also."
"He wasn't at the apartment," Billy said. "Not for a while, either, by the looks of it."
"This is so strange," Jane said.
"I know! What do people that old do when they go out? Bowling?"
"Em," Jane said.
"I know."
Just then Neal chimed in with a screeching alert tone none of them had ever heard before. It was loud enough that Emily actually startled. So did the dog.
"Why! What is with the beeping!" Emily said.
"Your feet actually left the ground," Billy said.
"I think I peed my pants," Emily said.
"What is it, Neal," Jane said.
"Incoming call from Jon Broadstreet, Designation: Solar," Neal said. "I believe there's been a prison break at the Labyrinth."
* * *
"No other information to report, but that's what my sources are saying," Broadstreet said. He was larger than life on the communications screen in the control center. Emily had insisted on giving him a number to dial in with months ago, something both Jane and Kate had balked at, but so far he usually provided good information when he called.
"Do we know who got out?" Jane asked.
"They're not allowing the press anywhere near the site," Broadstreet said. "It's offshore so we'd have to rely on our news choppers, but the Department has set up a perimeter and isn't letting anyone close enough to see."
Jane rubbed her eyes. Without looking up, she spoke. "Has anyone been hurt?"
"They have a complete blackout," Broadstreet said. "Look, this is all I have. I just wanted to let you know."
"Hoping for an exclusive if we fly in and save the day?" Billy said.
"A man can dream, right?" Broadstreet said. "Hey Solar. Do me a favor?"
"I'm not promising you an exclusive, Jon."
"Not what I was going to say," the reporter said. "This just . . . it looks fishy? Okay? It doesn't feel right. Be careful if you head in there."
Emily laughed. Jane ignored her and just nodded.
"We'll look out for ourselves, Broadstreet. Thanks."
"Always. Luck, Solar."
"You too."
Emily turned to Jane. "You should totally go on a date with him. You'd be so cute. Also I think you could use a break."
"After we deal with this situation," Jane said. "What do you think?"
"They've got some awful people locked up in the Labyrinth," Billy said. "Old school villains from Doc's days. People who are a lot more trouble than what we've dealt with before."
"You think we should hold back?"
"I think whoever broke out of there is probably too much for the security and Department agents on site," Billy said. "I think they're in trouble."
"Up, up and away?" Emily said.
"Looks like," Jane said. "Neal? Ping Kate, let her know where we're headed and we could use some backup."
"Yes, Designation: Solar."
"Up, up and away," she said.
* * *
The Labyrinth predated Doc Silence and his team by a generation, though it had been updated frequently over the years as the super-villains emerging evolved in new and more dangerous ways. An off-shore, man-made island, it was a honeycomb of specialized containment units, each uniquely designed to house the villain in question and to neutralize his or her powers.
It extended all the way to the sea floor, possibly even further, though no one outside of the Labyrinth permanent team really knew everything that occurred there. It had provided a service, a safe place for criminals too powerful and too dangerous for a normal prison to contain, for over fifty years.
The Indestructibles had never been past the front gate. On a few occasions they'd dropped off criminals they didn't know how to handle themselves, handing them over to the care of the armored security forces there, and as they approached from the sky, and Billy found himself suddenly wishing he'd paid more attention.
We have no idea what they do in there, Dude.
Horizon said they treated the prisoners humanely,
Dude said.
I myself never set foot inside.
You don't talk much about Horizon, Dude. Who was he?
Horizon was another like me.
Is he alive?
I hope so,
Dude said.
He went on a mission into deep space years ago with his partner.
Partner? Another one of you?
No, Billy Case,
Dude said.
With his host. As you are my partner.
We're partners?
To call us partners does not mean I think us equals, Billy.
And here I was about to say I was flattered.
"I see nothing remotely break-out-y happening right now," Emily said. "I think we've been punked."
"Maybe they resolved it," Jane said. "Let's check in."
They landed by the front gate where they usually met with representatives from the security team. The warden, a brick wall of a man named Sommers with a receding hairline and aggressively graying goatee, walked out to meet them. He looked worried. Prevention was with him, flanked by two agents in form-fitting armor and helmets, one male and one female. Billy didn't like the look of the armor — there was something uncomfortably familiar about it.
"I'm sorry," the warden said.
"Solar, Straylight, and Entropy Emily, I have to ask you to come with me," Prevention said.
"Oh, sneaky," Emily said. "It's the old 'fake a super-powered prison outbreak' joke. You're so clever."
"Come with you in what capacity?" Jane said. Her voice took on a hard edge Billy hadn't heard in a long time.
"You're being charged with aiding and abetting in actions interfering with an ongoing investigation," Prevention said. "It's too bad you didn't bring Dancer with you. You could have saved us the trouble of bringing her in separately."
Dude? What are your thoughts on resisting arrest? Billy thought.
You have full access to your powers, Billy Case,
Dude said.
This is wrong.
Good, because I have no intention of going with them.
The two armored agents moved forward, high-tech handcuffs in hand. Billy started laughing.
"This really isn't a joke, Straylight," Prevention said.
"Oh, it' a joke," he said.
"Steady," Jane said.
"Don't tell me you're going to comply with this," Billy said.
Jane answered him by punching the armored agent dead center in her chest plate the second she touched Jane's arm to cuff her. The agent tumbled several times, coming to a stop. She got right back up again, shaking the proverbial cobwebs from her head, but otherwise looking as if nothing happened.
"Well then. Sorry bud," Billy said.
He held up a palm directly at the male agent approaching him and unleashed a light-blast that sent the agent bouncing back ten feet.
Billy, Jane, and Emily all took flight together, trying to put some distance between themselves and the agents. Prevention raised her hand and created a ring of fire above them, causing the three heroes to scatter. Emily swore using a half-dozen words Billy was actually shocked by, and Jane caught Emily's arm and used her own body to shield the younger girl from the flames.
"What was that?" Billy said.
The psychic woman is a pyrokinetic as well,
Dude warned him.
Beware
.
Tell me you didn't know that until she did that trick, Billy thought. Or I'm going to be really mad at you for keeping that information to yourself.
Then the male armored agent slammed into Billy using a football tackle and brought him back down to the ground. Billy threw a series of light blasts at him and watched as the energy dissipated and spread out over the skin of the suit.
"Oh no," he said. "Are they using Distribution suits?"
The design is remarkably similar,
Dude said.
Billy's mind raced back to that first fight he and Jane worked together in, the battle with Distribution the drug dealer with his tech suit that used kinetic energy to power itself. It made most of their powers difficult if not impossible to use.
"Jane! Careful! These are Distribution armor suits!"
He yelled out his warning one second too late as Jane drove her opponent, the female armored agent, into the ground, cracking the cement. The agent bounced right back up and flung Jane aside like a ragdoll. Billy's combatant elbowed him in the face with a blow that made his teeth rattle. Billy fell to one knee and looked up as the agent cocked his arm for another powerful blow.
Then the male and female agents rose up into the air, arms flailing in a panic. Both fell back to the earth at a horrifying rate of speed and lay still for a moment. Emily stood between them, her arms outstretched.
"Bubble of Float ain't my only trick," Emily said. "Eat a Wall of Slam."
Both agents got up much faster than they should have and returned to the fight, the female agent running at Emily and the male heading back Billy's way.
"I've made a mistake!" Emily yelled.
She seemed to panic in the moment and have trouble deciding if flying or running would be the better option for escaping, and instead kind of did an awkward running in place mid-air maneuver that would, in better circumstances, have made Billy's day.
"This is why we didn't let the girl who controls gravity fight a guy in a suit powered by kinetic energy," Billy said. "Jane?"
"Try to get their power sources!" Jane yelled back at him.
She was flying like a rocket at Emily's attacker. Flames burst out of Jane's hands, lumps of fire the size of softballs, but Billy noticed — just before his own opponent tried to punch him — that the female agent's belt was noticeably lacking the distinctive power pack Distribution himself had.