The sadistic guard that had shoved the little girl was holding the woman against the wall and whispering to her all the things that he planned to do to her, while the other guard started unbuckling his belt. I didn’t need to see any more. Starting with the bat pointed towards the floor, I swung my arms up in an arc to catch the second guard’s face and shifted the bat to reality just before it connected. The bat was back in R2 before the other guard could turn around to see what had made that crunching sound.
As the guard saw his friend on the ground, he let the woman go and I repeated my performance for his benefit as well. The only difference was that this time I gave it a more traditional baseball swing, using a two-handed grip, choking up on the bat, and making sure that my right elbow was up and away from my body. I think that his feet might have left the ground, but I couldn’t be sure. I am sure that he went down hard. I don’t know how much damage I did to him, but he wasn’t going to get up anytime soon. Maybe never at all. At that moment, I didn’t care, and I didn’t bother to go check if either of the guards were breathing.
The woman had curled herself into a ball in the corner of the room, with her head buried in her arms. I don’t think that she was even aware yet that she was safe from the guards. I knew that there were no cameras in this room and so I shifted into reality and crouched down a few steps away from her.
“It’s ok. They’re not going to hurt you. They’ve been knocked out. The police are on their way and should be here in a few minutes.” With the voice changer still on, I spoke to her as soothingly as I could. At first, she didn’t respond, and I kept telling her that she’d be ok, and that help was on the way. Once it was apparent that she wasn’t about to get hit or raped, she relaxed her arms a bit and looked out at me and the guards on the floor. I’m sure that in my mask and black clothing, I wasn’t the most reassuring sight, but the seeing her tormentors lying in such uncomfortable positions must have made her feel better because she asked, “Did you do that?” I heard a slight accent in her voice and briefly wondered where she was from.
“Yes, I did.”
“Are the police really on their way. Is this finally over?”, she asked with tears starting to run down her face.
“They should be here any minute now, but I want to make sure that you’re safe while they secure the building and lock up the bad guys. I’d like to take you to one of the other offices and have you lock yourself in until this is over. Is that ok? I need to go make sure that the others stay safe as well.” I’d considered asking her to stay in this room and lock the door, but I couldn’t ask her to lock herself in with the guards, even if they were unconscious or worse.
She looked at me and nodded her head. Before we left the room, I sent out my field as far away from me as it would go to see if there were any guards in the area and to check for cameras. With no guards or cameras around I quickly led the woman into an adjoining office, and I made sure that she locked the door before I left. As soon as the door closed behind me, I shifted back to R1 and went to check on the captives.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Besides being confined against their will and miserable, the captives were ok for now. Although I started to worry about what would happen when the police arrived. Would the guards hold the women and children as hostages? There was no way for the police to get into the jail cells without someone getting hurt. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of this before and I started swearing in my head. Just because I could get and out of anywhere, I’d let myself forget that others couldn’t.
Thinking that I needed to secure this area before the police arrived, I counted the guards and tried to see how I could take them out without any of the captives getting hurt. There were four guards in the basement. One was sitting in the security office at the back with the camera display, one was pacing between the cages, and one was on either side of the door to the cells. I debated whether I should take out the guard outside the door first or last and decided that he’d be last because there was a camera watching the outside of the door that was linked to the camera room in the security office. That meant I needed to take out the guard in the office first. There was also a phone in the office and if the guard saw anything strange, he could call for reinforcements.
In R1, I walked across the holding area and into the security office. Brando was sitting down and watching the cameras. He was leering at a close up of one of the children. I put a field around one of the cattle prods on the wall and shifted it into R1. Then I used a field to shift Brando into R1 and used the prod and the bat on him, repeatedly, before I shifted him back into reality. By bringing him into R1 with me, the whole thing had happened without a sound in reality. I left his unconscious body lying on the floor and I turned off the camera system in the cells, as well as the live feed to my cameras. One down, three to go.
With the camera systems off, I didn’t have to worry about the police seeing footage of me later. It was possible that a few of the captives would see something, but no one would be able to make sense of it. After all, baseball bats don’t swing themselves. I used the bat on the pacing guard just as he turned to face the other way and the blow didn’t catch him full on. He staggered dazedly to the side but managed to stay up. My follow up swing crashed him into the bars of one of the cages and he slumped to the ground. The sound of the guard hitting the cage had gotten everyone’s attention and they were all watching his motionless body as I ran towards the guard by door, who was now running towards me to see what happened to the guard. The force of the bat hitting his face as we were running towards each other sent tingles up my arm and to my shoulder. I thought that his head was going to fly off of his body. Instead, his head was stopped in place by the bat and the body flew out from under him. He landed on his head and his body came crashing down on top of it. It was gruesome and I felt like throwing up for a minute or two afterwards. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down and I went to take out the guard outside. I didn’t think that I could use the baseball bat again, so I brought him into R1 and used the cattle prod instead.