Chapter 294: Many of the CIA Do Not Escape from Me

Sunday, February 19, 2006 (Continued)

For the moment, the ground floor looked ignorable, so I got back to the, "Cause Massive Destruction" task. I lowered myself back down to level 5, stopping there. I floated the clothes I wanted to me, getting dressed in them quickly, then fetched the wallet I was stealing as well as the loose cash I'd pilfered and stashed elsewhere. I left the security tag where it was for the moment, as I was going to be moving around too much for a while and didn't want it triggering any somehow active sensors.

I'd only seen a small portion of level 5 before, and I wanted to make sure it was just labs. I sent the sight blob around, seeing that level 5 looked the same as the other lab levels. I quickly searched levels 4, 3, 2 and 1 too. There weren't many people around, and they all looked very worried. There were only a few things of particular importance:

• I found the impressively VERY large computer center. It had a few dim lights on and some of the computer equipment was still working, so I'd have to do something about that soon. There were half a dozen young, techie-looking people talking worriedly. I didn't see any helpful signs saying "Backups in this cabinet"

• On level 3 I found what I was pretty sure was the room used to monitor me, but it was empty. There was quite a lot of paperwork about me, but not after I'd set a small bonfire in the middle of the room. I'd come back later to make sure it'd done the job properly. It contained a single PC. I removed it neatly (including the screen, power cords, etc.), flying them to the elevator shaft then down to my level. I let everything drop down the shaft, except the main box, which I ripped apart to find the hard disk. I put that in my pocket for thorough destruction later, letting everything else drop.

• I found the Big Bosses' area on level 1. It was sadly unoccupied.

There were some Medium Bosses around, but no Biggies. The BIG Boss's office was obvious. I searched his paperwork quickly - learning his name, Seth Byrd - looking for "Anderson, Mark" because I wanted to destroy those files. He had several files and drawers, so it took a couple of minutes, but I found nothing. Nor, I realized, had I found my wallet, cellphone, ring and watch. Days ago I had unsuccessfully searched the lower levels for those, and had assumed that whoever had received me here had kept them.

I didn't have time to look through every office's paper files, but I should be able to find my stuff much quicker, so I searched all the offices for my stuff, finding it in the fourth office I checked, belonging to a guy called Armani Phillips. I wasn't going to be Mark Anderson anymore, so I didn't want the stuff back, not even the $2,500 cash in case my taking it might cause suspicion later. The presence of my stuff here just meant Phillips' office was worth searching further. I found a small file about me. There wasn't much in it, but I took the few seconds it needed to fly it to the room where they'd monitored me, and I added it to the small bonfire there, which was burning well.

I'd had an idea that might be useful so when the file was burning, I zipped the sight blob back to Phillips' office, pulled my OSU Student Card out of my wallet, put the wallet back, and then hid the Student Card under a large bookcase he had in his office. It might be a good idea to have some proof that I was here waiting to be 'discovered', presuming the place doesn't burn too much or is very thoroughly decontaminated.

I sent the sight blob to the computer center to search it for video cameras and independent power supplies. It had both. Power was being supplied by some large batteries that were easy to disconnect, which killed the emergency lights too. The cameras had always appeared non-functional but I pulled their cables anyway.

When I was ready, I finished wrecking the fuse boxes, video cameras and elevator doors on every level working up from 5, but not touching the big doors into the two shafts that went up to the ground floor. I found the phone system's electronic switchboard, and that got its plugs pulled in case it had battery power. From top to bottom the building was in darkness and - I particularly enjoyed - in fear; exactly the same as would happen if anyone ever used any of the products this place developed.

It was time for some more theater. I needed my body for this, so I floated myself up to the computer center's level and through the shaft's doors. From there I preferred to run in the old fashioned way than fly in my unpracticed way. There weren't many people on this level, so I easily made it to near the center without being seen, not that they could've seen me in the dark anyway.

I created a sight blob down hallway from me, so I could watch myself. I took off the jacket, dropping it on the ground, shut my eyes, then COVERED myself in light blobs, adjusting their brightnesses until it looked right. I was so bright it hurt to look at me. People looking at me would be able to see that there was a clothed human shape underneath, but there was far too much light to allow details to be seen. I created and refined the wings, practicing moving them a couple of times, making adjustments until they looked great. I'd spent a lot of time in my cell/bedroom planning how I wanted this to look, but had never been able to practice it. I was quite pleased by how little adjustment was required to achieve an awesome effect.

Then I smashed the wall of the computer center open, continuing to push the opening wider as I floated into the room a foot above the floor level, flooding the room with light and fear. As soon as I was far enough inside to have room, I spread my 'wings'. They were wing-shaped, but pulsated with white lights that flowed like blood in veins. The leading edges had larger, brighter, neon-tube-shaped light blobs; smaller, dimmer blobs for the ribs, and even less noticeable blobs for the rest of the wing. Everything moved (like blood flowing, as I said), but what looked the most impressive was when they all moved together, such as when I opened my wings. With thirty minds concentrating on aspects of it, it was easy to create and control some superb special effects! The halo was simple and perfect too.

I extended my hand as far as I could so they might be able to see it, pointed at the youngest and presumably most expendable of them. A blue light blob shot out of my finger to stop in front of him. I yelled, "Get your backups!" I was hoping that what my plan lacked in intelligence, it'd make up in shock and awe.

He was slow to answer, so I floated his body up to midair in front of the others, took a grip on his arms and legs, and pulled him apart, saving his head to last. His screams were terrifying, but I needed the nerds to be terrified. [He resembled me fairly closely, and for a second I reconsidered my plan to put a lookalike body in my cell to hopefully fool the authorities into believing it was my dead body. I'd cut off one of his fingers to add to that deception. I'd decided not to because I feared that the science of determining the true identities of burned bodies was too good since it's something that's often practiced out in the real world of accidental house-fires. The CIA's realizing that a fake Mark Anderson had been planted in my room would lead to consequences that'd be far too dangerous to risk causing. The sight of the reasonable lookalike reminded me of that issue, but I still stuck to the same decision.]

"I am the Archangel Michael! God has decreed this travesty to be Hell on Earth, and has ordered me to destroy it! Tell me where all your data is kept, including your backups, or I will do unto you what I did to Jonathon Ellsworth." I'd read his security tag using the sight blob. I thought it added a nice level of godlike knowledge. Which somehow didn't apply to backups, but hopefully they wouldn't think of that with all the "shock and awe" that was going on. "If you value your immortal soul, SPEAK!"

They weren't capable of intelligent speech, even the ones that were speaking, as frantic prayer doesn't qualify as "intelligent speech" by any definition, but one of them managed to point. Some computer cables were plugged into a small wall panel where he pointed. It didn't seem overly special to me, but I used a sight blob to look behind it. More cables ran into a pipe that went directly upward inside the wall. I sent the light blob up it, going up so far my vision was getting poor. By moving myself so I was directly in line with the hollow pipe, I managed to extend my sight blob's range far enough to reach and see an EXTREMELY strong looking vault. I knew where it was in relation to me (or the blob would've canceled). It was a few feet above the top of level 1, and obviously was their version of "off site storage", as it contained a computer connected to some racks of hard disks, lots of file cabinets and not much else.

It was too far away for me to see clearly, so I'll revisit it later. I returned the sight blob back to me (I've got very good at that over the last several weeks, so it's instantaneous now). Then it was just a matter of finding where the hard disks were in this room, which I did by interrupting their pleadings to say, "For the good of your immortal souls, where are the hard disks in this room?"), waiting until they'd pointed, then knocking all the staff out at the same time. I didn't want any of them to survive to talk about an angel, but it was hard to kill them outright. The scientist whose wallet I'd stolen had been a "Bad Man", but these guys were just computer nerds. But they were helping support a heinous operation and they'd seen me through the glare, so they had to go. For each of them - already lying unconscious on the floor - I quickly rotated his or her head until things broke. Proximity clearly showing me that it killed them.

I pulled the computer cabinets apart to extract all the hard disks. I'd heard that experts can recover data from partly smashed disks, so I was going to take these with me. They made a too large pile, so I smashed open the disk drives themselves, to extract the platters.

I put my jacket back on. I used NP to pick up all the bodies, including the pieces of the poor guy I'd established my fearsomeness with, and floated them to the elevator shaft as I returned to it, letting them drop to the bottom. With all the leaked diesel, there was definitely going to be a BIG fire down there - something I couldn't guarantee at the higher levels - so I planned to dump quite a few bodies down the shafts. With luck they'd be so thoroughly destroyed that there'll be many unaccounted-for bodies, making mine being unaccounted for much less suspicious.

There were plenty of trash bags in the cafeteria, so I floated a couple to me to double-bag the hard disk platters, carrying the package under my arm.

I was just about ready to unleash Hell, but first had to ensure my ability to get away.

#30: <Don't forget the 'offsite' storage vault.>

#1: <Oops, I had.>

It was above level 1, and near the elevator shaft I hadn't used yet, so I ran across level 4 quickly. I wasn't comfortable with flying myself rapidly in confined places, even though it should have been quicker. I got into the shaft and floated myself up to level 1, sending a sight blob the rest of the way. The vault was human-accessible from the elevator shaft that ran from level 1 up to ground level. Exactly like the first one I'd inspected, this shaft also had a large plate sealing it off, with the vault's access above that, so if a disaster occurred in the labs, the vault would still be accessible. The outside of the vault's door had several security controls, and it was a VERY strong looking door, so it looked impossible to access from the outside (even for people with 6 tons of NP force). Fortunately, opening it from the inside looked like it only required spinning a wheel and pushing. I didn't do so now in case it set off an alarm. The vault and its computer still had power, which I didn't cut off yet, for the same reason.

I was on this side of the building already, so it'd be easiest if I exited the building using this shaft rather than the one I'd scouted out before, so I needed to check the surface situation.

The final shaft to the ground level was a clone of the previous one, including having its car pulled above the ground level door. There was a similar security arrangement as for the other, except it wasn't as fancily decorated, had only two guards, and the airlock was a great deal wider and taller. On the other side of the airlock was a large, concrete-floored area, which opened into a loading bay. This was obviously how their animals and other large supplies were delivered.

The loading bay was currently shut, with a big roller door lowered and no one else around. There was a man-sized door as part of the roller door, not that my sight blob needed to worry about using a door. Through the roller door was the outside world. No army base, merely a large paved area surrounded by a high wall about forty feet farther away, with farmers' fields and the prospect of freedom over the wall. There were no people in sight.

#14: <FANTASTIC! Whether or not those doors are locked, we can fuck the video cameras and be out of here easy as pie.>

#21: <No, remember we need to get out in a way that doesn't look like a breakout. Our exit point needs to look like it was an entry point before all the shit started, so disabling the loading bay's video cameras would be a bad idea.>

I searched around and it didn't take me long to find a way of exiting that looked ideal. The winch that lifted the elevator up to the ground level was necessarily housed in the level above that. It was inside a thick concrete cube, presumably for sound insulation reasons because the building it was in was an ordinarily constructed office. The bottom of the cube was missing because that's where the winch cables descended, and how people got access to do any maintenance on the winch. The four-foot high concrete block (relative to the floor it protruded up through), was inside an ordinarily walled office, except that it had no windows or door. The 'office' was just a shell to hide the ugly concrete block from the floor's office workers.

Beyond the pseudo-office there was a whole floor of normal offices. They were dark, unoccupied, had no security cameras, and were perfect for me. The concrete roof over the winch wasn't very thick, so I pushed down on it with 5.5 tons concentrated on a very small area, causing the concrete to fracture and break open. It only took a few seconds to create a hole considerably larger than a human would need. Because I'd pushed down from the top, it should look like people had forced entrance that way. When I'm leaving, I'll bash a hole into the "Winch Office" from outside the ordinary wall, as if people had gotten in that way.

I fetched my hazmat suit to me, dressing carefully with the bag of disk platters and the cap inside it. The cap couldn't be worn with the hazmat headgear, but I didn't have much trouble deciding that the hazmat protection was the more important of the two types of headgear, so the cap got pushed down inside the front of my suit. I connected and turned on the oxygen supply, quite easy to do when I could use a sight blob to look at my own back. [[I thought "oxygen" at the time, but it was compressed air rather than pure oxygen. I'll continue to write "oxygen" because that's what I thought at the time.]] Most of the hazmat suits plugged into wall sockets for their oxygen. There were a considerable number of emergency suits and oxygen outlets throughout the facility, the oxygen being under pressure meaning it would work even in the case of a power failure. Because I had to move around, I'd grabbed tanks to supply my suit.

I dropped down to the lab level I wanted to get the nasty stuff from. It was the same stuff as I'd pretended to have succumbed to in my bedroom. I'd chosen it because it acted extremely rapidly and I could mimic the symptoms. I wasn't worried about how much pain it caused; I'd had to resist choosing stuff that was REALLY horrific in its effects because I couldn't mimic them. Nor did I care how fast it dissipated, because if the fire caught hold the way I wanted, all sorts of shit was going to be released anyway. The REALLY bad, city-destroying stuff was kept in very secure fridges or even vaults, so it probably wouldn't get released, but there were still many containers of other deadly stuff in the comparative open; stuff that you very definitely didn't want to be anywhere near. Since a lot of that stuff was likely to be broken open during the fire, it didn't really matter what I spread around now.

I sent the sight blob to have a look around while it was on the way to the right fridge. People had gotten themselves pretty well organized by now. Everyone I saw was already in a hazmat suit; the complete loss of lights having delayed that process considerably, but not for as long as I'd taken thus far. Some people had found flashlights and they'd gathered other people around them, all of whom were fully protected now, they thought. Intelligent, orderly behavior had replaced panic. Not for much longer.

The group near where my chosen weapon was stored had three flashlights, so I use NP to bang on a wall heavily and repeatedly, to draw everyone's attention away while I opened the fridge and got out the vials I wanted. I checked I had the right ones, left one of the vials nearby, then flew the rack to me.

Once I was holding the rack in the hands of my suit, I zipped the sight blob back to the vial I'd left near the group. I created some NP-fingertips and picked it up. There wasn't any airflow around the place (the AC had shutdown immediately after the sirens had started), so I'd have to sprinkle the stuff around.

I removed the cap from the vial, tossed it away and flew the vial above the center of the group. I pulled the three flashlights out of their owners' hands, letting them drop to the floor. I could see fine, but no one else had vision above a few knees. Then I quickly and simultaneously pulled the headgear off several people in different parts of the group, tossing their 'hats' away. I 90% covered the vial's mouth with an NP-fingertip and upended it to let a little of it drop onto the bare head of the person in the middle of the group.

She felt it, but even before her hand had reached her head in an automatic reaction, the symptoms started hitting her. She barely had time for a couple of panicky words (I couldn't hear, not having a sound blob), before she collapsed, writhing on the floor for only a few seconds before becoming still.

What I was most looking for was how far away it worked. According to what I'd read, the agent's not being aerosoled meant it wouldn't spread far, but I wanted to test that before I started sprinkling it all over the place. The nearest two bareheaded people were hit a few seconds later, the next nearest person another ten seconds later, but another thirty seconds produced no more victims. That'd been what I hoped. I didn't want a lethal amount of it to reach me, so its inability to spread more than a few feet on air currents meant I could sprinkle it around liberally, making my job quicker.