We followed the guardian--Lissa asked his name; it was Giovanni--through more halls and security checkpoints. The route he led us on went around the prison's edge, not through the cells. I held my breath almost the entire time, terrified we'd run into someone. Too many other factors were working against us; we didn't need that too. Our luck held, though, and we ran into no one--again probably a result of doing this near the end of the night and not passing through a high-security zone.
Lissa and Mia had gotten the Court guardian to erase the security footage there too, but I hadn't witnessed it. Now, when Giovanni led us into the prison's surveillance room, I couldn't help a small gasp. Monitors covered the walls, and consoles with complex buttons and switches sat in front of them. Computer-covered desks were everywhere. I felt like this room had the power to blast off into space. Everything in the prison was in view: each cell, several halls, and even the warden's office, where Eddie sat making small talk with Theo. Two other guardians were in here, and I wondered if they'd seen us in the halls. But no--they were too fixated on something else: a camera that had been turned to face a blank wall. It was the one I'd adjusted in the feeding room.
They were leaning toward it, and one of them was saying how they should call someone to check down there. Then they both looked up and noticed us.
"Help her subdue them," Lissa ordered Giovanni.
Again, there was hesitation. We would have been better off with a "helper" with a weaker will, but Lissa had had no idea when she chose him. Like before, he eventually sprang into action. Also like before, surprise went a long way in subduing these two guardians. I was a stranger--immediately raising their guard--but still appeared as human. Giovanni was their coworker; they didn't expect an attack from him.
That didn't make them easy to take down, though. Having backup went a long way, and Giovanni was good at his job. We rendered one guardian unconscious pretty quickly, Giovanni using a choke hold to briefly cut off the guy's air until he collapsed. The other guard kept his distance from us, and I noticed his eyes continually shifting toward one of the walls. It had a fire extinguisher, a light switch, and a round silver button.
"That's an alarm!" exclaimed Victor, just as the guardian lunged for it.
Giovanni and I tackled him at the same time, stopping the guy just before his hand could brush the button and send a legion of guards down on us. A blow to the head knocked this guardian out too. With each person I took out in this prison break, a knot of guilt and nausea twisted tighter and tighter in my stomach. Guardians were the good guys, and I couldn't help but keep thinking I was fighting on the side of evil.
Now that we were left to ourselves, Lissa knew the next step. "Giovanni, disable all the cameras and erase the last hour's worth of footage."
There was a greater hesitation on his part this time. Getting him to fight his friends had required a lot of forceful compulsion on her part. She was keeping her control but growing weary, and it was only going to get harder making him obey our commands.
"Do it," growled Victor, coming to stand beside Lissa. She flinched at his proximity, but as his gaze joined hers, Giovanni complied with the order and began flipping switches on the consoles. Victor couldn't match Lissa's power by a long shot, but his small burst of compulsion had strengthened hers.
One by one, the monitors went black, and then Giovanni typed in a few commands on the computer that stored digital footage from the cameras. Red error lights were flashing on the consoles, but there was no one here now to fix them.
"Even if he erases it, there are those who might be able to recover it from the hard drive," noted Victor.
"It's a chance we'll have to take," I said irritably. "Reprogramming or whatever isn't really in my skill set."
Victor rolled his eyes. "Perhaps, but destruction certainly is."
It took me a moment to get what he meant, but then it clicked. With a sigh, I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and beat the computer to a pulp until it was nothing more than a pile of plastic and metal fragments. Lissa winced at each blow and kept glancing at the door.
"I hope that's soundproof," she muttered.
"It looks sturdy," I said confidently. "And now it's time to go."
Lissa ordered Giovanni to return us to the warden's office at the front of the prison. He complied, leading us back through the maze we'd gone through earlier. His codes and security card got us through each checkpoint.
"I don't suppose you can compel Theo into letting us walk out?" I asked Lissa.
Her mouth was set in a grim line. She shook her head. "I don't even know how much longer I can hold Giovanni. I've never used someone as a puppet before."
"It's okay," I said, trying to reassure both of us. "We're almost done with this."
But we were going to have another fight on our hands. After beating up half the Strigoi in Russia, I still felt good about my own strength, but that guilty feeling wouldn't leave me. And if we ran into a dozen guardians, even my strength wasn't going to hold.
I'd lost my bearings from the blueprint, but it turned out that Giovanni's route back to the main office was taking us through a block of cells after all. Another sign read overhead WARNING--NOW ENTERING PRISONER AREA (PSYCHIATRIC).
"Psychiatric?" I asked in surprise.
"Of course," murmured Victor. "Where else do you think they send prisoners with mental problems?"
"To hospitals," I responded, holding back a joke about all criminals having mental problems.
"Well, that's not always--"
"Stop!"
Lissa interrupted him and came to an abrupt halt before the door. The rest of us nearly walked into her. She jerked away, taking several steps back.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She turned to Giovanni. "Find another way to the office."
"This is the fastest way," he argued.
Lissa slowly shook her head. "I don't care. Find another, one where we won't run into others."
He frowned, but her compulsion held. He abruptly turned, and we scurried to keep up. "What's wrong?" I repeated. Lissa's mind was too tangled for me to pull out her reasoning. She grimaced.
"I felt spirit auras behind there."
"What? How many?"
"At least two. I don't know if they sensed me or not."
If not for Giovanni's clip and the urgency pressing on us, I would have come to a stop. "Spirit users..."
Lissa had looked so long and hard for others like her. Who'd have thought we'd find them here? Actually... maybe we should have expected this. We knew spirit users danced with insanity. Why wouldn't they end up in a place like this? And considering the trouble we'd gone through to learn about the prison, it was no wonder these spirit users had remained hidden. I doubted anyone working here even knew what they were.