My apologies for the long delay - Finals week, a computer virus eating my hard drive, and two moves shot down a lot of my writing, and I've had to work whenever I get the chance just to make up the lost ground. As it stands now, I'm still in the midst of finding a stable place to stay for the summer. I've just re-acquired my copy of the game, and I'm in a hotel, still kinda in transit, but I'll be here for a while.
*****
The charter plane touched down in Green Island, Carmelita already shifting her backpack to get off, Hyperion drowsing, and Nalphyr grumping in the back; he'd been muttering off and on during the entire nine hour flight that they should be staying around Jotunheim to make sure Cooper stayed put. A black sedan sent by the Republic met them on the tarmac to take them to the temple.
Green Island was a small place, the city and its environs covering most of the tiny equatorial island. Palms and tropical trees shifted lazily in the light breeze, and Hyperion found himself once more suffering in long sleeves, long slacks, and black fur, where neither Nalphyr nor Carmelita seemed bothered; the cat straggled along behind them silently. Open, spread out buildings made up much of the city, with open air cafes and restaurants shaded by canopies; the temple was impossible to miss when they got close, a huge complex of carved stone covered in avian gargoyles that seemed a hybrid of European and Aztec styles, the outer walls coated in reliefs of men and firebirds battling demons.
They were met at the gate by an old iguana, his spines and frills drooping around his red and gold robes; he was tailed by a young rat in similar but less ornate garb. Nalphyr bowed deep enough to almost drop to one knee. The old iguana nodded.
"Thank you, Sir Nalphyr." He turned to Carmelita and Hyperion. "Hyperion...and you must be Lady Carmelita Fox."
They nodded, as Carmelita glanced up from flipping through a file. "And you would be Bishop Inigo?"
"Indeed."
"It says there was three minutes and twenty-six seconds, thereabout, between the alarm on the stone going off and Officer Nalphyr witnessing Cooper's escape."
"That seems like about the right figure, yes."
"May I see the room the Firebird stone is kept in, and the place where the officers were killed?"
Inigo blinked and cocked his head. "Of course. I'm not sure what you're looking for, both Nalphyr and Hyperion have been through here rather thoroughly."
He led them through long open halls, gardens, and courtyards, pointing out the garden where the fight had occured, then into a huge vaulted chamber behind locked brass double doors.
The vaults and columns of the cieling went up past stained glass windows and pigeon roosts. The room widened out; the far wall was almost fifty feet across, covered in concentric rings of sigils and designs, with an empty circular slot in the center that spit sparks despondently. The wall was flanked by two huge Aztec-looking firebird gargoyles.
Hyperion and Nalphyr flanked the doors, waiting. Carmelita paused, examining the sigils.
"These don't look Aztec or European..."
"They're Enochian - the writing of the angels."
"And the doors were found locked?"
"Yes...it seems he did a rather good job of making it look like he didn't come through here."
She was staring up at the vaults. "I doubt that he used the door at all."
"Come again?"
She knelt down, laying out maps and photos from the file. "The timing is off here, and it isn't his style to just go through the front door...I doubt he even went through those doors; they were probably never unlocked."
"So how do you propose that he got in and out?", Nalphyr muttered, by the door.
"Simple." She looked over to Inigo, draping the stopwatch's lanyard over her neck. "Close and lock the door."
"Come again?"
"Close and lock it - I'm going to test something."
The old priest raised an eye-crest, shrugged, and pulled the huge doors shut, clicking the heavy old lock. "There."
Carmelita stared up for another minute, went through a few stretches, then hit the stopwatch. The moment it clicked, she was off; from the floor to the heads of the gargoyles, to perch precariously on the wingtips, then up the vaulted columns in a streak, disappearing out the pigeon lofts. Inigo scrambled to open the doors again, and the menagerie tumbled out, barely keeping up with her as she ran a rooftop obstacle course, taking cables that daunted pigeons and finding landing spots for jumps that were little more than spire points on towers. She hit the ground outside the wall and sprinted to just past where the van had been parked during the robbery, screeching to a stop and hitting the watch. "Three minutes, sixty four seconds, and never even in the wing of the temple where the officers were killed. If you wish, I can take the route you deduced, but from the maps I can already tell you that it would take Cooper about six minutes, almost double what he actually made."
Inigo was against the wall, panting in a slump; Hyperion had given up and was taking off his suit jacket, utterly overheated after the mad dash. Nalphyr had one hand on the wall, taking his own breather.
"Are you sure the raccoon could make that insane dash?" Nalphyr sounded almost disbelieving.
"Both of you lost him in Paris on the same stretch of buildings because he pulled stunts like that right in front of you. I learned that from following him these past few years."
"So if Cooper was nowhere near the spot...who killed the five police?" Her partner had draped his jacket over one arm, more bedraggled than she'd ever seen him.
"That I can't say...Nalphyr, when you confronted him, didn't he say something about that?"
Nalphyr growled, ears ticking back. "Yes. He said it was Macavity."
Hyperion suddenly collected himself. "Macavity, eh?"
"Macavity does not exist. It's an excuse, a fake character to pin things on."
"More like an overused alias." Carmelita noted that his ears were ticking, with a nervous twitch into his tail, although he'd almost recovered his deadpan. "Once in a while someone seriously uses it, but the last individual to do so has been dead ten years."
"Do we have any information on anyone else using that alias more recently?" Carmelita was starting to realize that she might've pushed herself too hard trying to mimic Cooper, and the ankle she'd landed on last was feeling pretty wretched.
"Nothing but the typical attempts at dodging a conviction.", Nalphyr said.
"Something is up, and the only lead we have right now is Cooper. This was taped, correct?"
Inigo brushed his spines back, trying to get back some dignity. "Yes...well, over half of it was in view of the security cameras."
"Then we have some evidence that Cooper didn't go past the area where the fight occurred in the course of stealing the stone?"
"It won't stand in court. Not without more proof that there was a second person involved that wasn't affiliated with Cooper." Hyperion flicked off his sunglasses, cleaning them with a dustcloth from his pocket.
"Then it's time we went back to Jotunheim. The Ringtail's our best lead."
"I'm telling you, this isn't my bag - there's no way I'll be able to pull this off...", Murray whispered into the com, in a bottom storage area of the ferry to Jotunheim, dressed in an expertly counterfeit guard's uniform.
"I'd go myself, but I need access to the computer systems in the van to be able to hack the Jotunheim systems once a link can be established - the interface computer is quite nice, but definitely not up to a task of this magnitude.", was the reply from Bentley, on the coast of the Hague, already hacking to fabricate a personnel file for Murray.
"Alright...if you're sure about this..." A klaxon sounded on deck, and Murray jumped and ran for the deck to be on the surface for review when the ferry landed. Other newly transferred guards were lined up haphazardly, few of them with their attention on the island.
A tall, gaunt hyena in a perfectly kept uniform stepped off the gangplank to the dock, flanked by two armed wolfhounds in similarly immaculate dress. He scanned the line of new transfers in distaste, shaking his head. "Line up!", he snapped, and in an instant there was order among the recruits. Murray stiffened with the others; at least he didn't stand out - the rest of them looked as scared shitless as he was.
The two wolfhounds stayed on either side of the gangplank, as the hyena stalked up and down the line, sizing up the transfers. "Do you know where you are?"
"Jotunheim prison, sir!", came from a twitchy weasel on the end of the line.
"Correct. You are at the only maximum security prison for international felons on the western hemisphere. The criminals held here are the worst of the worst worldwide. Past these gates, you will be dealing with mafia bosses, drug lords, petty dictators, and the greatest criminal masterminds in recent history. I will be your commanding officer; my name is Ryan Wakefield, but to you, I am Sir. There are no staff here in any capacity that are not also trained and qualified guards. I catch you slipping up, and you will relearn the definition of Hell. The inmates catch you slipping up, and you'll wish it was just Hell. Am I clear?" He stopped, glaring over his shoulder at the line.
"Yes sir!" came in unison from the entire line.
"Very good. Tristam Ford?"
"Sir?" The weasel leaned forward out of line.
"You're on switchboard, north tower." Ryan pointed, and the weasel scrambled off the gangplanks.
"Darren Green?" He paced back along the line. A big sheepdog saluted. "You're with the cleaning crew; the gate guards'll give you directions." The dog trotted off. "Frederick Gray?"
Murray blinked, recognized his alias for this job, and saluted overzealously, almost knocking his glasses off. "Sir!"
Ryan stopped in front of him. "Electrician." He glanced at Murray, then at his clipboard, and then the oddest expression quirked onto his face - Murray couldn't tell if he was bewildered, annoyed, or happy. "I don't bloody believe this..." It dawned on Murray that this was not a good reaction, all things considered, and if he didn't move now, he probably wasn't going to get the chance.
Ryan lifted a hand as if he was about to say something, but before he could say it, Murray was off down the gangplank, moving far faster than anyone would believe someone his size could move. The wolfhounds took off after him while Ryan was standing on deck with the same odd expression. The binoc-u-com crackled back on. "Keep moving! I just found a record from the daemon program that Carmelita sent them an e-mail predicting that we were going to break Sly out soon, and instructing them to watch for us! If you turn left just past the gate, you'll get into a maintenance area where you'll be able to move around after they cut off the hallgates in twenty four point six seconds!" The main gates slammed shut just behind him, and he ducked his head and ran through a hail of tranqs and bullets, wishing he had Sly for covering fire.
He bulled past a doberman in uniform, barely making it to the other side of the hallgate before it closed. "This is it - if you can just hook the interface device I gave you up to one of the door locks or a terminal, I can get full access and try to powerdown the system."
One of the wolfhounds trotted back, rifle slung over one shoulder. "He's in the southeast maintenance area; we've lost visuals, but there's twelve personnel there who're already searching. Should we go to high alert?"
"Keep Amber for now. As long as the ferry's guarded, he's not going anywhere. Assist the search; I'll alert Inspector Fox and keep an eye on Cooper myself." He walked easily off the deck onto the island proper.
Sly was on his third run of pacing, which he'd spaced out between four periods playing with the superball. He'd made four hundred circuits of the cell, and his record with the ball was fifteen bounces off various surfaces before catching it. He'd determined the line of view for the cameras, and plotted out where the infrared beams were, as well as the pressure plate traps in the hall, the impressive network of infrared devices there, and the twenty seven hall cameras as well. He'd determined that he had his own personal trio of guards posted next to him, that they worked six hour shifts in overlapping rounds, and he'd pegged which of them were the supervisors, and what weapons each of them had; he'd already started sizing up approaches if it came to a fight. So far, he had yet to figure out a way out of the cell that didn't involve some kind of disaster messing with the security systems. He was hoping for a disaster named Bentley, but was still scraping his brain for another option.
The ferret that was the first cycle supervisor walked by, glancing in. "Don't you ever sleep?"
"Maybe." While he was standing still, Sly caught his name - Garret - and an insignia of a computer tech.
Garret shook his head and walked away. The second shift supervisor was already in the watchroom next door - a dour jackal that seemed perpetually followed by a dark cloud of gloom.
Two minutes passed and there was a hiccup in the pattern - a tall hyena with the highest rank insignia he'd seen yet, who pulled a chair out into the hall and sat, watching him intently. His nametag read "Ryan", and he had both a stun pistol similar to Carmelita's and a heavy revolver. Cooper paced a couple more times, then sat down and pulled out the superball again.
"There something I should know about?"
"Eh?" One of the hyena's ears swiveled around.
"Is it normal for the guy in charge to park outside the door of an inmate?" One, two, three, four ricochets with the ball; he caught it out of midair.
"Nothing you need to concern yourself with. I simply believe in keeping an active hand on things."
Three, four, five, six. "Whatever. Any word yet on the trial?" Seven, eight, nine.
"The World Court is handling it, so as to avoid argument over where to extradite you."
Ten, eleven, and he caught it. "World court, eh? Haven't been to the Hague yet. Hear they've got quite an import industry." Ryan almost didn't believe it, but there were the beginnings of a cocky smirk on the thief.
The place went pitch black suddenly, and there was the clanking of all the locks disengaging and the hiss of the plexiglass shield on Sly's cell shutting. Ryan darted to manually close the cutoff door, and as it latched, the emergency power system kicked in and the lights came back up.
The cell was empty.
"That's it, high alert, I want Cooper found!"
*****
What, did you not expect him to pull off an escape? ;P. My original plan had been to place the chapter break *after* the jailbreak was finished, but it turned out to be a bit longer and more complicated than I'd planned, and I think I've had enough delays on updating all of my fics without waiting to update this. (Especially seeing as how this is my most reviewed fic ever…)
