Infernal Contract

by Thomas Green

  “Because you are too superstitious.” I descended the stairs to the level used by the announcer booth and headed towards it.

  In the arena, Ares kept dominating the opponent. Rhonrohak couldn’t hit him and ate one strike after another. Due to Ares’s evasive footwork, the punches carried little weight, but they were bound to add up.

  A small platform hosted the announcer booth, which was one prisoner sitting by a table while talking into a stationary microphone.

  “How much of a bloodbath will this be?” Wukong asked, still trailing me.

  “Depends.” As I approached the booth, nobody rose to stop me. The stunt I pulled with Keith bore sweet fruit. In the end, me making a mess wasn’t their problem but opposing me promised death or at least a serious injury. Good.

  The announcer glanced at me and paled.

  I stepped to him, peering down at the man. “I’ll need to borrow the microphone when the match ends.”

  He gulped and nodded. Getting beaten up simply wasn’t worth whatever consequences he could face for obeying.

  Satisfied, I stepped back and observed the match. The fight neared its end. Rhonrohak barely stood while Ares appeared largely unharmed. The werewolf stepped in for a one two combination. The right hand was too slow. Ares slid by the punch and landed an overhand hook, straight on the jaw. The werewolf fell like a puppet with its strings cut.

  The crowd exploded into cheering and the God of War raised his arms, signaling victory. Rhonrohak was out cold.

  I put my hand on the announcer’s shoulder and leaned to the microphone myself. “And the winner is Ares, the coward.”

  The arena fell silent and everyone looked at me. Yeah, this was going to hurt later.

  My eyes met Ares’s gaze. “What’s with the staring? You’re the standing champion of a league from which every decent fighter is disqualified. How heroic of you.” The iron rule of the league was that anyone who ever killed another prisoner could not compete. Through that, I disqualified myself less than a minute upon my arrival to this prison, Sora half an hour later, and about a third of the Lower Prison’s population did as well.

  Ares fumed. He couldn’t call me a liar since I wasn’t. He bent his neck, gazing up at the tribunes of the Upper Prison. “Hades! As my reward, I want Lucifer to be my next opponent. Let me shut him up by stomping him to the ground.”

  “I accept,” I said and looked up.

  Hades stood above the higher tribunes’ edge, peering down on us.

  Come on, Hades, grow a pair for a moment. While Hades couldn’t kill me straight, lest he face Lucielle’s wrath, he would be able to excuse himself if I died during an arena match against another prisoner. I mean, accidents happened all the time, right? On top of that, he could loosen Ares’s collar to ensure his victory.

  The Overseer nodded and his voice thundered through the arena. “I grant the request.” He turned and stepped away from the edge.

  The crowd erupted into cheers, chanting “Ares! Ares! Ares!”

  Most of them likely made the same calculation as I have and hoped to get rid of me through this. I let go of the microphone and stepped away with a smirk.

  Wukong rejoined my side. “You do realize you asked him to kill you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I stabbed the cherry tomato on my plate with the plastic fork. Dinner wasn’t the happiest meal of the day since the return to the cell came afterward. My muscles were sore, and my jaw clenched tight. Loki’s time in the hobby room was about to run out and he better bring what I told him to.

  I hid the plastic knife and fork under my jumpsuit and headed to the toilet. Once there, I locked myself in the stall and took off my jumpsuit. Using the closed toilet for a table, I laid over the seat the toilet paper, torn into individual sheets.

  I gritted my teeth and tore out a bunch of hair from my nape. Carefully, I wove the hay-like hair into the fork, creating an imitation of a brush. Harming myself was never fun, but I needed something to write with.

  Cutting my arm’s skin with the plastic knife’s frail, saw edge took forever. Blood trickled out and I dipped the brush-fork into it. With slow, precise moves, I used the blood to write on the toilet paper sheets.

  With the information from this day, I had everything I needed to finalize the escape plan. Step by step, person by person, I wrote the plan onto the sheets.

  My eyes hurt and hand screamed with strain. But when finished, I had a stack of toilet papers with the plan written in my blood. Gingerly, I blew at the papers to speed up the drying process, one by one.

  After what felt like an eternity, I tested two sheets by placing them on top of each other. They didn’t glue together. Good. I arranged the sheets into piles and fixed them behind my trunks’ elastic.

  Once I ensured the papers wouldn’t fall, I rearranged the jumpsuit, threw the knife and brush-fork into the toilet and flushed. I left the toilet and headed to the mess hall.

  Two prisoners awaited me in the hallway, glaring as I entered. I didn’t recognize them.

  Shit. My heart leapt up my throat and sweat covered my palms. If I fought them, I would get taken in and the plan would be found. Not to mention I would drop the toilet paper sheets if I moved too quickly.

  They stepped in front of me, their muscles clenched. “You humiliated our boss today,” one of them said.

  I stretched my neck, joints popping. Oh, yeah, they were from Ares’s crew. “How many men have you killed?”

  “More than enough.”

  “Have you?” I smirked, forcing my voice to be calm. “Because I’m here for seventeen thousand, five hundred and forty-three murders. Every single victim was a mage, witch, werewolf, or some other type of an aether wielder.” Technically speaking, that was what they sentenced me for. I hadn’t done any of that. Most of the deaths I mention came from the nightmare plague two years ago, which I ended, not caused. The rest were the people I killed in self-defense, usually while arresting them. Okay, and then there was the whole save Evelyn from an execution thing. But the men in front of me didn’t know anything about that.

  They stared at me, their chins tucked, and shoulders raised in defensive postures. It wasn’t unusual to go beat up a fellow prisoner by ambushing him in a hallway. Facing a fallen angel ready to kill was an entirely different matter, as they now realized.

  Pulse beat in my temples. I stepped forward to pass between them. “If you want to die, attack me. But you’ll end up like Keith, the guards, and everyone else who has ever crossed my path.”

  They did not stop me.

  I entered the mess hall. The signal light flashed orange, telling us to return to the cells. Last six prisoners were present, four of them leaving, the last two being Loki and Wukong sitting at a table.

  The two prisoners who came to ambush me slipped through the door and skittered toward the exit. They would be back with a lot more friends, but this bought me time.

  I sat next to Loki. “Do you have it?”

  With a broad smile under his now-crooked nose, Loki waved his hand, revealing five wooden boxes lying on the table.

  “Wukong, cover me.” I ordered and grabbed the first box. While Loki’s abilities were minor, moving illusions, Wukong’s were stationary. That my two best friends in here were the two most proficient illusionists wasn’t a coincidence. Not since all warfare was based on deception.

  The monkey king nodded, whispered something in Chinese and the air around the table shimmered. From outside, we would look like we were finishing the dinner or something along those lines.

  The boxes contained intricate mechanisms. Each contained empty space inside, fashioned to have a thin slit close to the bottom, and had a loading mechanism that could serve one sheet of paper after the side was pressed. Loki must have been a hell of carpenter to make five of these in half a day.

  At least one of us wouldn’t have trouble finding honest work if we ever managed to escape. The signal light turned from orange to red, meaning we had to go. Without hurr
ying, I placed a set amount of the paper sheets containing the plan into each box.

  Once done, I stacked the boxes under my jumpsuit. “After you.”

  They both smiled, rose, and headed toward the cells. Once their shapes disappeared in the detection corridor, I headed there myself.

  Since Hades built Tul Sar Naar’s core back in the times of ancient Greece, camera surveillance wasn’t originally implemented. They put up some cameras during the twentieth century reconstruction, but the result wasn’t anything spectacular. A pair of cameras watched over the mess hall; one was placed in the detection corridor and then there were some in the blind hallways. No one has escaped this prison in the millennia before cameras were invented, so Lucielle decided to spend as little money on the surveillance as possible.

  That worked for me. I entered the detection corridor, which was filled with shapes made of wooden cubes. Loki’s boxes matched the cube’s size perfectly. I went to the first spot I had planned, a giraffe-shaped sculpture where I could easily operate with the sculpture blocking the camera’s view of me. I grabbed the cube in the place I chose, one easily accessible but one where touching it would be almost fully covered by the sculpture and the person’s body, drained the aether holding it in place and tore the cube off. Within a second, I placed one of the five boxes from Loki there.

  I repeated the same process in four more places, hiding my boxes here in the corridor. I stopped at the tunnel’s edge, looking into the wet-aired abyss below.

  With a smirk, I dropped the wooden cubes I took from the tunnel. They would float up in the current, dance beneath the ceiling and then be throw outside whenever the top opened.

  I leapt into the abyss and floated on the magical updraft to descend to my cell. Since Loki was already present, the door closed behind me, sealing the cell, isolating outside sounds. A lone ceiling light illuminated the small room, more a tomb than anything else. I cleaned up and went to sleep.

  The next morning, my body did not respond with kindness to the abuse of previous days. Everything throbbed and my mind was clouded. Loki was already stretching.

  I got up and did a quick warm-up, filling the painful muscles with blood. After the morning ritual, I kicked the bed’s leg to move it from the ground and ducked. I fuelled my body with aether. It wasn’t very effective due to the collar, but little extra strength was better than nothing. Screeching echoed through the cell as I scratched a number into the steel floor, using the bed’s leg. 1 221 115.

  Loki stood above me, observing with an arched eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “A code you need to remember.”

  “What for?”

  I rose and returned the bed into its original position. “In case Hades ends up removing the number from the ground, you’ll need to tell this number to me if I ever forget it.”

  He paused for a moment, narrowed his eyes, and asked, “Why wouldn’t you remember it yourself?”

  “In the Female Ward, there’s a girl who can erase memories. In case that happens to mine, I’ll need this number.”

  Loki paled but nodded.

  In the evening, this day’s dinner sat well in my stomach. The signal light still shone green and the hall was packed full. I tapped the table to get Loki’s and Wukong’s attention. They both gave me an expectant look.

  “You will go without me today.” I grabbed the apple that was served for desert and bit into it. “Today, I’ll take the next step in the escape plan. You two go to your cells and act as if nothing’s happening.”

  They both looked at me, their expressions puzzled.

  “Just, do as I say.”.

  “Well, good luck,” Wukong said and rose.

  Loki did too and they headed away.

  I waited for them to disappear and then crossed the hall where Ares’s last opponent, Rhonrohak, sat. His face was still swollen, and he ate the apple as if he was imagining it to be Ares’s head.

  He raised his eyes when I sat opposite of him. “What do you want?”

  “You got trashed pretty well in your fight.” I granted him a cheeky smile.

  He smirked. “Nice try, but I won’t fall for a provocation this simple.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.” My bones cracked as I stretched my shoulders. “I’m planning to escape from here within the next few months. And if I escape, everyone else will as well.”

  “No one can escape from here.”

  “Maybe not… but maybe.” I paused, measuring him with my gaze. He had been here for over a century, far longer than most. He probably tried to escape many times, but lost hope and motivation along the way. “Things have changed outside. The current Lupus Dei is the Devil’s right hand, so your kind’s place in the world is better than ever. Also, the legend that whoever escapes from here will be exonerated of all crimes is true.”

  Thoughts of freedom were like drugs within these walls, forbidden and addictive. Especially when combined with mentioning the werewolf champion, Lupus Dei. Werewolves were artificially created beings, made by the Church to kill vampires when Europe had a vampire problem back in the fifteenth century. Werewolves freed themselves by striking a deal with the Devil, but they were made with a need for hierarchy and that remained embedded into their very cores. The Wolf of God was the spiritual pinnacle of that hierarchy and the title alone was enough to make Rhonrohak remember how much he didn’t want to be separated from his kind. His eyes became glazed. “Why did you mention the Lupus Dei?”

  “We worked together for a while,” I said in a much softer tone.

  “What’s he like? Is he strong enough to bear the title of the Wolf of God?”

  “She’s more than strong enough. And also, she wouldn’t approve of you sitting in your cage without resisting.”

  Rhonrohak nodded, a smile playing on his lips. “Suppose I would agree, what would you have me do?”

  “Can’t really tell you, can I?” I shrugged. “But what do you have to lose? You got trashed in the league and it wasn’t even close. You will not fight your way out of this prison. Instead, you’ll spend the rest of your life here. What difference does it make if you add an extra escape attempt to the list?”

  He sighed and leaned against the table. “All right, kid, I’m listening. What do you need me to do?”

  “Start a fight.”

  Awkward silence conquered the air for moment. “You haven’t had enough of extraction?” he asked.

  “Something like that.”

  He shook his head. “You’re insane.” But then he rose and walked to a group of prisoners.

  While I hated the thought, the question of my own sanity has remained in the back of my mind. What if I have become insane and never realized?

  Well, first I would return to Evelyn and then I would delve into this question. Right now, it was what convinced Rhonrohak. He must have seen dozen escape plans and they all must had been generic versions of trying to dress like guards and sneak out. My plan wasn’t and that sparked interest in him. Okay, if I told him more details, he would have called it a suicide and not cooperated. But he didn’t need to know the later stages.

  Rhonrohak walked to a group of mages, grabbed a chair, and hit a man’s head with a wide swing.

  The siren wailed, the signal light turned red, and a fight erupted. I relaxed into the chair, observing the show with a smug smile.

  Guards, fully clad in tactical armor, rushed in. Prisoners started dropping to the ground. When a guard was about to pass me, I leapt up, grabbed his helmet and pushed my aether into him. My energy blended with his. I drained a part and made the rest swirl, turning his brain to mush. The guards started shouting and most moved to surround me.

  I didn’t wait and attacked the nearest man, making his heart explode upon touch. From across the room, Sora sprinted toward me, easily recognizable by holding the baton with two hands, as if it was a katana. He was once an operative of the PSIA, the Japanese version of the FBI. Out of all the prisoners in Tul Sar Naar, he was easily the most skilled
fighter, at least for as long as he had a sword-like weapon.

  This was going to hurt. I kept attacking and my world turned into a blur of batons and men. Despite disliking the idea, I needed to cull the number of guards and to get myself back into the extraction chamber. This was the surest way. Sora was a problem though. I couldn’t get a hold of him and he kept landing hits on me.

  A few minutes later, I lay on the ground among six other bodies. I felt nothing but pain and Sora towered above me.

  He kicked me in the face, and I lost consciousness.

  Amarendra 2

  JASIKA’S SCOLDING GAZE remained glued on me. While I had done my best to repair Ricardo’s leg, even with the slightly superhuman recovery of demigods, he would forever limp. My wife blamed me, rightfully so.

  Now, as we lay down in bed, she massaged her temples and I knew no fun would be had tonight.

  “Good night,” she whispered and turned on her side, showing me her greatly sculpted back.

  To have my wife as my nurse was indeed a double-edged arrangement. Now, I faced its repercussions.

  With a tired sigh, I closed my eyes, and willed sleep to come.

  The night’s peace was interrupted half-way through.

  Despite not ageing since I merged with Vishnu’s soul, I had already reached the age when night trips to the toilet were a regularity.

  At least Jasika’s sulking made it easy not to wake her. I rose and went to pay the tribute my age required.

  When I pressed the button to flush, a maelstrom of water blasted through the toilet, splashing my legs and the ground. Strange.

  I grabbed a towel and dried myself. With a slow move, I turned the valve by the tap, and water exploded into the sink. I sealed it immediately, not wanting to make the bathroom any wetter.

  When I took a shower earlier this night, everything worked fine. Curiosity won me over. I donned my white suit, slipped into leather shoes, and stalked out of our room.

  Thick carpet swallowed the sound of my steps, making my breath the only companion of my ears. While luxurious during the day, the narrow hallways lit by minimum light offered too many long shadows during the night.