Rudra Kapadia leaned back against the wall of his prison cell, feeling the smooth wood against his back and pondering whether or not to try to break out. The subject was far more complicated than it seemed. The material composing his cell, and the other cells that he could see through the wooden bars, was some sort of lightweight wood that was far, far stronger than any wood that light had any right to be. Still, strong or not, no wood could keep Rudra from leaving this cell if he so chose. But exiting the cell didn’t actually mean Rudra could leave, because of one simple fact: the Stragmans were insane. That was the only justification Rudra could come up with to explain why they thought it was a good idea to literally suspend an entire prison building in midair, hundreds of meters above the ground.

It was a surprisingly standard prison, given the circumstances. There were two sections: the regular prison where prisoners could intermingle and the smaller solitary confinement section where Rudra sat, alone in his cell. As far as he could tell, the solitary section was little more than two rows of cells on either side of a hallway. He’d noticed as they’d marched him down the hallway that many of the cells were empty. His cell in particular was all the way down at the end, separated from the other prisoners. Rudra was no jail expert, but there was little he saw that jumped out to him as strange, other than, of course, the fact that it was far from solid ground.

During the trip from the arena Rudra had gotten a very good look at the entire place, and he still couldn’t get over its sheer audaciousness. Hundreds of ropes as thick as his waist hung down from massive branches, each looping through one of many thick rings sticking vertically from the building’s roof. The entire idea struck him as an exercise in absurdity, but he couldn’t deny that it worked — it turned the idea of escape into less of a hope and more of a deathwish.

In Rudra’s cell was a small hole, just a centimeter or two smaller in diameter than his head. The toilet, he assumed. Through this hole he could see the forest floor far below and by his best guess, he was at least two hundred meters in the air. There was no way he’d survive a drop like that. The only other way out was up, climbing the large ropes. But guards watched those ropes from above, meaning he’d be a pincushion far before he made it up to the top. The only way on or off the prison was an elevator platform that would come down from the tree branches above. If he timed his escape right, while the elevator was down, maybe get a hostage...

The sound of footsteps brought Rudra’s attention back to the present. He looked up just as several guards marched another prisoner into his view and locked him in the cell across the hall. The prisoner, a man of average height with large ears sticking out of his spotted tan hair. The man stretched and let out a small groan of relief before turning around and freezing at the sight of Rudra in the cell across from him.

“Well I’ll be,” he laughed. “It’s you!”

Rudra raised an eyebrow in confusion. “You know me?”

“Everybody knows you, my friend,” the other prisoner laughed, his one ear twitching. “The advanced examinations are watched by the entire country. Even we prisoners get to watch it every year. Nobody has ever done what you did. Willingly choosing to be a Shell? You’re crazy, my friend. But boy was that entertaining, at least. Ah! Where are my manners? Bitol Fogrunner-fleg, at your service.” He chuckled again.

“Rudra Kapadia,” Rudra replied.

“You’re quite an interesting fellow, Rudra. What are you doing here, in the high-security section of a prison?”

“I’m not really sure myself. This place confuses me much of the time.”

“Well why don’t you tell me all about it? Maybe I can help you understand.”

“I don’t know...”

The man chuckled again. “Let me tell you, Rudra. The days grow long in here. You’re gonna need somebody who’s willing to talk to you, or you’ll go mad eventually. So why not your old pal Bitol-fleg here?”

“Alright, fine...” And so Rudra relayed to him the events of the last few weeks as Bitol listened with a wry, amused smile on his face the entire time.

“That’s quite a story you have there,” Bitol said after Rudra had finished. “To me, it looks like you’re in here for two reasons, but only one action. You chose to be a Shell. As I said before, nobody’s ever willingly become a Shell. Only the permanently ill become Shells without taking the Tests, and it’s not like they want to be Shells, they just don’t have a choice. But you... you had a choice. And you said ‘no’.”

“And that’s a crime?” Rudra asked.

“I mean, it’s not really. Not on its own, at least. But look at it from the other end. Everything about you is unbelievably suspicious. Your story makes no sense and is suspicious. The fact that the wruelits didn’t detect any lies actually in some ways makes you even more suspicious. But you’d cooperated, and the Chos liked you, and so they probably decided to watch you and see what you did. But then you chose to become a Shell, which is something that nobody would ever do unless they were up to no good. And so I would imagine that they decided that you were too suspicious to let be free.”

Rudra sighed. “It’s not like I decided I wanted to be a Shell, I just am not willing to pay the price to be anything else. And it’s not like I can help being suspicious. I didn’t choose to be here.”

“But you did choose to anger the Chos. That’s actually the real reason you’re here, I reckon. You insulted her in front of the entire country.” He laughed again. “I bet she’s still fuming.”

“She can just lock me up like that?”

“She can do whatever she wants. She’s the Chos. She’s the strongest. That’s how things work here. The weak obey the strong.”

Rudra grumbled. That was no way to run a country. “What about you?” he asked. “What’s your story?”

“Ahhh, well, I’m just a guy who sometimes helps himself to a little something here or there that might not be entirely mine, so to speak.”

“Didn’t you say this was the ‘high-security’ section? How does theft get you here?”

Bitol looked away. “Well let’s just say that I may have... um... angered a rather powerful criminal in the other side of the prison, and his... associates... would have killed me. Sooooo... I attacked a guard to get myself thrown in here, where they can’t touch me!” He grinned again. “I won’t be free for a good long time now, but... it’s better than dying, I guess.” Bitol’s smile stayed on his face, but Rudra couldn’t help but notice the sadness in the man’s eyes.

Rudra leaned against the side of the cell again, his eyes closed as he listened to the sounds of the forest at night. The prison hung from two trees by the edge of the city, meaning he heard more hoots, chirps, and howls than he did laughs, shouts, and screams. The sounds of the forest had grown on him over the last few weeks, but only a little. He still found himself yearning for the sound of vehicles driving by his apartment window late at night.

Rudra’s ears picked up the sound of his neighbor Bitol’s breathing as the other prisoner slept soundly. Rudra wasn’t sure how the man fell asleep so easily in an empty cell that lacked even a single cushion to sleep on. Maybe he’d just had plenty of practice. Rudra thanked fortune that the other man wasn’t a snorer.

The two of them had chatted all day, off and on. It was nice for once to have somebody to talk to who didn’t want something from him or see the need to keep things from him. He’d learned a good deal about Stragma from those loose lips. Stragma seemed to be a land of contradictions. On one hand, the people reminded him of the stereotypical “natives” found in modern movies and television shows. They worshiped a giant tree, hunted wild beasts and used fangs and claws from those hunts as status symbols, and in many ways seemed shackled with their traditions of old. Yet at the same time, they were incredibly well-organized, their entire country run like one giant army. Any society that could pick its entire city up and move it through a giant, dense forest filled with dangers every few months was one that had its shit together to at least some degree. Their societal structure was even a meritocracy, which he found commendable in the abstract. It was just a shame that their entire perspective on ‘merit’ consisted of one’s ability to kill. His thoughts faded as the soft rhythms of the forest lulled him to sleep. He had a lot to think about tomorrow...

“So you’re the man who wanted to be a Shell...”

A voice in his cell yanked him back to reality just before his consciousness crossed the border into the land of dreams. His head shot up towards the voice and his body tensed, cracking the wall behind him accidentally with his panicked strength. He stood up and backed away as a man emerged from the shadows in the back of his cell. Rudra couldn’t see the man’s face beneath the shadows and the hood of the man’s robe.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Rudra demanded, his back bumping into the bars of his cell.

“Oh I go by a lot of names, but you can call me ‘Sneak’. That’s what most people call me these days. As for why I’m here...” The man shrugged beneath his robe. “I was just curious, is all. You’ve become a bit of a celebrity amongst the Shells, you see. Even some of us in the Hidden Fang took notice. I just wanted to see you with my own eyes.”

“Is that all?” Rudra squirmed. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, but he could feel Sneak’s gaze appraising his body, inspecting every centimeter.

“Pretty much. Rumors say you’re stronger than a markuut, and you sure look it. What a waste...” The man turned his back to Rudra and stepped back into the shadows, becoming nearing impossible for Rudra to see. “I’ll come see you again if the leader deems you worth it. Probably won’t though, since you’re a coward. Ta ta.” And with that, he was gone.

“You don’t look so good,” Bitol observed the next morning.

“I didn’t sleep much,” Rudra replied.

“No bed bothering you?”

“Not entirely. Somebody visited me last night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you slept through it all.”

The other man laughed. “I’ve been known to sleep like a rock. So somebody sneaked past the guards down the hall and came to see you?”

“No, he was in my cell. He somehow got in and out and I have no idea how he did it. I was up checking the walls all night. There’s no cracks, no hidden doors, nothing I can find in the walls, floor, or ceiling.”

Bitol’s smile faded. “What did he come to see you for?”

“I’m not sure. He claimed he was just curious, and wanted to see me. Said I was famous amongst Shells now or something. Also something about the ‘Hidden Fang’, whatever that means. Then he just stared at me and-”

“Rudra. Hold on.” Bitol’s face was dour now, serious in a way that Rudra had never seen until now. “What was that about the Hidden Fang?”

“He just mentioned it in passing.”

“Think back to it. What were his exact words?”

“Ummmm... ‘Even some of us in the Hidden Fang took notice.’ Something like that.”

Bitol let out a breath and closed his eyes for a second. “Listen to me. No matter what, do not get involved with the Hidden Fang. You do not want anything to do with those people.”

“Why? What are they, anyway? I heard some mention of them before too.”

“The Hidden Fang is a secretive group of radical Shells who appeared perhaps fifteen years ago and dubbed themselves the protectors of Shells throughout Stragma. Or at least that’s what they claim. Nobody really knows what they’re up to because they’ve never been caught. But you hear rumors, tales of people who abused a Shell in public being murdered in their sleep soon after, and a single black fang being left on their corpse so everybody knows it was the Hidden Fang that killed them. They’re fanatics. If I were you, I’d do everything in my power to avoid their attention.”

“Well the guy called me a coward and said that he would probably never see me again, so...”

“Good. They’re not interested in you then. Keep it that way.”

“How do you know all this stuff, Bitol?”

“Ehh, you hear things in my line of work. Gotta keep your ear to the ground and whatnot, even when you’re on the inside.” He grinned a knowing grin. “Want to know something I heard just before getting myself sent over to this side? There’s going to be an attack on Drayhadal soon. Real soon. I think the Chos is aiming to use the fact that we’re in Pholis ahead of schedule to her advantage. Hit those elven bastards before they’re ready.” His grin widened. “Those fuckers will never see it coming.”

“Hey Rudra.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you still here? It’s been what, fifteen days since I got myself transferred? Why haven’t you tried to break out yet? Don’t you want to be free?”

“Sure I do. It’s just...” Rudra sat back, his head leaning back as he thought about the best way to explain his problem. “Let’s say that I break out of this cell, and then I get off of this hanging prison without getting killed. Then what?”

“You run, obviously. Hide in the city, or head for a neighboring country.”

“But how do I do that? I can’t hide in a city I don’t really know, especially when people would recognize me because of what happened at the Test. And if I run into the forest I would probably die. I’ve never been much of a wilderness person. Grew up in the city all my life. I’d get lost, turned around, probably starve or get eaten by something. The forest is the real prison here. So I’ve cooperated as much as I could, in the hope that whatever damage I’ve done to my future here can be repaired.”

Bitol seemed to consider Rudra’s words for a few moments. “If you break me out of here with you, I’ll get you through the forest,” he finally said. “It won’t be easy, but with your strength and my smarts, we could do it. Move to Gustil, or Eterium, and start a new life.”

“You would leave your own country so readily?” Rudra asked in shock. “You always sound so proud of Stragma when you talk about it.”

“Yeah, well... the guy I pissed off has people outside this prison too. I’d probably find myself gutted in under a week if I got back out into the city. So it’s sit in this cell for the rest of my life, or get all the way out. And as much fun as it’s been here with you, I’m starting to get a little bored of the scenery. Aren’t you?”

Rudra didn’t reply for a few minutes. Instead, he thought about Bitol’s offer. Pairing up with the man didn’t sound half bad. They’d grown fairly close since they’d met just over two weeks ago. But did he want to throw away what he had for certain in the hope that a better alternative existed somewhere else? Was his situation here irreparable? “I’ll have to think about it for a while,” he finally replied.

Bitol just laughed his trademark amused laugh. “Take your time,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Later that night, Rudra’s eyes flashed open and he shot up into a sitting position, his mind ablaze with warning signals as adrenaline coursed through his veins. Something had penetrated the bubble of sleep and woken him with a start. A sound. Still groggy, he couldn’t quite remember the exact noise, but he felt like it had been some sort of... clack?

His eyes wide, Rudra quickly searched through the darkness in the back of his cell. Ever since that night, he made it a point to sleep with his feet towards the back, so that when he sat up the first thing he would see would be that area of his room, just in case. Yet as he strained his eyes, searching for a cloaked figure in the darkness, he found nothing. Nobody stood in those shadows this night. So what had woken him up?

Another sound caught his attention, a sound that he hadn’t heard in a long time but knew all too well. It was the wet ‘sshhluk’ of a knife being pulled from its victim, and it was coming from behind him. It was coming from Bitol’s cell.

Rudra spun about, rising to his feet in alarm as a large cloaked figure rushed from the cell across from him and fled down the hallway. His eyes caught a glimpse of the large dagger in the figure’s hand, its blade dripping with blood and... something else. Something pink and white.

No...

“Bitol!” Rudra cried, as he shoved with all his might against the bars to his cell. The wood shattered under the sudden force, and he quickly stepped into the hallway and through the open door to Bitol’s cell. The sight of his friend’s body froze him in his tracks. Bitol’s glassy, dead eyes stared back at him, his gaze seeming to ask why this had all happened. Between his eyes was a large, gaping hole where the blade had plunged deep into his skull. Several bits of the man’s brain decorated the blood-covered floor.

His only friend in this world was dead.

Filled with sorrow, Rudra sat down and cradled the lifeless body in his arms and wept. Another life cut short through the tragedy of violence. When would people learn?

The sounds of boots echoed down the hallway and several moments later three guards arrived, weapons out and ready. “Move away from the body!” the one in front commanded.

“You!” Rudra growled, his fury barely contained. “How much money did they pay you to let somebody in here? Answer me!”

“Shut your mouth, Shell,” snarled the guard in front. He stepped towards the sitting Rudra, Bitol’s body still slowly bleeding onto Rudra’s lap. “Hand over the body or-”

Without warning, Rudra swung his right hand around, smashing it into the nearby wall with tremendous force. The thick wooden wall practically exploded, leaving a large opening to the outside where much of the wall had just been seconds before. The man leapt back, wide-eyed, his hands suddenly shaking. “Go get the warden,” he muttered to one of guards beside him. The man turned and ran back down the hallway, leaving just the front guard and one other.

Rudra watched them for a moment, but they held back, too afraid to approach for the moment. Good. He only wanted a little time to remember his friend before he never saw him again.

Looking down at his buddy’s deceased form, he thought back to how he’d been just earlier that day. He remembered Bitol’s round face split open by a wide grin as he laughed over his own terrible joke, his large ears twitching as he chuckled, his sly eyes glinting with the promise of salacious rumors and scuttlebutt, his head... whole. That was the man he wanted to remember, not this desiccated corpse. And so that was what he did, visualizing the man from the past over the body of the present, replacing one for the other in his mind, just for a moment. Just long enough for something to happen.

As Rudra tried to overlay his image of his friend’s past with the horrible reality of the moment, he felt some sort of presence. Not in a physical way, but in another way that he couldn’t understand. The sensation was new to him, but if he had to describe it he would have said that it felt like some sort of pressure, like something was pushing up against him in some strangely immaterial way. Whatever it was, the object, which he could not see nor feel in the traditional sense, seemed to be getting in his way. He could feel it preventing him from his remembrances, keeping him from his goal, and so, without thinking, he pushed it away. Using his mind, or his soul, or whatever inside of him could feel this thing, he shoved it back. And Bitol began to change.

Almost as if part of a VHS tape set on rewind, the pieces of brain matter seemed to leap from the floor and reform inside his skull, the blood joining in as it flowed up into the air and back into his body. Bitol’s face and body regained its healthy color, and his eyes opened, immediately focusing in on his friend’s face.

“Rudra! How did you get over here? And why are you... holding me like this?” He sat up, confused, as Rudra and the guards looked on, flabbergasted. He did a double take when he saw the wall nearby. “What in Ruresni happened here?” he squawked. “And when did it become night? And-”

Rudra interrupted the man’s questions with a bone-crushing hug. He didn’t know how, but his friend was alive again!

“Can’t... breathe... gonna... die...”

Whoops. He lighted his grip. One Bitol death was more than enough for today.