Chapter 7: Violet

I had taken control, completely in a panic. The damn psychic had been fiddling with my mind. I could feel her butcher's fingers trying to tease me and Jen apart, so she could give that waste of space control. I lashed out, causing a bit more damage than I intended. I still lacked fine control and I was scared. I had knocked the psychic off me into a bookcase. She was winded, maybe a little bruised, but looked relatively unhurt. Things were looking bad. My twin's crazy actions had made what was self-defence into assault and lunacy. She'd got us locked up, and now this psychic had tried to kill me or something, meddling busy body.

I was just trying to work out what on earth to do to rectify the situation, when the stupid woman managed to knock herself out by pulling a load of files down on her head. I went to check if she was alright, it looked like she had just knocked herself out.

At this point, things went from bad to worse. The noise attracted a copper, who found me standing over the prone body of the psychic in a trashed room. He was dragging some young woman in cuffs with him.

"It's not what it looks like!" I tried.

"Hands on your head now!" he shouted.

I tried to comply as I raised my arms I inadvertently snapped the cuffs holding me. He turned towards the door called, "I need some backup in here!"

"You don't understand, she knocked herself out," I tried holding my hands out, palms up to show I didn't mean any harm.

The copper grabbed one of my arms, trying to twist it behind me, but it didn't work. I was significantly stronger than he was.

"Look, it was an accident.I don't mean you any harm. There's no need to get all worked up about it," I said, starting to get a little annoyed by his attempts to floor me.

He wasn't listening. He let me go, backing up a bit then pulled some sort of metal stun baton out. He jabbed the stun baton at me, I moved my hand to intercept it. When I grabbed the tip, but didn't feel a thing. I gripped it hard, crushing the metal like it was toffee, then pulled on the baton, yanking it from his grip. Bending it quite severely in the process, I tossed the mangled remains on the floor.

The cop stared at the ruined stun baton open mouthed. While he was distracted, the woman he had been leading sneaked up behind him and touched him with her hands, sparks flying from her fingers grounding through him. He cried out and shook then crumpled.

"Nice moves, hot stuff," the young woman said. She was maybe in her late teens to early twenties. She had vivid red hair and green cat-like eyes, and was a few inches shorter than me maybe 5'6", with a slim figure. She was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt with a light brown jacket. She had a quirky smile on her face as well as a slightly calculating look in her eyes.

"I'm Jo, Jo Trent." she said. "I think maybe we could help each other."

The stack of bodies around me was making it increasingly unlikely my story would be believed, so I was running out of options, "I'm listening."

"It looks like you are more than strong enough to smash your way out of this place, but once outside you'll be tracked by the security cameras within a few seconds of breaking out. Then the cops will have armed teams bring you down in minutes. I'm an electricity elemental and a technopath. I specialise in security systems, so I can kill the pigs security, loop their cameras, and as an added bonus, spike their computers, wiping out any recent records that have yet to make it into secure backup," she said.

"So why haven't you busted out already?" I asked.

"Three reasons. One, these nice bracelets. Two, this place is mostly secured by mechanical locks. Even if I could trick my way out of this block, there are still at least 3 other mechanically locked doors I can do bugger all about. Three, I'm not very tough physically. I can zap people, but its not very effective against more than a few. So even if they left all the doors open, I would only have to run into a couple of cops and I'd be scuppered," she answered with a smirk. "So what do you say? If we make it out OK, I have enough contacts to keep you hidden. There may even be some

work for someone with your skills, but make up your mind quick. Your playtime with short stuff over there is sure to bring the fuzz sooner or later."

I considered her offer, I could get away from here, start a new life away from all my old attachments. I would miss my parents and friends, but I doubted they would be happy with me, the evil twin as Jen put it, sticking around. It would mean becoming a criminal, but then I was probably already looking at a load of assault charges and some destruction of property. Jen had made it impossible for me to get out of this with her actions and now, what with this damn telepath, I doubted anyone would believe me. I didn't realistically see any other options.

"Alright I'm in. The name's Violet by the way." I answered.

Wasting no time I snapped her cuffs. We ran out down the corridor towards the nearest exit, keeping a careful eye out for coppers. Luckily, we seemed to be in a fairly quiet bit of the police station, and though we saw a couple of coppers coming and going, we always managed to hide somewhere and wait till they walked past. We ran across an office where Jo motioned me inside. She sat down in front of a terminal, touching her hand to the casing, small electrical sparks flowed over it. Then every screen in the room exploded and the lights went out. A few moments later, the emergency lights came on.

"Whoops!" said a slightly worried looking Jo. "I used a tad too much juice and blew out the main power, as well as the main computer. Well anyway, any records they have locally are toast, plus their security system is fried. So if we can get out of here in one piece, we are off scot free."

"Course they now know something is up and are scrambling everything they have to contain the situation," I said, to which Jo nodded.

I experimentally tapped the walls of the room. Most seemed to be light weight plaster board construction. We needed to get out fast, maybe it was time to use my new found strength for a purpose.

"Right then, since stealth is out, which direction do you reckon represents the shortest direct route to the outside?" I asked.

"That way," she said pointing, "it's about 10-15 meters, but there's a good few interior walls and a reinforced outer wall between here and there. Oh you're not thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"That concrete dust is going to ruin my outfit?"

"Ha, ha, ha, you are one crazy lady Vi, but I like your style."

"Stick close and pray none of these walls are structural."

I turned in the direction Jo had indicated and ran at the wall as fast as I could, using my new strength to propel me at great speed. As I got close, I threw my body at the wall like a missile. My high speed, coupled with my toughness, made me punch straight through the wall, several chairs, a desk, one book case, and land in a filing cabinet on the other side. As techniques went, it was a bit disorientating and loud, so for the next wall I braced myself sideways and shoulder barged the wall. Slamming into it with all my strength. I felt the same surge of power and the relatively light internal wall just exploded away from me, causing me to tumble through the reasonably large hole I had made. The next two walls were just as easy. Then we crashed into an occupied office with a couple of coppers in residence. They looked pretty surprised to see us. Jo zapped them before they could do anything.

I smashed through one more wall before I came up against the outside wall. I smashed into it, but it didn't give. I bounced straight off and was knocked back to the floor. I had knocked large chunks of masonry out of it, but I didn't make it through. I picked up a filing cabinet and threw it at the wall with all my might, it exploded papers all over the place and made the hole in the wall bigger, though it was still not through to the other side. I could probably have smashed my way through but it would take time, time we didn't have it wouldn't be long before someone noticed the series of holes smashed through the interior walls. There was a window nearby. It was pretty high up, and covered in metal security grating on the outside.

I jumped, easily making it up to the window, then smashed out the glass and bent the metal covering off the window. The drop outside was further than inside, due to the street level being lower but it looked survivable. I reached down and held out my hands to Jo, who grabbed on without a word. I lifted her easily, then lowered her down the other side. She dropped the distance to the ground, landing neatly and beckoning to me. I jumped out feeling brave and landed with a thump next to Jo, barely feeling a thing. The chaos of the power going out would allow us some time, but it wouldn't be long before someone spotted the gaping hole with torn metal gratings on the side of the police station haemorrhaging prisoners, or went to find out what that smashing noise was. Jo took the lead and we ran off, away from the police station. We were just about to round a corner, when Jo indicated to stop.

"There's a camera up ahead. I'm going to try and loop it." she said.

She stood there concentrating for a bit, sparks flying between her hands. She then looked up then we continued on. Periodically she would stop and repeat the process. I hoped this was working. Gradually we entered the more run down parts of town, Jo stopped less and less frequently as the CCTV coverage thinned out. We came to an old abandoned factory building, Jo led me in, taking me down into the basement, where she used a cleverly concealed door to get into a hidden area. It was a small entry way with the hidden door at one end and a thick steel door at the other. Jo shut the hidden door and knocked on the metal door.