Chapter 19 - Go Time

It's the depths of the night, and a single tower pierces the sky in the centre of Mineral City. It's known to the people as "The Line to The Sky". It had been years since I had set eyes on it and it look significantly different to when it was my home away from home.

Every remnant of The Line had been removed from the area, and in it's place was a hunter logo.

"Are you for real?"

Micron looks shocked, "Did I not mention it had been taken by the hunters. My bad."

"We've got to abort. We can't get through them, you know how strong they are."

"To be honest, I don't care if we can't get through them, I was just here to get you through the perimeter. The rest is on you two. It's Go Time."

And in the blink of an eye, Micron has gone. He's shrunk back down into the hole he brought us through, and seemingly leaves us to it. Claire stands beside me looking up at the logo. Luckily it isn't the strongest hunter association, but it's still a strong one, and has an incredibly wide reach within Aincar; "Areveola". Set up by a mysterious entity, who is believed to be a prominent former "Super" it has been running since the early days following the incident. Hopefully it wasn't the same hunter's from the other night, but with their being in Mineral City, and relatively close to the hotel, it was a possibility.

"Come on Claire, we've got to move fast, I think these are the same guys from the hotel" I move towards her to get her to start moving, but she's gone.

"Claire? Where are you?" I say in a tone that's just loud enough to carry, but not be heard.

"What are you talking about?" I hear a disembodied voice from fairly close to me, and look around to see nothing. "Dad, I'm right here".

Nothing. Where is she?

Then I feel it. A hand on my shoulder. A small hand. It must be her. I turn around to still see nothing.

"Dad what are you doing? Can you not see me or something?"

"Not a thing kiddo."

"Well I'm right here, that was me on your shoulder."

It hits me. I had seen this before. Or not seen it before is probably a better description. She was invisible. But how? Unless it was a power mutation. I'd heard about them in the past, incredibly rare, but in some cases a "Super" had been known to develop a power completely unrelated to their own.

"Claire. Stay calm. You're invisible"

"What?!"

"Look at your hands. Where are they?"

"They're righ-- ahhh hell no. What the F*#* is this?"

"It's normal kiddo, the longer you have your powers, the more likely you are to develop a new one. And it looks like now is the time for at least one of your power mutations."

"So this is me now? Just invisible?"

"It should be able to be turned off, I've never known an ability to be passive in this regard. Just try calming yourself."

She stands in front of me, I think, and focuses herself. You can tell in this moment that the world doesn't exist to her. It takes about 5 minutes, but piece by piece she comes back, and is stood in front of me.

"You ready to go now?"

"I guess, at least I can see me now."

We start making our way through the car park, and it seems too quiet. Have we lucked out and there's just no one here?

"So, this is going well." Claire shoots me a look as if to say what were you so worried about?

"Stay on guard. Everyone inside is a killer, this is their territory, it's not like at the hotel where we knew they were coming. We're going to them now. We're extremely on their radar. We definitely don't want them to know we're here."

We get towards the front end of the parking lot, and I pull Claire over to the side of the building. I try to maneuver us through all the blind spots in the camera systems. I hope they're still using the same ones. Even if they were the ones my brother developed almost a decade ago, they're still more advanced and responsive than any on the market today.

We're counting on the hubris of the hunters for a lot of this break in. If they're still using Razer's cameras, which as of now it seems like they are. Then the rest of the building must be running on at least some of his old tech. This first stage should be easy enough. All we have to do for now is get inside. I feel around on the side of the building for a panel that was only known to the members of The Line.

It pops open to reveal a digital panel. I input the code in the keypad to the side of it that I last used over 7 years ago. Miraculously it still works. Looks like they never found the entryway to the express elevator that drops off on the 30th floor. 5 floors below where Claire and I need to get to. I scan my hand on the panel, and the wall splits in two in front of us, and reveals the elevator.

We step inside and begin our ascent as the panels seal in front of us.

--------

"Sir, we're getting an alert I've never seen before. What do you want us to do?"

A man walks over to the screen to see the words; access elevator activated prepare for arrival of The Line.

"Find wherever the hell this is, and watch who comes out. Don't engage until my say. I want to see how this plays out."

He walks back over to his chair in the center of the room, and presses a button on top of it. It pulls up a number of holographic screens, and as he starts looking through them, the chair he's sat in starts to form a casing around his arm.

"This should be good. I've been waiting for a good exercise."