Outlaws (The Slingers Trilogy, Book 2)

Chapter 15

The next morning, Nolun told Andress and Trace everything that had happened the night before, and showed them the new Sapper which had transformed into a camera. Trace's eyes lit up and she squealed a bit. Nolun was still a bit unsure about Trace. She was a genius and had a knack for building things from practically scratch, but she could be a bit too overzealous sometimes. She was like a little kid. But he didn't need to worry about that now. Trace picked up the small device and examined it. "Honestly, I didn't think it would really work on the first try. Well, now we have a fully functioning camera." Andress nodded and produced a small cord from her uniform. "We also have a way of getting it up that pipe. I picked this off of a loose padding section from the back of the rec area. We can use it as a makeshift pulley." Nolun was warily optimistic. But even with all of this new technology and gear, they still didn't even know if they'd find anything up there. Nolun breathed out and laced his fingers together. No matter how bad it seemed, they had to try. There were only 4 days left until Gottlieb arrived, and it would all be over, camera or no camera. There was no point in preparing or planning. It had to happen tonight. Once Nolun told this to the two girls, it was decided. They nodded their heads and were just about to disperse when something happened. There seemed to be a commotion on the far side of the cafeteria. Two of the prisoners appeared to be fighting. Nolun disregarded it at first, but when two of the guards came to break it up, the two prisoners turned on them and stole their stun batons and handguns. One of the prisoners shot a few rounds into the air, making the three of them duck. The prisoner with the baton ran for the cage separating the cafeteria from the rest of the prison and began to climb over it. Then, there was a horrible buzzing noise as the cage came alive and crackled with electricity, throwing the prisoner off the bars, his entire body smoking. The other prisoner, seeing his friend dead, began to yell and shoot at the guards, who promptly shot him down with their rifles. The room was quiet for a few minutes, then the guards came to collect the bodies, and everyone slowly went back to their normal routines. Andress, Nolun, and Trace all stood staring at the bodies. There was no question. They had to leave. Now.

After what seemed like forever, the light's in Nolun's cell finally turned off, meaning that the prison was going into sleep mode. He carefully moved out of his bed and stayed in the camera's blind spot, then inched over to the pipe under his sink. He unscrewed it and pulled out the camera and wire. He tied it twice around the slender device, then pushed it up the pipe, sticking his arm as high up as it could go. Then, he began to feed the wire with the camera attached to the end into the pipe. Seeing how the wire was relatively straight and solid, Nolun could easily keep the camera upright. Then, Nolun pulled out a small square piece of glass, which upon first glance seemed to be a regular mirror, but when a switch on the side was flipped, the glass shifted and changed to a live feed of the camera's viewpoint. Nolun didn't ask where Trace had gotten this, but he had learned just to accept it. He kept moving the camera up through the pipes. It was mostly dark and difficult to see, but Nolun could make out several rusty parts of the pipe as it moved upwards. Then, a bend came. With some careful maneuvering, Nolun managed to move the camera around it, and then came across something interesting. The camera was in a pipe with small holes on the sides, which allowed light to pour in. Nolun turned the camera, and saw that outside the pipe was a corridor with several pipes and wires leading down somewhere. Not only that, there were people, prison workers who were fixing and looking over several of the wires. There was no audio on the camera's live feed, but Nolun could see their lips moving. This was clearly a place that the prisoners didn't have access to, and seemed to be important. He kept moving the camera, and then finally came to a stop against a wall when he ran out of wire. The camera focused and Nolun saw what he had stopped against. There seemed to be several cords, but the most interesting part was the fact that one of the cords was glowing with a blue energy. It lit up the pipe that the camera was in. Nolun stared at it, and decided this is what they had been looking for. He used the live feed function to take a screenshot, and began to move the camera backwards. He pulled it and the wire out of the pipe, and put the pipe itself back together. He then stuffed everything beneath his mattress, and went back to his bed.

The next morning, he stashed the mirror in his pocket and managed to sneak it into the cafeteria for breakfast. He saw his usual seat next to Andress and Trace, who were both looking at him expectantly. "Well?" Trace asked, almost bouncing out of her chair. "Did you find anything?" Nolun sat down and passed them the mirror. Trace accessed the pictures, then grinned widely, showing it to Andress. "Hah! You know what that is?" Andress looked at her and shook her head. Trace leaned over the table and whispered slightly. "That is liquid barium. It's a radioactive substance, but it's extremely potent when it comes to power. Just a few quarts of it could power a regular generator for years! They're probably powering the whole prison with that one pipe." Andress looked confused and flexed her robot hand. "How does that help us?" Trace looked at the both of them. "If we manage to cut off that supply somehow, everything goes into emergency power mode. Less security measures, means easier ways to escape. Everyone's probably gonna go ballistic if that happens, so we could just break out during the riot." Nolun smirked. "Well, when have we ever done an escape inconspicuously?" Andress rolled her eyes playfully, but smiled back. It did seem a lot more likely now that they could get out. Hope seemed just a little bit closer. Then, the P.A. crackled on and a voice came over it. "All prisoners return to their cells immediately. Cell search level 3 imminent." The three of them looked at each other, their eyes widening. They were going to comb the cells. They needed to hide everything. Now.