by Thomas Green
Wukong took the waiting well, perhaps better than me. He played basketball and always had a reason to be covered in sweat. Loosened collar or not, maintaining multiple large illusions was taking a toll on him.
Loki, on the other hand, was constantly paler than usual, trembling, his eyes darting around. He might as well had written I’ve got a secret on his forehead.
I only hoped nobody would pay attention to him.
The days passed without issues. As I observed the guards constantly patrolling the halls, I got an eye for the patterns of individual guards. They were barely switching, serving twelve-hour shifts back to back. Okay, my latest killing spree apparently culled the Upper Prison enough for them to stop having a comfortable number of guards. Good.
That meant they wouldn’t be able to maintain these patrols for long. Especially since they couldn’t easily elevate new members to the Upper Prison. They didn’t know who my accomplices were and the risk of accidentally letting one into the guard was too high.
Shame, because this whole escape thing would be so much easier if I had an insider. I paused. There was no way I would be doing an escape plan without having an insider in the Upper Prison. Okay, that thought made me curious who the insider was since I didn’t remember. I bet on the insider being Amarendra and banished the thoughts.
Three days later, the guard patrols thinned. Instead of eight pairs, we now had two. The next day, the patrols didn’t come, and I interpreted that as Mina leaving the previous day. The patrols were rather senseless, risky in fact, since we could ambush a patrol and take their weapons, but they looked good. With Mina gone, there was no one left to impress.
I waited for an extra day and when dinner came, I sat next to Wukong. “We move tonight,” I said and dug into dinner, boiled chicken leg with potato puree.
“Finally.” He sported a swift smile. “I’ll tell Loki. We meet in mess hall’s eastern toilets.”
We ate our dinner in silence.
He left first, pocketing an apricot for later. I sat still for two minutes and then walked to the toilets. The three of us met, Wukong and I calm, Loki slightly trembling.
The ever-present signal light shifted to orange and the last prisoners other than us left the toilets. I waited for them to leave and then motioned at Loki. “Now.”
He gulped, closed his eyes, focused for a moment, and an illusion of the three of us appeared nearby. It wasn’t great, blurry around the edges, undetailed on then skin, but that would be unnoticeable from the cameras.
I stalked to the door and opened them. Loki made the illusions walk out. An eternal minute passed before Loki opened his eyes, saying, “Done.”
So, now whoever sat at the other side of camera feed saw us leave the mess hall and go to our cells. Given how overcrowded the prison was, there was no way the operator would notice us not arriving at our cells. And the other prisoners may have noticed, but it wasn’t like they had any chance to contact the guards since it was impossible to get back to the mess hall from the cells until morning.
We approached the door and Wukong took the front. He slightly opened it, moved his hand, and whispered something in Chinese. Was that a prayer? “Come,” he said and slid out. We followed.
Wukong’s step was wobbly and he needed to brace himself on the wall. I glanced at this corridor’s camera. An image floated in front of it. To create an illusion that would fool the camera apparently cost Wukong a ton of effort. Loki looked like the walking illusions juiced him out, so they would both need rest soon.
We slipped through the corridor toward the blind end, where Wukong’s illusion still stood. We walked through. Beyond lay our welding machine and all the gear we used. Loki and Wukong both sagged by the far wall. I did as well.
Now, we had to wait, again.
Soon, the thudding of boots echoed through the corridor. From our side, the illusory wall that hid us looked like a wall of semi-transparent mist. Loki and Wukong remained on the ground while I rose.
Guards appeared in the corridor, doing the nightly checkup. They stopped at the turning, looking into the hall. They were about to turn, but one of them stopped, gazing at the ground between himself and the illusion.
An apricot lay on the ground. That must had fallen from Wukong’s pocket when he limped past the wall. I rose and stepped to the illusory wall. If they found us, I would have to kill them before they alerted the others and then hope the missing guards wouldn’t be found too quickly.
Still, that would be a massive problem. I clenched all my muscles, ready to spring forward. With a smirk, the guard kicked the apricot.
Fuck. If they saw the apricot fly through the wall, we would get busted. I bolted toward the illusory wall and put the back of my arm to where the fruit would land. The apricot hit my arm and bounced off. Icy sweat covered my entire body.
The guards turned and walked away.
I slowly exhaled and sat down. That was way too close.
Half an hour later, the lights went dark. The search was finished, finding no prisoners, so the guards returned to the Upper Prison and there was no need to waste electricity on lights.
I fuelled my eyes with aether and world’s colors shifted. With that, I could see well. “Let’s move.” I grabbed the welding machine and started pushing it forward. Loki and Wukong followed. We reached the sports hall and stopped near the platform used to get here prisoners from extraction.
With my magical sight, I found where the electric cables led through the wall. I peeled off the steel plate and repeated the setup we did earlier. The welding machine lit to life and I put on the protective helmet. “You two, rest.”
Neither Wukong nor Loki protested. I grabbed the welding stick and started working. I had to weld this platform and then all the doors in the mess hall. This was going to be a long night.
When the lights came back up, Wukong instantly waved his hands, wreathing us in an illusion. I was finishing the sixth door in the mess hall. Sweat covered my entire body, my muscles screamed with strain and my eyes hurt. I spent the entire night welding the doors and my body was ready to retire. The alarm didn’t sound.
Excellent. “Wukong,” I said, “Which way will we be using to escape?”
“A duct shaft leading from the Eastern toilet, last stall.”
I nodded. “You two leave, now.”
With a smile, Wukong and Loki slipped out of the illusion to blend with the incoming prisoners. Those started trickling into the mess hall. The first few dozen noticed nothing as they rushed to be the first to eat breakfast, but when the queue formed, those with enough time started squinting in our direction. Due to its size, Wukong’s illusion wasn’t exactly indistinguishable to human eye. They were still good enough to fool a camera operator sipping his morning coffee.
I pulled off the dark goggles, removed the gloves and stretched. When enough prisoners gathered in the hall, Wukong cancelled the illusion. The prisoners stared at us, eyes wide, mouth gaping. Those who were just arriving stopped mid-track and the ones behind them pushed forward.
I dropped the welding stick, letting it clang on the ground. Aether poured out of my heart, filling my body, washing away the tiredness. That was a mind trick, but a perfectly functional one. I reached for the welding machine, tore off a piece and threw it at the camera in the corner. The steel shard swished through the air and destroyed the camera. I wasn’t going to need the welding machine anymore.
I repeated the process for the remaining camera and then tore myself two more fragments, tucking them under my jumpsuit.
In the meantime, prisoners started filling the hall in awkward silence. No wonder since they still remembered the killing spree I caused.
I cleared my throat and then shouted, my voice booming through the hall. “Overnight, I welded all entrances into our ward. Guards cannot enter and I have prepared a way for us to leave. Does anyone know the layout of the Upper Prison?” I knew the answer to the question, but figured Ares would feel better if things appeared as if he ha
d a choice. He lived in the Upper Prison for months, after all.
Murmurs passed through the crowd and Ares stepped out, a wicked smirk on his face. “I do.”
“Then follow me.” I turned and headed toward the bathroom. “And everyone else who has had enough of this place is free to join us.”
Awkward silence filled the room.
“Hell yeah,” Rhonrohak shouted and walked to follow me.
And everyone else did as well. When I entered the corridor leading to toilets, I destroyed the camera with one of the metal shards and then the second one shared the same fate.
By now, the Upper Prison was about to get into an uproar. The cameras went dark, the guards were about to report they couldn’t open the door and suddenly, the fear of the unknown would kick in.
I counted on that. Due to the door’s thickness, they would have to call Hades to get in, removing him from the Upper Prison.
I led the way to the last stall in the eastern toilets. The wall was slightly bent, suggesting this had been covered by an illusion. I grabbed the steel plate on the wall and peeled it off with ease, revealing a duct shaft. The glue had been loosened to the point where the plate barely held in place.
A strange feeling of familiarity washed over me. I felt as if I had been here before, but I couldn’t remember any details.
Ares, standing next to me, wheezed. “You’re actually prepared.”
“Always.” I slid into the duct shaft to crawl through. To my right, the shaft led a bit further into a wall. I frowned. By the layout, there should have been a maintenance area for the remaining bathroom stalls.
Whatever. I didn’t have the time to think about this, and so I crawled forward, Ares and Rhonrohak behind me. We passed through the shaft, and I caught onto the ladder leading upward since that was the only possible direction.
I ascended, passed a maintenance door in a massive pipe and stopped by the exit door from the shaft. This must have led to the Upper Prison. I grabbed the door and pulled. They were locked. I formed the combat, octagonal pattern, and hit the lock area. Metal clanged and the lock fell apart. I flung open the door and crawled through.
A maintenance room opened in front of us. I walked straight to the door. The other prisoners got into the room as well, entering one by one.
“We leave once the room is full,” I said.
Nobody replied, but also nobody protested. Instead, the prisoners searched for anything that could be used as weapons—brooms, buckets, pliers, hammers, everything served.
I glanced at Ares. “Do you have your collar loosened?”
“No.”
“Turn around.”
He did and I started loosening his aether restrictions. “We need to go to the ventilation maintenance room. And then to the hangars, where we steal supply planes and fly away.”
“That’s so insane it might work.”
The plan’s glaring hole was that none of us knew if there were any cargo planes present to steal, but I didn’t feel like mentioning that. With my memory having more holes than a Swiss cheese, I hoped my past self knew what he was doing when making the plan. But then again, if all went to hell, I could take Mina’s offer. I didn’t want to, but I also couldn’t discard the option. Sure, I was proud, but not to the point of being self-destructive.
I finished with Ares’s collar and the room was already packed full.
“Go,” I shouted, and, for the dramatic effect, I knocked open the door with my shoulder.
Ares dashed past me into a tunnel. The first shock was the carpet on the ground. What the hell? Over the past ten or so months, my feet got used to the cold, steel floors. Thick carpet fell strangely comfortable. The white-painted walls were also a sharp change from the steel maze that was our prison.
Ares knew exactly where he was going, not doubting for a second. Perfect. Many prisoners failed to follow, dashing away to try to find their own path. That was most likely a part of the plan. Chaos was bound to erupt and that would buy us time. By now, Hades would have heard we broke into the Upper Prison, but he would immediately get overwhelmed with reports from various locations.
We didn’t stay long on the carpet as Ares led us into a tunnel clearly used for maintenance. A locked door stopped us. “We need to pass through here,” Ares said.
I eyed the door. They were clearly different from the ones in the Lower Prison, lacking reinforcing bands. I strengthened myself to the limit, stepped toward the door, and punched. Steel screeched and my fist passed through.
Good, they were thinner indeed. I gritted my teeth and pulled, tearing the door apart. More tunnels opened ahead.
“The ventilation maintenance should be somewhere nearby,” Ares said.
Good enough. I slid through and glanced around the tunnels. Going in blind would be too risky. I pushed aether into my eyes and searched for electricity. Lines of light appeared in the walls. I headed toward the largest cluster and about twenty prisoners followed me.
After breaking in, we stood in a set of rooms filled with machinery. “We leave in two minutes. Destroy all you can until then,” I shouted and stepped into the room. Breaking of glass sounded from behind me as the other prisoners got to work. I wasn’t sure I could find the controls for the ventilation, so I figured that if I destroyed everything present, I was bound to break the ventilation control as well.
I ran through the rooms, looking at each machine. Dozens of panels shone into the otherwise dark rooms. I glanced at the panels. I mean, the point was to cause enough local trouble for Hades not to be able to afford to pursue us.
Escapees or not, if he faced his personnel dying due to lack of oxygen, he would have to let us go. I couldn’t tell anything from the panels, so I grabbed one machine and pulled. My muscles screamed with strain, but the aether-imbued strength didn’t fail me. I tore a large, box-like machine from the wall and threw it across the room, destroying another one.
This took too much effort. I glanced around until I found a nice, long lever. I tore the lever from the base and filled its metal with aether to use it as a baseball bat. With that, I started smashing the machines. Two minutes would be enough to demolish everything in the four connected rooms. Barbaric, I knew, but the largest weakness of this remote prison flying above the Arctic was the inability to swiftly resupply.
After half a minute, I finished with one room and advanced to the next. Shards of metal and broken glass soon flew through the air.
I realized the sound of the other prisoners, who were supposed to be destroying the first room, had stopped. No time to investigate that. I smashed another machine, moved sideways and swung at another one.
“Vandalism, really?” Mina’s voice cut the air.
My heart leapt to my throat. She wasn’t supposed to be around. And this was way too soon since I needed to destroy much more of the machinery. I turned slowly. “How about you let me go?”
She wore her usual pants, running shoes, and a pullover. She also held a longsword, braced casually over her shoulder. “Sign the contract. Then we can go.”
I smiled. “How about no?”
“Wrong answer.” She clicked her tongue and tossed me the longsword. “You need a proper beating.”
I let go of the lever and gripped the sword’s hilt. Mina’s hair and eyebrows grew out and eyes turned white.
This was going to hurt. Mina was a warmage, just like me, but she specialized in body manipulation magic. One of its uses was increasing her own bone and muscle density. The last time we sparred, she weighed about five hundred pounds and had a matching amount of strength. There were few, if any, warmages of similar skill in the world. She charged, grabbing for me.
I slid past her charge and slashed at her face. She ducked, whirling. I stepped in and launched a knee at her head. Mina leapt forward. I jumped back and swung down. The sword slashed her collarbone and chest. Blood and bones sprayed into the air.
Without stopping for a second, she punched my gut. Pain exploded threw me and the impact se
nt me across the room. I hit the wall with my back, shouting with pain. Yep, she still weighed at least five hundred pounds. Mina straightened, the wound I caused her regenerating. Bones formed, muscles regrew, and skin stretched over the injury. Within a second, she was unharmed.
Sure, I knew she had the werewolf regeneration. But the last time I had seen it, she didn’t recover nearly this quickly. “Weak.” She smirked and charged again.
I straightened and swung down in a massive slash, my blade a blur. She broke her charge, stopping suddenly. My sword cut empty air. She stepped into the opening and kicked, aiming at my thigh. I turned and checked the kick. Bad idea.
Our shins clashed and my leg flew away as if I kicked a speeding car. I grunted with pain and tried to regain my balance.
“Slow.” She leapt at my other leg, grabbed the ankle, and raised it to the air. After a split second holding me in the air, she slammed me down on the floor, pinning me under herself.
Now, I was more than good at both wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But I didn’t have a half of her weight or her strength. Not to mention her extremely tall but lanky build with narrow shoulders and hips made it nearly impossible to grab her. She passed my guard, sat on my midsection, postured up and punched me in the face.
My head bent the steel floor beneath, and my vision blurred.
“Brittle.” She punched me again, this time sending me to unconsciousness.
Amarendra 5
I CROUCHED, bracing my rifle over a toppled table’s edge. Jasika huddled behind me. Three dead prisoners lay between us and our apartment’s door. The signal light kept flashing red.
What an absolute disaster.
My mind had yet to wrap around what happened. I joined the other guards when the alarm sounded. But the door to the prison wouldn’t open. Before we went to try the other ones, Sora stopped me. ‘Go protect your wife,’ he told me.
I did, abandoning my post and duty. If I didn’t… I gazed at the three corpses on our carpet. No, I refused to think of what would have happened to my pregnant wife if they ambushed her alone.