Chapter 5
A/N: OOOOOHHHH! This will be good, I'm excited about writing it, and I KNOW you are gonna love Reading it! I hate bragging but this is just to good! Lots of suspense, and finally the action I promised! And I'm Hyper! Ok on a calmer note, I put a list of questions on my profile, about the story, so I'd really appreciate it if Y'all sent me you're ideas. Thanks for all y'all's help, and I'll get on with the story now. Enjoy!
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It was an imposing facility. With gray cement walls and a black tar roof, the main building was a single story, rectangle, sitting in the middle of the compound. There were two other buildings, with much the same decor, the scientist's bunk house, in the back of the facility, and the guard house, situated by the front gate and housing the School's back up generator, and security camera monitors.
Max started there. After circling the perimeter, she landed on the roof of the guard house, and planted one bomb in the center. Drawing out a spool of thin wire, she attached the first bomb to another in her pack. She set the second, down on the generator casing, then attached her next bomb.
'But first Ladies and Gentlemen, a quick side trip. Shut down the cameras.' She thought grimily. She jumped down to the ground, leaving her backpack and the bombs there, and pulled open a window. She slid inside and counted two Erasers in the small rooms. Without thinking Max lunged at the closest Eraser. They were dressed as cops, complete with cuffs and nightstick.
'Part of the cover. Oh well, makes it easer for me, just don't let them morph.' She grabbed the first guy's nightstick and smashed it into the back of his neck, he was out in seconds. The second Eraser lunged, but Max ducked, coming up as he was halfway over her, driving her head into his gut. The force knocked him backwards and had Max seeing stars, but she recovered faster. With a short leap, Max gave the poor meathead, a full roundhouse kick to the face, and he joined his friend in the town of Unconscious. Max quickly dragged them into sitting positions, back to back and used their handcuffs to bind them together and to a support beam, in the center of the room. She removed their two way radios so they couldn't call for help if they woke up, then gagged them with their cheesy rent-a-cop ties. She also tossed the cuff keys out the window.
'Piece of cookie.'
Max then sprinted across the field to the Bunkhouse and planted the third bomb there, laying out the wire behind her. She doubled back to the main building, leaving a bomb by each of the four walls, careful to avoid lighted windows. The remaining five bombs, she placed on the four corners and the center of the roof. With the center bomb, she placed the detonator- Iggy had fashioned it out of an old RC car- and attached the end of the wire to the device. The remote trigger was still safely tucked away in her backpack.
'All right, time to get inside.' She thought as she brought up a mental picture of the map that they had found in Jeb's files, over a year ago. Using her mental map and her own memories from her stay, she quickly found the window to the "reject room". There were bars on the window but they came off easily, especially since Max had thought to snag a screwdriver from the tool shed. She peered inside cautiously then opened the window and slipped inside. Inside, the smell of excrement hit her in a wave, she fought back painful memories as she took in her new surroundings.. She saw about a dozen pairs of eyes shining from the outside light. They were all looking at her, wondering what was going to happen to them now.
'Poor things, I remember what it's like to be afraid of every little thing, they don't deserve this.'
"Hey guys. Ready to get out of this hell hole?" she tried to comfort them, give them hope that they were finally getting out.
"Maximum?" a voice exclaimed in a loud whisper. Something in that voice sounded familiar
'It's my voice! But something's different.' she thought in a sudden rush. She walked to the cage the voice had come from, bent down and looked inside.
"Hiya clone! Did ya miss me?" Max said in a cheerful voice.
"No. But surprisingly, I am glad to see you. I've had just about enough of this. You bustin' us out?" Maxx rasped, her voice was hoarse from the stun rod, Max realized.
"Yeah, but you need to do two things for me, ok?"
"I'm listening, what do you need?"
"One, you don't kill me, and two you help me get the others out. Deal?" Max raised her eyebrows, as if to say "you don't have any other options." Maxx shrugged.
"Deal. The keys to Arianna's and My locks are in the next room with the guard, the other crates don't have locks, and we can help you with those later." Maxx pointed to the cage across the room from hers, then to the door.
"Got it. I'll be right back." Max headed for the door, and opened it slowly. Inside was another Eraser, but luckily he was asleep. He had a security badge pinned to his jacket, it identified him as "Curtis".
'Curtis, huh? That's real menacing. Where do they come up with these names?'
She quickly spotted the keys hanging on a hook by the door, grabbed them and returned to her clone's crate.
"Just start letting everyone out, and then we'll get them outside." Max advised as she undid the lock.
"Yes Ma'am." Maxx answered unenthusiastically. Max scowled, then headed to Arianna's cage. As she stepped closer, she saw a pair of smallish black and ruddy orange wings flare, and a young face morph into a wolf-y snout.
"So, you're my sister thing huh? Sorry your family kinda sucks." The girl relaxed as Max spoke, and her muzzle receded to normal human features.
'She looks like Ari, dark hair and eyes, and like me in a way, my build and face. So would that make her our daughter, and wouldn't that be kind of like incest? Well if I wasn't sure before, this is final clinching proof that Jeb is insane.' Max shook her head, and got to work on the lock.
"You know, not all my family is so bad. I mean, you are letting us all out, and she," Arianna nodded towards Maxx, who was busy letting the others out of there cages. "Was gonna try and bust us out before, so I think I've got at least two good relatives. Even though Ari's useless." she concluded as she stepped out of the too small crate, stretching her back and wings. Max smiled, then remembered where she was. The room was now filled with hybrids, mostly human mixes, and a few that were unrecognizable. They were all just kids, a few had wings, others had tails and furry ears, and the rest had extra limbs, or not enough, any way you looked at it, it was cruel and unusual.
"Arianna. I want you to get these kids outside, you can go out the front gate or you can carry them over the fence, your choice." Max handed the younger girl a map, with a highlighted route on it.
"Take the back roads, that should lead you to a church, about two miles away, they can take care of you all there. Don't leave them ok? Their your flock now, got it? I'm trusting you to take care of them, they need you. Can I count on you?" Max had marked the route earlier that evening when she had decided to leave. She knew that they needed a place that was going to protect them and, from what little she knew about church, she knew the people there would, at least be kind. Arianna looked solemn, as she nodded and herded the others, out the open window without another word.
"Maxx. You're with me. Where are the other experiments kept?" Max turned to her clone, who wore a serious look almost identical to Max's own.
"This way." Maxx took the lead and walked into the next room. Curtis was still there, snoring loudly now. Maxx took one look at him, reached out and snapped his neck.
"What the hell was that for!?" Max was shocked, and stared at her double in horror.
"He deserved it, and you're gonna blow the place, he was going to die anyway." Maxx said with a shrug.
"How'd you know I was gonna blow the place?"
"You smell like gunpowder and I don't see a gun, so the next logical solution is a bomb."
"Oh. Well if he deserved to die, then I deserve this." Max plucked Curtis' iPod out of his pocket and slipped it into her pack. Maxx raised an eyebrow.
"What? You try sharing one iPod between six kids with different musical tastes." Max countered.
"Fine. lets keep going." with a shrug Maxx opened the next door and stepped out into the hallway. Max followed as they walked down the corridor to another room, like the one that the corpse or Curtis now occupied. But this one was empty, Max grabbed the set of keys for the cages in the next room, and put her hand on the doorknob. Maxx's hand shot out and grabbed her predecessor's wrist.
"They might be incompetent, but the guards don't leave their posts, this is a trap, someone knows you're here."
"I'm willing to take that risk, besides, he could have gone for a bathroom break, ya never know." She turned the knob. This was a room Max remembered, stacks of cages against a wall, barred windows, and the ever present smell of antiseptic. The only difference was a large metal table, in one corner. And behind that table, sat Jeb, with Ari standing behind him.
"Hello Max."
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"Max!" Fang sat up, suddenly and nearly flew down the hall to Max's room. She wasn't there.
'Maybe I'm still having a nightmare. No if it was a nightmare, I would have found her, but she'd be dead. This is so much worse than a nightmare, it's real, and Max is gone!'
"MAX!" He couldn't contain his frustration, he kicked her bed frame, and heard bones crack, but he didn't think about that now. Within seconds Fang heard feet running down the hall, he turned to face the door as six faces appeared in the doorway.
"Max is gone." he said, then sat down hard as he noticed the pain in his foot.
"And I broke my foot." he muttered bitterly.
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"I'm disappointed Max, I expected you to have a backup plan, but you just waltz in here, with no failsafe, no back up, and no plan B. I thought I taught you better." Jeb chided smugly, folding his hands on the table. 'Like a classic super villain.' Max thought.
"Who says I don't have all that? Or are you just hoping I don't have bombs planted around the whole compound? And, I obviously have backup, right, Maxx?" Max crossed her arms over her chest, thankful for her windbreaker that covered up the goose bumps that had appeared on her arms. Despite the tough talk, Max was trembling inside.
'What scares me the most is that I used to look up to him, and he's right. I don't have a failsafe or a plan B. I'm just lucky Maxx is on my side.' she looked over to her clone to confirm her thoughts. Maxx's eyes were burning with rage as she stared at Jeb. But she nodded slowly, and Max knew she would kill the man, given the chance.
Jeb's face hardened. He looked back at Ari, then jerked his chin towards the girls. Ari grinned and sauntered forward. Both, the clone and the original, dropped into fighting stancesas their "brother" approached.
"Relax Max," he added a barely audible "-is" after considering who he was addressing.
"I'm not gonna fight you two. Dad won't allow it. I just need your backpack Max. But when Dad's not around..."He added the last bit in a low whisper, leaning close to Max's head and drawing in a long breath, before pulling the bag from her shoulders, and returning to stand beside his father. All Max could do was stand as still as possible and try not to retch. With a brief hand signal from Jeb, Ari upended the bag onto the table. Max, winced, as the bomb trigger fell out, among the assortment of knick-knacks, including, Curtis's iPod. Ari's eyes went wide as he saw the trigger, not in shock, but because, it still looked like the remote for an RC car that is had been, before Iggy's tampering.He picked it up and began fiddlingwith the controls.
"Ari, don't! Too late." Max started forward but stopped as the remote beeped.
"What? You afraid I'm gonna break your toy?" Ari jeered, not noticing that he had juset armed the bombs.
"Ari, just put it down and no one dies, ok? You just armed twelve Bombs, that are set to blow if you push one more button, so just set it down, ok?" Max tried to stay calm, but with Ari's size and maturity level, they were all in big trouble.
"You're bluffing Max. No matter what was done to you here, there's no way you could even think about killing everyone in this place. It's not your way, Max." Jeb sounded so sure but his eyes showed an emotion Max had never seen there. Fear.
"She might not be capable but I am, who's to say it wasn't me that set them up, huh?" Maxx spoke for the first time since entering the room.
"That's impossible, considering you've been locked up for a month." again Jeb regained his composure. Maxx said nothing more.
"Max, I'd been hoping you'd have a change of heart about this place, I was hoping we could all be a family again. Like it used to be."
"Somehow I think that conflicts with the saving-the-world-thing. Which, and I'm still fuzzy on this part but, you said I was supposed to start taking seriously. So, I'm not gonna listen to your bull anymore, I'm taking control of my life. That means, getting rid of this place and you. Besides, the way I see it, the world is a lot safer with less mad scientists." Max said with a smirk.
"I just want to say, Max, you always were my favorite." Jeb confessed quietly. Ari, angered by his father's statement, slammed his fist down on the table. The remote beeped, and everyone looked down at Ari's fist, it still held the trigger.
"Now ya done it. Say hi to Hades for me ok Jeb?" Max closed her eyes and took a breath.
The building shook and began collapsing inward, within seconds. The sound came moments later, but the only ones who heard it was a small group of hybrid refuges, quietly making their way in the opposite direction, as the cloud settled in the air. A cloud that was seen by the eight worried occupants of a speeding van that was still hours away.
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A/N: Oh no I didn't. Yes I did! I left you hanging, Haha! Wow that was fun! Ok don't kill me just yet, even if you really want to, 'cus if you do...you'll never get the next chapter,(maybe the ending?) Please review, criticize if necessary, but I want your ideas and opinions.
ENox