A brief sense of respite ... - Part 5

"Come to the satellite. We'll get together. Have a few laughs." Caitlyn pushed herself along the air duct, trying to remember whether she was claustrophobic or not. "I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy passive aggressively pointing out that I'm in a wheelchair because of you, only, like, every single second."

"I can hear you. I literally hear everything you're saying." Still up in the satellite, watching over her progress, Kyle sounded like he had that stupid grin on his face. "But, yes, if I wasn't out of commission, I would be doing it. You're doing great. Deep breaths."

This had to be the dumbest thing she had ever agreed to, and she had agreed to do some dumb things in her life. There, kind of, was no option when you had a friend like Alaina, who thought trying out new things involved doing incredibly stupid stunts that could either embarrass, injure, or, more often, both. Once again, she cursed herself for thinking about her former best friend.

Former. Rayna had made it perfectly clear that Alaina had decided to call an end to that friendship, all because Caitlyn had accidentally received the power to do something good in the world. It felt easier to look at it that way, rather than thinking she had dived, head first, into a situation far beyond her capabilities. Not that Rayna knew the true reason why Alaina had fallen out with Caitlyn. The fake video was only the breaking point.

The air duct groaned and clunked, rumbling noises coming with every movement. In the movies, the good guys managed to move through them with barely a sound, but the thin material wobbled and bounced whenever Caitlyn put weight on a surface. Those air ducts, in the movies, were also not quite so tight. If not for the way the suit could change and adapt to circumstances, she expected she would have got stuck right from the beginning.

"How much further?" She paused, grateful that the suit slicked away her sweat. "I've been at this for hours!"

"You've been in there for less than five minutes. Don't lie for sympathy." In the background, Kyle's wheelchair squeaked as he moved. She chose to believe he had made it squeak just to remind her he was in it. "Right, you should see a junction in ten feet. Take the left turn, go on for another twenty feet and Alden's office should be right below. See! Easy."

It wasn't easy! None of this was easy! And she had yet to get out of the place once she had fitted the thumb drive to Alden's personal computer. That should be even more fun! Finding the junction, Caitlyn had to make a complicated, gymnastic turn to move in the new direction, wishing she had spent more time in the school gym actually learning this stuff than complaining about it. She could swear she was about to get cramp.

Twenty more feet and she found a grill. Almost exactly twenty feet. She wondered if she could pretend that it was twenty-five feet, just to prick Kyle's smug ego, but she expected he knew exactly how far she had gone. The next part, she wasn't even certain she could do, even though they had practiced, up in the satellite.

More thumping and rumbling from the tortured air duct and Caitlyn had manoeuvred her hand into position and stopped. With her suit's enhanced hearing, she caught a conversation passing over a radio and, below, she could see the outline of a man. A big man in a suit. A really, really, big, muscular man that looked like he chewed girders for fun. Caitlyn didn't want to have to hurt him.

After tortuous seconds, the man touched his earpiece, the coiled cable curling around his neck and under the collar around his enormous neck, and moved away. A few more seconds and she heard the 'ping' of an elevator opening. The sound of the doors closing and then her own breaths that she had stopped taking while the mountainous man had stood beneath her.

"I hate this!" She placed her hand over the grill and instructed the suit to unfasten the screws that held the grid in place. "I hate you! I hate chilli fries! I hate ..."

"Yada yada yada. Life is so hard. Why can't I pick flowers and appreciate rainbows and puppies and puppies the colour of rainbows." He was laughing! How dare he laugh when she was hating things? "You have ten minutes before the next security dude comes along. Plenty of time. And no-one hates chilli fries. You're just a monster."

Using the suit to unfasten the screws was Kyle's idea and, at the same time, he had noted that she really didn't use the suit in the most efficient ways. Smug. Egotistical. Way, way too happy all the time. And right. She had had certain ideas about the suit and what it could do, herself, but it always seemed to come down to punching people. And things. And things that were also people. Punching was fun. Cathartic. She wanted to punch Kyle. Especially tonight.

The grill swung down, giving her access to Alden's office and she struggled to wriggle herself out through the tiny gap. The suit could make her look bigger, but it couldn't make her smaller. When she needed to leave, she was finding a different way out. Probably by punching something.

-+-

Stormfield Island prison, supers wing ...

Chief Watson stood outside the specially constructed cage, made from several different layers of materials that the man inside couldn't use to his advantage. It was probably overkill, but what did Watson know. He only put these guys in Stormfield Island prison. What they did with them, how they kept them inside, was above his pay grade. Still, it looked a little undignified.

"Hey, Joe. How's life treating you?" Watson looked away, tucking his jacket over his hands that rested on his hips. He didn't need to see this. "Gonna be long?"

"I don't know. I tell ya, these guys don't know from good prison food, ya know?" Joe paused, grunting, then the sound of paper tearing reached Watson's ears. "Time was, ya got slop and you were happy about it. Now, it's all vegan this and high fibre that. I ain't been this regular in years. And do I get my medication on time? Forget about it. I'll be right with ya."

Grumbling, Joe flushed the toilet and Chief Watson could finally look. There were no modesty screens in Joe's cell. The problem with Joe was, he could make something out of practically anything and his numerous escapes over the years had brought Stormfield Island to the only conclusion that made sense. They didn't give him anything. If you asked Joe about that, he wouldn't complain about it, while complaining loudly about it.

"Say, Joe, I need to ask some questions that won't impact your case, can I ask without your lawyers present?" Watson had known Joe long enough to know he didn't care for lawyers, but they were necessary in his line of work. "Specifically about those lawyers. All your money is seized. Cash, bank accounts, that two grand under your floorboards. How can you afford these lawyers? They aren't the usual overstretched, underfunded public defenders. These guys are big. Expensive. Out of your league. Who's paying for them?"

"Can't say." Joe had sat down on the solid, plastic bed. They had even taken his mattress. "No, I mean, really. I can't say. I gotta tell ya, these guys? I'd rather sit in gen-pop with a sign around my neck tellin' everybody I'm a rat and I'd feel safer. Those guys? Forget about it. They ain't talkin' and I ain't askin'. Some mook is payin' for 'em, I ain't gonna complain. Can't help ya, Jim. Not this time."

It had been a long shot, but he had to try, even if it meant risking the boat trip to the island for it. Now he had to go back empty handed and none the wiser. Whoever had paid Joe to attack the kid had covered their tracks, right up to the point they hired these lawyers for Joe Morrison. That was a mistake. That left a money trail that could be followed, but it also meant going through normal channels and he didn't have enough for a warrant. He'd hoped Joe could have given him enough to take to a judge.

There was one other thing he had come to see Joe about and Watson took a good, long look around the room before he even thought about mentioning it. Even then, he knew he had to watch his words. He had no way of knowing who was listening and watching.

"I hear nothing gets in or out of here? Not even radio. What can you do with radio signals? I don't know." Passing the time of day, nothing specific. Nothing that could catch anyone's attention. "Say, how do they do that, anyway? Stop radio signals?"

"Faraday cage! I got one in my basement. Simplest thing in the world, but it kept me off the radar for years." That had caught Joe's attention. He liked nothing better than talking about his work. "This one time, I built a sonic deregulating electrical disrupter. Played havoc with Black Staff's senses. I almost had him, too. Built that baby in my basement and no-one knew a thing. Lemme tell ya, you wanna work in peace, get yourself a Faraday cage. All'a this social media mumbo jumbo? Forget about it. Ain't nothin' gettin' through one'a those cages. This one time ..."

Watson let Joe talk. The old guy had lived alone for years before Fiend had hired him and Warden Adams kept a tight ship, frowning on guards fraternising with prisoners. Watson had the time to listen to the old guy. For a while, at least. And he did have some wild stories.

-+-

Back at Ald-Tech HQ ...

Ten minutes, Kyle had said and five of those minutes had already passed without his pet little thumb drive doing its job. She had even considered switching the computer off and back on again, thinking the device had crashed, before seeing the progress bar tick over a little more. If this was detective work, they could keep it. Much longer and she would have to fight her way out and the optics of that would be bad. Real bad.

"It's not working." While she waited, she picked up a picture of Raymond Alden with his wife and Rayna. They looked happy. "We'll have to find another way of getting the dirt on Alden. Who I'm still not sure is Fiend, by the way."

"He's Fiend. I'm sure of it and we'll find evidence in his computer. I'm sure of that, too." At least Kyle sounded confident. "Why not sit down? You have ... three minutes, thirty-two seconds to go. Then the fun part begins."

"No! No fun part!" She sat in Alden's high-backed, incredibly comfortable, leather chair, but not because Kyle had said so. "Boring part. That's what I'm aiming for. Boring and not in the least bit dangerous. My aunt is expecting me, unbruised, for dinner."

She swung the chair around and around, revelling in the way it seemed to engulf her in soft, warm comfort. Were she a super-villIain, she would totally steal this chair. Every time she turned, however, she got a strange feeling. The kind of feeling she had sensed only a few times. A feeling that came more from the suit than from herself.

Keeping an eye on the progress bar, she tested that feeling, waving her hand around in the air near where the feeling came to her. It came from the drawer. Tugging a little too hard, expecting it to be locked, she pulled the entire thing from the desk, sending the contents tumbling and cascading onto the thick, luxurious carpet, but her attention fell on one thing. A pill bottle. Her hand hovered over it and that creepy, distasteful feeling came from it.

"Done! Get out now! I have access to security feeds now and the security is coming early." Kyle's voice had a new urgency to it. "Scrubbing evidence of you being here. Locking the elevator. That won't hold them for long. Back in tight space! Don't forget to breathe!"

Without thinking, Caitlyn grabbed the pill container and left the rest. Even though she could feel disgust emanating from her suit, she wasn't letting that pill container go. She had only sensed this feeling when around those containers in the medical facility, during the fight with Vezzpa. And when she had come near Fiend. It seemed Kyle was right after all.