>”Cell 1226. C’mon man.”

Isaac rolled his eyes in annoyance, but was relieved that the kid was finally moving. Leading the way, too. At least he wasn’t completely worthless.

Keeping an eye on the guards, Isaac followed Rhett down the hall, making sure to keep a small amount of distance between them so he didn’t accidentally burn the kid.

He’s probably boiling in those clothes. I wonder if he’s feeling alright. I hope he doesn’t pass out. He could probably take them off now. Brief thoughts of consideration flashed through Isaac’s mind before being forgotten. He typically felt more condescension than sympathy toward people who felt “too hot.”

Ahead of him, Rhett stopped and stood back from the wall, pointing to a cell. Guess this is the one. Isaac heated one hand and plunged through the lock then cooled the other and pulled open the door. He saw the occupant’s expression when it looked him over, but he didn’t really care. It’s not like he was doing this because he cared about these people or what they thought of him, his body included. Isaac stepped to the side as Rhett did the speaking.

>”We’re here to get you out…”

Isaac ignored the name.

>”1573. Down the hall.”

With a short nod, Isaac started down the walkway.

“Are you getting Gary?”

Isaac froze. Oh, no. There was no way that the kid had counted on bringing everyone’s friends, and if he couldn’t control these inmates the job was lost. He could hear the kid’s uncertainty as he shuffled through some papers. Isaac turned, readying words to cow the man back into line, but Rhett responded first.

>”God willing, if our luck holds.”

That seemed to placate the inmate, and he followed them to the next cell Rhett had chosen. Along the way, Isaac watched the guards shift positions around them, and as he melted the second lock he met eyes with one of them and knew they were both thinking the same thing:

How long until the METAs show up?

Turns out, it was two more mutants before the METAs showed.

The gang was just finishing up the third jailbreak. Leo was still clipping the shock bracelets off a winged mutant as soon as he was out of his cell when the heavy clomp-clomp-clomping sounded behind them from a bend in the hallway. They all looked around meeting eyes and with an unspoken understanding started scooting on down toward the stairwell.

Though he hadn't considered it an option before, they were 4 mutants strong when facing off against the 3 META bots. The odds were better than he'd hoped. Not super great, but... better.

"I've seen the Knights, but the big one...?"

"It's called a Golem." Leo replied to the winged mutant's question. His second bracelet clattered noisily to the ground in the silence that came when the METAs all stopped simultaneously and squared off against the group. "Lethal force."

"CEASE AND DESIST, MUTANTS. IF YOU COMPLY, SENTENCING MAY BE MORE LENIENT." In unison the two Knights and the Golem all drew weapons and pointed them at the collection of mutants that had been stopped just outside teh locked stairwell door.

Leo breathed a biiiig breath.

"Anyone want to comply?" He asked.

"*@#$ NO!" The first shot was fired by the gravity mutant. The Golem went from standing upright to slamming upward into the ceiling. The other cell's occupants whooped and hollered.

"We need to keep moving." Leo pleaded. "We're not going to win a toe to toe fight!"

#@$&. THAT. Like Hell Isaac was going to run.

The giant robot crashed to the ground as the other two stepped forward. “HOSTILITY DETECTED. THE USE OF FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORIZED. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.”

“I’ll take care of them. Go!” he shouted. He didn’t wait for a reply before sprinting toward the METAs. Earlier, he had been eager to face them, but it was a different story now that they were armed.

Isaac estimated he had roughly 20 yards to close. 2, maybe 3 seconds until he reached the METAs. He had to destroy the big one before it could get back up; he could survive shots from the smaller pistols if he cooled himself, but didn’t want to risk whatever “lethal force” the Golem was packing.

Carbotanium. Carbon/beta-Titanium alloy. Should melt around 2500 C.

That was bad. He could easily manage the temperature, but getting that hot would make him vulnerable to smaller robots’ pistol rounds, and he needed to be hitting 3000 C by the time he reached the Golem if he wanted to make quick work of it.

Isaac swore under his breath. He’d have to risk it. He started to increase his temperature, and as he did a second blast from the gravity mutant smashed the META on the left into a wall. Just one Knight left, but the Golem’s arms were starting to move.

Isaac pressed forward. It wasn’t until he was half-way to the robots that he realized the remaining Knight wasn’t holding a pistol; it was holding a taser.

Oh, shi-

Isaac felt the barbs sink into his heat-softened chest before his body was wrenched from his control and dropped convulsing to the floor. Electric knives shot through his nerves, and his mind went white.

Calcifer said go. Leo went. Only there was nowhere to go. The gravity mutant was staying with Cal, it seemed. That left armor mutant and winged mutant and human versus locked door.

Wait. One of the "waiting list" mutants he'd seen was on this floor. Leo passed the clippers to the armor mutant and shuffled his papers again until he found what he needed. "114-" Leo jumped at the sounds coming from the hall. Calcifer was on the ground. The kid only thought he'd been sweating before. Now he was dizzy with it. He tried again. "1148. Cut the guy's shock bracelets and then get away."

Leo grabbed his ears over the mask elastic and ducked. This was gonna get loud.

The moment that the armored mutant was done, everyone on the hallway knew it.

crrrrrrrKRAKOW!

The door to his cell ripped out of its moorings and flew back and away, clipping the armored mutant on its way, bouncing once, and sliding until it plonked into Calcifer.

Leo had been a little iffy on letting this guy go, but the evidence just wasn't there. Having an extremely destructive mutation wasn't reason enough to convict a man. He'd probably just had an accident when he discovered his mutation, right?

"GOD, I've wanted to do that forever."

"Right?" The gravity mutant gave the newcomer a high five. Wingman went to help up a dazed armored mutant.

"Can you take care of this door?" Leo asked the man who stepped out of his cell smiling.

"Pfft. No."

Ugh. This was going terribly wrong. A bullet pinged down the hall and Leo, much too late, ducked. The ricochet was wild. It didn't hit anyone, but it wasn't boosting his confidence either.

The searing pain stopped as soon as Isaac hit the ground, leaving only the memory of its presence that ached everywhere. Isaac groaned and lifted his head. Just in front of him the loose taser wires skittered on the floor. He must have melted their connection to the barbs when he fell on them. Isaac clumsily struggled to his feet, sliding on the concrete melting beneath him as he regained control of his limbs.

“Dude, you okay?” the gravity mutant was running up to him.

“I’m fine.” Isaac waved him away. “Go back to the others, I’ll finish this.”

The mutant hesitated.

“NOW!” The mutant stumbled into a retreat. Isaac turned back to the METAs. The guy’s power had been useful when the bots were still distant, but Isaac didn’t want to risk getting hit by a blast once he reached them.

Speaking of the bots, the Golem had managed to raise itself to a kneeling position. But Isaac was on his feet and moving again. And mad. He snarled as he ran, and anger roared down his arm in blistering heat. The hulking robot managed a “CEASE AND DESsiggrtsk” before Isaac’s blazing white fist sank into its face like it was dough. The metal body spasmed from rigid to limp and tumbled to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Isaac spat on the rubble and turned to face the Knight that had shot him, only to receive a hammer blow to his ribs that sent him flying over the broken Golem just as the sound of a massive explosion ripped through the cellblock. Isaac hit the ground with a grunt and winced at what were at least several cracked ribs.

As he rolled on to his side, the movement of black metal caught his eye. He had landed right next to the second Knight. It was starting to move again, and this one did have a pistol.

Oh, no you don’t. Isaac lurched toward the bot and plunged his hand into its chest, then tore it back out with a swear at the electric shock. The robot convulsed, jerking its arms into the air. Its hands clenched, firing a single shot blindly into the room before it twisted its torso 90 degrees, flopped onto the ground, and went still.

Isaac tried not to think about the bullet bouncing around the hall and focused on the remaining META. It had climbed over the Golem and was almost on him, its right hand slightly fused where it had punched him. Isaac braced himself against the wall then lunged at the robot.

“Bring it, $&@#er!”

He felt the impact of metal on his stomach and chest. He felt his hands close on the robot's neck. And finally he felt the rigid plate give way to his touch and the Knight’s decapitated body collapsed on top of him.

Isaac pushed and melted himself free of the broken robots before sprawling on the ground for a few seconds as he cooled and caught his breath. Then, clutching his side and limping, he stormed over to the rest of the group, now huddled in a confused mass around the stairwell door. Grabbing Rhett by the arm, he pulled him to the side and addressed the kid beneath the mask in low, sharp tones.

“We got three free before these bots showed up,” he spat the words. “Next time there will be more. Just how many people are you wanting to grab?”

The man from 1148 went his own way. There was a lot of noise in the way he went and Leo was forced to assume that he'd made a very big mistake. He would have to put a pin in that mistake, though because there were shots fired and the three mutants he had with him couldn't make it through the heavy duty door.

Calcifer was up again. He alternated between glowing bright as a welding torch and something a lot easier to look at. That made it easier to forget that the guy was buck naked.

"-away, kid."

It took Leo a minute to pull his focus away from the brawl and his hammering heart.

"Come again?"

"Move away from the door," the gravity mutant was already steering him out and away from where he'd been huddling. "You said we gotta go this way, right? I'll try it."

Right. He was right. Leo was just having a hard time keeping it together. The violence of the situation was awesomely jaw dropping when he didn't think too hard about the fact that it was happening way, way too close for comfort. The occasional bullet ricochet made him jump. He hated that he wasn't braver. Leo had just assumed that he would be able to do it all and keep his cool.

The door strained against its hinges as the gravity mutant gave it his best shot. Leo was making a quick change to his notes. That's why he didn't see that Calcifer had finished mopping up all of the METAs himself.

He grabbed Leo's arm and pulled him aside. Alarmed, Leo looked at his still hot form and then up to his angry face. He did some quick math that only cemented his new set of plans.

"Get away vehicle has space for six besides you and me. I mean, we could cram more in the trunk, but that's not what you're asking." Leo did not have control of this situation. He was realizing that no one did, really. They were all just in a tenuous truce and Leo wanted them all to go home. Well, he wanted the good guys to go home.

"New plan. 1148 being a jerk got me thinking that we might have a cleaner chance if we have a distraction." These were people's lives he was playing with. He knew that cerebrally, but he'd also DMed too many DnD games to think of the faceless names of this prison as much more than a really, really big distraction.

"Control room is two flights up, but if we go down instead, you and I can cut the power. That means no electronic locks and shock bracelets only have whatever's stored up in their capacitors. They have to recharge by..." He could see Calcifer's eyes glazing over. He gave up on the explanation even though it was really cool and got on with it.

"All the mutants who can get out of their cells will. We give Mr. Varg- uh the armor guy the bolt cutters and let him be responsible for getting his friend. Tell only the good guys about our get away plan, set a rendezvous point outside, and then it's nobody's fault if they don't make it. Everybody gets a chance to get out. The guys we tell," who were by his estimation the only ones that deserved it, "get the best chance."

So the plan was shot and they were winging it. Like Isaac hadn’t seen that coming. Still, the kid’s new idea wasn’t that bad; in the back of his mind Isaac had been toying with the idea of causing just such a distraction as a backup plan in case things went more south than they already were.

Of course, there was always the plan of just ditching the kid. Isaac knew he could make it out on his own, and he already had enough money to cut his losses. The only problem was that the kid was still wearing his clothes…

Isaac started to nod and then stopped. He looked up at the group of mutant inmates. Questions about the new plan started to form in his mind. So the kid wanted to

1) Make it so most of the mutants in here could free themselves and run amok, causing a distraction.

2) Tell their current gang which other mutants to free and where to meet up, hoping that they’d be able to find everyone in the chaos they hoped to cause.

and 3) Hope that everyone made it to the getaway vehicle in time and that there weren’t too many “friends” tagging along.

You know what? Whatever. Isaac didn’t care anymore. At least this way he only had to look after the kid instead of the whole group and Rhett could only blame himself if things went wrong.

“Whatever you say, boss.” The words were not without a note of derision. Isaac dropped his voice to a low growl. “But you have to be ready to leave them if they don’t make it.”

Isaac straitened up and casually looked at the stairwell. “Let’s get moving. And you probably don’t need to keep wearing my clothes anymore. They’re probably too hot for you, too. Stow them the next chance you get; I don’t want to carry you if you pass out.” If he had to, it’d be easier to grab the clothes and run if they were in a book bag rather than on a body.

Just in case.

Leo’s Darth Vader mask tipped down as he looked at Calcifer’s feet. The man brought up a good point. Leo had to be ready to make the hard call to leave people behind if it came to that.

A loud clang down the hall made the kid jump. He tried to ignore the hyena-like laughter that followed, a clear reminder that he had already made a mistake.

“You're right.” He also wanted it to be clear to Calcifer that he was taking this seriously. “If it comes down to it, we leave. But we at least need to give ourselves a fighting chance at escape."

> "...you probably don’t need to keep wearing my clothes anymore."

"There's not enough room in my bag and you said you'd need them later. It's fine." He was far too stubborn to pass out and he figured all the extra layers only made him harder to

Having made up his mind, Leo went to officially pass off the bolt cutters and pass on the message. Everybody got one buddy pass redeemable for a single friend they could spring.

He described the meeting place as a good run from the North wall where there was an overpass. Leo had arranged for a vehicle to be there and had confirmed it was waiting for them as of 2pm today. They were only going to get out if they kept to the rule of only one buddy and no telling. That meant they were motivated to stick to the rules. The signal, of course, was the moment when the power went out.

While Leo had been taking, Calcifer made short work of the locked door.

“Good luck.” He was hopeful that the mutants would be successful. He even got an echoed "Good Luck" back from the gravity manipulator.

All of their mutants went up. Leo and Cal had to go down. "I have a diagram..." He fished in his bag, all his papers hopelessly crumpled by now.

Isaac melted the lock on the stairwell door. The kid was still wearing his clothes, stubborn prick, but it’d be best not to push the issue and raise suspicion. For now, Isaac would just have to stay close to him.

The door had to be wrenched open, bearing the resistance of some bent hinges. At least there was a getaway plan in place. Isaac thought through the geography: their entry hole was on the east side while the car was on the north side. That meant they’d either have to run around the outside of the prison or dig a new hole. Taking the direct route through the north wall would be faster, but would broadcast the direction of their escape. The east hole would be less telling, but it was probably under greater scrutiny. Then there was the distance to the overpass. From what Isaac had seen when they first arrived, it would be a long run. A cold run.

“I will need my clothes back by the time we get out of here,” he told Rhett as they hurried down the stairs. “It’s cold out, and I don’t think you want me glowing like a beacon all the way to the car.”

The base of the stairs opened into a network of rooms connected by narrow hallways. The path on Rhett’s diagrams let them to an airlock-style arrangement of metal doors with electric locks powered by a guard sitting in a viewing room behind two layers of bullet-proof glass. As Isaac melted his way through, the guard spoke into his radio. Wherever they were now, the prison knew about it. No more bots, though. Finally, the two of them arrived in a large room with three hulking generators, two of which were running. Isaac grimaced at the thought of more electric shocks, but it was one of the last things between him and getting paid.

“Alright, kid, it’s gonna get really dark after I bust these. This is probably going to be your last chance to look at your papers. Make sure you know exactly how you want to get out of here and to the car, then let’s do this.”

Uh. Yeah he was gonna need his clothes. Duh. That would get real awkward real fast. "You say the word and they're yours. Just keeping them warm." And handy. Seriously. He didn't have the room in his bag and there was the issue of bags tending to be black holes for things like gloves. Leo wouldn't risk losing a single piece of Calcifer's clothes.

Leo eyed the guard as he stepped through in Calicfer's wake. It was really weird to see the man whole and wary and yet unwilling to act. Of course, would Leo be willing to act against someone like his heat elemental buddy? Probably not.

Rather than speak, Leo jerked his head to the side to indicate that the guard should move away from the console. The teen moved slowly and respectfully to indicate the man's gun. He thought about it. Leo could see that much through the plastic veneer of his Darth Vader mask. The guard thought about pulling the weapon and using it.

"The holidays are coming up." A low blow, but a poignant reminder. "Hospital bills aren't as fun as Christmas presents." It was a bluff as if Leo had the power to damage this man. One flick of the eyes toward Calcifer wading through the lock system and he raised his hands away from his belt.

Leo divested his gun and taser. Those went onto the table next to the computer. One glance at the CCTV showed that the halls around this area were clear. The guard's radio squawked and the humans at least both jumped at the sound. The guard scrabbled to turn the sound off so that they wouldn't hear. Leo moved his body between the computer screen and the guard.

Okay. He could do this. Leo pulled his notepad out of his bag and flipped to a page of handwritten notes. He hadn't dared print this part out at the Mansion. Jousten had scary good intel and really, very scary levels of access. This was the trump card, the one thing he'd been hoping not to have to use.

Leo typed fast using key commands to tab between functions and windows as needed rather than sully himself with using the mouse. He tripped himself up a few times with his double layer of gloves, but the commands, once in proper syntax and typo-free, worked just as promised.

He sent a red herring alarm to all further units. 10-33 to the top floor of the isolation ward meant all unassigned META and guard units were piling toward the south side of the prison and busying themselves with stairs. Leo knew that 99% of those in isolation were the worst of the worst so they hadn't wanted any of those guys to get out easy. He'd wanted a way to handle that should they have to cut the power and risk an all-out break.

And maybe the guards were smart enough to not follow that call, but maybe it would, at least, give them some clearance.

Calcifer called out his warning and Leo nodded, "Gimmie fifteen seconds." He fully hit his stride when he executed the commands to unlock all the outer doors without a single typo. He knew there was still a physical shank bolt to deal with according to the diagrams, but there was no way around that until they got there. The guards had easy unlock access for the inner doors with a keypad code: 97552. It made a kind of "Y" pattern across the configuration of the keys so that had been easy to remember. Leo triggered all the inner doors in the north, east, and west sections. He hit the enter key and prayed that it had time to propagate.

"5. 4." The blip showed up indicating that the command prompt was ready for its next command. "3. 2." Leo watched the screen and spammed alt+f4 a couple times for good measure. "1."

Darkness fell.

The kid yanked his notepad into his bag and grabbed the guard's access card out of its housing. He threw the plastic into the darkened hallway. He then grabbed the gun and taser off the counter so the guard couldn't take advantage of their retreat.

"Okay!" Leo ran toward the still glowing form of his ally and dropped the gun, notepad, and taser into his bag so that he could start stripping off Cal's gloves. "Can you wear this stuff yet? Hide your light?" He started them running out the way Cal had brought them in. They had a few stairs to hike up too, but then Leo intended for them to simply run out the front gate at the north side of the building. He would wait to relate that information until they were out of easy earshot of the guard with the radio, but... yeah. Hopefully something about this was going to go alright.

Things were moving now. Fast. Isaac had assumed that, like everything else, cutting the power would fall to him. It wasn’t until he turned around to make sure the kid was ready to run that he saw him entering commands into some kind of console with a cowed guard against the wall.

Gimmie fifteen seconds. The reply carried overtones of a parent’s “Yes, dear, I’m watching” that made Isaac cringe involuntarily. He was no child.

Then the lights went out. Then the boy started running. And now Isaac was running after him, an outstretched arm tapping the walls from time to time to verify their position in the dim half-light of his own glow.

Isaac’s eyes scanned the corridor wildly. This was wrong. He should be the one in charge of the situation. He should leading the way out. He should be disposing of obstacles bringing things under control. But there was nothing to destroy or control, just a frightened boy to follow. Isaac’s body chased Rhett as his mind struggled to catch up. He needed something to use as an anchor. He needed something to fight. He needed something.

>>”Can you wear this stuff yet? Hide your light?”

The words echoed down Isaac’s mind. The thought of getting his clothes back sparked with the idea of getting himself out on his own and brought him back to the moment. He looked at the kid, who was trying to shed his gloves and his emotions focused into familiar disdain.

“Boxers first, kid! Don’t you ever dress yourself?” That and the boxers, by necessity, were the most resilient of his clothes. They could handle a decent amount of heat. With the lights out, burning was the only way he could see in these corridors. He couldn’t go dark just yet.

He had mostly forgotten that Calcifer was buck nekkid. From studious avoidance or sheer mental block, either way it had taken a moment to parse.

Oh. Oh! Boxers! Those were in his bag. Leo turned to the side as he scampered and grabbed the boxers out from his bag. Some papers tried to go flying and he had to stop and grab them up again. That gave Calcifer time to run by and grab the boxers as he passed him.

The sounds they heard from above in the prison proper were some that might haunt him for the rest of Leo's life. At least one gun went off in the enclosed space behind them making Leo's ears ring. Did the guard have his gun back? Was he shooting at their retreat or something else?

He hesitated again just inside a heavy door, the last obstacle between themselves and potential utter mutant chaos of the prison courtyard. Leo made sure to shuck Cal's shoes and coat. He wasn't cold afterward, but some amount of his sweat ran cold from nerves anyway.

"Ready?" He wanted to ask to hold Cal's hand, but it was a bit too big a hit to his pride to ask. Besides. Leo had the keys. Was Calcifer dark yet? Were they forgetting something? It felt like they were forgetting something. Leo bounced on the balls of his feet, more than ready to use his nervous energy to their benefit and full out run to the north gate.

Isaac was back in control. While the kid was still stumbling with his papers, Isaac had reached the end of the corridor and melted the lock on the door. Rhett probably had some way to open it, but it felt better to do things by force. With the kid’s arrival, Isaac had cooled and finished getting dressed.

>>”Ready?”

Isaac’s ribs ached, there was a pain in his leg, and his breath came in the metered cadence of an athlete mid-way through some vigorous exercise. But adrenaline was flooding his veins. There was no way he wasn’t going to make it out of this.

“North gate?” Isaac asked, assuming Rhett had planned on the most direct route. The kid was jumping with nervous energy.

Isaac pushed the door open. “Let’s do this!”

The tunnel exit opened onto a sea of anarchy. Inmates of every kind had turned the power outage into a full-scale riot, pouring out into the yard through Isaac’s tunnels as well as several of their own making. The guards had retreated to the walls and towers, from which they fired canisters of pepper spray into the crowd below. Rough-looking inmates with bloodied hands roamed the yard in gangs, picking off members of rival gangs unfortunate enough to be caught on their own. Several of the mutants who could leap, fly, or climb were swarming the southeast tower, and the first of the META Scouts were leaping from the walls into the riot below.

Across this hellscape of smoke and violence, 400 yards distant, was the north gate. Guards from towers on either side swept the area with rifle-mounted flashlights, and Isaac thought he could see lying on the ground the body of an inmate who’d tried to make a break for it.

Well, could be worse.

He grabbed Rhett by the arm and sprinted into the chaos. “Run!”

Whoa.

Later, when they made a movie about this— and Leo was sure they would —the movie studio would have to spend a fortune on special effects to get it right.

The entire scene was wreathed in acrid smoke. Not only was stuff on fire, but people were too. Some of theme even seemed to be enjoying it. Things whizzed around making Leo twitchy. He ducked a metal something that ricocheted off the back of a bald and shiny head. Beanbag pellets, bullets, was that a severed robot leg?

Cal grabbed Leo's arm and shouted before he took off. If he hadn't Leo might have gotten lost in the show and forgotten that this was a dangerous war zone.

He was a human in the middle of a very, very not human situation.

So he ran.

Something clipped him in the shoulder. He tripped on something. It didn't matter. He RAN and he wasn't going to stop until he found that overpass.

The kid was a weight. Isaac knew he could drop him, but that would also mean dropping a significant amount of money. Not yet. Things weren’t impossible yet. If he needed to, he could ditch later. For now, he could spare one arm to haul a figurative sack of cash.

It wasn’t easy, though. He constantly had to pull Rhett from side to side, weaving between the ghostly figures in the smoke. Tear gas burned his eyes and choked him through his mask. A fist smeared in blood struck his jaw. Isaac punched at its source and kept running; this was no place to stop.

Isaac slowed his sprint as they approached several figures huddled by the chain link fence separating them from the main gate. He pulled Rhett up close behind him. He was preparing to punch and run when he recognized a face.

“Took you long enough,” said the armor mutant from before, holding the bolt cutters and standing next to a fresh hole in the fence.

“Yeah,” said the gravity mutant. “We got a problem.” He motioned to the hole. Roughly thirty yards beyond the fence and still groaning was the figure of a fallen inmate, occasionally illuminated by the rifle scopes sweeping the area in front of the gate.

Isaac nodded. That was bad. As long as he was cooled he could probably take a shot from those rifles- armor guy might be able to take one, too- but his cash bag couldn’t. To make things worse, he’d need to melt through the lock once he reached the gate, and he didn’t want to risk taking a shot while doing that. He looked away from the gate and scanned the length of the wall. He could try melting a new hole, but he’d have to strip down again and he’d be glowing like a flare while he did it. With the guards on heightened alert with the riot, there was no way he wouldn’t be seen, and even if he didn’t get shot immediately they’d still have to wait for the hole to cool. No, the gate was the best way.

Isaac looked back at the towers framing the gate. “Best” still wasn’t “good”. They had to get rid of those riflemen. He squinted against the dark; it looked like there was a bridge connecting the two posts. If only I could get up there… Isaac looked around for the winged mutant, but didn’t see him in the small crowd. Damn.

However…

“You!” Isaac pointed at the gravity mutant. “Can you get me up to the tower?” The man stared back blankly. “Can you blast me up there??” Understanding clicked in the mutant’s face, followed by hesitation.

“I don’t know, man… maybe. But you won’t like it. Even if you get up there, you’ll be in a pretty bad shape.”

“I’ll manage.” Isaac said tersely, trying to hid the pain in his ribs. He looked at the rest of the group. “I’ll come back down once it’s clear. Then we’ll need to get the gate open. FAST.”

He looked back at the gravity mutant. “Ready?” The man nodded. Shaking his shoulders loose, he glared through the hole in the fence, exhaled, inhaled, and started sprinting again as best he could.

10 yards.

20 yards.

30 yards. He passed the figure on the ground.

40 yards.

Light blinded his eyes. There was a loud crack accompanied by a sudden, sharp pain in his chest. He clenched the pain behind his teeth and kept running.

50 yards.

WHAMMM!! The ground struck him like a fist and threw him into the air. There was the crash of glass and the solid thud of a concrete beam. Isaac fell to the floor and rolled over onto his hands and knees. He was in.