Spark and Flame Ch. 01

"Autonomous tracking drones, aureal nauseators, and of course knockout gas." Rewire said that last feature with a particular excitement. Summer's eyes flitted back to the vents from the recessed sprinklers. She wondered if Rewire had made an error. The standard knockout gas produced by Lentrium that was used as a non-violent pacification technique across the city had an extremely reduced effect on almost all super humans. Even high concentrations did little more to her than make her feel like she'd missed an hour of sleep.

"Of course Lentrium KOG has only a 0.05% effectiveness rate among superhumans, meaning that it's only really useful or intended for use among non-supers." Summers eyes drifted back to the sprinkler, her hands at the ready. She didn't like where this was going. "Alterra Banks though have an off-the-books partnership with Lentrium to develop more effective solutions for pacification in superhuman-concentrated cities. The security response ventilation pumps have a seven canister selection system, each canister enough to fill the vault with ten times more gas than necessary to knock out a normal person. Most security documents on their servers show that all seven are Lentrium KOG, an overkill redundancy. However the Security Research division's private memos show canister number seven in each system is actually Lentrium X-4, with tests showing 98% effectiveness on knocking out superhumans."

Summer tensed, things had just gone from a potential stalemate to very bad.

"Let's see how well it works!"

Summer heard a hissing as a lazy blue gas began billowing out of the vents in the ceiling. She whipped her arm out and sent a burst of flame towards the sprinklers, hitting it dead on. Ten sprinklers descended from the ceiling in unison, and Summer heard what she'd been waiting for: a click from the vault door and the sound of hydraulics opening. She turned towards the door as unnoticed the ends of the sprinklers swiveled towards her.

"You think you're clever don't you?" Rewire growled through the speakers, a tinge of anger to her voice, "But this is no more than a minor setback."

The hydraulic door openers slowed and then stopped leaving only a two inch opening in the door. Summer had just enough time to swear under her breath before ten foam cannons knocked her forward onto the ground. The cold, heavy foam knocked the breath out of her, and by the time she lifted her head again, the arms had begun closing the heavy metal door again.

"All your struggling is futile Cinder, I've planned this whole thing out from every angle." There was a slight pause, and then anger tinged with the smallest, sweetest bit of embarrassment. "Although you did manage to send an alert past me to the fire station. So we'll need to speed things up a bit"

Summer struggled to her feet as the door clicked closed again. Spinning around she heard the gentle hiss of the vents escalate to a full bellow, the blue gas pouring in much faster than before. By the table Alisha lay on the ground her movements slowing to a full halt, her masturbating hand the last limb to finally fall asleep.

Summer frantically searched for another way out as she caught the whiff of something that smelled like a cross between rubber and bathroom cleaner.

"Average fire department response time to this location is seven minutes," Rewire mused over the speakers, "We'll be cutting it close, but maybe I can slow them down a bit."

Summer stumbled towards the door, a weariness tugging at the edges of her consciousness. She had to try something. Summoning a flame to her fingertips she began trying to cut through the thick vault door. She knew it was hopeless, that she'd never make it through in time, but she had to try. She had managed the smallest cut through maybe a quarter of the door's thickness when ten foam cannons launched another barrage at her, the pressure squeezing her against the door and then causing her to sprawl backwards on the floor, gasping for air. The rubber and sanitization smell flooded her lungs more fully this time, her vision swimming. She tried to summon the flames again, unsure if she should keep cutting, try to disable the foam cannons, or just prepare herself for the approaching villainess. The fire-retardant foam coating her hand made the decision for her though, try as she might no flame would form on her coated hand.

"Wow, good job Cinder. You're really helping to speed this process up!" Rewire's staticy cackle sluggishly registered in her mind. "Looks like I'll be down to collect you shortly."

Summer struggled to rise to her feet, to fight the good fight until the very end; but her muscles couldn't bring themselves to properly function. For a moment she managed to raise herself to a sitting position, but her next breath of poison air had her slouch down to her side again. Her eyes flickered, trying to stay awake, arms and legs splayed askew with no will to move. A tear ran down her face at her failure and powerlessness, as a click and hum slowly reverberated through her ears.

All her senses seemed disjointed, the sounds of the heavy vault door opening mismatching the stilted visuals her tired eyes were tracking. She saw square-heeled boots cross the floor first at half-speed then in a sudden burst, hearing the click against the floor what seemed like an eternity later. She couldn't lift her head to see who they belonged to, only that they were followed by six metal legs of some sort of robot, the movements seeming random to her drugged mind. The boots stopped a few feet in front of her face, and the figure stooped down. Summer tried one last time to do something, anything to save herself. But her arm felt like it was sealed to the vault floor and her fire only managed the weakest glint from one of the few spots not coated in foam before going out. A face with a gasmask stared at her, she could feel the predatory grin behind it.

"You're so close Cinder, just look how heavy your eyes are," Rewire reached out a glove with little metal contacts in the fingertips towards Summer's head, "Let me help you a bit."

Summer's mind began swimming in a new way before she felt the cold steel contacts touch her temples. The gas had made her thoughts sluggish and elongated, but now random thoughts were coming unbidden to her like someone sifting and searching through a stack of files. Once or twice she felt her arms twitch and her left leg kick back without her controlling it. Meanwhile she was remembering her 7th grade dance mashed into her setting a field on fire mashed into Artificer's keyboard's clacking. They were all simultaneously distinct and intertwined.

"Good enough"

The words stretched through Summer's mind before she felt a slight tingle and the world went dark.