Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Hello? she asked. Is someone there? Can you talk louder or something?

“Not really,” I hissed, glancing at the Librarians. Most of them had moved out the door, but a small group of men had apparently been assigned to search the hangar. Mostly security guards.

Um … okay, the voice said. Uh, who is this?

“Who do you think it is?” I asked in annoyance. “I’m Alcatraz. Who are you?”

Oh, I—the image, and voice, fuzzed for a moment—sent to retrieve you. Sorry! Uh, where are you?

“In a hangar,” I said. One of the guards perked up, then pulled out a gun, pointing it in my direction. He’d heard me.

“Shattering Glass!” I hissed, ducking back down.

You really shouldn’t swear like that, you know.… the girl said.

“Thanks,” I hissed as quietly as possible. “Who are you, and how are you going to get me out of this?”

There was a pause. A dreadful, terrible, long, annoying, frustrating, deadly, nerve-racking, incredibly wordy pause.

I … don’t really know, the girl said. I—wait just a second. Bastille says that you should run out somewhere in the open, then signal us. It’s too foggy down there. We can’t really see much.

Down there? I thought. Still, if Bastille was with this girl, that seemed like a good sign. Although Bastille would probably chastise me for getting myself into so much trouble, she did have a habit of being very effective at what she did. Hopefully that would include rescuing me.

“Hey!” a voice said. I turned to the side, staring out at one of the guards. “I found someone!”

Time to break things, I thought, taking a deep breath. Then I sent a burst of breaking power into the wheel of the airplane.

I ducked away, leaping to my feet as lug nuts popped free from the airplane wheel. The guard raised his gun but didn’t fire.

“Shoot him!” said a man in a black suit, the Librarian who stood directing things from the side of the room.

“I’m not shooting a kid,” the guard said. “Where are these terrorists you were talking about?”

Good man, I thought as I dashed toward the front of the hangar. At that moment, the wheel of the airplane fell completely off, and the front half of the vehicle crashed down against the pavement. Men cried out in surprise, and the security guards dived for cover.

The Librarian in black grabbed a handgun from one of the confused guards and pointed it at me. I just smiled.

The gun, of course, fell apart as soon as the Librarian pulled the trigger. My Talent protects me when it can—and the more moving parts a weapon has, the easier it is to break. I rammed my shoulder into the massive hangar doors and sent a shock of breaking power into them. Screws and nuts and bolts fell like rain around me, hitting the ground. Several guards peeked out from behind boxes.

The entire front of the hangar came off, falling away from me and hitting the ground outside with a reverberating crash. I hesitated, shocked, even though that was exactly what I’d wanted to happen. Swirling fog began to creep into the hangar around me.

It seemed that my Talent was getting even more powerful. Before, I’d broken things like pots and dishes, with the very rare exception of something larger, like the concrete I had broken when I was seven. That was nothing like what I’d been doing lately: taking the wheels off airplanes and making entire hangar doors fall off. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much I could break if I really needed to.

And how much the Talent could break if it decided that it wanted to.

There wasn’t time to contemplate that, as the Librarians outside had noticed the ruckus. They stood, black upon the noonday fog, looking back at me. Most of them had spread out to the sides, and so the only way for me to go was straight ahead.

I dashed out onto the wet tarmac, running for all I was worth. The Librarians began to yell, and several tried—completely ineffectively—to fire guns at me. They should have known better. In their defense, few people—even Librarians—are accustomed to dealing with a Smedry as powerful as I was. Against others, they might have been able to get off a few shots before something went wrong. Firearms aren’t completely useless in the Free Kingdoms, they’re just much less powerful.

The shooting—or lack thereof—bought me only a few seconds of time. Unfortunately, there were a pair of Librarians in my path.

“Get ready!” I yelled into my Courier’s Lenses. Then I whipped them off and put on the Windstormer’s Lenses. I focused as hard as I could, blowing forth a burst of wind from my eyes. Both Librarians were knocked to the ground, and I leaped over them.