Chapter 92

Jo was afraid to ask exactly what it was Elliott was talking about when he’d said he had found the thermal exhaust port of the building where Jamie and the other LIGHTS prisoners were being held. Her eyes went to Cassidy first, who’d asked Elliott what he’d meant when he exclaimed, “Aha!” but her aunt was focused on Elliott, so Jo was unable to get a sense of whether or not everyone else was holding their breath thinking he’d probably come up with something that simply wouldn’t work or if they were hopeful that he had actually solved the problem.
“What is it, Dad?” Brandon asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… look at the west side of the building. Do you see anything remotely familiar about the shape of that part of this allegedly new building?”
Jo studied what she thought was the west side, though it was hard for her to put it into context until she noticed a compass rose on the top of the blueprint. She had been looking at the correct side, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to recognize.
“Is that the old Capitol Building?” Scott asked. “The one that congress used to meet in, before the Vampires took over?”
“Yes, yes it is,” Elliott said before turning to look at his own child and saying, “I thought you knew more about history than that, son.”
Brandon shrugged, his eyes wide. “It’s a blueprint, not a three dimensional model!”
“Why is that the thermal exhaust port?” Cassidy asked, ignoring the disagreement between her husband and her father-in-law.
“Tunnels,” Elliott said. “There are tons of tunnels underneath the old Capitol Building. Back in the day, there were restaurants and even some kinda subway system down there.”
“Don’t you think they probably thought of that and closed all of those off?” Brandon asked. “I mean, why incorporate the old building into the new one without shoring up any possible Achilles heels in the defenses?”
Elliott started shaking his head before his child even finished the question. “No, and I’ll tell you why. The old Capitol Building is within this giant concrete monstrosity that they built, right? They said they did that to protect it and to keep the history of the country intact and preserved. Most people just assume that the exterior of the new building, whatever the hell they call it, incorporates the exterior of the old Capitol Building. But we are looking at the blueprint, and it doesn’t.”
“The damn blueprint says right on top of it what it’s called,” Heather pointed out. “How the hell did you miss that after staring at the damn thing for an hour? It’s called the American Government Buildin’, dummy.”
Elliott ignored the name calling and insults to his intelligence as if he just expected that sort of abuse from Heather. “They may have sealed up the ends of the tunnels, where they enter the building, but I guarantee they didn’t fill in all of those tunnels. There are miles and miles of tunnels down there. There’s no way in hell that they filled all of that shit in.”
“So you think we can access the new building through the old building?” Jo asked, pretty sure she was following along. “You think that Cass and Heather can blast through whatever they did to seal up the tunnel entrances or exits?”
“Precisely. The main Capitol Building, the one with the recognizable dome, is inside of the new American Bullshit Building, but not all of the entire complex is underneath those new concrete walls, which means we can get to the tunnels from one of these other buildings, the ones that used to house the offices for the members of congress. Not all of them are incorporated into the other building.”
“So we’ll only have to blast our way out of the tunnel,” Cassidy concluded. “Assuming they didn’t actually fill the whole tunnel in.”
“I guarantee they did not do that,” Elliott said, sounding very sure of himself. “I’m willing to jump out of this airplane on the way back to Russia if I’m wrong.”
“If you’re wrong, we might not be able to go back to Russia,” Brandon pointed out. “We might all be dead.”
“I won’t be dead,” Elliott reminded him.
“You can’t fly the plane, though, knucklehead. How the hell you gonna jump out of a plane that’s on the ground? That supposed to be a threat?” Heather rolled her eyes.
“I’m just saying… that’s the only way we’re going to be able to access the concrete monstrosity,” Elliott repeated, either getting tired of declaring that he knew what he was talking about for once or no longer caring enough to defend himself.
“All right,” Jo said, deciding to put her trust in her Funcle’s assessment so that they could start moving forward with the planning. “Let’s go ahead and assume that we can get into the American Government Building via these tunnels. Where is our entry point, Elliott?”
It took a while for Elliott to respond to Jo’s question as he studied the map for a few minutes, but when he spoke, he seemed sure of himself. “I’d say the tunnel from the old House of Representatives office building is probably our best bet.”
Jo had no idea what he was talking about as she couldn’t see anything on the blueprint she was staring at that was named anything close to that. “Where?” she asked, continuing to scan the document.
“It’s outside of the blueprint,” Elliott explained. He sent a picture of a map to all of them through the IAC. It had to be something he either quickly pulled up or found in the archives. “It’s that building on the bottom of the picture I just sent you.”
He had circled the building for them so it stood out immediately. It wasn’t part of the new building. “And there’s a tunnel from here to where?” Jo asked.
“Back on the blueprint, you see the dome of the old Capitol Building?”
Jo had noted that earlier. “Yes.”
“Somewhere around there,” Elliott replied. “Once we get in there, we’ll have access to the rest of the building.”
“And… how do we know where my dad and the others are being held?” Scott asked, sounding more nervous by the minute.
“I can find them,” Cassidy assured him. “They might be able to screw with our IACs, but they can’t mess with my telepathy.”
“Are you sure about that?” Heather asked. “They’ve messed with it before.”
“I’m sure,” Cassidy replied. “When they’ve messed with it before, it’s been an extremely powerful Vampire, and they’ve been aware of what we are up to. These bastards have no idea what we’re about to do. All they’re worried about is Margie and her forces attacking them from outside the building. They won’t be expecting anyone with telepathy, and they certainly won’t think that we’d find a way to dig into their building without being detected.”
She seemed very confident, and Jo wanted to believe her. After all, her aunt had been doing this a long time and had a lot of experience to call on.
“All right then,” Jo said with a nod. “Then… that’s our plan. We’ll let our team on the ground know as soon as we can.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to tell them?” Scott asked. “How do we know that no one will be eavesdropping on our conversation?”
“I’ll tell them,” Cassidy said. “They can potentially cut into our IAC messages, but I’ve never had another Vampire cut into a mental transmission through my telepathy. I’ll make sure your aunt knows what we’re doing.”
Cassidy had no doubt that she was capable of doing everything Jo and the others were asking her to do, so Jo nodded in agreement. Ordinarily, she’d have no issue with putting all of her trust in her aunt, but now, things were slightly different since Cassidy had been recently compromised by Holland. For all Jo knew, Holland was in charge of Cassidy at the moment, and she was just playing along to fool all of them. She really didn’t think that was the case, but she couldn’t let her guard down with anyone.
“What else do we need to get sorted out?” Zane asked. “There’s got to be more to this than just where the entry point is.”
“Do we need two entry points?” Jo asked. “What if we put all of our eggs in one basket, and it doesn’t work?”
“It’ll work!” Elliott exclaimed. “Trust the force, Luke!”
Jo stared at him, having no idea what he was talking about. She figured he had to be referring to some stupid movie again. “Is there another tunnel in another building, just in case?” she asked him.
Elliott nodded. “Yeah, there are plenty of them. The one I picked is the shortest, but the one from the old Senate Office Building is pretty close to being the same length.”
“All right then. We should split up. We’ll use some of Margie’s forces as well since she has thousands of people with her, and we already know that attacking the outside of this massive concrete building isn’t going to be easy.” Jo wished that she could take Margie and her partner Grant with them, but she didn’t know if that was an option. Someone had to stay behind and direct the assault from the outside, and it wasn’t going to be Jo.
“How are we going to split up?” Cassidy asked. “I’m assuming Heather with one team, me with the other.”
“Yes,” Jo said with a nod. “I’ll lead one team. Elliott, you can lead the other.”
“Bully for me,” he said, more indifferent than unenthusiastic.
Jo ignored him. “Cassidy, Heather, who do you want to go with?”
“I’m goin’ with you, Jo. Elliott’s accent drives me plum looney tunes,” Heather said.
Jo bit back a laugh at the irony. “All right. Elliott, why don’t you take Cadon, too. And Brandon. I’ll take Scott and Zane with me.” She looked around at the others, not really caring where they went or if they went.
Elliott nodded. For once, he had nothing to say.
“What about Ryker?” Cassidy gave Jo a look that questioned whether or not she had forgotten about the human altogether or just didn’t count him as part of the team.
“I’m not planning on him going with us, but if he insists, since he did fly us here, I’ll let him decide for himself,” Jo replied.
“You know he could get himself killed, right?” Scott asked. “My powers don’t do all that much for humans, not when they’ve been injured by a Vampire.”
“I know,” Jo said. That was exactly why she hoped Ryker would agree to sit this one out. But she knew that there was no way that was going to happen. He was going to insist on going--and she was going to have to let him.