It was almost ten o’clock at night when the plane landed just outside of Caracas and I made my way to my favorite rental car agency with my two large duffel bags slung over my shoulders. One carried my gear and the other the supplies that I needed for the rescue. The rental was still waiting for me in L2 and I headed straight for the secure area where the bus and the pickup truck were waiting for me. I’d memorized the directions and reviewed them diligently using satellite view so that I wouldn’t have to leave L2 at all. The plan was to stay in one of the layers or sub-layers almost the entire time that I was here.

I left the rental a few blocks from the secure area and walked the rest of the way on foot. I was done with the car and I shifted it back to reality so that it could be returned to the rental company. An envelope was already waiting at the rental counter with directions of where to find the car, as well as a payment for the use of the car and gas. It wouldn’t make up for all the trouble that was caused by having the car go missing, but it was enough to assuage my guilt for having to ‘borrow’ the car.

The secure area was a fenced-in building and parking lot that belonged to a friend of one of Shauna’s contacts. The bus and pickup were parked at the end of the lot and as per the plan, the keys were secured by magnets to the underside of the back bumpers. I shifted to R1 and used my field to scan the surrounding area for people and cameras. There was only one person in the building. He was walking around and I figured him for the night security guard. There were cameras watching the building, but none of them pointed towards the parking lot, so I shifted the truck to L2 and tossed my duffel with the gear into the back. The other duffel I left in L2, next to the bus. It would be safe there until I returned with the families.

The prison was half an hour away and I drove straight to the administration building, bypassing the gates that didn’t exist in L2. Inside the building, I headed for the security station and shifted to R1. My giant computer specialist, Jenny, had created a program that would overlay a loop of a recording from last week to the security monitors instead of showing the live feed. For the next seven hours the guard on duty would be watching the inmates sleeping in their cells, regardless of whether they were actually there or not. All ‘Roger’ had to do was insert the thumb drive and wait ten minutes for the program to start running. I used those ten minutes to don my powered exoskeleton suit and put on my ‘Roger’ outfit over it. The extra padding that I used to make me look bigger, along with the voice modulation mask, shouldn’t be necessary since I’d be in L2 most of the time, but if something went wrong, I wouldn’t have time to change later.

I drove the truck up to the building that held Samuel and parked it with the back facing the doorway. The less distance I needed to carry everyone, the better. There were seven steps leading up to the front door of the building. From there it was forty steps down the corridor to the stairway leading to the basement level. I counted twenty-four steps by the time I reached the bottom. All the climbing was really going to put the exosuit through its paces. I hoped it could take the punishment. Hell, I hoped I could take it. Between the eight people in this building and the thirteen in the next, I’d be going up the stairs twenty-one times.

Before I got to the point where I was carrying all those people, I had to shift them to L2. Once that was done, the prison-break was effectively over with, except for all the stair climbing. No one would be able to find them or get to them in L2. A search of the grounds and surrounding areas wouldn’t turn up anything and any roadblocks erected wouldn’t stop us from driving through in R2 or L2.

I walked inside the cell that was holding Samuel and the other foreigners. They were all asleep and it was a simple matter to shift them all to L2. I shifted the three tourists as well, because I couldn’t take the chance of them waking up and alerting anyone just yet. I ran upstairs and to the next building over to shift the kids and their mothers and then I had to run over to yet another third building to shift the mobster’s nephews. They shared a cell on the third floor of building F.

The nephews appeared to be in their early twenties, slight of build, and covered in tattoos. I didn’t think the ink was doing them any favors. Then again, maybe in a prison environment, the tattoos helped. At the moment, all that really mattered to me was that they were both short and weighted less than a hundred and fifty pounds. I had practiced with more weight than that. I picked up the first one from his cot and walked him downstairs. Not bad. I didn’t feel any back strain so far. In fact, since I’d shifted him to L2 and removed the field, his body was in stasis and as rigid as a board. I didn’t have to think about floppy arms or legs. It felt more like carrying an irregularly shaped piece of wood than it did a person.

I placed him on the ground by the front of the building and went back for his brother. A few minutes later I’d returned to Samuel’s building and started emptying out that cell. I started with the lighter inmates and made my way up to the marines. They were the biggest ones and even they were just a bit over two hundred pounds. I was confident that they weighed considerably more before prison. I’d have to remember that. Prison is the new diet. Maybe I’d open up a chain of ‘diet’ prisons for people who just couldn’t be bothered to stay fit.

Going up the stairs with the marines wasn’t a picnic. I felt some strain, but it was their height that was the main issue. I couldn’t hold them sideways without banging their heads or legs into a wall, so I either walked at an angle or had to hoist them over my shoulder. That last option would require that I grab hold of them in..uhm…interesting places. I chose to walk at an angle and saved myself from blushing beet red.

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As I brought out each prisoner, I loaded them into the open cargo area of pickup truck. I’d need to stack the bodies on top of one another to fit them all in. Samuel and his fellow cellmates were loaded first, as they’d be coming off last. It felt weird to be thinking about ‘stacking bodies’.

I drove the truck over to the nephews and tossed them gently onto the pile. I was almost sure that nothing could hurt them while they were in stasis in L2. Almost sure isn’t the same as sure, and that’s why I did it gently. I’ve very caring that way. Really, I am.

Compared to the marines, the kids and their mothers were a breeze to carry and load into the truck bed. By this time the pile of bodies had risen over the lip of the cargo area and I worried that I might lose a few if I took a turn too quickly. Luckily, I’d come prepared for just such an eventuality. I brought rope with me! When I’d realized that I couldn’t drive the bus, I came up with this plan to use the pickup trucks’ cargo area. Originally, I’d only planned on taking Samuel and his cellmates in it. I was going to drop off the bus with the families at the secure area and then come back in the pickup to get the rest of the prisoners. Not being able to drive the bus had changed things. Now I’d take them all back to the secured area and load the families onto the bus.

With everyone secured in the back, I shifted the three tourist informers back to reality and drove out of the prison. It had taken me a little under two hours to get them all out and no alarm had been raised yet. If things stayed quiet in the prison for another hour, then we were home free. The families would be safely outside of any potential search area by then.

Back at the secured area, I parked next to the bus and started loading up the women and children onto the bus. Using the pictures from their files, I matched up the mothers with their children and sat them together. I had to put a field around each of them in turn and shift them to R2 in order to be able to arrange them into a comfortable sitting position. They were still unconscious though and I suspected that other people couldn’t function in any of the layers of reality or the sub-layers. The field that was an innate part of me was what allowed me to function in the layers.

I put the nephews at the back of the bus, because that’s were all the bad boys go, and left several empty rows between them and the families. Next, I needed to prepare to wake them up. That involved two steps. The first was going to get the duffel of supplies that I’d left outside. In it were fifteen backpacks, one for each of the ex-inmates. Each pack had a change of clothes, extra underwear and socks, and a pair of shoes, all based on my team’s best guess of their sizes. We’d also put in a few bottles of water, meal bars and snacks for the kids.

The mothers’ backpacks also had ten thousand US dollars and five thousand Bolivars. Although they weren’t technically victims of human trafficking, they had been taken from their homes and imprisoned. That was close enough for me and I chose to give them some restart-up capital. It also gave them the means to move somewhere else if they didn’t appreciate the crime bosses’ hospitality. I suspected that their husbands would try to find them an alternate secure location.

I placed the appropriate backpack on everyone’s lap and then I took out six burner phones and put one in each of the adult’s hands. Each had a note attached to it, written in Spanish, directing them to call their husbands, or their uncle, and let them know that they were free. It also explained that they their escape had not been noticed yet, but that it would be soon and the bus needed to leave quickly before any roadblocks were put up. The note explained about being under the protection of the crime boss as payment for releasing his nephews, who were in the back of the bus. The nephews had a similar note, written by their uncle this time, telling them to behave and treat the families well.

With the stage all set, I shifted to reality and sent the first ‘all-clear’ signal to Shauna. Shauna acknowledged and a minute later sent a message confirming that the driver would be there in five minutes.

Now came the tough part. Waking everyone up. I couldn’t see a way around it. I’d have much rather shifted them back to reality as I drove away, but they’d been through enough already and they needed to understand what was happening and I needed to make sure that everyone read and followed their instructions. I made sure that my hoody and voice changing mask were on properly, took a deep breath, and shifted everyone en masse to reality.

Nothing happened. They all just lay there and it took me a few seconds to realize that they were still asleep. It was two o’clock in the morning. Hmmm. Maybe this could work out for the better. I stepped over and nudged the closest mother awake. She was groggy and it took her a few moments come awake. I backed away a few steps and put a finger across my lips in the universal sign to keep quiet.

“Hola Senora. Eres libre. Lee la nota, por favor.” Hello ma’am. You are free. Read the note, please. I whispered these words in my very poor Spanish, wondering if I’d conjugated the verb correctly.

The woman’s eyes widened at my words. “Libre? De Verdad?” Free? Really? Her panicked looked eased as she looked beside her and saw her children.

“Si. Libre. Lee la nota, por favor.” Yes. Free. Read the note, please.

“Que nota?” What note?

I pointed to her hand and she followed my finger to her hands in surprise. A look of astonishment came over her as she read the note and tears flooded her eyes.

“Puedes despertar a las otras?” Can you wake the others?

“Las otras?” She stood up a bit and looked around. “Si Senor!” She made her way around her sleeping children and started mimicking what I had done. Meanwhile, I woke went over to the nephews and started the process with them. They were much quicker to come awake and it was touch and go there for a second when it seemed that they were going to attack me, but the repeated words, “Llama a tu tio”, had the desired effect. ‘Call your uncle’ snapped them to attention and they read the note that he’d written them. They smiled and relaxed into their seats and placed the call.

That was my cue to leave. I walked past the joyful women and out of the bus. The driver was just pulling up on the other side and before he could see me, I was back in L2.