“Bring them to the others,” she ordered. The men lifted Sly off the ground and shoved them both forward. They were escorted to a room full of displays near the middle of the building. There were a couple dozen people present, familys’ and staff from the museum, all scattered around the room.
“In,” one of them said. They complied and found a space to sit together on the far side of the room.
Whenever any of the people in the room spoke too loud, they were threatened. Another man was taken out when he refused to heed their warning. His child was crying after them, the mother tried desperately to calm the child down. They took the man around the corner, and there was a gunshot. The guards returned, but the man didn’t.
Hunters hands shook and he couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs. Sly was looking around the room. He didn’t seem afraid, just focused.
“Deep breaths, Hunter,” Sly whispered, “You’re going to get out of this. Alright?”
Hunter nodded, taking deep breaths until he felt his racing heartbeat start to slow.
“What makes you so certain?” Another one of the hostages asked, close enough for them to hear.
Sly frowned, and twitched his head, beckoning for the guy to come closer.
“I’ve got a plan,” Sly said, then he hesitated, “Sort of.”
“A plan?” the other man scoffed, “what, do you think we should just rush them all at once”
Sly shook his head. Some of the others were beginning to notice their exchange.
“Keep your voice down. No, that’s not my plan. I’ve escaped situations like this before, and against much more capable foes. Compared to them, these guys are amateurs. Look around the room, what do you see?”
Hunter and the man scanned the room. Hunter did notice something, but he wasn’t sure if that’s what Sly was referring to.
“I see Force constructs,” Hunter said. Sly glanced at him, widening his eyes, then he nodded.
“That’s not what I was referring to, but now that you mention it, you’re right. Good thinking Hunter. What else do you notice?”
“The guards are avoiding spending too much time in here,” the man said.
Sly nodded.
“And the point I'm making is related to that. Why aren’t they spending much time inside the room?”
The answer seemed obvious to Hunter. He remembered the woman’s words as she ordered they be brought to this room.
He’d never gotten a look at her, but he’d bet money that she was the boss.
“There’s more of us then there are of them,” Hunter said, “Hypothetically, if we did rush them all at once, we’d be able to take their weapons. That would be two down, and they wouldn’t be able to afford many more losses. Right? You said it yourself, law enforcement probably has this building surrounded,” as Hunter spoke, he got more excited.
For a moment, it felt like the terrorists were an unstoppable force— a monster without flaw. But Sly had been thinking along another line altogether this whole time. What else was he seeing that Hunter wasn’t? He was suddenly fascinated by this new bodyguard. He said he’d been in situations like this before, but when?
“Keep your voice down,” Sly reminded Hunter. The guards were looking inside the room now.
They waited in silence until it was safe to speak again.
“At the very least, we can assume that there’s enough of us that we count as a potential threat. They’re not just threatening our lives, they’re protecting their own. As long as they think we’re too scared to act, they won’t be too afraid of us. Which means they’ll need to continually establish their dominance.”
Hunter did his best to avoid looking at the woman who’d just lost her husband, and the child who had just lost their father.
“So what’s your plan?” the man asked.
“Well, the original plan was going to be to cause a distraction, enough of one so that they have to leave a few exits with far less protection than they would hope. That would leave an opening for everyone else to run for it.”
“What kind of distraction? And how would we do it? We’re all trapped in here, and they have all the guns.”
Sly looked at Hunter.
“That’s where you come in Hunter. You’re supposed to be a wiz-kid with etherium. You figure you can throw something together?”
Hunter studied the room. He could feel the construct attached to the display behind him, he pushed his hand against the glass, and sure enough, he met resistance when his hand was about an inch away.
“I don’t know about a distraction,” Hunter answered, looking around the rooms. These must be some of the more expensive items in the museum. There might be force constructs all around them, which meant enough parts to create a powerful effect. He wondered how big of a battery they were running to power them, and how they were keeping it charged. They probably switched it out with a new one every morning before opening.
“I might be able to create a forcefield powerful enough to keep them out of here. The problem is—”
“—finding the time and space to create it,” Sly finished for him.
Hunter nodded. He noticed a door, hidden behind a small potted tree and a styrofoam rock prop. He could barely make out a sign on it, as the lighting in the corners was dim. When he realized what it was, he smiled.
“If I’m not wrong, that’s a maintenance room. If one of these constructs starts to act up, you’ll want to have quick access to parts in order to repair it. If you can get me in there, I bet it’ll have almost everything I need.”
Sly nodded, and the man they’d been talking with seemed excited, but a bit worried.
“How will we get you in there? They’ll see us moving around?”
“That’ll be what we need the distraction for,” Sly said.
“But what kind of distraction could we possibly make?” the man asked.
In the end, the distraction was made for them. They heard a small explosion somewhere in the building, causing the walls and displays to shake. For a moment, the guards’ attention was away from the rooms’ only entrance and exit, as they shouted at each other. One of them was on a phone, Hunter assumed he was calling someone to see what as happening.
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“Now, Hunter,” Sly said, lifting him up. They made it to the maintenance room. The man stood too, asking what they needed him to do. Sly looked to Hunter.
If Hunter could use the constructs that were currently used for protecting the artifacts from theft, it would make his job a lot easier, and a lot less physically taxing. But he didn’t have the time to walk a bunch of laymen through the process of disassembling a Force construct while they were active.
Hunter shook his head towards Sly, indicating that he couldn’t think of anything.
“Just try and keep people calm,” Sly said. The man looked at Sly like he’d just chosen him to swim across the ocean.
“I don’t know these people, but fine, I'll do my best,” he said.
The door was unlocked— which was a relief. Hunter couldn’t have been sure when he pointed it out. There were constructs in various states of assembly and repair. Hunter guessed that someone had been in here when the alarm was activated, and in their haste to leave, they must forgotten to lock the door behind them. There were a dozen batteries with varying charges lining the walls, and scattered across the workbenches. He’d be comfortable with about twice the amount that was available to him, not that he’d even have enough time to use more than one.
For the second time in a couple of days, Hunter thought through what he knew about Force constructs.
Forcefields demand a lot more etherium than Hunter could personally supply. Creating one powerful enough to keep them safe from rifles would probably take more etherium than Sly could supply.
“Sly, what’s your AR?” Hunter asked.
“48,” Sly said.
Hunter pursed his lips. Together they could supply about 53 AR worth of etherium, but it would need more than that. Maybe more than twice that much. He could probably reduce that by around 10 percent, but either way it would take 3 or 4 people to keep it active.
“How much time do I have?” Hunter asked.
“Assume you’re already out of time.”
Hunter wanted to laugh. This was a ridiculous situation to be in. He wished they’d asked the rest of the hostages if any of them were artisans. He could definitely use another set of hands.
He studied the constructs that were in the process of being built or repaired around him. He could use a few of them, but many of them were useless to him at the moment. He had a flashback to the final round of the competition. He wondered if he’d have done any better during the final round if failing to attain a spot in the top 3 meant the death of himself and over a couple dozen others.
The biggest difference between this, and the competition, is that he wasn’t going to lose points for shoddy work, and this was going to have to be a very rough job.
“I’ll need your help,” Hunter said. He didn’t have the third arm with him, nor did he have the time to try and configure his workspace to suit his handicap. Hunter directed Sly to hold a few batteries, and also had him activate them in bursts. Then he realized he was being stupid, and had Sly directly activate the constructs as he was working.
Sly had an affinity rating of 48, so Hunter didn’t actually need the batteries right now. In fact, he could probably use them to help power the construct later on.
The difference between using batteries to create a construct, and having someone stand by with a high affinity, was night and day. He was able to work almost three times as fast. Another way that this whole situation differed from the competition was that most of the tools and parts around him were geared towards a single aim: Force constructs.
Hunter had worked with shaped force constructs before, but only ever in the role of maintenance and very basic repairs. Shaping force fields was difficult, even for him. It came with a whole bunch of proprietary knowledge about efficient network placement and specific glyphs. Lucky for him, this was the most basic of shaped force fields, it was a flat field meant to project no more than an inch or two in front of a pane of glass. If this was a construct meant to create a curved field, Hunter was sure he could feel his way around the network in order to comprehend it, but he would probably want a day or three to do so.
During the second round of the competition, all they had to do was project a force field, they didn’t have to try and manipulate how that field manifested. This was different— and Hunter felt a bit out of his depth. Shaped fields were about a decade old but it had never been relevant for him to learn. Fortunately for him, and he supposed to the rest of the hostages, he had the unique capacity of being able to learn new glyphs on the spot, and his previous experience with this type of construct would hopefully expedite the process.
Another boon was that most of the shaping functions were already installed. Three of the constructs were pretty much ready to go before he even started working, so he decided to focus the entire build around them. It only took him a couple of minutes to put everything together.
Then he had an idea, and it would take less than a extra minute to configure the parts he needed to make the necessary adjustments to execute the idea. He told Sly about the addition he was making, and Sly agreed that it would be worth the extra time. Hunter added a few link glyphs, and made some very rough channel attachments, using extra-fine drawstone-threaded wires. These were expensive to produce, and Hunter wasn’t using them to their greatest effect, but for once in his life he didn’t care about efficiency. This time, he wasn’t trying to prove a point or satisfy his own pride.
There were lives at stake, including his own. The anxiety was causing his hands to tremble still, but he was used to that— his hands always shook a bit when he was working.
The guards had managed to get the crowded hostages to quiet down by the time Hunter was finished. Sly opened the maintenance-room door as quietly as he could. They slowly exited it and squatted behind the small tree and the fake rock that slightly occluded most of the door from the display rooms’ entrance.
It was a dark corner, and they hoped it would be enough to keep them hidden until they found an opportunity to place the construct. In the meantime, they were able to get the attention of the man they’d talked to before. They waved him over, and he made his way over to them when during a small moment when they weren’t being watched.
They told him about the construct and the need for multiple volunteers to keep it active. The man started asking around to see if anyone wanted to help.
A steady staccato of gunshots rang out in the distance.
“Its the police! They’re coming to save us!” someone yelled. Hunter saw Sly shake his head.
“This isn’t good. The abolitionists are already desperate. We probably don’t have a lot of time. Get ready to move.”
Another small explosion rocked the building, the walls of the display room shook. In the brief seconds the guards were distracted, Sly and Hunter were able to leave cover and make their way along the side of the room. Over the next minute, they slow inched their way towards the front of the crowd. Hunter told Sly exactly what he would need to do in order to set the constructs up. He’d even etched a 1, 2, and 3 on each of the main parts so that Sly would know which order to set them up in.
A few more hostages slowly made their way to the front of the crowd. They nodded to him and Sly. He guessed that they were the volunteers who would be keeping the construct active once it was placed.
Hunter was certain the construct would work, but he couldn’t guarantee it would hold out long enough for law enforcement to arrive. If the fight between law enforcement and the abolitionists stretched for more than an hour, then they would be out of luck.
Sly held the disassembled construct in his hands, three thin, wide bars that would be set up end to end. It would project a tall forcefield outwards. Hunter interrupted the channels leading to what he assumed were the glyphs which were placed to limit the forcefield’s intensity, which meant that much more etherium would be running through the later sequence of glyphs than they were meant to handle. He also placed a reinforce glyph along the output plates to keep the field as stable as possible. He didn’t have any time to debug each connection in the network, and he felt that break in his workflow as if it were a persistent, annoying itch at the back of his mind.
He was doing his best to ignore it.
The construct was the best he could come up with in the time he’d had. Anything travelling below a certain speed shouldn’t be able to enter the room. It wouldn’t completely stop any bullets fired from close range, but it would hopefully slow them down enough to ensure they wouldn’t be able to cause any fatal damage.
Hunter noticed beads of sweat forming along Sly’s temples. Sly took off his overcoat, Revealing a dark-grey dress shirt with a brown-leather holster strapped across his torso. The empty holster felt conspicuous to Hunter. But he figured they were past worrying about what he terrorists were thinking.
Hunter watched Sly start to click the bars together, preparing to activate them all at once. He nodded to the volunteers. The rest of the hostages were realizing there was something going on. One of the guards seemed to notice the growing agitation, and was about to say something, but a shout down the hallway grabbed his attention.
Sly sprung into action, crossing the intervening yards between himself and the entrance in a second. The volunteers were quick to follow. The guards were already reacting, pointing their guns at them. One of them had their facemask removed, Hunter watched his face transition from an expression of panic, to one of fury as he pulled the trigger.
The construct activated a split second later. Sly grunted, and Hunter saw him stiffen.