Well, we were in Tooele. Which, I had been informed, was pronounced too-ill-uh rather than toolie like it was spelled. At least it wasn't named after that big smelly lake like the capital of this state was.
Either way, as we drove through town and looked at all the buildings, I couldn't help but wonder why Pittman had set up his safe house here. Was there an actual reason, or was this just a nice out-of-the-way town with relatively few people to ask questions? It was small enough to be somewhat quiet and everything, but still populated enough that someone new or different wouldn't immediately be noticed. Forty thousand seemed like a fairly decent level of population to hide in, after all. Hell, who knew how many of the people here were his own Biolems? Maybe everyone in the neighborhood we were heading toward was secretly his. We were going to have to be careful about that, which was one of the reasons we wanted to get there while it was dark. Anxious as we were to deal with this, we couldn't rush things. That would've been a pretty good way to fuck this whole thing up. We had to take our time and scout out the situation.
Eventually, we found our way to the street in question. I could see the house right there, and it was tempting to tell Paige to stop so I could just run inside and look for what we needed to get this whole thing over with. But no, we kept driving. Both of us glanced that way and took in everything we could about the place. It was quiet, without any vehicles in the driveway or lights on. The house looked abandoned, though the homes on either side were definitely occupied. I still definitely didn't trust the idea that this place was going to be that simple to walk into. Not for a second.
As we continued on to drive around the corner, I spoke up quietly. “You think we should park down the street a bit and walk back? We can always bring the van around once we've got the machine secure.” My voice was tense. This was it. After over a day of driving, we were right here. If we were going to get what we needed to grab that son of a bitch and get answers out of him, it was going to happen over the next few minutes. Or slightly longer, depending on how long it took to actually get inside.
Paige gave a short nod, her expression one of intense thought and worry. She definitely still didn't like the idea of me going in that place by myself to get rid of his anti-Biolem defenses. “I'll stay far enough back that I shouldn't trip any sensors. But be careful, Cassidy. He'll have other things in there too, stuff you aren't immune to. And if I can't get anywhere near the place to back you up until you disable those other defenses…”
“I'll be fine, don't worry so much,” I insisted. “Come on, I am capable of standing up for myself without you right behind me, you know.” I said it with a little smile despite myself, watching her. It really was strange for me to think of Paige worrying about me so much. But it was also nice. I'd definitely take this over the way our relationship had been for the past few years. Even if it was a weird feeling.
Paige, for her part, took one of those energy crystal things from her pocket. But this one had a couple wires wrapped around it along with a small button that looked like it had come off a television remote. “Fine, but take this. I set it up so if you hit that button for three seconds, it'll set off an EMP, basically. The crystal will drain all the electricity out of everything within about a hundred feet or so. Which should include any Biolem orbs. If you get in trouble, set it off. But be careful. I only made one of them. We’ll need the rest for the machine.”
Taking the offered bomb, I grimaced. “Yeah, I'll be careful with it.” I also didn't want to accidentally set it off right here. If it really did affect Biolems, it would probably take a while for the other girl to reset herself. Longer than I wanted to wait.
By that point, Paige had found a place to pull over and stop the van. A glance toward the clock on the dash revealed that it was just after four in the morning. If we were going to do this, now was basically the best possible time. So, I sent a text to the others back in Detroit letting them know we had arrived and that I was about to check the place out. Then I put the crystal bomb thing in my pocket carefully before pulling out my mask and gloves. Once again, I wasn't going in there as Paintball. If I absolutely had to, I would use my powers more openly than I had at the restaurant, as long as I was just dealing with Pittman’s defenses. But I didn't want anyone else who happened to see me and start wondering why a Touched from Detroit was all the way out here. Especially with the lockdown. That would just create a whole new host of problems for us to deal with.
Of course, I didn't put the mask on immediately. I also didn't want people to look at their windows and see someone in a ski mask walking down the street. That was bound to draw attention we didn't need anyway, even if they didn't work for Pittman.
Together, the two of us stepped out and started moving that way, keeping our eyes open for any trouble. Or anything at all, really. The whole place was incredibly quiet. Almost eerily so. Detroit was never this silent. Not even now with everything locked down. It made me think something must be wrong before I pushed the paranoia aside. This was probably just what things were like in a place that didn't have over a million people. Even if it did make me feel weird.
Pushing those thoughts off, I kept walking while scanning the houses around us intently. It didn't look like there was anyone paying undue attention, or even anyone at all. But I didn't entirely trust that. There was no way that Pittman would have left this place completely unprotected. Something was going to happen. The only questions were what and when.
Apparently Paige didn't see anything either, though she stopped a few houses away from the right one. Neither of us wanted to push things any further than that. Well, she had made it clear that she would risk quite a bit, but not this. As much as she wanted to go in that house, her desire to not be controlled by her father was much stronger.
So, promising her yet again that I would be careful, I took a breath and kept walking after putting my earbud in and making sure it was connected to her so we could talk. Though we had set it up so I had to unmute my phone every time I wanted to say something, so she wouldn’t accidentally hear any commands from her dad if I set something off. I felt the crystal EMP thing she had given me in one hand while I held the balled-up mask in the other. After giving one last quick glance around and seeing nothing, I pulled the mask on and adjusted it. I already had every bit of paint I could possibly fit underneath my clothes. Whatever happened in there, I was going to be ready for it.
And just like that, I was standing in front of the house. I had thought long and hard about how to handle this, raising some truly paranoid ideas in my own head about what sort of instant-kill defenses this place could have just for stepping foot on the sidewalk. But then I had dismissed those possibilities. Sure, there would be defenses, but not that extreme. The whole point of this place was to not attract attention. He had a teleportation machine here that was supposed to connect to Breakwater. There was no way in hell he was going to put up an automated defense that would disintegrate the first Girl Scout or church person who happened to try knocking on his door. That would be a good way to get the whole neighborhood shut down and have his little machine found by experts. No, the worst defenses would be inside, where he could be certain that anyone who wasn't supposed to be in there was already a problem.
But while I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be lethal defenses right at the front gate or anything, there were cameras, hidden in the branches of a nearby tree and on the house itself. But I avoided those things thanks to my spatial awareness power. I had enough of an understanding of that by this point that it didn't just tell me they were there, I was able to tell through the shape of things in my mind which way they were facing. I made sure to move under them without being seen and then painted the lenses. Yeah, if anyone was monitoring that, they knew something was wrong. But they wouldn't know exactly what was happening, or who was here.
I also found a bunch of pressure plates partially buried in the dirt and grass around the house. I wouldn't have found them at all, except the same special power that told me where the cameras were pointed those out as well. Another way it had proven itself unfathomably useful.
I didn't take the time to dig out whatever those pressure plates were connected to. I needed to get inside before someone saw me. But I did let Paige know, taking a picture of the yard before editing it to mark all the traps before sending that to her.
Finally, after dealing with all the cameras that could have seen me and sending that picture, I simply walked right up to the front door. Of course, I kept my eyes open and activated a bit of orange paint on the way just in case I was wrong about that whole no lethal defenses thing. It never hurt to be safe.
Okay, that was a lie. Sometimes it did hurt to be safe. But it was generally the right choice in the long run.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Either way, if anyone did look outside and saw me in a ski mask approaching the front door of this random house, they would've called the police by now. Especially considering the way I had been sneaking around to deal with those cameras and check for traps. I probably looked incredibly suspicious. Fortunately, Paige had already connected to the local police scanner and she was going to warn me if a call went out. But a check with her confirmed there was nothing so far.
Now that I was closer to the door, I could see that it wasn't in the best shape. Actually, it looked like it had been completely broken off its hinges and then put back hastily. Whoever did it had seemed to be in a hurry, probably to make the door look right from the street before any neighbors noticed. Still, someone had kicked down the door? Suddenly, I had a few thoughts about that, but now wasn't the time. Instead, I quickly checked around the edges of the door for any obvious booby traps. I was looking for wires, string, putty, anything that shouldn't have been there and could be a sign of a bomb, alarm, or whatever.
Nothing, at least as far as I could see. Still, I didn't trust that. Sure, I wasn't going in the door anyway, it just would've been nice to identify the trap on the front door, because I didn’t believe there was nothing. And sure enough, a glance sideways revealed something against the small mailbox set against the wall next to that door. I squinted closer and realized it wasn’t a mailbox at all. Oh, it would hold mail, sure. But it was also an intercom with a connected computer behind it. Tilting my head, I realized I could hear a very low, quiet… almost static sound. Was this--oh yeah, it had to be part of Pittman’s plan to take Paige back. Grimacing, I put a bit of pink paint on the thing, then used a little bit of purple on myself to rip it off the wall. Yeah, I probably took a little too much satisfaction in crumpling that thing into a ball.
From there, I walked along the side of the house, watching every spot I stepped on while paying strict attention to my sensory power. I found a couple more pressure plates in the wood, and another intercom thing that was blasting static. The former I avoided and the latter I broke. Then I kept going. Eventually, I reached one of the windows and felt all along the sides for more wires and such. And that time, I found something. There was some sort of tiny glass tube about as long as my finger and slightly thinner than a pencil right up inside the space between the top of the window and the wall of the building. Within was an angry-looking orange red cloudy substance swirling around. If the window was moved very much, it would break the glass vial. And something told me I didn't want to let whatever that stuff was out. It probably wasn't a misplaced welcome to the neighborhood present.
Giving the vial a little bit of orange paint so it wouldn't break, considering how fragile it had to be, I pried it out and looked at the thing for a moment. I was no chemist or anything, so I had no clue what was in there. I also didn't trust it not to break in my pocket, so I carefully set the thing aside, planning to pick it up on my way out. Then, on second thought, I took my costume bag out and put it in there. Now there was no way it would be broken or lost. The thing was sitting in a bag back in Detroit. Really, it was too bad this little bag of mine almost certainly wasn’t big enough to put the machine in. It would've made sending the whole thing back home a hell of a lot easier. But hey, maybe we’d get lucky and the thing we were here for would be small enough to fit in something about the size of a fanny pack.
Either way, I checked the other windows just in case I had to make a quick exit or someone else came in here. There were more vials stuck in all of them, and against the door around back. So I took those as well. I wasn't going to go through any of these windows to get in, but there was no way I was just going to leave them there. If nothing else, one of the others might be able to do something useful with whatever this stuff was. Which just reminded me that we still had to figure out what was in those vials we’d taken from the Ministry base. If only new problems would stop presenting themselves for a little while.
Finally, I was satisfied as I could be that the cameras were all covered and I had identified all the traps I could find, including a couple more static-producing intercoms. Something told me the inside was going to be much harder to deal with. Pittman may have been careful not to draw attention to this place out here by having a bunch of dead bodies pile up, but he probably had no such qualms about killing any person who made it in.
Ignoring the windows and the doors I had spent the past couple minutes dealing with, I walked up to a corner of the house behind a lower bush and made sure no one could see me from there before making a pink circle big enough for me to pry it out and clamber through. Which put me in the corner of a small, barely furnished kitchen, next to a rickety cold sink. I had been updating Paige occasionally the whole time (via text as soon as I realized the intercoms were constantly going), and now I let her know where I was. Then I simply knelt there in the shadows, the place only illuminated by a small light over the stove. Silence filled the whole house. Well, aside from the heavy ticking of a clock. And yes, it made me jump as soon as I heard it. Only after assuring myself that it was a normal clock and not a bomb did I breathe again. It was just a normal analog clock attached to the wall, shaped like a cat. The ticking was accompanied by its eyes shifting back and forth. And speaking of paranoia, I pulled the thing off the wall and used pink paint to tear it open. There were no cameras there, nothing special. It was just a clock. Boy, I really was losing it. But could anyone really blame me at this point? Not with this piece of shit involved. I wasn't going to take anything for granted.
There were cameras inside this place, one in this very kitchen. But it was pointed toward the window, as expected. Sending Paige a message that I was in safely and hadn’t set anything off, I waited another moment, listening for anyone who might be here. Or anything at all now that the ticking of this clock had stopped. The house could be empty, or there could be a small army of Biolems in the basement.
Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything at all--wait--no, that was the hum of the nearby refrigerator kicking on. Boy, were those things supposed to groan and creak that much when they were working? That was really distracting.
Shaking my head and telling myself to focus, I tried again. Nothing else seemed to be happening in this place. Nothing save for--oh, there was another intercom behind the stove. I leaned over and ripped that out as well. Then I took a second to cover the camera before pushing myself up to start walking around carefully.
From the texts she was sending me, Paige was getting a bit impatient and nervous. Well, a bit more impatient and nervous. I needed to speed this up. So, I started looking around this floor of the house. It was pretty tiny, so that didn’t take long, even considering the fact that I had to carefully deal with cameras and traps. And yes, there were plenty of both. I covered nine more cameras, marked seven pressure plates and a dozen tripwires that were all connected to who knew what, and had to break no less than five laser turret things. At least I assumed they were laser turrets. They were relatively small, the main body being about the size and shape of my fist, with fancy-looking gun barrels only a few inches long. Each of the turret things were situated up in the corners of the rooms and hallways, mostly near the front or back door. Whatever they were meant for or capable of, I shot pink paint at them, followed by red to rip them out of the wall.
And, of course, I dealt with all the intercoms I could see. Again, this was a small place. You could probably raise your voice a little bit and be heard everywhere inside it. But there were intercoms in every single room, even two in some of them. And most were sort of hidden out of the way, where you wouldn’t immediately notice. Like the one in the living room behind the couch, or the one in the front hall that was on the ceiling directly above the door so you’d have to be looking directly up as you came in to see it. Every single one, as soon as I was anywhere near it, started giving off that same static noise. Yeah, I was definitely leaning toward ‘secret code hidden in the noise to control any Biolem.’
Finally, after what seemed like forever, I had the whole ground floor dealt with, as far as I could tell. I did a couple more passes through just to be as certain as possible, then stopped at the doorway leading into the basement. I hadn’t been able to find anything resembling a machine up here, so it had to be downstairs. If it was here at all.
No. No, I wasn’t going to let myself think that. It was down there. And… well, I had been loud enough by this point that if anyone was down there, they were either setting up an ambush or completely deaf. Either way, I wasn’t using the stairs. Instead, I walked away a short distance into another room near the stairs, pointed my hands down, and sprayed a circle of pink paint on the floor. Then I activated some purple on my legs and stomped a couple times to knock that bit out, making a hole I could see down through.
Before anyone who was down there could possibly adjust their ambush from the stairs, I quickly dropped down, activating just a bit of yellow paint under my clothes to slow my fall so I could land normally. And just like that, I was in a simple, unfinished basement consisting of cement walls and a matching floor and ceiling. Ahead of me was a…. well, it was definitely a machine. The thing was about ten feet wide, reached all the way to the ceiling, and seemed to be made entirely of random sheets of metal, long, twisting tubes with liquid in them, glowing light bulbs, pipes, and more. It looked more like some sort of weird modern art piece than a teleportation machine. But what did I know?
In any case, if this wasn’t the thing we’d come here for, I was going to be very surprised. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a chance to look it over. Because at that moment, a voice spoke up. “Well, I think it’s safe to say I’ve got a few questions.”
Spinning that way so fast I almost fell over, I stared at the figure who stood in the corner. It was a good thing the ski mask was still covering my face, because the shock and panic in my expression probably wouldn’t have done much for my reputation. I’d genuinely had no idea anyone was there.
The man who stood in the corner had a gun, but he wasn’t pointing it at me. He was tall, like NBA player tall, at six feet, eight inches. And built like a truck. His skin was dark, and he was wearing a nice suit.
Oh, and I instantly recognized him.
“And boy,” Robert--Bobby Parson continued, “do I hope you have some answers.”