The first step was getting Kevin over to the Fayetteville area with a large team that could swoop in and save the day. For that, I needed to gather up some evidence and show them what was going on here. Carefully placing my cameras in R1, in places where MTC’s cameras couldn’t have been able to record me if I were in reality, I had them download their video to the Roger’s Dropbox account. The cameras recorded the chained men and women in their barracks, the women in the mansion and some of the men working in the fields. My timing was excellent as I even managed to record a fertilizer delivery van come in and deliver five more captives to the loading dock of the fortress building. I got good pictures of the driver, his license plate, and the car’s registration certificate that I’d found in the glove compartment.

Disarming the bombs was much more problematic. I was able to follow the wiring to the main controller, but I knew nothing about bombs and how they could be set off. Would the bombs go off if I sent the main controller to L2 and they lost their connection to it? Because I couldn’t be sure, I would have to wrap all of the bombs in their own fields and try to shift them to L2 simultaneously. Last year, I couldn’t handle twenty fields at once. This time I would need to shift fifty of them. I’d practiced a lot over the past year, specifically for this kind of a situation. However, I’d never gone as high as fifty.

Complicating the matter further, my solution from last year of sending an entire building into L2 wasn’t a good option in this case because there were four buildings that I’d need to send away at once and too many people would witness what I’d done. Last time I’d only taken that chance because the building was about to explode with people in it. Now, I had the luxury of finding a better solution.

While my subconscious mind worked on the problem, I found an out of the way spot and called Kevin. I gave him a summary of the situation and told him to check out the Dropbox videos. I instructed him to make his way to Fayetteville with a large, well armed team and I gave him the address. Before I hung up, I cautioned him to call me when he was ten miles out, as I hadn’t managed to disarm the bombs yet.

The trick to disarming the bombs was that they all had to go at once. My issue was that my mind couldn’t keep track and control so many individual fields. I wondered if there was a way to use my pulse scan to find all the bombs and wrap them all in active L2 fields as it found them. I wrapped one of the bombs in a field and sent out a pulse scan to look for more. Forty bombs showed up. What happened to the other ten? I compared my field scans to the pulse scans and found that ten of the bombs, the ones in the men’s barracks used a different explosive compound and were configured differently. I tried my scan again, this time only looking for the detonators. Now my count showed ninety-four detonators. What??!! How had I missed so many bombs? I checked my field scans of the compound and realized that I’d forgotten about the bombs in the tunnel leading to the bunker, the bombs in the vault, and the box of twenty excess detonators that were kept in the bunker. I spent the next few minutes carefully scanning the entire compound again, including empty fields and forested land, just to be sure that I didn’t forget or miss any other explosive materials.

My pulse scan was created by connecting a brief flash of an inactive reality field to a specific object. What would happen if I used a brief flash of an inactive R1 field or and active one? The inactive R1 field should just surround the object and do nothing. The active R1 field should send the object to R1. I was about to try it on the detonators, when I realized how stupid that would be. Instead, I tried it on some of the cash that I had in my backpack. I took out five twenty-dollar bills and set them out. With no wind in L2, I didn’t have to worry about them flying away. I wrapped one in a field and sent out a very low power regular scan that barely went out ten feet. The scan found the four other bills. I tried another scan, this time with an inactive R1 field. Sure enough, all four of the other bills were in fields, ready to be sent to R1. I removed the fields and tried the scan a third time, this time with an active R1 field. Success! All four bills were automatically shifted to R1. It was great having a better understanding of my power. It allowed me to cut way down on the trial-and-error portion of my life.

I tried the pulse scans again using L1 and L2 fields, until I felt that I was ready for the real thing. I put my twenties back in my backpack and wrapped one of the excess detonators in a field. I was about to send out my active L2 pulse when I remembered that the control board might send out a warning of some kind to the people in the bunker. I couldn’t get rid of it first, because that might set off the bombs, so I decided to get rid of it immediately after my pulse. I counted to three in my head and sent out my pulse.

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All the detonators in the compound disappeared in one shot and a second later the control board followed them to L2. I held my breath, waiting to see if anyone had noticed or been alerted to the change. Everyone continued with their day. I sent out a field scan to each of the building with bombs and the only sign there was of my actions were some loose wires that were no longer connected to detonators. Most of those wires were in the ceilings or walls, so the loose wire wasn’t visible. In the basement however, the ceiling was open and I had to shift the loose wired to L2.

I still had time before Kevin could get here so I borrowed some paper from one of the offices in the fortress and drew a crude map of the compound, showing where all twenty-four guards were and where all the prisoners were kept. As much as I could, I added in distances and patrol routes. I took a picture of my handiwork and sent it on to Kevin once I was in a secluded place again. I let him know that I could turn off the power to the compound before he arrived, or I could shut down the camera and security system if he needed me to.

Kevin called when he was ten minutes out and I assured him that the bombs were disabled. He got his men into position and I disabled the perimeter security system and cameras for one minute while his men climbed the fence and got into position. The guards were slow to react to the glitch in their system and by the time they started to take notice, the system was back up and running. It’s amazing what you can do by sending one vital control box into R1 for a bit.

Kevin’s raid was over in fifteen minutes. His men had the guard stunned and tied up before most of them could draw their weapons. While Kevin and his men were busy, I wasn’t sitting idle. I disabled the two cameras in Shari’s cell and shifted her to L2. I also shifted everything in the vaults to L2 and five expensive looking cars that were in the visitor’s parking lot outside of the mansion. I didn’t know which customers they belonged to, so I just shifted all the car keys that I found in their pockets to L2. I’d sort them out later.

Just prior to the raid, I’d taken the precaution of cutting all the phone and security system lines to the bunker. As a result, while the raid was happening, no one in the bunker was alerted. The first inkling of danger they received was a loud knock on the door and an order to come out by order of the FBI. All four of the occupants raced for the back exit and I let them go. Kevin had a team waiting to take them as they exited the storm drain. I shifted to reality inside the bunker and started copying their server and personal computer files. The FBI could have the servers once I had my own copy and once I used some of Howie’s special software to delete any information concerning their bank accounts. Howie’s software wiped the information in a way that left the FBI no way in which to retrieve it.

When my copies were made, I punched in the code to open the bunker door and shifted away to R1. Besides collecting my loot, my work was almost done. Back at the Chopper, I unloaded the two thugs and carried them to the trapdoor above Shari’s room. Making sure that none of the agents were around, I shut down the cameras in the area and opened the trapdoor. Without fanfare, I dropped them down the hole. They were in L2 so they didn’t get hurt at all. It was fast and it didn’t require me to carry them down to the basement. It was one of those win-win situations.

I retrieved Shari from her room and walked her through the concrete wall and up to the Chopper. I shifted her to R1 and placed her comfortably in the seat next to her brother. One more trip into the fortress netted me two boxes of Shari’s things and I was able to leave the senator’s daughter in one of the rooms upstairs. I texted Kevin where to find her and waited until he was just outside her door to bring her back to reality. I had planned on bringing he back to Hannah’s Home, but this solution was much better for everyone involved. Having the girl be rescued at the compound would connect MTC with her kidnapping and ensure that the senator would help the FBI deal with anyone trying to lessen the charges against MTC’s executives.

I flew the Chopper halfway back to Charlotte in L2 before shifting to reality. My two passengers were safely in L1 when I made my phone call.

“Hi Shauna. Did Kevin call you about the raid in Fayetteville?”

“Diane and I are on the way already. We have the rest of the crew coming down in the bus. I tried to reach you to let you know about it. Check your messages.”

“I was just taking the Chopper for a spin and was a little busy when you called. Anyways, Roger called me and told me all about it. He says that there’s over a hundred survivors there. You might need to charter another bus. I’m heading to Fayetteville right now and I should be there in twenty minutes. I’ll meet you guys there.”