Swamped

"I think our best bet is to lead the patrol away from them," you say after a little thought.

"Then I'll handle that," Erin says.

"Now hold on a minute!"

"Didn't we already have this argument?"

"That was for Ash's knights. You said this patrol wasn't Ash's."

"Oh, for... We are not having this argument again. I'll be the distraction. And I'll go take care of that now."

"Wait," you say. "I'm not going to talk you out of it, I'm going to tell you what I was planning. Lead the patrol around for a bit, then head back here, to the prisoners. We'll say we stumbled onto the knocked-out guards and then we headed in to make sure they hadn't escaped."

"They'll want to know why we were here in the first place," Erin says skeptically.

"We'll just say we broke curfew for a late-night talk, and the brig was on the way to where we were planning to go. No need to overthink an excuse there."

"I guess. All right, then you wait there and I'll get the patrol's attention." She pauses. "But wait, if I'm going to get caught with you, I shouldn't show myself, should I?"

"You could try crowing," you suggest. "Make them think a bird's gotten loose in the base."

She gives you a baffled look.

"Who would even fall for that?"

"It's worth a shot."

She shrugs, and heads off. Then you slip into the brig.

"It's not time for a new shift yet, is it?" one of the prisoners says, taunting you.

"Not on the schedule," you say. "But something seems to have happened outside. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"There was a bit of noise a while ago," says the other prisoner. "Then the last two guards ran out. That's all we know."

"Yeah, we're pretty out of the loop in here," laughs the first. "Last interesting thing we know about was Viper bailing on us. Not that I blame her, I'd be in a hurry to get out of this dump too."

Well. You're stuck waiting here until Erin leads the patrol along. So what are you going to do?