Free Origins of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer Page B

to set me free, but they didn’t deserve that! Why the hell didn’t the guards take them to a safe room or something? Idiots!
    The energy reformed into E.M. Pulsive, who looked like he’d found a new way to escape today. He waved other villains onward and I started backing away from the window as energy weapons from the towers began firing down on the main yard as everything went pear-shaped down there.
    It’s a mass breakout. Looks like the highest security level has been breached.
    If the bullets and the explosion hadn’t killed the occupants of the van, the rain of death punishing the courtyard left no doubt to their fate as a dozen of the most dangerous villains in the world fought for their freedom.
    For two or three of them, it was the only taste of freedom they’d get. Eddie and Maxine started taking out the turrets, but the prison exacted its price in blood. One of them was ringed with flames when a plasma bolt slammed into him and he exploded in a brilliant blast that left me rubbing my eyes.
    That might have been Fiery Doom, I thought while trying to focus. I tried looking for a body, but there was only a twenty foot diameter crater where the man had once been.
    When a plasma bolt hit and dissolved part of the window ten feet away from me, I revisited my “turn the table over and cower like a scared little girl” idea from before. Like the four inches of wood would really make a difference!
    Even so, it was much better than standing there waiting to be a casualty, and I put myself to work.
    Pushing the table over into the corner of the room, I formed a crude little barricade and huddled behind it while Armageddon’s warm up band was playing just outside.
    It was there, in my pathetic little fortification, that I looked at the paperwork I’d pushed off the table. There before me was my parole paperwork. The chairperson had been passing it to the rest of the board when all hell broke loose. Three of the five had signed it already while I’d been in the pissing match with the empath and then I noticed the most important sentence I’d ever see, right above the signature block.
    Parole has or has not been granted for the prisoner at this time. (Circle one and line out the other)
    It wasn’t filled out! She must have been waiting for everyone to sign it first.
    A delightfully evil thought occurred to me, I’m just a circle, a line, and two forged signatures away from freedom.
    I dug around in the empath’s purse and found her driver’s license and a pen. After a couple of practice tries on the one dollar bills, I taken earlier, I made my best effort at her name, but that still left me one name short and I had no idea who the last guy was. That’s when I began a frantic search of everything on the floor in hopes of finding some clue of the man’s name and I completely ignored the ongoing apocalypse that no longer concerned me.
    My efforts were rewarded when I stumbled on a sign in sheet. Three government employees can’t even talk in the hallway without someone calling it a meeting and producing an attendance sheet.
    Saved by procedures! Halle-fricken-lujah!
    • • •
    It was four hours before someone came and got me and eight more before they had power and a way to get me back to my cell via the damaged main shaft. When the guard said something about rescheduling my hearing, I told them that they were finishing up with me when the breakout occurred. He seemed suspicious, but said he’d take the papers to the acting warden, which didn’t sound great if you were the regular warden.
    Guess I’ll just cross my fingers and wait and see what happens.
    “What happened out there, mate?” Kenneth asked when I finally returned to the cell, sweet cell, only to find that it smelled like an outhouse. I recalled that the maintenance crews on the way down said that the plumbing, along with the power, lights and just about everything else on the maximum security level was destroyed. Several of the prisoners in