\u201cJane, this was a terrible idea,\u201d said Kevin.<\/p>\n
\u201cShut it, kid,\u201d said the large man with the automatic rifle. \u201cJust drop that helmet on the ground and walk slowly and quietly towards the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turns out that in the middle of a field, most of our powers weren’t actually very useful, tinfoil hats or not. No doors for Marie to open. Kevin didn\u2019t know the guard, so he didn\u2019t sense him coming. No technology for Jane to tinker with. And none of us were bullet-proof.<\/p>\n
The hill had a kind of bunker built into it. The entrance was at an angle into the hill and screened behind a couple of trees. From a distance, you\u2019d never spot it.<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t a door on the entrance, I noticed. Inside the entrance was a kind of security booth with a transparent screen in front of it \u2013 bullet-proof glass, I had to assume. No door there, either. To get into the booth you had to go through a full-height turnstile in an alcove on the right-hand end, and it was clearly controlled from inside. There was another guard there, watching a security monitor.<\/p>\n
We were ushered down a short, doorless, concrete-lined tunnel into an old-style prison area with metal bars across the otherwise open fronts of three cells. Two were empty, but the middle one held a rather pretty but very rumpled girl with black hair and long eyelashes. In contrast to skinny Jane and tiny Marie, she was noticeably girl-shaped.<\/p>\n
On a rickety table sat a device of some kind, which buzzed gently. An outdoor extension cable, the kind that builders use, led from it off up the tunnel, back towards the guard station, and a workshop lantern plugged into the same power supply gave a harsh light. A security camera with a red light showing was fixed to the wall above the table, and its cable also led back to the guard station.<\/p>\n
The guard gestured Kevin into the left-hand cell. I followed, and he locked us in. He unlocked the middle cell and put Jane and Marie in there with the other girl. The cells had concrete walls between them, so we could no longer see each other, but we would be able to talk.<\/p>\n
Kevin was clutching his head and looking haunted and disoriented. I guessed that the buzzing thing was the power damper.<\/p>\n
The guard checked the doors again, and left.<\/p>\n
The girls immediately began talking. It quickly emerged that the pretty girl was Karen, and that she had been here for a day or two, she thought. Mr Brown had shown up at her school in Sydney and abducted and drugged her, and the light stayed on all the time, so she was a bit hazy on exact times. My guess was that he had headed on to Sydney when he failed to pick us up in Auckland.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was so weird?,\u201d she said, in a pinched Australian accent. \u201cNot like a real person somehow?\u201d She had the habit which some girls have of making statements sound like questions by lifting the pitch of her voice at the end of her sentences. \u201cAnd I thought he was going to kill me, or, you know\u2026 hurt me? But he just brought me here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know where this is?\u201d asked Jane.<\/p>\n
There was a pause, and I imagined Karen staring at Jane, flummoxed. \u201cHow did you get here?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came \u2013 a different way. We didn\u2019t see where it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guard sounded like he was from the US,\u201d Kevin said. \u201cThe South, I think, but I only know American accents from TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Kevin,\u201d said Jane. \u201cHe’s from your part of the world. New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin let that pass \u2013 we New Zealanders hate to be lumped in with Australians \u2013 and asked, \u201cDo the guards come round, or do they just watch the monitor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey feed me now and then,\u201d she said. \u201cDid that Mr Brown guy get you too?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, no,\u201d said Jane. \u201cActually, we were coming here to rescue you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou knew I was here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were pretty sure someone was here \u2013 one of\u2026 our kind of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean you can\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane hushed her. \u201cDon\u2019t let\u2019s talk about it where the guards can hear. I don\u2019t know if our enemies know exactly what we can do, and I\u2019d like to keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
While they were talking, I fumbled one of Jane\u2019s devices out of my belt. She\u2019d made the belt, too. It was a belt for hiding things. The guard, being shorthanded, hadn\u2019t searched us, but if he had, we were prepared.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere aren\u2019t any proper doors here,\u201d said Marie, apparently irrelevantly unless you knew. \u201cGlass doors and anywhere I can see the other side \u2013 it doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin, will you take your coat off? You\u2019re the biggest,\u201d Jane said, no doubt equally mysteriously to anyone who was listening, including me in this case.<\/p>\n
We normally would have locked gazes at this point and shared our puzzlement, but he looked around the cell somewhat vaguely. His eyes slid past me – the tinfoil hat was still working, which I’d guessed from the fact that the guard hadn’t made me take it off. He began to take off the long coat he was wearing. I walked over to the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Centre will want to know about this place,\u201d Jane pattered on. \u201cMarie, do you think they\u2019ve been set up long, or only since the Incident?\u201d<\/p>\n
While the guards were, hopefully, focussing on her and the now intentionally nonsensical information she was \u201cleaking\u201d, I eased the device into the lock and gently clicked it open. I read a lot of the kind of books where picking locks is a thing, so I know how lockpicks work, though not how to actually use them. You have several different little tools, and you have to fiddle with them for a while to get the lock open. This was a Jane lockpick, though. It worked the way she thought it should work: you stuck it in the lock and turned.<\/p>\n
The cell was fairly new, and the lock moved easily. I swung the door slowly open and slipped through, quietly pushing it to behind me. I wasn’t sure how good the don’t-notice-me power was, tinfoil hat or not.<\/p>\n
There wasn’t much space between the cell door and the table, which is why I hadn’t just stayed outside the cell – I was afraid the guard would bump into me.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin,\u201d said Jane, \u201chow\u2019s that coat? You want to hang it across the door of your cell?\u201d<\/p>\n
Clever Jane. If Marie\u2019s power only worked when she couldn\u2019t see the other side of the door, the answer was to set it up so that she couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I strolled casually and, I hoped, unseen across the short distance to the humming box and pulled the cable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cJane, this was a terrible idea,\u201d said Kevin. \u201cShut it, kid,\u201d said the large man with the automatic rifle. \u201cJust drop that helmet on the ground and walk slowly and quietly towards the hill.\u201d Turns out that in the middle … Continue reading