by Thomas Green
Sora bowed slightly. I wanted to ask him what would be done about the wounded prisoners since me working with Sora meant I wouldn’t be able to tend to that. The question remained stuck in my throat. Oaths be damned, the increase in my personal strength meant I could ensure Jasika’s safety. That was all that mattered right now. And I could not endanger my unborn child by being stubborn or by allowing Lucas’s escape plan to continue.
Once the child was older, I would think of escaping… provided I failed to convince Hades to release me to begin with. But now, Jasika’s safety eclipsed all other goals. I bowed as well. “Thank you.”
“Do not fail me.” Hades walked out of the room, his darkness withdrawing into him.
Sora and I exchanged glances. Sora formed a troubled smile, motioning toward Lucas. “Do you think he even has an escape plan?”
I frowned. The thought occurred to me earlier, but I always dismissed the idea. That he worked on an escape was my base assumption, but as time passed, I couldn’t see the design. Everything appeared to be mostly random. Him helping Loki win the fight against Ricardo could had been a mere favor, or a return of such, to his cell mate.
The fight against Ares may have been a release of frustration from being unable to fight and the latest rampage was, by all symptoms, a result of mental damage caused by our investigation of his mind. Somehow, I convinced myself that everything Lucas was doing was a part of some grand escape plan.
But what if it wasn’t? Then we would be chasing a ghost. Objectively speaking, we didn’t have any proof of him even trying to escape. In the end, if he wanted to get out of here at any cost, a single phone call with Lucielle could arrange that.
A scowl took over my face. Not to mention that with his loosened collar, he could had escaped the prison, possibly tried to steal a supply delivery aircraft and attempt to fly away. With the power he showed during the rampage, he could have pulled that off. “Do you know what Loki made during the time he got in the hobby rooms after beating Ricardo?” I asked.
“He carved wood, creating a sculpture of a fox trapped among wooden boxes.”
I sighed. We had been searching for a phantom, looking through tunnel vision like a racehorse. I grabbed Lucas and flung him over my shoulder. With less restricted aether, he felt weightless. It would be so easy to snap his neck and be done with this. But doing so would bring forth Lucielle’s wrath, resulting in my demise and Jasika’s doom. Our unborn child couldn’t afford that. And then there were my oaths.
Also, Sora had close companions in the prison, which were effectively Hades’s hostages, giving Sora little wiggling space. We carried Lucas into an extraction chamber, tied him down, and plugged his collar into the mechanism. I turned on the extraction and left before Lucas could start to wail.
My gut still clenched at the thought. I didn’t become a doctor to torture people, no matter their crimes. And the memory reading we did on him was the darkest day of my life.
Sora led me to the guard’s armory. The wide hall featured hundreds sets of armor, all with a prepared helmet, gloves, boots, shield, and a baton. I took off my suit and put on the armor. Sora waited for me, sitting to the side.
I frowned. “Don’t you want some treatment?”
He shook his head. “Just got a headache. None of the blood covering me is mine.”
He must have gotten knocked unconscious during Lucas’s rampage. Without giving it another thought, I strapped my armor tight and then followed Sora into the live weapons armory.
I never held a rifle in my life. From what Sora explained to me, the gist of its use was in pointing the shooting end at the enemy before pressing the trigger. Wishing I never needed to use it, I flung the rifle over my shoulder.
Normally, guards wouldn’t come into the prison by themselves. But this wasn’t a normal situation. We used one of the hidden doors in the wall to enter the mess hall. The prisoners were a sorry bunch. They stacked the corpses into the second sports room, creating a mountain of bodies.
The stench of rot was insufferable and almost made me vomit again. Broken tables lay piled up by the mess hall’s side and bloody tracks covered the floor. We had to remove the corpses before they rotted. That would cause an outbreak of diseases and had the potential to destroy the prison in its entirety.
In the back of my mind, I saw Lucas’s smirk. This was the only facility of its kind in the world. There was nowhere else to transfer him. I shook my head. What happened to the young man Lucas once was? What turned him into the raging monster he was now?
Hopefully, not me.
The prisoners stared at us, pale and wide-eyed.
Lucas bearing the soul of Lucifer may have sounded strange as it was difficult to assign the words the correct meaning. To see Lucas use the fallen angel’s power to kill all in his vicinity must have driven home the point with whom they were imprisoned. Jasika was right. We had to do everything we could to remain in the Upper Prison.
“Let’s start with the common rooms,” Sora said, waking me up from the daze.
I nodded, refocusing my mind. If my memory served me well, then someone took a welding machine from my treatment room. Why though? The answer escaped me.
After we closed the door behind us, we headed into the furthest bathroom. There we started our search. Stall by stall, inch by inch, we looked for anything that didn’t belong here.
We found nothing.
We searched through the blind corridors, combed through the arena, scoured the sports halls and all the other bathrooms. During the entire process, the prisoners did their best to remain out of our reach. I was not proud and was thankful for the darkened visor. Though some would surely recognize me by my dark skin and moustache.
Unpleasant as the thought was, Lucas’s rampage may have been caused by my search through his memories. While Persephone would have realized by herself, I was still the one who proposed the method we used.
Back then, I was overwhelmed by the news of Jasika’s pregnancy. With that in mind, no crime remained unthinkable. To protect my future child, I cared not whom I had to torture or how. And so, I designed the entire process on how to extract the information from him.
As no results were forth coming, I got increasingly desperate, increasing the frequency of the torturous illusions and their harshness.
Now, over four hundred prisoners lay dead as the possible aftereffect of my actions. A large part of me wished Lucas would one day tell me his actions weren’t connected to the interrogation, that he would have done so anyway. The remainder of my being knew that would never happen. I would have to live with this for the rest of my life.
With all common rooms searched, we advanced toward the cells.
I stopped walking in the wooden detection corridor. Thousands of cubes formed the hallway, including structures built within the prison. What did Sora say Loki made?
Fox trapped among wooden boxes. But all art made by prisoners was scrapped after their time in the hobby rooms was up, so we couldn’t verify he didn’t take something. Something like boxes that could be hidden here.
Sora also stopped, looking at me. “What’s wrong?”
“I just had an idea,” I whispered. “What if the boxes Loki made were taken from the hobby room, placed here and contain some key part of Lucas’s escape plan?”
Sora shrugged. “We could have the tunnel decomposed, but that would break the detection mechanism, and take weeks. There are what, a hundred thousand wooden cubes in here?”
A scowl overtook my face. Since they weren’t reconstructed in the past century, cells had no cameras and no security other than the doors and the fact that they had no access path aside from the magical current. Given that the cell’s back walls neighbored the civilian complex of Tul Sar Naar, disabling any of their security would be unwise at best. “We cannot afford that.” I ran my gaze over the tunnel’s length. How could I find individual boxes among a hundred thousand?
I couldn’t. Still, I gave it a try and spent the next half h
our scrutinizing the cubes. We found nothing out of the ordinary.
With this done, we searched the cells. We knew only two of Lucas’s accomplices, Loki and Wukong. We started with their cells. As expected, we found nothing useful. And then we went to Lucas’s room.
A number scratched onto the ground immediately caught my attention: 1 221 115.
I pointed at it, so Sora would look. “What do you think this means?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Looks like some kind of a code.”
Obviously, but what code? And what was its purpose? I didn’t know.
I remembered the number. After searching the rest of the barren cell, finding nothing worth investigating, we returned to the mess hall. I noticed a small, black camera pinned under the ceiling and frowned. “Would it be possible to see the records from that?” I asked Sora, pointing at the device.
“Yes.”
We left the mess hall and went to investigate that recording. In the Upper Prison, a section was devoted to security. Inside lay a small control room, where we found a tired, old man without a collar.
He looked at us with swollen eyes, face slackened.
I granted him a smile. “Tough day?”
“Never in my life have I seen such a slaughter.” He shook his head. “I’m not getting paid enough for this.”
That too. “Sorry for bothering you, just, would you please show us the camera recording from before this started?”
He motioned at a monitor. We sat down. After a moment, the black display lit up and showed the recording from both cameras.
Sora and I stared at the picture. Lucas took his breakfast, sat down, and started eating. A blonde woman in early twenties sat across him. She touched his hand, spoke for a moment, then let go and walked away. Lucas sat frozen for thirty seconds, then touched his collar, and soon afterward, the carnage started.
“Who is that blonde?” I asked.
Sora shrugged. “I’ve got no idea.”
“I don’t remember seeing anyone like that during today’s search.”
He nodded grimly. “Me neither.”
We thanked the man and left, heading back to the prison. The woman walked out of the picture in the direction of bathrooms. We used a hallway from a blind opening, scaring away kids who hid in the empty tunnel, and burst into the bathroom.
Two prisoners were washing their hands as we did. They both paled and started trembling. We ignored them and looked at the first stall. Nothing.
We searched the remaining stalls. We found absolutely nothing remarkable. Staring at the last, empty booth, my mind raced. Where was the woman? She was so attractive it stood out, so we would remember her if we ever met her. We would do another search for her tomorrow, but somehow, I knew we wouldn’t find her.
Was she the actual mastermind behind the escape plan while Lucas only followed her orders?
From the beginning, I assumed he would be the modus operandi, but what if she broke the Female Ward’s pipes to get to the Male Ward to meet with Lucas? As far as I knew, no one in the Female Ward was capable of the destruction level Lucas was.
That was actually possible.
A thought crossed my mind. The first action of Lucas was the murder of a former sex trafficking gang member, using a toilet brush. I glanced at the toilet brush in this booth. It was spotless.
I returned to the previous booth and looked at the brush. The back end was scratched and bent. How did it get bent? These brushes were made of solid steel.
Another thought slid into my mind. Sora was a veteran investigator. These were all details he should have noticed.
My blood nearly froze my veins. He missed nothing. He only chose to not mention it.
“I haven’t noticed anything,” Sora said, pulling me from the daze.
“Me… neither,” I stuttered. “We can call it a day.”
Sora nodded, kicking the wall.
Suddenly, I didn’t believe his frustration.
We returned to the armory and changed. We bid each other good-bye and Sora left.
I waited for three minutes and headed back to the control center. After a swift exchange with the operator, he put on the screen the recording from detection corridor camera from the evening after Loki won his match.
The display remained black.
The man frowned and hit the machine with open palm. The impact echoed through the room, but the picture didn’t come up.
“What the hell?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Probably some technical problem,” I said, putting on my professional smile. “It wasn’t important, anyway. Thanks.” I turned and left the room.
But it was important. Lucas clearly had an insider who deleted these records. I made the turning and saw Sora standing in the middle of the hallway. His eyes were dead cold when he looked at me.
My heartbeat sped up into a frenzy, my eyes darting around.
“So much for calling it a day,” Sora said.
“I only wanted to check on something.” I did my best to sound calm, though I knew I failed.
He stepped toward me. “Is there something, you want to tell me, Doctor?”
I gulped. “Are you working with Lucas?”
“With that trash?” He scoffed. “No, of course, not. What made you think that?”
If a lie was hidden within his words, I couldn’t see it. But I wasn’t exactly an interrogation expert. He was. “I couldn’t help but notice your lack of initiative during this investigation,” I said, carefully thinking through my every word. “Or how much you profit from his actions.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got transferred to the Upper Prison after Lucas’s first killing spree. His second killing spree got your friends moved up as well, and now, this rampage promoted you to the head of security.”
He shrugged. “I merely rose to the occasion.”
“As you say.” I forced out my well-trained smile and stepped around him.
He kicked my leg from the side. I grunted and reached for my aether. Power filled my body. With little idea how to use it, I imagined a blast in his direction, willing the power into life.
Before my spell could form, Sora punched my ribs, slid past me, and bent my arm behind my back. With a stifled shout, I lost concentration. A cold blade pressed against my throat and Sora peered down at me.
“I’m afraid I cannot have you talk about this with Hades, Doctor,” he said, his intonation slow. “With the current state of the Lower Prison, my friends and I simply cannot afford the risk of being sent there.”
“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
He shook his head. “I’m unwilling to face the risk, false accusation or not. But that is beyond the point, Doctor. You see, before becoming an investigator, I was a Yakuza hit man. I committed my first murder when I was eight, shooting a man through the curtains when he was taking a shower in a hotel room. Until I switched sides, fourteen years later, I murdered hundreds. Here, this prison is as lawless as the Yakuza. No, I am not working with Lucas, but I profit from his actions, hence I’m unmotivated to stifle them. And I will not risk losing my position over your accusation. Understand?”
Pain shot up into my mind from the bent arm. Since Sora made the difference in our combat ability exceedingly clear, I could do nothing but nod. “These thoughts will never leave my head.”
“Good.” He let go of my hand, allowing me to rise. “Cooperate, and all will be well. Betray me, and you will face consequences. Don’t think for a second I wouldn’t murder your wife only because she’s pregnant.”
Lucas 9
STRANGE, they let me out of extraction after a single day. I had such a headache the torture illusions passed by me with me barely noticing. Sora and Amarendra untied me, grabbed me under each shoulder and dragged me out of the cell.
My legs refused to listen. Everything throbbed as if I had run a marathon. Sora and Amarendra didn’t talk and both were tense. Shame I had too much of a heada
che to strike up a conversation.
They dropped me on the rising platform and left. Sora still snuck in a kick to my ribs.
Soon, I sat in the sport hall. And I didn’t believe my eyes. A highway of blood led from the mess hall into the second sports hall. Dozens of prisoners moved around buckets while washing the floor with mops.
What the hell happened here?
I braced myself by the wall and rose to my feet. The prisoners who noticed me paled and skittered away.
This was my work, wasn’t it? I didn’t remember a thing about this, but I recognized my handiwork. I frowned and eyed the prisoners.
A giant of a man kept mopping the floor, undisturbed by my arrival. I stepped to him. “This is going to sound strange, but what happened?”
Rhonrohak gave me a tired smirk. “Figured you wouldn’t remember.” He motioned into the second sports hall. “You went on a rampage, killing over four hundred other prisoners.”
That many? My heart sank. Why did I do that? Did Amarendra messing with my head make me crazy? Possibly. I half-expected an inner voice to whisper into my mind that everything was fine and that, of course, I wasn’t crazy. But that didn’t happen. With a frown, I dug into my memories.
Upon focusing, I remembered I fought someone, but everything was blurry. Even my fight against Hades was veiled by a thick cloud. Any good answer to what the hell happened failed to present itself to me. Meh. With a shrug, I searched for a mop to help with cleaning. Everyone ran from my path.
Under the direction of the guards, the prisoners had already moved the corpses to a corridor, where they were sealed by doors from both sides. Not a pretty solution, but the prison apparently lacked the logistics necessary to remove these many corpses quickly.
Cleaning the blood was thus all that was left to do.
As I worked with the mop, another man approached with a mop in hand. He helped cleaning nearby and whispered. “Recognize me?”
I eyed him for a moment. The word Kong popped into my mind, but that didn’t feel completely right. Why did I remember Sora, Amarendra, Rhonrohak, Hades, but not this man? I shook my head.
