Legends of Ninjago Book 2: Rise of the Serpentine

Chapter 21: What's in a Secret Base?

Kai paced back and forth in his clean, white cell, grunting and muttering unintelligibly. Breaking out of here would be easy, he thought. He was, after all, one of the smartest ninja of the bunch who had successfully broken them out of the Undead Citadel.
There were security cameras for every single cell, and a thick layer of bullet-proof glass separating the tiny, black cameras from Kai. There was no conventional door to exploit. Instead, the whole wall slid up and down like a garage door, which could only be activated by a thumb-scanner embedded in the wall outside the cell. But he didn't need control panels when he had raw firepower. The only problem was: how could he bust down the door when there was a camera on him twenty-four-seven?
If, hypothetically, he did manage to make it that far, then he'd need to take out the security cameras for the others and break them out too. He had their pathway memorised, so he knew exactly which way they would need to go to get back to the large garage. The only main problem he could think of was the alarm sounding and—that was it! The alarm! Or more specifically, the electrical system that powered it! Jay could set off a huge blast of energy, causing the power to go out, including the alarm and the cameras!
'But what about backup generators?' Nya seemed to say at the back of his mind. She always managed to find the holes in his plans! He couldn't get away from her nitpicking even in his own head! It was an excellent point, though. What about backups? Well, no big deal, Jay can short those out, too. Problem solved!
Alright, and then there were the guards. The first place they'd be sent is here, to secure the prisoners. They'll be armed and have flashlights, meaning that darkness won't exactly work to their advantage... so Jay overloads the power, the lights go out, and they bust down their glass doors before the guards can come. After that, they run as fast as they can to the exit. A mad dash to freedom! ...why did that sound so familiar?
A black thought touched his stomach and made it squirm. He stopped pacing and sat down. This plan needed to work. It needed to be full proof. No—check that—it needed to be idiot proof. These people weren't the dumb, naive Skulkens, they were... well, they were adults. Adults with firearms. Adults with firearms who were trained not to play around. If they perceived a threat like Kai, or Jay, or Keaton, they wouldn't hesitate to take them out.
He stood up again and put his fists against the glass door, kicking it with his foot. Everything in here was so clean, so smooth, so lifeless... it made his skin crawl. He sighed and let his tired head gently hit the cold glass. There had to be a way for them to escape safely, but the longer he thought about it, the more time they wasted.
"Guys?!" he called out. "Can you hear me?!"
"Kinda," Jay said weakly, though the walls muffled his words quite a bit. He was located right next to Kai on his left, and Zane's cell was to his right. The girls were farther along, to the point that they probably couldn't hear him very well, if at all.
"We've gotta get out of here," Kai said, not sure where to look.
"Not so loud," said Zane from the next cell over. "They're watching."
Kai immediately looked to the tiny, black camera peering down on him from a dark corner of the ceiling. It was eagerly waiting to tattle on him and his friends like a pesky little kid.
"Alright, well then, there is clearly no hope of escape!" Kai said even louder. "Might as well just give up now! Boy, those agents will be in for quite a shock when they come back! Needless to say, this has been an electrifying experience for all of us!"
"What are you babbling about?!" Jay cried.
Kai slapped his forehead hard. "I'm SHOCKED you haven't realised!"
"Smooth," Zane muttered.
"What did he say!?" Jay called.
Kai resisted the urge to strangle something and said, "How's everyone feeling?" Zane relayed his message to the girls.
"Nya says she's fine," said Zane. "Just a little shaky."
"I've been better," Jay's voice said.
"And I seem to be normal," Zane confirmed.
Then there was a pause.
"What about small-fry?" Kai asked.
Keaton's voice suddenly came to him in a whisper. "I wanna go home," was all she said. Kai felt the same.
"Don't worry. We're gonna—"
Suddenly, the lights dimmed and a chime sounded on the speakers overhead. It must be after hours. Time for them to go to sleep. Or was it time for them to break out?
"What do we do?" Jay asked.
Kai thought about it long and hard. This could go either really well or really bad. Maybe they could manage to sneak out? People in the movies always used air vents for that, so he craned his neck around in the darkness to see if he could spot one. As luck would have it, he was pretty sure there was a vent opening right outside his cell, and as misfortune would have it, it was far too small for a person to fit through.
'Think! Think! Think!' Kai shouted in his brain. 'There's got to be something we can do!'
Sadly, the only option he kept coming back to was: use your powers. The very thing they weren't supposed to do in front of other people.
"This sure isn't where I thought we'd end up," Nya suddenly said, just loud enough for Kai to make out the words.
"You can say that again," Jay agreed. "Do... do you think we'll ever... see our parents again?"
Silence followed. His statement didn't just apply to their parents, but also to Wu and Ann and Cole. They should've stayed in the woods to help Ann! They should've handled things on their own instead of crawling back to Sensei Wu looking for direction! They hadn't been thinking for themselves at all!
Kai laid down on his slab of a bed and stared up at the blank ceiling in despair. Its sterile surface made him think of the woody, splintered ceiling of his bedroom, so full of history and life, unlike this place.
Hmm. He wondered if maybe they could fake their own deaths in here...
Just then, all of the lights went out completely—even the exit signs. Kai remained on his bed, looking around idly. Was this part of the night time system thing?
"Kai! Nya! Zane!"
Kai scrambled to his feet, knocking his pillow to the floor, and stared out into the black hallway.
"Hello?" he whispered. The voice sounded so familiar, but it was too impossible. This had to be a trick.
"Don't be alarmed! It's only me, young ninja." It was him. It had to be him.
"Sensei Wu!" Kai whisper-cried, rushing to the glass. "How did you find us?"
"Use your powers and get yourselves out of there! Now! Before the power returns!" Wu ordered.
Kai rushed back immediately and braced himself. This was going to take a lot of power. He closed his eyes and took in a large breath of air, trying to center himself. He let the heat rise in his stomach, but then let it pool there. Every time it swelled, he made it double over on itself, making it grow warmer and warmer, until he could feel his forehead and neck growing wet with sweat. He took in a few more breaths to add just a little more edge to the flame, and then, feeling like he was unleashing a scalding swarm of killer bees, he let the flames loose from his hands. It shot out like a rocket engine, nearly pushing him backwards.
BANG!!!
Bits of glass exploded and bounced off the walls, nearly hitting Kai in the eye, but it wasn't enough. The door was still there! He held his breath and pushed out more flames, holding steady for as long as he could. It wouldn't be a surprise if his face was turning purple right about now.
Kai gasped for air as he dropped to his knees, and when the flames stopped, everything in the room was warm and sagging, but the glass was still very much in place. The first layer or so had exploded from the heat, but after that, it looked blackened and somewhat melted. However, the damage barely reached the halfway point, leaving the glass on the outside perfectly smooth.
CRASH!!!
Someone else had managed to bust down their door, and they were coming over.
"Stand back, Kai!" Zane shouted.
Kai dragged himself over to a corner of the room and huddled there, feeling dizzy. Just as his hands went over his head, he heard a noise like glass buckling. The next thing he knew, the door was popping layer by layer and spraying the room with more glass chunks.
"Hurry, Kai!" Zane yelled through a massive, cracked hole.
Kai did his best not to cut himself as he gingerly exited his cell through the mangled, glass door, and then he found himself next to his teacher.
"Sensei Wu, what are you doing here?" Kai asked, feeling the old man's hand in the dark.
"I would have thought that was obvious," Wu replied. "Smashing windows is my part-time hobby." His skin glowed gold as a tall hammer appeared from it. "Take this. Help your brother. Quickly," he added rather hoarsely.
Kai dragged the hammer to the nearest door—Jay's—and started flailing away.
CRASH!!!
POP!!!
BANG!!!
Zane was clearly having faster results than Kai was, using his ice to bust his way through, but Kai was still able to chip away at Jay's cell enough to get him out while the ice ninja helped the girls.
So with the two of them thoroughly exhausted, Wu rounded everyone together.
"There isn't much time. Follow me, and remember your training."
Kai was first to follow the sound of his master's footsteps toward a door at the end of the hall. They ran frantically through the dark, and Kai could see flashlights waving in certain directions.
Every time it sounded like soldiers were getting close, Wu managed to find a small side room to smuggle them in while the soldiers passed them by. As they kept running, however, Kai realised that they weren't heading toward the garage, as he had been planning. Instead, they hit a stairwell and started taking the steps down two at a time, making the darkness feel deeper than he thought possible.
"Hurry!" Wu cried as they reached the basement level. He ushered everyone through a cold, metal door and into more open blackness. Kai couldn't figure out what the possible function of this room might be. All he could ascertain was that it was big and cold.
Wu suddenly grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward, to which Kai responded with flailing his free hand around until he snagged someone else's wrist and pulled them forward too. The growing chain of fugitives ran through the cold emptiness, terrified of what might happen next.
Then they stopped. Kai was lurched forward by someone bumping into his back.
"Hide here. You'll be safe." Wu's voice was followed by the sound of a metal cargo door going up. Kai reached out and felt the bumper of a truck. "Get in, quickly!" He pulled himself in and the others followed clumsily. "Stay hidden. You'll be in for a long wait, but do not leave this truck, understood?! When the ruckus is over, it'll take you to a small business on the west side. Meet me in Haru." Then he began to pull the door closed again.
"Wait, Sensei—" Kai started, but his master didn't stop for him. The door closed swiftly and sudden silence took over the truck. As the five of them sat in the dark, they listened to the faint sound of footsteps and then a door opening and closing. Now they were truly alone.
"Come on," Zane said. "Let's hunker down."
Kai stood up on the lumpy, metal floor and felt his way around. There seemed to be a lot of wooden boxes and some tarps in here, so he wedged himself between two of them and made himself comfortable. The others settled down too, and they went back to listening for the sounds of certain demise.
Every so often, something in the cold room would settle, like a pipe or a column or a wall, and it would echo for a few seconds, making it sound like a large footstep somewhere far away. Was there anybody out there? After their first few minutes, they started to hear the rumblings of heavy feet overhead, and strange thumps and thuds, which were all amplified in the big room, and turned into strange, echoey noises.
After half an hour, Kai wondered if maybe there were some bugs in this truck, like a spider or some ants. It certainly didn't feel like the cleanest truck in the world.
An hour later, nothing had changed. The lights outside were still out, there were still strange noises, and no one in the truck had moved. Kai suddenly felt the need to stretch his legs, and found that his glutes were positively aching from sitting on this metal floor for so long. He eventually landed in a position that allowed him to lean against the wooden crate to his left and took some of the pressure off of his legs.
Two hours later, through a sliver of a crack between the car door and the floor, they could see that the lights had been restored outside, leaving all the kids to wonder how long it would be before somebody came down here looking for them. But thankfully, nothing had come of it yet. Just more noises from upstairs.
Three hours and no one had said a single word. Kai was actually becoming somewhat sleepy, but he knew that he tended to snore, so he kept pinching himself awake.
Three and a half hours later: footsteps. Then the door to the room swung open and a large crowd of people marched in.
"Search every nook and cranny! We cannot let them escape!" someone barked.
It sounded like soldiers were marching through rows and rows of cars, shouting back things like, "not here!" and "area clear!" With every passing minute, their voices got louder. What would the IBI do to them if they were found out?
"Nothing here!"
That last one had to be only two rows over. Kai tried to maintain steady breathing and forced himself not to move a muscle for fear of shaking the truck. He could only imagine the faces of his companions right now. They were probably looking at the door, just like he was, eyes wide and bodies curled as tightly as they could go.
There was someone walking just outside of the truck now, the THUMP THUMP THUMP of his boots sending chills riding down Kai's spine. Then, the most terrifying noise he would ever hear: the latch to the door being jostled. He slowly pulled his head back into the darkness and watched for the light to change.
"It's locked," someone shouted.
"Any signs of forced entry?"
"No."
"Then leave it."
The latch was left alone, and the footsteps passed them by. Kai let out the deepest, slowest gasp of relief in the history of Ninjago.
'Thank the First Spinjitsu Master,' he said in his head.
Feeling more at ease, the rest of the search turned out to be rather boring. It sounded like they did a very thorough job, but in the end, they couldn't find a single smidge of dust that would incriminate the kids. After an hour, they called it off and everyone retreated back upstairs, allowing the silence to return. Kai could tell that everyone wanted to celebrate or at least say a comforting word of relief, but there was no way of knowing for sure if they were really alone. The silence was positively unbearable, but it did eventually lead to some amount of relaxation.
Half an hour after the search had ended, Kai was nodding in and out of sleep. There was scarcely any difference between closed eyes and open ones in the back of the truck, and sometimes Kai didn't even realise that his eyes were closed.