Anomalies: Control

“Alright, we all ready?” Cole asked, looking around at his housemates. They were nodding, and he did the same in response, feeling fidgety. “Alright. One last time. We get to the conference, Tracker lifts the right ID’s and signals us. Track - you remember the signal?”

She made a sound that was a little more reminiscent of a bulldog than a woman, but plastered a smile on her face and twirled her long hair that was up in a sleek ponytail. “I play with my ponytail.” Her face dropped back into a scowl. “I remember.”

He had to work not to laugh; she probably wouldn’t appreciate that. “Good. Track gets us the ID’s, we slip to Mr. Baxter’s side-”

“Wait, I thought it was Byster,” Banshee interrupted, making Kane groan.

“Bansh, seriously, pay attention or we’ll swap you and Lights and put you on lookout duty in the alleyway,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry, I just misremembered. Shut up.”

“Focus, guys,” Cole redirected the attention in the room. “We corner Mr. Baxter and let him know we know about his daughter and that all he has to do to keep his secret is get us to the lower level and go back outside. Once he does that and is back outside, Kane and Track will keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t freak out and spill his guts to someone. Bansh and I are down in the lower level, we don white coats from the utility closet ten paces in and to the left, we make sure no one gets too close to us and flash the stolen ID badges at anyone who does. Fifty paces, then down the hall on the right, sixteen paces; I go down the door on the left, down that hall twenty paces, and I’ll be at the door to the cells.”

Banshee took over from there, trying to make up for messing up earlier. “I take the door five paces further up on the right, and start a small fire in a wastebasket, make it look like a cigarette.

Cole nodded. “Once I’m at the cells, I use the scrambler Tech made to screw up the signal and get them out. We trace our steps back as fast as possible, getting to the elevator and back up to the street level hopefully before the security realizes the fire isn’t what’s actually happening. Tech, Lights, and Maggie will be in the southeast alleyway to watch for trouble. Hawk, Shock, Duplicate and Jake in the northwest alleyway. And the triplets-”

“Will be waiting for our sister.” They said together, making Cole sigh and nod. He’d tried to get them to do something helpful, but they flat out refused and he’d given up that fight.

Everyone was nodding, and he turned to open the door to leave with Banshee. They’d leave in five minute intervals, themselves and Kane and Tracker. The other two would wait another twenty minutes then do the same, five minutes apart. “Good luck everyone. Anyone see anything out of the ordinary, remember the catcall whistle.” It was the simplest way they could think to signal trouble without being too obvious.

The conference was bustling, and Cole couldn’t deny it was a pickpocket’s wet dream. Tons of people, mingling, touching, enjoying life and without any cares in the world. The general sense of the crowd was happy and excitable, eager to hear and talk about the new vaccine. It took barely ten minutes after she’d arrived before Tracker, dressed more nicely than he’d thought she could muster up, swung her ponytail the first time, catching Banshee’s eye subtly. The two girls slipped through the crowds and passed each other without stopping, letting Banshee back to the almost but not quite edge of the crowd. The very edge of the crowd would attract too much attention, even with her striking pale hair tied up in a demure bun. People noticed people who were overly anti-social. People didn’t notice shy girls who were, to the naked eye, trying to make an effort by being in the crowd and simply too shy to make the first move.

He drifted through the crowd, able to look at people for once in sunglasses. Thank the gods for press conferences and their pomp and circumstance of being held in large, outdoor public spaces. Thank the gods for vain heads of departments that wanted the striking frame of them against the backdrop of their department building splashed across headlines advertising their new drugs that meant they could only hold their conferences outside and in the bright sunlight. A little while later, Tracker flipped her hair again and they did the same brief cross, exchanging the card palm to palm as they passed each other. He drifted off, mingled without really saying much, and killed some time to dampen any suspicion before catching Banshee’s eye in the crowd and nodding. They both made their way to the man they were looking for, and came up alongside him on either side. He looked a little surprised, then nervous as Cole started talking in a low tone.

“Mr. Baxter, I’m going to cut to the chase here. We know about your daughter and we can assume that you haven’t told your superiors yet. We’re willing to keep your secret, but we need your help in return.”

“I- I don’t’ know what you’re talking-”

“Please don’t play stupid, Mr. Baxter. She’s telekinetic. You know it, they don’t. We don’t want trouble, we certainly don’t want her outed. We just need your barcode to get us into the building.”

“This is illegal.”

“So is harboring an Anomaly.”

Baxter didn’t have a response for that, though Banshee was watching him with an odd look. He knew she was surprised by his cutthroat approach, but truth be told… so was he. He’d recited his lines over and over, and they simply flowed without much effort. Cole nudged Baxter toward the building, and the three of them made their way to the building. “Mr. Baxter, if you could smile and wave off the security, that’d be great.”

Baxter did as he said, and waved with a slightly nervous smile. The security Officers behind the desk smiled back and went back to their video feeds and magazines, and Baxter led them to the elevators. They filed in and Baxter waved his barcode tattoo across the panel and pressed the button labeled ‘UG’.

“U.G.?” Banshee asked, and Baxter shot her a nervous look.

“Under Ground.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

The elevator dinged and they filed out, still with Baxter. He swiped his card through another door and pushed it open for them. Banshee slipped in and headed straight to the utility closet, while Cole held out a hand to Baxter. “Your pass card please. I’ll leave it dropped in the elevator when we leave. You can say it fell out of your pocket. Nothing will come back to you or your daughter.”

“You had better hope not,” the nervous man threatened as he dropped the card into Cole’s open palm, though it would have been a little more effective if he hadn’t been nervously glancing around and tapping his leg, eager to leave.

Cole didn’t bother to respond and simply slipped inside the door and followed Banshee, who was coming out of the utility closet wearing a white coat and offering another to Cole. He slid his arms into the sleeves and shrugged the coat on, clipping the new ID to his jacket and nodding to Banshee to do the same. They managed to get past a few idle security Officers, chatting about nothing and looking at each other to avoid anyone seeing Cole’s eyes. They got a few curious looks from fellow white coats, but no one raised any alarms and it seemed Banshee’s prediction was true that it would be mostly empty with the scientists needed up at the press conference, and they reached the point to split up without incident. They exchanged a look, and split up, Cole going in the door on the left, Banshee trotting a few more paces to the door on the right. “Ninety seconds. Count it,” he whispered as they separated.

He swiped the pass card, and slipped into the door. No way it was this easy…a simple pass card to get to dangerous prisoners? He looked around and realized that it was too easy. Each individual door was the same heavy steel as the others, each with a food slot and a glass window to check on the person inside, each protected by a handprint and eye scanner. He paused, not sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. He darted from window to window looking for people he recognized, and realized there were a lot more people here than just the three he was looking for. Most looked sad and tired and skinny and miserable. Crap. This was going to be harder than they thought. Banshee was counting down and he didn’t have time to be shocked. He grabbed the scrambler out of his pocket and circled the room, pointing it at each door lock, waiting as they fizzed and spit and short-circuited. Alarms started blaring and he started ushering people out of their cells. “Alright people, don’t run just yet, wait for the blonde at the door to get you out. There’s a plan - don’t rush it!” He ran from door to door until he found the room with a girl still in it.

“Rue,” he breathed, dropping to her side. She had no bed like the others, no sink, just a half-toilet. She was crouched on her knees in the middle of the room, bent over in half with her forehead on the ground. The blaring of the alarm hadn’t so much as made her lift her head, and when he touched her shoulder she flinched back, falling to her side and giving him an eyeful of a unfamiliar looking contraption on her hands. Her hands. Her power. They must have immobilized her hands to prevent her from lashing out. “Rue, it’s me, it’s Cole; relax, I’m here to get you out.” He tried to soothe her, and she blinked blearily up at him, her eyes unfocused like Micah’s had been back when he’d been hospitalized and on drugs when he’d broken his knee a couple years ago. They must be keeping her under something; it’d explain why she was so oddly docile.

“Cole?”

“Yeah, hold on.” He reached to touch the back of her neck, one of the few spots that weren’t covered in scrubs, and she yowled in pain as he charged her as much as he could. The thing around her hands rattled, and broke apart, bloodying her hands with the shards of broken plastic.

“What the fuck? Haven’t you learned to control that shit yet?” she snapped, cradling her hands, and he laughed, grateful that she wasn’t hurt or broken enough to not degrade him, hoping the surge of power had been enough to burn away at least half the drugs in her system, let her focus on getting out.

“Ohh…just you wait, Rue. I have tricks up my sleeve this time,” he chuckled, taking her by her wrist and shooting her a grin when he didn’t set her off. She didn’t seemed to realize it at first, but when he pulled her to her feet and tugged her out of the room the shock dawned. He pulled her through the crowd of people- eight, he counted- and to the door. He cracked it open and saw security running past toward a cloud of smoke billowing in the hall. He spotted Banshee at the end of the hall, and waved the others out. “Go, go, go. Do not stop no matter what happens. If people start yelling and screaming for you, just run.”

Everyone filed out and broke into whatever version of a jog they could manage, and he slipped his white coat off to toss at Rune. “Put that on.”

“Why-?”

“Just do it please,” he said, pushing her out the door and into a jog toward Banshee. They reached her just as the yelling started.

“The Anomalies! They’re escaping! Split up!”

“Time to bolt!” Cole cried, and the three broke into a full on run, though Rune’s was accompanied by significantly more labored breathing, even with his charge-up. They reached the elevator, half filled with actual employees, half filled with escapee Anomalies wearing half disguises; a janitor jacket here, a white coat there, anything Banshee had been able to grab in her ninety seconds, and all in scrub pants, hoping to have enough time to bolt from the elevator before their oddities were spotted.

The doors dinged open and they weren’t the only ones running full speed from the elevator. The alarms from downstairs were going off up here too, and causing a panic in the employees. Made for a great cover to get out though, and Cole grabbed Rune’s still-bloody hand, running alongside her as they broke for the far alleyways on the other side of the street. They couldn’t go back to the safe house, they just needed to touch base with the others first. There was an alley a block and a half away where they were supposed to meet, and though his hand broke from Rune’s, he tried to keep an eye on her as they ran from the panicked site behind them. That failed too, and they melted into the crowds. He’d just have to hope she caught sight of someone that would lead her back to the right alley.