Inspired by the film ‘Toy Soldiers’ (1991)
Sunday AM
Colin increased his speed slightly as he headed back towards the school and smiled to himself; he was really looking forward to collapsing into his own bed after all the ‘fun’ of yesterday. The last 24 hours had been boring as hell. Had it really only been yesterday morning that the HCP community had been covertly alerted to a possible invasion and he’d been told to stay on duty to Monitor transmissions for the London Watch?
Almost every active as well as currently retired hero in the UK that was certified had been called back into service when a signal had been detected that indicated that a new Terminus rift was apparently opening above the city of Leeds. Cadet had been with the London Watch when it had been reported and he had been left alone to monitor the Trouble Alert channels in case the other previously identified rifts started to reopen as well.
Even the deactivated HCP faculty staff at the school had been called up and asked to join the ‘Meta-Army’ rushing to stop what looked to be an interdimensional invasion occurring up north.
In the end, it had turned out to be an elaborate hoax. Someone had found a way to mimic the indicators and disruptions that had previously signalled an interdimensional nexus opening. When no rift appeared in the sky, the heroes reluctantly started to disperse.
‘Old Man’ Summers and his cohort of teachers were already preparing to return. Thankfully being a Sunday the school was quiet – the boarders having either left early in a fleet of coaches to watch a school rivalry rugby match between Walford Defence Sixth Form College and their own First 15 in London or just enjoying a long lie in.
So, after a 24-hour plus shift, Cadet was really looking forward to crashing for a few hours and was surprised to arrive at Reception and be met by a police barricade and dozens of armed Police turning people away from the school. What the..?
He looked over towards the school and saw that it was covered in a glittering half dome composed of some form of energy. Had a student’s latent meta-abilities activated or was this something more sinister? The Armed Response teams standing outside the school gates seemed to indicate the latter. He parked up outside the locked and deserted Reception block and wandered over towards the Police barrier hoping that he might get one of the Police officers there to talk.
That’s when he saw Dane, one of the school Caretakers, already by the barrier talking with a heavy-built, Kevlar-wearing sergeant. Dane was married to Camille (a subject of much gossip amongst the students) who was about a third of his age, two-thirds his size being all of 4’6″, petite and gorgeous French-Vietnamese. She was also the iron fist inside the metal gauntlet of the school’s security. If anyone knew what was really going on, it would be Dane.
Colin had always assumed he was former military due to his fitness levels and stealthy demeanour. He was also rarely seen above ground.
No sign of Camille though, so presumably she was still inside. Colin looked up and saw a small squadron of camera drones flying above the energy dome. Okay, so even if they couldn’t gain entry at least the authorities would be able to see what was occurring inside the grounds
Having finished talking with the officer, Dane saw Colin in the crowd and signalled for him to join him on the Reception steps away from the crowd. “Ah, Mr Duncan, good to see you’ve not been wrapped up in this fiasco…”
Colin nodded; he knew that Dane was also one of those on the faculty that knew about the existence of Down Below and the students that attended there. “Morning Dane, what’s happening?”
Dane thought for a moment then whispered that all comms in the school had gone down about twenty minutes ago. Dane had rushed out to contact the faculty up north, only for the force field to suddenly appear and trap him on the outside. A few minutes later he saw several squads of people all dressed in black wandering the grounds inside the barrier. Maybe 20 soldiers armed with automatic weapons and about five or six others, also dressed in black who he assumed were Metas, wandering the grounds seemingly rounding up all the staff and students inside the grounds and marched them over to the mansion. He immediately contacted Mr Summers and then the Police.
The Police had responded quickly, but it was already too late. They couldn’t get inside the grounds. There was no indication of how the ‘mercs’ as Dane called them, had arrived and he suspected they had teleported in then somehow erected the force field.
He paused for a moment as though considering how much information to reveal then again whispered that the Police had said that the mansion has been ringed by explosive devices and they were threatening to blow up the building with the pupils inside if the school doesn’t hand over two pupils to them within the next couple of hours. Their leader was apparently a young woman who had a remote strapped to her arm that the Police suspected could set off the explosives.
“Who? I mean which of the pupils had they demanded, do you know?” That might just indicate who the intruders were, he thought. “Amalia Chelo and Audrey Novak.” Amalia was Ms Kitty and Audrey was one of the Amazons, the one they called Aura. Could the PITT, the Pryde Institute be involved? They’d attacked the school once before to try to get Ms Kitty back but why would they want the shy, nearly powerless Aura, the weakest of the Amazons?
The sergeant returned and signalled for Dane to join him in the incident caravan the Police had set up just beyond the barrier. Dane nodded and was about to head over but before he left, he whispered to Colin that the faculty would be back in about an hour and would likely attempt a rescue through the tunnels to Down Below.
He looked over at the gathering crowd and saw a familiar face, Reni Moriarty, also known as Kid Arachnid. He’d helped him out before despite his apparent indifference to being a hero. He wondered..?
The force field cut off access to the school by normal routes but… He looked over again at Reni; they might be able to get inside the field through the repurposed telephone booth by the school gates, which led to a tunnel to Down Below if they could just manage to distract the Police long enough. Another option was to enter the school grounds using the underground maintenance tunnel he’d used during the storm-giant generated snows last year. That should allow him to travel from the Reception block beneath the force field into the basement of the school building itself…
He knew that Kitty (Amalia) had moved into one of the guest suites Down Below so she could be with Mau, her cat. He had no idea where Audrey was though. He was pretty sure she wasn’t a fan of rugby so was unlikely to have gone to the match but apparently, she hadn’t been in school when the attack took place. Why would they be demanding her in exchange for the other student’s lives?
Before he could do anything, there was the sound of several shots being fired from inside the grounds, from the direction of the mansion and he heard over an officer’s radio. “Drones confirm they’ve shot one of the hostages, she’s down and not moving. I think she’s dead.”
Who had they shot and why? Could they risk waiting until the faculty got back and if they did would the body count keep on rising? Colin turned and caught Reni’s eye and gestured with his head for them to head to the side of the Reception block so they could speak together without anyone overhearing. Murmuring quietly so as to not be overheard, he said, “Look, I know you don’t reckon to this kind of stuff, but our people are being shot, there’s no time to wait for the teaching staff to get here, and so far as I can see it’s just you and me on the outside. I’m going in anyway, but I’d really like to have you with me, ’cause I know how good you are in a tussle. Are you in?”
Reni tilted his head slightly and crossed his arms as though deep in contemplation, then a big smile spread across his face. “Oh why not, how do we get in though?” Colin smiled back, “I have a cunning plan…” and motioned towards a shadowy set of stairs leading behind an overgrown bush set off to one side. “We use Dane’s underground kingdom, or at least his maintenance tunnels to go under the ‘field and come out inside the school himself. We can change once we’re inside. You in?”
Reni nodded and Colin immediately scooted to the entrance to the underground maintenance tunnel, making sure they don’t draw attention to themselves. Hidden behind the bush he began to pick the lock even as tried using his comm-link to make contact with Chris.
Initially it remained dead but he kept trying anyway. If he was being honest he didn’t expect it to work, he sort of assumed that if the signal was blocked that it would (probably) mean that Firewall was one of those trapped inside the force field.
The lock on the basement tunnel door clicked and then squeaked open and Reni and he quickly jumped inside before relocking it behind them. In the comforting darkness of the tunnel (Colin didn’t dare to switch on the tunnel lighting just in case they weren’t alone down here) they began to take off their street clothes and Colin pulled out his visor and cloak from his satchel even as Reni clambered into his costume at the same time.
Ready, Cadet turned to Kid Arachnid and quietly muttered, “There’ll be a lot going on, we need to get inside the force field with maximum stealth and try to get a good scope of what is happening. Then try and track-down Kitty and Aura, while figuring out why they want them who was involved, where and how the captives are being held, who was shot and what condition they seem to be in. Just another day at Claremont, eh?”
They set off, travelling in complete darkness heading stealthily towards the main school block. A few minutes later to his surprise he heard the shared comms channel momentarily connect then almost immediately switch off. How closely were they watching the hostages and had he accidentally just endangered Chris, he wondered? Well, at least he knew someone, hopefully Chris, was aware someone was out there and they would make contact when it was safe for them to do so. If anyone could have figured out to circumnavigate the signal blocker it would be Chris, he was sure.
After another couple of minutes creeping slowly down the corridor Cadet suddenly found himself pulled up short by Reni who whispered in his ear, “Wait, there is someone up ahead.”
Then in front of them, a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel blazed into life showing an excessively muscled middle-aged man in dark combat clothes standing in their path about fifty metres ahead. He was obviously looking for something or someone though they were far enough away that the dark still hid their presence. He cradled an automatic rifle in his arms as though it belonged there. Cadet immediately recognised it as a PromTekhnologiya manufactured ORSIS-AR15 J rifle; an AR-15 Russian clone designed to fire a heaver 7.62-mm round such as normally used in the AK-47 rifle and RPK machine gun.
The cartridge was twice as heavy as the bullet of an American automatic rifle cartridge and, therefore, has greater energy and damage at all distances of practical shooting. They weren’t playing around here.
They paused as Cadet and Kid quickly assessed the situation. The guard was currently stationary, but he was liable to start moving forward again at any moment. The fact that he was searching for something could mean many different things. He could be checking for means of access to the school, searching for something technical, or perhaps hunting down school personnel – maybe even one or other, or both of the missing girls. For a few moments, they both waited to see which way the guard would move, at the same time Cadet was racking his brain to try to recall if there are any cross-passages, or rooms nearby that lead off this corridor. He was also hoping the man would either use his comms so he could learn their radio protocol or possibly turn and withdraw. He did neither; instead he slowly, methodically, headed in their direction.
They had passed several small corridors leading to locked storage rooms but otherwise it was a straight corridor to the Reception block, unless? There had been a storm door just behind them that when closed blocked off the tunnel from the outside entrance. If he remembered correctly, it automatically locked when shut; could he close it and if so, would it alert the man in front of them? And if he did how would they hide if the searcher came their way? He turned to find out what his companion thought and discovered he’d already vanished. He looked around then thought to look up. Hidden above the school’s sewage pipes hanging above his head lay Kid Arachnid. He pointed at Cadet then at the merc who was slowly walking towards them then he gestured back towards the storm door and fired off a thread of webbing at it.
Cadet smiled as he worked out what Reni was suggesting. There was no chance they would be able to dodge past the searcher in the dark, instead he picked up a small stone from the floor and threw it down the corridor, passed the man only to hit the wall in the dark behind him even as he pulled himself up into the dark of the pipes.
The man had initially spun round to look behind him searching for what might have caused the unexpected noise, his rifle slipping into firing position in his hands. Damn, one of the pipes Cadet had climbed on top of was really hot, boiling even. He tried to move quietly over to a cooler pipe even as Kid Arachnid yanked at the webbing he’d fired previously and pulled the door over with a loud bang. He then dissolved the webbing even as several bullets hit the now closed metal storm door with deafening pings, thankfully, none of the ricochets came close. A few seconds later the man rushed past below them.
Staying on the roof-mounted pipes of the tunnel they began to crawl into the light hoping the merc wouldn’t notice them sneaking forward hidden above the naked hanging lightbulb.
It worked. The man was busy swearing in some unfamiliar language that wasn’t Polish but was definitely Eastern European and sounded like the curses that Chris’ friend, Ashen had occasionally uttered. That put paid to any thoughts they had to take out the guard and bluff their way through any radio transmissions they assumed they would be expected to make. Thankfully, he was completely focused on trying to open the storm door.
Never mind, they continued to crawl along the hanging pipes until they were passed the light whereupon they quietly lowered themselves back down to the ground and headed along the corridor into the school.
They were lucky, there were no more guards in the tunnels, however instead of coming out in the boiler room, they elected to take a detour and head along a tight crawlspace to come out beneath the stage in the auditorium. They crawled towards the front of the stage listening in for any sounds of movement, or voices. Through a gap in the front of the stage, they could see another of the armed guards walking across the room quietly singing some foreign song to himself, out of tune. He was similarly armed to the other one in the maintenance tunnels.
He soon vanished from sight, presumably searching the school for anyone hiding out. Cadet walked back and found the trapdoor that came out in the middle of the stage and listened carefully. Nothing. He risked opening the hatch and peering out onto the dark of the stage.
Cadet tried hard to reconcile his memories of Down Below with the geography of the upper school trying to guess at how the two might relate or interconnect. He was sure the majority of the underground faculty lay beneath the mansion and the sports field but like the transport tunnel that led to the front gate and the repurposed telephone kiosk, he was sure there would likely be tunnels that linked the main building with Down Below but had no idea where they might be. The closest entrance he was sure of was the rallying point in the sports field; an emergency evacuation platform concealed in the athletic field, marked by a red pillar.
They climbed out of the hatch and agreed to head out the side entrance and use the walls alongside the school to get as close as they could to the pillar. Unfortunately, it was located on the side of one of the football pitches and completely exposed to anyone looking their way from the mansion. Still they proposed trying to get as close to it as possible without being detected, trying to avoid being drawn into a fight too quickly.
As they slowly but carefully made their way as close to the pillar as they could while remaining hidden from view at least from the ground, Cadet puzzled over what he knew of the two girls and where might they hide in the school. It was likely that Ms Kitty was still Down Below playing with Mau, especially as she wasn’t allowed to take him up top but neither of them had any idea where Aura might be at this point in time.
As they got closer to the pillar, they looked over towards the ‘Big House’. In the distance, they could see a large male figure out front talking to some of the guards, a big, bulky, body builder figure then Colin noticed that he had a long ponytail – it brought back memories of an oversized young man with intense superhuman strength he’d meet at a carnival some time ago… He thought he had gone by the name of Apex? That would make the female figure with him, also dressed totally in black but carrying a barbed whip another Pryde Institute student, Scorpion?
This close they were able to confirm that they had ringed the mansion with remote-detonated explosives. With Amalia and Audrey nowhere to be found, this bunch had decided to take the entire school hostage.
That’s when they saw what the mercs were mounting on the roof of the mansion; a .50 calibre M2 machine gun. They certainly weren’t taking any chances or was this for the attention of the Police drones flying above the dome of the force field; a warning not to try anything?
As they watched two of the mercenaries came out and threw a sheet over what they now realised was a small female body lying in the gardens in front of the mansion and then lift the covered body, taking it round the side of the building. Removing the corpse of the student (or staff member?) they’d shot, apparently. At least he hoped it was the same person and they hadn’t shot anyone else.
Then they saw someone walk out onto the balcony above the main door dressed all in black, a young female with some sort of remote control unit strapped to her wrist. She turned to stare at what was going on below and to Cadet’s surprise he found himself looking on the face of Audrey. Her hair was unusually neat for her, her eyes looked cold and calculating and there was an unusual sneer pasted across her lips. What was going on?
It was too much. Cadet was shocked and chilled by his glimpse of the victim being disposed of so casually and callously and had to struggle to hang on to a calculating frame of mind. The sight of Audrey on the balcony was equally disorienting; either Audrey was someone other than she was thought to be, or she was possessed or controlled in some way. Could that unit on her wrist be responsible? Perhaps the Police had got it wrong and it was controlling her and not a remote detonator as they’d suspected. Alternatively, could she be some sort of doppelgänger or someone in disguise?
Though if that was the case, why would the insurgents demand that Audrey be found and surrendered – unless that in turn was some sort of double-bluff to provide her with an alibi? Realising he couldn’t possibly get to the bottom of the matter just by staring, Cadet forced himself to set the matter aside and return to their plan in hand (such as it was).
They had a 25-metre sprint from where they were currently hiding across an open field to the pillar in full view of the machine gun post and the woman who might be Audrey.
Having profited from the use of misdirection down in the tunnel, Cadet thought he might try something similar again. The mansion was still too far away to target but if he could create a diversion say in the direction of the memorial gardens or the dorms on the opposite side of the field… Perhaps that would hold their attention long enough to figure out how to access the tunnel below the pillar?
He pulled out his grapnel intending to use it as a sort of improvised sling or spear-thrower to project a smoke bomb over a greater-than-usual distance. He hoped he would be able to rebound it off the building’s walls or the ground without activating it to disguise the direction it came from and draw attention away from them as they made a dash for the pillar. He would love to have targeted the ‘Audrey’ on the balcony, but she was too far away so he’d had to settle on the dormitories and garden wall opposite and hope it would cause sufficient disturbance and maximise the misdirection. Assuming he could get it that far away of course. He started to swing his grapnel around his head then let loose. The smoke bomb hurled away from them only to fall short, landing on the far side of the playing field immediately unleashing its cloud of smoke. From behind their wall, they could hear the sound from the rooftops of shouting followed by heavy machine fire as they strafed the field in response. Damn, it would only be a matter of minutes before guards were dispatched and the diversion if anything had brought them more, not less, attention from the crew on the roof with the machine gun.
Then, he glimpsed something flying low over the roof of his dorm’; it was a small camera drone and someone had hung speakers on it to enable it to play Wagner’s infamous theme from the Ring cycle, the “Ride of the Valkyries”. It flew using the sun behind it across the sky towards the roof of the mansion. Someone was using it as a distraction and a good one at that. It even provided an excuse for where the smoke bomb might have originated.
Machine gun fire again punctuated the quiet of the day as the mercs elected to shoot it down, rather than risk it getting any closer to the mansion. All hostile eyes were now on the drone and away from them. If they were to make a dash for the pillar, it had to be now. They left the relative safety of the wall and dashed across the edge of the field to the pillar. Now they just had to figure out how to activate it. It was intended for use as emergency evacuation so couldn’t be complicated but at the same time it had to be disguised so students messing around didn’t accidentally find it. Cadet started to run his fingers over the seams of the pillar looking for a concealed panel.
That’s when Reni suddenly spun round even as Cadet heard the click of a safety being switched over and a heavily accented voice behind him said, “Hands up and turn slowly round. I have no wish to execute children, but I will do so if I…” He suddenly stopped talking mid-sentence.
Cadet was already turning as he had started to speak, having palmed a sleep cartridge into his hand in the process, though he wasn’t convinced its effects would be fast enough to stop them being shot. Before he could do anything though, he heard a swishing sound as something long and black hit their attacker on the forehead followed by a muffled thud as the man collapsed to the ground spasming. Someone had bounced a long black arrow off his skull. Instead of an arrowhead, it had a small disk-like object that was still sparking as it lay on the ground beside the victim.
They looked back at the school in the direction that the arrow had come from and saw a well-built hooded man dressed completely in black carrying a powerful compound bow standing by one of the auditorium’s emergency exits. They didn’t recognise him but whoever he was, he appeared to be on their side. The man shuddering and fitting at their feet was their searcher from the tunnels. He must have finished his exploration of the maintenance tunnels. They looked back again at his attacker, but he was gone, vanished.
Reni immediately crouched down and began to wrap him in webbing including covering his mouth with a gag constructed of a ball of webbing; reluctantly he left their would-be attacker’s nose uncovered so he wouldn’t suffocate. He then grabbed the rifle and flung it onto the top of a tree a hundred metres away even as he muttered, “You know if you’d told me your plan I could have thrown it further but no, you had to be the hero, the go-doer didn’t you?”
Cadet ignored the running commentary; they had seconds at most before the group on top of the mansion again turned their attention back to the sports fields and saw them out in the open. He quickly ran his fingers over the seams of the pillar until he discovered a small, concealed panel, which he forced open. Inside was a keypad, like on an old-fashioned intercom, it obviously required a code to activate the entrance but what?
Then he remembered the lectures the school gave annually about what to do in an emergency. The teachers always emphasised that you made your way to the signposted locations and used a phone there to dial 999 and ask for the Emergency Services… Could it be that simple? He dialled three nines and the base of the pillar immediately started to swing open revealing a metal hatch set about ten centimetres below ground level. As he reached down to pull it open it swung up and a familiar head popped up, catlike with pink hair swirling round her face. Behind her, he could see another face peering out of the darkness, Audrey’s.
“Quickly, quickly before they get us from both sides. The bad people have discovered the entrance to Down Below and are chasing us.” Kitty explained breathlessly.
Cadet however couldn’t stop staring at Audrey; it was mere seconds before that he’s seen her on the mansion’s balcony and now here she was… He also noticed that her hair was dishevelled at the back. What the..?
Kitty continued to try to grab at his hand, “They’ve overrun Down Below, if it had not been for Aura here, I would have been caught but she created powerful visions to cover our escape.” She immediately cursed in Arabic… Behind them from the darkness, they could hear the muffled sound of voices coming from inside the tunnel.
Cadet’s initial thought had been to duck into what he’d hoped would be the relative safety of being underground – especially as he felt very exposed up here above ground, but that had been before they’d found Miss Kitty and Audrey and realised that the nerve-centre for the intrusion appeared to be the mansion. To add to their problems, Down Below had itself been invaded so he quickly changed his mind as he reached out to help draw the girls up into the limited cover of the pillar. As he did so, he asked Audrey if she could use her newfound powers to cloak them in some sort of illusion. She shook her head and quickly explained that not only did her powers ebb and flow in strength but she could only create an illusion affecting one person at a time and then only when they were in close proximity. As she spoke, she reached out her hand down towards the hatch and patterns of light flared across her face and arms as a multitude of coloured tendrils of light appeared emanating from her fingers, which then plunged into the darkness of the tunnel.
As soon as Kitty and Audrey had climbed out, with a slim, short haired spotted cat clambering up with them, the hatch automatically sealed. Audrey’s tendrils of lights seemed unaffected by this though and a muffled voice below could be heard cursing in the same Eastern European language, they’d heard before. Then the lights from her hand gently dissipated and the markings on her body faded away.
Kid Arachnid laughed, “The security upgrades are still active at least,” he muttered then he saw the look of surprise on Cadet’s face. He directed the girls to run back towards the wall by the side of the school building as Cadet re-closed the top hatch and then sabotaged the lock on it before running after the others. Once they were safe in the relative security behind the wall Reni quickly explained that after the security breach by Browser some months before, the school had initiated a new security protocol in Down Below that if there was no identified staff or students present, it immediately went into full security lockdown and compartmentalised each area with sealed blast doors. With Aura and Kitty no longer registering as present, their hunters would now be trapped Down Below.
Cadet took a moment to grab up the black arrow and snapped it in two so he could pocket it easier, so that if they found the incapacitated guard it would look to be all the Kid’s handiwork. “We’re not the only ones fighting the good fight here, but let’s keep the bad guys confused about what they’re up against.”
Okay, so they needed another diversion if they were to get away from their relatively exposed location to the relative safety of the trees opposite. How best to do that though?
Following a rapid whispered conversation Cadet and Reni agreed to launch a series of smoke bombs, trying to create a smokescreen between the south end of the dorm wing and the school with Kid arachnid hurling his furthest. As the wall of smoke appeared across the field, a barrage of machine gun fire peppered the field for the second time. Could they risk running across the field?
As soon as sufficient smoke had accumulated between the football field and the dorms and the machine gun had temporarily stopped to reload, the four of them took off heading for the sunken memorial gardens opposite, each using their own best efforts to remain unseen. Kitty kept on slowing down to try to grab her cat, which was actually making better time running that she was. They headed north to the memorial gardens hoping to get under cover as fast as possible.
They had almost made it when the machine gun started firing again and a stray shot into the curtain of smoke sliced into Kitty’s thigh, thankfully, it was only a flesh wound but it caused her to collapse midfield with the pain. Even as the bullets began to once again plough up the field towards her, Cadet realised what had happened and he turned and ran back, grabbed her then unleashed his grapnel and fired it into the gardens catching the hooks on the branches of a tree. He hit rewind, which resulted in the two of them “flying” across the remaining distance. As soon as they were behind the wall, he wrapped the wound in a makeshift bandage. There was no time to wait; they had minutes at most before the other Audrey sent her men in search of whoever had unleashed the curtain of smoke. Throwing Kitty over his shoulder, he unhooked his grapnel, grabbed the hissing cat and ran keeping low towards the dorms and the others.
To their surprise two mercs appeared round the side of the dorm in front of them and aimed their rifles at them, only hesitating because they saw Audrey’s face. Then there was an unexpected burst of electricity behind them and they collapsed to the ground, while discharging their rifles in the air as they fell. Behind them materialising was Firewall. “Hi guys, can I suggest you move before their reinforcements arrive? Unfortunately, you can’t vanish into the buildings’ cabling the way I can. Did young Harry Burroughs’s drone help earlier by the way? Ah, please don’t tell him it was me that got it shot up though; I can’t afford to pay for a replacement.” He held up the control console, “Is this of any use to anyone by the way?”
Cadet nodded and grabbed it from him. “We’ll have a proper welcome later but for now can I suggest we get to somewhere a little less exposed?”
They ran past the two unconscious men and into the dorms before exiting out the back by climbing through a window. They then headed deep into Raven Woods, hiding in the undergrowth as several mercs and two of the unarmed but seemingly powered individuals (though they were different people from the pony tailed male and the woman with the barbed whip Cadet noted) rushed by heading to search the dorms again.
Once they had managed to get to the relative safety of the overgrown woods at the rear of the mansion, they paused and hunkered down and briefly conferred. Cadet somewhat nervously asked Audrey if she had a twin-sister..? She looked surprised and initially denied it but then reluctantly admitted she couldn’t be sure as the woman she had called mum had adopted her when she was a toddler and had always refused to discuss her birth family. Then before she’d come to the school, Carpathian soldiers had kidnapped her from her home in Gibraltar and in the process had killed her mum before she could explain why they were after her… When she had been imprisoned with the other Amazons, her powers had also fluctuated wildly as they were doing now… At times, she could even read people’s thoughts though not now, she hastened to add. That was a surprise, as Cadet knew that telepaths were extremely rare. He felt very sympathetic, and ground his teeth at the mention of Carpathians. “Looks like who we’ve also got out there,” he said. “Not nice folk. But it looks like your powers are reacting to something, or someone, amongst them, and that woman who looks like you, she’s surely the key?”
She hadn’t seen the woman as she explained that she had gone to Down Below earlier that morning hoping to find a staff member due to experiencing a major headache and her powers getting out of control like never before – unless you counted when she had been kept captive in Carpathia… She’d subsequently been waiting for someone to come down and only realised something had gone wrong when the mercenaries had broken into Down Below and she’d been rescued by Ms Kitty forcing both of them to go on the run in the underground base.
From where the four of them were currently hiding, they could see patrols searching the dorms and school. It was only a matter of time before they headed back into the woods again. Cadet watched one of them pick up the crashed and downed drone from earlier and carry it back to the mansion. For some reason he thought that might be important.
No, they couldn’t stay where they were. It was only a matter of time before they were found or that woman started executing another hostage. No, attack was their best form of defence.
Cadet suggested that their best bet is for himself and the Kid to go up on the roof at the rear of the mansion, by grapnel and by web, and try to take the machine-gunners by surprise from behind.
The others disagreed and felt that it would be best if they joined them in the assault. He managed to persuade Kitty to stay until they had succeeded, given her wound and the need to protect her cat and Aura to stay and look after her just in case.
So it was that a few minutes later the three ‘boys’ in a millennia-old stereotype of macho protectiveness clambered silently up the rear of the mansion and crept up behind the four-man crew on the rooftop. As soon as they were close enough, the Kid started to fire off bolts of webbing to cover their mouths even as Cadet weaved in and around the crew rabbit-punching them in the throat so they couldn’t call out to anyone inside the building. He kicked another in the face, knocking him back into the nearest chimney. It was Firewall who finished any further resistance by tasering them all with a massive burst of electricity.
As soon as they four of them were unconscious and they were reasonably sure no one had heard their assault, they offered to help the girls clamber up to the roof though Kitty insisted on making her own way up unassisted with Mau clinging to her shoulder.
Kitty immediately started propping and tying up the unconscious merc’s around the machine gun as though they were still guarding the mansion, then with a wink to the others she unloaded the gun and rammed a big nail she’d found into the front end of the barrel with her fist. She was stronger than she looked Cadet realised as she hammered it in so hard so that it was wedged in. As she did so, she explained in a whisper, “The communications they are down are they not? Then until these men are due to be replaced, by this we make sure no one will know that they are unconscious, no? Now we need a plan to get the students and staff out, yes?”
Over the school-wide loudspeaker system they heard the other Audrey, “Enough, We know you’re out there somewhere. You’ve three minutes to appear or we will start shooting your school friends one by one.” With that, they began to herd the pupils and staff out of the mansion, several of whom were crying including a couple of the canteen staff who were near hysterical with fear.
Their Audrey immediately volunteered to surrender with some determination, arguing that they were not likely to kill her, whereas the others were surely all disposable. “And it will get me close to the centre of what’s going on, I’m sure. Knowing you’re behind me – we can put an end to this without any other innocents getting hurt.” “I don’t like it” both Reni and Cadet said simultaneously.
Before Cadet could come up with an alternative plan, Reni pulled off his costume leaving him with just his boxers on. To everyone’s surprise, he rushed over to the guttering and splashed himself with rainwater before he grabbed hold of Audrey’s school hoodie off her shoulders, wrapped it round his own and jumped off the side of the building.
Cadet glanced over the edge of the roof and saw the merc’s lining up their hostages in a line outside the building even as the other Audrey was apparently counting down. She stopped when a wet and near naked Reni appeared round the side of the building with his arms in the air, “Stop! I give myself up. I was having a swim, I surrender! Don’t fire.”
Two of the dark clothed men rushed over, grabbed him roughly and forced him to his knees. The other Audrey sauntered over, “So you are the drone pilot?” “Yes, sorry I was just trying to see what was going on.”
The Audrey gestured and one of her men rushed over with a tablet. “What is your name, boy? So I know who I am about to kill?” Reni raised his chin in defiance, “Reni Moriarty” As he spoke the muscle-bound male with the ponytail came over and backhanded him across the face as though in response to some unspecified insult. Had it been anyone less powerful than Reni, the slap would likely have taken his head clean from his shoulders, as it was everyone heard his head whiplash back. He went to slap him again, only for the Audrey who had been checking the school records on the tablet to scream, “idiotule, nu știi cu cine este înrudit? 1. Stop now if you value your own life…” She walked over and raised Reni’s head to stare into his eyes. “Moriarty? Reni Moriarty, your uncle is the industrialist Alexander Helmes is he not?” Reni nodded.
The Audrey turned to the muscle-bound male, “And you know who Alexander Helmes is, don’t you?”
To Cadet’s surprise, there was fear in the boy’s eyes at that name. The other Audrey spoke to her people, “Take him inside and make sure he is guarded BUT no harm must come to this boy if you value your lives, do you hear me? No harm.” She turned again to Reni, “Tell me boy, are there any others out there that you have seen? Two females, maybe. Eh? I will not harm you out of respect for your Uncle, but I make no promises about them.” Pointing at the gathered pupils and staff, some of whom looked as though they were ready to collapse with fear.
“No, as I said I went for a swim in the river and then when I saw what was happening here I used the camera drone to see what was going on. I didn’t know about the smoke screen function until I accidentally activated it. I’ve not seen anyone else while I was out there. Anyone got a towel I can use? I lost mine running here as you demanded,” he explained loudly as he was taken inside the mansion.
Cadet knew of Reni’s uncle, that he was a famous entrepreneur but why would these people be so afraid of him? They watched as Reni was escorted indoors and the other students and staff followed, grateful that there wasn’t going to be another execution.
Behind them, they heard their Audrey collapse, her back to one of the chimneys and sigh, “I don’t understand why my powers ebb and flow whenever I’m close to her, my twin you think? It was the same when I was taken to Carpathia.”
What was the connection between the PITT and Carpathia anyway? He glanced down at the side of the house and noticed that the corpse from the earlier execution was missing, leaving just the blood-covered sheet on the ground to mark where they had dumped the body. What had happened to it, he wondered and why?
Down on the ground the staff and pupils were again being rounded up and taken inside, leaving only a single guard standing below them. Good, they were very exposed up here trying desperately to hide behind the unconscious and now bound and gagged machine gun crew.
He looked around for what to do next and couldn’t help notice that someone had cut the telephone cables to the mansion. He looked behind them and at the rear of the balcony set into the roof were two wide windows that apparently led into the mansion’s attic. This must have been how the crew had managed to get the machine gun onto the roof. He hurried over and confirmed that they were still unlocked. He quickly opened them, then signalled for everyone to get inside and out of sight, before the guard down below looked up and saw them.
Cadet wondered at Reni’s decisiveness and his willingness to potentially sacrifice himself for Audrey, so like the hero he always said he didn’t want to be. Aloud but in a whisper, he speculated, “I wonder if the Kid knew, or suspected, he might get that kind of reception? Anyway, lucky for all of us it worked out the way it did, but we mustn’t waste the chance he’s given us…”
Glancing between Audrey and the Kids’ discarded costume still in his hands he asked if she thought it might fit her well enough to be a disguise? It was Firewall that wondered if a disguise for her was a bad idea since the Carpathians seem to hesitate when they saw her face? Audrey heard him out then agreed to get into the uniform explaining that if she had to unmask the shock of seeing her face, identical to their bosses’ face, might act in their favour.
The light through the big windows behind them showed that the attic was filled to near capacity with stacked boxes, crates, unwanted furniture and school equipment but thankfully no guards.
He handed Audrey Kids’ uniform and she shyly striped down to her underwear and began to put Kid’s suit on as Cadet and Firewall turned their backs to try to preserve her modesty. They heard her mutter to Kitty that the suit stank of a male deodorant. Kitty giggled and whispered something in her ear that made her cheeks burn with embarrassment.
Kitty just smiled as Audrey struggled to put on the boy’s costume. “She will not pass for a boy in that” she whispered, “she is almost an adult and her breasts are fully developed I think.”
Firewall and Cadet unconsciously turned and realised just how tight the uniform was on her. Red-faced Audrey struggled to get her torso concealed and zipped up. Thankfully, Kid’s costume wasn’t armoured and was stretchable. She had a good figure Cadet couldn’t help notice and irreverently wondered if Reni had also noticed? Could Reni’s motivation have been as simple as that, an attempt to impress Audrey, fuelled by male hormones overpowering his logical thought processes?
That was something to think about another time.
Once fully dressed, Cadet had to agree with her that it would be more of a surprise if she unmasked to reveal ‘her’ face. They know they have to get moving before they were discovered but first Cadet had to know if Audrey wanted to come with them as they tried to get to the heart of the matter. He asked her “Knowing how your powers go off the scale the nearer we get to the other girl, would you rather find a hiding-place up here out of the way?” Her face hidden behind the Kid’s mask, her voice muffled he still heard her voice tremble slightly as she responded, “No, I need to see this out to the end.”
Cadet quietly suggested that they should try to infiltrate the mansion, working their way down floor by floor, assuming they could find a way out of the attic. “Any guards on the next floor down think they’re secure from above. If we go quietly and try to shut down any encounters quickly and quietly, however unsportingly, we should be able to make progress.”
He then turned to Firewall. “I need you to find some way to close down the explosives if you can. I also wonder what has happened to the vanished body of the executed hostage. “Maybe they weren’t really killed..? Or maybe this is one of those things where there is a mad scientist in the basement harvesting bodies? Anyway, we should all keep our eyes peeled and be open to stuff that’s off the wall.” He stifled a nervous chuckle. “Even more off the wall, I mean!”
They then began to spread out, to quietly wander around the attic trying to find the exit while figuring out what to do next. In the twilight light of the attic, Cadet failed to see a small metal box balanced precariously on top of a crate. He pushed the crate aside and tripped over something protruding from the floor sending him off-balance and causing the metal box to fall with a loud bang on top of whatever it was he’d just tripped over. Damn! He managed to stop himself from falling flat on his face and turned to see what he’d stumbled over only to hear something come loose and fall into the room below with another loud bang.
Cadet picked himself up and he hurried over to see light shining through a small hole in the floor. He realised that he had tripped over the series of large bolts pultruding from the floor of the attic and the falling metal box must have knocked one of them loose to fall into whatever lay below.
He looked through the hole left by the fallen bolt and stared into the room below. He found himself looking onto the top of an elaborate, crystal candelabra and beneath that a study with an ornate desk, the damaged drone lying on top of it. Sitting beside the desk, shackled to a chair was a near naked Reni. He looked up, “Shush, she’s coming” he whispered and bent his hand back so that a small, concealed strip of his own skin pulled free on his wrist to reveal a small slit out of which a thread of webbing shot out. It hit the bolt. He retracted the webbing back into his wrist so the attached fallen bolt landed in his hand, which he concealed in a fist.
Below them, the door opened with a squeak and the other Audrey walked in, “So, Mr Moriarty it’s time for you to be honest” she breathed as she sat down on his lap, wiggled her hips and tilted his head back so he looked her straight in the face.
From above, Cadet realised that despite all the similarities between this woman and their Audrey, time had changed their features enough to be able to recognise them apart. This woman beneath him had no laughter lines engraved on her face, her hair was neat and pulled back, her lips seemed thinner, harsher, her skin paler and going by her pin-sized pupils, she was obviously hyped up on drugs.
Reni looked her in the eyes and licked his lips gently, “So you’re obviously not our Audrey, so what do I call you? I mean I can’t just call you ‘beautiful’ all the time, it would be bad for moral, surely?” Cadet smiled, Kid was actually flirting with the woman!
She smiled and again that was another difference, Audrey’s smile was coy and bashful, hers was predatory and feral. “I’m known as Argent but I’m Cassie to my friends and I’m sure we will become friends, good friends, but first I need to find my twin. I know you know her, you used the name the hag that stole her gave her and I can feel her closeness.” She stretched out her hand; fingers wide and they flared with a rainbow of colour as dozens of objects in the room suddenly lifted into the air and began to circle the pair of them faster and faster. She closed her fingers into a fist and the flying objects suddenly crashed to the ground, smashing into thousands of fragments in the process. Some shattered shards headed towards her and her prisoner but failed to hit, bouncing off an invisible force wall surrounding them both.
She leaned in closer, her lips close to his ear as she explained, “I can feel her, she’s close. Very close… Usually my Gran’tată has to drug me so I can unleash my abilities but now. Let us just say the two combined leaves me feeling like a goddess. I could get used to this much power.”
“Does Audrey know you exist? I never heard her mention you though admittedly I’m not one of her friends, we just share a couple of classes…” Cadet smiled, good Reni, get her talking… Before he could hear anything else though, he found his spot being shared with a masked Audrey who had joined him on the floor listening in.
Cassie, continued unaware she was being overheard, “We are the ultimate creation of our Gran’tată, the second generation of psions, but my twin sister and I share a weakness; we are at our most powerful when we are physically together. Apart and I need ‘enhancers’ to unleash my abilities. Unfortunately, we were separated when we were toddlers by a worker, a drone my Gran’tată had brought into look after the both of us and our younger brother Jacob while we were little, a mousey foreign, little crèche worker of all people. Apparently she took umbrage at our being experimented on to enable us to unleash our true potential and tried to escape with us but when they almost caught up with her, she elected to abandon Jacob and me and escape with my sister alone. Without her my Gran’tată was forced to use artificial means to enhance my abilities, painful means or ones with side effects…” She raised her hand and Cadet and Audrey could clearly see that it was trembling uncontrollably. “Then we found her again and I was able to exact my revenge and kill the bitch for abandoning me and taking my sister away from me – died screaming for her ‘little girl’.”
Above in the attic, Audrey had to stifle a sob as cadet reached out to cover her mouth as a warning.
Unaware of what was happening above her, Argent continued, “Ah that was so sweet.” She gently sucked the fingers of her hand and then stuffed them into Reni’s mouth. He sucked them for a second and she gave a little ecstatic cry. “Unfortunately she escaped forcing us to track her down to this abomination of a school. So, now you know. Tell me where my sister is or I’ll be forced to carry out my earlier threat against your school chums…”
Reni bit down gently on her fingers then pulled his head back so he could speak, “Okay that explains your fixation with your sister, but why the other girl?”
Cassie smiled, “A favour to a friendly group who we needed to work with to make this situation happen. Seems the cat-girl escaped from their clutches and they want her back, she’s what my Gran’tată called a ‘meta-mystical hybrid’ like our own creations back home but this one was ‘firesc’, ah, her bond occurred naturally, without our influence and both they and our scientists want to know how. I really don’t care about her, she is how would you say? Unnatural, an inferior ‘Untermenschen’ to our own creations, but I suppose we must pay our debts to our colleagues, eh? So where is my little sister? I cannot wait to introduce her to her brothers and sisters and you, you will be a hero for saving all your other friends and colleagues…”
When Reni failed to reply, she gently slapped his face then raked her nails down his bare chest drawing blood. She then stood up and walked out while saying, “So be it, but the deaths that follow will be on your head you stupid, stupid, little boy.”
The door slammed and beneath them, they heard metal snap as Reni broke his hands free of the shackles then reached down and did the same to the chains around his ankles. He looked up towards the chandelier and quietly said, “Okay, we haven’t a lot of time. The controller round her wrist activates a master control panel next door. That’s guarded by two or three Metas. I had a really close look at the remote on her wrist when I was sucking her… anyway, I think that the control chip on that is identical to the one in the drone controller, if we can just think of some way to get hold of it and swap them over…”
In the attic, Firewall overheard and nodded, “That would work, it wouldn’t stop her from being able to set off the explosives using the main control panel but someone would need to physically flip the switch to do so. I’m not sure if she’d have that many people willing to volunteer to stay in the building and blow themselves up… It would give us time to figure out how to disarm the explosives themselves and we need to get the hostages somewhere safe regardless. Ah, by the way we found the door to the stairs.”
Cadet looked up at Firewall, “Do you think there’s any life left in the drone? Will it respond to the controls at all, or can you infiltrate its electronics somehow? Any chance we can use it to eavesdrop on what’s going on around it? As for these explosive charges, what’s the best way to stop the whole lot going off?”
Firewall paused deep in thought. “Assuming it still works I could use the speaker as a makeshift mic as long as you don’t want it to it to play music at the same time. How are you planning to transmit it though, especially when all comms are still down? As for the explosives, we could remove all the detonators from each bomb but they are likely to have sort of anti-tamper… I’m not a bomb disposal expert, I don’t even want to try. Best bet would be taking out the control panel or the remote and hope she hasn’t another means of setting them off. So what’s the plan?”
Plan? Cadet wondered – what plan? But they needed to do something. Worrying as the explosives were, and the teasing idea that they might somehow exchange control-chips in Argent’s wrist-device without her knowledge, the most immediate risk was to the lives of the hostages. Looking round at his companions he said as much. “I’m thinking to get to the front of the building, just above where they bring the hostages out to shoot them. Attack them in the open. There’s at least one other super out there on our side. If they bring out more hostages than two, well, the more chaos we can create the more we might be able to get free and add to the confusion. Maybe in that confusion we can get hold of that other Audrey, get that controller off her wrist. Though if we can do that, I don’t know why we’d want to change the chip and let her have it back?”
He shrugged and left a pause for other ideas to be voiced. It was Kitty that spoke up first, admittedly hesitantly, “if she did not know this chip had been exchanged, that would be of benefit surely? She would rely still on it as a means of carrying out her plan?”
Audrey spoke next, her voice trembling slightly, “If we were to attack the people guarding the master control panel, which we might need to do if we want to help Reni escape from the room below, I might be able to pass for my ‘sister’ in this outfit. I would need to take off the mask and hold something in front of me to hide this spider motif on the front, at least for a few seconds. The whole of the mansion’s soundproofed, isn’t it? We could get lucky?”
Cadet asked, “What do we do about the hostages being rounded up outside? I think we need a rescue before they are executed. Kid could escape through the window and I’m guessing the bad guys are all tooled-up with re-breathers and the like, but it still may be worth me raining down a mix of smoke and sleep and flash bombs, while Reni “ties-up” as many as he can.
Mostly we want to try to stop them shooting at the hostages, draw their fire and disarm them as much as possible, but focus on the other Audrey. If we can snatch her away, by web or grapnel-gun or however, that will change the story.”
He paused and looked at the real Audrey “I can’t ask you to do this, but – seeing the effect of your closeness on her – how she too struggled for control – if we can bring you next to her…? Maybe as a last resort because there’s no way of guessing how that would pan out.”
He paused and looked at the others. “If we can grab and hold the other Audrey, make her our hostage, I could maybe try sleight of hand to switch her bracelet. Holding her close may be the best way to stop them blowing up the building, I’m hoping they won’t do it, not with her standing beside it. And when I say close, I mean close – I think there’s maybe some teleporting going on…”
“Crap! So mass slaughter and suicide by merc’s, that’s your grand plan?” The voice came from beneath their feet.” Cadet looked down. The Kid had pulled himself up so he could hang from the chandelier and had been listening to them from the ceiling.
Reni continued speaking through the bolthole, “If I remember rightly those automatic rifles come with a 30 round magazine and even if they aren’t the type capable of military grade auto fire, they can still fire, what… several rounds a second? I think we can assume that they will do the same as they did last time and drag out the entire school to witness the next execution, but even if they don’t, they’d still be trapped in a building surrounded by live explosives. Your solution is a straight-up fight against up to six or more of the soldiers armed with automatic rifles and twitchy trigger fingers and at least four Meta’s?”
Cadet thought one or two shots a second, say a max of 45 shots a minute would be more likely for the heavier calibre bullet used by the ORSIS-AR15 rifles they favoured but that still meant a massacre… to achieve what? To save one life, two from being executed? As much as he hated to admit it, the sums didn’t add up.
Kid continued in a whisper from the room below, “Oh, and you have to include the possibility they can teleport away as they blow up the building? I vote for a different plan. I say take out the master control panel first. Would it use the same control chip as the remote do you think?”
Firewall hesitated, both nodding yes and shaking his head no at the same time. Finally, he muttered, “I don’t know, but it’s possible, even likely…”
Kid smiled, “I’m pretty sure that that bitch, sorry Audrey but your sister is… Would ignore the executions if she were to see her sister inside the building, but we need to reduce the odds first. Perhaps Audrey could get us in next door first then distract her sister and lead her on a merry dance round the mansion while we deal with those next door?”
Above in the dim light of the attic, Audrey turned pale but still nodded. “I, I can try…”
Firewall smiled, “I could zap myself back into the electrics of the building and be nearby to protect her or possibly help distract her pursuers? Changing the chip over on the panel, ah once you’ve taken out the people in the room, is easy, I can show you how and if it doesn’t fit, just smash the bloody thing and hope it doesn’t set off the explosives. The handset’s useless without the control box.”
The three of them turned to face Cadet. It was Firewall that spoke first, “We’ll go with whatever plan you think will work best, will save the most lives. How you want to do this; frontal assault or?”
Cadet gave an embarrassed grin. “Knew someone could come up with a good plan,” he acknowledged. “Just knew it wasn’t going to be me this time! OK, so we aim to take out the switch-room first. If we come across any mercs en-route, we’ll have to take them out quickly and hopefully quietly.”
Kid was being held captive in Old Man Summers study in the mansion, which meant the control panel had to be located in Astrid Jennings’ outer office. Unless Kid went out a window then he would have to go through that office with its occupants if he was to escape.
“Firewall, if you can join me, Kitty and the Kid in taking-out the switch room, ah Ms Jennings’s office – and, if that goes right, then speed off after Audrey, give her protection like you said, maybe add to the distractions if you can, frizzing electrics, door-locks, whatever. Ultimate hiding-place for Audrey could be behind the tied-up mercs behind the machine gun on the roof.”
He paused and looked for a reaction, a rejection of his proposals – he was proposing they go up against armed mercs and murderous Metas after all. When they failed to do so, he continued, “Maybe we can take over the room by trying to draw them out into the corridor – rather than busting-in through the doorway one by one? Audrey, you’ve heard your sister speak – do you think you could imitate her voice? Enough to maybe bang on the door and order one of them to go and sit guard on Remi? If that worked he could ambush the one that comes into the room, while we use the confusion to kick up some sort of rumpus so that the others comes to investigate. Best I can come up with, all improvements welcome,” he grinned. “Kid you ready?”
The four of them set off as quietly as they could, heading towards the stairs Firewall had found earlier that led down from the attic. There was a door at the bottom and by the sounds coming through it, there was someone on the other side. Time to try out Audrey’s mimicry skills? He pointed towards the door and mimicked to Audrey that she should speak to him. Audrey turned pale at the thought then pushed past him and headed back up the stairs. Cadet thought that he’d asked too much of her so was surprised when she returned a few seconds later, mask removed and clutching a large damaged computer tablet to her chest in an attempt to conceal the costume’s spider symbol behind its cracked screen. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long but worth trying surely?
She took a deep breath then pushed passed until she was at the front and opened the door. On the other side, a very surprised guard spun round and almost dropped his rifle when he saw who was coming down the loft stairs behind him. He then turned and stared down the main staircase then back at her in complete astonishment. “Cu’? Tocmai te-am văzut..?” 2. he muttered as he began to bring his rifle up. Shit! He must have seen the real Argent walk past him as she headed down to the hostages only a few minutes before so how could she now be exiting the attic?
Audrey’s hands began to glow with a rainbow of colours as threads of light spill forth but Cadet didn’t, couldn’t wait. He jumped down the stairs and slid past Audrey. His feet connected with the guard’s stomach knocking the wind out of him and sent him spinning back towards the wall opposite. He had to silence him and fast.
To his dismay, the guard’s rifle spun round and towards him. Thankfully he didn’t fire, Kitty had got in first jumping over both Aura and him to slash his trigger hand with her claws. The pain made him hesitate pulling the trigger just for a second but it was long enough. Aura’s threads managed to connect with the guard’s head and he slithered down the wall, his eyes glazed as she quickly reprogrammed his thoughts and memories. A second or two later, he stood up, completely oblivious to the fact that the back of his hand was still bleeding as he proceeded to act as though they weren’t there and immediately resumed his position guarding the stairs. Audrey leant over and whispered, “He can no longer see or hear us, at least for the moment. His memory of our exiting the attic is gone but at some point, my ability to disguise our presence will dissipate, so be quick. We need to be out of his sight before that happens.” With that, she spun round and began to hurry down the corridor heading towards the study and outer office.
The others joined her in getting out of sight from the reprogrammed guard. It seemed as though the rest of the mercs were downstairs herding the hostages outside going by the noise. Cadet and his cohort headed towards the study. Cadet had no idea how much time they had before the real Argent carried out her threat to restart the executions.
They arrived at Ms Jennings office. They could not be certain how many were inside but hopefully the subterfuge would work better this time. Kitty immediately kicked off her shoes, so she was barefooted. Cadet smiled, he thought she was stealthy enough even wearing footwear.
Moving to one side, Cadet whispered to the others, “We’ll try to get to let the Kid out quietly, and at that point maybe Audrey – if you could risk opening your mind up to your sister, let her know you’re here in the mansion, then try to shut things down again, if you’ve got some kind of mind-shield? You should be able to dodge upwards through the floors we’ve covered, free of mercs, playing mental peekaboo with your sister, keeping her distracted and drawn away from the executions.”
Audrey nodded but didn’t risk replying, then she began to bang hard on the door. In what she hoped was her sister’s voice she began to shout, “I need someone to go into the study and check on the boy. I also need one of you to come here now and open this door.” There was a scrabble inside the room and the door was pulled open by the pony tailed youth, Apex. Clutching the broken tablet to her front, Audrey pushed him aside and rushed past the others and into the study where the white haired youth was looking around for the missing Reni, expecting the Kid to be still bound to his chair.
Then chaos broke out. Reni dropped from above the door onto the top of the white haired youth even as Audrey ignored them both and the chaos that had erupted at the outer door.
Outside, they could now hear Argent ranting about wanting her sister now and counting down aloud to the first execution. Audrey ran to the window pausing only to grab a chair, which she threw through the main window behind the desk. It fell to the ground outside, hitting the entrance stairs with a loud crash.
Outside, Argent paused her countdown and looked up. She saw her sister standing behind the shattered window screaming, “Hey bitch, come get me!” Audrey then turned and ran back through the two rooms, ignoring the fights as she headed again for the loft. In the outer office, Firewall unleashed a massive burst of electricity at Apex, then looked at Cadet trying to block Scorpion’s scythe-like whip with his swirling grapnel, shrugged and headed after Audrey. Everything was happening at the same time. Inside the study, the white haired boy unleashed a blast of freezing cold all around him, freezing up the room. A near naked and now shivering Reni fired off a thread of webbing at the roof and swung himself out of the way of the blast just in time.
By the outer door to the corridor, a partially stunned Apex went to try to grab hold of Audrey as she pushed passed only to find something attacking his eyes; Mau was attacking his face. It gave catfights a whole new meaning as Apex tried to grab the ball of fur clawing at his eyes and face only for Kitty, despite her wound starting to bled again, to kick him hard in the groin. Like the cats she was named after, she had retractable claws on both her fingers and toes – except they hadn’t been retracted when she had kicked him.
Despite his own ongoing battle royal with Scorpion, Cadet winced in sympathy almost hoping that Apex was invulnerable down there as well. The look on his face and the wet stain spreading down his trousers seemed to indicate that wasn’t the case.
Cadet meanwhile had managed to use his grapnel to tangle up the Scorpions’ dripping and clearly poisoned blade and tried to disarm her but instead he found himself being picked up from the ground, slammed hard against the wall and temporarily pinned there against his will. Thankfully, his opponent was similarly pressed against the opposite wall.
Outside, events were unfolding. On seeing her sister inside the building and so physically, psychically close, Argent abandoned her hostages. Unconcerned about their fate any longer, Argent unleashed her abilities and flew up, towards the room where she had just seen her sister. Powered by her telekinesis, she headed towards the shattered first floor window, her TK shield causing the shards still attached to the frame to blow in as she entered the hole where the window had once been and headed through the building in pursuit of her sister. Inside the room, everyone found themselves ripped from the safety of the floor to be blasted hard against the walls and temporarily pinned there as she floated through and out into the outer chamber. She ignored the fighting, intent upon finally catching her sister.
As she had flown up and into the building, her men had also abandoned their hostages and had elected to race inside, heading for the front doors. Their backs turned, they never saw the arrows that rained down silently on the guards at the rear. No stunner bolts this time, the arrows buried themselves deep in the back of their necks killing them instantly, even as a small, blood-covered female appeared from around the side of the mansion with a sharp, curved knife in her hand and finished off one of the surviving guards who’d started to turn, rifle ready towards the screaming hostages. She then signalled for the students to run across the grounds towards the hooded man, the archer in the middle of the sports field even as she checked the bodies and then headed towards the packages of explosives taped round the outside of the building.
Inside, Scorpion’s skin was supposedly poisonous in addition to the dripping blade of her whip at least according to the report the school had on her. Despite that, he risked punching her several times in the face before applying a nerve pinch. As she collapsed unconscious, he wondered if he’d just poisoned himself. He just hoped his gloves and costume were sufficient protection? No time to worry about it though as he joined Kitty in trying to tackle the angry Apex.
Next door, Reni swung up and over a series of icy spears that peppered the ceiling, where Reni had been suspended against the wall a second before.
Outside, a familiar female voice was shouting for the students and staff to run towards the hooded man who had appeared at the Pillar. Some hesitated, looking up at the unmoving and unresponsive machine gun crew on the roof before a wild scream from Camille ‘inspired’ them to run, fear of her wrath being stronger than their fear of being shot.
Cadet had no time to make sense out of any of this. He glanced at his fists to see if Scorpion’s toxin was showing any signs of compromising his outfit. With a few flicks of his wrist, he quickly twisted his grapnel cord about his unconscious opponent, using the grapnel itself to snag the bonds tight, and then abandoned it. He spun round ready to join Kitty in her fight against her former schoolmate. He was just in time to see Kitty being flung across the room against the wall. To Cadet’s delight, she spun herself round whilst in mid-air so her legs acted as springs hitting the wall first allowing her to bounce off it and land on her feet just in time to catch her cat as it was flung with deadly force against the same wall. She wrapped her own body around the semi-comatose animal as the force of the throw picked her up as well and hurled the pair into and through the wall into the icy hell that was the room beyond.
Cadet had to stop Apex before he followed through with his attack on her. He rushed in and carried out a series of jabs into his ribs (and bleeding groin though he hoped no one witnessed his blows below the belt). If his punches were having any serious effect, he couldn’t see it. Apex was in a rush to finish off Kitty it seemed and punched him hard in the shoulder, knocking him aside. Cadet felt intense pain and his right arm slammed back to hang at an abnormal angle. He tried to raise his arm and couldn’t, his shoulder was either broken or dislocated. He hoped it was the latter. Apex smiled and went to walk towards the still prone Kitty and the meowing bundle of life in her arms and Cadet forced himself to intercept. As he stepped between them and the hulking male pulled his fist back for another punch this time intending to literally knock his head off, Cadet suddenly remembered the arrow he’d picked up earlier.
Left-handed, Cadet pulled out the piece of black arrow that contained the disk-like arrowhead from his cloak and slammed it into Apex’s temple. He had no idea if the weapon still retained any charge or how it was activated if it did, but this was all he had left. The pain in his shoulder was intense and he almost failed as he jabbed upwards with his left arm. The disk connected with Apex’s head, retracted slightly and there was a momentary flash as the Taser discharged followed by a scream as Apex collapsed, momentarily stunned. Before either of them could figure out what to do next a small and bloody girl appeared, grabbed one of the office chairs in one hand and proceeded to beat Apex around the head with it again and again and…
Hoping that the combination of attacks would be sufficient to keep Apex out of the fight for the moment, Cadet knew he needed to ‘fix’ himself, at least temporarily if he was to get back into the game. He looked around and saw that the door frame into the inner sanctum that was Summers’ office was still undamaged. He rushed over and turning round he slammed his dislocated shoulder into the upright frame hard. He screamed with the pain, though all the others heard aloud was a bang and a muffled curse as the shoulder slid back into its socket and secretly confirmed to Cadet that it must have suffered from a number of hairline fractures.
Cadet then turned his attention back to Apex. He added a couple of punches to Kitty’s attack – desperate enough not to care – even hoping – that he might be smearing toxin from his gloves onto his target (and perhaps also wiping it off himself).
As he did so, he heard a scream coming from Reni. He glanced round just as a spear of ice sliced open his chest even as he twisted away from the attack. He tried to swing over his opponent but the webbing had been weakened by the ice blasts and just shattered, causing Reni to fall hard onto the wintery floor.
Cadet responded by cartwheeling through the door, despite the pain in his shoulder, to attack the white haired guy from behind, his feet slamming into his back allowing him to kick the boy across the room. He was grateful that his attention had been still locked on Reni. There was no time for subtlety; it was all about bringing the maximum force to bear as swiftly as possible. He rolled onto his feet and rushed over flinging sleep pellets at the boy even as he slipped his rebreather into his mouth. They had to take these enemies down fast. Reni fired off a spurt of webbing (though it was clear he was running out) which wrapped round his opponent’s waists, pinning his arms by his side. Kid then grabbed the end of the webbing and swung him hard into the ground and into the fumes emanating from the cracked pellets. Unable to hold his breath, the boy was forced to breathe deep of the fumes and within seconds he stopped struggling. Reni walked over, kicked him several times in the gut then proceeded to pull off his clothes before rushing next door to get dressed in the stolen outfit as Cadet spared a glance through the shattered window to see what’s happened outside. He could see the students hurrying away and Camille herding them away dressed in some abstract red and white coloured blouse.
As the gas dissipated, Cadet rushed through to join Kitty and the Kid next door. While Kitty brought Reni up to date with what had happened since his capture, Cadet hurried over to the desk in the outer office noticing in passing that Apex was either finally unconscious or excellent at acting. He picked up the control board, turned it over and carefully opened the panel. Sure enough, there was a chip near identical to the one in his pocket. He slid the chip out of the drone controller and breathed deeply. He just hoped disconnecting the chip while he swapped them over wouldn’t activate the explosives. He slipped out the microprocessor chip from the explosives panel and panicked as all the lights on the front panel suddenly lit up red. He grabbed for the drones’ unit and accidentally dropped it on the floor. Holding his breath he scrambled beneath the desk for the replacement and forced himself to breath as he found it, stood up and slammed it in. The lights on the front panel immediately blanked out again. Success, hopefully?
He turned the unit back over and replaced it where it had been before. Without thinking, he then rushed out the door in pursuit of Argent. As he exited the room, he shouted, “Watch out for the sisters. As they get together expect all hell to break loose – but don’t forget the other Meta. It might be a priority to take him down before he can pitch in to help his boss.”
Back in the outer office, Kid Arachnid picked up the discarded control chip from the control panel and when no one was watching slipped it into the drone’s discarded remote transmitter. Before leaving the room, he walked next door and switched it on then left it beside the damaged camera drone lying on the desk in Old Man Summers’ now iced-up study before joining the others.
Back in the corridor Cadet ran for the stairs to the attic hoping meanwhile that Audrey could hold off her sister and absorb her attention long enough for the rest of them to neutralise any mercs and the other remaining Meta. Hopefully the five of them would be able to contain Argent somehow.
As he reached the now unguarded door to the loft, a mercenary rushed up the main staircase from below. He immediately pointed his rifle at them even as a bloodstained Kitty dashed towards him. He turned and was about to fire at her only to find he couldn’t because one of Kitty’s claws had slipped behind the trigger blocking it from being pulled. The girl smiled, showing large feline teeth as she slammed the palm of her other hand underneath his chin and kicked out at his knee sending him flying back down the stairs. They risked looking over the railings to the floor below and were happy to see the remaining soldiers fleeing the building, possibly out of fear that they were about to be attacked; without hostages they were now extremely vulnerable, or possibly out of fear that Argent would elect to set off the explosives whether they were inside or not.
There was no sign of Argent on the floor below. Then they heard the sound of crashing coming from above their heads. Presumably, Argent had caught up with Aura and Firewall.
They rushed up the stairs two steps at a time, only to see that almost every object that had been stored in the overcrowded loft was now in the air, circling faster and faster the two sisters wrestling in the middle of the room. Aura was appearing and disappearing from their view every few seconds. Cadet had seen a similar trick before, a type of mental invisibility created by a Meta working with the Caledonian Protectorate, though the fact she strobed in and out of view showed her inexperience in using the power.
When she was visible, Audrey could be seen trying to ‘connect’ the strands of light emanating from her hands to her sisters’ head even as the crates and boxes circling them both, slammed into her as they flew past. Over to one side of the attic Firewall had created an energy barrier to protect himself against the deadly TK maelstrom that was threatening to destroy everything in the room.
Audrey was already bruised and bloodied from the numerous impacts and Cadet was sure she wouldn’t be able to hold out for much longer. Cadet was forced to dodge a familiar-looking metal box that flew towards him and then reached out to grab hold of a length of rope that threatened to whip round him and reeled it in. As he did so, he asked Kitty with her feline senses and the aid of Mau to watch the stairs and the floor below for any sign of the other Meta. Her abilities were better utilised as an early warning in case the remaining unidentified youth turned up suddenly.
Turning to Firewall he shouted, “I think we all need to do what we can to distract this mad-woman, preferably in one of the moments when Audrey is visible, to give our girl a better chance to do whatever it is she’s trying to do”. He hoped that Firewall’s electrical attacks would not be affected by the TK-sphere surrounding them. Chris nodded, and waded into the swirling chaos and unleashed a bolt of electricity. Much of the initial blast was bled off by the rotating objects but enough got through to draw Argent’s attention.
Cadet dodged a pair of flying shears as he turned to Reni, “Can you work your way round the walls so you are in Argent’s eye-line? I’m hoping seeing you might cause her to be distracted enough so that Aura can do whatever it is she’s trying to do…” Reni nodded grimly and began crawling up and across the wall.
Cadet knew he had to end this and quickly. The machine gun crew outside were slowly coming round and he could see one at least struggling to break free of his bonds. He did have an idea but he found himself regretting having left his grapnel behind. He had a rope, he just needed something..? He cast his eye around the room looking for a substitute – preferably something hook-shaped to fix onto the end.
Then he saw the metal box from before, circling around for another attempt at his head, saw the heavy-duty handles on either end and reached out to grab it. Beggars can’t be choosers he thought as he quickly fastened the end of the rope to one of the handles then allowed it to fly up and out into the vortex of the circling psychic storm. He allowed it to loop round the two sisters a couple of times then shouted, “Hey Rube!” Hoping Audrey who was facing in his direction would see what he intended and duck. Silver frequently used the phrase in training and he hoped Audrey would understand that something was about to go down.
No time to wait, he braced himself against the stair bannister, grabbed hold of the other handle on the box as it was about to fly round again and then began to pull the rope in as hard as he could. For a second or two it seemed the storm was too powerful to break free of its influence then, a second set of hands, small, clawed but powerful, grabbed hold of the rope and yanked. The rope pulled Aura into Argents grasp then both of the girls came flying towards the stairwell and them. Kitty held onto the rope but jumped down the stairs to get out of the way of the two girls hurling towards them. Cadet was forced to roll out of the way. There was an almighty crash and the bannister post shattered. Cadet looked up only to see a smiling Reni hanging upside down from the roof holding Audrey in his arms. Argent on the other hand had no-one looking out for her and had hit the balustrade hard, breaking it and slicing herself on the splintered ends.
He did notice that the tendrils of light emanating from Aura’s fingertips had managed to attach themselves to Argent’s forehead and both girls’ looked to be in a dazed stupor. Aura muttered something about “Gran’tată is well pleased with you, he is saying you have passed the test girl, you can stand down now and learn of your reward.”
For a brief second, a look of happiness spread across Argent’s face immediately followed by confusion… “No!!! Gran’tată is NEVER satisfied, It’s a lie!” and with that a wave of pure psychic energy washed over them all and flattened them against the walls, floor and roof as she ran towards the bay windows and jumped though and into the air.
“Enough!” she screamed ignoring her unconscious men as she floated out beyond the gardens. Cadet and the others rushed to the bay windows, unsure what to do next. They watched as she landed a couple of hundred metres away in the relative safety of the grounds.
Several arrows cascaded down on her from above, each shattering as though hitting something solid around her. The hooded man stopped firing, turned and ushered the fleeing students towards the main building.
On the ground, they could see Argent smile as she pressed the button on the control on her wrist to set off the explosives and blow them and the mansion to smithereens but nothing happened.
She rapidly pressed the button again and again in frustration. Instead of the building exploding, they could now hear a loud, buzzing sound coming from the first floor of the mansion. Argent looked up and in the shattered office window a small, damaged camera drone momentarily took off trying to fly on shattered blades only to hit the window frame before heading through the smashed window and crash to the ground outside. Argent screamed in anger. Nothing was apparently going right for her.
Behind her, a small, blood-covered Asian woman silently appeared walking towards her from the side of the mansion. “Hey bitch, I think these are yours.” It was Camille, her shirt covered in blood, her own seemingly, and she had a couple of bloody big holes including one over her heart (and several others on her back on her shoulder blade, which was equally covered in blood. Cadet looked carefully but she had no actual wounds.) In her hands she held an ornate Wakizashi sword and a pile of small devices, detonators apparently, each of which was flashing red. Argent looked shocked even as Camille continued, “I thought you’d want these back.” She punctuated the sentence with the hilt of her sword, which she slammed into Argent’s nose with great force. Argent’s face erupted in a flood of blood from her broken nose. “Hard to focus when you’re in pain, isn’t it?” Camille spun the blade round and slashed at Argent’s thigh, “No don’t run I haven’t finished with you yet. I really liked this shirt…”
As Argent fell to one knee in agony, a circle of darkness appeared behind her and a young, dark-haired boy of about 14 or 15 appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her under the arms. Camille rushed forward only to bounce off Argent’s shield. There was a similarity in their facial features that indicated that this had to be one of her (their?) brothers. The two siblings suddenly vanished into a tunnel of darkness that appeared around them.
As they vanished, the force shield overhead also collapsed almost instantaneously and communications were immediately restored in a cacophony of signals and conversations. A few minutes later the Police, followed by several staff members, swarmed into the grounds. Rather than wait for the Police to reach them Cadet, Firewall and Kid Arachnid sneaked away to find their civvies leaving Kitty to transform herself back into her pink-haired but otherwise normal schoolgirl personae and head with an exhausted Audrey to explain what they had seen and undergone.
Cadet was just grateful that Audrey and Kitty were still with them and everyone was alive. He had his suspicions that even the ‘executed hostage’ was once again back amongst the living.
They left the mansion via a rear ground floor window intend on disappearing through the trees. To their surprise as they exited the building Camille approached them and handed the three of them their clothes and told them to get changed then head to the main building so that Nurse Joy could patch them up and yes, arrange for Cadet and his costume to undergo decontamination. Up close, it was clear that Camille’s clothes had been shot at and had been bled on but Camille, totally unaware of the amount of flesh on show through the holes was clearly uninjured. She told Reni she would make sure that his outfit was retrieved from Audrey and returned to him as soon as possible and then hurried off to ensure that Audrey had clothes to change into as well.
They looked around but there was no sign of the hooded man. The three of them immediately started to pull their clothes on over their costumes. As they did so, they thought about how best to explain what had happened to the Police and how they would explain about the trapped mercenaries Down Below. Their story of events would have to accommodate and match as closely as possible what the hostages would report. Their account to ‘Old Man’ Summers’ on the other hand…
As they wandered over to the main building, they could see the coaches returning and start to decamp the students into the road outside. The school would have to remain off-limits until all the attackers had been rounded up and the crime scene properly processed.
They wandered into the car park heading for Nurse Joy’s room where they could see the newly arrived students wondering what was going on and why the barricade. Cadet and the others couldn’t help but overhear Outrage’s booming voice complaining that she was sure that the Walford quarterback, Lee had cheated and used his abilities to score the last try, that there was no way his arms were that long normally! Cadet smiled, Lee had to be the Walford DSFC student Plastique and he definitely was capable of stretching.
They watched as the students that had been hostages were escorted into the auditorium under armed guard as the Police (and teachers) proceeded to process the crime scene.
Joining the others in the auditorium for a debrief thirty minutes later, a bruised, battered but now patched up Colin realised that after this some of the students would likely be removed from the school by their concerned parents worried about a similar situation occurring again in the future. He also knew that they’d likely be back next term though as there were few schools in the region with such a good academic reputation…
Several days later
As anticipated, quite a few families had elected to keep their children away but already students were starting to return.
The Pryde Institute students Apex, Scorpion and Winter, as well as a number of foreign ex-soldiers were arrested at the scene and charged with attempted murder.
The PITT had unsurprisingly disavowed the actions of their students, claiming that they had acted on their own when they had linked up with the unknown terrorist group and were claiming that it was their intention to permanently exclude them as a result of their criminal actions.
Despite this, the school was informed that it would be investigated by the Ministry of Powers and Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education) to identify any possible involvement in the attack. Colin thought it was more likely they would be found to have been negligent in training and restraining their pupils. After all, the school had already been responsible for the outlaw group of Metas known as the Rejects and now this.
Cadet smiled, their HCP certification training licence was also under review and it looked like it might even be withdrawn forcing them to stop taking in new students, officially at least. What they continued to do at their secret campus in Cornwall though was another matter. After all, what the officials didn’t know about they couldn’t respond to. He’d considered an anonymous tip-off but all that would mean is that they would move their covert training facility elsewhere. They retained the advantage as long as none of their students or staff knew that others knew its location.
The abandoned mercenaries were all captured and arrested but refused to say anything, being lawyered up before they had requested a phone call or even a translator. They were all being represented by a single law firm Cabot, Cunningham & Crowley who arrived at the custody suite before any of the arrested.
Several of them had been found tied up in the grounds outside the auditorium. One had initially stated in broken English that they had been “trapped underground in a secret base” and they had subsequently been captured by a man “in a hood”. He, like the others, subsequently stopped talking in any language when questioned.
Officially they remained unidentified, but off the record, the Police had confirmed to the school that they were all believed to be Carpathian.
The Carpathian Government however, refused to recognise them as Carpathian citizens and claimed they had no knowledge of the attack or them. The mercenaries had no identification on them when arrested and they refused to talk to anyone, even to confirm their nationality. In the end, they were deemed illegal aliens and declared stateless. No trace of how they got into the country or where they had been prior to the attack was ever found.
The Police were convinced that the person who’d killed the mercenaries was apparently a retired villain, an assassin called appropriately enough The Hood.
The students held hostage in the mansion confirmed that the person they saw being shot by Argent’s men had been Camille who had offered herself up before another could be selected. They had all been convinced that she’d been killed so her re-appearance alive and unhurt was considered miraculous.
Camille was claiming that she’d survived being shot because she’d been wearing Kevlar under her shirt at the time and had subsequently played dead. Somehow, Colin doubted that. She definitely had not been wearing any body-armour when they’d seen her and the blood on her had looked to be hers. Add to it that she’d been shot by several 7.62-mm rounds close up and personal and they would have left her badly bruised at the very least if not with broken ribs, even if she’d had body armour on. The school elected to pay for a replacement for Harry Burroughs’s drone. He wasn’t told who had borrowed it or why it had been so badly damaged, however. Oh, and the staff seemed to think they may have found a non-addictive way to enhance Aura’s abilities when she wasn’t around her twin and were working on it.
In the end, it had been ‘another encounter of the Claremont kind’ as Camille would say.
1. Carpathian, “You idiot, don’t you know who he’s related to?”
2. Carpathian, “How? I just saw you..?”
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 