“Move the Headstones!” Piotr shouted, firing off a marble into one of their heat guns, filling its barrel with yellow energy and twisting its shape in on itself, closing it. Piotr then lunged forward, grabbing the far smaller guards in his bear-sized arms before crashing them against the opposite, knocking their heads together.

“Oh no! Piotr kidnapped me, a normal guy, and hurt a bunch of guards who are my friends!” Thomas shouted at the barely conscious officers who had fallen down against the wall. Piotr shot him a look.

“What? I can’t use my Civ, remember? They know who you are, I still have a shot at leading a normal life!” Thomas whispered.

Piotr picked up and undid his change to the heat gun, before handing it over to Thomas. “Tell them I will make you help me escape or I will kill your dog or something.”

The two escapees began to sneak their way down the various hallways of cells that lined the prison. “Did you hear where they’re keeping Cyrille?”

“I know it’s maximum security, so we probably would have noticed if we went past it. I can’t use my Civ in view of anybody, but I can do some recon with phantom eyes. Although last time I did that, I went blind, so maybe it can be a last resort,” Thomas said as a handful of other guards appeared at the end of the hallway and an alarm began to blare over the loudspeakers, prompting Thomas and Piotr to run back into the cafeteria as the guards opened fire. Thomas and Piotr flipped over a table that hadn’t been properly screwed to the ground and used it to block some of their fire. “Hey, they actually have an alarm here! Surprising,” Thomas chuckled, marvelling at the dance of red lights and loud alarms that were overhead.

“Thomas, I need you to pretend to be my hostage,” Piotr whispered. “Then, I’ll hit the guards with my Civ,” Piotr suggested as they heard the guards sprint towards their flipped-over table.

“Okay, I’ll try it,” Thomas said hesitantly before standing up, hands raised in the air. “Don’t shoot. I’m a hostage!” Thomas was immediately shot, a heat bullet piercing and burning his shoulder and sending him falling to the ground, hitting his head on the concrete floor. “Fuck, why did we think that would work?” Thomas yelled, clutching his bullet wound and massaging the back of his head. Piotr had returned fire with the screws from the table, and Thomas looked over to see three guards whose hands had been contorted into strange mish-mashes of fingers and meat. The two quietly walked past their screaming figures without trying to think too hard about how awful that must be. “Please tell me you can fix that?”

“Uh, it’s a process, Thomas. We have bigger things to worry about now, come on.” Piotr tried his best to reassure Thomas of the morality of his decision. Thomas and Piotr had been evading gunfire from behind them as they ran down the nearest corridor, past seemingly endless cells of prisoners shouting and screaming at the duo. Thomas had occasionally fired back with his heat gun while Piotr deflected some of their heat bullets albeit with a bit of burning to his hands. It made Thomas wonder what Blair was up to—and if he’d ever see her again.

Eventually, they came to a huge metal door that towered over that of every other cell they had seen. This has to be it. Am I ready to end this? Thomas thought and took a deep breath. I have to be. Thomas kept their six covered while Piotr used Move the Headstones to make his way through the door, but it wasn’t going as fast as they needed. Piotr had been hit a few times—in the back and leg—although he was large enough that an individual wound didn’t kill as much of his body compared to a normal person.

“I got it, Thomas!” Piotr shouted, prying the circular hatch open and gesturing for Thomas to come inside. An opportunity that Thomas gladly took, walking in after Piotr while he shut and undid his changes to it, sealing the guards out.

But sealing them in.

They could tell the interior of the cell was very large, despite it being pitch black. Piotr’s Unit had been disabled, meaning he couldn’t light up a mental flashlight like Thomas could, and when he did, he saw a large cylindrical room whose bounds were too far off to see. He didn’t know where Cyrille was. He could tell that this place was likely a pod—one that could probably detach from the prison’s main building and be carried off to the DSH by itself, without Cyrille needing to leave.

“What do you think of this place, Piotr?” Thomas turned back through the pod to look for his companion, but he was gone. “Piotr?” he asked, his heart rate rising and rising as he worried about the flaw in their plan—that it may be the last stupid plan they would ever make. “Cyrille, you bastard, where the fuck are you?” Thomas shouted.

Suddenly, he felt something pass by him. How the fuck did he get behind me? How the fuck did he— Thomas’s thought was interrupted as he felt multiple blows strike his back, and he fell face-first onto the ground, smashing into the pod’s cold metal.

When Thomas stood up, Cyrille was nowhere to be found, if that had even been Cyrille who attacked him. Neither was the door. He had somehow ended up near the middle of the pod. “Piotr! Piotr, we have to get out of here! Now!” Thomas yelled, screaming, almost crying at the pain all over his body. All he remembered was Cyrille appearing behind him and striking him in the shoulders and sending him to the ground, but now somehow almost every part of his body was aching and screaming, and now he didn’t know where he was. Thomas then saw Piotr, but he wasn’t conscious. His limp body was sliding across the floor, not being touched by anything. Is he fucking with gravity or something? Thomas rushed to Piotr, but suddenly, he was past him, flying into a wall of the pod, and Piotr was now nowhere in sight. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?” Thomas screamed, blood streaming down his face, tears welling in his eyes as he hugged the wall with his arms, cowering away, back in the corner like he was years ago. No. No, I have to get out of here. If this is a pod, then there needs to be a way to grab it and detach it, which means it can’t just be sitting underground. It has to be outside! “PHANTRANA!” Thomas shouted, glowing light filling his fist as he slammed it into the wall of the pod bay, sending a dent into its metal frame and a searing pain in his arm as he broke every one of his fingers. But he didn’t care, he had to keep going. His hand was looking like a glowing purple version of those horrible masses of meat that Piotr’s Civ had created. But eventually, he broke through, the light of the caverns outside of the pod filling a tiny section of the darkness. Then, his hand was through the hole again, and the jagged edges of the metal hole were slicing into his forearm, sending jets of blood rushing out of his hand as he waved to the outside world, trying to get the attention of anyone who could see him.