Chapter 5

PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE

Alexander hesitated, inexperience costing him the initiative.

The guard’s foot lashed out, slamming into his shin. Pain flared, and his leg slipped out from under him. He hit the ground hard, jarring the shoulder wound he’d already half-forgotten.

He scrambled backwards, but the guard lunged, dragging himself forward with a single good arm. If he hadn’t known better, Alexander might have thought the man was a zombie. The movement was clumsy, one side of his body hanging limp, but the man came for him with sheer determination, appearing unstoppable.

Think! Move!

Alexander kicked at the man’s face. For a moment, he even thought he’d connect. Until the guard’s hand caught his foot and twisted. Pain raced up his leg as his ankle bent in a way that it wasn’t meant to.

Alexander gasped, vision going white at the edges. Instinct took over. He lashed out with his free leg, heel connecting with something solid. The guard grunted. His grip faltered, but he refused to let go.

Panic spiked. Alexander clawed at the floor for leverage, fingers scraping uselessly across the polymer and leaving a streak of blood from his wounded hand.

The guard dragged himself closer, pulling Alexander’s trapped leg under him. The details of his face were vivid now, the crusted blood in the man’s hair, the set of his jaw… the malice in his eyes.

If he gets on top of me…

He cut the thought short. Bracing against the floor, Alexander lifted his hips and kicked with everything he had. This time his heel smashed into the guard’s nose with a sharp crunch.

The man’s grip slackened. A wet sound escaped his throat, and then he slumped face-first onto the walkway.

Alexander didn’t pause. He yanked his leg free and crawled backward until his shoulders met the railing. His lungs pumped harder than they ever had, dragging in air to feed burning muscles and a pounding heart.

He’d survived his first fight. It didn’t feel like it, but the proof lay in front of him.

When the tremor in his hands eased, he crawled forward and pressed two fingers against the man’s throat. There was a pulse. Alive, but out cold.

With clumsy fingers, he retrieved the other boot and laced them both up. Looking down at himself, he let out a laugh.

I almost feel overdressed. The combat boots really complement the dirty medical gown.

Turning back to the guard, he scanned for anything useful. Strapped to the man’s waist was exactly what he needed: a stun baton.

Perfect.

He forced himself to move. Every step sent an ache from his shin, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on. The ankle of the other leg was worse, each throb a threat that it would give out if he misjudged his footing.

But he could walk. Running was another matter.

The boots were loose, but better than bare feet. He pulled the stun baton free as he passed the guard, testing the weight and triggering it once to make sure it still worked.

He climbed three more levels without incident, stepping around bodies in various states. Guards had been crushed by debris, prisoners with blackened burns from energy weapons. Cell doors randomly alternated between buckled or missing entirely, and those that remained sealed. Down the side corridors, he could hear prisoners pounding on cell doors and shouting to be let out.

Alexander paused to listen to the comms chatter

“—repeat. All—active—heroes in the vicinity—report to—command priority—prison containment breach—”

A braided cable dangling alongside the railing caught his attention. It swayed gently in place. At first, he assumed it was part of the debris hanging from overhead. Then he saw the small mechanical device attached to a harness.

Some kind of powered harness.

The term was stuck on the tip of his tongue. He’d seen them used in action movies, soldiers leaping from hovercraft.

Rappelling. Or fast-roping?

Etched along the casing was a familiar logo: Santiago Systems R-2 Auto-Winch Harness.

Of course it is. Is there anything in this bloody place that doesn’t belong to them?

As the adrenaline ebbed, fatigue washed back over him in force. With it came frustration and a simmering anger. Hunger gnawed at his insides, and he’d been fending off the growing dizziness ever since he started pushing himself, jogging and fighting for his life. Muscles trembled from exertion.

The comms suggested the worst of the fighting had spilled out into some above-ground facility. Inside the prison, guards were pushing down level-by-level, rounding up the last of the escapees.

He shook his head and refocused. This was his chance to skip the fighting and chaos going on just a few levels above.

Gripping the stun baton in his left hand, Alexander took the harness in his injured right.

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Access denied: User ID mismatch. No override authority granted.

“Override,” he muttered, pushing intent through his power.

Nothing happened.

His breath caught. His heart thudded. Pain screamed through every limb. Something inside him snapped.

“Override!” The word tore out of him as he hammered his will into the device.

The harness lurched and shot upward, his vision blurring. Blood-slicked fingers slipped as he fought to hold on. His ankle cracked against the railing, then he was dangling over empty air.

The winch didn’t slow.

Air roared past him as levels blurred one into the next, lit by weapons fire and muzzle flashes. His focus narrowed until there was nothing else but the pain in his hand and burning muscles in his arm. Letting go now wasn’t an option.

The stun baton remained clenched in his other hand, as if surrendering it now would mean giving up what little control he’d gained during his escape.

Freedom was close. And getting closer every second.

A sudden jolt. The winch stopped so hard he almost lost his grip. His knees slammed into the railing where the cable ended at a motor housing bolted into polymer and rock.

He swayed, breathing hard. If he’d thought his ankle hurt before, it was nothing compared to the pain signals screaming up his leg now. Muscles shook from overexertion, seconds from giving up.

He hooked an elbow over the railing, dragged himself up, chest scraping across rough metal. It dug into his ribs. He growled through gritted teeth and heaved himself over, collapsing onto the walkway.

He didn’t get a chance to rest.

Heavy footsteps stopped a meter away. Alexander looked up, trying to brace against the railing.

A bald, muscular man stared down at him. Armored from the waist down in scavenged gear, the rest of him was bare and caked in blood and grim. A collar circled his neck.

He shifted his grip on a stolen rifle, presumably empty, as the guy tossed it aside. His stance shifted.

“Wait—” Alexander rasped as the man lunged.

The baton was ripped from his hand in a single motion. Before he could react, it had been jammed against his neck.

The prisoner leaned in close, sneering.

Alexander shoved with both hands, panic driving him.

The baton crackled. He braced for the agony, mind recoiling at the threat of yet another pain.

Instead, the shock was no worse than static from a carpet. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw sparks dance across the man’s chest where his hands made contact.

The prisoner flew backward, hitting the wall with a heavy thud and crumpling to the ground.

Alexander slumped against the railing, breathing ragged. The baton lay next to the prisoner's outstretched hand.

Must have run out of charge.

He didn’t have the energy to think about it.

Dragging himself upright, he limped onward. The winch had brought him closer, but cost him the remainder of his strength. Running was gone from the list of options, if his ankle would have even allowed it.

He circled the prison one final time, head low. Light flared in the shadows of the lower floors, followed by the crack of weapons fire. Sometimes, muffled screams rose with it.

The walkway felt endless.

How long has it been since I escaped? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

It felt like a lifetime. Pain and exhaustion twisted his sense of time. He let out a short, painful laugh.

I really need people to stop trying to kill me. Just let me limp away in peace, damn it.

At last, the main bulkhead loomed ahead. What remained of it. A gaping breach split the reinforced entryway, the metal warped and rock shattered. Beyond, the facility above had been torn apart, though emergency lights still flickered amidst the wreckage.

There was no clear path. Just debris, twisted piping, and dangling wiring that he would have to navigate to proceed.

He swallowed, weighing the risk to his ankle. Waiting here wasn’t an option. Turning back even less so.

Old instincts kicked in, pushing down the panic. He measured the slope and tested his balance before beginning the climb. Each step was deliberate, but even then his hands slipped more than once. He pressed on, dragging himself to the top.

Finally, he stumbled through a shattered office, down a half-collapsed corridor, and stepped into a wider hall. Every door looked the same in the flickering light.

Where are the emergency maps? What happened to the good old classic neon green exit signs?

He turned without thinking and tried the nearest handle. Something about this place tugged at his memory.

Pulling the door open, Alexander stepped inside. Dim emergency lights gave the room an ominous glow.

It was the same room he’d woken up in weeks or months ago. The cremation chamber. The same two technicians were there, bent over a crate of equipment, whispering in panic.

Whispers he’d interrupted.

For a moment, none of them moved.

Alexander must have appeared as some kind of revenant to them, returning during a crisis to exact vengeance: filthy blue medical gown torn and stained in blood and grime, with a boot lace trailing behind him.

Recognition lit their faces. Fear followed it, then outright panic.

The thin, balding one grabbed a tablet from the crate. The other, broader, snatched up a steel canister. They charged, each of them shouting wordlessly.

Alexander raised his arms, knowing it would be futile. The tablet smashed into his elbow, pain shooting up to his shoulder. He lashed out with his other hand, fist catching the thin man’s temple. A lucky hit. The technician stumbled back, tripping over himself, and crashed into a pile of equipment with a strangled cry.

The bigger one swung the canister into Alexander’s ribs. Air left his lungs in a gasp. A heavy hand shoved him to the ground.

Weight crushed his hips. The big tech straddled him, face twisting in an ugly snarl.

Alexander shielded his head just in time to catch the first strike. It wasn’t a punch. The man was just slamming his forearms down with all of his strength. Again and again.

Each hit stole a little more of what energy he had left. He twisted, trying to throw the man off, but failed.

Both the man’s arms rose, fingers clasped together for a final blow—

“Hey!”

The voice cracked through the room like a whip.

Alexander squinted past his bruised forearms.

A young woman stood in the doorway, roughly his age, with vivid ginger hair spilling from under the most ridiculous, dirt-smeared cowboy hat he’d ever seen. Her orange uniform and collar marked her as a prisoner. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she stood there as if she’d just kicked down the door to deliver judgement.

“Pick on someone your own size,” she said, her tone so full of righteous indignation it took him a moment to register she was speaking to the man pinning him.

The bigger tech turned halfway toward her, still holding his clasped fists above his head.

“What—?” he started.

For one long, surreal moment, the three of them stared at one another. The other technician, tangled in cables, froze mid-crawl to look.

Even through the haze of pain, Alexander let out a half-hysterical bark of laughter.

Of all the people who could have shown up, this tiny, freckled, cowboy-hat-wearing stranger would never have made the list.

Yet there she was, standing in the doorway like she owned the place.