Author's Note: Yay! Brand new chapter 7! Finally this chapter has stopped giving me so much grief. While writing this chapter I realized I'm just not very good at writing action scenes so if you have any suggestions for ways I could improve that would be so helpful. I'm just glad the chapter as fun to write this time and didn't make me want to kill myself. Anyway, hope you enjoy.
7. Escape
Woo! Woo! Woo!
"What is that!?" Saul shouted as he slapped his hands over his ears. He had to shout to be heard over the ear-splitting noise.
"It's the alarm," was Prosper's vague response.
This explanation brought forth more questions than answers, but the one Saul asked first was "There's an alarm!?"
"Yes!" The Virus answered. "And if we don't get out of here quick it's going to be more than just an alarm we're dealing with."
"What do you mean?" Saul asked but Prosper and Vee were already rushing out the door. The Virus burst into the hallway just as the psychologist tripped on a discarded bucket of fried chicken.
Peeking out the hallway, Saul Greeniaus saw a sight he only expected to see in movies. A series of metal doors were shutting violently all the way down the hallway with a bang, bang, bang, bang, and it was getting closer to them. "What the hell!?" Saul exclaimed.
"We have to hurry!" Prosper shouted as he emerged from the Virus's hideaway. His shoes were covered in chicken grease. "We'll be stuck here otherwise!"
Saul and the Virus didn't have to be told twice. The three men took off running narrowly escaping the metal doors every time. Eventually they surpassed the hallway and burst into the stairway and flew down all five flights of stairs. Saul Greeniaus was utterly lost the entire time. It would only be when the metal doors trapped the three men in a hallway on the first floor that he would finally get an explanation.
"No!" Prosper shouted just as the metal doors closed in front of him. "Dang it! The police will be on us any minute!?"
"Police!?" Saul shouted. His heart had skipped a beat at the mention of law enforcement. "What's with all the alarms! What's with all the metal doors!? What is going on!?"
Prosper sighed. "Will you tell him or shall I!" He shouted. The alarm was still blaring.
"I'll tell 'em." Vee said.
"Yes, please!" Saul urged. "Tell me what's going on."
"Alright." Vee cleared his throat and began. "Mr. Greeniaus, you'll remember how protective Dr. Darkkon was of his projects back in the day, right?"
"Of course." Saul said. He had learned quite a bit about the man from the files he'd been given when he'd first been assigned the case of the Darkkon criminal empire.
"Well, GenoMe was no different. When he first set up the facility in America, he had an elaborate security system installed. When activated overnight it would trap intruders in a hall or room so they couldn't escape or access anything else in the facility. Then the police would be contacted, and the intruder would be arrested for breaking and entering."
"And all this would be set up to prevent someone catching Darkkon doing something illegal?" Saul asked.
"And to stop anyone from stealing his work." Prosper drawled. "No one ever attempted that though because all of his research was meaningless rubbish, anyway."
"GenoMe must have done the same with the Australian locations when they were set up." Saul concluded.
"But this place had been abandoned for ages." Prosper said. "Surely for that reason the security system should have been offline."
"It was the last time I checked." Vee said. "Someone else must have activated it."
Saul asked, "Are you sure it couldn't activate on its own?"
"I'm sure," said the Virus. "It had to have been done by a human being."
"A human being who doesn't want us to find Cadel, perhaps?" Prosper suggested.
"Well, that can't be allowed to happen!" Saul retorted. "We have to get out of here!"
"And just how on Earth are we going to do that!?" Vee asked. "Don't you see these metal doors? We're trapped in here!"
"Not necessarily." The detective retorted. He pointed to a regular wooden door that stood ajar in the hallway.
"It's just a janitor's closet!" Prosper exclaimed when the three men peaked through the plain wooded door. He was telling the truth for once. The tiny concrete room was filled with mops, buckets, paper towels and other cleaning supplies.
"How will any of this stuff help us now?" Vee asked before sneezing into his arm.
"We'll have to figure it out." Saul said. "This closet is our only hope right now. We should at least try to use the tools we have." This argument seemed to convince Prosper and The Virus who soon joined the detective in canvassing the closet for anything they could use to get free.
Dr. Vee was the first to make a suggestion.
"What if we used this to pry the metal doors open?" The hacker held up a mop but was pointing to the handle. Saul considered it.
"Prying the doors apart might work. But never with a wooden stick." Saul took the mop from Vee's hands and set it aside. "Maybe something sturdier will do the trick."
"Are you kidding?" Prosper said. "Those doors are made of metal. There'll be no prying those apart! And even if there was, it'd take too long to pull apart every door in our way!"
"Then what do you suggest we do!?" Vee shouted.
"If you ask me, I think we should try and blow a hole through the walls. Much of it is just wood and plaster. It'll be easier to get through that then metal."
"And just how will we break through the walls?" Saul asked. "Do you think we should just whack them with brooms and mops until they give way?"
"Maybe!" When Saul and Vee raised their eyebrows Prosper said, "Look! This is a desperate situation here! We don't have many other options or, oh!" Prosper had just registered the shelf of disinfectants. "Maybe we could make a propane bomb with these chemicals!"
"Will it be strong enough to break through the walls?" Saul questioned.
"Crap, I don't know!" Prosper shouted. "It was Cadel who first told me how it worked."
Saul blinked. Had that been a note of sadness in the psychologist's voice? And in his dark eyes, had there been real regret and grief?
Mr. Greeniaus shook his head. No, that couldn't be right. This was Prosper English, Notorious criminal extraordinaire. He had tried to kidnap and kill Cadel on multiple occasions. Surely for those reasons he couldn't actually be concerned for his son's wellbeing.
Right?
"Guys, come on!" The Virus urged. "The police could be here any minute!" Then he devolved into a nasty coughing fit.
"I'm an officer. Maybe I could talk to the police and diffuse the situation." Saul suggested desperately.
Vee and Prosper simply stared at him. Clearly no words were necessary to tell the detective how stupid this plan was.
"I've never been in trouble with the law before, okay!" Saul shouted in defense. "This is my worst nightmare."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about it." Prosper patted the detective's arm condescendingly. "Really, the police force and intelligence agencies are run by a bunch of fools. All you need to avoid them is a quick name change and a few forged documents."
"Hey, what!?" Saul shouted, but Prosper's attention had already shifted to the mop he'd propped up in a corner earlier.
"Maybe the door idea wasn't so bad…" he mused, desperation in his voice. Fortunately, before all three men could be consumed by panic and stupid ideas The Virus made a very smart discovery.
"Hey, you guys! What's that over there!" The Virus's fat finger was pointing to a plain white cloth covering something large and mysterious.
"Looks like a rather unwieldy piece of equipment." Saul said.
"But will it be able to get us out of here?"
"Let's see!" Prosper said, striding to the mysterious object. He pulled the cover off in one swift, dramatic motion to reveal a peculiar janitorial machine. One of the large sit-in ones that would clean the floor as they rumbled by. Saul and the Virus gasped when they saw it.
"Gentlemen…" Prosper said. "I believe we've hit the jackpot!"
Five minutes later the janitors' machine stood in the hall with Prosper and The Virus. Saul sat in the driver's seat.
"Really, it's wonderful that was came across this." Prosper said, gesturing to the strange vehicle the detective sat in. "This will definitely break through the walls!"
"You guys, we better hurry," said the Virus. "We've spent enough time in that supply closet. The cops could be here any minute!"
"Yes, yes, I know!" Prosper snapped. He was beginning to get annoyed with Vee's constant nagging.
"Are we sure this is safe?" Saul asked. He looked at the cleaning contraption warily. "This thing doesn't even come with a seatbelt."
"You'll be fine!" Prosper snapped. "This is an emergency. You yourself said we couldn't discount any resource we had!"
"Alright, alright." Saul said.
"So, are we ready now?" asked Dr. Vee.
"We're ready!" Prosper said, answering for the detective.
"Alright! Let's go!"
The plan was simple. Very simple. Especially for such smart men. They would simply drive the lean, mean, cleaning machine through the plain white walls, until they reached one of the laboratories where they would remove the grate and leave the way they come. Surely, with a plan so basic there was no way it could fail!
The only thing holding them back was one simple complication.
The janitors' machine did not move very fast at all.
"Oh, what!?" Prosper exclaimed when Saul started the device and it proceeded to move at a snail's pace. "What's the point of having such a slow thingamajig!?"
"It wasn't made for breaking through walls." Saul said.
"Still, what's the use in using this thing as a cleaning device? The sun will have swallowed the Earth by the time you'd finished cleaning a single hall in this building!"
"There must be a way to make it go faster." The Virus said. Saul turned back to the janitors' machine. The controls were very basic. Buttons for stop, go and two cleaning modes. Mop and sweep. Saul was on mop mode right now. Cautiously, he pressed the button for sweep.
The janitor's machine shot forward. The detective gave a yelp as it surged through the hall and crashed through the wall. The janitor's machine was completely totaled. Saul landed flat on his face.
Prosper and Vee gave a whoop a triumph. Rushing, to the wall that Saul had created they found that it opened right into one of the laboratories.
"Yes, this is perfect!" Prosper exclaimed. "We'll be out of here in no time!"
"What did you do?" asked Vee as Saul picked himself up off the filthy lab floor.
"I just turned it to sweep."
"What?"
"We can talk about that later!" Prosper said. He had already begun fiddling with the grate in the room. Saul presumed this led to the same sewer the one they used to enter did. "Right now we have to get out of here! Help me with this!"
Saul and The Virus obeyed. Within minutes, the grate was removed and the three of them had slunk back into the sewers. Their swim was silent and swift and before long they emerged onto the surface where a little blue light was already showing on the horizon.
"Finally, we're out of there!" Prosper said.
"Yeah," said Saul. "Now let's make ourselves scarce before the police catch us." And the three men escaped into the rapidly approaching new day just as the first sirens sounded.
Author's Note: So yeah. Hope you enjoyed it. It feels good to have the show back on. Thanks for bearing with me while I deal with school. I'm in some advanced classes so that will probably end up taking a lot of time in the future. I promise not to go on "hiatus" again. Stay tuned for chapter 8! I'm really excited for it.
