Okay, so the coast was clear for a minute. But apparently that wouldn't last, so we had to get the machine out of this place and into the van before those reinforcements showed up. Especially if Robert was right about them being Touched reinforcements. I didn't really want to try to fight people with powers when I couldn't use mine effectively. Actually no, if it came down to that, I would have to stop holding back and use my powers the right way. Even if that did tell Breakwater more than I wanted. Sure, they couldn't exactly inform the authorities that I was out of Detroit without exposing what they were doing, but even just letting Breakwater themselves know was probably too dangerous. I had enough problems without drawing that sort of heat down on myself. And something told me that they would be very interested in me if they knew I was the one trying to steal Pittman’s machine right out from under them.
So yeah, the best option right now was for us to get the hell out of here before those people showed up. Paige and I both sprinted through the house and out the front door. Thankfully, all the neighbors had already been escorted away from this place, so there were no onlookers to gawk and ask questions as we ran past the unmarked but official-looking Breakwater vans to our own. On the way, I gave those vehicles a quick look. There really was nothing on them showing where they were from, but they had clearly reinforced armor, along with police style lights. They would just look like ordinary SWAT vans to most people. Which I supposed made sense considering Breakwater wouldn’t want to let anyone know they were operating here. But had they gotten permission from the local authorities? Did the cops here even know anything about what was going on? I was pretty positive they didn’t know the whole story. No way would these Breakwater people trust local cops to keep their secret. But what had they told them? Either way, in a town like this, the whole situation was going to be big news. A whole neighborhood being evacuated? They would talk. And boy would that be a big thing around here. Over in Detroit, it probably wouldn’t even make the front page and would at most be a casually-mentioned three sentence thing at the end of a news broadcast. But in a place like this? They would be going over it for months.
Actually, come to think of it, that was probably a big part of why they hadn't sent Touched in here to grab the machine to start with. Not only because they thought it was going to be a simple smash and grab (Pittman’s defenses notwithstanding), but also because they didn't want anyone who stood out with powers to be seen. Sure, they could hide what their powers really were so it would be harder to identify them specifically, but still. This whole bit had been the safest way for them to do it. At least until they found a few complications when they ran into us.
And speaking of creating complications for them, both Paige and I thought about doing something to the vans to stop them from following us or being used anytime soon. Unfortunately, according to the other girl, those tires were the reinforced type that wouldn't be popped even from a bullet.
Still, I had another idea. And with this one it wouldn't matter how reinforced the tires or armor were. Quickly dropping onto my back with Paige right beside me, I extended my hands and took aim under all the vans before sending a spray of pink paint out over their axles. As soon as all of them had the pink spots, Paige fired her pistol repeatedly. Each bullet tore through that spot of pink that I had made and destroyed the axle on all of the vans. They wouldn't be going anywhere. Which might also force them to try to explain things to the locals a bit more. I was just sorry I wouldn't get a chance to see that.
Paige also took the time to wirelessly hack into their vehicle cameras to erase them so they wouldn’t be able to see what we had done. It wouldn’t exactly be a great idea to do all this to hide who we were, then leave them camera footage of me using my paint power.
Anyway, that was about as good as we could do with these things. And we didn't want to take the time to try anything more elaborate. No, the trick now was to get out of here before this became an even bigger issue. So, we reached our own van and Paige hopped in the driver seat, with me right behind her on the other side. She spun the van around and then backed it right up over the curb to put the thing directly in front of the house. Even avoiding letting the wheels hit any of the traps I had marked out, we still ran over the grass and flower bed, but neither of us cared. The time for subtlety was completely gone.
As soon as the van was in position, we both hopped out and ran inside. Robert was already downstairs, disconnecting the machine from the pipes in the ceiling and floor it had been connected to. We'd have to work out specifics about how this thing worked later. Or rather, Wren would with as much help as we could provide. Which just made me feel bad again about how much pressure we were putting on the poor kid. But what else were we supposed to do? She was the best shot we had at this. I was just going to have to make sure she knew how appreciated she was.
The machine split apart into four pieces, each only about five feet wide and four feet tall. But that was still too big to just carry through the doorway and up the stairs. Or at least I thought it was. But a moment after the two of us arrived, Robert moved to the wall next to the entrance and pressed a hidden button there. As he did so, that whole section slid out of the way. Suddenly, we were looking at a doorway several times larger than it had been. Even the stairs were bigger. Or, more accurately, they had always been larger than they looked, but now there weren't walls on either side to hide that fact. It was like whoever had built this place made a much larger stairwell and then positioned the walls to make it look smaller. I had no idea why they'd go to the effort of hiding the larger stairway, but now wasn’t the time to question it. Instead, I just moved to one of the machine pieces, secretly used a fair bit of hidden purple paint for strength, and lifted it up.
Paige and Robert were already strong enough to each lift one of the pieces on their own, so we carried three of the four through the now-larger doorway and up the stairs. I just had to keep redoing the paint on myself every ten seconds, praying silently that we weren't about to walk right into an army of Breakwater Touched. Please, just let them be a little slower. We could do this. We could get the hell out of here before they showed up. Because if fighting a bunch of superpowered people before hadn’t been my idea of a good time, doing so while holding the very machine they wanted to destroy was even worse. There was no way that would go well.
Fortunately, our luck seemed to hold for the moment. We rushed the pieces through the house and into the garage through another oversized doorway that Robert opened up. From there, we just had to hit the button for the garage door and carry the machine straight to the van. On the way, I found myself asking, “Hey, how did you know about the secret door things?”
He gave me a quick look, eyes seeming to look right through both my mask and my soul, before answering simply, “I had time to look around before you showed up. And let's just say I have some experience finding and hiding that sort of thing.”
Yeah, considering who he had worked for, I supposed he would. Which just made me think about how many secret doors were probably all around my own house. Maybe I should look into that. If I found anything and my parents caught me in the process, I’d just say I was exploring and play dumb. After all, it wasn't like they expected me to actually know anything important.
By that point, we had reached the van. The other two waited while I quickly set my piece down and opened the back doors. Soon, we had all three of the pieces we’d carried up, and Paige said she was going back for the other one.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As she disappeared back through the garage, I looked at Robert. There was so much I wanted to say at that moment, but I didn't dare get into most of it. Instead, I asked, “What if the guys out back decide to start causing problems again? We were kind of in too much of a rush to secure them very well.”
Again, he looked at me with a somewhat curious expression. It looked like he wanted to ask something, but wasn't sure if he should. Finally, the man just replied, “Don't worry about it, they’re not here anymore.”
Okay, now I was really curious. And that just reminded me of the fact that there was no sign of the people out here in the front where he had been dealing with them. “What happened to those guys? What about the ones who were supposed to be out here? I don't see anybody. It's like you made them disappear.” Had he disintegrated the bodies or something? Please tell me he didn't disintegrate them. I wasn't sure how I would react to that sort of thing.
Looking down at his phone, Robert grunted. “Start the van,” he ordered. “We're cutting it really close.” Then he seemed to come to a decision and looked at me while adding, “I used this.” He reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out what looked like a simple pair of barber shears. “Press it against the back of a person’s neck and press the button for a second. It sends them a few hundred miles away. Stops them from being a problem for awhile.”
Part of me wanted to ask where he got something like that from. Hell, another part of me wanted to just flat out ask if he was still working for the Ministry and how much he knew about my parents. After all, there were a hell of a lot of questions he could answer and blanks he could fill in. But this probably wasn't the right time, even if I had wanted to expose that much to him. So, I shoved that down and quickly ran around the front of the van. Jumping in, I turned it on and looked up just as a truck came screaming around the corner. There was a guy standing up in the back with a rifle pointed our way, before he could get off a shot, Robert had his own pistol out and fired a single shot that caught the man and sent him flying out of the truck. Then he fired a couple more times at the driver, but the windows appeared to be bulletproof.
Leaning on the horn, I watched as the truck went skidding sideways across the street. There! Paige finally emerged from the garage, carrying the last piece of the machine. With Robert covering her, she shoved the thing in, then the two of them hopped up, closing the doors behind them while both shouted, “Go!”
Right, it was way past time to get the hell out of here. Shifting into drive just as I heard Paige say something about reconsidering this, I hit the gas. The van leapt forward off the grass and tore through part of the fence in the process of slamming down onto the street. Shouting for the two in the back to hold on, I kept the pedal pressed down. Instead of turning left or right once I reached the pavement, I just sent the van straight across and up into the yard of the person across the street.
Robert and Paige, of course, had loud opinions about this. But I ignored them because they weren't exactly helpful. I knew what I was doing. Angling the van at the fence in the neighbor’s yard, I plowed through it and straight over their front lawn, past the side of the house, and into the back yard. I had to swerve to the left to avoid a swingset, but we made it to the back fence and went through that as well. Only then did I violently shove the wheel to the left, coming out onto a rear alley that I had known was there from our research into this place. The Breakwater people might have put up some sort of traps on either end of the regular street, but it was less likely that they would have covered the alley back here.
As we reached the end of that alley, I gave the wheel a jerk to the right to send us out onto the next street over and kept my foot firmly on the gas. We went up over a curb and actually got airborne. In the back I could hear Robert grunt a little while Paige made a noise in the back of her throat that seemed to be a mix of worry and reluctant enjoyment. It was like she was having fun with this, but was afraid of letting me know that in case I used it as an excuse to do something even more wild.
Then there was the loud exuberant cry of, “Whoooooooo!” That was… unexpected. Especially since it seemed to be coming from directly above us, outside of the van. Twisting my head to look at the ceiling, I reflexively hit the brakes. That exuberant cry got even louder as a very small figure flew forward into view past the windshield. I couldn't pick out many details, but it was pretty tiny and colorful. At the last second before it hit the pavement, wings extended from the thing and glided it to the ground. A long bungee cord of some kind lay draped over the windshield from where it was hooked onto the luggage rack on top.
Paige and Robert were both blurting questions while I quickly shifted the van into park and jumped out. A quick glance showed that I was right about the bungee cord being hooked onto the van. The opposite end, laying near the front bumper, had a makeshift handle on it. It was like someone had been using our van’s momentum to parasail. Someone very small.
With that realization, I quickly ran to the figure I had seen while Robert and Paige jumped out the back. Now, as I approached, I had my first decent look. It was a small, yet colorful creature that was maybe about eight or nine inches long, plus a big fluffy tail almost the same length. The thing appeared to be covered in bright red, green, and blue fur. But it also had a pair of feathery wings that were equally colorful. As it rolled over and groaned a little, I could see that his face was mostly that of a squirrel, but with a small beak.
Laying there splayed out on the ground, this strange creature lifted its hand and gave me a thumbs up. “That… was… awesome. Let's go back and do it again.”
Paige, who had come right up beside me by that point, blinked a couple times. “Did you switch brains with that creature or something?”
Ignoring that, I crouched down. “Hey, are you okay? What--uhh, who are you?” I wanted to ask why it looked like a hybrid of a bird and a squirrel, but I wasn't sure how to do so without being offensive.
The creature finally focused on me and offered a broad smile. “Hey, you're the driver! You're awesome. Hi!” Jumping to his feet (the way he had been sprawled out before belatedly made me realize for certain that he was a boy), he announced, “The name’s Qwerty. I’ve been so freaking bored around here, but then I saw what you guys were doing and I knew you'd be making a fast getaway, so I hitched a ride. At first I was just using that bungee to hold on, but then you started going so fast so I had to try letting my wings out, and whooooosh!” He opened his feathery wings to indicate what had happened. “It was totally awesome and I wanna do it again. Can we do it again, please, please, please? I haven't been able to figure out how to fly properly with this body yet, just glide. That was the closest I've ever gotten. At least, this version of me.”
Paige was the first to find her voice. “Are you a bird or a mammal?” Apparently she didn't have a problem sounding awkward with questions like that. “And why are you called Qwerty?”
Qwerty scuffed a bit. “Why, I’m both! One of me was a parrot and the other was a squirrel. We both touched this orb thing at the same time and then we were smart and also me. Both of them turned into me. Just one brain. I guess you could say I'm a flying squirrel!” His ears drooped a little. “Except the part where I can only glide. Oh and I’m Qwerty because I found out I could read when I saw this little broken computer in the garbage and Q-W-E-R-T-Y were the first letters I read on the keyboard.”
I had so many questions right then. Unfortunately, now definitely wasn't the time for them, considering the sound of screeching tires we could hear from down the street. My head jerked that way in time to see five dark sedans approaching rapidly. “Those probably aren't the local neighborhood watch.”
Robert straightened and turned, firing three quick shots from his pistol that made the cars swerve just a little, but they were still coming. “Get back in the van,” he ordered.
Well there was no way I was leaving this poor guy here to get run over. “Come on, Qwerty, time to go,” I quickly said while putting both hands down in a cupped position. He climbed onto them, then ran all the way up my arm to perch on my shoulder with his wings tucked in close against his back.
I jumped in the front, with Paige right beside me while I started the van once more. In the rearview, I could see the sedans getting closer. Worse, there was a figure flying just above them. A Touched of some sort.
“Hey look,” Qwerty noted while turning around to look out through the back window of the van. “That guy figured out how to fly. I wonder if he'd give me lessons.”
“Let's not ask him,” I replied while flooring the gas once more to send the van screaming down the street with the sedans and flying man in hot pursuit.
“Yeah, you're probably right,” our new tiny friend agreed.
“He looks like a jerk.”