Wow, after three months of fighting inspiration and even calling a hiatus of sorts, chapter 11 is finally here! I'm not calling off the hiatus, but in no way am I giving up on this fic. Progress is just likely to be slow. Very slow.
Anyways, this chapter finally finishes up Jailbreak, man am I glad to have that over with. I gave myself way too much artistic liberties with this episode and I sorely paid for it. We're unfortunately not quite done with Prague, though, so the next few chapters will be handling that.
I feel like the final paragraph of this chapter is a bit rough, but there was so much I wanted to go over that making things seamless was sort of hard, but I did my best. Regardless of that, enjoy!
Chapter Elleven: The Science Of Jumping Out A Window
As the ground shook below me, I lifted my ears at the sound of the tank canon blasting the doors to solitary confinement open. This operation was officially underway and in full-swing. Which meant that I had to be incredibly careful. There was no going back now, so all I could do was move forwards.
"Alright, I'm inside. Nyx, you better start moving, you might not have long," Sly's voice came over my earpiece, acompanied by the sounds of the alarms going off. Yeah, totally didn't miss that sound.
"Got it," I replied quietly, and jumped from my place on the prison wall to aproach the evidence lockup building. The semi-familiar announcement about a break-in began sounding over the intercom speakers, informing guards that someone had broken into solitary, and that they should get into 'formation'.
I figured that I'd likely be hearing the evidence lockup version of that announcement again real soon, providing that I actually managed to get inside the building. I had no idea why Bentley had trusted me with my own solo job, but Bentley always had his reasons, it seemed. This was the job he had given me, and I was going to give it my 110%.
"And be careful, okay?" Sly added, trying to make it sound casual and not at all like he actually was worried.
"Don't worry, careful is my middle name," I responded, as I came to a stop in front of the ground floor fire escape, and began to evaluate how I was going to get inside.
"Really?" Sly teased. "I thought your middle name was-"
"Can it, Sly," I replied. "I'm trying to focus, and so should you," it sounded like the raccoon was in the middle of fight at the moment, which meant that he needed to focus a lot more than I did.
Sly's breathless laugh came over the line as he replied. "Fair enough,"
The line went silent then, and I got back to examining the door. It was your typical fire escape door, and reminded me of the ones most classrooms had. Which meant that it opened freely from the inside, but was locked on the outside. I figured it was some kind of electromechanical or electromagnetic lock? I wasn't sure, but it was obvious that the skeleton keys Sly had given me 'just in case' weren't going to work here.
That was why Bentley had also given me a total of five of his trigger bombs, acompanied by a crash course on how to use them. I was more than a little hesitant to use explosives, but it was something I'd clearly have to start getting used to. Hopefully I wouldn't have to use them all that often.
"Freeze!"
Inches away from grabbing a bomb from the pouch around my tail, my hands froze. I didn't intend to comply with the officer's demands, but the shock of being caught had rendered me unable to move as my brain tried to catch up with what was happening.
The officer behind me said something in Czech, followed by hesitant English. "Get on the ground,"
I sighed, raising my hands in defeat and following his instructions. Alright. I had to think of some way to best this guy before he called in back up. Or got handcuffs on me...
"Do not move," the officer demanded as he came up behind me to frisk me. I could tell that he was one of the wolf guards, which I knew I could possibily outrun. But if they ganged up on me like last time, I stood no chance. Right now, it was just this guy I was dealing with, I had to try and keep it that way.
He quickly removed the baton from my belt, as well as the pouch wrapped around my tail, and the backpack meant for carrying the heart. I figured that I only had moments now before the handcuffs would be coming out. I had to think... What did the bad guys on TV always do to escape getting arrested? Maybe it was an unrealistic and inconsistant thing to base an actual escape off of, but it was honestly all I had to go by.
A classic bad guy move came to my mind as I felt the first cuff click around my left wrist, and I had but a second to swivel around with all the force I possibly could, slamming my elbow into the officer's jaw. Sure, it was cliche, but facts are facts; And facts say that an elbow to the jaw hurts, and is effective.
I lunged for my baton, getting in my hands right as I felt the officer grab onto my ankle. I swung my arm as hard as I could, extending the baton and hitting the wolf in the side of the head. It was enough to daze him, and give me the chance to get up.
I retrieved my backpack and pouch of supplies, and from the latter pulled one of the bombs. I activated it, stuck it to the door, and ran behind a stack of boxes before detonating it.
I flinched and closed my eyes as the explosion shook the ground and temporarily deafened me. Maybe I shouldn't have been so close? Regardless of the ringing in my ears I had to keep going. I moved from my hiding spot to run for the door, but hesitated a moment, stopping to make sure that the blast hadn't killed the guard. I was now part of a criminal gang, sure, but the last thing I wanted to do was kill someone.
I was relieved to find that the guard was indeed still alive, albeit coughing and trying to regain his bearings. It looked like he'd be fine, so I darted for the door and vaulted myself over the mangled mess on the floor that used to be the fire escape door.
The alarms were still a constant background noise, now once again accompanied by the announcement that there was a break-in at the evidence lockup. I had to hurry now, there would likely be guards getting into 'formation' to try and stop me. I had a weapon this time around, but like Bentley said, I shouldn't go in looking for a fight. If I could, I was gonna do this as clean as possible.
Not like it had been very clean so far, but I digress. The ground floor of the evidence lockup building was actually not evidence lockup. It was conference rooms and physical record storage. The actual evidence lockup was underground, and I really hoped I was remembering the right instructions to get down there. Directions are one of those things that I'm just not good with.
For once, it seemed like my memory hadn't failed me as I reached an elevator just like Bentley said I would. I hit the call button, and prepared to move or fight if anyone else was in it.
I lucked out, and the elevator opened instantly, and was empty. I darted inside, and pressed the button that indicated the evidence lockup. I stayed to the side of the elevator, as Sly had advised I do, in case anyone was still in the lockup. It would most likely be non-guard personnel down there, just managing the evidence. I wasn't sure if this was better, though, as I didn't want to have to hurt anyone innocent if push came to shove. I didn't think I had it in me to be the tough criminal who demanded that everyone get on the ground.
I waited a moment as the elevator door opened, holding my breath as I listened carefully. It didn't seem like anyone was there, so I carefully exited into the lockup, clicking the other side of the handcuff closed as I did so. I supposed that non-guard personnel were off-duty at night, which is likely the main reason why heists are pulled at night; Less witnesses and less hold ups.
I moved over to the passcoded gate that led to the actual evidence, and pulled a slip of paper from my right boot. On it was the passcode to this door, as provided by Bentley.
"Five... Two... Nine... Seven..." I mumbled to myself as I pressed the cooresponding numbers on the pad. With a loud buzz, the door opened, and I cautiously opened it, stepping inside slowly. I still had my baton in hand, ready to spring into action if I absolutely had to. There weren't any places for people to hide in this room, but Sly had told me to be wary of everything, and expect anything. And I intended to very much take that to heart.
I looked back at the slip of paper with the code on it. Underneath the code was the case number that the Clockwerk heart would be tagged as. It was a long string of numbers that started with '286' and ended with '750' and that's all I really cared to remember.
Keeping my footfalls as quiet as possible (y'know, just for the sake of it), I began searching the boxes. There were quite a few of them, despite the room being rather small, and searching through them all might actually take longer than I anticipated. Hopefully, they were organized in numerical order, which would make my life a lot easier.
"Nyx, how are you doing?" it was Bentley who came over the binocucom and scared the hell out of me this time. "We've found Murray and are working on getting him out, what's your progress?"
I noted that Bentley hesitated between 'we've' and 'found', and from behind him I could hear a commotion, like a loud fight was going on. As much as I wanted to, I didn't have the time to be worrying about that, though... They could handle things over there, I had to do my own job. "I'm in the lockup, I just have to find the heart now,"
"Good, try not to take too long, we should have Murray free soon," Bentley responded. From behind him, I was certain I heard a gutteral yell that belonged to Murray...
I shoved that back again. They were fine, they'd been doing this for years. I had to find the heart before anyone found me. "Will do, I think I'm in the right section here, shouldn't take too much longer,"
"Alright, we'll see you soon,"
I returned to focussing on the case file numbers as I scanned my eyes over them, disregarding boxes that were too small to contain the heart. Finally, I located a box that was just the right size, checked the case number twice, and then pulled it off the shelf.
I opened the box to check, and yep, that was indeed the other half of Clockwerk's heart. I took off my backpack and placed the heart inside, quickly pulling it back on as I stood up. The alarms were still blaring, and guards were certainly on their way, if they weren't already there. I had to hope that I could either slip by them, or outrun them. If I was lucky, the majority of the guards would be focused on solitary; I just had to hope that Contessa valued inmates over evidence.
Now that I had the heart secured, there was only a few things left to do. One of which being leaving a Cooper calling card in the box, and placing it back on the shelf. Sly had asked me to do this, and while I didn't understand fully why he wanted people to know his gang had robbed them, I didn't argue. Contessa knew it was us, so I suppose this time it made sense; Maybe it was to rub it in that we'd bested her?
After this was done, I ran out of the evidence lockup, and back to the elevator. I figured that I'd run into guards not long after reaching the ground floor again, so as the elevator moved upwards, I prepared to use the fourth item I'd been given before leaving; Smoke bombs.
The doors dinged and slid open, and I immediately heard the shuffling of feet. Before my eyes could even focus on the guards in front of me, I slammed two smoke bombs into the hallway, and made a break for it.
I shoved one surprised guard out of my way, and was pretty lucky that he didn't turn and try to grab me. I emerged from the smoke, aware that they knew where I was, and evaluated my escape options.
They likely had the fire escape I came in through heavily covered, so I had to find some other way out... Except I didn't know the layout of this building at all, which made locating a viable escape route rather difficult.
"So uh," I breathed into my earpiece. "I've got the heart, and I'm on the ground floor. But I'm being chased. Any tips on getting out of here?"
"Try heading for the second floor, perhaps. If you can find the fire escape that Sly and I used to get inside, you ought to be able to get out that way. You can handle that jump, right?" Bentley was quick to reply, though he sounded a bit out of breath.
As soon as 'second floor' came out of his mouth, I took a hard right and made for the stairs. I wasn't going to fool around with elevators again, those took entirely too long. "Alright, second floor fire escape, got it. That tower in India was a higher jump, I'll be fine,"
"Remember those smoke bombs I gave you," now it was Sly who was responding. "If you can use those to blind them and then get around a few corners real fast, you might be able to lose them,"
"Note taken," I replied breathlessly. I was already losing steam, so I had to act fast. I was absolutely not as in-shape as Sly, and this made everything a hell of a lot harder. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how a large guy like Murray could keep up with the swift raccoon.
I stumbled as I reached the top of the stairs, but managed to stay up on my feet and keep moving forwards. Those guys were right behind me and I had no time to be messing up and slowing down. If they caught me, they would absolutely overpower me.
"Be careful, alright? Don't do anything stupid," Bentley said.
"Like I said," I panted. "Careful is my middle name, I got this,"
"Yeah, well don't get cocky. You've got a long way to go before you're allowed to do that," Sly laughed, though there was nervousness underneath it.
"I'm very much aware, Sly," I replied, finally slamming down more smoke bombs as I turned a hard left. I tried to pick up speed as I went down the next hall and took another left, hoping to lose them like Sly suggested. "I'm honestly talking out of my ass right now, if you must know,"
"Good to know. Just stay focused," Sly responded.
"Aye aye, Captain. Same to you,"
It didn't take me long to realize that I had not at all lost the men chasing me. I wasn't fast enough to turn enough corners to lose them before they caught up with me. Okay... Things were starting to look not good, weren't they?
Upon seeing the third sign pointing to the fire escape and still not seeing the damn thing, I decided to make an executive decision. Perhaps it was a really dumb one (and I knew I'd promised Bentley I wouldn't do anything stupid), but it was worth a shot. I was really quickly losing steam, and those guys were going to catch me if I didn't put some serious distence between us real soon.
So instead of continuing to look for the fire escape, I picked up as much speed as I could, steeled my nerves, and pulled another move straight out of a movie.
Which was jumping straight out of the window, using the force of my body to break the glass. It was a huge gamble, as I didn't know what kind of glass the window was made from, but it looked like I'd gotten lucky this time and didn't get fatally injured. Of course, I made a mental note to never jump out of a window like that again, 'cause I knew I couldn't be lucky all of the time.
And actually, I wasn't 100% lucky. As I crashed through the window, I felt the pain of glass shards digging into my right arm and shoulder (the side I'd hit the glass with), and a few cutting into my left arm. But like I said, I didn't get fatally injured, and that was good enough for me.
I rolled as I hit the ground, failing to avoid shoving the glass shards in deeper as my right side made contact first. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that getting them out was going to hurt like hell, but that wasn't really my biggest worry.
I didn't have the time to cry over the pain, though I won't deny that my eyes teared up. As soon as I recovered from my roll, I got back up on my feet, and made a beeline for solitary. I was pretty sure that I'd put enough distence between me and the guards, now. Sure, it was vertical distence, but it did the trick.
"Okay, I managed to escape in one piece, where are you guys?" I rasped into my earpiece, my throat having gone a bit raw from my heavy breathing.
"We've got Murray out, and we're up on the wall chasing Contessa," Bentley responded, sounding even more out of breath than before. I was certain I sounded just as awful.
"Alright, I'll be there as soon as I can," I said, turning sharply to climb up a building.
From this building, I moved to another, and then to the wall, sprinting across it to reach my teammates. By the time I got there, though, it looked like the action was done and over with. Contessa was escaping on some kind of blimp, and Murray seemed a bit discouraged by this.
"Gahh! She's getting away!" the hippo grumbled angrily.
"Don't worry, pal," Sly reassured him. "We'll find her. With the four of us back together, she doesn't stand a chance,"
"Aw, it's so nice to know you really do consider me a part of things," I purred playfully as I closed the distence between me and them. Despite all the pain I was in, I couldn't help but to grin like an idiot. We'd all made it. We'd sprung Murray and gotten the other half of Clockwerk's heart. We were all okay and we were back together. I honestly couldn't have been happier.
"Well, after that stunt you pulled in India, why wo- Nyx are you bleeding?" Sly's jesting statement was cut short upon seeing the blood oozing from mainly my right arm.
"Yeah, I uh. Couldn't get to the fire escape fast enough, they were gaining on me too much. So I kinda had to. Jump out a window," I replied, laughing nervously. "I know you told me to not do anything stupid but it was between this and getting caught soooo,"
Both Sly and Bentley sighed, but it was Murray who spoke next. "Well, at least you're okay, right? Leaping out a window is super brave!"
"Yeah, I'll be fine," I laughed. It was a real relief to hear Murray's voice again. "I'd uh. Give you a hug but there's absolutely glass shards in my arms right now, so eh," I held out my fist and let Murray eagerly fist-bump with me, both of us grinning like idiots.
"Well," Sly said, trying to not let the good mood get to him too much, but failing miserably. "Can't say I haven't jumped out a window before, but..."
"Don't tell me there's an actual technique for jumping out of windows?" I asked, glancing over at Sly.
"Not necessarily a technique, but yeah basically," Sly shrugged, finally giving in to laughing. He then pointed to my left wrist with a smirk on his face. "Are those handcuffs?"
"Yeeeaahhh. Guard caught me outside the building. Barely had the time to smack him in the jaw before he got the other side on," I replied, holding up my hand to show the other cuff dangling loosely. "You can get these off right?"
"Of course I can," Sly laughed. "Handcuffs are so easy to pick,"
"Are you all done flirting?" Bentley asked impatiently. Even he couldn't resist smiling at us, though.
"Pfft, this is barely flirting, Bentley," I scoffed. "If you wanna see flirting, go back and look at the recordings of Sly and Neyla,"
"Oh, c'mon, I was only trying to get on her good side," Sly protested.
"Suuurreee. Like those shorts totally had nothing to do with it," I purred.
"Can we perhaps save this for later?" Bentley interupted. "We should really get going, before Interpol - Actual Interpol - shows up,"
"Oh yeah," I said, feigning ignorance. "I forgot about that. You're right, my appologies,"
"Besides, we've gotta get that glass out of your arms, Nyx," Sly said, nudging me in the side with his cane.
"Yeah, that too. Man, am I excited for that," I drawled sarcastically as Sly lead the way back towards the safehouse.
"Which is code for 'I know it's going to suck like hell' right?" Sly asked.
"Yep,"
'Suck like hell' is a serious understatement to how painful removing glass from your arm is. I'm pretty sure that the glass going in hurt way less than pulling it out. Perhaps it was the adrenaline?
We drove out of Contessa's prison in silence, alert and on the look out for Interpol. Once we got far enough away, Murray pulled over, and the hell of removing glass and disinfecting my wounds began.
I wish I could say that I took it like a man and didn't cry like a baby, but then I'd be lying. I'd also be lying if I said that Sly didn't have to hold my hand and talk me through the whole ordeal.
Bentley made sure that I learned a very good lesson from this incident; Don't go jumping out of windows again. ...Until Sly teaches you how to, of course. But that was the part of it that I kept to myself.
Once I was no longer in danger of an infection, we got back on the road, and from there the entire atmosphere changed. It all started with Sly making stupid jokes, and before we knew it, everyone was laughing so hard they cried. Murray actually had to pull over twice for fear of crashing, if you can believe it.
We stopped in some small town, because Murray insisted that we should totally get some hot dogs and marshmallows, and find a place in the woods to make a campfire. We all figured we deserved to celebrate, so we agreed. Not long later and we'd set up a makeshift fire, and were roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over the open flame. It reminded me of camping trips with my girl scouts troop when I was a kid. It was a welcome change to all the stress that we'd been through the past few weeks.
On our way to a proper hotel, Murray actually let Bentley drive, something the turtle seemed incredibly proud of. Apparently he learned how to drive it for the first time when escaping India with Sly. Said raccoon says he was unconcious for most of this, but that it certainly took Bentley a while to get the hang of driving a stick shift.
For the second time, I actually don't remember arriving at the hotel. In fact, I'm pretty sure I fell asleep leaning against Murray's side whilst Bentley was driving. But I woke up the next morning in a hotel bed, with Sly's limbs tangled around me. Apparently the hotel only had one room available, and apparently Sly is a cuddler.
I had every opportunity to hold this over his head, but I honestly didn't have the heart to. He looked so comfortable that I couldn't even bring myself to try getting up, for fear of waking him. I'm pretty sure that Bentley took a few pictures, but he's not admitting to anything.
While spending a few weeks just relaxing and goofing off was incredibly nice, eventually things had to come back around to the Contessa. This was something I knew from the start, but I tried to not focus on it as much as possible.
But as soon as Sly and Bentley started talking plans again one morning, I knew I had some priorities to set straight. At first I was a bit nervous, for fear of failure, but then I remembered that I absolutely was going to fail. Many times. But that's a part of the learning process, and with that in mind, I finally dredged up the courage to ask.
"Hey Murray,"
"Yeah?"
I smiled up at the hippo as I gave him my request. "Will you teach me how to fight?"
Sly and Bentley stared at me from across the room, while Murray gave me the biggest smile I'd ever seen.
"Of course! I thought you'd never ask!"
