Escape

Some hours later, Chance and Jake were recovering from the effects of the anaesthetic. As he became more conscious, Chance began to look around, taking in his new surroundings. They had been locked in an Enforcer holding cell, and manacled at the ankles to a wall-mounted bracket. There was a window in one wall, little larger than the average letterbox. But it was barred, and even if Chance could have made his escape through it, the view made it plain that they were some distance up in Enforcer Headquarters, and jumping out would be suicide. Jake was coming to across the room, and it was then that Chance began to look about for the missing member of their party. Chance looked around for Cody in one of the neighbouring cells, but to his dismay he couldn't find him, just a mixed bag of junkies and winos sleeping off the more dizzying effects of intoxicants.
"Oh man, they've got Cody!" Chance shouted, somewhat unnecessarily, at Jake. "We have to get him back!"
"Yeah Chance, don't you think we've got enough problems of our own right now? What with being locked in a cell?" was Jake's sarcastic reply. Chance's obsession with this kid was beginning to grate.
"Come on buddy, we've got to help him" Chance replied desperately.
"Hmm" mused Jake thoughtfully. "They may have brought him here, just before I passed out Steele said something about taking him to the Enforcer lab, so he's probably in here somewhere Chance. But right now, we're locked in a cage, so unless you've got some bright ideas, we're not going to be able to help anyone."
Chance shouted angrily at this, and took out his aggression on the bars of the cell. One of the dozing drunks in the next cage rolled over at the sound, but that was the only response. The bars held firm.
"If only I still had my toolkit!" Chance said, turning to gaze out of the window.
"Err, Chance?" said Jake uncertainly.
"What?" replied the increasingly irascible Chance.
"You do" Jake told him, matter-of-factly.
"Do what?" Chance retorted, getting more annoyed by the moment.
"You do have your toolkit, it's in your back pocket, they can't have bothered to search you when they brought us in" Jake announced, pointing.
Chance put his hand to his pocket, and found that Jake was absolutely right. Someone had cocked up their incarceration, and now that person would pay. It took Chance all of two minutes to remove the manacles and pick the lock on the gate, giving them access to the whole of Enforcer Headquarters.
"Where's the lab?" Chance hissed at Jake, his mind set firmly on recovering Cody.
"First things first" Jake said, pointing to a door marked 'Main & Auxiliary Power Bus – No Unauthorised Admittance'.
The two exchanged a knowing look, and headed inside to cause some damage.

---

In a Lab several floors below, a pair of scientists were observing Cody, who was tied to an operating table. The small child was struggling against his bonds, but he was powerless to get free of the leather straps.
A computer set up against one wall began to let out a wailing sound, and a message flashed across the screen "test complete".
"Excellent. All is going according to plan," a shadowy figure said, before turning to the two scientists. "Get it done," he told them, before walking out of the door to the lift bank opposite.
Once the figure was out of earshot, the two scientists, who had been quite tense in his presence, relaxed.
"So, we're going to extract the anti-mutagen directly from him?" one enquired of the other, evidently his superior.
"Most certainly, it has developed rather well inside the cocoon of this kitten. That blundering self-righteous fool Xenon would have wanted to use this for the sake of good. He always was weak, and now he's no longer anyone's concern" the superior said, allowing himself a small chuckle at the fate of his former colleague.
"Very well then, should we begin, Manik?" the first scientist asked.
"Yes Clause, we shall. We will begin by incising the left..." Manik was stopped mid-sentence as room suddenly blackened out, and the electrical equipment began to make whining sounds as it shut down.
"A power cut! Who is responsible for this?" demanded Manik, throwing down his scalpel and stalking over to the phone mounted on the wall. He picked up the receiver, but heard no tone.
"Damn and blast!" exclaimed Manik, rounding on where he thought the other scientist was standing to launch a tirade of abuse at the only person accessible.
Suddenly, the back-up power kicked in, and the lights came back up. Manik blinked for a moment, but barely had a chance to catch his thoughts before a somewhat over-enthusiastic Jake punched him squarely on the nose. Manik was thrown across a table of beakers, shattering them, before slumping unconscious against the wall.
"Good left-hook, buddy" Chance told Jake, looking at the body of Manik across the room.
"You can congratulate me later Chance, let's just get the kid and get out of here. It won't be long before they're onto us!" Jake replied.
Chance made his way over to the table on which Cody lay, and released him from the straps holding him in place. He picked Cody up from the table and set him down on the floor, whereupon Cody smiled up at his rescuer, and hugged him. Chance smiled down at the kitten, but Jake wasn't concerned with the heartfelt reunion.
"Alright then, we've got him, let's go, now!" Jake instructed them, but it was too late. Clause, the other scientist, had hidden behind a large free-standing bookshelf when they had entered, and was now making a break for it.
"Quick, get him!" Chance shouted, and Jake picked up a bottle of some amber chemical that had been sitting on a nearby table, ready to throw. Taking aim, he threw the bottle at the fleeing scientist. It shattered on his back, and Clause let out a piercing shriek as he was engulfed by blue flames. He ran down the length of the corridor leading from the room, before grabbing hold of an alarm. Jake and Chance watched as the flaming figure smashed the fire alarm, hoping for the sprinklers to come on and douse him, but they didn't, as it wasn't a fire alarm.
The general alert siren rang throughout the Enforcer building, as the scientist, weakened by the flames, collapsed in a heap on the floor, still ablaze.
"That's done it! We've got to go, right now!" Jake shouted at Chance, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the exit. On their way out, Cody grabbed what appeared to be a wooden staff, but Chance and Jake ignored him in their haste to get out.
They headed through a maze of mercifully empty corridors before they rounded a corner to be met a group of Enforcer troopers, their weapons at the ready.
"Hold it right there, you three are under arrest!" the sergeant behind them shouted through a megaphone.
Chance and Jake looked for a way out, but it was hopeless, they had no choice but to surrender, otherwise those shotguns would blow them to pieces. Neither noticed Cody, but if they had, what they would have seen they would not have believed.
Cody was grasping the staff he had taken from the lab and, grunting somewhat, slammed its bottom end into the floor. It then became evident this was more than just a wooden walking stick, as diodes along its length lit up red, and began pulsing slowly. The Enforcers were slightly taken aback, and, unwilling to shoot at a kitten, did not act while Chance and Jake just watched Cody's slow actions. Grunting a little, Cody slammed the end of the staff down again, causing the diodes to change to a blue colour. As they changed, so did the air around them. A cool breeze began to blow down the corridor, barely doing more than the air conditioning, but it grew stronger. The blue lights of the staff began to pulse faster and faster as the breeze got stronger and stronger until it was a fully blown gale. The Enforcers were hunched down into the wind, but they still had their guns trained on the three in front of them.
Cody was visibly weakening, barely able to stand up against the wind, let alone hold the staff. With his last ounce of strength, he lifted the staff up, and once more slammed it into the ground. The diodes emitted a blinding green light, and the wind swirling around them became focused at the top of the staff. A swirling column of air had formed a tornado, and Cody guided it with his staff towards the Enforcers. Blinded by the light, they did not see the approaching turbulence until it was upon them. Their guns were sucked out of their hands and flung in all directions. The Enforcers themselves were knocked of their feet and hurled into the walls of the corridor. Carnage reigned.
Then Cody collapsed, his body falling limply to the floor, his staff falling from his hand, its lights fading as it clattered across the ground. Chance ran to Cody's side.
"He's still breathing" Chance shouted, breathing a sigh of relief. "He's not in a good way though, we need to get him looked at right away."
"Right now, we've just got to get him out of here before they come around" Jake said, gesturing at the fallen Enforcers.
"Yeah, you're right" said Chance, grabbing Cody in his arms and following Jake down the corridor and into a fire escape staircase.
They hurried down the stairway, and through the doors on each floor they heard Enforcer troopers running to the scene of devastation they had just left. When they reached the ground floor, they left the stairwell and headed down a corridor towards a door marked 'exit'. As they neared it, they heard two Enforcers approaching from the other side. They dived into the first open room they could, and found themselves in the vehicle pool. Ranks of parked patrol cars lined the walls, and at the end of the room, a ramp led out to the street. They made a break for it and, mercifully, were not intercepted, their antics upstairs having distracted the Enforcer's attention.
Out on the street, they took refuge in an alleyway opposite the Enforcer building. "Phew, that was close" said Jake, rather understatedly.
"That was too close" Chance replied, turning his attention to the limp body of Cody in his arms. His breathing appeared to be stronger, but he was still unconscious. As Chance looked him over, he noticed a chunky grey bracelet on Cody's arm. A light on one side of it glowed red, blinking on and off every few seconds. "Hmmm" Chance thought, looking at it.
"Look buddy" said Jake "I know that kid means a lot to you, but he's going to get us killed at this rate. They tracked him back to the garage earlier, so it's not a bad bet they can't still track him now" he said, but Chance appeared not to have noticed his words at all. "Chance? Chance are you listening to me?" Jake demanded.
"That's it" yelled Chance, dragging the bracelet roughly off Cody's arm. "It's a bloody tracker! That's how they found him, that's how they tracked him back to us!"
He threw the bracelet to the ground and stamped on it repeatedly. The red light faded slightly, then died.
"So, they were tracking us the whole time!" Jake said, looking at the broken tracker. "Well, they'll have a hard time finding us now."
"Ok" said Chance, finally beginning to think pragmatically, "where should we go now?"
"There's only one person we know in this city who can do something about this, but we're going to have a job convincing Callie to help us, now that we're fugitives" Jake replied.
"Well, we've got no choice. We'll have to persuade her" Chance replied, glancing around, looking for some kind of transport. There were no cars parked nearby, only a vandalised and forlorn looking bus stop stood by the kerb.
"Chance, where will Callie be at this time of night?" asked Jake, ever the pragmatist.
"Dunno... City Hall? Manx always has her working late, if we're lucky we might catch her before she goes home" answered Chance. "Doesn't matter anyway right now, we've got no way to get there."
Just as he said this, an Enforcer patrol car turned the corner, and they dived into the shadow of the bus stop to avoid it.
"We can't stay here, that's for sure Chance" said Jake.
They were both looking around for some means of transport when a bus rounded the corner and came towards them. Illuminated in its windscreen was the destination 'City Hall'.
"Thank god for the night bus" said Jake
"Give me the Turbokat any day" replied Chance, but he boarded the bus and paid the fare. As it pulled off, they noticed another patrol car scouring the area for them.
"At least they won't expect us to have taken public transport to escape," said Jake.
As the bus headed, nearly empty, down the darkened streets of the city, Cody began to stir in Chance's lap.
"Hey kid" Chance said to him "are you OK? That was a pretty cool trick back there."
"Tired" muttered Cody, before closing his eyes again and resting his head on Chance.