About 9 hours later, I parked the car in a multi-storey parking lot 10 minutes walk from the Barracks, turning to Sierra I give her my warnings. “I’m about to cause a huge mess, Sierra. I want you to stay here. I’ll remotely turn the car on if I’m on my way back ok? Just curl up on the seat or something, keep hidden” She shook her head and grabs hold of my wrist.
“No, I’m not coming halfway with you. Someone’s gotta make sure you’re doing this with the right mindset Cy” I can’t say no to her face, especially with her tiny mammalian ears flickering about, so I relent.
“Fine, but you’re not fighting anyone”
“Nor are you, we’re just here to try and set them free, your powers should mean we can do so without fighting anyone ourselves” We left the car locked on the 3rd floor. Instinctively I reach out for all the CCTV cameras in the vicinity and turn it away from us, the barracks was in a small part of the town, not far from the high street, next to a few nicely mown and maintained parks, a few children are enjoying the small amount of sunshine that winter is providing. Although a set of clouds on the horizon and the final glints of sun seem set to cut it short.
The town was bustling slightly less than normal, there just seemed to be less people about. Every so often an old Defender in woodland camo would trundle past, which we tried to ignore and look inconspicuous. We were walking alongside Indian and Chinese takeaways, plus the occasional deserted betting shop. Football hadn’t ceased due to the Emergence, although some fairly sizable names had gained new attributes, everyone betted online or in apps now, and betting shops were certainly struggling.
I notice a group of students, or at least they looked student-like, meandering out of an alleyway. One of them spots me and Sierra and freezes.”Thats-”
My expression hardens “One more word and I’ll smash your phones”. I clench my fist in a threatening manner, they move swiftly and silently on. Sierra, who had tucked her tail away under the back of her shirt against the small of her back, whispers up to me.
“Bit harsh?”
“I’m not here to get immediately reported” I reply, moving onwards, I round a corner and ahead, up a grassy verge was the chain link fences of the base. Theres a bench nearby which we sit on, it was apparently dedicated to some Veteran of one of the World Wars, probably killed in battle heroically against the Germans. Hell of a funeral present, a bench.
“Sierra, ears out okay, if anything happens alert me okay” I close my eyes to concentrate and feel out for all the machines in the vicinity, there is an endless amount of mobile phones in the near vicinity, across the chain link fence I could sense a small selection of cars parked in the staff lot. I started turning them on, one by one before setting two off, aimed right at the gates.
I could hear yelling and alarms blaring so I set the rest of the cars to accelerate forwards; some of which smash into each other and cease, others clipping walls and chain link fences, one of which strays and plows into a Portaloo sitting at the side of the lot.
I could feel Sierra whispering into my ear so I retreat momentarily back to myself, a shiver going down my spine, momentarily making me feel nauseous.
“What's it like, this ability, you close your eyes but what can you see or feel?” Sierra asks me, peering up the slope at the bedlam occurring just beyond the fences, phone in hand.
“Its like...you know one of those games where you have like, regular out of body experiences? Its a bit like that, the world goes all grey but I can just feel the presence of machines. I’m drawn to them”
“Have you found where they’re being kept yet?”
“Nope. I do have an idea though” I shut my eyes again. Time to target the security systems of the base. Searching...searching..searching..found it! A lone computer lying in a bunker underneath the main army building, my perspective shifts to the screen and I can’t make heads nor tails of the operating systems, hacking had never been my specialty I suppose.
Starting to feel a little bit queasy, I begin to just batter away at the system until it blue screens and I quickly back away from it and return to my body. A roar echoes through the streets. “Its done Sierra, we better make like a tree” I shoot upright and stumble, blacking out momentarily. Sierra is trying to hold me up.
“You’re very heavy, you know”
“I’m sorry, I feel awful now. I don’t know why, can you drive?”
“Yeah, should be able to”
“Good, because I can barely stand”
***
Alarms were going off like nobody’s business, Soldiers rushed past the doors to the cell. It had been somewhere between 3 to 4 weeks since Michael had woken up in the middle of the night, riddled with pain, to find out that he had changed.
His tongue was now forked and his fingers were flattened and sticky. He could taste and feel the presence of so much more, the heat signatures of his mother and father at the door to the guest bedroom he was staying in were the most prominent. But that was then, now he was incarcerated….somewhere.
The cell door trundled open, He expected someone to come by with a gun pointed and perhaps some food, but nobody came. Michael sticks his head out, bemusedly noticing all the other strange people doing the same. A roar permeates the walls of the building. “That must be the tiger-dude down the row. Sensing the presence of only other people like him. He decides to use his ingenuity and climbs the wall to crawl along the ceiling.
“Oi Lizard” A growling voice distracts him, a dude with skin that looked like rock was glaring at him from below
“Sup?”
“You’re gonna get nowhere going that slowly, jump onto my back, we’ll get out of here”
Michael does as he says and drops down onto the hulking figure, attaching tightly to his shoulders.
“Hey Boulder, you have a name?”
“Brad, although I like that nickname, Boulder”
“Well I’m Michael, not really a fan of Lizard”
“Well Mike, hang on tight” He raises a fish and obliterates a door. It really begged the question:
“Why haven’t you done this already?” Michael asks.
“They locked me in a really tough room, like thick steel. Couldn’t do too much against it, be damned for trying” He shrugs his gigantic shoulders.
“How’d they even catch you dude? You’re like, bulletproof”
“I had like, zero stamina still” He shuffles along, moving through door after door “I’ve been working out, jumping jacks and stuff, nothing else to do when you’re stuck here” So that explains the constant thumps he could hear, Michael muses to himself.
Eventually after clearing through a couple more doors they found themselves in an alleyway behind the main cell system, the fence is only a short distance. Michael looks behind him and sees the flood of Emerged following them. A couple of soldiers round the corner in front of them, guns drawn.
“Everyone duck behind me!” Brad yells, charging forwards towards them, bullets ping off of his skin, embedding in the building or in the ground. The soldiers have nowhere to go and are steamrollered over, all the Emerged trampling them. One nasty individual stops and stamps on one of their heads until the moaning stops. Brad grabs the chain link fence and pulls it off of it’s supports, leaving a sizable gap for him and everyone to get under. From that point onwards the swarm of Emerged splits up into several small groups, Michael clinging tightly still to Brad’s back.
“So what now?” He yells over the sound of sirens and car alarms blazing.
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“I don’t know”
“Fucking useful” Michael sighs. A white sports car pulls out of a building ahead of them, a shiny metal arm pokes out of the window, gesturing for them to follow
“Well thats as good a sign as any Michael, I’m gonna go with them” Michael peers over the hulking man’s shoulder.
“That white car?”
“Yeah, thats Eunos, I think”
“Eunos?” Michael had been locked away since the start, He hadn’t a clue what had happened in his absence.
“I suspect they’re behind this escape”
In the car ahead, Sierra was sat behind the wheel whilst I was sitting in the passenger seat, clutching my head, trying to fight off a migraine. “Sierra you’re lucky, under normal circumstances I’d never let anyone else drive her”
“The car is that special to you huh. I’m so glad to see Brad again, he was a lovely man, just doesn’t much appreciate being contained” Sierra smiled at me.
“Well I can relate to that” I sigh “I need to rest Sierra, thats taken a lot out of me”
“Thats okay Cy, sleep tight now, I’ll drive to the bunker, Brad can stay there”
“Sounds good to me” I slowly fade into sleep, listening to the rhythmic thump of the footsteps running along behind the car.
***
I’m awoken to the sound of the handbrake being pulled, I slowly pull myself up from slumped position. We’re in the gravel lot where I had the encounter with Victoria. A few metres away the big rock dude is conversing with another man, both of them were dressed in grey overalls, and had numbers stitched into them. The younger looking of the two had bright blue reptilian eyes and huge fingers, almost as if-
“Hey!” I call out to him “is your name Michael perchance?” He nods and they walk over to the car.
“I am Michael yes” he ducks down and looks inside the car at us “this is Brad” he gestures to the other man.
“Hey Brad its me, uh, Lewis. Although I go by Sierra now” Sierra pipes up.
“Sierra, like Ford Sierra huh, I like it” Brad says, his voice like strained gravel, the irony not lost on him. “I know you Sierra, this must be Eunos” I get out of the car and reach out to shake his hand.
“I suppose I am Eunos, thats not my real name of course. Call me Cy, or Cynthia please” Brad’s grip was immense, but the metal my arm was made out of was equally tough.
“Thats one hell of an arm lass, how’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Break us out, both times”
“I can control and screw around with machines, let me show you, that phone over there is about to start dial someone” I had mostly recovered from the headache after some rest so I felt confident in doing this. A disused BT telephone box sits 30 feet away, covered in graffiti. I find the presence of the phone and dial a random number. Brad laughs heartily.
“I see indeed, thank you greatly, both of you. So now what?”
Sierra bounds forwards, her tail fluttering along behind her. “We found a bunker, just beyond here, for you to stay in. Follow me! I’ll lead the way” She bellows in her best deep voice impression. Brad shuffles along after her while me and Michael follow along behind.
“How’d you know who I am?” Michael asks, looking curious.
“I met your mum, Glenda. She was so upset about them taking you”
“Is she okay?” I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Still running her shop, she gave me these” I pull at the fabric of my clothes. “I kinda...nevermind” I was considering telling him about who I was prior, but I had made a vow to try and forget the old me, and just be the woman I am now. “We’ll take you to see her at some point soon, you gotta lie low ok?”
“Right, I understand” his tongue pokes out. “They’ve gone inside the bunker” we near it, I can just about see the beginning of the steps amongst the bushes a few feet away.
“So you can like, scent the air and stuff?” I ask, becoming suddenly curious about his powers.
“Seems so, I can also stick to things, like the ceiling. I travelled here on Brad’s back” he puts two hands on the wall and hauls himself up onto the ceiling, attaching both of his bare feet to it as well. “See?” He gives me a grin like he has something to prove. I humour him.
“Very impressive” I stifle a giggle, he looks fairly ridiculous, but I won’t say that out loud. I leave him there and push open the battered door to the bunker. “We ought to fix the door” I shout into the bunker.
“I’m on it!” Brad yells back “should be able to rig it back into working order” I heard a thump from behind me and Michael is a heap on the floor.
“Ow that really smarts” I laugh at him. “Its not funny” he groans.
“Serves you right for showing off, welcome to your new home away from...everything really, there should be an internet connection, I think I spotted a couple of Ethernet ports about, don’t know precisely why they put them in but I’m glad they did. I’m gonna move a spare computer down here” I stretch my arms out as if to welcome a friend into my home. “Sierra, I’m heading home, come on!”
The crumpled mess on the floor pipes up. “You not staying here too?” Michael cooes, sounding disappointed.
“In a bunker trapped with two men, hell no. And I’m certainly not leaving Sierra here either, although she’d tear you to pieces if you tried anything on her”
Sierra pokes her head out from a room further in. “They’ve got enough supplies down here to last them enough time, the previous...occupants left a phone here as well. I’ve written down the number of the apartments phone down for them”
“Then lets go, I feel a lot better now so I’m back to driving!” I do a little fist bump to myself, happy I can get back behind the wheel.
“Fine by me, I’m not used to such a powerful vehicle” She shivers. I wave goodbye to Michael and to Brad, who’d come out to see us off. Then we set out back to the car. Sierra seemed to like walking on all fours out here.
“Whats with walking like that?” I ask, pondering if there is any benefit.
“It feels more natural, I guess”
“You do you” I shrug to myself. We walked on in silence, I felt pleased with today's ‘work’. The vehicular assault on the front had seemingly done a good job distracting them. I hadn’t seen the news so I hope there wasn’t anyone hurt, but if there was. Well, then there was. All in all, a good day I think. We emerge from the bushes, no nasty super-plebs were hovering around my car this time so no need for caution, the moonlight glints off of the car’s white bonnet. I run my hand down the front wing, looking at my reflection in the paint. I love my face, it seems so perfectly smooth and feminine, no nasty facial hair to trim. The car unlocks and we settle in.
“Seatbelt, Sierra”
“Yeah I know”. She buckles the seatbelt, the skin on her arm squeaking against the leather seats. I switch on my Mp3 player and bluetooth it to the radio and hit shuffle on the playlist.
Pounding in my chest
Shattered pieces my heart
I am coming after you
I am losing my resistance
“Right lets go home!” I put it into first gear, drop the clutch and roar off into the night.
Fighting
Going down for fighting
Can't you hear me screaming
Fighting through the night
Born to be a winner
***
Back at the Barracks
“What an absolute mess” Victoria paces through the path of rubble and wreckage left behind after the breakout at the base. A couple of Soldiers shuffle past carrying a stretcher with a wounded man strewn haphazardly in it, they gave her a couple of looks but hurry on when she returns them a nasty glare.
A mottled green Land Rover rolls around the corner, its diesel engine clattering loudly. a hole in the exhaust exasperating the racket. “Oh here we go” Victoria groans. Colonel Goff climbs out of the driver’s seat.
“A disaster! A titanic fucking disaster!” He slams a fist down on the bonnet of the Rover, seeming to wince in pain.
“And I wonder who’s fault this is. The security was piss poor, she got in through the computers I reckon” Victoria shrugs, sick of the old man’s childish tantrums.
“Then how do you explain the gate. No-one was in those cars!” He points accusedly at the pile of twisted metal that used to be the entrance.
“I ran into the woman herself earlier on today. She moved her car without being in it, I checked, there was no-one behind the wheel. She must be extremely powerful if she can control that many cars at once”
“Fucking bitch, any dead?”
“two, some of the psychos she let loose decided to decided to get their own back on the first two men they met” She made a silent note to herself to make sure they were caught first.
“We’ll make an announcement then, I’ll try and approve a minute’s silence for them. That’ll get the public to back us I reckon, I’ll declare her current public enemy number one. Do we have a photo of her?”
“No, all CCTV cameras in the vicinity were pointed the opposite way, frozen completely” Victoria’s phone buzzes with a notification, she ignores it. “I know what she looks like and a few teenagers saw her, but likewise couldn’t get a photo. She apparently threatened them” Her phone buzzes again, she checks it this time. Her twitter account was apparently tagged in something. She opens it and her jaw drops. “Hey Colonel, you’re gonna want to see this…”
Eunos @YesIAmEunos: Hey @Victorious, Hope you don’t mind me letting some friends loose today.
***
The tweet immediately takes off, I had seemingly gained quite a lot of followers with the tweet about Sierra. Some nut called Seraph had immediately condemned it from across the Atlantic, not that it matters. It just gave me more of a following. It didn’t take long to get a response from her.
Victory Victoria @Victorious: Your stunt cost the lives of two good men. I’ll be seeing you soon.
Eunos @YesIAmEunos: Ooooh scary….
“Fuck, two dead” I turn to Sierra, who was reading the feed alongside me. She looked at me with a hardened expression.
“Cy, we knew what we were getting into here, you threw cars at the gates, we’re lucky that didn’t kill anyone. You’d have first handedly killed someone then. Its not your fault they decided to murder the guards” She leans over, resting her head on my arm. The computer pings again, another reply.
Victory Victoria @Victorious: I’ve been given orders to use any necessary force to bring you in, villain. You better be goddamned terrified.
Making a mental note to furnish the bunker. I turn on the TV that sits to the left of the computer. The local news channel is showing an interview with that Goff asshole.
“The breakout today was facilitated by an Emerged character by the name of Eunos. Eunos takes the form of a woman with a metal arm, antenna and long white hair. Don’t be fooled by her looks, she is incredibly dangerous.”
The description angers me greatly, “I am a woman! Not just taking the ‘form’ of one”
“the Emerged that she released today have gone to ground, but thankfully we have our own weapon in this fight. Victory Victoria here is under my payroll and she is bent on bringing Eunos to justice. We lost two good men today and that donations for their families will be accepted” The screen cuts away back to the news studio.
“So Jill? What do you make of this Eunos character?” The male news anchor turns to a woman dressed in a light pink suit
“Well if they’re capable of this who knows what else they can do” I shut off the TV, growing annoyed with it all. I lean back on the chair and ponder what to do next. It was answered for me when I hear the snores of Sierra, who had fallen asleep on my shoulder, the excitement of yesterday had been a lot for her. It was in the early stages of the morning and I could just about see the beginnings of sunlight peeking through the curtains. We had only gotten home an hour ago, and the buzz had just about worn off. I plucked her off of the spare computer seat and placed her on the foot of the bed, before collapsing onto the bed myself.