Chapter Fifteen
The stench of rotting flesh was almost beyond what Patrick could handle as he reached the entrance to the cavern. It was a smell that was so uniquely horrible, he couldn't help but gag as he neared the command room. He had no idea how to work the device Cyborg had given him, but planned to work with it as he neared the server room. This smell, however, made him wish he had asked for instruction before leaving. It felt as if he were about to vomit at any moment.
This was all his doing. All this death and destruction he had brought. All over the death of a sister he had never met. With a sigh, he attempted to suppress his feeling, the smell doing a very good job of helping.
He got close to the black boxes. They were shut down. Cold, dark, they were all the embodied the evil they helped. Gagging once more, still unused to the smell, Patrick turned on the device and began turning the knobs until he finally found the proper frequency. The small screen lit up with the rough direction of the receiving end. Not wanting to spend any more time in the area, Patrick sprinted out of the cavern and inhaled the crisp, clean scent of the fresh air. Now outside, he was no longer preoccupied by stink, every ounce of memory had flooded him. All this had happened so quickly. Loosing his sister, Raven, killing all those people. It all seemed to happen so fast. So much shock was enough to drive Patrick to his knees for a moment to stare at the moon. He whispered one word that seemed to echo through his mind forever.
"Samantha."
So caught up in his own sorrow, he lost track of time. He must have been moping there for over an hour before finally getting up. The whole time, he refused to allow a tear drop to fall. One of those macho man things he had about him, nothing more than an ego booster. He got up and took off, pressing all the emotions out of his immediate thoughts. Reestablishing the signal, he took off, following the bright arrow on the screen. Straight north.
The signal got much stronger as he left the city. Without all the other interference, it came in crisp and clean. The soft beeping pinged slowly, increasing in tone and speed as he got closer. Finally, the triangle turned to a circle and the tone stopped playing. Patrick was flying over what looked to be an aircraft hanger. He turned off the turned off the device and the entire screen went black instantly, the faint afterglow dying just as fast. He began to descend into the roof of the structure.
Slowly and silently, landing seemed to take for ages. Quite often Patrick had to stop to ensure that the coast was clear. Each time he stopped, he became more certain that there was no one around the hanger. Biting back the fear that he had come to a dead end and this was just some sort of monitoring station, he finally landed on the hard metal roof with a silent thud. He looked around once more, feeling the frigid roof on his hands. It was still very cold in the city. Winter was very rapidly approaching and Patrick could feel every second of its arrival on the metal. He sighed and hopped down to the ground, in the tall grass that adorned the side of the hanger. There was light pouring out of one of the windows. It made long shadows that seemed to blend perfectly with the dark of night after a certain distance.
He approached main gate to the hanger, finding that the door was shut tight. He peered around the corner and found a lone guard, armed with a very powerful rifle, smoking a cigarette, and sitting on a large crate. Patrick smiled, realizing that he wouldn't be outnumbered for once. He focused on the barrel of the man's gun, singed behind his back, melting it to the point where it closed tight, a long distance weld job. Now neither of them were armed. He casually strolled in, very confident, assured that he wouldn't be fired on.
"Hey, you, kid. You can't be in here. It's restricted," the guard said, a bit startled at first from Patrick's sudden appearance.
Patrick kept walking.
"What are you, deaf kid?" the guard asked, picking up his weapon, but not pointing it at Patrick. He walked closer to the teen.
A smile appeared on Patrick's face. "Tell me," he said, "where's the entrance to the complex you're guarding?" Hi voice had a confidence in it that his mind lacked, not sure this was really where anything was.
The guard frowned and aimed his gun at Patrick. "Get out of here kid," he said, "I don't want to have to kill you."
Patrick smiled, his assumptions being confirmed. He focused on producing a small orb of fire above his palm, walking towards the guard slowly. "You might want to inspect your weapon before firing sir," he said with a tone of mock respect.
The guard had just begun to apply pressure on the trigger when he heard Patrick's words, but looked at the barrel just in time to avoid the fatal mistake. Looking shocked, he released the pressure and dropped the weapon, far too shaken up to keep hold it. As if he were afraid it was going to fire at any moment.
"If you value your life," Patrick bluffed, "you'll open whatever secret door there is to get into the complex." He smirked and sent out a few blasts of heat, more to satisfy his own personal demons to make this man squirm.
The man reacted with terror to each blast of heat. It was painfully uncomfortable, but did not quite burn the flesh. He stepped back blindly, stumbling every few steps. Surely whatever he was being paid was not enough for his life. He stepped quickly over to what appeared to be a solid box, much like the case for a circuit breaker. He opened it and reveled a card swipe. Like charging something at the store, he swiped a flat piece of plastic through and an opening in the floor, directly in front of Patrick appeared. It was a staircase, leading down to what looked like an elevator. Patrick saluted the man and began to step down, summoning a bolt of heat, enough to cause the man a mild heat stroke and pass out. Patrick went down the steps assured that the man would survive.
He did not bother to call the elevator, assured that it was not only monitored, but also exited to a very populated room. Stealth was key here. He did not doubt he could handle himself, but a hundred plus men with high powered weapons was quite out of his league, considering he had no way to use his powers to shield himself. Prying open the elevator doors, he hopped into the empty shaft, balancing, less than nimbly, on a ledge that jutted out. His hand groped blindly for the metal cords, allowing him to rappel down the shaft quickly.
The elevator was not moving. It was only used to go from the surface to the complex. That allows the descent to be without any abnormalities. Patrick landed on top of the elevator silently and quietly pondered his next move. He hadn't really thought this far ahead. He looked around for any method to enter the complex instead of the main elevator. He lit a small fire on his hand, looking around calmly. He knew exactly what he was looking for. Only a moment of searching gave him results. There was a large vent shaft, tall enough to walk in, covered by a fenced mesh, likely to keep out any intruders. Patrick smiled at this attempt at security and quickly melted the wires and walked into it, each foot step echoing in the silence.
He felt a constant breeze of warm air across his face as he walked through the hollow metal pathway. Despite his every attempt to keep quite, the metal creaked and groaned under his weight. It was easily covered up by the tone of the air conditioning, but it was still enough to cause Patrick considerable paranoia. Each chance he got; he looked into what was beneath him. Through small slits that allowed the warm air into the complex, he saw exactly what he expected. A surgical white room with several desks, each identically adorned with a high powered computer. It was surprisingly bland and did very well to hide the evils, Patrick knew it held. He continued to walk, planning on dropping into the first ill lit hallway he could see. Though at the rate things were going, he wasn't sure if there was any darkness in this place.
Luckily, just outside the lobby, it appeared to darken up. There were many a deserted hallway, and just as many dimly lit rooms. He thanked his endless luck and jumped out of the vents at the first chance he got. It was a men's restroom, well lit, but without surveillance equipment or people. He planned to wait in there for his perfect opportunity.
It took only ten minutes of waiting before he was finally rewarded. A man entered the rest room and took the familiar stance in front of the urinal nearest where Patrick was perched in the vents. Smiling sadistically, Patrick hopped silently out of the now open shaft and silently approached the man, making sure to not grab him until he heard the sound of trickle of water stop. When he did, he acted swiftly, pressing the blade of his pocket knife up to the man's throat.
No doubt caught off guard, the man would have likely urinated himself if it had not already been taken care of. He merely gasped and stiffened.
"There is a prisoner being held here," Patrick said, hoping his assumptions were true and this was where they had brought Raven, "Where would she be?" His voice was very dark, a bluff, but the man didn't know this.
"I… I don't know," the man said, frightened more by the tone of Patrick's voice than the knife to his throat, but just barely. "I'm not a high level employee," he continued, feeling the increased pressure on his throat, "if they were holding someone, they'd be in Sector 1."
"And how," Patrick said irately, "do you plan to get me there?"
"I can't… I don't have the clearance," the man said, quickly beginning his next sentence before Patrick could harm him, "But I know who can."