Tessa moved through the hallways suspicious of everyone she passed. It was late enough that there weren’t many people roaming the halls and those that were; she wondered why they were out and about. They could wonder the same thing about her. Tessa tried to remain calm and collected on the outside, but on the inside, she was a ball of nerves. If this didn’t go well, and they failed, it could be a disaster. They could be captured and tortured or executed for treason. Either way, Tessa refused to be a pawn.
Tessa felt unprepared for this mission and wished they had more time to plan for every contingency. She felt like she was flying by the seat of her pants. Finn kept buzzing in her ear, giving constant updates to all four escapees about other hallway traffic or how close H.I.V.E was to discovering him. He watched the real camera feeds and directed each of them around any security officers. Eventually, he announced that H.I.V.E found him, and it forced the mission to change.
Red glowing alert lights and signals beeped in the hallways, and people started pouring into the halls. H.I.V.E personnel stopped what they were doing to report to their designated emergency evacuation areas. Once at the mustering area, management would look to see who was missing.
Tessa walked shoulder to shoulder with the flow of the crowd but clung to the right side of the wall. When Finn gave the word, she peeled off and down a now empty corridor. She scurried around the nearest corner to duck out of sight. From there, Finn’s looped cameras would conceal her for the time being.
All four successfully arrived outside the storage closet, and Tessa inserted her key card. Once inside, Tessa and Sam armed themselves with firearms and knives. They secured their duffle bags full of extra gear, and it was time to move to the next phase of the plan. They left the closet and attempted to activate the Director’s elevator. Now H.I.V.E would know where they were and send security. This was the critical point of no return. It was all or nothing now.
4
Tessa inserted her keycard decryptor into the Director’s elevator lock. Finn helped her access this elevator before, and that was how she obtained the details of Project Genesis. Tessa waited while Finn attempted to hack the elevator again. It took much longer than it did the last time which gave Tessa cause to worry.
This time Finn had terrible news; his hacks were being blocked by a counter hack. H.I.V.E was on to them, so Tessa redirected Finn to jump ahead and start hacking Project Genesis. She would figure out how to get the four of them to the project’s hangar bay. It was time for some improvisation.
Tessa removed her keycard and used a different key. She struck the control panel with her fist crushing through the electrical housing with her Evo strength. Tessa dug through the rubble to find the wires she needed to hot-wire the elevator doors open. It took her a few tries before she found the right wire combination to bypass the elevator security, and the door opened to reveal a deep dark elevator shaft.
Tessa could hear footsteps coming down the hallway, meaning they were almost out of time. She used her kinetic energy power to pull on the hallway walls and ceiling to collapse in on itself in all directions blocking them from their pursuers. Mangled metal and exposed wire sparked in the destroyed hallway. She bought them more time.
Tessa and Sam fastened grapples to the elevator and secured ropes to their suit harnesses. Sam would take Arica, and Tessa would take Norine since the two ladies were less than confident about rappelling down the elevator shaft on their own. Tessa and Sam strapped in and hooked onto their partner to shove off. They dangled in the open elevator shaft for only seconds before beginning their controlled descent. Norine and Arica were frightened they dropped too fast. They had done nothing as daring as this stunt, and both felt like they were falling to their deaths. But they couldn’t afford to take their time with H.I.V.E chasing them, and Tessa needed to get her group as far ahead of security as possible.
At the bottom of the shaft was an underground tunnel leading to the Denver Airport. Under the airport was the home of Project Genesis and their destination. They could traverse the tube either by footpath or by high-speed tram car that ran on an electrified rail system. There were two trams on this side of the tunnel. Both trams were a round enclosed pod with a front window above an operating panel. There were four seats inside each tram with two seated as operators and the other two as backseat passengers.
Before they boarded a tram, Tessa had some business to take care of first. She focused her power on the elevator shaft and door. Manipulating the potential energy in the walls into kinetic energy, she caused an explosion of concrete to collapse into the elevator shaft and block the entrance. Tessa planned to leave a trail of obstacles in her wake to slow down their pursuers.
Tessa used her Evo power to crush the second tram, thus forcing her opposition to pursue on foot. They would take the other tram to Project Genesis, but it had a computerized system to operate the vehicle. Without Finn’s technological assistance they could not access the control panel. The break mechanisms remained clamped around the rail track, so Tessa jumped down onto the track to correct their first problem. She used her Evo strength to pry back the metal
