So, let's all thank
dreamon for nudging me into coming back to the story. There are still a couple of chapters left, but let's see how this escape plan finally pays off
Journal entry #28, September 10th, 2011
I’ve never been one for magic tricks. I’ve never enjoyed watching a magician openly tricking my mind because it feels a lot like paying someone to show you how easy your brain can be fooled with a few distractions and some misdirection.
Worst of all: he won’t tell you how he’s pulling off the trick, to begin with.
Waiting for Max and John to pull their own brand of magic tricks feels a lot like watching a magician on a stage: you know incredible things will happen—but only if the magician is skilled enough to fool you.
Chapter Sixty-One
Now You See Me
From inside the car, two pairs of binoculars centered on the base’s entrance, waiting for something to happen. Max had not known what kind of diversion John could create with this “mindwarp” thing, and so, both Liz and Anne kept looking for something unexpected.
On her cellphone speaker, Alex had a sense of what was going on in the base. He’d turned off all main cameras, but he was still using some peripheral ones to keep an eye on things.
“Everybody is gathering around the ship, looking scared,” Alex told them.
“Any sign of Max or John?” Anne asked, binoculars firmly in place.
“Nothing. They’re still inside the building, that much I can tell you. I have eyes on the ship and the outside, so whenever they reach the last stretch of the escape plan, we’ll know.”
Seconds passed in tensed silence.
“You sounded surprised to hear about John’s mindwarp skill,” Liz said, finally giving the binoculars a rest. Alex would tell them the moment they were coming out, after all.
“John doesn’t like doing it. He’s rather…inexperienced with it. Molecular manipulation, telekinesis, fire-starting, he loves those things. Can do them in his sleep, I bet. Healing, shielding, dreamwalking…those drain him. So he does them when necessary, but it’s not something he has to practice on a daily basis. Maybe if he did them more often, they wouldn’t be so tiring.”
Anne sighed, placing the binoculars down as well. “But then there are things that scare even him. If he gets really angry, things tend to explode around him, so he keeps a tight leash on his negative emotions. And making people see whatever he wants? That’s a big no. You see, he was controlled all of his life while he was at that base,” she said, pointing with the binoculars forward, “so he despises everything that has to do with controlling what people think or what they should do. He told Max he could sustain it for twelve minutes, but he has no way of knowing that. He’s never been that good with it because he never uses it.”
“He might be good at it because he’s good at the others,” Liz said, hopeful.
“Yeah, I’d believe that when he’s here, safe and sound.”
“They’re coming out!” Alex shouted over the phone, and both Liz and Anne raised the binoculars again. They couldn’t see beyond the first checkpoint, and those black doors remained as closed as ever. If it had been nerve-wracking to watch Max being handcuffed and taken away less than thirty minutes ago, it was downright terrifying to wait for his escape.
“No, wait, I only see Max—or John? I can’t tell them apart. But one of them is coming.”
“What do you mean just one? Where’s the other?” Anne frantically asked.
“I don’t know. Soldiers are running past him, though.”
“John,” Anne breathed. “It has to be John who’s misguiding them.”
“What about the cameras? Do you see anything going on with the ship?” Liz asked, feeling her soul sink. There was only one reason why John would be coming out of the base alone: if Max was dead or captured beyond rescuing.
I can’t do this again. I can’t keep rescuing one just to lose the other.
“Something’s happening,” Alex said. “I think…I
think not all of the soldiers are going back into the building? They’re standing looking around as if they have no idea what’s going on.”
“It’s falling,” Anne said with sudden clarity. “The mindwarp is falling apart. John can only keep it up for a few minutes, and that’s with just me. He has to deal with dozens of minds here.”
“I’m sure he’s going to come up with something else,” Liz said, placing a hand on her shoulder, while they kept watching the front doors. Their car was ready to go. They just needed for Max and John to reach it.
Shots rang in the air a moment later. A mix of hollow handguns and rapid machine guns.
“No,” Anne whispered, “Oh, God, John, please don’t die.
Please.”
“Alex! What’s happening?” Liz demanded, her heart in her throat and her stomach sinking like rocks in the sea.
“They’re shooting to empty air. I mean, Max-John-whoever he is, he’s walking right behind them. They’re not shooting at him. I repeat,
they’re not shooting at him.”
“It’s not going to last,” Anne said, her knuckles white as she held onto the binoculars. “He has to get out of there before the whole sham collapses, and everybody sees reality once again.”
“Okay, guys?” Alex said, “He’s picking a car. He’s—he’s in. I think he had the keys. Oh, he’s moving. He’s moving! He’s—wait, what the hell? He’s going back to the building entrance.”
“Max is still alive,” Liz breathed out. “John is going back for Max. He has to be. I bet that—”
She never finished that sentence.
The car’s floor rumbled under them, making the vehicle vibrate more and more until, finally, an explosion erupted from the base, black smoke and fire filling the air above the entrance to the base.
More explosions followed as both Liz and Anne left the safety of the car to see what was going on. Angry flames leaped into the air, and ashes started to rain on them. She could hear shouts but no more shooting, and she desperately willed the doors to open so Max and John could come out to safety.
“Alex?!” Liz asked the phone, her eyes not leaving the fire.
“I don’t know. The whole system went up in smoke—I mean, I’m blind. All the cameras are out. I have no idea what exploded or where Max or John is.”
“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Anne said, “It can’t be. John would have warned us. This is going to call attention to this place. This—John? Where the hell are you?”
Please, be fine. Please, be fine, Liz chanted in her mind as they both waited for the doors to open.
How long do we wait? the rational side of her asked when ten minutes had already passed with no sign of anyone coming from the front door. They could hear sirens in the distance now.
“Anne?” Liz tentatively asked, fearful. “Do you feel anything at all coming from John?”
Anne shook her head. “He’s concentrating too much on this, so I haven’t felt anything from him in days. One more reason to strangle him when he finally comes out of that damn base.”
They had a back-up plan. The plan where everything went to hell, and they had to return to Liz’s apartment to regroup and basically accept defeat. It had always been a real possibility that neither Max nor John would come out of there alive.
It can’t end like this. After everything, they can’t just die in the place that imprisoned them for so long.
The doors finally opened, and a dozen soldiers came out, maybe escaping from the inferno behind them, maybe securing the area so no curious onlookers would come by. Firefighters were coming, followed by police and ambulances.
“There’s no way they’re going to allow non-military personnel into a base that houses a spaceship,” Anne said. The soldiers seemed to think the same, as they argued with first respondents, while smaller yet potent explosions kept happening in the background.
And then, the most unexpected sound came from behind them.
“A little help here, please?” Max asked, panting while half-dragging an exhausted-looking John.
“Max!”
“John!”
Anne and Liz said at the same time.
“We better leave,” Max said as Liz opened the backdoor, and Max helped John getting inside. Anne had opened the opposite door and was helping him settle in. “We created way more chaos than we wanted, but it’s not going to last forever.”
She picked the driving seat. Max was beside her in no time.
“What happened?” she asked him, looking first at the base to make sure no one was paying attention to them, and then putting the car in reverse to get away as fast and quietly as they could.
“He couldn’t keep hiding the car. The noise, even the smell of it was going to tip the guards off. It was too much. So he directed everyone to blow up the ship. Once that was done, we walked here by a backdoor no one was paying attention to. It was the path of least resistance for his mind.”
“John? What’s wrong?” Anne asked as Liz hit the back road into the forest.
“I just need to sleep,” John said with a wicked smile while Anne held his face, inspecting him. “That and a kiss from you.”
For a moment there, Anne’s incredulous look was comically frozen in time, but before she could act on it, John’s head swiftly moved forward to steal a kiss—and then promptly fell asleep on her shoulder.
“He’s completely wiped out,” Max said, turning to look behind. “But he did it. I think he was able to pull the last part of the plan off.”
“The last part?” Liz asked.
“He made them think we were boarding the ship before it blew up. They think—if he pulled it off, then they think we’re both dead.”
“A disappearing act,” Liz whispered with a broad smile.
“A disappearing act like no other,” Max said, nodding.
Liz accelerated. She couldn’t wait to celebrate the best magic trick of them all: disappearing into a life of freedom.