“It’s an idiot plan, Evan.”

  “Federation flight, F-2124 - We’ve deterred the attackers.”

  “I hope you know what you kids are doing.”

  “F-2124, what is your status?”

  “Rowic’s transferring his A.I.”

  “I’m glad some of you made it alive.”

  “Don’t get killed.”

  “We will provide additional escort to the facility.”

  “Thanks…” Evan clicked off the channel. The two jets hovered at the flanks of their hijacked ship. Fortunately, the navigation instructions were imported into the ship’s controls by autopilot, so Luna only had to utilize her knowledge of Federation procedures to guide them through security.

  A captured soldier lay gagged and hog-tied at the back of the cockpit, with Blink and Twitch keeping close watch on him.

  Ad Astra was gone, and there was no way to contact them at this distance without risking interference by the Federation. Rowic had sent a program that might help them disable some security features at the base, he was uncertain as to how effective the A.I. would be, having never interacted with the system there.

  Evan adjusted his enforcer uniform. He was committed to this action, no going back. To think that only a couple of weeks ago he had been little more than a loner student, and now he was an active enemy of the Federation. To think that only a few weeks ago, he’d have passed out if he had so much as disintegrated a door, and here he’d managed to utilize his powers for an entire fight with little more than a migraine. To think that he’d once been responsible for a few accidental deaths, and now had aided in the deaths of dozens. To think that in a few moments, he’d be swimming in a sea of thousands of enemies with only a handful of allies by his side. To think. To think. To think.

  To hope that at the end of this day, he’d be able to embrace Ken once again and walk with his brother into another life, free from war or corruption. To hope that not another drop of blood might be spilled because of him.

  To dream that freedom was almost in his grasp. To know that if he screwed up, they’d all be dead because of him. He supposed he better not screw up then.

  The two fighters that followed their ship unsettled Evan every time he looked outside the cockpit, but fortunately the facility was close, according to the navigational display.

  They came upon a crescent shaped mountain range, cradling a settlement of structures at the base of it.

  A voice patched into the ship’s comms. “Alright, F-2124, that’s it for us, you are free to descend.”

  Luna flicked a switch. “Thank you, Guardian-One.”

  The two jets fell back, leaving the transport to lower into the valley on its own.

  Square windowless buildings scattered throughout mountains, growing larger as they clustered at the bottom of the valley. It was a network of drab concrete structures drumming with the cadence of marching kill teams, hungry machinery, and buzzing drones.

  “This is it,” Luna said as she engaged the landing protocols.

  “Where do we go when we land?” Evan asked.

  She tilted her head side to side. “Your friend was in the holding cells last I saw him. It shouldn’t be hard to get there. I hope your hacker has a good A.I. program, otherwise I don’t know how we’ll get Kenneth out of there.”

  “Ken,” Evan corrected. “If not, maybe Blink could just teleport him out.”

  Luna shook her head. “There’s a lot of security measures in place. Each cell is lined with lead, followed by an electrical barrier, and then encased in several inches of thick glass and steel. Beyond that, there are alarms that can detect energy spikes in any of the rooms. There’s also a system that tracks the weight distribution per cell. That way the system can detect a multitude of things. How many people are in there, how big they are – how small. Any shifts in that ratio will trigger an alarm and anything in the cell is fried. That’s not to mention the customized defenses each cell is built with.”

  “Custom defenses?”

  “Yes.” She focused on the controls as the ship approached a dockyard. “Speedsters get electrified if they speed up, fire starters are sprayed with liquid nitrogen, teleporters are injected with nanites that rip them apart if they leave the room… lots of fun stuff.”

  Blink grimaced. “That’s brutal. Just… disgusting.”

  “I know.” Luna shrunk into her seat.

  It made sense why she was willing to betray the Federation. What they did was evil. Though Evan couldn’t imagine there were many defenses needed for Ken’s powers; there was nothing offensive about it.

  Twitch made some divergent hand signs, and Blink swatted him in response.

  “F-2124, please dock at station five. An inspection and medical team will board immediately to assist you,” another voice said over the comms.

  “Crap.” Evan looked down to see that over a dozen soldiers and medical personnel were awaiting them below. “We have to get rid of the other guy.”

  “Call me.” Blink grabbed the bound enforcer and flashed away with him moments before the ship landed.

  Luna chewed on her inner cheek. “I hope your buddy Rowic successfully corrupted the ship’s black box, or it won’t take long for the security team to decipher what happened.”

  Evan paced. There wasn’t a chance for Blink to get back to them now, they’d have to rendezvous somewhere in the facility.

  A hand pinched Evan’s shoulder, it was Twitch who offered a smile and thumbs up. Evan patted his hand and nodded. If the twin was confident in Blink, then he should be too.

  Luna shut down the aircraft as the Feds approached it. “Don’t say anything,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Evan tightened his enforcer uniform.

  “They’ll catch on to us if they find out Twitch can’t talk. There’s no such thing as a mute enforcer. If you don’t talk, they might pass it off as both of you are in shock. I’ll take the lead on this.” Luna covered her head with a helmet that was slightly too big for her. She had swapped out her uniform with another, fearing people at the facility would recognize her normal one, and then she’d be detained since she’d been missing for a couple of days.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Evan and Twitch put on similar half-visor helmets and followed her lead to a door at the side of the cockpit. Evan held his hand to his stomach and pretended to favor his left side. He didn’t want to look too healthy, this way they might better believe that they had survived a brutal attack. He coaxed Twitch into following suit, and the twin gabbed his shoulder and feigned a grimace.

  Luna pressed a handful of buttons that released the door. The inspection team approached them, while voices came from inside the ship; presumably other enforcers had entered through the gaping hole in the side of the ship’s hull. They’d find a couple of dead feds, but not much other evidence for what had happened.

  If there was a time that Luna would betray the rebels, now would be it. Evan prayed she had truly joined their side.

  “F-2124?” the lead inspector asked, a woman in a dark blue officer uniform and wearing a cap instead of a helmet. Two other enforcers flanked her, one with a kit of electronic devices, and the other holding an SMG. There was a drone floating just behind them.

  Luna saluted, followed timidly by Evan and Twitch.

  “Please submit to identification scanning.”

  The drone hovered past the inspection team toward Evan and his accomplices. He tapped his wrist computer to activate Rowic’s A.I.

  A beam of light scanned over Luna first, and flashed green as it stated the information, “Tara Jones, F-2124 – Flight Crew.”

  Evan stifled his sigh of relief as the program had successfully tricked the drone to match their identities to their stolen uniforms.

  After the drone had finished dubbing Evan as “Justice Bell, E-1102 – Enforcer Unit,” and Twitch as “Lu Tess, E-4033 – Enforcer Unit,” the inspector’s eyes panned over to Evan and Twitch.

  “Casualty report?” she asked.

  Luna waved behind her. “This all that’s left. The Afflicted hit us by surprise and took everyone out before the air support could arrive.”

  The inspector stepped onboard the ship. “Our scans detected more life signatures onboard when you were landing.”

  Evan spoke up, despite Luna’s warning, but he couldn’t afford to hesitate. “They were disintegrated, ma’am. One of the Afflicted could melt things with his mind. The others who were on the ship turned to ash slowly. They didn’t make it during the landing.”

  She eyed him, and he bowed his head submissively.

  Luna cleared her throat.

  Right, soldiers stand at attention. Evan corrected himself straight and focused.

  The inspector clucked her tongue. “Animals. What kind of freak does that to a person?” She addressed Luna again, “You and your men can head to the barracks for debriefing.”

  Luna nodded and started off the ramp.

  Evan followed close by, adverting his eyes from the soldiers, with Twitch in tow. A string of radio chatter came from the helmet Evan wore, mostly codes and jargon that didn’t make sense, so it was just noise to him. He continued on, ignoring the radio as best as he could.

  “Blink?” he said, hoping the helmet wouldn’t interfere with his earpiece.

  “Heya, how’d it go?” Her positive tone superseded the tension in the air.

  Evan sighed. “Good.”

  Luna’s path twisted around a hub of long buildings that was presumably the barracks, but then she doubled back toward the main structure. “Meet us at the back of the central building.”

  “Mkay.”

  The building was lined with thin black glass that lit up yellow at differing sections. Train carts and loaders passed in and out of two giant doorways. Sentry turrets and guards protected the entrances and inspected the travel lanes, and a handful of drones scanned those who passed by. However, there was only one obstacle that truly gave Evan pause – a purifier.

  The hulking mass of plate and gyros would periodically halt a passerby and display a projection of their face with his gauntlet emitters. After a moment of comparing the face and the image, and asking a few questions, he’d let them pass on.

  “What’s the issue?” Luna asked.

  Evan whispered, “I was told that Rowic’s program has never been able to hack a purifier’s code. If the purifier stops us, he’ll find out who we are right away and we won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  Twitch pointed at his cross necklace.

  “Blink?” Evan asked.

  He nodded.

  Luna shook her head. “Remember, the facility has systems in place that can track unusual energy spikes and sudden changes in population, not to mention there’s cameras everywhere. Teleportation isn’t an option here.”

  The enforcer comm channel broke through Evan’s focus. “Inspection team at station five, prepare for re-scan of transit eleven. Be notified that there may be an additional life signature aboard transport F-2124.”

  “You guys hear that?” Evan asked.

  Luna swore. “There might have been someone who survived, and we didn’t realize it – stole away in a vent or something.” She looked around the yard. “Blink, where are you?”

  “Sorry… I ran into a bit of trouble, but it’s all patched up now!”

  “Trouble?”

  “Yeah… Uh, let’s just say it’s a good thing I could find enough rope for two more pilots.”

  Luna’s eyes might have popped out of her head if they weren’t attached, though Evan wouldn’t have been surprised if her teeth had started to crack under the pressure of her grinding them.

  “We can’t wait for Blink to catch up to us, we have to risk the checkpoint before they trigger a lockdown.” She made her way toward the processing line.

  Evan looked back at the docking stations in the distance where more soldiers had gathered around their stolen ship. It seemed it was already too late.

  When he turned back to see a purifier at the head of the line. “Wait!” he called to Luna.

  A few other soldiers looked back at him with her, and he waved at them with a nervous chuckle.

  She waved a dismissing hand to the other soldiers and hobbled her way back over to him. “What?”

  “Look.” Evan pointed to the purifier, who seemed distracted by something coming from his comms. Sure enough, the brute left his post and headed in the direction of the docking stations.

  Luna nodded her approval, and the trio continued down the line together. Their fortune continued as they ran into Blink just before entering.

  “What happened?” Evan asked.

  Blink grimaced. “The soldier woke up.”

  Luna hushed them and stacked up against a truck.

  “We have a small window,” Luna whispered. “I doubt I need to explain how bad it is if the guards found a survivor on our ship. We need to ditch these uniforms for new ones before they start searching for us, and we’re running out of time.”

  Evan considered this. “Is there a room where they operate the security cameras? Some place we can upload Rowic’s code and take over the base’s security and cancel any alarms?”

  “There’s not one security control center for that exact reason. But we can find one of several that might control the cells where your friend is at least.”

  “Let’s do it.” Evan steeled himself.

  They walked into a multi-level sector with spaces of plexiglass roofing. Evan saw what was happening three or so levels above him. The facility bustled with soldiers, drones, scientists, other machines, metal reinforced glass cells with people cuffed inside, and purifiers – At least two of them patrolling the sectors.

  Blink whispered to him. “So, if they discover us, how fast do you think they can kill us?”

  He squinted and pretended to calculate. “Well… in the blink of an eye?”

  She cringed. “Nice.”

  “This way.” Luna diverted them to a lift. There were no buttons, only a slot for a keycard and a scanner. “Ah. So that’s what I forgot to account for.”

  Blink shrugged. “Let’s just… be friendly.” She waved to a group of five white-coated lab workers who were walking in their direction. “Heya, we’ll wait for you.”

  Luna looked at her uncertainly.

  The lab workers waved back and hurried over to them.

  “Thank you for waiting, these things can take forever to return to the first floor,” one of them said.

  “Of course,” Blink agreed, flashing her signature smile. “After you, please.”

  That same lab worker smiled back and inserted his keycard and allowed his eyes to be scanned.

  “What floor?” he asked.

  “Sub twelve,” Luna answered.

  “Great! We’re heading to the fifteenth.”

  The elevator stuttered before descending.

  Evan wished his unorthodox plans turned out as smoothly as they did for Blink. He supposed some people were just that amazing… or more likely, it was because she’d been doing this far longer than he had and her competence preceded his. He should be taking notes.

  As the lift descended, it was impressive how fast the elevator had made it to the subterranean twelfth floor. The elevator stopped at the destination, followed by an automated voice that said, “Please scan credentials in order to exit.”

  “Here, let me get out of your way,” the kindly lab worker said.

  The group of rebels froze. It had gone so smoothly.

  The ceiling light flashed red, followed by an alarm. “Attention, facility breached. Compromised personnel on site. Facility lockdown initiated. All units, keep watch for imposters claiming to be Tara Jones, F-2124, Justice Bell, E-1102, and Lu Tess, E-4033.”

  Crap.

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