I concentrated with all of my will power. Flames like a jet engines rocketed from my palms and the bottom of my feet. I slowed almost to a stop, and waited for the others to catch up.
I angled my way towards Silence.
“Are you alright?” Silence looked furious.
“I’m fine.”
We all slowly approached the ground, touching down without a sound. Silence immediately broke away from the group and disappeared into the trees. I lost track of him quickly in the shadows.
“What is he doing?” Arch asked.
“I don’t know.” I thought about going after him.
I tapped on my ear piece, "Silence. What are you doing, the facility is in the other direction.”
Ronnie was holding up a holographic map of the area.
He didn’t answer me. "SILENCE.” I whispered loudly into the headset.
A few of the longest moments ever passed by and he returned from the trees. He had something in his hands, "Someone tampered with it.” He held up my antigrav generator.
“How, why?” I asked, "How in the hell did you see where the thing landed?”
“I don’t know who did it. I intend to find out.” His expression scared me, I’ve never seen anyone that mad in my life.
Someone tried to kill one of us and it was completely random. Anyone of us could have picked up that antigrav generator. Furry flushed through my face as we started to creep through a field low to the ground.
We came to the fence on the outer perimeter of the facility, "How should we get inside? Getting out was kind of explosive.” Chrono looked over the small map that hovered over his phone.
Arch took an all in one tool from one of the many pockets on the vest and started to cut a slit in the fence. We all slipped inside, staying quiet, and still low to the ground.
“There are two entrances. Both equally guarded.” Silence pointed out.
“Which one is closest to our ultimate goal?” I asked.
“The one at the back.”
“Well I vote for that one.” Arch said.
I noticed that even though he told Sam that he chose his abilities over the gun it was still strapped to his hip.
We slid along the wall slowly towards the rear of the facility. It was an entrance they used for deliveries. There were two trucks parked with their engines running. I assumed for deliveries the next morning. I didn’t see either driver which led me to believe that they were sleeping in the cabs.
There were four guards two standing on either side of the entrance. They were different than the soldiers that cornered us after we escaped. These were wearing gas masks with glowing red eyes. They had all black armor that looked like plastic and some kind of rifle that I had never seen before.
One of the guards had wandered off from the others.
I looked over to ask Silence something but he was gone. I looked up and he was inches from the guard who had wandered off by himself. He reached up and grabbed the guard waving some kind of device over the guard’s ear. The guard immediately lost consciousness. He drug the body to a nearby wall.
Arch made his move once two of the remaining guards rounded the wall to investigate. He rushed them and took them out with a single powerful bolt of energy. Shift morphed into one of the guards, we all joined Silence and the three dead bodies at the side of the building.
Shift joined the last guard at the entrance.
“What is going on?” the guard asked Shift.
“Had to take a leak.” She said mimicking the man’s voice perfectly.
“I’m going to have to report this.” the guard turned to walk away
“I was afraid of that.” Shift took her chance to hit the guard in the back of the head. The guard stumbled and caught himself on the wall. She put her arm around his head and held him until he stopped struggling. She drug the body to where the others were stacked.
Chrono held out the storage case, "You should take this from here.”
I took it from him, and threw the strap over my shoulder. We used a keycard from one of the guard’s bodies to unlock the door. Shift held her guard form, but made the blood vanish from her clothes.
The hallway inside was quiet.
Chapter 22: The Core
The lobby inside of the building was eerily cheerful. The walls in the lobby were a sterilized white and the lights were bright and unnatural. Cheerful elevator music played over the intercom system. The receptionist desk was empty.
“This place gives me the creeps.” I said keeping a close eye on the two doors leading from the deeper parts of the facility into the lobby.
“Remember this is the lobby for the power plant portion of the facility. This lobby is the public area. Aurora has their image to maintain.” Silence said. He walked over to the desk, and pulled the touch screen computer out of the desk.
“Why don’t people ask Aurora why they post guards at the entrance of a simple power plant?” Shift asked.
“I guess most people just don’t care.” Silence mumbled.
“What are you doing?” I joined Silence behind the desk.
“I am going to download all of the fire escape data. With it, we may be able to find our way around the facility.” he plugged a cable into the computer, and then into his phone. The screen flashed the words files located and he pressed his finger to the download button.
“How do you know you can get it with your phone?” I asked.
“Most of the current Aurora Tech is built upon AdvaGen platforms. We were able to recover a lot of AdvaGen technology in the town.” Silence explained.
“Is there any way that we could use a terminal in one of the labs to download the information?” Arch asked.
“The terminals in each lab only have access to the information pertaining to the subjects and projects in that one lab. To get all of the information in the facility we have to back up the core.” Silence said. All of our watches beeped at the same time. I looked down and it said new maps available. I pressed the screen and the map displayed our location.
I navigated through the maps down to the lowest level, "I’m guessing that this black area at the bottom here is the computer core?” I said.
“I’d say that would be a good guess.” Silence looked at my watch.
“There are two elevator banks, each with emergency stairs. It looks like the stairwells stop one floor above the level that the core is on.” I looked down at the map.
“It would be nice if these nifty little watches would tell us where all the guards are.” Arch played with the settings on his watch.
“I think that the facility will be relatively unguarded. Aurora is under the impression that we are stretched very thin.” Silence opened the door to the first hallway. "Let’s just go down the closest stairwell.”
We all entered the hallway and stuck close to the wall. Silence led the way and made sure that he was the forward most person.
“What about the cameras?” I asked looking at one that had just pointed right at us.
“You phone projects an electromagnetic field that makes you and everything you touch invisible to electronic recording devices. This includes infrared.” Silence said waving to the camera then flipping the bird.
“Where did you get these toys?” Arch asked looking at his phone.
“We either created it from scratch or modified AdvaGen tech same as Aurora.”
We rounded a corner as one of the guards was making the last leg of his rounds. He was walking away from us and had no idea that we were behind him. Silence pulled a small throwing knife from his boot and threw it into the guards back. Before the knife even made contact, Silence was inches from the guard to catch him as he fell.