Remy thought it over for a moment.
“Yeah, that could have worked. Did you get it?”
Sebastian took a fistful of smashed electronics from his pocket.
“She landed on it.”
Farrah hadn’t quite completed her mental map of the facility’s magic array, but once they started prepping to move her to another facility, she knew she had to act. The first part was the hardest, taking out a pair of bronze-rank guards. Fortunately, one panicked when she made her move and unleashed his strongest attack. Farrah shoved the one she had been choking out with her handcuffed arms into its path. Her arms were burned a little, but she ignored it. Fire wouldn’t have hurt her if her powers were active.
While the second guard was aghast at killing the first, Farrah took advantage of his shock and moved in, making a weird standing jump because of her leg chains. She grabbed his face, yanking his weight onto one leg as she hooked her own leg behind it and pushed forward. He was slammed into the concrete floor with a jolt, and she smashed his head repeatedly into it until she was sure.
That gave her clothes and the keys to her manacles, but not her suppression collar. Forcefully removing it would most likely kill her, so she would have to get a key. The man in charge of the facility, Barbou, had been the one questioning her and kept the key on his person at all times. She would either need to find him or some magical resources to knock out a skeleton key, but she had never come across a magical workshop in either her escape attempts or as they had dragged her around the facility.
She found some tools in a maintenance storage cupboard and claimed a hammer and chisel. These allowed her to start making small but critical changes to the magic engravings on the walls, carefully altering the flow of magic in the facility’s whole magical array. The magical flow was accumulating and redirecting in ways it was not designed for, and enough small changes would get big results as the excess magic stacked up.
It was a delicate balance; she needed to avoid just breaking the array and having the power drain out. The goal was for magic to gather at roughly the same rate in various points around the facility. That it was working was impressive, given the simple tools at her disposal.
Fortunately, this type of magic was her speciality. Before the alarm went out and they realised she was loose, the facility was experiencing areas of dangerous magical build-up. Even as security personnel pounded through the halls, explosions started reverberating through the underground facility.
Personnel rushed through corridors filled with concrete dust from the repeated explosions. The staccato flickering of the lights was inducing panic; each moment of darkness was a reminder of how far underground they were. Whole chunks of floor, wall and ceiling had become rubble underfoot. In the chaos, her stolen uniform and cap allowed her to blend in, just another panicked staffer.
After setting in motion the chain reaction of blasts from the magical array, Farrah had no more control. She was even caught in the periphery of a blast and slammed into the opposite wall, almost falling unconscious.
She wanted to evacuate with the actual staff, but the exits were where security was making strict checks. Instead, she managed to find her way to Barbou’s office, in which she had been questioned several times as he tried carrot over stick. She didn’t expect the key to be present, but she spent a few precious moments searching the desk, just in case.
After unsurprisingly not finding it, she made for the strange room that held the non-magical elevating platform. She knew she wouldn’t get it to operate and didn’t try, instead chiselling the lock on the ceiling hatch and pulling herself up and through. There she found metal rungs set into the concrete that led up the long shaft and started to climb.
At the top, she used the chisel to pry open the doors and then forced them open with raw strength. She felt weak without her strength-enhancing ability, but she still had the power attribute of an essence user at the peak of bronze.
Shoving open the doors, she staggered into the light. She was in some kind of abandoned building, which was surrounded by a metal mesh fence and then forest beyond, with only one road leading away. Unfortunately, she was not alone.
Barbou was standing with a dozen heavily muscled men and women in dark clothes.
“Well,” Barbou said. “Aren’t you industrious?”
50
TECHNICAL ISSUE
The transport helicopter touched down at a small airstrip in Sri Lanka. It was small and set amongst an expanse of grassland. The air was hot, thick, and heavy with a tang of fuel, although the helicopter stirred it up. There was one hangar and a small, prefab office building. The runway itself was a line of hard-packed earth rather than asphalt.
Jason and the other survivors of the plane attack disembarked the helicopter and were met by Chathura, a local Network agent. He led them towards the smaller building.
“We’re still prepping your plane,” Chathura said loudly over the noise of the winding-down helicopter. “You’ll be wheels up in twenty-five.”
“We were negligent and only looked out for magical threats,” Bruce told him. “I hope you’ll be more thorough than we were.”
Bruce did not hide from his failure, as part of the security team that had failed to detect the bomb. Their oversight had gotten his team and a committee member killed, along with the crew of the plane. Once things calmed down enough that he had time to think, guilt had overtaken Bruce. He didn’t shy away from it, but owned the shame and let it feed his resolve to do better in the future.
Jason did not feel guilt at having been the impetus for the trip in the first place. He was ready to pay the price to get Farrah back, be that a fresh stain on his conscience from a killing spree or sacrificing some pride and giving up on vengeance. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the one paying.
The Network was at a body count of eight. Though Jason was the impetus for the trip, he did not assign himself the blame. That he placed on the people that took Farrah and planted the bomb: Adrien Barbou, anyone that worked for him, and anyone he worked for.