Chapter sixteen - steel
Oh man. I wrote this listening to The Bad Touch and eating dried kiwi on a five hour plane flight with a terrible airline (I won’t name it in case anyone gets offended or something). I’m so sorry if it comes out really weird.
Anyway, as you read this, I will be down by the pool completely coated in suncream, reading fanfiction underneath a beach towel to hide from the light. How's life for all of you? I'm oddly happy.
Oh, and guess what? I haven't actually been here twelve hours yet, but I've already memorised the wifi code. Yup. I can memorise any random fifteen digits if it'll give me wifi, but I couldn't remember how to calculate a radius for a million quid.
And one more thing. It's probably impossible for most of you to picture (with the exception of about one person), but I am wearing a dress. Just thought I'd put that out there so you know that anyone can do anything if they want to.
Happy reading, skittle babes.
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“What the fuck?” I spluttered. “Bob?”
Bob turned around, ducking his head to look at me through the smashed up gap in the bars. “Hey,” he said nonchalantly.
“What are you doing?” I asked slowly.
“Breaking you guys out,” he stated simply, shrugging.
“With you superpowers?” Gerard asked dubiously.
Bob sighed. “Pretty much.”
“Bob,” Ray said, bewildered. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a really long story. And we don’t have much time until the other guards work out why this guy’s communicator cut out.” Bob nudged the dead guard with his foot. “Come on.” He climbed back through the bars and Ray followed, but Mikey stayed cowering in the corner, terrified.
“Mikes,” Ray said gently. “It’s okay. It’s just Bob.”
“But he– he–” Mikey stuttered.
“I know. I don’t understand either. But we have to get out of here. It’s okay, Mikey. I promise.”
Mikey hesitated, then took Ray’s hand and carefully climbed through the bars. He collected himself, and Bob stepped over the body of the guard to reach me and Gerard. He pulled the bars of our cell apart, warping the metal and cracking the rust like it was made of eggshells. I stared, awed and slightly scared, but just went along with it, climbing out through the gap with Gerard.
“This way.” Bob started down a corridor that looked like it would lead nowhere. We all followed timidly like small children traipsing after their mother.
Mother.
Gerard’s mom. Shit. Where was she?
“Where’s Donna?” I asked.
“They’ve put her in a more secure cell,” Bob said. “They think she’s a higher risk for some reason.”
“Mothers can gain near inhuman strength to save the lives of their children,” I mused. “Adrenaline rush. Hey, what do you know? School did teach me something.”
“That’s nice. Walk faster.”
We picked up our speed, passing through corridors lined with rows of cells and locked rooms, white prisoners sulking, and innocent blacks crying, before we reached a huge metal door bolted shut and protected with a keypad.
“What now?” Ray asked.
“We break in,” Bob said. He gave the door a light kick, and the huge mass of metal swung easily aside.
“Not to get off track,” I said as we climbed through the door, “but when exactly did you gain these… super powers?”
“It’s a long story,” Bob said. “A really long story.”
“Then sum it up,” I said impatiently. I had been reasonable for five minutes, and that was long enough. This was too weird for him to just expect us to shrug and go along with it.
“The council have created a serum designed to turn any man into the ultimate fighter. They want to use it to make an army to wipe out the blacks.”
“Oh.”
“Shit,” Ray said.
“Yeah,” Bob agreed. “There’s supposed to be an element in the serum that allows the president to calculate and control every move of a soldier with it in their bloodstream.”
“And they wanted to test it on you?”
“They said I seemed strong, pretty tough already. They wanted to see how much stronger it would make me.”
“A lot, apparently.”
“Wait,” I said. “But why aren’t they controlling your mind or what you do?”
“Apparently, the recipe isn’t quite perfected yet.”
“Or maybe they’re letting you do what you want because they know you’ll break us out and gather us all together. Then it’s the perfect opportunity for them to strike. Use you to kill us all when we think we have the upper hand.”
“Oh, man, that’s clever,” Ray said.
“It’s not that clever,” I muttered. “It’s simple enough for the president to come up with. So let’s see how he executes it.”
Bob nodded, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. He had started scanning over the labels on the large steel doors, shaking his head and moving onto the next each time. I glanced at the label on the nearest door. It was just a mass of jumbled letters and numbers.
“Bob,” I frowned. “What are you looking for?”
“How do you know which cell she’s in?” Ray asked, his voice strained. He was carrying Mikey again, and skinny as he was, I doubted that he was particularly light.
“I don’t know,” Bob murmured. “I’m looking.”
“Please tell me you don’t have x-ray vision,” I said. “My life is turning into a sci-fi movie or something, I swear.”
“I don’t have x-ray vision,” Bob scowled. “I can see blacks a different colour to everything else.”
“Um, we all can,” Ray mumbled. “They’re black.”
“No.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s like. I have thermal vision, except everything looks normal except blacks. I can see them through solids. But I wouldn’t be able to see Frank if he was on the other side of one of these walls.”
“I think I get it.”
“Yeah. It’s so soldiers can see blacks no matter where they hide.”
“Shit, they really thought of everything.”
Bob stopped in front of a random cell and stared at the metal door. “That’s her,” he suddenly said.
“Are you sure?”
“It looks like her.”
“You’re not sure.”
“It’s not in HD,” Bob said indignantly. “It’s all blurry. She still looks kind of pregnant. Are women supposed to look kind of pregnant even after they’ve had the baby?”
“Yeah,” Gerard said. “It’ll take time for her stomach to go down. It’s her.”
“How do you know?”
“Look, the likelihood of there being another black woman who just gave birth in a high security cell in this prison is so low, it would be idiotic not to just risk it. Get her out of there. Now.”
“Okay,” Bob mumbled. He gave the door a hard kick. It made a dent, but didn’t open. “Fuck. It’s strong.” He kicked it again, and it made another small mark in the metal, but otherwise had no effect.
“Get the keypad,” Gerard said.
“But that would short-circuit the system. Security would get alerted right away.”
“Kick the fucking keypad.”
“But–”
“Just do it!” Gerard growled. “Get her out of there.”
“Alright, but we’re going to have to be fast. I mean, we’re basically going to have to run away with them firing at us. They’re already on our trail thanks to that guard’s communicator.” Bob glanced back in the direction we’d just come from, as if he could see the guard.
“We’re not leaving her,” Gerard said firmly.
“Do as he says, Bob,” I ordered.
“We are not losing anyone today, okay? We’re all getting out of this, and we’re all going to be okay.”
“Short-circuit the keypad. You and Gerard can help Donna, I’ll help Ray with Mikey. Yes?”
Everyone nodded.
“Bob?”
He kicked the keypad, and with a shower of sparks, the door swung open. An alarm started shrieking, and Donna stared up at us from inside the cell in shock.
Gerard pushed past Bob to reach his mother, kneeling beside her and wrapping his arms around her as quickly as he could. “Mom,” he mumbled into her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was weak and she looked awful. She was still recovering. The anaesthetic from the operation probably hadn’t completely worn off.
“Don’t ask questions, just get out and run,” Bob said quickly, stepping into the cell and grabbing Donna’s arm. He yanked her out of the cell and she yelped in surprise as he started to run.
“Just go with him, mom,” Gerard said. “I’ve got your back.”
She started to run with Bob and Gerard followed, while Ray and I shared Mikey’s weight, moving as fast as we could with the small boy in our arms.
“Where are we going?” Ray yelled to Bob.
“We’re going to get the baby,” Bob called back. “She’ll be in the vice president’s office.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Vice President Hargreaves was the man who took her.”
VOUS LISEZ
Disgusting (Frerard)
Fanfiction"There's a reason we are white and pure, and they are black and dirty. There's a reason they stain our skin. That we are shamed if others see those stains. They're bad people, Frank. They're disgusting."
