Infernal Contract

by Thomas Green

“It would also be good to stock all bathrooms with strong disinfecting soaps,” I said. “And as a temporary measure, spiking the drinking water with antibiotics could help prevent outbreaks of most infectious diseases.”

  “I will order all of that,” Hades said and looked at the obvious chief of security. “Boris, this is Sora Izanagi, a former PSIA detective. He will help you coordinate the security. We also enter the red protocol. All guards are to carry combat weapons with live ammunition.”

  Boris frowned. “We don’t need any help.”

  Hades sighed. “Who broke the water conduit and how?”

  “That’s a maintenance issue,” Boris said and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “No.” Hades donned a sour smile. “The regulator that broke first was sixty years old, so I believe that could have been an accident. But this second follow-up, where all limiters in the pipe all the way up to the reservoir were suddenly destroyed, that was no accident. Once you handle the transfer, you will investigate who did it and how and Sora will be a part of that investigation, if only for your personal security. Understood?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Boris whispered and lowered his gaze.

  Sora smiled shortly. “The obvious suspect is Lucas.”

  “But we cannot keep him in extraction forever, plus doing so hasn’t proven effective.” Hades braced his head with his palm.

  “And he could be a decoy,” Sora pointed out. “The aether extraction machine connects to the mind and soul. I understand it cannot be made to wipe memories clean, but couldn’t it, perhaps, be adjusted to search ones’ memories? That would shorten the investigation by months.”

  A second of awkward silence passed through the air. “Possibly,” Hades said, rubbing his beard. “Amarendra, once you are done with the vaccination, join Persephone in investigating this possibility.”

  No would have been my instinctual answer. But that could send me and Jasika into the Lower Prison, a fate I would not allow her to face. “As you wish,” I said, my chest tight and heartbeat speeding up.

  Hades flashed a smile. “Good.” He glanced at the woman in business wear. “Clara, how is it looking with the welding machine shipment?”

  “Arrives in two days, Sir,” she replied, her voice sharp but measured.

  “Our next main priority shipments are the vaccines. After that, we will need a massive shipment of gold and gems.”

  Everyone looked at him, staring in disbelief. Except for Sora and I, of course, since we knew what that was for.

  “Right, I haven’t told you yet.” Hades straightened his back. “This incident alone is sure to enrage the facility’s owner, Lady Lucielle. To tame her rage, we will prepare a gift of a statue, which will hopefully earn us an increase in funding as well as forgiveness for any incidents that happen in the meantime.”

  I paused, measuring Hades with a calm stare. Why did Hades trust Sora to such extent? They didn’t know each other from before and Sora was the most lethal prisoner of the Male Ward. As I replayed the events in my mind, Sora was always in the correct spot to handle a crisis and apparently never failed to find the words Hades wanted to hear.

  Sora Izanagi was the head of the Shinto pantheon… what was his power? While the collar limited him, the higher demigod could undoubtedly use aether to an extent. Somehow, Sora skyrocketed in the prison’s hierarchy, becoming Hades’s most trusted prisoner.

  But so have I and I haven’t done anything special. Hades was facing a lot more trouble than he let on, wasn’t he?

  That would explain my and Sora’s rise as an almost-desperate search for allies.

  The meeting continued for fifteen more minutes, where Hades coordinated with the engineering chief the preparation of repairs. Afterward, Hades said, “Everyone other than Amarendra and Sora, please leave.”

  Persephone glanced at him her eyes narrowed into slits. But she obeyed, rising and leaving, as did the four civil operatives.

  “Now that it’s the three of us,” Hades said, his voice suddenly smooth as silk. “It is true that no one has ever escaped this prison. But there have been those who left. I can arrange such a departure. Help me resolve this crisis and I will get both you and your closest out of here. Do we have an arrangement?”

  So that was why he lacked allies among prisoners. Those who once helped him in the past were set free. This was also a trap. If we refused, our cooperation would be instantly terminated. He didn’t trust us, he merely showed us a hint of what our future could be and now, he would bind us to his will or dispose of us.

  “I accept,” Sora said faster than I could.

  “So do I,” I added.

  “Good.” Hades nodded. “If you betray me, I will lock you and your closest into extraction and throw away the keys.”

  Our days became a lot busier. First, we needed to move the prisoners from the Female Ward to the male one. Every prisoner of the Upper Prison was assigned a shift, borrowed tactical gear and sent to help. To maintain at least some security, every prisoner was assigned a guard when moving from one ward to another. Jasika’s words hung in my head as I helped guide the female prisoners through the hallways. They were too many.

  The men in their ward laughed at the start, welcoming the new company. Their smiles froze on their faces when they realized a lot more than the rumored four hundred female prisoners were coming. To accommodate them together, men’s cells were hastily arranged to house five inmates at once. Since all the beds were allocated to female prisoners, the men slept on the ground.

  Due to how fast the process needed to happen, men could decide who shared the cell with whom.

  Holding an M16A2 assault rifle loaded with live bullets felt strange. On the one hand, I had the unstoppable urge to try to use it to escape. But Hades must have been prepared for that. Even if all prisoners were to turn their rifles at the prison overseer, he was sure to prevail.

  A layer of security we didn’t know had to exist, one that made Hades absolutely confident in his ability to keep things in order.

  After we transferred the female prisoners to their new cells, the challenge then became logistics. The imported equipment, vaccines, and supplies overwhelmed the depot capacity.

  Every unused room became storage. Unfortunately, that included my medical office and even a part of my treatment room. I fought tooth and nail to protect the space, but they still became the new homes of two industrial welding machines, and piles of supplies. My office, together with all my files, became a storage inaccessible to me and the treatment room lost a third of its space. I missed my desk the minute after the maintenance crew piled packed protective gear onto it. I also hated the welding machine lying next to my RTG scanner with a passion, wondering if anyone would notice if it went missing.

  And then the vaccinations started. Jasika and I erected a shallow barrier in the middle of the treatment room and each of us used one section to give the injections. Combined with Doctor Nowitski, and the two doctors previously servicing the Female Ward, we were five people. We had to vaccinate approximately fifteen hundred prisoners, giving four injections to each of them.

  I was approaching the end of my second sixteen-hour shift when I sent away the current prisoner. I checked out his name on the printed list and glanced at the next name, Lucas Johnson. I blinked a few times, rose, and stretched my limbs, hoping to regain at least some sharpness of my senses.

  Seconds after I sat down, the door slid open and Lucas entered the clinic, accompanied by Sora.

  Lucas smiled. “Howdy.”

  Nostalgia flashed through my mind. The last time he greeted me like this, it was when he entered my office in my clinic in New York. Back then, we were free, and he was a young man looking for a treatment for his sister’s cancer. Now, he still appeared young, but something ancient lurked within his eyes. All his innocence had disappeared, replaced with Lucifer’s soul.

  “Please, sit down,” I said, trying not to sound tired.

  He did. “Your old office looked better.”


  Sora hit his back with the baton. “Shut up.”

  Lucas grunted with pain.

  “Pull up your sleeve,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “You will receive four vaccines.” I moved my chair to sit in front of him, taking his hand. His skin was unnaturally cold. There was a limit to how much aether a body could use. Crossing that limit would take one into a backlash, a state where the lack of energy caused the body temperature to decrease. Backlash made it nearly impossible to use aether, presenting the major weakness of every aether wielder.

  The second I touched his arm I knew he was backlashing. The pipes broke three days ago, meaning he used an ungodly amount of aether to backlash for so long. All my tiredness vanished with the realization and adrenaline flooded into my veins. The water conduit breaking was indeed no accident.

  And it also meant Lucas was moving along with the escape plan. I bit my inner cheek not to smile. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life here, whether my wife wanted to or not. Yes, Hades promised freedom, but I didn’t trust his word. With a natural ease, I jabbed the first injection into his arm. “I hope you aren’t the fainting type,” I said in a conversational tone.

  He snickered. “Only when a pretty girl’s involved.”

  I pushed in the injection’s contents and reached for the second one. “Shame you didn’t get Jasika to do your vaccination.”

  “I haven’t seen her in a long time.” He flashed a grin. “How’s she doing?”

  “Prospering.” I finished this injection, tossed it into the trash bin and reached for the next one. “You would lose your mind if you saw her.” I stabbed the needle into his arm, not bothering with being gentle. Blooded dripped down his arm, but if anything, Sora was bound to like that.

  “Shame indeed… will she be doing the interrogations when the investigation starts?” he asked.

  I dared a glance at Sora. If he noticed the hidden question, he didn’t show. I started pushing the liquid from the third injection into Lucas’ arm. “No need. Why bother a lady when one can use a machine?”

  Lucas nodded his expression suddenly serious. “No reason to, indeed.”

  I threw away the third injection. He clearly got the point. “If it hurts, get used to it. Send me a man named Rhonrohak on your way out.” I motioned to the door.

  Sora jerked Lucas up and then pushed him toward the door.

  My lip’s corners curled up when he left. We would finish the injections tomorrow and then I would start with Persephone on adjusting an extraction chamber to search memories. That gave Lucas at least two days to find a way to trick that.

  If he couldn’t, I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize my position. But if he could, freedom would perhaps enter our reach.

  The extraction mechanism was a lot simpler than I had anticipated. Persephone, dressed in casual jeans and t-shirt, explained the basics to me.

  The prisoner’s collars were indeed linked directly to their spiritual cores, which were the physical manifestation of one’s soul. To use this link to funnel aether from the prisoner was Persephone’s power, which she imbued into the extraction chambers. Similar to them, the transformation of aether also resulted from her abilities. The Queen of Underworld represented the absolute core of this prison.

  We agreed on the design quickly. Memories were stored as patterns fired by neurons. To see someone’s memory, one first had to force the person to relive it and capture the pattern. Hades’s illusions, which were normally used to torture or entertain the extracted person, could make Lucas live through his escape plan. Or, better said, through the imagination of how the plan would go.

  That would recreate the pattern. Persephone was just working on adjusting the extraction machine to record all patterns that ran through the brain.

  The challenge came afterward… how would we replay the patterns and interpret them as memories?

  To move the memories to another person was impossible due to different brain structure. After much debate, we settled that adjusting someone’s brain to match Lucas’s brain structure was also beyond our means. Not that I would have ever done that, but I had no option but to play along.

  Or well, pretend to play along, at least for a time. Eventually, she would realize the best way to get the plan out of him would be to arrange the torturous illusions in such a way that he would say the plan out loud inside them while we would listen to him talking in his cell. By my best judgment, I could buy Lucas a day, perhaps two, but then I would look increasingly stupider if I didn’t come up with such an obvious solution.

  I bid Persephone a good night and headed to my chambers.

  Low light of candles welcomed me into the opulent room. Jasika lay in bed, her legs crossed, staring at the ceiling with palms under the back of her head. She whistled a light tune and smiled at me when I entered.

  Exhausted, I returned the smile. “What happened?”

  “Check the table and see.”

  I approached table. On it lay a pink stick, a used pregnancy test. My heart froze in my chest.

  “I missed my last period,” Jasika said, her tone light and merry. “And so, I fished this out of the supplies.”

  I glanced at the white-pink stick. Two black lines crossed the small display.

  My wife was pregnant.

  Lucas 7

  SLEEPING ON THE GROUND annoyed me to no end. And since I shared my cell with four mages whose names I didn’t bother to remember, I wasn’t in a pleasant company either. My stiff body hurt when I stood up as the morning alarm sounded through the prison. The others did the same, grunting as they clawed their way up to their feet.

  While I would never openly admit it, Loki made for an excellent cell mate. But sharing the room with him now would put him under unnecessary scrutiny. That I broke the water pipes already became a public secret. Not that anyone from my companions talked, but some things were impossible to hide. Especially when Rhonrohak carried my drenched body through the mess hall a moment after the incident.

  I stretched and leapt out of my cell, straight into the wet current. Floating into the detection tunnel felt awesome, no matter how routine it was. After passing through the wooden corridor, I entered the mess hall. The place was packed way beyond its limit and many prisoners took their food to the sports halls beyond. No wonder since this prison ward was designed for four to five hundred prisoners. Now, we counted about thirteen hundred.

  Leaving aside the question of how the hell they packed nine hundred women into the Female Ward, that suited my plans.

  I gazed over the hall, measuring the closed groups of women. They had every right to be mistrustful and defensive. Though the general feeling was that of early high school, when boys and girls were too young to have figured out how to talk to each other. In this case, most prisoners hadn’t seen a person of the opposite gender in years, often decades, so related social skills were long gone.

  But I needed to find the woman who could manipulate memories, and it had to happen now. By what Amarendra implied yesterday, the extraction machine could indeed be used to read someone’s memories.

  If that happened now, my plan would crumble to dust.

  I needed a part of my memories blocked to pass the memory scan in a way that wouldn’t raise suspicion. Escape plans worked only when the prison guards didn’t know their details.

  Now, I had to find the woman and convince her to help me. The first part was the difficult one. Were I to simply ask around, Hades would have an easy time finding out I cheated the memory scan he was preparing. That left two ways for me to find her.

  First, I could somehow gain access to medical logs and see who had that ability. The somehow was the problem. Second, I could infer who she was from indirect hints. That felt more appealing. So, what would be the limited abilities of someone who could block memories?

  Most likely the same thing, but weaker. Everyone liked to use their abilities or, better phrased, everyone used their abilities to advance their ideals. Sora used his combat-oriented sk
ills to get himself a comfortable life in the Upper Prison. I used my warmage skillset to push forward an escape plan. What did I know about the woman I sought?

  She had an ability extremely useful to Hades and yet didn’t live in the Upper Prison. By the sheer number of female prisoners and the aura of misery they emitted, life in the Female Ward was not pleasant. To remain there, the woman I sought had to have a good reason. Did she have a relative locked in with her?

  Possibly, but Hades would have taken them both to the Upper Prison. After a bit of thinking, the only motive my mind could produce was altruism. The woman remained in the Female Ward because she wanted to keep helping the other prisoners.

  Since her ability was to manipulate memories, she most likely offered oblivion or a temporary escape. No, she wouldn’t stay for the latter.

  Okay, how would I find the woman who helped others forget?

  The easiest way would be to find someone who suffered a recent trauma and then follow the person. But right now, everyone in the Female Ward suffered a trauma. Sure, something new was bound to happen, but that could take while. And I wouldn’t go cause one myself.

  I took the breakfast-containing tray from the distributing machine and started the search. Since the arena matches were cancelled until the crisis passed, we now had most of the day free. Not that there was much to do given the insufficient capacity of everything.

  If my target helped the other prisoners, she would either be beloved and surrounded by others or she would isolate herself. I circled the mess hall, eyeing the various groups.

  They counted six to eight women, all of whom tensed when a man came nearby. No surprise there. Ironically enough, I could thank the torturous illusions for meeting Evelyn and thus maintaining basic social skills.

  No group stood out. So, my target was most likely isolating herself. That made things harder. I searched for anyone out of the ordinary.

  After a while, I stumbled upon a pair of girls too young to be here. They were... uhhh, okay maybe I lost some of my skills. I couldn’t decide if they looked like they were twelve or sixteen. But they sat alone, huddled by the wall. Their hair was black, long, and greasy, falling over their pale, gaunt faces.