Chapter Twenty-Nine

Once Seven finished the long list of instructions Thoth sent to her, Set arrived with a disc in one hand. Seven called out Ra, stuck the disc on his forehead, and watched as it vanished into his skull with a flash of white light.

"You do realize that torkoal can't swim, right?" Hax asked with a mocking smile. "Did you get some floaties for it?"

Seven walked past him and drew the eyes of all the Grunts. "Find all the vents along this hallway. My Torkoal will seal them up." First, she gave Set the pokéball carrying her Magneton. The Haunter grinned at her and whisked the ball away up a vent. Next, she called Horus, giving the Noctowl new orders. With a hoot, Horus left his perch atop a guardhouse and flew towards the city.

Seven sprinted down to the cells. The Torkoal slid on its belly behind her, bouncing off the walls like a hockey puck. She frowned at the missing door and ordered Ra to seal the two doors beyond that cell. The torkoal, using the move it learned from Thoth, spat gobs of mud out of its mouth, and seared them into place with a jet of flame. Once it cooled, Seven gave the seal a quick rap. It felt solid as stone.

"Wow, genius, let's seal ourselves in with mud. What could possibly go wrong?"

Hax examined the seal and chuckled quietly. Seven said with a snap in her voice, "Could you let me do my job?"

The former Admin raised his hands defensively. "Hey, I'm not trying to stop you. I'm just amused at how badly you botched this. Giovanni will not be pleased."

As Hax mentioned the boss' name, he raised one fingernail to his chin. The point of the fingernail, sharp as a knife, drew a bead of blood, but he didn't notice.

The sound of trickling water made her look back down the hall. A small stream tumbled into the room and washed up against the blocked doors. Ra gave a high-pitched whistle, like a tea kettle, as water washed against its legs.

"We don't have time for this," Seven said, picking up the Torkoal by the edges of its shell and carrying it to the dry side of the hall. Her fingers stung from wisps of ash that drifted from its shell.

"If you find a bar of soap, let me know," Hax called after her. "I'd like to be squeaky clean when I call on the devil, and they haven't given me a bath in a month."

As she passed Blacksmith, who covered one vent with a foot and stretched to touch a second with his hand, she wanted to remind him of the task she set for him, or better yet, do the deed herself. Instead, she clenched her hands and approached a vent on the opposite side of the hall. He had his orders, and those orders were from Giovanni.

Once Ra finished sealing up the vents closest to the cells, where water already formed a puddle an inch deep, Seven walked up to the Blacksmith. He slid aside without a word.

As Ra worked, the water picked up pace. At some vents, she had to have bundles of clothes piled up so Ra wouldn't drown in the rushing stream. Water rose towards them, inch by inch, but once they were three quarters of the way up the ramp, the rising water slowed to a crawl. Once the last vent was sealed up, the water gurgled fitfully for another minute before the hall fell silent, save for the splashing of Grunts wading in the deeper end of the hall. Seven called Ra back to his pokéball and stared up, towards their only escape.

"You do realize that we'll run out of oxygen pretty quick, right?" Hax asked with a smooth, innocent smile on his face. "It's less painful than drowning, I suppose, but there are easier ways to die."

Seven ignored him and typed into the tablet on her arm. "Vents are sealed."

"Greet," came a hasty response. "Hold tights, am bus getting pipes switched."

An edited message, with the spelling corrected, followed it a second later, but it did nothing to ease the sudden stir of anxiety, like hornets buzzing in her chest, at the thought that her life depended on a malfunctioning Porygon. She forced the illusion masking her face to maintain perfect composure, but sweat dripped down to join the water waiting below them.

Hax grinned at her, as if smelling her unease. "I'd say that this hare-brained plan of Steven's has run full course," he said to the Grunts, gesturing towards the lake threatening to swallow them all. His voice echoed over the water's surface and made it ripple. "Giovanni trusted him to do his job, and he failed. Therefore, it falls upon me, Admin Hax of Team Rocket, to punish him."

With a flourish, he drew Blacksmith's pistol from his loincloth and pointed it at her. Before she could react, he pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked softly. Hax only had time to give the faulty gun a perplexed stare before a shard of fiberglass split his spinal cord in two. A tiny shard, shining red with Hax's blood, jutted out from his belly button. With a gurgle, Hax dropped to the floor and clutched at the glass sticking out of his back.

Blacksmith wiped the blood off his hands on his loincloth and circled around Hax, pressing his back against the wall as he passed the dying Admin.

"Well done," Seven told Blacksmith as he came within strangling distance of her.

He nodded slowly and said, "Word of advice, I follow Giovanni's orders, not yours. Forget that, and you might end up like him," he said, jerking his head at Hax's corpse. He had died giving Seven the middle finger and had it propped against his chin so it would stay upright in death.

"Noted." She looked down at her tablet, and to her relief, the Porygon said that everything was ready.

"Time to go up," Seven told the Rockets. "The plan is to escape out the pipes pumping water into the prison. Once we're out, a small team will head for home and return with a full convoy. Any questions?"

Silence answered her. With a nod, Seven led the way up the hall, to the source of the flood. Where there was once a bare concrete wall, two doors swung out, revealing a gaping black cavern large enough for Blacksmith to crawl through. Sloshing sounds echoed out of it, along with a high-pitched, keening wail of a motor losing the fight against air pressure. Robbed of its means of displacing air, the motor lacked the strength to compress the chamber's air any further than atmospheric pressure, and therefore ceased to push water into the prison.

Her tablet vibrated, with an especially long message from Thoth, which read, "The city used to rely on an underground sewer treatment facility. It had an especially large tank, for preventing floods from overwhelming their system. However, as the population rose, the old system couldn't keep up. They built a new sewer system, but they connected it to the old one so they could divert excess waste to the old system. Once the new system was perfected, they abandoned the old one, and it became the emergency flood system used by Stonebough Prison.

However, the connection between the two systems remain. By using the emergency systems, I can divert the excess water in the old sewer into the new one, letting you escape through the old sewers. Tell Hax that I'm not a piece of garbage, will you? Oh wait, he's dead."

What drew her attention next, however, was a metal grate in front of the hole, made of criss-crossing metal bars half an inch thick. The holes were just big enough for Seven to squeeze a fist through.

"You didn't mention a grate," Seven told the Porygon, and accompanied it with a picture. She refrained from typing 'you piece of garbage' as an afterthought.

"That wasn't in the schematics," Thoth said. "Do you see any means of prying the bars free?"

Seven called Blacksmith over and had him inspect the bars. "Despite my name," the man said without a smile, "I'm no expert on metal." He gave a bar an experimental tug. "However, I can tell you this shit's going nowhere without some extra muscle."

She called out Ra, but the Torkoal, already exhausted from sealing up the vents, could do little more than dry the bars. The thought of smashing through the bars herself came to her, but she angrily shoved it aside.

"Have Set bring back the Magneton," Seven told Thoth.

"It's not optimal," Thoth replied, "And Set isn't back yet, but I'll have it done."

As Seven finished reading this, she heard a gurgle. Water splashed through the grate, soaking her feet. A steady trickle ran from the base of the pipe.

"I think one of the seals broke," Seven told the Porygon.

"Then I'm going to need the Magneton," Thoth said. "I was planning on escaping first and then accessing the sewer's computers, but if the first seal broke, it's only a matter of time before the cells get flooded and the officers escape, telling those upstairs that the flood system isn't working. I can access it from here, but once they figure out what's happening, I'll be under attack, and they'll open the doors and come after you." That message was followed by another. "I'm sorry. Either way, you'll be cornered."

Seven felt her heart sink as she weighed her options: arrest, and imprisonment for the rest of her life unless she managed another escape, or freedom, at the cost of her humanity. Even if she could maintain her illusion, the men would look in askance at the twig-like figure punching through metal even Blacksmith couldn't bend, but power that strong coursing through her hands would tear her fragile illusion like wet toilet paper.

But then, she thought of a simple, elegant solution.

"I can break the pipes," she told Thoth. "Get everything ready for our escape."

Then she looked at the Rockets milling before her. "Everyone," she said, loud enough for them to hear, "I order you all to turn around. Do not look this way until I tell you to." She paused, and added, "I am about to use something that Giovanni wishes to keep secret."

That convinced them. As one, they all turned their backs to her and placed their hands over their eyes, even Blacksmith.

Satisfied, Seven dispelled her illusion and focused on her hand, making it throb with her power. When it felt ready to explode like a grenade, she punched at the grate. The bars bent like string cheese before her hand even touched them. The squeal of dented metal rang through the hall and sent a shiver through some of the Grunts.

Wiping sweat out of her eyes, she punched again. And again. Over, and over, making the entrance cave in on itself, until finally, one of the bars wrenched loose. More followed with each punch. Once the opening was clear, she donned her illusion. Fatigue made it a leaden mantle She craned her head to hear down the pipes. The pump still whirred, but it no longer screeched and groaned with pent-up water.

"You may turn around now."

When those Rockets turned, and she with them, they all saw freedom, hidden beyond the cringing, broken-toothed cavern. Without another word, Seven was the first through, flashlight in hand lighting the damp, echoing path, and a flood of Rockets followed close behind her.


Changelog

10/28/18 - minor edits