Polished Read online

  Mirror Man Book Three:

  Polished

  P.S. Power

  Copyright 2018

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Chapter one

  Richard felt a hint of exhilaration as he hung upside down, a rope harness securely around his slim waist, using a small chisel to pop the lock on the window he was in front of. That, the lock itself, was a simple slider that had probably come with the window when it was originally purchased, sometime in the late seventies. Even being topsy-turvy at the moment that portion of things wasn’t a real challenge. Anyone with half a brain could have popped it, even with makeshift tools. The alarm had already been bypassed, a thing that was newer and a bit more subtle, without being particularly challenging at all, so when the satisfying click came, a bit of white paint chipping from the forces involved in his prying, there was no siren going off. No bell rang to tell the world that he was about to go inside their secure facility.

  Which should have been a lesson to the people trying to hold Infected prisoners against their will. Anyone could have gotten into the place with no more than a few hours of practice and learning. Things that could be gotten from online so easily that it had shocked Richard more than a bit when his friend Kate had showed him how to find things like that, a few weeks before. Including how to break people out of low security prisons.

  This place, a concrete and brick building, was structured that way. It was supposed to be a house, of course. On the outside it looked like a big and possibly well kept, mansion. To his eye, honed for half a century to recognize such things, since buildings were where all the best loot had always been stored, it was clearly something very different than that. Real houses, the homes people lived in, couldn’t be built like a bank vault. People needed to come and go freely in order to live something approaching a real life. Alarms and bars on the windows didn’t just effect people psychologically, they actually hampered the ability to do anything fun or interesting, if in little ways.

  This place had people that lived inside of it, but the truth was that they weren’t truly doing anything other than existing.

  Which was, as odd as it seemed to him, why he was there. Not to take the gems and coins of the people who lived in their protected world. No, he was there to steal their people. The prisoners that were being kept in a quasi-legal fashion at best. More to the point, he was there for one of them. Taking a group of them would be ideal, of course. Legal, as well. That thought made him want to shudder just a tiny bit.

  After all, he was a thief, or had been for most of his life. A criminal willing to do whatever struck his fancy, if it was safe enough to be worth doing. Taking from the rich and giving to himself. Now, for some ridiculous reason, he was on the other side of the law. It left a bad taste in his mouth, he had to admit.

  It was tempting to mutter to himself as he moved through the small window. His lean form allowed that to happen with only a bit of scraping on his sides. The thing wasn’t large at all, though, just as he’d practiced, it wasn’t too hard to navigate. There was decently thick safety glass in the frame, so the pane was heavy as he moved the sill upward. There was thin blue wire in it as well, though that was just to hold things in place if the pane was ever broken. That might have even been a reasonable thought on the part of whoever ran the place, it was supposed to be an insane asylum, housing people that needed to be there due to real mental problems. In a very real way, it was, of course.

  The oppressive structure was called the Bendrick Home for Troubled Persons. Everyone at the IPB just called it The Depot. It had surprised Richard to learn about that portion of things, since more than one of his new crew had been slated to go to it when they’d first popped Infected. Christian Pours for instance had nearly been placed there by her own parents, a doctor having actually recommended it. Thankfully she’d been too powerful a telepath for the IPB to ignore and her parents had actually loved her, so had basically told the medical idiot to go and abuse himself instead.

  The thing was, the place had a reputation, among a certain type of person. Not a good one, either.

  At best it was a dumping ground for low powered Infected men, women, boys and girls that weren’t dangerous enough to lock up in prison for a crime, or bad enough to legally kill for being too big of a pain in the ass. It wasn’t state sanctioned at all, since the government’s stance on non-threatening Infected was that they should be helped, not locked up without a trial for the rest of their lives. Most of the people there had been put in place by their own relatives. Most often their parents. It took a court order to do it, but even a few years before that kind of thing hadn’t been all that hard to come by. A parent walking in with a good lawyer would be able to complain about their annoying Infected kid well enough to have them locked away for their own safety without even lying.

  The rules had changed, though. Meaning the whole establishment was bordering on being illegal.

  At least Richard took what he’d been told about it that way. Certainly no one at the base had suggested that he needed to be polite to the people who worked there. In fact, his boss, Turner, had obliquely suggested that a few people dying in the rescue operation, on the other side, might be fine enough with her. That was a bad plan though, of course. The nurses and doctors that worked there were just people, as far as he knew. They had jobs that required them to work with the Infected.

  That wasn’t the same as being evil, or even doing anything wrong. Not that they had any reason to know about yet.

  Once into the complex, there would be guards, as well. Basic rent-a-cops that, from the information they’d gotten from Katie on the whole thing, would be fairly well armed and not that well trained. So shooting could happen, though if it did it wouldn’t be particularly accurate. Not that it would matter if he was hit, of course. The thing there was that the men doing the work weren’t top level. They could wave a pistol around and send up alarms, which was their real danger.

  All of them were also on the other side of the hallway door. That was about twenty yards away, down the soft green painted tunnel made of walls. If they kept to their normal schedule, no one would be coming through it for exactly thirty-eight minutes. That would fail as soon as the people in the cells started yelling and carrying on about him being there, naturally. On the good side, there was a door to his left that didn’t lead to a cell like room, but to an outside door. An alarm would sound when he got to it, of course. On opening it would make the world light up and scream like a little brat whose candy was being taken.

  Unless someone, say a certain ex-thief, disabled it. He turned and did that first thing. Just by finding the thick power line running from the alarm box at the top of the metal portal and cutting it. That took using the clippers he’d brought with him but worked like a charm. Richard had actually been worried that it would be too close to the stone wall for him to get a good purchase on. In practice that had happened every single time, so he’d been ready to pry the chisel under it and struggle with it. Not having to do that gained two minutes for the actual escape plan.

  When he turned back to the line of room doors, Richard put the tools away, sliding them into the special pockets that he’d built into the all black outfit he had on. His face and head were covered as well, though that was far more about style points than keeping his face off camera. That part was unsettling to him still but apparently a real thing.

  He was an IPB Operative now, which meant that little things, like stealing half a dozen mental patients, wasn’t something he could be prosecuted for. Not in the United States. Even if his face was all over the video feed. Not that he could let himself be that sloppy. It would hurt his pride as a master thief too much to relax his standards that way.

  There were cameras watching but those had been hacked by one of the best
people in the world at that kind of thing, so they would, for the next thirty-seven minutes, show only an empty hallway. A small drone, a thing that looked like a toy helicopter with four rotors, had been landed on the roof allowing for that. The system there at the complex was behind an air gap. Which was a new term for him. He’d been in an old folk’s home for much of the computer revolution, so had only loosely kept up with such things. It meant that the computers there had a linked system in order to talk to others of their kind inside the building, without being online at all.

  Kate, his old friend from another life, had used a powerful antenna on the roof to tap into the thing. That meant landing a small remote-control helicopter thing right next to a line in order to create a line tap. A thing that didn’t affect the cable it was touching at all, physically. When the thing flew away there would be no sign that it had ever been there at all. At least if Richard had been informed correctly. Katie had said it was the case and since she knew everything, that being her super power, he kind of felt like trusting her on the idea.

  No one had stormed the dormitory wing yet, screaming about how they were being invaded by ninjas, so it was probably working pretty well. It had during the tests they’d run. If things went sideways at any point, he was bailing on the mission, of course. That meant using a small mirror and light that he had in his pocket to enter another reality. A thing he’d been practicing for the last several weeks, which had made the whole trick of walking into mirrors much more useful for him. It was all in his head, after all.

  So, if he went into a mirror, touching the thing lightly, he could imagine any other mirror, anywhere, and if one existed at all, he could bring it to himself and then walk out the other side. Technically he could imagine a mirror in the first place and go inside the other world that way. A thing he wasn’t risking when on a mission. If he was captured though, it was a nice trick to have available, even if it took him about ten minutes to make himself believe he was seeing a real mirror that way.

  Richard needed a lot more practice, of course.

  On his left hip, built into the outfit he’d used a magical amulet from a different world to create for himself, Richard pulled the key to the room doors. It was an old-fashioned thing, which wasn’t all that complex or designed for security. If you stood outside the room doors and had the time and a few bits of metal, even an amateur could have picked any of the locks. A bump key could be used as well, though that tended to be a bit noisy, if you had guards standing twenty yards away. Eventually even a rank newbie would be able to get the job done, however.

  For him it would have taken about two minutes for each one, using the kit he had on him. Using the right tool for the job was going to be much faster. About ten seconds per door, made slow due to the need for silence.

  Heading to the first one, the closest white door, on the right, he tapped gently on it. Calling out that he was there to rescue them wasn’t going to work. Whispering was probably all right, given the distances involved. The trouble would be in how the person inside the space responded to him. If they started out by screaming at him, or for help, Richard was just going to have to simply leave. That would be annoying, since they needed one of the people specifically.

  If they didn't get her that night, on the first try, she might just be killed, to keep her from talking to anyone. As it was, from the data that Kate had provided his team, the one girl, Gillian, probably should have been executed years before. At least if the bad guys wanted to keep murdering, raping and eating small children.

  After ten seconds there was a voice from just inside the metal door. It sounded female. Not young but uncracked by age. More than that he wasn’t going to guess given the conditions he was working under.

  “Who’s there?” The woman sounded slightly scared, which was only natural given the situation. There was light in the hallway, though it was very dim. The room had a window on it, allow the woman inside to look out at him. Her face was just a face though. Thin, pale and concerned looking. Normal seeming, which meant she could probably pass as a regular person, if her first mode wasn’t too bad. They had tricks for that now, so even if she was secretly a monster, the IPB could get her hooked up to have that toned down or even removed, if it was needed.

  They had a system rigged up for it, using some wizards who traded subjects to practice on for impossibly expensive genetics work.

  Richard, for his part, was masked and clearly not one of the guards working there. If he’d been the one looking out of his cell, he might have been a bit freaked out by that as well.

  “I’m your ride out of here. We have a van outside the wall and the alarms are shut down. We need to move as a group. Quietly and fast.” Telling her all of that was needed, though part of him begrudged the time it was going to take. Each person was going to have to have similar information. Not giving them what they needed would be worse than losing the time, so he did it. “You need to move to the end of the hallway and wait inside the door to the right. We have people that will help on the outside.” He wanted to hold his breath but didn’t.

  The issue, the real one, was that about half of the people inside The Depot had first modes that really would be a problem for an escape plan. People who weren’t powerful, but who were filled with anger, rage, or other emotions that could make things difficult to manage in the middle of the night.

  He opened the metal door quickly, the key trying to stick a little, being new like it was. Keys were always a risk that way. Especially master keys. They might work in one lock and then fail on the next. In this case it worked though and the lady inside, dressed in a long white gown, stepped out instantly. Then she darted back inside and popped back out a moment later, holding a pair of soft soled slippers. The kind with texture on the bottom.

  Richard winked at her.

  “Good plan. If anyone starts screaming or yelling, we have to run. Get ready for that. I have no clue who’s behind these doors.” There were ten times the number of people there than they could possibly recover that night. In this hallway there were ten doors. As far as anyone knew, they were all single occupancy rooms.

  The woman, who was about forty or so, her lank black hair and lack of makeup not helping her appearance at all in the middle of the night, went wide eyed. Probably working out what the issue was on her own. Infected didn’t mean stupid after all. Just kind of crazy, in a unique fashion. One that varied for everyone.

  Her voice stayed low, however.

  “Fudge. Still… This is the quiet ward, so maybe it won’t be that bad? Most of us here are pretty calm about things. Most of the time. The modes are mainly low level. Fear, angst, anxiety, that kind of thing.”

  Nodding, Richard waved to the correct end of the hall. The one with the door at it.

  “Good. We might get a few people out, then. Stand by the door. Don’t go until I tell you, or you hear that yelling. In that case, take off and head straight out to the wall. We have thirty-five minutes before the guards come, otherwise, so don’t let the stress get to you.” That was twenty feet high, and would be pretty difficult to climb, for most people.

  They had a nifty trick waiting on the other side to handle that, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

  Lanky hair or not, the woman was bright enough and sound enough of mind to understand both what to do and that she wanted to leave the place she was being kept against her will. That meant she jogged, fairly quietly, down the white tiled hallway, just as soon as her shoes were on.

  At the same time, Richard repeated part of his spiel at the next door. It wasn’t until he hit the fourth door down that he found the person he was actually looking for. The girl was about eighteen, and unlike the rest of the people there, when she came to the door, she glowed, fairly brightly. It was an impressive look, being mainly green, her skin lighting up very much like a glow stick. Her eyes did the same thing, which had to make it hard to see.

  She sounded almost bored when she spoke. There was a soft hint of wry amusement to her words at the
same time.

  “What’s this, now? We’re going on a field trip?”

  Richard nodded, noting that the gowned young lady already had her shoes on. Meaning she was paying attention and willing to do her part. It was impressive, since the others had needed to be helped that way, except the first woman.

  “That’s right. A pretty nice one, too. There will be ice cream and candy, I hear. You heard the instructions already? We need to move…” He felt urgent, because he wasn’t an idiot. They actually had almost half an hour to leave, with no one bothering to yell or scream for the guards yet at all.

  If they could take this one person with them, the whole mission was a success, of course. She, Gillian Sprouse was the entire reason they were rescuing anyone at all the way they were. After all, they were the IPB. They could have simply driven busses up to the front door and taken everyone inside, if they wanted. That would give things away though and if there was any kind of warning that leaked out first, then this one girl would probably have been killed before they could drive up with a bus.

  To protect the secrets of her father and mother.

  Really, failing to kill her had been a mistake on a level that could prove disastrous for the Sprouse family. One that Richard Drake was planning to capitalize on, if at all possible. In the end that would be up to Gillian, of course. If she was too afraid to speak, then their best plan as to how to take down the cabal was done. Then the only thing they had left was mass murder. Taking the IPB to war with the rest of the Federal Government wasn’t anyone’s idea of a brilliant plan, of course. They’d win, in the end but a lot of innocent people would die first.

  This way they might shut down the bad people without hurting the innocent ones too much. That was the theory at least.

  The girl got herself to the end of the hall and the men and women that stood there shifted nervously, without trying to run early or making too much noise about it. Really, fears aside, Richard got through the last door, near the one that the guards would be storming through if they were alerted, without anyone flying off the handle at him. One man, the second to last one, had started to do that but had muffled his own yelling by placing both hands over his mouth and holding them there physically. Then the older fellow, who was gray haired and heavy all over, jogged slowly to the end of the hall to stand with the others. Fighting for silence that his first mode didn’t want him to have.