by Ramy Vance
Farther and farther into the mountain they went. Suzuki could feel Fred's anxiety. It was something more than losing his place. Suzuki could feel Fred's fear of enclosed spaces, a form of claustrophobia, a feeling born from the freedom of the sky. Fred was trying to keep it together, but he was counting the seconds until he could run screaming out of the mountain.
Suzuki tried to unfold himself onto Fred. He imagined himself as a warm blanket and hoped that the sentiment could be understood. Come on, Fred, he said. "We gotta keep it together. We're almost there.
How do you know, human? Fred snapped. All of this looks the same. I have no idea how you and the other humans can stand places like this. There’s no air. I feel like I'm suffocating.
It's just in your head, Fred. We’ll be out of here soon enough.
The sooner, the better. It's taking everything out of me not to kill this dwarf and be done with this entire plan.
Ansalm looked back as if he could read Fred's mind. "We're almost to our first batch of prisoners," Ansalm gleefully cooed. "I believe that you'll be quite impressed with our work so far. Please, do tell the viceroy what we've been up to." The dwarf stopped walking. He turned to his left and pointed at a cell. "Would you like to see what's inside?"
Fred did his best to force a grin. "Please, I'd like nothing else," he hissed.
Ansalm took a light from the side of the wall and waved it in front of the cell's bars. The light cast dimly. Fred strained his eyes to see. Even with his heightened sense, he could barely make out what was inside the cell. "Would you like to step inside with me?" Ansalm asked.
Fred nodded. "If it would help me to see your work, yes."
Ansalm pulled out what looked like a remote from his pocket. He waved it over the cell and Fred heard the cell unlock. The door swung open with a faint creak.
Even with the light, it was difficult to see. By the time Fred and Suzuki's eyes adjusted, they both wished that they had not.
The cell was filled with bodies. It was difficult to tell if they were still alive. The smell did not help. Something was rotting.
Ansalm shined a light on the cell’s contents. A man sat in the corner of the cell, holding his arms close to his chest as he shivered. His body was covered in sores, his chest completely bare and split down the middle, where his heart could be seen pumping from inside his ribs.
Suzuki fought the urge to vomit.
Fred fought the urge to run from the room.
Ansalm continued to shine the light on the contents of the room as Fred tried to avert his eyes. When the light shone upon his face, he grinned grimly, flashing his teeth so they caught the light from the lantern.
The inhabitants of the room realized there were other people in the room with him. That was when the lamentations began. The cell flooded with the cries of the damned, the begging, the hope of an ending to suffering. The cell was a bedlam of pain.
"Do you believe this will please the Dark One?" the dwarf asked.
Fred stifled the urge to purge himself. Suzuki wondered absentmindedly as he retreated to a part of Fred's mind where he could cope whether Fred was reacting to his feelings of disgust or if they were genuine. "The Dark One will be pleased," Fred managed.
"Wonderful. Would you like to see what we have in store for the...how should I say...more ardent prisoners?"
"Please."
Ansalm and Fred exited the cell and the doors clanked loudly as they closed. Then they turned to the tunnels, which grew ever darker as they progressed. Suzuki could no longer focus on the direction they were turning.
He did not see any more cells or any more turns. All he could see were the faces of the military officers hanging from walls, screaming, asking, and pleading for an end to their suffering.
The walls grew closer as they trod through the dark tunnels of despair and pain. Neither Fred nor Suzuki were aware of how long they walked, the demon’s wings flapping monotonously as Ansalm's quick feet continued on their path.
Finally, Ansalm stopped. He pointed to a cell and nodded, grinning gleefully. Fred opened the cell and stepped in. Ansalm followed and closed the door behind him.
The cell was empty save for a few chains. Ansalm shone his light on the bareness of the cell. His voice cracked when he spoke. "This is the cell we reserve for traitors," Ansalm whispered, his voice low and ominous. "It is a privilege to see this cell...unless you have transgressed."
Suzuki felt Fred muster all of his courage. "Then why have you brought me here?" Fred asked.
Ansalm looked at Fred. His expression was pure and simple. "You are a traitor, are you not?"
A thousand responses flashed through Suzuki's head. None of them would have helped; he understood that they were outed.
This was going to be the end.
They would have to kill Ansalm and hope to find some way out of this labyrinth. Then they could find Beth.
"I am no traitor," Fred said.
Ansalm smiled sweetly. "Oh, you aren't? I saw how you looked at those prisoners. There was sympathy in your eyes. Even such a creature as you could feel sympathy for their pain. It was so obvious, as if you had lost your eldritch power. As if humans had tainted you."
Ansalm reached behind his back. He withdrew a small remote and pointed it at the wall. There was a bright flash of light. He was still smiling when Suzuki and Fred could again see his face. "You're a MERC, aren't you?" Ansalm asked.
Fred said nothing.
Ansalm rushed to the door and closed it behind himself. He was still smiling, but the sickly sweetness had evaporated. "Thank the gods.” He sighed. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you."
Chapter Ten
Ansalm's eyes looked hollow and he breathed very slowly as he crossed the room.
There was hardly any space in the small cell. If they attacked, that would work to their advantage. Fred knew that he was faster than the dwarf.
Stronger, too.
He'd be able to eliminate the dwarf before there were any witnesses. Burn the body, take the clipboard, and make their way through the maze of cells.
The dwarf raised his hands in a sign of submission. "Wait, wait," he whispered. "I know what you must be thinking. Hear me out. I'm on your side." He pulled out a small badge and presented it to Fred and Suzuki.
The badge had the MERC insignia on it.
Fred's scales bristled as he eyed the dwarf. "What the hell is going on here?" Fred asked.
"You think that all that MERC has up its sleeve is brute force? We needed to see what the Dark One was doing on the inside. I'm part of the Espionage Department."
"I didn't realize that MERC had spies."
"What good is having spies if everyone knows that you have spies? We try to keep that information to ourselves. I've been waiting for someone to try and infiltrate this camp. Couldn't have asked for a better person, myself."
"Better person?"
"You're Suzuki's familiar, right? Isn't José with you?"
Fred shook his head. "No, José did not accompany us."
"But he's on the mission, right?"
"He is, but we entered the camp ourselves. We thought it would be wiser if we separated."
"It wasn't a bad idea,” the dwarf said. “Security here is tough. I'm surprised that you made it this far. Changing places with your host was a smart idea. Pretty sure you'd be dead otherwise."
"What have you been doing here? Have you learned anything about—"
"Let me just stop you there. Almost nothing. I've been posing as one of the dwarves that defected to the Dark One's side. There's a shit ton who joined up with him. They figured that it was better than being dead. Can't blame them. They aren't warriors. But I don't have a microchip, so the orcs tend to keep me at a bit of a distance, even with the fabricated paperwork. This place is like a goddamn office. Most of the communication isn't done person to person. It's done through the microchips, direct data transfer. Everything is on a need to know basis. I've been scraping by what I can get so tha
t I can make this work, but I'm going to get found out eventually."
"And what is your plan to get around this?" Fred asked.
"There's one. I'm going down with the ship. Unless this camp gets taken out, I'm dead. The least that I can do before I get found out is spring some of our guys. Our military guys, I should say. There are no captured MERCs here." Ansalm smiled with a little bit of pride. "Take no prisoners, leave no prisoners. But you're looking for military folks?"
Suzuki couldn’t hide his excitement and forced Fred to say, "A young woman named Beth."
"I don't know any names. The Dark One doesn't care about any of that shit. All I know is cells with humans, elves, and dwarves and whether they're civilians or not. It's military that you're after? Let's see what I got..."
Ansalm looked through his clipboard. He flipped through pages, chewing on a pen. Suzuki couldn't get over the mundaneness of the situation. The MERC spy was just a pencil pusher. Who would have thought that it would be such a vital and important position to have infiltrated? Ansalm probably didn't think it was too glamorous. Especially with his impending death hanging over him.
Suzuki could feel Fred approaching him mentally. Do you think that we can trust him? Fred asked.
Suzuki nodded, not that Fred saw it. He did show us the badge.
That could have been provided by the Dark One, Fred said.
I think he's good. If he's full of shit, we can just come back and kill him later.
Sounds good to me.
Ansalm looked up from his notebook and turned it around for Fred to see. "So, we got multiple levels of cells. They're all mixed up. There isn't really any order to any of it. We just have some tagged, and others we don't bother with. The military ones are what we tagged. New and old arrivals too. How long has your guy been here?"
"They were captured roughly two weeks ago."
"They're probably dead."
Fred watched Ansalm's matter-of-fact face. It was as if working in a bureaucratic office of the Dark One had rubbed off on the dwarf's bedside manner. “What do you mean, she's probably dead?” Fred asked.
The dwarven MERC pursed his lips. "Most of the military is processed for reintegration within a week. If they can't break them by then, they kill them.”
“Beth is still alive.”
The MERC turned his head, confused. "How do you know? Have you been in contact?”
“No,” Fred admitted. “But I know. She's still alive.”
“If you say so. Come on, we'll take a look at the feeds. There should be another control room that we can check out that has a bit more privacy.”
Ansalm turned to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. He turned to Fred and motioned for Fred to follow.
Fred ducked his head low as he walked forward. He still had misgivings about the situation. Anyone could come up with a fake badge and a sob story. Neither of those meant anything alone. This could easily be a trap.
Suzuki picked up on Fred's thoughts and reached out to present his own. It could be a trap. There was no way around that possibility. If they were realistic, though, it would take a lot of foresight to assume that the Dark One's camp had prepared for the specific situation of a MERC switching bodies with a familiar by providing a dwarf who didn't have microchips to pose as a MERC spy.
Possible, but highly unlikely.
It still feels too convenient, Fred thought. We could be walking into a deathtrap.
Well, this is a time for you to show off just how strong an eldritch creature you are, Suzuki countered.
My powers...ugh, I hate having this conversation with you, human. But my powers are not what they used to be. They have been dormant for too long. I am still recovering from the skirmish we got into earlier.
Are you serious?
If we find ourselves in trouble, I will have to revert back to your body. And you will most likely be killed.
Yeah, I kind of figured the killed part. I didn't need you to spell it out. We… Fuck it, we might as well see how this pans out.
Fred and Suzuki followed Ansalm down the winding paths of the prison caverns. Distance had ceased to have any meaning some time ago. They walked in near darkness, the only light occasionally coming from lanterns flickering on the side of the polished stone walls. They moved silently as if they were ghosts. They were prisoners themselves, perhaps.
After some time, Ansalm turned a corner and opened a door. Inside was a room covered in television screens. There were an orc and a goblin sitting in front of the screen, snacking on large pieces of roasted meat. They looked up at Ansalm and Fred as the dwarf and the imp walked into the room.
Fred's body tensed.
This was the fight that he was worried about, and Suzuki prepared himself to take back control of his body. One orc and goblin? Plus a middle age, slightly overweight dwarf?
Suzuki could probably tear through them before either one of them realized what was happening.
Ansalm stepped across the room and placed his hand on the orc's shoulder. "Take a hike, you guys," he ordered.
The orc and goblin grumbled as they got out of their chairs. "No one's up to anything," the orc complained. "You'll be lucky if you even see a tit."
The two foot soldiers shuffled out of the room and closed the door behind them. Ansalm sat at the chair and waved a control scheme into existence in front of the holoscreens.
Fred stood beside the dwarf. "What were they talking about?" he asked.
"There's a couple of peeping tom viewing rooms. Sometimes the prisoners get desperate and try to make the last moments of their lives a little less grim. There's a general understanding between the guards that you'd like some privacy to...alleviate your frustrations at the prisoners’ plight. I've found that these rooms are the easiest to check in on prisoners without being disturbed. Even orcs don't want to walk in on each other with their dicks in their hands."
"Interesting way to do your job, but you must enjoy—"
"It's nothing I enjoy,” the dwarf said. “I enjoy not being tortured and reintegrated. So, if you please, look through these screens and find your friend. Maybe we can get her out of here if it isn't already too late."
Fred turned his attention to the screen. There were too many to count. Each of the cells was filmed from a corner of the ceiling. It was difficult to make out anyone's face. Suzuki tried to push himself closer to the forefront of Fred's mind. He knew he would recognize Beth the moment that he saw her.
All he needed was a glimpse.
They flipped through screen after screen. Soldiers lay or sat on the ground, some of them propped against the wall. The few faces they did see looked drained of all life. It was looking at a corpse in a mocking parody of the living.
There!
Fred stopped scrolling through the screens. In the bottom corner screen, there was a group of soldiers standing, some of them pacing. One of them had short hair, and she kept throwing glares at the security camera. Out of nowhere, she threw a rock at the camera and flipped it off. Then she went and sat in a corner as she crossed her legs and stared up at the device.
Fred pointed to the screen. "That’s Beth," Fred said. "That’s who we're looking for."
Ansalm nodded and enlarged the screen. "She is still alive... Oh, it's her," Ansalm muttered.
"What do you mean, ‘it’s her?’"
"She's been a massive pain in the ass to the captain. I personally respect her. A few days ago, she talked her fellow soldiers into having a—what do humans call it?—circle jerk? When the guards came in to break up the flagrant breach of conduct, she slipped out of the cell. She killed five guards singlehandedly in the dark before the captain was able to bring her in. Then she got thrown in solitary, which was an even worse idea. She managed to convince a guard who was bringing her food to get close enough to the door so that she impaled his toe with a poison dart. She killed ten more guards when they attempted to silence her."
"Why isn't she dead yet if she's causing so much trouble?"
/> Suzuki had wondered the same thing, but he was overjoyed to know that Beth was still alive, although he didn’t understand why the captain would deal with her causing so much trouble when he could just have had her killed.
Ansalm sighed and shook his head. "Reintegration," he explained. "If you haven't noticed, most of the orcs and goblins working here aren't just mindless drones. They have personality. Honestly, if I didn't know how the whole operation worked, I would have assumed that they were happy volunteers. But it's the reintegration. The stronger the personality prior to being chipped, the more cognitive function that remains afterward.
“That's how the Dark One has managed to not only build such a massive army, but also have generals who are competent. The captain is grooming her for reintegration, slowly breaking her down with her time here. And when she's ready to kill herself, he was planning on swooping in and giving her an option—or taking her by force. She's actually been scheduled to be taken to another holding facility today."
"We need to get to her as soon as possible."
"What's with the sense of urgency? This seems like more than just MERC business."
"This isn't MERC business,” Suzuki forced Fred to shout. “This is my business. MERC didn't send anyone to break her out. I came here for that."
Ansalm sighed and took his clipboard back. "That is a shame," he said. "I was hoping my reports were being seen. Still, it's better that you're here than no one at all."
"So how do I get to her?" Fred asked.
"It won't be easy. I’ll have to guide you there from the control room."
"I would prefer to be told. I have an exceptional sense of direction."
The dwarf shrugged. "Not in a place like this. It isn't just designed to get you lost, it's designed to ensure you end up alone, insane, and ready to serve the Dark One until your dying days."
Ansalm held out a MERC earpiece for Fred to take. Fred slid it into his ear and felt it instantly connect to Suzuki's neural HUD network. "Like I said," Ansalm repeated, "I'll guide you. Just listen to me, and you'll get to your friend. And...will you do me a favor?"