Summus Proelium

“How?!” Peyton demanded roughly one minute and forty-five seconds later, as the van we had piled into went tearing out of the alley with a loud roar of the engine. We, in this case, amounted to most of our usual field group of her, Poise and Style, and me. The others, including Calvin and Hobbes, were staying in the shop just in case anything else went wrong. Which, at this point, wouldn’t have surprised me. After all, they could’ve been trying to lure us away from the shop just so they could attack it straight on. But we couldn’t just do nothing, not when people at the school were being held hostage. We had to check it out. Wren’s defenses around the shop would warn her and deal with any initial problems. Attacking a Tech-Touched on their home turf was always a very bad idea, especially when they were home and knew you might be coming.

Besides, the moment we made it out of the shop, Wren had triggered its lockdown. Every window was covered, the doors were secured, if people wanted to get in there they’d have to try much harder than they might think. And if worse came to worst and they did manage to get through, Wren would use the emergency evacuation system to get herself and the others out to a secondary location. Including Pittman himself.

On top of all that, Paige and Sierra would know the moment anything came in contact with the security system, so we could try to do something about it. Assuming we could extract ourselves from whatever situation we were in at that point in the school. It wasn’t perfect, to say the least. But we had to do something.

Help, we needed help. Unfortunately, one of the other things Eits had let us know was that these invaders were apparently monitoring any and all communications with the authorities, and were prepared to… do the worst if we called in the cavalry. Worse, they had people monitoring the various locations so we couldn’t even secretly contact them, because the moment they saw any sort of mobilizing force, they might just decide it was coming for them.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t get any help, of course. I sincerely doubted these people had good enough surveillance to cover the Ministry. With Paige driving, I was calling them once again, listening to the phone ring as I did my best not to start cursing loudly about how long it was taking to answer. Seriously, did they not have a big flashing ‘Paintball only calls when it’s an emergency so pick up immediately’ sign over the phone?

Yes, telling them what was going on would almost inevitably lead to them finding out that we had taken Pittman and that that was how we knew about Sleeptalk being made by Amanda. Which we hadn’t really wanted to do, but we would deal with that as it came. Getting those hostages out of there safely was a hell of a lot more important than keeping that secret.

Peyton continued while gripping the handle over her seat as the van took a hard turn, nearly tipping over in the process before managing to right itself. “How the hell would they even know we have him?! Who--are these Biolems? Cup’s Biolems, his--whatever, who the hell are they and how do they know what we’ve been doing?!”

“Maybe there was a security thing that showed us getting into that lab,” I pointed out. “If Cup, or whoever she’s got running things for her while she’s in custody, saw us get in, they might’ve been able to put two and two together to figure out we must have Pittman. Especially if they figured out he was taken off the island. It’s possible.”

Sierra’s voice was hard. “Yeah, well if they think we’re just gonna hand him over so he can cause more problems, they’ve got another thing coming. And that thing is my fist.”

My head shook. “We’re not handing him over. If he gets out, things will get a hell of a lot worse than a few hostages at the school.” Even as I said that, my stomach felt queasy. What the living fuck was wrong with me? How could I even say that, as though people dying wasn’t a big deal? No, no, that wasn’t what I meant, not at all. I wasn’t saying that the hostages at the school weren’t important! We were going to do everything we could, everything besides letting that monster go to get them out. But if we did let him go, he would kill a lot more people. He would make everything in the city so much worse than it already was. If we let him go and more people died, wasn’t that even worse than if these hostages--no, no, do not think like that, don’t think like that.

We wouldn’t let it happen. We were not going to let those people die, not tonight.

Fucking finally, someone at the Ministry answered the phone, his voice a bit tired. But when I started telling him about exactly what was going on, he woke up pretty damn quickly. His first thing was to tell me I should call the cops, but I informed him in no-uncertain terms of what a stupid idea that would be. And I told him that if they officially mobilized any big forces, these guys would find out. So whatever they did, it had to be quiet. They couldn’t make a big production out of it. “You guys do have quiet, subtle ways of handling things, right?” I had to believe they had other people like Bobby, those who could get in there and help deal with this without having an entire army of cops or Touched behind them.

The Ministry person on the other end of the line, who wasn't either of the Ministers Gray or any other Minister as far as I could tell, took a moment before responding. “You certainly keep yourselves busy, don't you? Most of us are still rather occupied with the subject of your last call. Do you have any idea what these people at the school are after?”

My eyes rolled at that. “Sure, I know what they want, but I'm not going to tell some random guy who just answers the phone. Put one of your leaders on and I'll talk to them. Otherwise just know that these people work for Cup and a man named Benjamin Pittman. If you don't know that one, put it in your system. I’m sure the name will throw up a few red flags and alarms. The point is, send your best agents quietly to the school to help those civilians. We’re heading there right now, but we could use some backup. I mean, fixing shit like this and making sure it doesn't get out of control is supposed to be the whole reason you all exist, isn't it? So do something useful instead of complaining that I give you too much work.” With that, I disconnected the call before slumping back in my seat with a heavy sigh. “How close are we?”

“Close,” Paige replied. “Forty seconds or so before we need to stop and be a little more stealthy so their lookouts don’t see us coming.” She paused, exchanging a glance with Sierra and Peyton before adding, “Well, you sure told him.”

A slight blush crossed my face as I squirmed uncomfortably. “I know this whole situation isn't his fault. He’s not the one holding guns or whatever against those people. When this is over, maybe I'll call back and apologize or something. But seriously, I just said that there's a bunch of hostages that are about to be killed at the school and he's complaining about me giving them too much to do? Why do they even exist if not to deal with this shit when it comes up?”

Paige brought the van into an alley and parked in the deep shadows away from the distant streetlights. Turning the engine off, she twisted around to look at me intently. “They're going to help. That's our school, your school. There's no way the Ministry will let anything too bad happen in there, not when their leaders are already in the hospital. When your parents wake up, if they find out that their people played fast and loose with the lives of people in that school, heads will literally roll. And they know that.”

She was right, obviously. I took a deep breath, then grabbed my helmet and put it on before latching the thing in place. “Right, of course. Whatever they do, let's see how much we can get done without them. I’d rather not have to depend on them too much. Especially given… well, the reason those fucks are in there to begin with.”

The others piled out of the van with me, and we kept our voices down. Not that we expected it to be all that necessary from this distance (the school was across the street and down a bit), but still. It couldn’t hurt to be careful in a situation like this.

Paige took a moment, head tilting as though listening to something before she gave a very faint smirk. “They made it. The kid’s cameras picked up a couple probable-Biolems in a truck just down the street, and another truck on the opposite side, watching the other intersection. They showed up two minutes after we left.”

That was one of the main reasons we had been in such a rush to get out of there. Eits had given us a heads-up before these guys were ready, and even helped slow them down before they could show up around the shop to see if we left after they called in their demands. But with Eits’ warning, we were gone before that ever happened. Now they could watch the shop all they wanted. Wren had made sure no one could see into the shop with any sort of heat detection or anything like that, so they would have no idea how many were in there. Murphy and the others would show themselves now and then, and move around just enough to make it clear someone was there. Which would hopefully convince them that their plan was working.

Their plan? Whose plan was it? Did they have any Biolems who were advanced enough to make plans? Thus far, the only ones besides Paige and Sierra that we’d seen were the dumb sort who simply followed orders. But there was no way that kind would have been able to come up with something like this. So who did? Was it a smart Biolem, or someone else Amanda had left in charge? Who the fuck was doing this?

With those confusing questions filling my head, I checked my phone again. Eits had been sending me texts full of information. He was hiding out in a corner of the basement, having narrowly avoided being caught before he could call us. He said they had no idea he was there, but I was still worried about the boy. Looking through his messages, I read the details aloud. “Thirty guys in total inside the school itself, all dressed in military camo and carrying automatic weapons. They’re mostly spread through the school, six of them in the main gymnasium with almost three-quarters of the hostages, another six in the pool area with fifteen more hostages tied over the water with weights to hold them down if those guys cut the rope, three in the main office with another few hostages, and the remaining fifteen in five groups of three doing constant walkthroughs. Another few on the roof and an unknown number out on the grounds, he’s not sure because they broke a few of the cameras out there. And, of course, they’ve got it all locked down to stop anyone from getting in or out. Or try to.”

Sierra shrugged. “Good thing we weren't planning to take the direct way in. Otherwise, that might've been an actual problem.” She was already turning to walk down the alley ahead of us away from the direction of the school while adding, “So, do you think the Ministry’s gonna use that door teleporter of theirs to send in their attack squad?”

Following her with the others, I replied, “I guess it depends what their limitations are. But if it's possible, I'd say absolutely. For all we know, they've already got someone in there.” Even as I said, I was checking my phone to see if there was anything from Eits, either about that very subject, or anything else. But there was nothing. His last update had been a couple minutes earlier when he said he would be watching for our arrival. I had to assume that if he’d spotted someone playing commando through the halls of the school dealing with these intruders, he would have mentioned it. Unless something had happened to him-- No, god damn it, don't think about that, Cass. Shut the hell up. Ryder was going to be fine. He was holed up in a safe place and they had no idea he was even there. They didn’t know they needed to be on the lookout for him. As long as it stayed that way, he’d be fine. We just had to deal with this.

Shaking that off, I sent the boy a text letting him know that we were in the area and would be there soon. Maybe that was mostly so I could reassure myself by getting a response from him, but still. I let out a slight breath of relief when he sent back a thumbs up emoji. Was it weird to communicate with emojis at a time like this? Or was that more appropriate because we were communicating more efficiently? I wasn't sure, but I did send him an emoji with its finger to its lips in a shushing motion to indicate he should stay quiet. He, in turn, replied with one that had both hands over its mouth.

Soon, we reached the end of that alley. But rather than going out the other side, we stopped in front of what looked like a blank brick wall. Paige reached to touch several of the bricks in order, pushing them in. After she finished the sequence, that part of the wall slid aside to reveal a dimly-lit stairwell leading down. Yeah, we definitely weren’t taking the normal way into the school. I wasn’t even going to use my pink paint to go in through the roof or anything like that. They would clearly be ready for that sort of thing, watching every part of the building. Instead, we were using the secret tunnel that led to that room where Paige, Amber, and I had been practicing with my paint before.

The Ministry would be mobilizing whatever they had by now, they would be sending someone who knew how to handle this situation. Paige was right about them not wanting to be the ones to tell my parents they’d let people in my school die. So we would have help soon. But we couldn’t wait for it. We had to get in there and start dealing with this. Even as we started down the steps into the tunnel, I spoke in a soft whisper, “You know, there’s another problem. What if these guys have a shutdown code or whatever for you two?” I was glancing over my shoulder at Paige and Sierra pointedly. “Or worse, something to take control of you. Maybe… maybe you should stay here in the tunnel until Alloy and I scout ahead and check it out.”

Paige absolutely didn’t like that. It was clear from her body language. But she couldn't really argue with it either. The same went for Sierra, though she was more audible about her annoyance, cursing several times under her breath. Then she gave a long, heavy sigh. “We really need to focus on removing any and all commands like that.”

It was Paige’s turn to curse, something about how she had been working on it for a long time but never knew if she had everything. Then she turned her attention to me. “Okay, look, take this.” Extending her hand, she held out a small thumb drive. “The main server room for the school is in the library. If you can get there without being caught and plug that in, then get Eits to bypass their security, you should be able to make the file on there infest the whole system. Once you do that, get Eits to activate the execute command and it’ll send a signal through the intercom to shut down all the Biolems.” Before I could say anything else to that, she added, “We’ll be safe down here. But be careful, they might have non-Biolems in there. You’ll have to check before you send that signal, because the second the Biolems go down, any of them who aren’t will probably take it out on the hostages. So you’ll need to be ready to stop them.”

“How do we check which ones are Biolems and which aren’t?” Peyton demanded.

The other two exchanged looks before Sierra replied, “There isn’t really an easy way to tell for sure without alerting everyone. You’ll have to get it all set up, then get enough people to watch over each room where the hostages are. When it’s triggered, you’ll need to hit whoever’s still standing all at the same time. Which means hoping the Ministry’s ninja squad shows up. Or Poise and I are gonna have to risk going in fast and hard enough to stop them before they can use any commands. If they have them.”

Exhaling, I looked toward Peyton. “Right, so the two of us get inside, place this thumb drive, sneak around without getting caught, and hope help shows up so we can fight everyone who isn’t a Biolem all at the same time. Without letting any hostages get hurt.

“And hey, if we’ve got time, maybe I’ll even find that biography on Sacagawea that I was supposed to check out for my final paper.”