Ravens of Eternity

306 Liberating Force, Pt Freya ran up behind two guards at great speed and took them both completely by surprise. She ducked down just as they began to realize she was even there, then spun her leg out fiercely. The first guard was thrown to the ground as his legs were swept out from under him with a THUD.

His mind swam as all the breath was knocked right out of him.

Without skipping a beat, Freya rose up even as she continued to spin. In a flash, her leg came back around a second time and struck the second guard with a wide hook kick. The second guard was thrown into the wall with such force that he was knocked out instantly.

While his body slid down the wall and crumpled on the ground, Freya turned towards the first and knocked him out with a single downward fist to his temple.

With both guards completely knocked out, she ran forward and around the corner, where she assaulted the next couple of guards.

As Freya busied herself with clearing out the floor, Raijin was also hard at work.

She waved her baton at a control pad on the wall, and after a brief moment unlocked all of the cells in the hallway. Then she turned her baton towards the sensors up on the ceiling and waved at them as well.

Instead of simply deactivating them, however, she injected her Truesight Engine and took over the floor’s security intelligence circuit. She grimaced as she scoured the Illuminated’s code architecture, and sighed at how easy it was to break.

And so while Raijin invaded their systems and neutralized them easily, she lamented at how little she had been challenged thus far. Then, she floated after Freya, and opened up as many doors as she could along the way.

.....

Some distance behind her was Azrael, who was being escorted by Lucifer. Hir pistol was out as ze covered the rear, though there was little either of them needed to worry about. Freya’s assault had already taken out the majority of the floor’s guards.

But it was best to stay vigilant regardless.

While ze kept a look out, Azrael ducked into one of the many cells and went straight towards the prisoner trapped inside. Like the others she had freed thus far, this one was practically in a coma as the device on his head ripped into his mind.

And unlike the others, this prisoner was in terrible condition.

–

Condition: Stable, Malnourished, Dehydrated

Afflictions: Catatonia, Delirium

Metabolics: 26.4%

BPM: 31

–

Azrael quickly turned towards the terminal to her right, and deactivated the device over the prisoner’s head before she lifted it outright.

Her heart sank when she saw his face – his eyes had sunken in, his skin was pallid, and his body was gaunt. Thanks to his lack of food and water, his lips were cracked and bleeding.

And now that he was freed of the mind-tampering device, his body began to shake and shiver in his restraints. Azrael’s eyes went wide as she realized that he was undergoing withdrawal.

One of her drone arms extended out and injected the prisoner with her best restorative – a cocktail composed of stimulants, painkillers, antioxidants, macronutrients, and minerals. She had her nanites deliver everything exactly where his body needed them.

It was while she worked on his restraints that his eyes jolted open, and he suddenly sat forward in the chair. But he immediately flinched from the harsh light above him, and weakly shielded his eyes with his arm.

“Wh-what the hell’s going on?” he mumbled. “Where the hell am I?”

“It’s okay,” Azrael said.

Her voice was as calm as she could muster, which in turn helped his mind and body settle down.

“You’re alright now,” Azrael continued. “You’ve been kept at the Illuminated’s education center on this planet. They’ve taken you prisoner and did something to you...”

“Education center? The seminary? Prisoner?” he exclaimed. “What? Why? What did I even do? How long have I been here?”

Azrael looked over at the terminal and checked the status screen. SShe choked up seeing the number listed on it.

“86 days,” she said. “You’ve been here for 86 days.”

The prisoner’s sunken eyes went wide. They were filled with degrees of dismay, anger, surprise, and sadness. His mouth hung open for a moment, unable to articulate just how he was feeling.

“Do you remember anything?” Azrael asked.

But she already knew what he was going to say. The past few she had helped all said the same thing.

“Nothing,” he replied. “All I remember is... walking into the Seminary. Then nothing. Nothing.”

The prisoner buried his head in his hands and rubbed his face strenuously, as though that would help him remember.

But of course, nothing came.

“We need to keep moving,” Lucifer said from just outside the door.

“Right,” Azrael replied. Then she turned back to the man. “I know things are terrible right now. You’re in pain, you’re confused, and you’re probably angry, too. But you’re not the only one here. We’ve got almost a hundred to save, and we can’t get caught. Can you walk?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. He thought about that for a moment, then realized he didn’t have a choice. Not really. Unless of course, he wanted to stay.

“I can,” he followed up.

“Good,” Azrael replied. “Come on up. We’ll get you out, too.”

He shakily pushed himself up off the seat, and would have fallen forward if she didn’t catch him first. Though his footing was unsure and unsteady, he ultimately got a hold of himself, and maintained his balance.

Azrael helped walk him outside, and leaned him up on the wall briefly.

“I’ve gotta go help the rest,” she said. “But you should be strong enough to be able to get to the grav lifts. From there, go up to the roof where our ship is – the others will help get you inside, alright?”

The prisoner nodded, pushed himself off the wall, then stumbled down the hallway where she was pointing.

Lucifer and Azrael then took a few steps towards the next prison cell, but before she could go in, Lucifer noticed how many guards were laid out in the hallway ahead of them.

“Freya seems angry,” ze said. “I mean, she really didn’t pull any punches against some of those guards.”

“Well yeah,” Azrael replied. “Just look at these people, what the Illuminated did to them. If I was her, I’d be taking my frustration out on them, too.”

“I get that it’s bad or whatever. But why get angry in the first place?”

“You know, a better question to ask yourself is why you aren’t.”

Azrael then ducked into the next cell and left Lucifer to hir thoughts.

At the other end of the floor in a large security room, Freya continued her assault on the floor’s security guards. She slammed a fist right into a guard’s gut, and completely knocked all the wind out of his lungs.

She then grabbed him by the arm and threw him into another guard with incredible force. Both were thrown back a number of meters, then crumpled to the ground in a heap. They joined four other unconscious guards as they littered the security room’s floor.

Freya then dusted off her hands as she admired her handiwork.

As she did so, Raijin casually waved her baton at the large terminal in the center of the room, which caused all of the screens and terminals to flicker off.

They flickered back on after a few seconds, and their startup sequences scrolled past.

–

Raijin: I am taking over the floor’s security circuits now.

Raijin: All cell doors are now unlocked.

Claire: Nice work!

Claire: We’ve gotten seven prisoners so far.

Azrael: More are on the way.

Azrael: Sorry it’s taking so long!

Raijin: Do not worry about time too much.

Raijin: I am muting all alarms and looping all sensor data.

Raijin: We are practically undetected.

Lucifer: Unless someone physically comes up to take a look.

Lucifer: Can you lock out all incoming grav lifts?

Raijin: Consider it done.

Raijin: I can see controls to wake every prisoners.

Raijin: Should I activate it?

Azrael: No, don’t.

Azrael: It might lead to violent mass withdrawal.

Azrael: Especially for the ones that’ve been here longest.

Azrael: We can’t risk that.

Freya: Floor guards are all down

Freya: Anything I can do?

Azrael: Yeah, escort the people up to the ship.

Freya: On it

–

.....

Freya didn’t hesitate and ran straight back to where Azrael was. She watched as she took care of the next prisoner, then helped get him out of his restraints.

Then, she led him out to the hallway, got up on a grav lift, went all the way up to the roof, where Claire, Kali, and Xylo all watched over the other escapees.

And over the course of the next hour, the Ravens continued to surreptitiously empty out the entire floor. Azrael treated each and every one of the prisoners as fast as she could, while the others ushered them up to the Accursed Bootlegger up above.

Thanks to Raijin’s takeover of the floor’s security circuits, the Illuminated were none the wiser. They hardly knew anything was wrong at all.

Many of the Ravens were utterly disturbed at what they had seen, at the sheer inhumanity of what was going on. The prisoners themselves were equally disturbed, if not more so. It scared them that they simply couldn’t recall what they had gone through.

Worse, they were terrified of the possibility that other memories were taken away. After all, there was no way of knowing if some of their memories were wiped out.

The Ravens escorted the very last prisoner up the ramp into the stealth corvette, glad that they made it out scot free. But also greatly shaken by what they had seen.

Sure, they had seen a great deal of terrible things all throughout their lives, but thus far, most of it had been perpetrated by outside forces. Pirates and marauders and bandits and thieves – the lawless types.

But then, starting with the Federation, they began to see the atrocities done by governments on their own people. Even Major Houses in the Hegemony weren’t above such corruption, and manipulated people for their own purposes.

Freya grimaced as she looked at the prisoners, as they came to terms with what had happened to them. They were already disillusioned by power, and instead of finding freedom, only found more corruption. More abuse. More erosion of their lives.

The Accursed Bootlegger swiftly and silently lifted up off the roof of the Illuminated Seminary. And despite being in the very middle of the main city, right in the heart of Illuminated power on the planet, hardly anyone even noticed.

They climbed up higher into the sky, up into the stars, and escaped with barely a sound.