Danger Days: The Escape

In the back seat of the red mustang convertible, Fun Ghoul, bloodied and injured, laid exhausted with his head resting in Party Poison’s lap. Lady Killer was back in the driver’s seat after the final switch of drivers for their journey back to Battery City, with Jet Star giving her directions. Without Bob there to help they were already finding their mission harder than usual, especially seeing that they were down to three drivers. While they all appeared calm on the surface, deep down they were panicking about what was to come. This time when they entered BL/IND they would have no insider assistance; they were on their own for this one.

Party Poison had more on his mind than the mission at this point in time. Whenever he looked down he caught sight of Fun Ghoul’s angelic face and his heart went into overdrive. He hated himself for it. In their current situation everyone needed to be focussed on the mission, and what was he focussing on? Pornographic daydreams of a certain long-haired male killjoy, with honey eyes and countless tattoos adorning his perfectly sculpted body. And with a description like that coming to mind he knew he was in way too deep. All he should want to do is save his brother, and then his friend, not have sex with his – well he wasn’t quite sure what Fun Ghoul was to him.

Lady Killer drove through a large pothole, causing the car to jump rigidly. This sudden change didn’t give Fun Ghoul enough time to move, so he yelped out in pain when his ankle slammed into the side of the car.
Party Poison clasped a hand around Fun Ghoul’s wrist and pulled him back further into his lap. “Are you okay?”

He winced slightly. “Yeah, apart from the fact my ankle hurts like a bitch. Nice driving, Kill!”

Lady Killer shouted a sincere apology back over the roar of the engine, although it was essentially ignored because Party Poison and Fun Ghoul were caught in a moment. Party Poison had begun stroking away the out of place hair from Fun Ghoul’s face, which led to prolonged eye contact, followed by an awkward silence when Jet Star had turned around to see if there had been any more damage done to Fun Ghoul’s ankle.

Approximately half an hour later they parked themselves outside the BL/IND compound in Battery City. It was almost midnight, which meant that they had very little time to plan if they wanted to get in and out before Korse and the draculoids discovered their presence. They sat in the car for a few minutes to figure out their plan of action before entering the building.

“First of all, are you coming in, Ghoul?” Party Poison asked, taking charge as usual.

Fun Ghoul glanced down to his ankle, then back to his friend. “I don’t think I’d be much use if I tried.”

“Okay, you mind the car then.” He turned his attention back to the other two killjoys in the front of the car. “Kill, you go up into the vents and search the cells for Kobra; you’re the only one who’ll fit. Jet, you and I will stick together and search down on the floor in case they’ve put him somewhere else. We don’t leave here without Kobra, got it?”

As soon as they had all nodded their agreement, Lady Killer’s foot pressed down hard on the accelerator and they sped off in a straight line toward the newly installed boom gate. Party Poison remembered the look on her face when he’d smashed through the gate a week ago; she was terrified. The look she had on her face now was the exact opposite.

“Kill, you wouldn’t – ” Party Poison’s sentence was cut off by the sound of the boom gate snapping in half. He ducked to dodge a flying piece of wooden shrapnel. “Okay, you would.”

“Payback,” Lady Killer smirked.

They had been luckier this time; no draculoids were on duty at the gate after midnight. Another thing that worked in their favour tonight was that there were two vans parked side by side with enough room in between for Lady Killer to reverse into, effectively hiding the car from view of anyone inside the buildings. Last time they had been parked out in the open. Party Poison, Jet Star, and Lady Killer vacated the car and approached the glass doors of the main building cautiously. As they expected, the doors were locked. On one of the doors was a small keypad to type in the access code on. Party Poison hoped that Bob’s badge number, which he had thankfully been able to remember from the day before, would works as an access code like it had in the Zone 30 compound.

“00238,” he said allowed as he pressed the corresponding buttons on the keypad.

A small noise sounded and the side of the door with the keypad became slightly ajar. Party Poison smiled triumphantly to his friends as he pulled the door open and walked inside, with them following close behind. The corridors were eerily quiet, so they assumed that everyone had gone home for the night, or at least to bed if they lived on site. The threesome approached the familiar small alcove with the vent above it. Silently, the two men lifted Lady Killer up so she could remove the cover and slide inside the metal pathways.

“Are you going to be okay up there?” Jet Star asked, concerned.

Lady Killer replaced the cover. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. If I don’t find him in an hour then I’ll head back to the car.”

“Okay, we’ll do the same,” Party Poison said reluctantly. He didn’t want to leave without his brother, but without the second radio they had no way of communicating to each other, so a time limit needed to be in place. There was also the small fact that he didn’t like the idea of Fun Ghoul being in the car by himself either. “If neither of us have him then we’ll work out a better plan and go back in.”

Jet Star and Party Poison continued down the corridor once they’d heard Lady Killer crawl away. They had decided to go to the main control room to check that Kobra Kid had arrived there from the Zone 30 compound. It didn’t take them too long to reach there as Jet Star knew his way around quite well. When they were inside Party Poison used Bob’s badge number again to gain access into the system, and then did a quick search for ‘Michael Way’, just as Fun Ghoul had done the day before. Kobra Kid’s file came up, confirming that he was there, but there was no clear indication as to where exactly in the place he was.

“You won’t be able to him with the computer,” Jet Star told Party Poison after he watched him read and re-read the file. His friend looked at him questioningly. “As very few people are kept here, their location only needs to be known by guards and Korse. If you logged on with one of their numbers then you’d have access to that information.”

Party Poison closed the file angrily. “What was your job here anyway?”

“Security camera monitor,” he replied. He looked at his friend guiltily, knowing that he was sparking memories of his betrayal. Jet Star would never forgive himself for doing what he did, especially to Party Poison; that’s why he always helped them out when he could. He decided it was time he informed at least one of his friends of this. “I always tried to help you guys out while I worked for them.”

Party Poison scoffed. “Yeah, how?”

“Well, for one, I knew Ghoul had the radio the whole time; I knew he was talking to you, and what had happened to Kobra. I made sure that no one else knew about it so you could keep in contact. And I’d recognised the car when you guys came here, so I disabled the panic button to give you time to get in. You would have gone in completely unnoticed if it wasn’t for the fact that they had a portable radio down in the booth.” Party Poison’s was speechless, so he continued. “I’m really sorry that I let you guys down, but I want you to know that I’ve always done what I could to make up for it.”

Party Poison stared at his friend thoughtfully for a few moments. When he was out in the desert alone, he always knew, deep down, that Jet Star had never meant to betray them all, he just never admitted it because he was angry with him for doing it. He was glad that he was back, and even more glad with the fact that he had always looked out for them, even if it was from the other side.

“Thanks, Jet,” he offered him a smile. “You’re a true friend.”

The small heart to heart moment they had been sharing was cut short by a loud thud beside them. They looked down to the floor to find a bemused Lady Killer looking up at them from the flat of her back. She shook her head, probably to clear it, and jumped to her feet.

“I found him!” she beamed at them.

“Where is he?” Party Poison asked. Both of the men were looking around wildly for him.

“That’s where you guys come in,” she replied, already on her way out of the control room. They followed after her. “See, he’s in one of the cells not too far from here, but I can’t speak to him because, one, he’s asleep, and, two, there’s a Drac sitting in with him and one doing sentry duty up and down the corridor outside the cell. So, I need you guys to deal with the guard outside so I can shoot the one inside.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Jet Star remarked.

They stopped walking when they were in the corridor adjacent to the one the cell was along so that they could boost Lady Killer back up into the ventilation system. Once she was up there and on her way to the vent above Kobra Kid’s cell, the two men proceeded on around the corner to deal with the guard. They chose not to shoot at him, in case they woke any of the other draculoids in the building, and instead waited til he’d started to walk away from them before they took his ray gun gently from its holster and then crash tackled him to the ground. Jet Star, who was reasonably muscular, had the draculoid pinned to the ground while Party Poison removed the man’s belt and used it to secure his hands together.

“Knock him out!” Jet Star commanded as he placed his left hand tightly over the guard’s mouth to keep him quiet.

Party Poison delivered a powerful kick to the side of the man’s head. He went into an unconscious state, just as they wanted. Almost as soon as he was knocked out, a pink beam of light illuminated the corridor through the small window pane of the cell door. Jet Star and Party Poison watched on in awe as they saw a confused, shocked, and then elated, Kobra Kid get pulled up into the open hole in the ceiling by Lady Killer. They then ran back to where they had boosted her in to wait for them to come back, however only Lady Killer appeared a couple of minutes later.

“I’ve sent Kobra on toward the entrance,” she called down through the vent cover. “Go find his clothes and ray gun and meet us back at the car.”

Jet Star and Party Poison raced down the dimly lit corridors to a small room that was only familiar to Jet Star. This room had large lockers along one wall and a bench in the middle of the room with plastic containers left discarded on top of it. In here was where all the inmate’s belongings were stored. The two men each tried different lockers, but none of them would open.

A recognisable voice cut through the silence. Both men ceased their attempts with the lockers and spun around in shock. The figure was holding up Kobra Kid’s clothing in one hand and his ray gun in the other.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”