Well, my mind was filled with questions and confusion, and uncomfortable feelings I couldn’t describe. What does Alexei have to do with all of this? After thinking about it for a while, he did say he blew up a building. Did he do that for the revolution? What did this have anything to do with me? Amidst my confusion and questioning myself, Alexei came into the room. I looked at him as if he was an alien, and he showed a wicked smile after noticing the book in my hand.

“Oh, that girl came visit you? Finally!,” said Alexei. “So? Will you join our cause?”

“What cause?” I asked, but I already knew.

“You know what I’m talking about. The revolution, my guy.” Alexei said. “Join us, and I will free you out of here.”

“Why do you need me? Why me? Was this all part of your plan for me to show up at this prison?” I asked him, slightly raising my tone.

“Well, who is better to be the face of the revolution than a Zero itself, right? They are as rare as Perfects, and would be the perfect symbol to unite all of us, the low-scorers together.” He continued. “And no, it was not in our plan for you to show up here. In fact, I was only sent here because Hano told me that I needed to get a Zero on our side and that you, a Zero, were being sent to prison. So I went ahead and planted a bomb inside a museum and let them catch me.”

He was giggling that entire time. I didn’t know how much I could have trusted him, he didn’t look, or sounded like a sane person. But when I thought about it, what was there for me to lose? I was most likely going to spend my entire life rotting away at this prison, or until one of the prison guards decided they didn’t like me anymore and put a bullet to my head. Besides, freedom sounded really nice, but I wasn’t sure I was up to be the symbol of the revolution, or whatever they wanted me to be. After considering it for a while, I decided that the first thing I needed to do was to get out of this sorry excuse of a building.

“Fine, you convinced me, what exactly do you want me to do?” I questioned Alexei. He jumped and clapped as I agreed.

“So, there are two things that I need you to do.” He leaned in closer to my ears and lowered his voice down to a whisper. “My magic is to enhance explosives. I have a very small concentration of TNT in my body, contained by a diamond container, very rare, very expensive, but immune from magic scanners. With this little concentration alone, it will leave nothing more than a dent in the prison wall. But, with my magic, I could enhance it to the point where it will most likely make a hole big enough for us to escape.”

He walked back outside of the room, looked back and forth, right and left to make sure there wasn’t anybody close to us. He then walked back to me again.

“What I need you to do, is to steal something sharp so that I could get the TNT out of my body. And since you can’t spot it, there are invisible Spirit Suppression devices hooked onto the ceiling, that’s how they keep prisoners’ Spirits in check. However, the guards have a magical device stuck on their guns to keep them from being affected by it. I need you to get that for me as well.” He finally finished.

Well, that was certainly an enormous amount of information that I just took in. I didn’t know how I would be able to do all of these. But I had to, my freedom depended on it. I nodded as I started to walk out to leave the room, nothing has changed, except then, I had a plan. I would still need other people’s help to be able to do this, but at least then, the chances of me escaping were a few times more than what I had before thanks to Alexei. Before I went out of Alexei’s view, he told me one more thing.

“Find friends, we always need more people after all!” He snickered randomly as he lay on his bed.

How could a mad man be sane enough to work with anyone, especially an organization as big as a revolution? Actually, I didn’t even know how big the revolution actually was. Their size, their numbers, their hideouts, I knew practically nothing about them. Perhaps this was how Hano and Alexei wanted to test me, a test of trust, which I had no choice but to take. I made my way down to the first floor, trying to find Paul. If I was going to escape this prison anyhow, I didn’t think I could do it without him, his strength to be specific. I searched the vacant main hall, the cafeteria was no less empty, I came to the realization that most of the inmates should be in the yard right now, working out or doing whatever prisoners do. I was greeted by the cold breeze of December when I walked into the yard. Paul was talking to another inmate, they all looked happy, more like nostalgic, as if they were reminiscing the past. Together, they looked like two boulders that could stop anything. I walked up to Paul and was greeted with an annoyed look on his friend’s face.

“Hey Paul, can I talk to you for a minute, in private of course.”

“Whatever you want to say, you can say to both of us.” He replied, with his eyes squinted.

“I’m not sure I can do that, I promise you that it would be worth your time if you would just follow me.” He glanced at me with a suspicious look.

“Hear the kid out, don’t worry about me, I will be right here all day.” The man beside him said.

He was an old man, he looked like he had been in this prison for quite an extended period of time. His prison uniform was worn out, his skin beat by the sun showing a rough tan. Paul reluctantly agreed, and I led him back into the prison cell. Alexei wasn’t there anymore, but that wasn’t my main focus at the moment. When I was going to tell him about the plan, I bit my tongue as I realized I did not know where to start.

“So, remember how you said I was probably not going to get a trial and will be spending my entire life here?” I decided to go with that approach.

“Yeah, make it quick.” He said, tapping his right foot onto the ground, his bald head reflecting the sun ray through the tiny window.

“So, I didn’t like that very much. If you would help me, I guarantee that you would be able to escape from here.” I said, half-lying. I couldn’t exactly guarantee it, but it was the best way I could think of to persuade this man.

“Are you sure you should be telling me this, kid? What if I tell you I don’t want to escape.” Even though he said that I could tell from his tone that he was buying it.

“Absolutely no one in this world wants to be in this terrible prison. Think about it, you could be free again, and you won’t have bars in your memories twenty years from now.”

He walked around the room and sat down on his bed. He buried his face into his hands as he thought about it. It was a big risk for him, if it didn’t work, they would execute him on sight, or give him a death sentence, either way, they would both have the same outcome. But he knew he had a life sentence, he knew he was never going to get out of here, I didn’t know if he had anything to live for, but I highly doubted it.

“Why me?” Paul finally asked after what felt like decades of deep thinking.

“Look at you. You have strength, and I am sure as hell you know how to fight as well.” I said. “You are built with discipline, not just some random street fighter. Were you military?”

He shook his head. “They wouldn’t let someone that scored in the single digits to be in the military. I was a ring fighter.” That might be even better, that means he is a highly-skilled fighter. “I will help you, only if my old friend could come with me as well. Don’t worry, he is one of the best fighters I have ever seen.” He was referring to the old man at the yard earlier.

“If he would help us and not slow us down in any way, I don’t see a problem with it,” I said. “Come, let’s go get him.”

He nodded and I followed him back out to the yard. To Paul’s surprise, the old man wasn’t there. I found it to be strange as well, he was supposed to be there. I scanned the yard again, in the corner of my eyes, I could see a guard holding the old man at gunpoint, leading him away to somewhere. I tapped Paul on the shoulder and pointed in that direction. We started walking toward that place. The cop was leading the old man to an alley at the side of the prison while angrily yelling at the man. The old man was obedient, he didn’t want to fight back, it didn’t look like this was the first time it happened to the old man either. When we arrived at the back alley, the old man was on the ground as the cop was beating him. It was the same cop that ordered Paul this morning.

“Boxing champion huh? Are you still a boxing champion now!?” He was stomping on the man as he said that.

Paul rushed over to stop the guard, swearing at the top of his lungs. But the guard noticed him first. He pulled out his pistol, threatening Paul to shoot if he moved any closer. Paul was stopped dead on his feet.

“You see, this is what happens when you people don’t listen to me. You should have just listened to me earlier, then I wouldn’t have to take out my anger on him. This is all your fault!” The cop was laughing at Paul, ridiculing him. “Let me teach you how things work at this prison, you don’t listen to your superiors, you get this!” He stomped the old man’s stomach again. Paul was furious, I swore I could see smoke coming out of his ears. He didn’t dare say a thing, however, or else the cop might put a bullet in every single one of us. But, for a split moment, a very slight moment that no one would have noticed if they weren’t focused on the situation. The cop was enjoying his moments beating the old man up so much that he pointed his gun slightly away from Paul for just a split second. But being the experienced fighter that Paul was, he took that chance to immediately engaged the cop with a left hook. The cop was surprised, and the entire yard heard a shot.

The old man was lying on the ground, bleeding from his chest. The guard was lying on the ground as well, his jaw took the full impact of that left hook.

“NO!” Paul kneeled down to the old man. “Common, coach, you been through much worse than this. You gonna be ok, you gonna be ok, coach.” There was doubt in his voice, his tears streamed down his face, even he knew deep down inside that the old man, his old coach apparently, was not going to make it. Taking this chance, before anyone could come into this alley and saw what was happening, I rushed over to the guard lying on the ground and took his gun. I hid it behind my back, putting my shirt out of my pants to cover it up.

“Get out of here Paul, go before they get you.” The old man said before finally losing consciousness.

He was right, we needed to get out of here quick, but there was a problem. The guard knew we did this, and he would know if his gun got stolen. I needed to silence him, make sure he never speaks again. I held up his gun, my hands shaking. If I pulled the trigger, it would be the first time that I killed another human being. But I didn’t have a choice, I had to do it, for my freedom. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger and turned away. I hurried Paul to leave, and he knew he had to leave as well, so we fled the scene. Paul and I swiftly blended in with the crowd of inmates as they started running in the gunshot’s direction. The inmates were excited, it had been a while since they had such a commotion. We blended in with them, hoping that they were more focused on the scene in the alley than us.

I have seen it all, all that I needed to see. When the other prison guards arrived at the scene a few seconds later, they didn’t even care about the old man. They cared more about the body of the oppressor than the oppressed. I could see how lower-scored people were treated in this world, and something inside me was born. A new feeling of hatred. I wasn’t going to stop at just achieving my freedom, I would free my people from oppression as well.

I decided to join the revolution.