Infernal Contract

by Thomas Green

  Across the room, Sora was throwing things out of the wardrobe, searching inside them, knocking on their walls and bottoms.

  “It’d be nice not to destroy my room,” Zeus said with a troubled smile.

  Hades glowered at him and Zeus shut up.

  When I finished with the table, I moved to the wardrobes on my side, copying Sora’s moves. Cracking of wood sounded from his direction. I turned. Sora stood inside the second wardrobe, running his hands along a half-broken wardrobe’s back wall.

  “I think I’ve found something,” Sora shouted.

  Hades stepped toward him and so did I. When I got close enough to see, Sora wore a triumphant smile, pointing at the wardrobe’s side wall.

  “Explain,” Hades said.

  “The joints on this back wall are loosened,” Sora said. He pressed the wardrobe’s wall and pulled it sideways, revealing a hole that showed the steel wall beyond.

  “And?” Hades asked, his voice heating up.

  Sora reached with his fingers into the gap between the wardrobe and the wall, slowly sliding out a rolled-up paper. “And this was hidden within.”

  We all looked at Zeus.

  His eyes widened and cheeks flushed. “I have no idea what that is and how it got there.”

  Sora handed the paper to Hades. The Lord of Underworld rolled it open. On the paper was a hand-drawn schematic of the prison’s water pipelines. Two red circles marked locations. One on the control panel for the Female Ward, the other at the controls of the Male Ward.

  The Female Ward’s pipelines’ control panel was where this entire escape plan started.

  “I have never seen this schematic,” Zeus blurted. “He must have planted it during the search.” He pointed at Sora.

  Hades flicked his wrist and Zeus fell to the ground, unconscious. “Throw him into the Lower Prison.”

  Lucas 11

  MUCH LIKE ALL THE PREVIOUS TIMES, the torturous illusions were not pleasant. This time, they were a mixture of Evelyn torturing me, of others torturing her, and of she trying to kill me. All three tore apart my soul. And they weren’t ending. Mina must had told them I could handle way more than others, so they left me there for a month.

  She really wanted me to sign that contract, didn’t she? When the illusions ceased, I lay broken in the extraction chamber. A person removed my bindings, but I couldn’t move.

  The entire world appeared as a blur where I could barely recognize human shapes. Though the tall, thin shape towering above me was unmistakable.

  “Get up,” Mina snapped.

  She had to be joking. I conjured a remark, but only groaning left my dried-up throat.

  “Want water?”

  I grunted, twitching on the ground to look up.

  She ducked above me, eyes cold, mouth drawn into a thin line. “Will you sign the contract? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  With a full focus of my mind, I blinked. And then one more time.

  She scowled. “No contract? No water.”

  I supposed Lucielle would file this as advanced recruitment techniques. One deep breath after another, I tried to make my body function, to no avail.

  Mina pulled a half a liter bottle of water, opened it and drank, making sure I saw her. Like hell I would allow this to work. I would die before I would sign myself to Lucielle. “Want some?” Mina asked.

  Yes. But I liked my freedom… okay, the dream of freedom, more than anything else. I grabbed the wall and tried to rise to my feet.

  My muscles refused to obey, and I crumpled to the ground. Dull throbbing filled every inch of my being. Good. Pain signaled my limbs were still present. Amarendra must have kept me alive and my bindings loose enough to be able to wiggle. We may have had our disagreements, but he was still a sworn doctor.

  Dissatisfied with my defiance, Mina turned over the bottle and let the water pour on the ground, just out of my reach. Droplets sprinkled my face. “Agree to the deal.”

  “… no,” I squeezed out of myself.

  “Stop being stubborn.”

  I lay on the ground, trying to get some rest.

  With a sigh, Mina grabbed me under my shoulder and lifted me up as if I weighed nothing. She carried me through the tunnels and dropped me on the platform that would take me to the male ward. “I’ll give you time to reconsider.” She spun on her heel and left.

  The platform took me up to the ward.

  Lights blinded me when I reached the sports hall. I grunted and blinked, still unable to get up from the ground. The other prisoners stayed away from me, glaring. But not nearly as sharply as before. Instead, in their dropped gazes, slouched shoulders and vacant eyes, I saw defeat.

  As if my capture wasn’t enough, the last escape plan must have ended in a disaster for them as well. I remained on the ground, trying to regain some strength.

  The day passed in front of my eyes. When dinner time came, Wukong arrived, standing before me. “Thought you were dead,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Not… yet.”

  He gently raised me from the ground and carried me to the mess hall. There, he took my portion, and then fed me. I tried to eat by myself, but my arms were incapable of coordinated movement.

  Together with the food, I swallowed the humiliation. My heart still sunk though. By my I count of the months, it was now early October. I promised Evelyn I would return to her within a year, and that would be in the first week of November. I had less than a month to get back if I was going to live up to that promise. And I always kept my promises.

  But I wasn’t escaping when I couldn’t eat by myself.

  Wukong needed to carry me to my cell, where he now slept as well. He had to because someone needed to bring me back for breakfast. Also, where the hell was Loki? I wanted to ask but didn’t have the strength to speak.

  This phase took over a week. Not until seven days after my release from extraction could I walk by myself. Not straight, not fast, but I could limp along.

  The next morning, I floated out of my cell by myself and crossed the detection corridor. I softly pressed my box and a toilet paper sheet slid out. I read the text in blood: Stage 4: Onboard Zeus. Mass escape through ventilation system, westward. Disable aether circulation limiter.

  Well, fuck. I slipped the paper beneath my jumpsuit. The prison’s air was the same as ever, neither too hot nor too cold. If the ventilation was broken from the third stage, the temperature wouldn’t be perfect.

  And how the hell was I supposed to get Zeus in here? He was in the Upper Prison and really close with Hades. I joined the breakfast queue.

  Wukong soon stepped next to me. “You look better.”

  I needed to be in this shape on day one. The week was far too long. When I returned from extraction, they were probably still finishing the repairs on the doors they had to break down due to us welding them shut. But now, they had also sealed the hole in the toilet wall and most likely placed guards in the duct shaft. Since most of the escapees died during the last attempt, no one would follow me on a new one. Not to mention the original escape plan with the ventilation shafts wasn’t going to happen.

  I glanced at Wukong. “On a random note, Zeus wouldn’t have happened to be demoted to the Lower Prison, would he?”

  The monkey king grinned. “He’s been here for two weeks already.”

  Oh. Well, apparently, my now-obvious insider in the Upper Prison and was doing well. And I didn’t even remember the person. How many more things did I forget due to Hades combing through my memories?

  I could solve that later. We took our meals, sat down and waited for our prey.

  Zeus arrived among the last prisoners. His handsome face was slackened, hair greasy, and shoulders slumped. Yeah, getting banished from the Upper Prison must have been rough. And things were going to get a lot rougher for him.

  Wukong and I grabbed our plates, walked to where he sat and flanked him, sitting uncomfortably close. Zeus’s eyes widened.

  “I’m Lucifer. He’s Wukong.�
� I gave Zeus a moment to process what I said. He must have heard about my rampage and I wanted the fear of being near me to settle in. From what I have heard, he went straight to the Upper Prison, so being sent down had to be a shock and that wouldn’t help him when dealing with me. “How has the Lower Prison been treating you?”

  He took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. “What do you want?”

  “Many things,” Wukong said and grabbed the banana from Zeus’s plate. “But first, we’re curious if you know why you’re here.”

  Zeus opened his mouth to speak, but then paused. He must have realized the obvious, that his fall to the Lower Prison was our doing.

  “That I’m setting up an escape plan shouldn’t be a secret by now,” I said. “And you have a part to play.” I fully expected him to say he would tell Hades. His silence made me smile. He had nothing to tell the Overseer that would be of value since, so far, all I said was general knowledge.

  Zeus narrowed his eyes. “Why should I ever help the people who sent me here?”

  “Because life is fickle here in the Lower Prison,” Wukong whispered.

  The direct threat was probably unnecessary, but better safe than sorry. Yes, Zeus could act playing along to gather information that would get him back to the Upper Prison. My past self, however, definitely accounted for that when making him a part of the plan. “How do you ever expect me to trust you?” Zeus asked.

  “We don’t,” I said calmly. “And neither will we trust you.”

  Zeus scowled. “Then how are we supposed to work together?”

  “By common self-interest.” I rose. “How about you give it a bit of time?” Before he replied, I left, and Wukong did as well.

  The monkey king caught up to me soon. “That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”

  Yes, and no. “Neither did the last escape attempt.” The original plan didn’t count for Mina being around, so the escape through ventilation shafts was supposed to happen as soon as I got back from extraction. But now, I had to get around the werewolf.

  Wukong nodded and walked away.

  And to avoid Mina, I could think of only one strategy. She most likely knew about my promise to Evelyn, that I would come back within a year, possibly from Evelyn herself. I knew that, Mina would wait here for at least a month after that deadline passed, hoping I would prefer to fulfil that promise over being stubborn.

  In a way, she was right. But I still had one more attempt to make. On November 1st came the All Saint’s Day. Mina, given how religious she was, would undoubtedly fly to attend a mass, most likely in the Vatican. That would remove her from the prison and give me the opportunity to get out. If I did, I would still have a week to get to Evelyn and live up to my promise.

  The waiting was going to kill me. But I had little else to try, so I started playing at being a good prisoner.

  The clock under the signal light showed November 1st. Not a single incident happened in the meantime and the prison had calmed down. Rumor had it the plumbing in the Female Ward was almost repaired, so they would be moved back within a week.

  Not that it mattered. I didn’t have any plan that would allow for anyone other than me to escape. Sure, I would try to help Wukong from the outside, but the odds of that succeeding were slim.

  I also hadn’t found what happened to Loki. He was simply gone, and no one has heard anything about him in a month and a half. The idea of him being killed during the last escape attempt made my stomach churn.

  But no matter. My last window for an escape attempt was now.

  I took my breakfast as usual and sat down next to Zeus. He drew back slightly but did not say anything.

  I granted him a smile. “So, have you thought about joining the escape plan?”

  His eyes widened slightly, face paled, but he softly nodded. “I’m in.”

  Oh, no, he wasn’t. He wanted to get a piece of information he could use to get back his position in the Upper Prison. But my past self must had counted on that. “Tomorrow morning, when you go from the cell to the mess hall, there will be a box waiting for you in the Detection Corridor. It’s twenty-six rows deep, five boxes from the left, which is an elephant-resembling formation if I recall correctly, twenty-one boxes up on the shape and then nineteen boxes from the left. Press the wooden box’s wall and a paper will come out.”

  His mouth gaped slightly.

  I didn’t wait for his answer and rose. He would take his paper, I was sure, and what happened after wouldn’t matter. I sat down at the end of the hall and ate my breakfast.

  Afterward, I went to the sports hall to stretch. I didn’t do much since my goal was to get blood into my muscles and work up a bit of sweat. Once done, I walked to a blind corridor and found myself a nice ventilation shaft. The steel grid was tightly sealed into the ceiling.

  When I put my hand under it, I felt a slight draft. In the next minute, I loosened my collar and headed to the toilets. They had sealed the hole in the wall and most likely placed guards on the other side. But that wasn’t enough to stop me.

  I collected two toilet brushes, fuelled my body with aether, and locked myself in the last stall. Steel screeched when I tore off the brush’s ends, leaving myself with two steel rods.

  I dug my hands into the wall beyond which I knew the maintenance duct was. Steel bent apart and concrete shuttered before my hands. I tore the steel plate apart, creating an opening. Two guards stood at the duct shaft’s end, aiming at me. I grabbed the brushes, and whirled. They fired. Gunfire roared into the tunnel and I threw the projectiles. Bullets hit me but were too light to pierce my aether defenses.

  The two steel rods hit the two men in their chests, digging deep into them. The gunfire ceased, the bodies hit the ground, and I leapt into the duct.

  Alarms wailed throughout the complex.

  I grabbed one guard’s assault rifle and hung the strap over my shoulder. I exchanged the magazine for a full one and took an extra, storing it under my jumpsuit. The ladder leading upward flashed before my eyes as I climbed up, fast as wind. I kicked open the door at the end and leapt into the maintenance room.

  A guard stood there. I raised the rifle and fired in a three-bullet burst. His visor shattered and a second later, the corpse hit the ground. Yes, my target was the ventilation system, but that would be too easy to read if I went there straight. And so, I made this diversion. I ran to the doors and smashed them open with my shoulder, tearing apart the hinges. I whirled, ran back, and dropped the assault rifle into the duct. Clanging echoed through the shaft as the rifle hit the pipes.

  I descended the ladder back into the shaft. The upper maintenance room would be the first place they would search, and the broken door should distract them for long enough.

  Next to the water pipe, the ventilation shaft didn’t look like much, being one third its size. I opened the maintenance door, and nearly vomited when the stench hit my nose. Inside was full of mold and dust. Nobody ever cleaned these shafts.

  With gritted teeth, I slid inside, closing the door behind me. The shaft was tight, pressing my shoulders from the sides. It was still much better than the bone crushing fall of water in the water pipes. I reached the bottom, where multiple exits led away. The small ones at the bottom aimed toward the prison wards. They were too small for me to crawl through, anyway. But a larger one led deeper into the prison.

  I entered the biggest one, crawling forward. These shafts contained even more mold, forcing me to push through it. A minute later, mold and dust covered my entire body, my jumpsuit torn. My stomach had enough and made me return my breakfast to the world.

  After I was done retching, I crawled forward, straight through my own vomit. Yeah, this wasn’t pretty. The ventilation shafts often split, and I always took the one that headed roughly westward. More than a dozen times, I had to return because the shafts became too thin for me to continue.

  The things I would do for Evelyn. When did I become so obsessed with her? I wasn’t sure. Something inside me was missing, as if
a part of me was hollow and somehow, she filled that emptiness. In retrospect, it most likely came from becoming ageless. The realization that I wouldn’t die of old age changed everything at the subconscious level.

  There was no reason to hurry for anything, no motivation to do things in the moment since I could postpone them indefinitely. That gave me a huge life goals problem. When I could do anything I wanted to, nothing felt relevant.

  And Evelyn was the first, large motivation I had found. For her, it made sense to achieve something. With her, I could build a life that would be worthwhile.

  The ventilation shaft got hotter, meaning I was getting closer. Since my destination was the energy control rooms, the ventilation system would be connected to cooling system surrounding the machinery.

  Sweat covered my body, gluing the jumpsuit to my skin. The shaft burned as if I was crawling into a heated oven. I continued and soon reached a fan blocking the shaft.

  Within my palm, I formed a rotating sphere of aether. Not too large but spinning. I stretched my arm and let the spell go.

  Metal screeched and tore, leaving a hole ahead, opening to the view of a room. I slid though, fuelling my eyes with aether. The world’s colors inverted, and I exited into a machine-filled room, careful not to slip on spilled cooling liquid, released from its container by my spell. Machines hummed around me. But they didn’t contain too much aether, so they weren’t a part of the aether circulation system.

  They looked important though. I shrugged, stretched out my arms and formed two aether blasts. No reason to waste time by holding back. I let go. Steel shards flew through the air as I destroyed the two largest machines.

  If I happened to destroy something crucial, no harm done. I shot four more, turning the technology room into rubble.