Untitled 5

Darkness. Light. Scratching.

I wake up to a bright light shining down, and a scratching sound. Kyndra is scratching at something on the ground with a knife that appears to come out of one of her metallic fingers. A light overhead is turned on, and I can see other cells, all empty.

“Oh, you’re up. Good. We need to work on our plan,” Kyndra says to me.

“What plan?” I ask, still trying to clear the fog from my brain.

“Our escape plan,” she says, as if she’s explaining something to a little kid. “We need to escape, remember?” I shake my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Bad idea.

“How would we even get out?” I try to summon the darkness, but what was once so easy to call is now far beyond my reach. “Can you use your powers?” She scowls.

“If I could use my powers, I would be out of here already. They must have some sort of power disabling device.”

“A PDn?” I ask, feeling around my neck, but coming up empty.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“A PDn is a Power Deactivation necklace,” I answer, wondering how in the world does she not know about PDns. “They’re a S.W.O.R.D invention.”

“Oh. At Serephimbia, we have Metacuffs. They block the activation of the metagene, which is where natural powers come from. I’m pretty sure that they block GMs, too. AND they’re handcuffs, which are handy. Anyway, I was thinking that I would pick my lock, and then yours. After that, we could probably make it to the doors before the guards get here. We wait on either side of the doors for them to unlock and open them, and then we sneak out behind them, while they go to our now-empty cells. We run out of the dungeon and up a couple of flights of stairs to the main floor. By this time, we’ll have to fight pretty much the entirety of S.W.O.R.D based here, which is why I need you. We fight through them and make our escape. You need me to pick the locks and show you the way out. In the end, we both benefit and can go our separate ways.”

I think over this.

“How can you pick the lock on your cell? You’d have to be double jointed to reach it. What if the guards catch us? We don’t have our powers, remember? And what about weapons? We need something to fight with.”

“My fingers have three joints, instead of two,” she says, bending her cybernetic fingers in an unnatural way. “My arm also bends in three places.” She demonstrates, her elbow, the joint between her wrist and her elbow, and the joint in between her shoulder and elbow. I hold in a shudder of revulsion. Somehow, I don’t think that she’d appreciate that...

“Why haven’t you done this already?” I ask, trying to figure this out.

“My powers are not combat-based. They don’t help me much in a fight, and I can’t take on the entirety of Incantatus’ army by myself. But, me and  the most feared man alive? I’m pretty sure that we’ve got it.”

“Right… and weapons?” I pause. “Can you use your cybernetics to find out if there’s a weapon storage somewhere?” Her eyes go unfocused as she looks at the blueprints.

“Yeah, there’s one right next door to the prison. They are incredibly stupid. They also store the prisoners’ weapons in there, so we’re in luck. It’s about 6pm right now, I think that we should wait till about 11pm to do it.”

“Why?” I ask. She grins a wicked grin.

“Because all great escapes happen at night.”