197 Plans

Laz opened his eyes, only to find he everything was still dark. At first, he was questioning if he had even opened his eyes, but the faint light that he could see told him that there was actually something over his head.

After moving around a bit, Laz quickly figured out that he had been restrained, tied up and had his head covered. Basically, he was being treated like a prisoner of war.

Despite the shackles, restraints and head covering, Laz wasn't panicked. Instead, he settled himself down to use his senses to try and detect what was happening and what kind of situation he was in.

His energy and spiritual sense felt rather sluggish at first, as though it didn't want to respond to him. But Laz simply fueled his energy with his black flame and burned away all the drugs in his system, allowing his energy to return to normal. At the same time, spreading out his senses, he was able to get a general idea of what was happening.

He was currently alone in the back of an armored car while people were rushing around outside. he could see that there were several guards posted around the truck, but it wasn't moving. He knew that this meant that they hadn't left yet so not too much time would have passed. Had Laz not had his breakthrough, that would have been an ok bet to make. But now, he was not only awake, but he was stronger than ever.

Still, Laz didn't do anything or try to free himself. He knew that currently he was completely surrounded and there were tons of civilians in the area. If he did attempt to escape at this moment, a lot of innocent people would be caught up in it. That wasn't a line he was willing to cross.

As such, Laz just continued to play dead while observing the things around him.

It was worth noting that his spiritual sense could spread a whole lot farther than before. Before his breakthrough, he was able to cover most of the compound, but now, he could cover an area almost ten times the size of that, meaning he could spread it out to an area that was almost a mile in diameter. Had he tried to focus in one direction, he would have been able to spread it out much farther than that.

Due to this, Laz was able to quickly find where Ruby, Leona and Vivi were sitting as though waiting for something to happen. He also noticed that Lady Mathilda was there with them as well, so he knew that they were safe. That helped take a load off his mind as well.

He quickly made contact with the three girls.

:Nice day, isn't it?:

At first, there was total silence, then it felt like three people were yelling at him at once. An interesting part of this was that if they had tried to contact him without him extending his sense in their direction, they never would have been able to reach him. The only reason their thought voices came in so clearly was because he had done so.

"LAZ!!!" Three voices shouted at once, before going off in their own directions.

It took Laz a while to settle them down enough for them to understand that he could hear them all at the same time and they could hear each other, like a voice conference. As such, they had to take turns otherwise it was just one big mess of screaming.

:Are you ok?: They decided on a round robin style questioning with Leona starting off.

:Yeah. I'm fine. Better than fine, actually.:

:Better than fine my ass. You could have been killed. And you're not immortal you idiot.: Vivi was next, only because she cut Ruby off.

:I could have been, but I wasn't. I was able to heal on my own.:

:How? And what the hell are you going to do now?: Ruby finally got her turn and focused on the important issues.

:Um. Well... I haven't gotten that far yet?: Laz didn't really have a plan, other than now wasn't the best time to leave.

:AAHHH! I knew it. Hold on...: Ruby starting chatting with Lady Mathilda who seemed to understand what the circumstances were. Although she wasn't an infected, she had a lot of experience in this type of work. This was the main reason why Yumi trusted her to run the day to day operations of their business.

Because of this, she already had a few ideas lined up to help Laz make his escape. Of course the key was that he could free himself. They didn't have the fire power or the man power to attempt a rescue while facing an armed caravan. And that was what it looked like was going to happen.

Lady Mathilda had been listening to scanners and had some intercepts going on phone calls. She already knew they were calling in the national guard to escort Laz north to the Global Sciences building for holding and testing. Although his first stop should have been jail, it was quickly decided that it was a bad plan to put him in there as he needed to be isolated and given to people who could handle him.

Having found out the extent of his injuries and what he had went through and been hit with, she was actually quite surprised that Laz had already awoken, was physically fine and already trying to think of a way out of this mess. And due to Yumi's orders, she was prepared to help in any way possible that didn't involve a serious risk on the companies part.

While she and Ruby had started making plans, Vivi and Leona had continued to find out everything they could from Laz while trying to hide their worry. All things considered, his situation looked pretty grim.

:Are you sure you can escape on your own? How are you being restrained?: Leona couldn't help but wonder, something Vivi wanted to know as well.

:Uh, nothing serious. Drugged, shackled, hog-tied, and hooded. I've also been stuff in the back of an armor car. Oh, and there are guards too. But only outside at the moment,: Laz answered without worry.

:AND THAT'S NOT SERIOUS?: Vivi couldn't help but shout at him.

:No. It's not. Due to some strange luck, I've actually been able to advance my realm.:

:YOU WHAT?: Both Leona and Vivi were surprised. Even Ruby who had been listening in while hashing things out with Lady Mathilda was shocked. And they weren't shock that he had advanced since he was stronger than all of them. They were shocked that it happened because he had almost been killed.

It took a lot of questioning from Vivi to actually hammer out how it had happened, leaving her wondering just what kind of luck he had to have been able to do things the way he did. Not just anyone would have been able to have survived the kind of pain he must have went through to make it happen. Vivi also had to admit that it was so stupid that it bordered on genius. But it was mostly stupid.

:So I can get out of this, but...:

:I'm working on it. For now, sit tight.: Ruby was going over a map with Lady Mathilda.

:At least Ruby's able to help right now. If it wasn't for her and the others at Black Rose, I don't know what we would do,: Leona said, glad that she had Ruby and feeling somewhat helpless.

:Yeah. That. I probably should have thought of that too...: Vivi commented with a strange look on her face.

:It's fine. I didn't think things would come to this so how would we have planned for it? It's not like there was anyone else we could have called,: Laz said while moving himself a bit. He didn't want to move around too much and break the restraints, but it really wasn't comfortable being tied up like a pretzel. It was pretty harsh on the back.

:Yeah. That's not... entirely true,: Vivi said while seeming a bit nervous.

It was only now that Leona realized that Vivi had been trying to get a hold of someone on her phone ever since Laz had woken up and Ruby began planning his escape.

:That's not? Ok. What did you do?: Laz had a bad feeling, besides just the cramping in his back and legs.

:Well, I might have called a few people you know to get them to send some help. I mean, they said that they were always here if you needed them. They also said that they wanted to see you again but that it wasn't the right time yet. So, when you were in trouble, I... got a hold of them...: Vivi said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

This hit Laz a hell of a lot harder than when he was hit by lightning.

:You know where they are?:

:Yeah. I found them through the web.:

:Are... are they ok?:

:Yeah. They are actually working together and doing well.: Vivi noticed a touch of sadness in Laz's voice, one that barely concealed a bit of pain. She knew she shouldn't have hidden it from him, but she also knew that Laz needed to forge his own path while they forged theirs. They were all way too young when they first met. Growth can't come when things are squeezed so close together.

Although Laz was hard hit, it was Leona and Ruby who were the most confused. They didn't know who Laz and Vivi were talking about, but they could tell from the conversation that it was something painful for Laz and something that Vivi was tying to hide.

They wanted answers, but now really wasn't the time for it.

Laz also quietly sat in the dark and took several deep breaths. There was no reason to get worked up about this right now. There were more important things to do, like escaping.

It wasn't like he had worried about them day and night after everything that went down and had no news or information and they didn't know about him or even if he was ok or even if they wanted to know about him or cared about him or thought about him or wanted to see him.

Nope, everything was fine for now.

:We will talk about this later,: was all Laz said to Vivi before asking Ruby if she had any ideas.

:Once we get out of town and start heading north and get on the highway, there are tons of places to escape from. Many of them would be hard to track since the area is isolated. We would just need to make sure we had a vehicle nearby for you and a way to meet us after.:

:Alright. Pick a spot and set it up. Once I do this though, it's going to get really complicated. After all, I'm not fast enough to outrun helicopters and a full blown man hunt.: Laz could probably run really fast right about now. But that didn't mean he could escape. With the types of technology the world possessed, disappearing would be next to impossible. As such, he could only take things step by step. He didn't want to stop looking for his parents, but when the entire country starts hunting for you, you would only have so many options.

He was even considering leaving the country for a while.

All this would depend on if he could escape from the eyes of the law long enough to enact those plans.

By the time a plan had been set up, the national guard had arrived. Dispersing the crowd, they began the route that would take them back to New York. In each town and area along the way, the highways would be closed and cut off temporarily while the caravan was coming through. Laz had now been branded the moist dangerous criminal in the U.S., something that would have been kind of cool in any other circumstance but now was nothing more than a pain in the ass. Especially when he started hearing the girls talk about how he was on the news and his face was everywhere.

If there was any sort of silver lining, it was that they just ended up pumping Laz up with more drugs while locking him into a human sized cage that the military brought, but they only posted two guards in the back of the armored car. At this point they didn't really view him as a threat but wanted to make his capture and transport some sort of spectacle that people could watch and enjoy.

They were making the entire thing a show of force.

Therefore, they weren't really watching Laz as closely as they should have been.

Not that it made much of a difference.

Before he knew it, the signs he was told to look for started popping up and he knew the time had come.