#escape attempt

This is from Stomp written by Christina Nordlander @nothingofvaluewaslost ! These gifs are very special to me

“Wait! We’re in lockdown, doors can only be opened remotely”. She says with her hands lifted to protect her face, but there’s been a misunderstanding. He doesn’t need her keycard, or their help, to open this door, not if he can disintegrate both airlock doors himself. The problem is the power-dampener. Then, he hears it. A siren quietly bleeds through the soundproof walls of his cell. 

“Lockdown? So they mean to bury us?” 

Her eyes dart back and forth in confusion, but then Noah seems to settle down. 

“We’re too valuable to let that happen. Listen, it’s stopped. There’s nothing to worry about”. 

The siren hasn’t stopped. Noah must mean the shaking. Jasper exhales and returns to the bed. It’s a relief to have the pressure off of his legs. Without using his powers to take the weight, even standing is a pain. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you”. 

Noah looks at the wall behind him rather than make eye contact. “Doesn’t matter. Are you alright?”

Jasper takes a few steadying breaths, but the Darkness rattles within his lungs. The staff keep trying to take scans of it, but his flesh is nearly opaque to radiation, and his magic is even less cooperative. 

“No. I can hear sirens, Noah. I’ve never heard these sirens. Something is terribly wrong”.

Past and present are a maelstrom. He remembers weapons that ignite the atmosphere, open-pit mines stretching a mile deep, “heroes” swinging to crush his skull with a war hammer. Jasper knows that some sirens do not deactivate. They blare until the speakers are crushed. 

“I don’t hear any sirens. We’re not in danger”. 

“You’re wrong,” 

“Trust me,” Noah says, but she fidgets with the collar of her comfortable green sweater. It doesn't feel right to call that a collar too.

“These tunnels, they’re unstable”. 

“This place was built to withstand very powerful people. The tunnels are fine". Noah checks the screen of her pager-watch again. “There’s no evacuation order. It says… let’s try to calm down, okay? Breathe with me”. 

Why breathe? If he lets the Darkness take him, he won’t need to breathe. He’ll be able to disintegrate the cell walls and feel the air on his face. The sunlight above will burn his monstrous skin. 

“What does it say?”

“I can’t tell you, just, believe me. Everyone is scared right now”. 

He struggles to hold ideas together. A distant rumble resonates in his chest. It’s not far. Jasper presses his hands over his ears, then grips the edge of his bed. He needs to flee, but what good will that do? His cell is only a few paces wide.

“We’re going to die here. I’m getting us both out of here”. 

“That is the worst thing you could do right now! Jasper, you need to calm down”. 

“THEY ARE GOING TO KILL US". It is the voice of the Creature of the Underground.

Then, he chokes. Jasper hasn't been electrocuted by his shock collar in days. At the same moment, the power-dampener rumbles to life and crushes him again. The weight recedes like a crashing wave before Jasper has even realized he’s drowning.

He stares at Noah with blank emotion. He needs somewhere to put his confusion, pain, hatred, but Noah is a short young woman holding a watch. He feels power bubbling beneath his skin despite what the human guards tried. He could kill her. Her dark eyes meet his and she flings the device across the room. 

“Jasper, Zachary, please! Listen! The base is on lockdown because another prisoner is already trying to escape! They’re not going to kill us. You’re scheduled for release”.

“Really?”

“I swear on my life, Zachary. We’re both too valuable to lose”. 

Escape. Death. Release. The alien clinging to his thoughts laughs and laughs, but Zach sinks to his own knees over the drain in the cell’s exact center.

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I can hear the sirens. You can’t understand”. 

She lifts her chin in a nod of acknowledgement.

“I think I do”. 

A ragged moment passes. Then the ground shakes again. The watch rattles against the tiles.

“Oh I’ve fucked everything up. They thought I was good enough and now I’ve lost control. Please tell me you felt that. I can’t go insane… they’re letting me go”. 

“I did, that time”. 

“Who is it? 

Noah shakes her head. “Phosphor. She’s close”. 

“To escape?” 

“To us. She’s the only other asset in your zone of the base”. 

Noah is just a girl and he nearly tore her apart but didn’t he beat Phosphor in the ring as well? No, Phosphor isn’t just a girl. She’s too dangerous to be the same kind of person as his sister. Lizzie’s powers create rather than destroy. She’d never end up here.

“She’s insane,” Jasper states.

“She’s been here since October,” Noah replies, but so has she, and Noah just stopped a break out.

“So all this shaking is from explosions she caused”.

Jasper rolls his shoulders, trying to shake the memory of his collar. A single thought sticks in his mind more powerfully than pain. Explosions ringing throughout the base. Are there no power dampeners in the hallways? His own cell has malfunctioned. Does that mean there is nothing between him and the surface?

“I assume”. 

The thought of escape multiplies. It is a living thing covered in burrs and brambles. He cannot shake it. The Darkness is obsessed. 

“I’m really being released?” Like slamming his head into the wall to stop a train of thought.

“Within two weeks. You have a final surgery scheduled, and after you recover, you’ll be assigned missions like I am”. 

He smiles despite himself. Is that really release? No, but it’s just as good. All these miserable days, they weren’t for nothing! He’s really good enough to help the world. 

“Who told you?”

“Rumor, but a trustworthy one”. He must turn back into the monster, because Noah whispers cyrene.

“Do you think I’ll be working with the Horizon Guard? What’s been happening out there?”

“You might be. You’re very strong”.

“Oh my God, I want to meet the Horizon Guard. Well, the ones that are left. I am strong! I can help them in case the demons come back. And I have so many shows to catch up on. And my friends? They must be so worried. I tried sending a letter but I don’t know if he ever got it”.

He dreams of it. Jasper can never go home. His family sent him away, and one vision of a villain didn’t make him a real Sparston, but he sees himself playing his part someplace new. Fighting other monsters, making his handler proud, showing that a season of effort wasn’t for nothing. Jasper imagines standing side-by-side with Lord Ferrel or Captain Cavalier as they face an alien foe, maybe even Elster. He’ll take a bullet for them, and die in his hero’s arms. 

Noah’s voice drags him back. “It’s nice having outside contact”. 

“You have a twin, right? What was it like seeing them again? I have a little sister, and I don’t want to scare her”. He looks at his pale hands. “Who am I kidding. She’ll be horrified. I'm lucky my family sent me here. The Guard would’ve killed me”. 

“Can you give me my watch back? It’s not dangerous, I swear. I hit a panic button. It can’t hurt you”. 

He creeps across the floor and whacks it her way. Noah checks the readout and clips it around her wrist.

“Noah, I am so sorry. It’s this thing inside me. It has its own PTSD and the thought of this place caving in just set it off. I can be trusted. I’ll prove it, however I have to”. 

“Your handler probably has ideas already”.

“I’ve learned to handle waterboarding. I can do anything he needs”. 

The corner of her mouth curls in disgust, and Jasper feels his heart drop through the floor. Maybe it’s even physical. The Darkness would love to reject a coward like him. Why hasn’t it? Why is he the bearer of this? Why was he chosen? Just for being curious, and for carrying a bit of family magic that let him bear the weight? Why couldn’t he let them take it during his biopsy? 

The siren stops. Her pager blares it’s own alarm. 

“The situation has been handled. I’m being recalled. I’m probably in deep trouble for this-

“I’m sorry”. 

“-but good luck out there”.

Jasper holds himself perfectly still while the airlock door opens and closes again. And then all is silent. Jasper heaves himself up onto the bed. He isn’t healing like he used to. He eats what he’s given and follows orders, but the grasping pain in his bones never goes away except when his eyes are red with magic. The pain is the worst right after he returns to normal.

Deep down he thinks it’s because he’s pushing himself too hard, but that make sense if he’s about to be released. Finals week is always the hardest, and harvest is the busiest time of the year. He’ll rest once he’s proven himself. 

He shouldn’t have trouble occupying himself until dinner. Books, television, and daydreams should tide him over. Unfortunately, Zach got into this situation because he wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. He heard half of a story today. What’s the ending? Bridges never tells him anything, but Cyrene seems to know a lot. They don’t talk. She’s kind of terrible. But Zach is curious, so he thinks of her. Loudly. 

Cyrene told Noah about my promotion - How did Cyrene know this? - Can Cyrene hear me now? - Is she listening? - Are you listening? Telepathic communication still feels like an attack. Cyrene named herself after a mythic hunter, and now there’s an arrow stabbed into his mind. He asks the question.

What happened today?

You really are a caricature of yourself. You spend half an hour complaining about your own curiosity and now you’re asking questions you don’t want to know the answers to. 

But I do? 

What do you think happened, Zachary?

Phosphor - Rachel, that’s her real name - is unstable. She’s been imprisoned for three times as long as he has, but people talk like she lost it eight years ago when All Hell Broke Loose and demons invaded New York City. She’s explosive, literally and emotionally.

His cell’s power-dampener was broken today. If her cell is near to his, did she have the same malfunction? Phosphor must’ve taken that chance and blasted her way out. That was the first period of shaking. Then she ran, blowing up anything in her path. He imagines the aftermath. What did Noah see walking back to her own room? 

Suddenly squeamish? You’ve coughed up your own lungs. 

Why are you like this? I’m an adult. I’m going to be working with the Horizon Guard soon. They probably called Sapphire to drag her back to a working cell.

If her messages are arrows shot into his mind, the wisdom of his magic is poison from an old wound. The realizations feel like recalling something he's always known. Cyrene told him once that his most desirable trait was how he broke with clean edges, but Phosphor is explosive. It’s taken them less than three months to chip Jasper into a weapon. Rachel had been imprisoned for nine before trying to escape. 

They killed her, didn't they?

They’ve already cremated the body. 

He remembers that after the caverns collapsed and the atmosphere ignited there was nothing left. He remembers ash clinging to his mouth. Did the ashes taste like Darkness or was his magic twisted to taste like death? 

I didn’t know this place could do that. 

They found a way. Happy now?

Did she suffer? 

You don't care about that in the ring.

There is a furious buzzing in his head not unlike a siren. He tries not to even think of a reply. Cyrene relents.

She did.

He owes Noah his life. (and he’s still imagining a body on fire. He can draw with charcoal but charred bones are jagged and stick in the throat and in the mind) Phosphor tried to leave and she is dead. She is dead and there is already nothing left. Twelve generations of his family are buried together. Intellectually, he understands that his transformed body won’t be lying with them, but the idea of ash?

How often does this happen?

Rachel is the first prisoner to die here. They have been very careful to avoid making martyrs.

And before he can ask a million questions, the power dampener slams down, and Cyrene is gone. The concept that he could be a martyr does not make it easier to risk death by suffocation. It’s stupid, anyway. He’s a soldier, not a victim, but maybe nobody knows what’s good for them. Zach sure didn’t, what with his crush on a supervillain and everything.

His magic returns. Jasper remembers to breathe. Then he fills his water bottle and tries to wash the taste of death from his mouth.

...................................

We enter the final sequence. Next chapter, Jasper gets vivisected and things fall apart.