Prologue #2
The countdown began before I could even process the words.
Two.
Shit.
“My people will be in contact. Have a good night, Mr. Volkov. Now run.” The cold edge in her warning was as cruel as the Russian storm.
One.
Instinctive panic set in, and with all my force, I threw it in that direction and ran to the corner of the room for cover as the explosion went off.
The nuclear reaction reverberated loudly throughout the halls.
A deafening, piercing ringing affected my hearing as I closed my eyes from the strong radiation.
My chest tightened with residual shock.
How the fuck are we not dead?
“A miracle, I guess,” I murmured, attempting to fix my hearing as I opened and flexed my jaw.
You eedeeot! I told you not to trust that damn Ved’ma! She could have gotten us killed!
“But we aren’t.” I adjusted my eyes and saw the cataclysm before me.
Intense heat wavered in the air from the blast. Filling the room with a hazy cloud of smoke, ashes, and raging fire.
The ceiling was on the verge of collapsing.
More importantly, the bomb ended up destroying the railing and walls that contained me inside this hell.
My one-way ticket to freedom.
My salvation.
The grin on my face grew as wide as a madman’s. “She kept her promise.”
Now I was going to walk out of here like nothing.
I rose to the balls of my feet, leveling myself for what was next as the prison alarm activated. The sirens screeched to the four winds, and the ambience of the building became engulfed in red light.
Shit. My content was interrupted, and my smile faded off as I thought about what step to take next.
You didn’t think it would be that easy, huh? He taunted, like always trying to be right.
The little shit was a pain in my ass, but there was no way to get rid of him unless it was to kill myself. And I preferred living, so I guess life was disappointing for both of us.
“Shut up. I’ll do what I have to do. Fuck off,” I snarled, picking up my pace and walking through the brazen fire, lifting one foot first and placing it outside my cell.
Then the next, realizing I was finally out of my purgatory.
Taking in the moment of my long-lost freedom.
For the first time in a long time, in the recess of my chaos and confusion, the ones that chained down my soul, I never felt more alive.
This is going to be fun to raise hell.
“Help us! Help us! Get us out, Volkov!” The men in the following cells yelled.
I ignored them. They served me no purpose, so why would I?
Even puppets were better served to their masters. These scums weren’t even that.
Navigating my head side to side, checking out the scene to see if there were any guards on the way to this floor and/or making their way too. Although that didn’t matter because they would be here soon enough.
Not sticking around for that to happen, I turned on my heel when suddenly I heard the heavy machinery opening all the cells of the inmates. Malicious crazy laughter followed afterwards as, one by one, they began pouring out of their holding cells.
Damn, this wasn’t a rescue; it was a fucking prison break.
Shit, that woman wasn’t a Ved’ma; much worse, she was D’yavol.
Officers began to shout, calling for backup, while others tried to contain some inmates.
The alarms set off, blaring to alert a lockdown.
An officer with a mad scowl comes barging at me, and as he reaches his hand for his gun, I prepare my stance, angling my body to the side, pushing off my foot, extending my leg, and kicking his outer thigh, performing a sweep kick.
Knocking the cop off his feet as I stole the opportunity to grab his tie on his way down, wrapping it around his throat.
Cutting off his circulation while I slipped behind him, wrapped one of my arms around his neck, and with my other arm held his head in a rear-end choke.
He struggled and jerked around, his body desperate for oxygen, control, and freedom.
The same freedom he abused and mocked the prisoners of.
“Please! Please! Let me go! I swear I wouldn’t shoot. I let you go,” he pleaded like a dying dog.
As if I would ever believe his words.
“Never,” I taunted, watching him go purple.
“F-fuck… you, bastard!” he wheezed.
And in one swift, bold movement, I snapped his neck.
Immediately, he became limp, and I removed my hands off him as he dropped to the ground.
Adrenaline ran through my veins, pumping my muscles for this fucking excursion.
Taking the pistol in his dead hand since the poor bastard wasn’t going to need it anymore and it would be much more useful in my hands.
“Have a nice life in hell,” I told his corpse.
Going onward, slipping inside a staircase where more officers appeared to come to attack.
“Stop there, inmate! Stop, we tell you.”
I raised the gun, and without remorse or a thought to his miserable life, I pressed the trigger. The bullet fired and landed between his eyebrows. The blood splattered against my clothes and face as his lifeless body collapsed to the ground.
No one, fucking no one, was going to stop me now.
My eyes scoured the place for an exit, noticing how most exits were blocked or cut off completely. Dammit. What do I do now?
Heavy uncertainty roamed across my chest when a hand touched my shoulder and I turned around with my gun ready to shoot.
“Wait!” The forty-something-year-old man holding a rosary in his hand said with a strong Italian accent. He put his arms up to show no signs of being a threat. Yet there was a thin layer of deceit in his eyes.
I kept my pistol steady, gritting between my teeth. “What do you want?”
“I can help you— well, the both of us.” He smiled weakly.
“I don’t even know you. You think I’m stupid enough to trust you.”
“I’m Tomaso,” he introduced himself, as his face wasn’t one I had seen before. “I’m one of the cellmates in charge of church services. Look on the second floor; the library has a secret passageway out of the prison.”
As if I would believe that shit. Did he think, after rotting away in a cell for that long, my brain turned to shit?
“Fucking liar.”
“What would I gain from that?” Tomaso inquired, his shoulders shrugging.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth and not leading me to my death?” I trusted men before, men who I considered my brothers even when they weren’t my blood, and I paid a heavy price for it.
He inclined his head, playing novice. “You just have to trust me.” The footsteps of the officers rushing up the stairs became more prominent as with every step they lingered near. “Or you could just give up now?”
A tick in my hand shook.
Did I have a choice?
I hope I don’t regret this.
“Fuck, alright, let’s go.” I turned him around and shoved him forward. He stumbled a few steps before regaining his stride, leading me past the empty cells, then the spiral staircase, and straight into the library.
Closing the door behind us, we stepped inside cautiously, treading lightly against the floor as if it would burn me alive; however, the place seemed opposite to the chaos outside— unguarded, quiet, filled with cases of books, and dark with only the moonlight and lighting providing some sense of direction.
That’s why anytime I wasn’t in my cell, I spent hours in here.
Reading the books, I had almost read each one.
Passing the columns of shelves and the unoccupied desk, we went to the very end of the room as he stopped in front of a sign that said “storage.”
If this motherfucker—
If memory serves me right, no one has ever opened this door, so that meant two things: there was nothing worth sharing, or they were hiding it specially so no one could find it.
I held the lever of the gun tighter as it clicked into place and prodded it against his shoulder, warning him. “Open it.”
“Alright, relax, man.” Tomaso replied, slowly lowering his hand on the knob. The diminishing seconds were agonizing as it felt like my chance for freedom was running out.
The guards came storming onto the third floor, yelling and attacking. The blurred motion of flashlights made my pulse spike and sweat break against my skin as they fought with certain inmates to get them back to their cells.
The ticking on the clock echoed louder.
The sensation of pending doom only grew.
One of the officers yelled, “Lemme look at the library to see if anyone is hiding!”
Shit.
“Come on.” I uttered as he twisted the knob.
The officer’s footsteps approached the doorway as Tomaso opened the door, which revealed a long, dark stairway to God knows where.
But I didn’t have time to debate that as I tossed him forward and went right after him, making sure to close the door behind us.
Just like that, we were submerged in darkness with no path in sight.
My eyes strained to find a source of light.
Nothing but hazy shapes and the outline of the fellow prisoner struck out to me as I reached out my hand and grabbed the collar of his shirt, pushing him to his feet, and commanding him, “Keep walking.”
He hissed as he limped, the fall seeming to hit his old ragged bones. “Yeah, alright, give me a second.” Tomaso, or whatever the fuck his name was, continued forward. Thankfully, the tunnel was a smooth downslope, or else we would have both been rendered unconscious with one wrong step.
“You see, I wasn’t wrong, man.”
“Shut. Up.” I gravely answered, wiping the sweat from my brows.
We weren’t in the clear yet. Not until I was out of this prison, out of this town, and out of this fucking country.
The air soon became moist and thick. There were no windows or surfaces to allow air to flow, making it hard to breathe, and the only thing that distracted me from the ragged breaths and dragging footsteps was the incessant swinging of the rosary.
Just another reminder of burying past sins to buy more time. Just a bit more so I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and leave it all behind.
All this spiraling awoke the maniac from his nap.