CA Chapter Forty (Patreon)

A piercing siren woke her from a restless sleep, filled with nightmares where she chased after a green-gowned figure she could never seem to catch. When she sat bolt upright in bed, her hands stretched out in front of her, clawing at the darkness of her bedroom. The only light came from her screen, where it lay face down on the bedside table. The glow of the screen backlit its rectangular shape, and when she picked it up, she saw that the screen was turned up to maximum brilliance.

“Ugh,” she grumbled, swiping at it. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a fire,” Amythyst’s voice said, at the same time Ava read the message on the screen.

EMERGENCY! A fire has been detected. Fire suppression has been initiated, but you are instructed to evacuate immediately. Follow the emergency map provided here, and assemble in your designated Emergency Evacuation Location. Take your screen, but leave other personal items behind. If a door feels warm to the touch, exit through the egress window nearest you. Egress windows are marked on the map.

“Did you do this?” Ava asked, as she stumbled out of bed, trailing blankets and knocking her pillow to the floor. She picked up the yoga pants and pullover shirt she had worn the day before and started pulling them back on.

“Not me,” Amythyst said, “but I think it’s intentional. It’s spreading too fast to be another cooking fire, and it’s nowhere near the kitchens.” Her voice was filled with suppressed excitement. “I think it may be George’s people, here to get Amy out. There are no rats, but otherwise this is exactly how I would have done it.”

Ava flicked the lights, but the power was out. Probably a safety feature? Maybe it was an electrical fire and they were trying to get it under control. She shook her screen, and the LED flicked on, bathing the room in light. “Did you ask George?”

“I… can’t.” Amythyst’s voice was small and tight. “He went into V-fib in the helicopter on the way home yesterday. They got him stabilized, and flew him to the nearest hospital, but he’s still in intensive care.”

Muttering curses, Ava opened her bedroom door before she remembered she was supposed to check to make sure it wasn’t hot. Fortunately, the room was clear, and she couldn’t even smell smoke. “Why would George’s people be here, if he’s… unavailable?”

“Uncle George is a planner,” Amythyst responded promptly. “It would be just like him to give them orders to proceed with an extraction in case something happened to him. He would never risk leaving Amy in danger.”

Ava slid her feet into her shoes and reached for the doorknob. It was cool, so she turned it cautiously. Nothing happened. Frowning, she turned it again and put some effort into her pull. It still didn’t budge. She cursed some more.

“What’s wrong?” Amythyst asked, an edge of worry creeping into her voice.

“The door is still locked,” Ava answered, tugging at the knob so hard she was afraid it might come off in her hand. She could hear people talking and moving outside, so she tried pounding on it, hoping someone might be able to open it from the outside, but no one answered.

“That’s not right,” Amythyst said. “All doors should have automatically unlocked when the alarm sounded.”

“Even though the power is out?” Ava asked.

“Yeah. They use magnetic locks in all the low security areas, including residential. They need a current to work, so when the power goes out, no locks. There are electric locks in the high security areas, because they require electricity to open, but managers carry a device that uses electromagnetic induction so they can still open them in case of emergency evacuation.”

Ava turned the knob a few more times, but the door showed no indication that it planned to open any time soon. “Well, this one is broken. Where is the egress window?” Turning her screen toward her, she tapped on the link for the map. The blueprint-style image promptly opened, and Ava turned to look at the large window currently occupied by several sad-looking houseplants.

Crossing the room, she felt around until she found a small lever that was almost completely hidden along the window frame. Pulling it out, she tried turning, then pushing, but nothing happened. “How does this thing work?” she muttered.

Amythyst could see whatever Ava could, since they were essentially using the same ‘eyes’, so she knew what was going on. “This is a slider style,” the AI said. “You should just… slide it.”

Tugging at the lever, Ava tried maneuvering it in every direction, but the window refused to move. Finally, the lever snapped off with a metallic ping. “Damn it!” Ava yelped, shaking her stinging fingers. “That’s it!” She turned away and strode over to the heavy, solid chairs that sat by the small dining table. Picking one up, she glared at the window before taking a running start and swinging the chair against the glass with full force. The chair bounced back, falling from her hands, which were somehow both numb and painful at once, and would have landed on her foot if her heightened reflexes hadn’t allowed her to dance back out of the way.

“What the hell is that stuff?” she demanded, staring at the unmarked windowpane.

“Polycarbonate,” Amythyst answered grimly. “All of the windows in the house are polycarb. It cost a fortune, but Carl is nothing if not consistent. Glass windows are an invitation to thieves, you know.”

“So how do I get out of here?” Ava asked, staring around the suite that had seemed like a refuge the day before, and now felt like a trap.

“Look at the front door again,” Amythyst said.

Ava did, and saw the same thing the AI had noticed. “The hinges are on the inside.”

“Yep,” Amythyst said, and Ava could hear the grin in her voice. This was like one of her puzzles in the game. “Do you have a screwdriver?”

It turned out that one of the many things Felicia had included in Ava’s ‘moving boxes’ was a small toolbox, complete with all the essentials, including several screwdrivers of varying sizes. Ava had shoved it into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink when she unpacked it, figuring she’d never need it. Now, she flung open the cabinet doors and pulled it out. The plastic latch popped, spilling tools across the tile, and she scooped up a particularly long, skinny one.

When Ava first moved into her small, shabby apartment, she had discovered that the lock on the bedroom door was broken when she found herself trapped inside. Even then, she’d known her landlord, Dominic Mayhew, was a scumbag, so she hadn’t wanted to call him. Fortunately, she’d had her screen with her, and a quick search showed her how to use a screwdriver and a hammer to pop the pins out of the hinges, and just take off the door. Of course, she’d had to use a nail file and a hardback book, but it had worked in the end.

This was much easier.

A few minutes later, she wiggled the door loose, letting it fall to the ground beside her as she stared out into an eerily dark and empty hallway. The people she had heard outside only a short time before have vanished, leaving doors standing slightly ajar and a few dropped items on the ground. She looked down the hall toward the communal area, which had an emergency exit that leads outside, at least according to her map.

Resolutely, she turned and started jogging the other way, toward the door that would take her deeper into the house.

“Ava?” Amythyst asks, voice sharp. “Where are you going?”

Ava shook her head. “I don’t like this. I’m going to check on Amy.”

“You can’t!” Amythyst said. “If George’s people are here, it’s possible there may be… violence. Let the professionals take care of it.”

Barking a laugh, Ava opened the door to the outside corridor. The security pad is just a gray rectangle on the wall, and the door swings wide easily. “Which professionals, exactly? Carl’s? Or George’s? The ones you aren’t even sure are here? You said yourself that if we had decided to try to get Amy out, you would have planned it just like this. I’m just going to make sure Amy is all right, and if I see a chance to help her escape, I’m going to take it.”

Amythyst sounded worried now. “I may have been exaggerating a little when I said that! With the power out, I can’t see where the fire is, exactly, but I think it started in that little Safe Room where Carl met George. It had already spread into Carl and Liam’s offices before the house system went down. If they haven’t gotten it under control, it could be encroaching on the medical wing by now. You’re heading straight into it, Ava!”

Ava paused, wrinkling her nose as she caught the first whiff of smoke in the air. Thanks to that moment of hesitation, she caught a flash of light from the corner ahead of her. Turning her own light on the area near her, she saw one of the many long, narrow tables that proudly displayed expensive-looking objets d’art throughout the house. She shook her screen, turning off the light, and dove under the table, nearly lying on her side as she flattened herself into the cramped space.

Two dark figures turned the corner, each holding a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. Their faces were indistinguishable behind the bright light, and Ava froze as they walked slowly past her, pausing to push open the door of a room slightly further down the hall so they could peer inside.

“Clear,” one said, and they both moved on, leaving Ava behind.

“Guns,” Amythyst said, speaking the word that pulses in Ava’s mind with each beat of her heart. They really had guns, and if she’d been a little slower, and one of them was a little too jumpy… Boom. Game over.

“I just need to be more careful,” Ava murmured, pulling herself out of her hiding place with shaking hands. “They all have to be using something to communicate, right? Can you tap into it and warn me before I run into any more of them? Maybe figure out what’s going on?”

“Not really,” Amythyst admitted. “I hacked their comms shortly after we got here, but they’re using code tonight. Unless you have a cheat sheet to tell us what ‘secsat-ten’ and ‘amber-seven-seven’ mean, the best I can do is give you a general location. Without the cameras up, they could be several yards away from where I think they are, though. Seriously, Ava, you should-”

Ava shook her screen light back to life, cutting off the voice in her ear. “Amythyst, you were the one who said we could do this. You’re always the one who says we can do it! Why are you trying to get me to give up now?”

“Because there’s a better way! Because we haven’t had time to plan! Because this isn’t under our control! Because… because I’m afraid you’ll get hurt,” Amythyst admitted, her voice dropping so low Ava could only make it out because of the thick silence that blanketed the halls. Her voice picked up again a moment later, as she sharply said, “Go left. There’s another team to the right.”

Ava dodged left as the hall split, sliding into a room immediately on her right, then tucking herself back behind the wide-open door. Lights flickered through the crack and around the edges of the door, but the guards turned left, going down the hall Ava had just exited. Their footsteps were faster than the first pair, and they didn’t pause to check any rooms.

“All right,” Amythyst said, seeming to calm down as she accepted that Ava was going to do this with or without her help. “You need to go around the wide hallway that goes by the second parlor and the large dining room. Check your screen.” Ava looked down at her screen, which still displayed the map of Landon House, though the icon that should have indicated her own location was no longer visible, thanks, no doubt, to Amythyst.  Several red ones appeared instead, moving through the halls in pairs.

“Sorry, it took me a minute to think of this, since I wasn’t ready,” the AI said, sounding chagrined. “Remember, the locations aren’t completely accurate. We’re indoors, and they’re pinging off nearby cell towers, since the local system is down.”

“All right,” Ava whispered, feeling the presence of those red dots, even though none of them should actually be close enough to hear her. She peered out of the room she’d been hiding in, looking for the flare of flashlight beams reflecting from the walls. Looking down at the map, she turned right as she entered the hall. “I can’t keep looking at it and watch where I’m going at the same time, Amythyst, so you’re going to have to warn me if I start to go the wrong way.”

“I can do that,” Amythyst affirmed. “Just don’t move too fast.”

Ava caught another whiff of smoke, and the beam of light emitted by her screen looked slightly hazy as it passed through the air in front of her. “I’ll move exactly as fast as I need to,” she said, crouching so she could run beneath the hovering fog. “I have a really bad feeling that time is running out, for all of us.”