Darien knew he was going to have to move fast, regardless of what he did.
Not really sure it was the right idea, but knowing he had to do something, Darien moved away from the exit doors, going down the hall until he found an alcove that was out of sight of the doors. It was here that he set Nicky down and quickly stepped back, expecting the child to cry as he had last time the quicksilver vision was taken away from him, and hopefully draw the notice of the door guards enough that they would leave their post and come over here, at which point Darien would try to knock them out, one right after the other, ideally before they yelled out an alarm or anything.
Granted, the screaming toddler might bring goons down to investigate without the security guards raising any alarms of their own, but Darien had to take that chance because he couldn't think of anything better in the few seconds he had to formulate a plan.
But a piece of his plan failed right at the start. He had cried and screamed before when the quicksilver fell from him, but this time Nicky had nothing to say about it. He just sat there on the linoleum flooring, looking up at where he knew Darien to be and sucking his thumb.
Fortunately, that really wasn't much of a problem. Darien had simply assumed screaming would follow when he put the child down. Since he was invisible, Darien could take the two guards by surprise whether they were over here or over there. They literally wouldn't see him coming.
Realizing that he had to just trust that Nicky would stay quiet for a few moments, Darien turned and went at the guards at a run. Darien smacked bodily into one, hitting the larger man's chest with his shoulder, knocking him back against the door and at the same time driving the wind out of him.
In almost the same maneuver, Darien redirected and took a whack at the other guard, using his elbow rather than his fist. Experience told him that punching was a miserable activity, hands were actually pretty fragile and not meant for smacking things. Darien was tall enough to pull off the action even though he didn't really know how to deliver a blow most effectively, and was basically going on pure guesswork and visual memory of having seen Hobbes pull off the move.
Without taking the time to see if this opponent went all the way down, Darien turned on the other and tried to repeat what he'd just done. But this guy was taller, and at a weird angle as he was pushing off the door, and Darien's elbow really just knocked his chin a bit. So Darien followed through with a punch, which really hurt, but seemed to get the job done.
Shaking his hand in a futile attempt to take the sting out of it, Darien looked over his handiwork. Both goons were down, neither had been given the opportunity to shout, and the baby hadn't even cried.
Returning to where the child was waiting, Darien said, "Well, Nicky, I guess you don't want to be here any more than I do, huh?" he then picked Nicky up, and coated him in quicksilver, musing, "I wonder what a doctor would think of my quicksilvering a toddler."
It had never come up whether quicksilver was safe for babies or not, and it hadn't even occurred to Darien to wonder until now. All he really knew about small children was that they were really fragile. Though it really didn't change what he was doing since that had been the plan already, he resolved to get out of the situation where he had to quicksilver Nicky as rapidly as possible.
Quietly, Darien returned to the two guards he'd dropped and carefully stepped over them to open one of the double doors to the outside world. If Nicky had any thoughts on the bodies in the hall, he didn't express them except to keep sucking his thumb and silently looking at everything as if he were a tourist in a museum full of particularly interesting artwork.
Outside, Darien was relieved to see that at least he hadn't been carted off to the middle of nowhere, though where he actually was now he had little idea. Even though Darien was certain it was the same day that he'd been kidnapped, it was notably cooler here than where he'd started. But that was a peculiar feature of California, you didn't really have to take a long drive to find almost completely different weather, depending on where you'd started and which direction you drove in.
Looking around, it seemed like he was at the outer edge of a warehouse district, and all of those looked pretty much the same to him. Big, ugly buildings, not a lot of pedestrians, only a high traffic area at certain times of the day, and only if the district had been built between two highly interesting points, such as major cities or tourist attractions of some sort. There wasn't a lot of traffic here, but Darien was distressed to see that most of it consisted of black SUVs just like the two that had chased and cornered him. Black SUVs weren't exactly unusual, but Darien had to go on the assumption that any such vehicle he saw was out looking for him.
That of course meant Darien had to maintain his quicksilver coating. And that would become increasingly dangerous. Quicksilver oozed into his system whether he used the Gland or not, but when he went invisible his bloodstream was all but flooded with the stuff. It drastically cut down the amount of time he had before he needed his next fix of counter-agent. Not knowing where he was, or when he would be able to contact The Agency, Darien understandably wanted to lay off the invisibility as soon as possible. But there wasn't any convenient hotel to duck into out here, or even a back alley. Surrounded by fencing, the warehouse plots made it impossible to travel efficiently anywhere except alongside the main road through the place, which was of course in plain view of all the black SUVs out there. And Darien wasn't stupid enough to just go blundering off away from signs of civilization.
He needed to find out where he was, and he also needed to find a phone so he could call The Agency and let them know firstly that he'd been kidnapped, secondly that he'd escaped, and thirdly that he needed a ride home. But there weren't a lot of phones out here. And he didn't have his wallet anyway, he belatedly realized. Not that getting hold of enough cash to use a pay phone would be a problem for him, but that also meant he didn't have his ID, and getting that replaced wasn't so easy as picking up quarters. Although it was a lot easier with The Agency on his side. IDs, real and fake, were not something The Agency had trouble generating.
But the only thing for it here and now was to just start walking. There really wasn't anything else Darien could do except look up and down the main street, pick the direction that looked like it led into a more inhabited area, and go that way.
It was a long walk for someone who'd recently been overdosed with anesthetic, especially considering the violent altercations Darien had since participated in and the fact that he was carrying twenty odd pounds of extra weight that wasn't necessarily even as easy to carry as a sack of potatoes because sometimes Nicky was leaning into him, and other times Nicky would suddenly and without warning lean away, as if he was reaching out to try and grab a vehicle as it flashed past. Nicky also had a distinct preference for being carried on the right side, and would start flopping around if Darien shifted him to the left to give his right arm a break. The maintaining of invisibility wasn't particularly taxing physically, and the concentration needed to hold it wasn't excessive, but the awareness that each passing second brought him closer to the edge of Madness was extremely wearing mentally.
There was also the small matter of the setting sun and surprisingly precipitous temperature drop that seemed to be coming with it. That was a signature of desert areas, temperatures could skyrocket around midday, but plummet with the coming of nightfall. Darien didn't really want to be stuck out here after dark, for a number of reasons. Mostly, however, Darien hated being isolated.
Gregarious by nature, Darien already suffered a lack of social activity since the implantation of the Gland, he just couldn't hang around his old friends much, and certainly hadn't been able to attend any fun parties. But he compensated by engaging in a variety of activities that invariably got The Agency up in arms. His favorite being of course trying to "run away," even though there was patently nowhere for him to run to and everyone knew it, so it was completely silly the way The Agency went nuts every time he dropped off their radar for so much as five seconds. The Agency was a micromanaging and paranoid organization, always wanting to know exactly what every single one of its employees was doing at every single moment of every day.
Normally Darien detested The Agency's habit of spying on him (and of course he resented being reined in), and he pretty routinely went through all his things these days to check for and remove bugs. Darien couldn't have freedom, but he could have the illusion of it by having a modicum of privacy. What Darien wouldn't give for one of those bugging devices hidden in his shoe right now.
Eventually, the black SUVs started to thin out, and the main street split off in various directions towards shopping centers and parking lots. Not a high class area, but at least Darien could be somewhere other than exactly where the black SUVs would expect him to be. Finally, he could drop the quicksilver. Nicky must have gotten bored of it, because he really didn't seem to mind the loss.
Darien checked the serpent on his wrist. It was much closer to the red than he would have liked, but the Madness hadn't yet begun to knock at the door of his sanity. He was doing alright. For the moment. But everything here seemed to be shut down and closed for the holidays. It wasn't surprising this close to Christmas, especially in areas like this one, with these kinds of shops. Probably they didn't get enough customers to justify staying open. In any case, there was no opportunity for Darien to go in anywhere and ask if he could use their phone, and he still hadn't seen a single pay phone anywhere.
He did the only thing he could. He kept going.
Sunset came early at this time of year, making it feel like the middle of the night for hours before anyone normal even thought about going to bed. Once the dark started to settle in, Darien found himself frequently checking his watch for the time, feeling all the time like it was later than it was.
The dark meant he wouldn't be as easy to spot from the road, but for some reason he didn't find the thought comforting. As if it were distant kin to the werewolf, the Gland seemed to be most active at night. Madness lurked closer to the surface. And it never seemed nearer than when Darien was alone. And he was certainly alone out here, totally isolated from everything and everyone familiar.
A chill crept into the air, not as cold as he imagined, but cooler than was comfortable nonetheless.
Nicky began to fuss intermittently, probably more because he was hungry than because he was cold. Unlike Darien, Nicky had a sweater on. But they'd been out here a long time. Darien didn't know when Nicky had been fed last, or how often you needed to feed kids this age, or even what to feed them. Not that it would have mattered, Darien had no food to offer Nicky.
Tired, focused on avoiding trouble and looking for a phone, Darien didn't have the energy to spare to jolly the toddler along, barely speaking at all to Nicky as he went. Feeling ignored might have contributed to the child's fussiness, but Darien could do nothing about that either.
A feeling of cold helplessness grew as minutes passed and the surroundings grew darker and seemingly more desolate. It began to dawn on Darien that, sweater or not, it might get too cold out for Nicky. He needed to find somewhere to go. More than contacting The Agency, he needed somewhere warm to put Nicky, somewhere with food (whatever food children transitioning from baby to toddler ate).
But there didn't seem to be anywhere for them to go, and all the time it was getting darker and colder.
Then, quite suddenly, the night was bathed in light. Darien had just turned onto a street lined with condos to avoid a black SUV prowling down the main street of the town. The street had been utterly dark, but all at once it was lit up on all sides by a plethora of Christmas lights. The people of these condos had gotten together to set all their lights on the same timer. They had wrapped the railings of the steps to their doors in lights, and the few bushes in front of their homes. Many had framed their first and even second floor windows in lights as well. A few especially committed souls had light up wreaths on their doors, and snowflakes or Christmas stars in their windows.
The whole street was decked out in primarily white and blue lights, with only a few tasteful exceptions on railings and wreaths being multicolored. Trees out in the parking lots were likewise colored. Because there really wasn't any space for such arrangements, nobody had put out Santas or reindeer or gaudy nativity setups. Just lights.
Lights which Darien had never welcomed as he did now. Not only did they light his path, they made the night feel warmer. More importantly, they got Nicky to stop fussing, as he became enthralled with this fascinating new look to the world. But perhaps most important of all, they made Darien fell less alone, less isolated. Though he knew it wasn't so, it felt almost like the lights had been turned on just for him. They shone with welcome, and he felt suddenly sure that someone in one of these condos would surely let him use their phone, even if nothing else.
All he had to do was go door to door. In a neighborhood like this, surely nobody would ignore him even if they thought he was a caroler. He didn't even feel like the usual drawback of being an athletic young man (which pegged him as a potentially dangerous individual) would apply here. Especially not since he was carrying a baby wearing a Christmas sweater.
"What's say we knock on some doors, huh, Nicky?"