Escape

Imagine, if you can, a sky without stars.

It's not that hard, really. If you live in the city, or have been fortunate to go out into the city at night, you'll know very well what it looks like. All that light from the streetlamps blocks out the light from the stars, turning it completely black. Not a speck or spot of those cosmic pinpricks is visible - the whole thing is a shadowy canvas stretching from horizon to horizon as far as you can see, the depth of which you can only estimate as you gaze up at it.

With me so far? Good. Now, try to imagine that in the middle of the day.

12:20, to be precise. Because that is the exact time this story begins.

Look down.

At this time, on this world, Rutledge Asylum and Foster Home for the Gifted is the only source of light here. The whole building is a mass of metallic cylinders, lumped together as if a child has squashed his plasticine sausages into a bunch, and the beams of the searchlights glancing off its curved surfaces lend the entire construct an ethereal, almost beacon-like glow in the darkness surrounding it. Every window is alight, each one an eye gazing down into the blackness around it, as if daring some monstrous thing to come out and challenge it. The asylum, in a nutshell, is glowing.

And baying with the sound of alarms.

Zoom in.

-------

"YOU ARE A PAIR OF DRUNKEN LUNATICS!"

The words aren't so much shouted as yowled, although it's hard to tell where exactly it came from over the roar of the engine. The vehicle is a jeep in the same sense that a child's stick figure is realistic human anatomy - the crudely bolted-together lumps of metal only bear a passing resemblance to the original article, and black smoke belches from places it probably shouldn't belch from. The entire thing rattles and shakes as it swerves back and forth on the bumpy forest road, and the many, many near brushes with the surrounding trees suggests the driver isn't entirely there, either. The whole ensemble reeks of oil and ozone.

A head and shoulders lean out of one of the windows, black hair whipping in the wind, and whoops as a fist is lifted in the classic victory gesture.

"Faster, Carol, faster!" it screams. "I can still hear their sirens!"

"YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO HEAR THEM," retorts the original voice from within, "IF THIS THING WRAPS ITSELF AROUND A REDWOOD! SLOW DOWN!"

"Aw, come on, Crusoe!" pipes up a third, female voice from the driver's seat. "Why don'tcha try livin' a little? WHEEEE~"

The thing swerves dangerously, and there is a hiss of metal as it scrapes another tree, bark flying. The sound is matched in volume only by the animalistic shriek of terror from within as the tail end swings out far too much to be safe in any degree. Carol, if that is the driver's name, seems to pay no mind to this, merely laughing in glee as she steers the vehicle on it's careening path. Only the sputtering headlights on the front give any indication or warning of the terrain ahead, and it's highly unlikely the driver is in any state to pay it any attention.

"ROBERT!" howls the voice of Crusoe from within the back of the jeep. "WAKE UP, ROBERT, FOR GOD'S SAKE!"

The only response to this panicked yelling is a groan, barely audible over the thundering of the ramshackle engine. But it's the sort if groan that immediately communicates that all is not well with the person it belongs to, and it tells Crusoe, whoever he is, all he needs to know about his friend's current situation.

"SPARKLE?! DANIEL, YOU LET HIM TAKE SPARKLE ON TOP OF ALL THAT ALCOHOL?!"

"Hey, he was the one," retorts the man leaning out the window, "who said we couldn't do this! And now... now look at us! Those fucker's can't possibly catch us now!"

Something within the belly of the vehicle begins to glow.

"We fucking escaped from Rutledge, man!" shouts Carol, yanking back on the steering column and leaping their conveyance over a ditch. "We're fucking KINGS!"

The stink of ozone is overpowering.

"I SWEAR TO ALL THE NINE CIRCLES, IF WE SURVIVE THIS, I AM GOING TO what smells like time?"

VROP

And then they are gone.

The time is now 12:21. Remember this.

-------

"So you're telling me that three of our patients..."

"Yes, sir."

"...and how many bottles of Scorpion were-?"

"An entire crate, sir."

"...and they took the cat with them?"

"Yes, sir."

"And despite having access to our top-of-the-range helicopters and assault jeeps, you somehow manage to lose them after tracking their shoddily-built escape vehicle for at least two miles?"

"Two and a half miles, sir. It was going pretty fast, sir."

The man sat back and placed a hand to his forehead, groaning.

"Oh, I can just see the paperwork coming in..."