Lila Shortcuts by Sarah Alderson Read Free Book Online

on the guard towers ahead of us.
    ‘Watch this,’ I said, focusing on the silhouettes of the two guards standing guns to shoulder observing the no man’s land between the inner and outer walls. As we watched, and I focused, they both placed their guns on the ground and did hand-stands.
    ‘Can we just get this over with?’ Amber muttered, skulking towards the entrance, which looked incongruously like the polystyrene facade of some Disneyland castle. She was frowning, pressing a hand to her head. It was only then I realised that she was having to deflect the thoughts of over five thousand inmates, many of them incarcerated for the most heinous crimes imaginable. It made me reconsider the wisdom of taking her in there with us, but we needed someone to control the temperature just in case things got a little trigger-happy.
    At the entrance the guard asked to see our identification.
    I stole a line from Star Wars: ‘You don’t need to see our identification.’
    ‘We don’t need to see you’re identification,’ the guard repeated, his face blank as a waxwork.
    ‘Move along,’ I said.
    ‘Move along,’ he repeated.
    It made Ryder laugh.
    We did the same at every guard post until we hit the waiting room. Any guard that looked sideways at us Amber hit with a wave of calm until they backed away smiling. It was quite a gift she had, not one I’d come across previously. It made me wonder what other abilities might exist, who else we might be able to recruit given time. Ryder wiped memories as we went – a quick hand gesture, a touch of his fingers to their temples and we were forgotten, passing through ID checks like ghosts.
    The only thing I’d lied about to Amber was the cameras. It was the real reason I’d given her the cap. There wasn’t a thing I could do about the cameras. They were closed circuit. And Harvey was the one who had the hacking skills. I knew our faces would be recorded but mine was already on the record, as was Bill’s, and Ryder’s. Amber’s was partially shielded by the visor of the cap and I hoped that would go some way to disguising her.
    We breezed on through until we found ourselves in the waiting room, where we’d been placed along with other ‘family members’ – there for their allotted twenty minutes with their death row inmate loved one. You can imagine the vibe in that room. Amber needed to steady herself against Ryder. I glanced around verifying the points on our map were just as they were in reality. There was one heavily-guarded door straight ahead of us which led into a control room, that I knew would be manned by several armed guards.
    Thomas had drawn us the map after he’d projected his way into the building and done a thorough recon. At the thought of Thomas I felt a familiar gut twist of anger, then a blast of guilt which I quickly dismissed. Guilt was a wasted emotion. Thomas was the first of our army to fall. Another old colleague, who’d worked with me on a few bank jobs in the past, Thomas had agreed to help me dig up information on who had murdered Melissa by infiltrating the Senator’s meetings with Stirling Enterprises. Shortly after he confirmed Burn’s role, Thomas disappeared. I presumed murdered by the Unit, who by then were actively hunting me.
    Bill slipped the keys from the chain at the waist of one guard. I froze another. Amber gave it all she had, working with the energy already in the space she ramped it up a notch until the room was filled with hysterical cries as stalwart mothers, wrung out wives, snot-nosed kids and shame-faced fathers collapsed to their knees drowning in a sea of sorrow. It was quite a thing to behold.
    We were through that door and into the control room in ten seconds flat. I took over – freezing the five guards manning the console before they could even swivel in their seats or raise their guns. Bill, using a length of fishing wire, tied all five guards to their seats and removed their weapons, piling them into a duffel bag