"Good."
Seeing the boys fully dressed, the girls nod their heads in satisfaction before leading them to the 'weapons room'.
With outstretched arms, Penny opened the door to the room and stood aside with Avi, waiting to see the boys' reactions to the treasure they found.
They, however, didn't need to wait too long..
"Wow!..."
With their eyes glistening and mouths agape, the boys scramble into the room to get their hands on the 'gold' they discovered.
While Penny and Avi shook their heads whilst thinking,
'Boys!', forgetting they had similar reactions moments ago.
Finally, the quad was all dressed up and with just 5 minutes left for the alarms to go off, they sauntered out of the glass door entrance into the stormy night.
However, a nagging feeling kept lingering in Timmy's mind, almost like he forgot something but he shrugged it off and focused on their escape.
Almost immediately after they left, three to four hands suddenly appeared at the same time and removed the key cards that Timmy left on the panel to unlock the doors.
Glancing at each other, the owner of the hands look at the key cards in their possession before peering out the glass door with an evil smirk on their faces.
Outside Winters,
The brightly lit sun which characterized the beginning of the mid-day was long overcast by raging storm clouds.
Lightning flashed while thunder rumbled.
The wind blew violently and unceasingly.
Howling and whistling, it danced unsteadily with the leaves and dirt it picked up from the Earth.
At the top of a broad modern floating concrete staircase which was installed with a centrally placed stair structured fountain, the group stood with their backs against each other trying to survey the darkened premises of the lab that the LED facade lights and lamp posts did little to nothing in brightening up.
Timmy squinted his eyes towards the entrance gate of Winters, then towards the direction of the engineering department to see if he could catch a shadow of the silvery men he saw earlier and also to mentally calculate their distance from one another.
However, due to the little light available caused by the stormy weather, coupled with the whirling leaves and dirts, he couldn't even see the garage itself let alone the silvery men.
"Guys, I can't see them! It's too dark and windy!"
"But we need to leave now, we have less than five minutes left!" Timmy said as he looked back at the rest of the group.
The engineering department was quite a distance from the main gate so if he couldn't see them, those silvery men definitely couldn't see him and his group either.
Using his hands to protect his eyes from the wind, Cyrus said, "Running off immediately is the same as waiting here for the alarm to go off. How can we be so sure that they aren't at the gate?"
"I don't think they are but like you said we can't be too sure! That's why these weapons will come in handy." Timmy said flicking the taser and a tranquilizer in his pant pocket. He promised his master not to kill but that didn't mean he couldn't inflict injury or cause temporary unconsciousness.
"The weapons may guarantee our escape but let's not use them unless it's completely necessary. We don't want to attract more trouble." Penny chipped in.
"Hey! Don't forget about me, I could use one of my inventions too you know." Avi pouted as she reminded the group of her awesome skill, making potions.
"....and besides we've been so lucky up until now, I'm pretty sure the universe also wants us to escape unscathed." Avi added while looking at the raging clouds.
"Exactly, I mean what's the worst that could happen?" Timmy said.
"Well, it seems wearing the silver shirts wasn't necessary..", Avi said as she looked at the blackened sky then at her sleeves.
"It has it's usefulness, keeps us from the cold." Penny said jokingly and the others agree with a chuckle.
"But...if we do eventually escape, where do we go after here?" Cyrus questioned seriously.
"Let's go to the Frozen cave, we'll think of what to do when we get there." Penny replied solemnly as she looked into the distance.
Nodding their heads resolutely, Penny and her friends ventured into the whirling winds, hands on their weapons as they used the darkened environment as a cover to escape Winters.
They were proud and fully confident in the skills Davis and Jeremy taught them, however, they didn't know what they were about to encounter was something they've heard and seen but never trained with before.....
Mutants.
At the garage,
Looking at the turbulence that was occuring in the sky, S3 thought with his arms crossed on his chest,
'At this rate, we might really be struck by lightning if we do not go in.'
He was the only one standing at the entrance while the rest were sitting in incomplete vehicle projects in the garage for a quick nap.
The garage was spacious but filled with different equipment so they didn't really have anywhere to hide from the rain except in the metallic vehicles.
He would have joined the others for a quick nap too but the fear of the unknown scared him.
'What if lightning struck at the vehicle they were resting in and burnt them into ashes?'
Thinking of the dried bodies and fried static hairs of him and his comrades, really spooked him out, so he shivered.
While S3 was still in his lightning themed fantasy, S7 suddenly stood up, got down from the vehicle and briskly walked to the entrance of the garage.
His sudden movement woke S6 and S8 up while startling S3 who thought the sudden 'flash' of movement beside him was lightning but later realised it was S7's silver shirt.
Eyeballing the shirt for frightening him, S3 began to see reasons to dislike the shirt.
Walking up to S7, S8 asked, "What is it?"
Sniffing into the air, S7 said with a very thick and unpleasant voice, "I smell kids."
"Over there. With a little bit of...flowers." He continued as he pointed towards the main gate entrance.
S7's inherent ability is an increased sense of smell. He could smell anything through space and could also detect a person by their body chemistry. As long as the body of a person carries out normal functions, like secretions and such, he'll be able to smell them.
Hearing S7's words, S3 was shocked as he and S8 tried to check out the area where S7 gestured to but no matter how much they tried, they couldn't see anything clearly.
Frustrated, S8 called upon S6 to use his night vision in order to see what S7 perceived.
Looking into the distance, S6 said after a while, "I see 4 people and they are wearing silver shirts, I think it might be some of the people we left to keep guard up there?" he said pointing towards the upper floors of Winters.
"Are you sure? You know S7 has never made a mistake, and he said he smelled kids, we didn't bring any here. And the ones that should be here aren't meant to be outside but locked up! So check again!" S8 said exasperatedly cause he couldn't see or sense anything.
You couldn't blame him though, he didn't have sensory superpowers like S6 and 7 but had super strength instead, so there was nothing he could do.
"Their smell is fading from the premises." S7 commented again.
Using his clairomancy this time, S6 closed his eyes as he tried to sense the events that transpired between the 'four people' moments ago. This superpower gave him the ability to know events that happened in the past.
However, this ability was limited because it wasn't his dominant power which was his heightened vision so he could only sense events that occurred two to three minutes ago.
Snapping his eyes open, he turned and began to arm himself with the guns and knives he left on the ground earlier.
Throwing the other weapons to S7 and S8, he explained, "S7 wasn't wrong, they are kids alright."
Catching the weapons, S8 also began to arm himself as he asked, "What did you see?"
Glancing at S6, S7 caught a weapon and prepared himself silently, keeping his ears open for his reply while S3 just watched on in awe with his mouth open.
He and the others didn't have the advanced powers that S6, 7& 8 had so they always looked up to them but the real scary one....was S6.
Strapping his leather boots on properly, S6 answered with a smirk, "Nasty brats trying to escape. Even wearing silver shirts to put us off track. Gotta admit they are pretty smart for their age."
In his 'vision', he saw all that transpired between the group of four at the top of the stairs just outside Winters.
He didn't understand what they meant by 5 minutes left and alarms going off but he did know they were going somewhere called Frozen Cave and...
"Oh! And they are armed too." He said before running off into the windy weather with his weapons.
S7 ran after him immediately while S8 looked stumped for a few seconds wondering why the kids were armed before glancing at S3, "Look after this place and investigate why those kids were able to escape."
Running out the door, he stopped and looked back again, "Also...close your mouth and wake those fools up!" he said before rushing after S6 and S7.