Chapter 5
To this day, I'm not entirely sure what JB Swift was thinking. I mean, here he's got himself a room full of young, husky guys, all of whom have trained in martial arts for years -- not a group of folks you want to piss off, right? And let's face it, no one likes to be kidnapped and held in a room for hours. He had to know we were spoiling for a fight.
So what does he do? He sends in his goons to attack the prettiest, most popular gal in the room. Well, okay, I'll grant that Angela was the only gal in the room, but you get what I mean. In the short time she had been there, she had made herself a lot of friends and would-be protectors. That's just the way she is.
And protect her they would. Everybody is different, of course, but most of the advanced martial artists I've met, myself included, kind of buy into the idea of some sort of code of honor -- using one's skills to defend the weak and helpless, stuff like that. Now, Angie would kill me if I ever implied she was weak or helpless, but . . . seriously, what did JB Swift think was going to happen?
Regardless, our initial rush was not a complete success; we did a lot of tripping over each other. The Zoinks were still all bunched up at this point, though, so we did manage to knock most of them down. Unfortunately, one of them managed to get past us, and it made straight for Angie.
She slipped down off her stool and then kicked it at the Zoink to buy herself some time. By the time it had untangled itself, she was in a fighting stance and looked ready to kick some Zoink butt. Satisfied that she was safe enough for the moment, I turned my attention to the drone in front of me. It was a poor specimen of a Zoink, hardly worth my trouble at all, and I quickly disposed of it. It was a good thing, too, because when I next glanced around at Angie, I saw that her Zoink had her pinned up against a wall.
I don't think I have ever moved so fast, force shield or no. In a flash, I was across the room and aiming a jumping backwheel kick to the side of the thing's head. Not something I've ever done to a person -- you can crack someone's skull open that way, and I've never been in that desperate a fight against a human -- but this was just a Zoink, and I'm not even sure whether those things are really alive. My heel connected hard, and the thing dropped like a stone.
"Th-thanks, big brother," Angie gasped out. She looked more than a little shaken. "It . . . just wouldn't back off."
"This isn't a free-fighting match," I warned her. "Don't pull your punches; you've got to hit these things as hard as you can, like you're trying to break a board or a brick." And by way of demonstration, I picked up her stool and began bashing a Zoink that was coming too close. The wood splintered and broke after only half a dozen hits or so, so I grabbed one of the stool's legs and started pounding on the face of the next Zoink that came along.
Looking around, I saw there was a fairly even mix of Zoinks and Trevors. A few of the guys seemed to be having some trouble, but most of them were handling themselves just fine. A well-trained human ought to be more than a match for a single Zoink; we seemed to be slowly gaining the upper hand. I moved to help some of the guys who seemed like they needed it the most.
That was when I began hearing howls of pain from all around me. Zoinks don't talk, so they had to be coming from the other Trevors. And then I figured out what was happening . . . at pretty much the same time that something hard blasted my left knee. JB Swift had gotten hold of one of those damn pipes of his and was dashing around knee-capping everybody he could get to.
Throwing down the Zoink I was beating on at the time, I limped over to a wall and put my back against it, trying to spot the flash of his speeding form. It wasn't easy. I finally located him by following the yells. He stopped for an instant, looked around, and spotted Angie. She was side-kicking a Zoink in the chest, and I heard her ki-up, the particular yell she makes when she's fighting especially hard. The Zoink fell backward from the force of the impact. Good for her, I thought.
JB Swift's face took on an evil-looking grin. Suddenly I realized he was going to go for her next, and I had a feeling he wasn't just going to settle for her knees. I placed my foot against an overturned chair, and when I saw him jerk into motion, I shoved it as hard as I could right into his path, hoping I had timed it right.
See, one of the reasons that Enclave gave up on trying to give their monsters super-speed is that their reflexes just can't keep up. JB Swift might have been able to dash across the length of the room in the blink of an eye, but his reaction time was only a bit faster than mine. Put something in his way, like, say, an overturned chair, and he won't have time to adjust; he'll just splat into it face-first. Which is exactly what happened.
I'll say this for the little bastard -- he was plenty tough. I think everyone in the room felt the flying splinters and heard the kapow! of the impact. It would probably have killed an ordinary human. As it was, it knocked JB Swift cold, although I didn't see any blood amid the wreckage of the chair, and I'm pretty sure I saw him breathing.
With JB Swift disposed of, most of the Zoink resistance faltered almost right away; Zoinks don't do well without a leader. Time to get out of here, I thought. The little scarlet hedgehog would eventually recover, and Zoinks never really gave up. They just took longer and longer to get up after a beating. Even as a Prime, with my force shield at full strength, I have only rarely been able to pound a Zoink so thoroughly that it didn't eventually come back for more.
"Guys!" I shouted. "Into the other room!" I hauled a Zoink off of Master Vampire Trevor. He looked more than a little worse for wear -- Vampire Trevor, I mean, not the Zoink. I gave him a hand up and a shove toward the door, and then I began methodically attacking any Zoink that seemed to have the upper hand on anyone, all the time shouting for everyone to move to the other room.
In short order, all of us had piled into the room we had originally been teleported into, me coming through last of all, dragging a chair and pushing Angie ahead of me. I slammed the door behind me and jammed the chair under the handle to make sure it stayed closed.
I turned to face the others, and Baxter said, "Okay, smart guy, we're in the other room. Why did you want us in here?"
I was a little surprised by his question, because the answer seemed so obvious to me. "Uh, for one thing," I began, "we've now got a door between us and them."
"Which they'll break down before too long."
"Well, yeah, but this is also where they brought us in, so there's probably a . . . whatchamacallit . . . a teleporting thingie in here. I was hoping we could use it to escape."
"Oh." Baxter appeared to consider the idea. "I hadn't thought of that."
One of the other Trevors -- I think it was Smith -- put in, "Is it part of this desk here?" and he pointed at what I was pretty sure was the teleporter console.
I walked over to take a closer look. Yup, definitely the teleporter console. After my last adventure at an Enclave base, I had asked Wizzit for a crash course on how to use an Enclave teleporter. (That last time, I had had to rely on JB Swift to get Padma out, and my attempt to teleport myself had nearly ended in disaster.) He showed me how to work a couple of basic models and had me memorize a few sets of coordinates I could use in an emergency.
So yeah, I felt pretty sure I could operate this thing if I had to. Still, I was kind of hoping to get out of here with my secret identity more-or-less intact, so I just shrugged and said, "That's as good a guess as any, I suppose. Do you think the big green button means 'Go'?"
"Uh, yeah, that sounds right." He studied the controls, obviously trying to figure out how everything worked. The coordinates, I noted, were set to something close to my parents' house, so I figured they were still pointing to the place where Angela and I had been grabbed. Smith looked up, his mouth set in a firm line. "I'll stay behind," he said grimly.
I blinked. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Somebody's got to push the button, right? That'll be me. You guys figure out where
you're supposed to stand, and I'll push the button and send you on your way." He folded his arms across his chest, as if daring anyone to contradict him.
The guy had guts, I'll give him that. I took a deep breath and looked at the other Trevors. A few of them stepped forward and said, "No, I'll stay," but no one seemed interested in pressing the issue.
I nodded and shook Smith's hand gravely. "All right. You're a brave man. But . . . maybe there'll be some sort of delay between the time you push the button and the time it sends us out. In case there is, I want you to haul your butt over to us as soon as you push it. Got that?"
Actually, I was nearly certain there would be plenty of time for him to join us. According to Wizzit, Enclave teleporters always had a built-in delay as some sort of safety feature. Yeah, I know -- monsters worried about safety? Go figure.
He grinned and gave me a mock salute. "Sure thing, Cap'n," he said. "I'm not itching to get stuck here."
I winced inwardly at the "Cap'n" bit. I didn't want to be the leader of this group, didn't want anyone walking away from this adventure thinking, "Say, that Chiao guy sure knew an awful lot about Enclave and Zoinks and teleporters. I wonder . . ." There wasn't anything I could do about it, though. Someone had to lead, and no one else knew what to do.
I turned back to the others, ready to give some more orders, but Baxter was ahead of me there. "I think I was about . . . here when they brought me in," he said, positioning himself. "Everybody look around and see if you can spot any sort of marks that might tell us where we're supposed to stand."
He meant well, I know. No one said anything for a moment, until Angie piped up, "You mean, something like this big circle on the floor?"
Baxter looked down and took in the large black circle inlaid into the white tile floor that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- was pointing at. "Uh, yeah," he said, turning slightly reddish, "something like that." And then he chuckled and mock-slapped his forehead with his palm. "Duh!"
I grinned. I really like people who can laugh at themselves. Baxter started to say something else, but his words were drowned out by the sudden blaring of an alarm. I think we all knew what it meant: JB Swift had woken up and was yelling for help. I didn't know whom he could call on that wasn't locked up in the other room with him, but I wasn't eager to find out. And I sure hoped Lily slept right through it.
"Quick! Everybody get into the circle!" Smith shouted. No one argued. In less than a minute, the rest of us were huddled together inside the black ring. I wouldn't exactly call it a tight fit, but it was a good thing we were all friendly. Smith scrunched his eyes shut and slammed his hand down on the green button, shouting, "Here we go!"
I'm not sure what everyone else expected, but they were probably disappointed, because at first nothing happened. Then, after a second or two, a smooth female voice said, "Beginning teleport in sixty seconds . . . fifty-nine . . . fifty-eight . . ."
Smith slowly opened his eyes and looked down at his hand, as if he couldn't believe he hadn't been left behind. "Get your butt over here, Trevor!" I yelled, and my shout was quickly picked up by the others. He lost no time in joining us, and we waited in anxious silence while the voice counted down the seconds. "Thirty-five . . . thirty-four . . . thirty-three . . ."
The door to the other room began to shudder. JB Swift was having the Zoinks try to break it down. A couple of the Trevors glanced at each other and stepped out of the circle to go brace the door.
"Intruuuuuders!" My head snapped around at the voice behind me. To my relief, it wasn't Lily. Instead, it was Mr. Creepy-pants, the tall, thin monster that had first tried to kidnap me and Angela. He still weirded me out, but my blood was up now, and I was more mad than scared.
"Everybody stay inside the circle!" I commanded as the female voice announced that twenty seconds were left. "We'll all be fine if we're inside the circle when the countdown reaches zero. You guys over by the door -- get back over here when it reaches ten."
They were definitely having to work to hold the door closed now. I could see it jerking open maybe a quarter-inch every time the Zoinks shoved. One of them nodded silently and dug his tennis shoes into the floor, his back propped against the door.
"Nooo!" the monster was saying in its ghostly tones. So far, it hadn't made any threatening moves except to wave its sword vaguely at us. "Stooooop! You must stay heeeere!"
"Shut up, Casper!" Baxter snarled, eliciting a few nervous laughs from our group.
There was a splintering sound, and the door suddenly burst open, scattering the two Trevors who had been holding it closed. "Somebody grab them!" I shouted. "Nobody gets left behind here!" Many hands reached out and pulled the two of them into the circle as JB Swift and his Zoinks flooded into the room. The disembodied voice droned on, "Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . ."
"Everybody link arms!" I yelled. "Squeeze into the middle of the circle; it'll be harder for them to pull you out that way. Don't let anybody fall down!"
I don't know how much of what I said could be heard, but I do know that everyone pressed tightly together. I heard more than a few grunts and curses as Zoinks tried to pull one or another of us outside the circle, but none of their efforts were successful. At last, I heard the female voice say calmly, "Two . . . one . . . teleporting now . . ."
There was a soundless flash of light, and then we were gone.