Chapter 99

The timer in Jo’s head was ticking. Margie said she was on in five minutes with the president, and she’d asked for five minutes after that, so that meant ten more excruciatingly long minutes until Jo could start her attack.
She let the rest of the team know and saw the irritation on their faces as well. Everyone was ready to get on with this.
“I just had a thought,” Cassidy said a few minutes into their wait. “We didn’t think I’d be able to reach Jamie or anyone else through my telepathy because the Vampires would be guarding against it, but now that our IACs are open, maybe we can get them that way.”
“Their IACs will have their coordinates,” Jo said. “We can find them that way.”
“Won’t that just give us a broad lat and long?” Brandon asked.
“Maybe. But it also might be more exact. It’s worth a try,” Jo said.
“The only problem is, if my dad’s IAC is off, none of us can force it on. Only Aaron or Cadence could do that,” Scott reminded them.
“True. Use your telepathy, Cass. See if you can reach Jamie and ask him to turn his IAC on.”
“Do you think they’ll have something in there to detect when the prisoners’ IACs come on?” Jo asked.
“It’s possible,” Cassidy told her. “But I might be able to block that, too. It’s just a matter of whether or not we think it’s worth the risk.”
Jo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If she made the wrong decision, they just might be discovered before they even started their attack. She didn’t want to cause the early assassination of the prisoners, and she didn’t want to cue the Vampires in that they were about to be attacked.
“Let’s wait,” Jo said, hoping she was doing the right thing. “Let’s wait until we get in there, and if we can’t find them, we’ll try it. There’s a chance we’ll already be discovered by the time we have to ask, and by then, we can do it without alerting them of what we’re up to.”
“Because they’ll already know,” Brandon filled in for her.
“Right,” Jo said with a nod
“And if they know we’re in there….” Grant continued.
Scott finished, ‘They’ll kill my dad and the others before we can reach them.”
When the ten minutes were over, Jo checked in with Margie one more time. “We’re going in, unless you say otherwise,” Jo told her.
“Go for it,” Margie said. “I’ve got Crimson Crotch’s attention.”
Jo took a deep breath and then told Cassidy, “All right. You’re up.”
Cassidy rolled her eyes. “I’m always up. I’ve been up this whole time. Who do you think is throwing the shield?”
Not wanting to argue, Jo said, “All right. Well, you’re up again. Can you get us through this wall?”
“Of course I can,” her aunt said.
Through the IAC, Jo told Elliott and Heather. “We’re busting through the wall now.”
“Allrighty,” Heather replied. “I’ll give it a try.”
It was difficult for Jo to concentrate on what was going on in front of her and listen to Heather as she did the same thing as Cassidy was doing--though from the sound of it, it wasn’t exactly the same. Cassidy lifted her hands and shot blue light at the barrier in front of them. In a matter of seconds, the concrete began to break into chunks, but it was only the center section that was deteriorating. Cassidy was keeping the destruction to as small an area as possible that they could still all squeeze through. Rather than letting the chunks of concrete fall to the ground which might make a clatter loud enough to catch the attention of the Vampires, Cassidy was slowly lowering them to the ground, soundlessly.
Through the IAC, Jo heard the exact opposite. The loud sounds of huge chunks of concrete hitting the ground, possibly even being blown out of the way, continued way past the time when Cassidy was finished and said, “All right, boys and girls. Let’s go.”
With guns drawn, Jo and the others walked through the narrow opening. Only one of them could fit through at a time, but there was nothing to stop them or slow them down, so they poured through quickly enough, undetected, as far as Jo could tell.
On the other side of the wall, they found themselves in a dimly lit, large, round room. Jo stepped out of the way to let others through the opening and took a look around, trying to figure out where they were.
Around the perimeter of the room there were several statues, but lots of them were broken. Some were completely toppled over. Others just had pieces knocked off--an arm, a hand, a head. The room looked vaguely familiar, like she might have seen it somewhere before, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“This is the old Capitol Building, all right,” Brandon said through the IAC. Cassidy hadn’t let her shield falter while she was breaking down the wall. “This is the National Statuary Hall.” Brandon took a look around the room and then added, “Or it was.”
“What the hell happened in here?” Scott asked. “Why would they break the heads off of the statues?”
“Because they don’t care about the history of our country, and they’re a bunch of barbarians,” Cassidy said.
Jo took a deep breath and started walking toward the closest door. ”We have no idea where to go to from here, right?”
“Right. And Dad and the rest of them are also in this building and making a hell of a racket,” Brandon said.
“So we should probably get out of here as quickly as possible,” Pamela concluded.
Jo knew she was right. She had the blueprint of the newer building pulled up now and was trying to figure out how to get to the closest staircase that might take them up to the rooftop, but it was difficult to tell precisely where they were.
“Do you want me to contact Jamie?” Cass asked.
Having reached the door, Jo looked out the small, dirty window in the door and saw a long, dimly lit hallway. “Not yet. We need to get out of this building within a building.”
“That’s the easy part,” Brandon said, pushing the door open. “It’s figuring out where to go after that that’s going to be a pain in the ass.”
Exiting the statue room, they made their way toward what would’ve been the front of the building before it was consumed by the new addition. It was the next door that was going to be tricky. What were the chances that they could get out of the old Capitol Building and into the new facility with no one coming down the hallway and spotting them?
Jo didn’t think they were good.
With their weapons drawn and ready to fire, they burst through the double doors into another hallway. This one was clearly newer, but just as dimly lit. The floor itself was gray concrete, the walls and ceiling white with fluorescent lighting. Oddly enough, there was no one around.
“That seemed… too easy,” Grant muttered, holding his weapon up near his face as he paused against one of the white walls.
“You can say that again,” Jo said. It really did seem odd that there was no one there, but as big as the building was, and as extensive as the Australian invasion had been, there was a good chance that many of the troops meant to defend the building would’ve been pulled away.
But with an execution on the calendar, one would’ve thought that they would’ve been better staffed.
“Which way do you think we should go?” Daniel asked, looking both ways down the hallway.
“I’m going to say… that way,” Cassidy provided, pointing at the closest door to where they were standing.
Jo nodded, and they took off going that direction, keeping their steps light and their formation tight.
They reached the next door without incident, but the next hallway was different. There was no window, so they'd have to open the door to see exactly who might be waiting on the other side.
“Let’s just take a peek,” Jo said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be another empty hallway.”
She was hoping, but the chances of that were slim to none. 

Night Slayer
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