The Defenders’ staff recomnded a route for our approach that avoided air traffic from both O’Hare and Midway. Following their advice, I brought the jet in. Hal, an AI that specialized in predicting how best to win battles between fleets of starships, probably could have worked out a more direct route through Chicago’s many flight paths, but we weren’t in that much of a hurry.
Besides, it was best not to annoy people unless you needed to.
Their advice had been to bring the jet down over the water and fly low on the way in. I did, flying toward Chicago with its skyline of buildings like the Willis (forrly Sears) Tower. Black with white antennas, it towered over everything else. Other buildings stood near it, one of them close to the sa height, but I didn’t know their nas.
To the south, I could see Soldier Field with its odd combination of 1920s concrete at the base with glass and shiny tal added as part of a later renovation. However much so people might not like the comparison, sothing about the shape reminded of a toilet bowl.
That’s not where we went. The Midwest Defenders base was an island just offshore—maybe one hundred feet at most. It wasn’t natural either. Earthmover had been brought in to create it more than thirty years ago.
I landed the jet on a helipad next to the huge, silver do. Leaving the jet on the tarmac, we walked toward the entrance, a section of wall with a rectangular outline that split in the middle, retracting into the wall around it. As it disappeared, I got a comm call identified as, “Midwest Defenders,” and accepted it, hearing a male voice that said, “Welco to the Chicago Defenders base. Follow the arrows to reach the containnt facility.”
I don’t know what I expected the Defenders' base to be like, but I must have expected a more human touch and maybe a surprisingly normal block of cubicles. What I got was bare walls, all made out of the sa silver material as we saw outside. My guess was that this was the entrance for prison deliveries—which you’d want to be as controlled as possible.
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We walked down a featureless hall that ended in a circle of gray tal twenty feet across. The glowing arrows on the wall were painted toward the circle and we walked to the middle of it. Panels rose up around the edges and we shot downward, feeling a hum through the floor.
Haley frowned as we dropped, possibly hearing sothing irritating on frequencies that I couldn’t hear without my suit. Katuk stood unmoving, seemingly emotionless. Kals stood to my right, but not quite unmoving.
She glanced over at Haley and , took a breath, and tapped her foot before sighing, “They never told us anything about the Dominators on Earth. I rember learning that we’d had contact with them once in school, but no one knew anything. I never knew whether the rumors were true or if they’d passed them on to test our responses.”
“They did that,” I asked, unsurprised. From the little I’d seen of it, the Human Ascendancy had all the charm and humanity of Nazi Germany or Star Wars' Empire.
She nodded, “If you were too curious about certain topics, you disappeared, and if you reappeared, you didn’t ask as many questions.”
The elevator stopped and a panel to our left sunk into the floor, opening into a hallway made of grey rock. I didn’t know how far we were down, but the rock would have told it was Earthmover’s work even if I hadn’t already known.
I rembered a similar cellblock in Colorado where Haley and I had both been involuntary residents. We followed the hallway into a long room with hallways that extended out of it on all sides. Inside the room were four guards, all of them wearing sleek, red powered armor with the Defenders’ “D” on it. Along the walls were lockers and on the right side shelves filled with boxes.
Greeting us, I saw Daniel’s father, Mindstryke in his black uniform that between its jacket, slacks, and Greek Ψ always made think of the TV show Babylon 5.
He smiled, “I’m glad you made it. Kals and Katuk, welco to Earth. I’m a friend of the Rocket and Night Cat. We’re hoping you can figure out how to undo what’s been done to Ana and if we’re very lucky, you’ll find a way past our other prisoner’s protections.”
In response to my unspoken thought, he added, “I’m absolutely not going to call her by her codena. ‘Athyst Archer’ sounds like sothing Stan Lee ca up with on a bad day.”
He pointed down the hall behind him, “We’ll start with Ana unless you’d prefer not to. If it will help, I’m willing to read Ana’s mind to see how she reacts to whatever Kals tries.”
Kals froze for a mont before responding, “I’ve never t a telepath before. The Human Ascendancy kills them whenever they discover them—which ans that you scare them. Let’s try it.”
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