Deryni

Week 13, Breaking Out

A guard showed up in response to Wu's shouting. He pushed a button somewhere on the door frame and the cell stunned us from all sides at once. The guard hit the stunner twice more until all were unconscious but Wu. Wu pleaded with the guard to take him out of here, lest we slay him, but the guard just walked away.

Pfusand came to and started to talk Wu out of his disflorger. She might have wheedled him into it, but Aphron revived and instantly resumed the attack. Wu stunned him and we heard the returning footsteps of the guard. Lorelei tried to remove her psi-cuffs (that headband that damps our psychic powers) but failed. Victoria and Aphron attacked Wu again.

So the guard came tromping back and stunned us all silly again. Wu fell over and dropped his disflorger, which Victoria managed to fall on top of. The result was that the guard did not remove the disflorger. He DID remove Wu and lock him up in a cell across the corridor from us. Wu revived and amused himself by playing his blue pencil over our unconscious forms. There was no obvious effect.

When Cantrel woke up, he pulled out a concealed macro-metal knife and started trying to carve through the walls. The walls had electric currents in them, or something worse. On the first try, Cantrel got stung. On the second try, he lost the tip of his knife.

Around then Victoria woke up and handed Pfusand the disflorger. She turned it over to Cantrel, who blew a hole through the ceiling with it. Aphron made a leap through the hole, but just then a guard returned and tried stunning us. Aphron and Pfusand fainted, but no one else did. Our damage had enfeebled the stun effect. The guard ran for help.

Cantrel scrambled out of the cell and tossed a macro-metal knife to Tom. Tom immediately cut the psi-cuff headband. It fell off. Cantrel tried the same thing and fainted. Tom cut the bands of the other prisoners, with varying results. Pfusand, for instance, shrieked in agony and lost some brainpower.

Across the hall, Wu kept blue-penciling us, still with no effect. But soon three guards showed up and started battle in earnest. They took down the force fields and stunned Tom, who was pot-shotting from up in the hole. Victoria attacked them but had a hard time coping with their armor, or personal force fields, or whatever. One of the guards knocked her out.

Cantrel surprised them by using his new telekinetic power to pull a disflorger from one of them. But the victim surprised Cantrel by using TK right back, pulling Cantrel out of the ceiling hole. Cantrel retaliated by disintegrating the guard who KO'd Victoria. Tom revived and stunned the telekinetic guard, and Victoria revived and kicked him around some. Cantrel finished him off with the disflorger.

By now we had finished off all the guards. Before more could arrive, we scrammed up the hole, using leaps, TK, or a bed sheet lowered by Pfusand. (The room above the cell is an unoccupied residential suite.)

After we were all up in the bedroom, Cantrel surprised us (at least he surprised Tom and me) by going back for Wu. Of course, Wu is still on the other side, so this was difficult. He stood at a goodly distance from the cell and used TK to push the button for the stunner. Once Wu was out, he looked around for the controls that lowered the force fields. They weren't in evidence. Perhaps they are psychically activated.

Rather than spend time looking for them, Cantrel hopped back up into the bedroom and selected a piece of floor over Wu's cell. He blew a hole in that and fetched the unconscious Wu that way.

The party then started skulking down the halls, looking for some kind of way out. We paused briefly to stun a technician. There is a strange thrumming noise in the background. It doesn't sound like a siren. It may be some sonic weapon. We are making tracks as fast as we may. But we are somewhat hampered by:

• the unconscious form of Dr. Wu (or rather the unconscious Dr. Wu wearing his latest of several forms)

• the unconscious form of Aphron

• Victoria, who got her feet burned by an exploding guard. She is now limping along using a metal strut as a staff. (It used to be the bar in the coat closet in the suite we invaded.)

Believe it or not, things are looking up.