Infernal Contract

by Thomas Green

  “Name’s Wukong. I’ve been in this with you from the start.”

  “I suppose.”

  “My stage three paper says you’ll loosen my collar.”

  “I see.” We worked in silence until we made visible progress. Afterward, about half an hour later, I motioned him to follow me. I had no better idea than to head to the bathroom. Once we were in a stall, I motioned him to sit down. He did and I stepped behind him, running my fingers across his collar. This, I remembered clearly. “Mind refreshing my memory about you?”

  “Sun Wukong, a former Special Forces operative of Chinese Ministry of Defense, arrested for theft, imprisoned for lifetime, have been here for fifteen months.”

  “What did you steal?”

  “The Golden Cudgel…” He smirked. “It’s mine by divine right but the Chinese Secret Societies didn’t quite agree.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  His tone softened as he spoke. “A wife, three sons, and a daughter.”

  “You will see them soon.” I finished with his collar.

  He rose, stretching. “What makes you say that? Didn’t you lose most of your recent memories?”

  “I did… but that doesn’t mean I cannot see through my own plan.” I left the stall and so did he. Okay, I didn’t actually see through anything, but admitting my cluelessness wouldn’t help. Somehow, I felt I was in charge of this and being in command meant showing no weakness.

  We left the toilets. Before we reached the mess hall, a black-haired man intercepted us. Loki, I recognized. Wukong waltzed away.

  Loki gave me a troubled smile. “I need you to do something with my collar.”

  “Come.” I led him to the bathroom stall and did the same process as with Wukong. When I worked with the collar, Loki was pale, slightly trembling. “Nervous?” I asked.

  “A little…” He sighed. “I know you and Wukong are used to doing stuff like this, but I’m a carpenter. I’m not cut out for this.”

  “That doesn’t matter.” I remained focused on the collar. “Nobody is born for these things, nor can you ever be fully prepared. Sooner or later, one has to rise to the occasion or fall.”

  He gulped. “I feel ready for the falling part.”

  Well, he was right. Given his lack of combat experience, he simply wasn’t up to par to work on this type of stuff. But that wasn’t something I could tell him. The plan needed him, apparently, so I had to get him to do his part. “Do you have anyone to return to?”

  “Not really.” His face slackened. “I lived with my grandmother. She took care of me when I was young, so when she got a bad case of Parkinson’s, I moved her in with me to help her. But since I’ve been taken here, she has surely been taken to a retirement home. Even if I escape this prison, it’ll take forever to get enough money to be able to take her out of there.”

  “Not necessarily.” I smiled, projecting confidence I didn’t have. “I’m pretty sure the Secret Societies will find more than a well-paying employment for a carpenter.”

  He shook his head. “Doubt it.”

  “How many mages do you think want to work as carpenters? Not many.” I finished with his collar. “But they also need floors done in their laboratories and cannot exactly hire a standard company, can they?” This wasn’t a lie. The magical world kept itself separated from the mundane one, so craftsmen were beyond difficult to get since most mages had areas which common people couldn’t visit. No matter how understanding a standard craftsman would be, one just couldn’t explain a chained demon or a collection of heads in jars.

  His lips twitched into a smile. “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Because there’s nothing to it.” I opened the stall and led him out. We left the bathroom and I headed toward the mess hall.

  Loki tugged on my jumpsuit. “This way.”

  I followed him into a blind tunnel. It was empty. I stopped near the end, but Loki walked ahead, passing through the wall as if it wasn’t there.

  What the hell?

  I tried to touch the wall, but my hand felt nothing but air. I stepped forward and got through the illusory wall. Impressive.

  Beyond was Wukong, standing by a fridge-sized machine. Around him lay a pile of other protective gear – gloves, overalls, and darkened goggles. We were in one of the corridors that ended with doors for the guards, effectively being blind to us. Yes, we would get busted if there was an incident for which the guards needed this particular door, but that was unlikely given my recent rampage. Afraid for their lives, the other prisoners were bound to behave, at least for a while.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “A stick welder.” Wukong grinned and motioned toward the wall behind him. “We will weld the doors so the guards cannot pass through.”

  So that was what they stole from the medical-room-turned-depot. If I made this plan, I needed to pat myself on the back. And not only because it worked. “How do you know how to use it?”

  “A manual was packed inside.” Wukong stepped aside, with a cord in his hand “And by my instructions for this stage, you will find where to plug this thing in.”

  With a smirk, I fuelled aether into my eyes. The world’s colors inverted. That allowed me to see other’s aether. I tweaked the power and light trails appeared in the walls. “We’re not going to have a socket though.”

  Loki gulped and paled a little. “Since I often worked with electricians, I’ve got an idea how to connect the wires… but I can’t prevent myself from getting shocked.”

  I imbued my hands with aether and reached for the edge of the steel plate covering the wall. I bent it up from the bottom, revealing the wiring in the wall. Wukong handed me the welder’s wire before he went to guard the hallway. Sure, we had an illusory wall, but someone could have touched the illusion by accident. I tore off the cable’s end and ducked under the wall. “Direct me.”

  Loki did. And yes, this took a while. Aether reinforcement made me immune to electrocution, at least from non-magical electricity of lower voltage. Sure, I could feel the electricity and my skin burned upon touch, but the magical shielding stopped me from becoming a part of the circuit.

  From what I understood, we needed to tie the machine’s wires to specific wires in the wall. After six tries, we found the correct combination, and the control LED light on the welder lit up.

  “Good job.” I rose and walked through the illusion.

  Wukong awaited outside.

  “Your turn,” I said and sagged down by the wall. Given the slaughter I caused, no one would approach me, making me the perfect guardian by merely sitting around. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be proud or punch myself. Sure, I could glimpse the design behind what appeared to be my plan, but I had to wonder if there wasn’t a better way to go about this.

  The peaceful moment lasted for two hours. In my mind, I drew a map of the entrances the guards used. There were four blind corridors, one by each bathroom, then six doors in the mess hall’s walls, and then the platform used to bring new prisoners and returnees from extraction.

  This was going to need a few days and more than a bit of illusion coverage. The sound of commotion from the sports hall disturbed me. Lots of shouting and then suddenly, nothing.

  I rose and went to check it out.

  The sports hall was empty. A crowd oozed from the mess hall. I approached, my step light. A semicircle of guards stood inside the mess hall, and in front of it was Sora.

  He had his helmet removed and ran his gaze over the crowd. When his eyes rested on me, he quickly averted his sight and spoke, “From now on, I am the head of the guard.”

  Well, fuck. Couldn’t they promote someone less competent?

  “And as such, I hereby announce a zero-tolerance policy. Any crime, any disturbance, and any problem will be punished by immediate death.”

  A nervous murmur passed through the crowd. Yeah, Sora wasn’t going to win the popular vote. Not that there would ever be one.

  He continued. “Starti
ng from tonight, guards will patrol the common areas. They will wield live-ammunition weaponry and are authorized to execute prisoners upon any infringement, no matter how small.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Something was going on.

  “That is all for now.” Sora spun and the guards left.

  With a shrug, I returned to the tunnel. Patrols were going to be a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

  I gave Wukong and Loki the news. They were finished with the door. Its edge now had clear seams where Wukong welded the door to the wall.

  “Can you keep it covered?” I asked Wukong.

  “Yes… but even with a loosened collar, there’s a limit to how many illusions I can maintain at the same time.”

  I scowled. “Can you do five?”

  “Easily.” He smiled.

  Without the patrols, we may have had a theoretical chance to sneakily weld the doors in the mess hall. With them, that would be far too risky. But I had a way around them. Also, Sora’s new rules made it extremely unlikely for an incident to happen, which further minimized the chances of the welded blind corridors being used.

  I untangled the cables from the wall and straightened the steel plate the best I could. Wukong still had to expand the illusion to cover it.

  Loki and Wukong smiled at me. “We will go hide the welder.”

  Oh… “And I’m not supposed to know where, right?”

  They nodded.

  I spun and left. At about the dinnertime, the guards rolled into the mess hall. I acted my part of a perfect prisoner. On the way to my cell, I took the paper from the wooden box hidden in the detection hallway. Written in tiny letters was: Stage 3: Do as Wukong says. Leave through where he says. Take everyone with you. Destroy ventilation controls. Head to hangars. Fly away.

  Okay, I could do that. When I descended into my cell through the vertical tunnel, I let the paper go. It floated up toward the ceiling.

  Later tonight, the power plant would transfer water through here, dissolving the toilet paper sheet to nothing.

  The next morning, I stood in the line for breakfast as every other day. Okay, not quite, since nobody dared to come closer than five feet to me. I enjoyed the privacy. Guards patrolled the hall and six stationary guards loitered by the walls.

  In an opportune moment, I switched to my magical gaze. As expected, the guard’s bodies were filled with aether. That was both good and bad news. The good news was that Hades couldn’t adjust my collar to stop me from loosening the restrictions. The bad news was that now we had spell-capable aether wielders watching over us.

  Then again, that turned this game into a battle between mages. Sora was about to become triple the problem though. Unrestricted, he could see about eight seconds into the future and choose which variant would happen. That made him nearly invincible unless trapped or outnumbered.

  He would be restricted, sure, but so was I and I had no idea how his power worked with restrictions. He could probably still glimpse the future, just not as far as normally. And then there were the other higher demigods, like Amarendra, who may have had similarly powerful abilities.

  The guard door in the mess hall opened and Sora entered, again not wearing his helmet. The restricted vision a helmet offered limited his powers, didn’t it?

  Not that I could do much with the information.

  He walked straight to me and nudged me in the shoulder with his assault rifle’s muzzle. “Come.”

  Okay. I didn’t see that coming. I rose, turned toward the exit. He led me out. I chose not to strike up a conversation since I had too much information I could slip. He also wasn’t the chatty type.

  Without a word, he led me through a pair of tunnels into a room, which featured a table, two chairs, two empty glasses, and a pitcher full of water.

  An interrogation room, perhaps, though it lacked the traditional one-way mirror on the wall. Feeling cheated, I sat down.

  “Wait here.” Sora turned and left.

  Mildly curious, I poured myself a glass.

  Ten seconds later, the door slid open and a slender, seven-foot-tall woman entered.

  Well… fuck. Minerva Integra Natalia Antoinette, commonly called Mina, was the devil’s right hand and the Wolf of God. She wore sneakers, loose pants, and a pullover, all black. Her face was clean, youthful without makeup, eyes gray and lips draw into a thin line. Her hair was messy, pale blonde. A polished cross shone on her chest, hanging on a necklace she has pulled over her pullover.

  When I started working for the Secret Societies, she was my mentor. She taught me how to use aether, how to fight, and how to get beaten by a leather cane until I dropped unconscious.

  I missed her.

  But if she missed me, the cold glare she gave me didn’t betray it. She sat across the table, crossed her legs, and reached for a glass.

  Automatically, I filled the glass from the pitcher. She normally wore the cross under her clothes and clearly put it on top to make me feel guilty. And it worked. I may have not been religious, but being a fallen angel made me strongly associated with the Church, not to mention I used to work for the Secret Societies’ part of the Church for a long time.

  She did not smile. “You’ve sinned.”

  “I’ve tried not to.”

  “At least give me an excuse.”

  I shrugged, wearing an awkward smile. “There’s none. They tried to kill Evelyn and I killed them first. Now, I’m imprisoned, and you cannot expect me to stay here forever because escaping requires immoral means.”

  Her jaw clenched. “I didn’t teach you to fight so you could murder.”

  “You also didn’t do it so I would sit in a prison.”

  We glared at each other for a moment. Yes, she had the moral high ground, but that didn’t matter much in the world of Secret Societies. While she was trying to keep some morality, she still worked as the Devil’s right hand, so her moral high ground wasn’t so high. “Anyway, I don’t think you’ve come here only to lecture me.”

  “I did.” She smirked. “But not only that. I’m here to recruit you.”

  That got my attention. I’ve already refused Lucielle’s offer, but she wouldn’t send Mina to offer the same thing again. “Recruit me to do what?”

  “Luci dumped interventions on me. All of them. I need someone to lead the US branch.”

  I stared at her for a second, gaping. Aside from being the proverbial devil, Lucielle ran a corporation that spanned most of the world, servicing the Secret Societies with things like this prison. The overall net worth was somewhere in the trillions of dollars. And interventions was the euphemism for assassinations, sabotages, and everything else that included illegal operations. “What’re the terms?”

  Mina reached into her pocket and pulled out a paper folded a dozen times, which she handed to me. “This costs the large favor Luci owes you.”

  After a bit of effort, I unfolded the sheet and read the contract terms. In essence I would become the Head of LCorp US Interventions, get paid two million dollars per year, adjusted for inflation, and also receive five weeks of vacation, full medical insurance, a service phone, an apartment in Lower Manhattan, and a car. Contract duration was five hundred thousand years, terminated only by employee’s death. In case of resurrection, the contract would be automatically renewed. I raised an eyebrow. “Five hundred thousand years?”

  She grinned. “Luci’s got big plans.”

  Of course she did. “Two million dollars a year isn’t even half of what I earned as a private investigator.”

  “Greed is a sin. Stop sinning.”

  But greed was also a valid motivation. Though this offer was worlds apart better than the last one I received from Lucielle. The pay was ten times bigger and the old one had no benefits. “Do interventions include assassinations?”

  “Obviously. Stop asking stupid questions.”

  As expected… I didn’t like that and not just because I promised Evelyn I would find a job at the Church. Yes, I killed hundreds in here, but I di
dn’t plan to keep doing that. Quite the opposite actually. Still, if I agreed, I would leave the prison with Mina within the next hour and never come back. Yes, I would also become Lucielle’s pet for pretty much an eternity. Though despite being ageless, five hundred thousand years contained about five too many zeroes. Still, this would let me see Evelyn tomorrow and forget about this place.

  But I didn’t want to sell myself to Lucielle. I didn’t want to work for her aside from short-term contracts and I definitely didn’t want to become her assassin. And the promise I gave Evelyn meant the world to me.

  Not to mention I didn’t want to leave here by cutting a deal. A part of me wanted to prove I could escape this place, to be the first man who escaped from Tul Sar Naar.

  “Thanks,” I said and put the paper on the table. “But I’ll need some time to think about this.”

  Mina’s glare sharpened. “That’s no.”

  “I only need time to think.”

  “You want to prove you can escape.”

  I didn’t think she could read me this well. That was another complication. “Perhaps a little.”

  She exhaled slowly. “Fine. I’ll let you see you’re wrong.” She rose and left through the door. “Take him back,” she told Sora, who awaited behind the corner.

  Sora entered, motioned me to follow him, and led me back into the male ward.

  I had to adjust the escape plan.

  Lucas 10

  PRISON LIFE became a lot less exciting, which was, surprisingly, possible. With Loki and Wukong, we welded shut the four blind corridors, but we couldn’t do the doors in the mess hall until I was sure Mina left the prison. With her around, odds of escaping were somewhere around zero. Luckily, Mina mentioned she got a lot of extra work from Lucielle, so she wouldn’t have the time to linger.

  I estimated she wouldn’t stay longer than three to five days. Supposing yesterday was day one, all we had to do was wait.

  Being a good prisoner felt awkward. But at least everyone in the prison stayed out of my way, especially when I was working out. Practicing wrestling was also a lot less fun alone.