The Escape Plan (An Ivion Loost Short Story)

Part 1: The Escape Plan

Ivion's Gate

Part One: The Escape Plan

By Drew Avera

Another blast marred the wall in front of my face. These guys weren't playing. It was time to take off the kid gloves.

"Is that all you've got?" I asked, raising my voice over the sound of blasters firing haphazardly in my direction. I stifled a chuckle as I looked up and saw the electronic wanted poster bearing my resemblance. "Wanted for Murder: Ivion Loost," read the screen. Of course, now it was mostly pixelated and shattered from the little showdown we were having.

"Come out with your hands up, Loost. Nobody wants to have to kill you," the lawman said. His accent had a particular drawl to it; most likely he grew up on Earth. It was typical for those working in law enforcement to come from our native planet. This place was nothing like Earth, though.

"You know as well as I do that I can't do that," I replied. Broken glass was sticking to my hands and I gingerly brushed it away as quickly as I could. There was no need to accidentally cut myself and lead them to where I was going next.

"No one is going to harm you so long as you come out with your hands where we can see them. You have my word on that."

Really, I had his word on that? The putrid sound of his clichédstatement made me want to put my own blaster to my face and squeeze the trigger. I looked to my left, my only hope of escaping. It was going to be a tight fit, but I'd squeezed through smaller. "I tell you what, Mr. Lawman. How about I stand up as a show of good faith and you promise not to kill me: maybe we can build our relationship from there. What do you say?"

There were a few exchanges just out of earshot before he came back with a response. "Yeah, let's do that. I'm going to put my blaster back in its holster, but my men are going to keep theirs out, don't lose your cool, all right?"

Air escaped my mouth in an unintentional chuckle. I kept sight of my escape route and calculated the steps. Thirteen and a leap, I concluded. I hated when the steps were an odd number. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves for the jump. "You have a deal," I said. I pulled my legs in and slowly took a squattingposition. "I'm standing up now. Please don't blow my head off," I said, barely joking.

I rose up and could see half a dozen men, sights trained on me like I was a predator prowling towards them. To say I was terrified was an understatement. Thirteen steps, I thought. Six seconds. Each blastershoots twice per second, that's twelve blasts per second. Good grief! I had to get past seventy-two blasts and hope to make it through? I was getting too old for this.

"There you go," the lawman said, his mustache wiggling with his words. All of the lawmen were wearing mirrored sunglasses to hide their eyes. That made it harder to figure out which ones were blinking, which made it harder to guesstimate the variables for my escape. I had no choice but to close the gap. My odds of getting out of this one unscathed weren't very good.

"I'm innocent, you know." I said, taking a half-step forward. The business-end of each blaster followed me. I wasn't lying, but I wasn't telling the whole truth either.

"That's not for us to decide, Ivion. Just slowly walk over to us and let me put you into custody." His heavy breathing betrayed his façade of fearlessness. It could also have been his bulging waistline, but I was hoping for fear anyway.

I smiled and showed my empty hands. "Yes, sir," I said, taking another step. Eleven and a half steps remaining, "you and your men have done an excellent job tracking me down." I took two more steps.

My statement didn't elicit a response at all.

"Which moon did you find me at first? Was it Titan, Europa? I can't seem to remember," six more steps, but I was forced to turn and face them. It was now or never.

"You were never on either moon, Ivion. What are you talking about?" the lawman asked.

This was my cue. I pressed the Gateway switch on the back of my wrist and opened a portal only a few steps away from me. The gravitational pull was almost enough to suck me in, even from six feet away.

The bright, blue light pulsating was just enough distraction. I needed to book it into my escape portal. I took a breath and ran for it. They say time slows down as you enter a black hole, and they would be right. Every blast I could see as I watched, horrified, at the lawmen squeezing their triggers. The blaster fire illuminated around them and propelled in my direction. If not for the bending light enveloping me, I might have been hit. It was a close call, that was for sure.

I woke up on another planet, the light from a nearby sun descending behind me. There were tall buildings around scattered through the city and it looked like I was in a park of some kind, but it was relatively abandoned. That was a good sign; I didn't need any bystanders to report my appearance. I looked at the computer on my wrist and could see I had traversed twenty-eight years in the future and skipped over seventeen solar systems to get here, wherever here was. I started to take a step and heard a voice behind me.

"We've been waiting for you, Ivion."

My heart sank. I recognized the drawl.

End