Chapter Five- Escape

"Are you ready to go out, Rex?" Abby called as she and Connor entered her lab. "Rex?"

A cheerful chirp drew their attention to the small animal carrier on Abby's desk, upon which Rex was perched as though eagerly waiting to get inside. The small dinosaur preened happily as Connor scratched him behind his ears in greeting.

"Good boy, Rex!" Abby cooed, opening the wire door for him and slipping him a few pieces of apple from her pocket to munch on as a reward. "Are you ready for a picnic?" She quickly set about grabbing her jacket and backpack from behind her desk, resolutely switching off her computer.

"Do you have everything you need for the weekend?" Connor asked. "I'd rather not come back until Monday, if we can manage it."

Abby nodded and smiled as she picked up Rex's crate and handed it to him. "Ready when you are."

The anomaly alarm sounded throughout the ARC, though it was somewhat muted in the menagerie, distracting them from any comment Connor might have been about to make. Abby had talked Lester into installing sound-proof walls to keep the creatures from being constantly disturbed by the anomaly alarm. Connor started to say something but one look from Abby silenced any suggestion that might have escaped his lips of investigating the alarm.

"The relief team can handle it," he assured himself aloud and she nodded her agreement.

Rex began squeaking and chirping anxiously, knocking against the door of his crate. Connor and Abby exchanged a confused look and Connor set down the crate and peered in.

"Hey, buddy, what's the problem? That's nothing you haven't heard before."

"Connor," Abby called, and he glanced over to see that she had wandered away to stand by the enormous windows of her lab that looked out over the creature enclosures. "Look at this."

He glanced back at Rex, still shuffling anxiously within the confines of his crate, before joining her and looking out over the enormous room. Every creature he could see was as distressed as Rex, jostling against the sides of their cages, emitting a cacophony of protest against some unseen threat. The anomaly alarm cut out abruptly, but still the creatures did not calm themselves. In fact, Rex seemed more distressed as his alarmed squeaks raised another octave.

"I don't ever think I've seen the creatures react like this," Abby said, her brow creased as she watched them through the thick glass. "Most of them are used to the alarm by now. This is something else."

She glanced at Connor, expecting him to argue, but he only frowned.

"You're the expert in here."

They spent several more minutes staring out at the creatures as Abby debated what to do for them, sometimes out loud and sometimes in her head. Connor did not press the issue; he knew that Abby would not agree to leave the ARC until the creatures were well taken care of and she did not trust anyone but herself to do it. He doubted even her hand-picked assistant who was scheduled to be on-site this weekend would have been entrusted with this mystery, were he here. Connor frowned, realizing that her assistant should be there. He was never late, not after Abby had chewed him out for being three minutes late to a briefing once. He opened his mouth to voice this concern when he was interrupted by an incredibly loud feedback tone screaming through his earpiece.

They each tore their comms from their ears and threw them onto Abby's desk, staring at them in confusion.

"What was that?" Abby gasped, rubbing her ear and wrinkling her nose, confirming his suspicion that the feedback tone had not been limited to his earpiece, ruling out a hardware error.

"Definitely not something good," Connor said firmly, clutching his chest to try to calm his racing heart. He was already running through scenarios in his mind to try to explain the series of events they had observed over the past few minutes, and none of the solutions he came up with were positive. "Come on," he said, grabbing her hand. "We need to get out of here and find someone who knows what going on." And I need to get to the ADD, he thought to himself.

He led her back down the hallway to the secure entrance to the menagerie, slowing as they approached the heavy doors that separated this section of the ARC from the main body of the building. The doors were equipped with long-range scanners to open the doors for authorized personnel before they reached them from this side of the door, but they did not budge. Abby rolled her eyes.

"The scanner has been a little slow for the past few days," she explained, extending her ID bracelet to the scanner beside the door, and stepped forward preemptively.

The doors did not budge. Connor did not even bother to scan his bracelet, choosing instead to throw his weight against the doors, rebounding of sharply.

"Right, those are definitely not going to open," he surmised wisely, rubbing his throbbing shoulder. "I think they're locked from the outside."

"That's impossible," Abby argued, pushing past Connor to try the door herself. "These doors shouldn't be able to lock anyone in. You wrote the security protocol yourself."

"I'm not arguing that; I just think the door would disagree with you," Connor replied calmly as Abby continued unsuccessfully to attempt to open the door.

After several stubborn moments that Connor suspected had more to do with pride than actual belief that she could force the doors open, Abby abandoned her futile attempts and slumped down to sit on the floor, leaning her back against the wall. Connor followed suit, sliding down the opposite wall until they were facing one another.

"Abby," he said feigning calmness, "we're trapped in here, at least for the moment. But if we can't get out, then maybe no one can get in either. "

"And why would we want that?" Abby asked.

"The way the comms went down, the door being locked from the outside- those aren't signs of good things happening. Maybe trapped in here is the safest place to be for the moment."

"Our friends are out there, Connor," she argued, her eyes flashing protectively. "And given our luck, somehow I don't think we're necessarily any safer trapped in here than out there helping, do you?"

The gunfire started a few seconds later, echoing through the halls just outside the menagerie door. Abby flinched away from the door and scooted across the space to sit next to Connor.

"I hate being right all the time," he mumbled.

"Stand up!" the guard barked, angling his rifle towards his prisoners.

Becker and Matt climbed to their feet with some difficultly as their hands were still bound behind their backs.

The tall guard signed impatiently before shoving Matt towards his shorter counterpart. "You'll take that one to the others; the captain goes to the boss."

Becker and Matt exchanged a quick glance and Matt shrugged minutely. Becker had assumed that he and Matt were being held separately from the other hostages because they had been recognized as members of the senior staff.

"Where are you taking him?" Becker demanded.

"He'll be plenty safe with the others so long as everyone cooperates," the first guard answered, waving off his concern. He glanced at his watch again and tapped it impatiently. "Now, let's go."

It seemed that the "boss" may not have given his men sufficient instructions- or that his information was seriously out of date- if they did not recognize Matt as a ranking member of the ARC staff. That lack of information might be useful later, but if they allowed themselves to be separated they would lose what little tactical advantage they had.

Matt and Becker marched out of the room, trailed closely by their captors. Becker did not want to risk revealing Jess's position, no matter how safe she insisted she was, but the alternative was worse at this point. He did his best to put a few extra feet between himself and the guards and waited until they were whispering to one another before he risked speaking into his earpiece.

"Okay, Jess. Do something."

"Give me a minute," she said briskly. He could hear her fingers flying over her keyboard in the background.

Becker jabbed Matt's side with his elbow, trying to catch his attention. Matt glanced toward him questioningly.

"What?" he whispered.

"Shut up!" the short guard snapped, shoving Matt further forward with the butt of his rifle.

"When you take the next corner," Jess said calmly in his ear, "you'll be temporarily out of view of the cameras. When you do, it's going to get dark- very dark- for ten seconds and then the lights will kick back on automatically. Be ready in three… two…"

Becker caught Matt's eye and nodded sharply as they were marched around the corner into a junction of corridors.

"One."

The darkness was absolute and instantaneous; Jess had shut off all the lights in all the surrounding corridors so there was not even any ambient light to aid them.

Matt and Becker turned as one and rushed their attackers, who had been caught completely off-guard by the sudden plunge into blackness. Without speaking, they each attacked the guard closest to them, Matt the shorter of the two and Becker the taller. Becker ducked his head and allowed his shoulder to connect heavily with the man's chest, knocking him off-balance, before spinning to kick his stomach, sending the guard flying to the ground and severely winded. He advanced again before his opponent could gather his wits and return the attack. The toe of his boot touched the rifle the guard had dropped and he swept it to the side, out of his reach. Judging his opponent's position by his heavy breathing, Becker took a step closer, dropping as lightly as he could to his knees. He planted his left knee firmly onto the man's chest to hold him down and pressed the right against his throat, cutting off the flow of oxygen and blood to his brain. It was impossible to tell from the scuffling noises to his left how Matt was faring in his fight, but there was nothing he could do to help him until the lights returned. Becker counted in his head, waiting for the man beneath him to stop struggling before easing the pressure away from the guard's neck. He needed to incapacitate the man, certainly, but not kill him. They might need to question him later.

The lights flashed back on, temporarily blinding Becker. As he blinked against the sudden brightness, he saw Matt still tangled with his attacker, his legs locked around the man's neck in a triangle choke.

"He's down," he assured Matt, who immediately released his grip on the man's neck and slowly pushed himself back up to his knees.

"And what the hell was that?" Matt demanded as Becker crouched down to snag a knife from the tall guard's belt.

Becker did not answer as he twisted the knife awkwardly in his hands to cut through the zip ties that bound his wrists. He stepped behind Matt and cut his hands free as well before picking up one of the abandoned rifles and inspected it.

"Becker? Are you two all right?" a voice in his ear asked.

"Excellent timing," he replied. "Thank you."

"No problem," Jess replied cheerfully. "After all, what's a field coordinator without people to coordinate?"

"So glad to be useful."

Matt looked at Becker as though he had lost his mind. "Who are you talking to?"

"Jess," Becker explained simply, pointing to his earpiece. He set to work stripping the guard of his weapons and tactical vest, which he tossed to Matt. "We're a little bit exposed here," Becker continued, glancing up and down the empty corridors.

"You're clear for the moment. It looks like the patrols are moving away from your current position."

"We need to see what's happening," Becker said, tucking the knife into his boot and searching through the guard's pockets for other useful items as Matt did the same. "Any suggestions as to where we go from here?"

"You need to get to a computer terminal," she instructed. "I'll take it from there. There's an empty lab about twenty meters from you at the northern end of the corridor. Just give me a minute to fix the cameras so anyone else watching won't see you. And I might suggest taking the guards with you so another patrol doesn't trip over them and know you've escaped."

Becker relayed Jess's message to Matt, who leaned against the wall to catch his breath after the fight.

"Was she able to get in touch with Lester?" Matt asked, eagerly inspecting the weapons he had collected from the guard.

"My phone is dead, remember? And being locked in a closet didn't do much to increase my options for communications either," Jess said rather testily. "Tell Matt I'm doing everything I can- which is more than most people can do under the best of circumstances- and that-"

"She says we're on our own for now," Becker paraphrased with a smirk.

"Damn," Matt muttered. "Just once it would be nice if we could get ourselves into a situation where back-up was an option."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time we invite mystery forces to attack the ARC."

"This is getting to be a bit of a bad habit with you people, isn't it?" Matt asked cheekily.

Becker ignored the jibe and focused on turning his attention back to the problem at hand. "What happened after I left you and Jess?"

"When we heard the gunfire, I went after you. Obviously I didn't get very far before I ran into trouble," Matt said, indicating his swollen eye. "What happened to you?"

"I got caught by a group of them," Becker explained grimly. "I was winning until they activated the earpiece disruptor. They shot me with my EMD and took me to that room."

"What happened to your earpiece?" Matt asked curiously.

"You didn't have yours in…" Becker said suspiciously, gazing intently at Matt's blackened eye.

"No, I didn't," Matt agreed, still not catching on.

"If you didn't have your earpiece in, then you didn't hear the disruptor tone." Becker's face shone with competitive smugness as he explained the tone the intruders had used to disable the security team and jam the frequency. "How many did you say you fought?"

"Two," Matt answered defensively, making a face at Becker who smirked victoriously. "But they were very big and very… surprising."

"Sure," Becker offered loftily. "I understand."

Jess rejoined the conversation, cutting his gloating short. "You can tease Matt later, Becker. I've put the cameras in the corridor and the lab on a loop, but there's a patrol coming your way. I'll have to reset the loop before they arrive, so you need to go now."

"Got it." He glanced over his shoulder at Matt. "I should probably go first. There could be trouble ahead and if you don't think you're up to the challenge…"

"Careful, pretty boy," Matt growled, grabbing the collar of one of the guards and dragging his dead weight behind him as he shoved past Becker.

Becker suppressed a smirk and followed suit, dragging the remaining guard behind him, carefully checking that they had not left any signs that there had been a disturbance. The guard was heavier than he had expected and it took some careful maneuvering to get the man's prone figure through the doorway without further injuring him- not that Becker was overly concerned about that. He locked the door behind him and tossed the second guard next to the first in a sloppy pile by the door. Matt began rifling through the lab, looking for anything useful as Becker sat down at the computer workstation closest to him.

"All right, Jess, I'm at a computer. Now what?"

"I see you," she said. Becker glanced around until he located the surveillance camera mounted in the corner of the lab. "Don't worry, no one else can. Now, log onto the network using this user name and password." She rattled off two long series of letters and numbers.

"What is that?" Matt asked from across the room as Becker dutifully typed in the credentials.

"It's an override I built into the system after the New Dawn incident."

"An override you built into the system with Lester's knowledge and permission, of course," Becker said sardonically, shooting a bemused look at the camera.

"Please, it would have taken me ten times longer to explain what I wanted to do that to just do it," she answered airily. "And what Lester doesn't know won't hurt him. I switched him over to decaf coffee months ago and he still hasn't noticed."

"You still should have run this by me, Jess," Matt said firmly, knowing she could hear him over the open channel. "I don't like having holes in the system."

"If you don't like it, don't use it," she shot back calmly. "I'll apologize once we aren't all being held hostage."

"And why can't I just use my normal passcode?" Becker asked.

"Because we aren't the only ones in the system right now. Whoever broke into the ARC also found a way onto our network. If you log in like you normally would, they would be able to see what you were doing and trace it back to the computer terminal."

Becker's fingers hovered over the keyboard as he paused to process this information. "If you know they're on the network, do they know you're there as well?"

Jess paused before she spoke again and her silence answered his question. "Yes, they know there's someone poking around. They probably know I've been fiddling with the cameras, and by now, they probably know that I helped some prisoners escape. But there's no way for them to find me or you, so there's no reason to worry yet."

"Can you see what they're doing?" Matt asked, as he joined Becker at the computer, abandoning his search of the lab.

"Not yet, but I'm working on it. Whoever it is, they're very good at covering their tracks."

"How did all this happen, Jess?" Matt asked.

"You're going to have to see it to believe it. I'm accessing archived footage from the time the alarm went off," she answered. "You should see it on your screen… now."

They watched the scene unfold. Just from the camera angles they were watching, Jess counted at least a dozen anomalies opening at different, seemingly random places throughout the facility.

"Anomalies?" Matt asked incredulously. "They created anomalies?"

"They created anomalies at strategic points throughout the ARC. That's how they overwhelmed security so quickly."

"Do you have any thoughts on who's behind this?"

"No," Jess replied. "I haven't had enough time yet to analyze the footage."

"We'll deal with that later, Matt," Becker said. "What's the status of the rest of the ARC?"

Images flashed on the screen too quickly for Becker and Matt to get anything but a general impression of what was happening.

"You've been looking at this longer than us, Jess," Matt said. "What can you tell us about our friends?"

"I count approximately twenty of them, not including the ones you took care of. No more than thirty, as far as I can see. They're all heavily armed and wearing tactical gear, though they haven't killed anyone as far as I've seen. Also, none of them are wearing earpieces or carrying radios."

Becker repeated her observations for Matt. "No communication devices?"

"Not that I can see," she replied.

"We didn't find anything on the guards when we searched them," Becker mused. "So how are they communicating with one another?"

"That's a riddle for another time," Matt interjected, echoing Becker's earlier sentiment. "Is there any way to know who was in the ARC when the alarm went off?"

"Lester left at five o'clock with most of the staff. The relief field coordinator and most of the night shift were here, with the exception of a few scientists, according to the log book. It looks like most of the support staff were held up at security and hadn't made it into the building when the alarm went off. Besides that, Connor and Abby were in the menagerie. I've tried to reconnect their comms, but they haven't answered and the cameras for that section are down, so I can't get a visual. And, of course, there's us and Emily, and anyone else who worked a few minutes late tonight."

"Where is Emily right now?" Matt asked, finally giving into his worry. "Have you seen her yet?"

"She was somewhere between your office and her quarters when the alarm sounded, as far as I can tell. I haven't seen her since, but I have a pretty good guess of where to start looking: the camera in Matt's office has been disabled."

Matt cursed under his breath. "That sounds like her. Can you show us the surrounding areas?"

Jess immediately called up the images he requested. "I haven't seen her, but I don't think she could have gotten far without being caught on camera."

"Can you fix her comm like you did mine?" Becker asked.

"Sorry," she replied. "And technically I didn't fix your earpiece; whoever took over the ARC is jamming the frequencies we broadcast on, so I set up a new channel for us. I can bring anyone onto the new channel if I know their radio number, but I have to be careful. I can't tell from this computer if she even has her earpiece in anymore. If one of the intruders picks up the wrong earpiece and listens in…"

Becker and Matt exchanged a silent look. Without active comms it would be much harder to coordinate any kind of effort to retake the ARC, if it could even be done at all given their limited resources.

"Okay," Becker announced, breaking the silence, "that's enough talk for now; it's time to regroup. Jess, tell me where you are and I'll come get you."

She quickly described the location of the closet where Matt had stashed her. "But I'm perfectly fine where I am for now, Becker. I'm not sure you could make it all the way here without running into trouble."

"Trouble is relative," he argued. "You're only a few corridors over from us."

"True, but they're still running patrols," she replied. She brought up several screens, showing the intruders paired off, still calmly patrolling the corridors, presumably searching for any staff who had not been captured in the initial incursion.

"Jess is right," Matt said, injecting himself into the conversation. "She's safe where she is for now, so she should stay put until we have a better plan. Agreed?"

Becker only stared at him, crossing his arms over his chest. The look on his face made it clear that no argument would overrule his decision. "And we need to get Matt an earpiece," Becker continued as though he had not heard any dissent. "I'm tired of playing telephone."

"And just where are we going to go, Captain Becker?" Jess inquired politely, though he could almost hear her rolling her eyes at his stubbornness.

"We'll go to the armory," he decided. "You're right- the patrols are moving away from the center of the building. I don't think we'll have too much difficulty getting there if we're careful. It's a secure room and, best of all, it has weapons."

"I thought you'd be pleased, Action Man," Matt said, gesturing to the desk covered with the weapons they had collected from their captors. "Real guns, remember?"

"Yes, real guns and a real lack of ammunition. Not really a winning combination. And while I'm usually all for more conventional, lethal weapons, in this case, they do lack the… subtlety of the EMDs."

Matt sighed impatiently, but nodded to Becker in concession. "You may have a point. We need supplies before we can make a move, so we may as well regroup now." He stared at the screen for a long moment, presumably studying the guards' movements. "If you're going to get Jess, I'm going to find Emily. Once we're all together, we can decide how to proceed."

"Excellent," Becker said, clapping his hands together. "Jess, can you do anything about the cameras?"

"I'll take care of the cameras for Matt as best I can from here," Jess said. "And I'll put them on a timed loop so he can get back to the armory. Just tell him to go slowly and be careful- I won't be able to warn him if he's running into trouble."

Becker repeated Jess's last instruction and glanced at his watch. "We'll meet you in the armory in… thirty minutes' time."

"What's your plan for dealing with our pals here?" Matt jerked his head toward the still-unconscious men.

Becker produced a handful of zip ties he had taken from the guard's pocket. "I'll take care of it- turnabout is fair play." He nodded toward a supply cupboard at the back of the darkened lab. "We can chuck them in there and lock the door. We certainly aren't taking them with us."

Matt nodded his agreement. "Good luck," he called quietly over his shoulder as he slipped out the door.

Becker turned back to the computer screen and narrowed his eyes as he focused on memorizing the patrols' patterns.

"You've got five minutes, Jessica," he said firmly. "And then I'm coming to get you, whether you're done or not. Understand?"

"Yes, Hilary."

A/N: My beta and I have relocated to our Bunker of Hiding out of concern for our safety because we are such horrible updaters. Obviously, the easiest solution to this would be for us to write/edit faster- which we are working on. We are just both also working on jobs, college degrees, other writing projects, and this delightful habit we've picked up called "sleeping."

However, we really, really are working hard on getting the next few chapters done. Cross my heart and may Jecker die, stick a needle in my beta's eye (Sorry, Ellen).