At the rear of the boiler room, I found a steel door. It had a lock, but the lock had been shot off. The door hung open and beyond was darkness. No lights filled the corridor. I had to rely on my night vision as I stepped through.

Chains hung from the wall with cuffs and wood buckets. A stretch rack was just beyond them with all the tools to torment or gut a victim. A steel chair with cuffs built into the legs and an electrified helmet. A bed of nails, some skinning tools then another door with the lock blown off.

I stepped through to see a long run of steel bar cages. None were tall enough to stand up in or long enough to lay down. Drains ran along the floor toward the back of the ship. The steel cages ran on for a city block then more torture devices.

It was here that I heard Goar's deep voice. I heard him but could not see him. Another booming voice carried to me, who I had to assume was Popeye. Their voices sounded metallic. Like they were talking inside a thin-walled metal tank.

I stepped around a ten foot long, thick wood butcher block. It was about then I began to wonder about Brax's true intentions. Behind the butcher block was a trash chute with a spring-loaded door. You could sling something against the door and the door would allow the trash to pass down the shoot and spring shut again.

I reached out and tipped the door down with my hand. The metal chute was wide enough to drop a truck engine down through. It was long and sloped down several stories before it was too dark for even my eyes to see. I glanced back at the butcher block then down at the drains under the table.

I shook off the goosebumps that ran up my spine. He was a creepy little hunchback. I kind of wanted to punch the creep in his furry yellow teeth.

"I'm wide open now, One Eye. Throw another tub at me now." Goar shouted from the bottom of the trash chute. "Can't be scared all your life big man."

I slid one of the cuff chairs over to the chute and climbed up on it. Holding the edges of the chute I slipped my legs in first. I hesitated a moment remembering my fall on the grating. I glanced at my data pad and found I was at half health. The shop was going to kill me before my prisoners did. I pondered the likelihood of a surprise death trap at the bottom of the chute.

Taking a long breath, I slid down the chute and heard the door smack shut behind me. I was blackness skating down what Brax hoped to turn into a bloody waterslide, to an unknown room, with an outraged Minotaur and an angry Cyclops.

I only had seconds to consider it before I was shot out like a cannonball flipping and cartwheeling through the unknown room. I slammed into Goar and knocked him into the wall. The mini gun flew from his hand and smacked me in the head.

He pulled back his other hand to punch me, "Rage?" We untangled and Goar picked up his gun glancing around. "Did you see the Cyclops?" He touched his head where blood was oozing down his face. "Ugly Bugeye hit me upside the head with a bathtub."

"Tell him he's back here." Tootsie screeched from further back in the room. "He found the back door, hurry up before he finds the lever."

"Follow me." I turned to run toward the back. The room was made of extra thick steel. It was a long room roughly as wide as a semi-trailer and twice as long. There were two grooves the length of each wall that my arm could fit in with equidistant ridges at the bottom of the grooves.

Piles of scrap metal, wood and wires were healed to the ceiling. Broken furniture and shards of glass. An overhead pipe dumped water down onto one of the piles then stopped. The smell revealed where the couple of gallons had come from.

"Too late, he found the lever." Tootsie called from somewhere beyond the next pile of trash.

I ran up a pile just as an alarm went off. Red lights sunk in the steel walls began flashing. Sirens bellowed. "He's going to escape out the back." I called back to Goar. The minotaur was trying to climb the pile with one hand and cradle his new gun in his other arm. "We have to hurry. He will lead Hermes right to us."

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying. You climb this crap like a spider." Goar gasped.

I pushed through a hole in the trash pile and saw the panicked face of the Cyclops on the other side. He was scratching at the heavy steel door like a panicked cat. It wasn't opening. I could see the seam in the door about waist high on the giant.

The strange thing was I could hear heavy gears moving. I paused and looked around perplexed. Something big was definitely happening. There was too much noise. Goar finally caught up and tumbled through the hole on top of me.

We both rolled down the heap of trash and slammed down into the back of Popeyes knees. The giant fell back on us, and I lost my breath pinned in a ball under the giant and the massive minotaur.

I tried to push them up to take in a breath, but my arms were spread wide, and I was face down. In smelly trash. Sewage-soaked trash. It was then that I realized where we were and what was moving. We were in a trash compactor. A very big one. The door wouldn't open until we had been compacted back against it. Then we would be crapped out the back of the giant centipede. I was right, the stupid ship would kill me before these idiots had a chance to.