“I hope this guy isn’t just jerking us around,” Cam says as we approach the metal detector. Not many visitors are allowed through these gates except lawyers and villain groupies who fudge birth certificates to show they’re “related” to the incarcerated. Sad. The only weapons allowed on-site are in the Hardcore Unit—their name not mine—where the criminals with superpowers are housed. We hand over our weapons to the guard, who sticks them in a lockbox before walking us through.
“Hell, I’d rather be here than where I was,” I say, getting my keys and wallet back. We walk down the beige hallway with pictures of the guards on the wall. “Did you call Harry about this?”
“I left a message, but I think he’s still at the Mike Spencer bombing site with Kowalski and Mirabelle.”
“Well, better them than us.”
The guard behind the bullet resistant glass at the reception area looks up from his magazine as we approach. “May I help you?”
“Detectives Cameron and Fallon here to interview prisoner Janus Manx,” Cam says.
“One moment please,” the guard says as he makes a call.
As we wait for confirmation, I turn around and lean against the wall with a sigh. I so just want to go home and crawl into bed, but no, instead I get to spend countless hours listening to a man tell me how he vivisected women. Fun all around. A guard wearing a Galilee Angels baseball cap with his head hung rounds the corner, followed by an Asian man dressed in a business suit. God, you could not pay me enough to work here.
As the guard passes, his head tilts up to gaze at me. I can only see half his face, but I can tell he’s very good looking: about forty, six foot, and medium build, with wide lips and brown eyes, the visible one winking at me. My body tenses a little for some reason. I swear I’ve seen him before. Where—
Cam’s angry booming voice interrupts my train of thought. “What do you mean he’s in the hole?”
I turn around to see the guard hanging up the phone. “I’m sorry, but he’s been in there all day.”
“But that’s impossible. His lawyer called us saying she spoke to him just hours ago.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. There is no way he made that call. I—”
“Holy shit! I need some help over here!” a man shouts around the corner.
Cam and I take off like rockets. About twenty yards away another guard kneels on the beige linoleum, beside him another man lies on the floor covered in blood and a pink frothy liquid that still bubbles. The smell of sizzling flesh with metallic acid and blood is overpowering. “Lockdown! We need a lockdown now!” the guard shouts into the radio on his shoulder.
Cam kneels down too, yanking off his jacket. “We need to stop the bleeding.”
The prostrate man, if he can be called that because I doubt he’s barely out of his teens, is as white as a ghost. His left hand is nothing but a pulpy stump, and he’s not dressed. He’s only in boxers and a gore-covered undershirt. Oh, fuck. I remember exactly where I’d seen that guard before. I look at Cam. “Alkaline! Fucking Alkaline is trying to escape!”
Instinct takes over. I take off running the way I came, passing the receptionist who shouts, “What the fuck is the matter with the security system?” into the phone. Not good.
As I’m going one way as fast as my feet can take me, the guard at the metal detector runs the other. We both stop. “What the fuck—”
“Did a guard with a baseball cap just leave?” I ask.
“Yeah, he—”
I don’t wait for the rest. I sprint toward the entrance, retrieving my car keys from my pocket. Just as I step out, booming gunshots ring out from the watchtowers above, their guns pointed down the road on the other side of the fence. He’s out.
As I approach my car, I notice a pair of legs on the ground about three spots away. The Asian man lays motionless next to his empty spot, his head at an odd angle and eyes open. I feel his broken neck for a pulse, but there isn’t one. Nothing I can do here. I leap up and get to my car.
My spare gun is in the locked glove box, and I retrieve it before I peel out of my spot, tires squealing loud enough to overpower the waning gunshots and barrel out the open gate. I turn right, the only way off the island toward the bridge. As I super-speed as fast as Justice, I get on my own radio. “Attention, this is Det. Joanna Fallon, badge number 5757. We have a prison break at Xavier Prison. I repeat, James Ryder, AKA Alkaline, has escaped from Xavier. I am in pursuit, about to cross onto Xavier Bridge. Known one dead, one injured. Send back-up immediately!” Dispatch does her job, ordering all available units toward the bridge. I spot the only car on the road as I cross onto the bridge, a red SUV about a quarter mile away. My blood is pumping and I can feel every inch of my skin. I can see why some people become adrenaline junkies. I floor it.