Maria’s Perspective

  I arrived at the gated community he went to and was shocked to see him out front. I confronted him, which was a mistake because I forgot I didn’t have my gun on me, because he stole it. We banter before he gets a serious look on his face and tells me to check my messages, like he knows I missed something important. I think it’s a trap so he makes it harder for him to run away, so I do look, and he was right.

  My father sent me half a dozen calls about a potential breakout at the prison. I was worried and scared, but the man went running off at a speed I wouldn’t be able to match before coming back after rounding the house a few seconds ter. I drove at the speed I went, which might have cost my father's life before seeing the wall of water heading towards us.

  Everything that happened, I was scared. I was scared that my muscle car would be ruined. I was scared that I might get hurt from this. Most of all, I was afraid that my daddy would need me and I wouldn’t be there. I blinked, and the vehicle disappeared in an instant. I almost fell on my ass as I managed to catch myself. The man picked me up and pced me in a boat that appeared out of nowhere and held it up so it would bypass the first part of the flood.

  I wouldn’t have been able to make it to the jail if he didn’t come with me. I wouldn’t have been able to make it inside if he wasn’t with me. I remember a training video expining how heavy a car door would be if it were underwater, and the door was the same way. It had to be hundreds upon hundreds, if not over a thousand pounds, to hold open against the water pressure.

  The next part happened too fast for me to even know what happened. We got to the door, and he said there was an armed man on the other side. I didn’t know how he knew without looking through the gss, but he did. Kicking the door, I only saw the armed man move his hand slightly before he was dead. I hadn’t seen more than a domestic disturbance where the woman was beating the man. This was not only the first body, but the first murder I witnessed.

  Still reeling from what just happened, he moved up to the next door and got shot in the head… I swear, it sounded like he was happy it happened. It was his inflection, the way he said they just missed their chance. I had been busy driving when he made my armor, so I didn’t see him do it. When he stored vehicles, it would happen so fast I didn’t have time to think about it, but the bone spikes he was firing at people just seemed more magical.

  I could hear the men crying from having the bones pierced them. Screams of pain and confusion as they didn’t understand what was happening. It wasn’t clean like it was in movies; a person did not just fall over instantly dead. They screamed, cried, and begged for their mother when they thought they were going to die. He was clearly a bad guy, he was stealing like it belonged to him and viewed murder as a necessity. I knew he was bad…

  So why… Why was he so fucking attractive to me. If I weren’t already soaked from the flood and rain, my panties would at least be damp. An animal instinct drove me to want him. It had never happened to me before, I thought I was a lesbian because I would rather compete with men than lust after them. Only watching fictional characters got me going like Captain America or Thor, hell, even Iron Man, but those people didn’t exist in real life. I thought I’d be alone forever, only lusting after fictional men, but it turns out my bar was just ridiculously high.

  He ran for the room, and I wanted to follow behind him, but didn’t. I needed to keep this door locked down so they didn’t just escape. I wondered how he took my gun, it seemed his power could pull smaller objects from further away because all of the guns disappeared as he ran past. A man tried to strike him as he ran passed and without missing a beat he dodged and countered, knocking the man on his ass before opening the door. I cried tears of joy as I heard my father yell. “In here!”

  ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

  “I-In here…” I could hear the fear in his voice. He was scared that he and all his men were going to drown to death. It was understandable, I called out. “This way!” The power had gone out, so it was almost pitch bck inside the room, only the light leaking from the windows at the top of the prison was visible. I pulled out a fshlight from my storage and dropped it at the door before heading inside the room.

  “Jefferson… He stopped talking a few minutes ago.” Six heads stared back at me as I saw a body floating. Swimming over at max speed, I wasn’t really worried about them closing the door behind me at this point. I had plenty of ways to deal with it, but why the fuck was the lock on the same side, in the same room as the prisoners? That seems like a design mistake. Oh, it could lock both ways; the electronic lock stopped working, but it also had a manual lock on the inside.

  I grabbed the body; he might still be alive if it just happened, and made my way as the police chief kept talking. “We… Got stuck in here when the wave hit. The pressure must have kept the door from opening.” So there was a basement entrance to this storage room, the police were going to use to mount their attack on the prisoners.

  Things started to make sense. There was no shootout in my first life, they would have all been down there and drowned to death before anyone bothered checking. The room looked like a combination of storage and an armory. The armory had been broken into and was missing most of its guns. The guns that the prisoners were using.

  They came in from the bottom, possibly got into a fight, or the prisoners moved up before the police arrived. The police went down into the basement/storage/armory where the flood hit and locked them in by keeping the door shut. The flood started to slowly fill the room with water, and they couldn’t get out the door up top because it was locked by the prisoners, too thick to shoot through, and the power was knocked out, so they wouldn’t know where it was in the pitch dark.

  That’s what happened; they’d die, and the prisoners would leave after they knew they were dead, so one of the more evil prisoners was keeping everyone there, knowing the flood would kill them. That evil prisoner was likely dead now, but I’d have to ask to make sure. If we were even five minutes slower, they’d be dead. I look around the room again and see that only one door was open. I think… They must not have been able to get all the way through the armory and only got the handguns instead of access to all the riot gear.

  The person made them wait for the police to die so he could loot the better stuff. The old man walked up. “Hello, it seems you’ve killed the ringleader already. He had everyone stay here until he could get those rifles and body armor.” Yep, thought so… Now that I saw more of the puzzle, I remembered one of these fuckers from my previous life.