April 4, 2005 – 02:00 (Sri Lanka Time)
"It's time," said Whazk.
Coralis stood and turned her back against the camera. She turned slightly the palm of her right hand toward Alejandro's cell door and her left one toward hers. Visualizing the locking mechanism and the bars surrounding it with her eyes shut, she directed a small amount of energy toward their cell doors. She wrapped them with a layer of polished iron and made sure they had the same colour as the rest of the bars.
"Let's do this!" said Coralis to Alejandro when she was done.
They both pulled a crafted key out of their underwear and inserted them into one of their ankle cuffs. Using a small amount of elemental energy, they made them fit the locks and freed their ankles out of their cuffs. Using the same crafted key, they did the same thing to remove the cuffs from their wrists. They made sure that the camera saw the keys breaking in the lock, and they used a second one to uncuff their wrists.
They turned around and passed an arm through the bars to insert a third crafted key into the locking mechanism of their cell doors. Before leaving their cells, they looked at the camera by the main cell door, smiled and waved at it.
Alejandro stood underneath the ventilation trap and Coralis removed the coating she made around the bars before climbing on his shoulders to get into the ventilation system. Once her entire body was in the ventilation conduit, she shifted into Cheetah to easily turn around, and she shifted back to give him a hand.
He reached out to her hand and using a small amount of his wind elemental energy, he smoothly climbed up her arm and reached the opening of the vent. Coralis shifted back into Cheetah, and Alejandro shifted into his mouse form as his body entered into the ventilation conduit. Alejandrito climbed on her back as she spelled her paws so she could walk through the conduits without making any sound.
She remembered the path to get to the storage room and easily made it there in less than 5 minutes. Knowing there was a camera in that room, she shifted back to her mage form before jumping down on the floor below the ventilation trap, which was in the middle of this storage room.
"We need to be quick. Hopefully, our stuff is being stored here, together and not spread out to every corner of the room," said Coralis.
Coralis quickly located her jacket and found her sets of keychains in it, but her wedding ring wasn't with it. Not wanting to leave without it, she continued searching.
"Look at this," said Alejandro, pointing at a pile of documents sitting on a desk located at the back of the room, where he stood. "They drew blood on all of their prisoners, including us. They found weird data on ours and some of the other prisoners, but it seems they don't know how to interpret them."
Coralis opened the drawers on either side of the desk, one by one.
"I think we should falsify their data before they find someone who can interpret them," said Coralis as she located her ring in the 3rd drawer she opened.
"Good idea," said Alejandro, making sure his back was against the camera before hovering his left hand over their blood reports to change the data into what they should be if they were humans. "Good thing I studied human biology a few decades ago out of boredom. I'll also falsify the ones from the white witches. I can tell which ones are witches just by looking at the data. Botany and homeopathic type of witches are harmless, I don't believe them to be nasties. White magic got nothing to do with demon-summoning. None of their typical spell does."
Helping Alejandro to search for his jacket and their binds, Coralis found a small refrigerator with a clear door.
"Think you can also falsify the blood samples to reflect the changes you made to the blood reports?" said Coralis as Alejandro located his jacket.
"Definitively. I don't know where they put our binds and eyeglasses, but we need to be out of here before the night guards return to sit in the security room and check the live camera feed. I'm fine with leaving them behind," said Alejandro, putting on his jacket and slightly turning the palm of his left hand toward the refrigerator's door. "If they think they're what is giving us our abilities and are keeping them somewhere else to try something, they'll be sorely disappointed."
"Agreed. You got everything you need?"
"Yes, it's time to go to our next stop," said Alejandro while positioning himself so that Coralis could climb on his shoulders like they'd done when leaving their cell block.
Cheetah made it to where the other prisoners were kept in 6 minutes. There were twelve people held within four cells. Cells there were wider than the ones Coralis and Alejandro had been imprisoned. Similar to their cell block, the coven's cells were lined up on one side, divided by silver bars and with a ventilation trap on the ceiling in the middle of the hallway.
Cheetah removed the spell on her paws before they shifted back to their normal bodies before exiting through the ventilation trap. The loud noise made by their feet as they touched the ground woke up the prisoners. Alejandro brought the second finger of his left hand to his lips to indicate them to stay silent, while Coralis discreetly coated the bars around the cell doors' locks.
"The bars on their cells don't have the same silver density as ours had, but I coated them anyway," said Coralis in a mind-link to Alejandro.
They grabbed the crafted keys they used for their cuffs. Coralis went to the last cell while Alejandro went to the first one. They passed their cuff keys to the people in them, pointing at their wrists and ankles, and worked on unlocking their cell doors using a blank crafted key while directing some energies toward the prisonners' cuffs as they inserted keys into the locks.
Before moving on to the middle cells, they raised a hand in front of them to indicate to the prisoners to stay in their cells for now.
They repeated that same process for the two middle cells, but using the newly crafted key they used on the previous two doors.
When done, Coralis climbed again on Alejandro's shoulders to return into the ventilation system and as Cheetah, she spelled her paws again and headed to the ventilation trap across this cell block's main door. Once again, she shifted back to her normal form before exiting it.
With her right hand, she grabbed a bunch of blank keys and made sure the camera above her saw the handful she held in it.
She grabbed one with her left hand and made it look like she was trying to unlock the deadlock but failed. Using a different one, she went for the deadlock again and made it work. She repeated the same process on the handle's lock, but made it work after the third key.
She opened the door and once again, Coralis and Alejandro smiled and waved at the camera within the cell block before leaving. Alejandro signalled the prisoners to follow them in silence while Coralis discreetly spelled their feet so they wouldn't make a sound.
They walked down a barely lit long hallway and at the end of it, was a large metal door. Alejandro unlocked it, and it opened up to a mouldy stairway going upward to their left. After signalling the coven to wait, Coralis climbed up to a landing and cracked open the door on the landing to let in a filament of light.
"This should be the basement level," said Coralis in mind-link to Alejandro while looking up toward the next landing.
Alejandro climbed up, indicating the coven to follow him, and when he reached Coralis, he signalled them to wait, and he continued to the next landing, where the stairway ended. He unlocked the door there, slightly opened it, and Coralis climbed up, followed by the coven.
She passed her head through the door opening.
"No one in sight," said Coralis in a mind-link to Alejandro, before passing through it.
Alejandro indicated the coven to wait before passing through the door, and Coralis held it ajar. The emergency back exit was next to them, and it had an alarm on it.