Chapter 1: Execution.
“Inmate No. 125, Age: 21, Gender: Male, Date of Execution: 12th March, 20XX…”
The rustling of paper from a clipboard filled the steel container of a room, reeking with chemicals.
“Method of execution: Lethal Injection. Special meal: dismissed.”
Mechanical. Cold. The prison warden’s voice crept over the uniform cell, its glaring fluorescent bulbs contrasting sharply with his inky, elongating shadow, widening up like a monster’s gaping maw.
Hollow sockets. Sandpaper skin.
A star-shaped scar crossed his chin, flexing and stretching ominously with each syllable he spoke.
The Warden continued rattling off the checkboxes. A list of names, locations, and times.
It made the rookie officer next to him suppress a yawn, having just snuck through the unlocked steel door after realizing that he was damningly late to their appointment.
But not much escaped the old man’s senses.
Those dead eyes stared at him for a moment, contemplating, before landing back on his work.
“You… must be the new recruit.”
He rasped solemnly. “You should go.”
“This place is not for someone like you, recommendation or not. Please leave.”
A bony finger pointed back towards the door, clear in its message. So blunt? The officer felt stunned, having never experienced such a gruff temperament before, let alone have to tolerate through it. His cheeks reddened slightly in shame and anger.
The Warden wasn’t even looking in his direction anymore.
Yet he couldn’t show his discomfort in the end, lest he lose the precious opportunity he’d received.
“Ahaha…” The officer chuckled awkwardly, sweating a bit. “I am truly sorry for my tardiness, sir.”
“Please accept this sincere apology of mine.”
He bowed his head and torso 90 degrees, only releasing his posture when he felt a pair of eyes bore into him once more, and heard the low grunt sounding soon after.
A crammed clipboard was awaiting him when he looked up, shoved unceremoniously into his chest.
“I’m telling you one last time.” That rasping voice suddenly gained a dark, gloomy undertone, “This is a place of death. I will not be taking responsibility for your wellbeing here.”
“Do not mess up.”
With that sinister warning, the clipboard finally dropped into his scrambling arms, as its owner then walked across the reinforced steel box, and pulled a wheelchair into view.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Saline solution. An IV bag, almost empty. And a patient, unconscious on the chair, eyes firmly shut.
Normal things. Ordinary things. Things you would often see in a hospital or prison like this.
Yet, at that moment, a dreaded chill swam throughout the officer’s body. The type of chill that froze his blood solid, that pumped his system full of adrenaline in an instant, preparing him for the worst.
Because those common things, had been twisted into a monstrosity.
The sleeping man on the wheelchair was heavily bound. A straightjacket, pristine and white, limiting his movements. A straightjacket, that also gleamed with heavy metal. Shackles, chains, locks, woven into an asymmetrical, intertwining pattern of endless restraints, thick enough to cage even a lion.
Is this necessary?
What an insane precaution.
Incredulous thoughts went through his head. Confusion and a scoff, just barely contained.
It was merely a man. Merely a criminal. You’d think they were containing a beast!
“We will be killing this inmate tonight.” However, the Warden’s timbre did not change, as if he saw everything here as expected. As if, all this ridiculousness… was a must.
“Give it your utmost. Or I might end up burying you alongside him.”
Hah. “…alright.” Crazy codger.
K-rack, k-r-rack, krack!
Boom!
Rumbling. The lights above them suddenly flickered; their florescent hum drowned out by a roaring explosion that shifted about dust, and threw up an earthy smell. The Warden’s grizzled hand quickly shot across one of the numerous steel tables, pre-emptively catching a vial of chemicals, just before it could shatter onto the white-tiled floor.
The officer wobbled slightly, anxiously exclaiming.
“Woah! W-what was that? An earthquake?!”
The old man carefully slid the vial back into place, expressionless as always. Yet, his silence seemed a bit longer than usual, his empty eyes heavy and downcast while he spoke:
“A [Rift].”
The uniformed man immediately turned pale.
That word. That blasted word. It was something none living in this world would not know. Something no one would dare forget. A word like a rusted dagger, slowly twisting within the wounds of millions.
“The [Tower].” The officer murmured, “I thought the prison was safe from its influence!”
The Warden didn’t respond this time, but merely shook his head discontentedly, seeming annoyed.
Until the rumbling subsided, the old man stood there silently. A crooked spine and bent posture, yet his aged muscles rippled through his uniform nonetheless, like a coiling snake, ready to strike.
“The prison has been restless of late… its influence is expanding. Nowadays, it seems even the air itself has a bad smell to it. A putrid stink of limitless malice…”
He spat viciously on the floor. His whisper of a voice turned solid.
“Finish the checklist, I’ll prepare the equipment. The doctor will not be coming in today.”
The rookie responded swiftly this time.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
The Warden paused a bit when he heard him, before wheeling the inmate away without a sound.
Left alone with the clipboard, the officer decided to first satisfy his curiosity, flipping over to the first few pages for a quick peek at the criminal’s information. Unfortunately, the name, alongside most of his private details, had been interestingly blanked out.
Hmph. What a let-down. Did they not know anything about him? Or were they hiding it?
Regardless, he went through the shallow profiling:
[Name: [EXPUNGED]]
[Age: 21, Gender: Male, Height: 189cm, Weight: 124kg]
[Description: A tall male with weight disproportionate to his lanky frame. He has short, dyed black hair, and numerous scars of all sizes crossing his entire body. We have not yet finished identifying the sources of these scars, but stab, slashes, gunshot, and burn wounds seem to be common.]
[The inmate was found bleeding to death at the scene of the crime with a knife in hand.]
[He overpowered several police officers, even at the verge of death, and was tasered thrice before the station successfully detained him.]
[Investigation into the factory revealed that roughly 40+ people inside had been stabbed to death, in various fashions, while attempting to defend themselves with guns.]
[The police force confiscated the firearms.]
[There were no survivors.]
[The Inmate was linked to numerous other group killings, along with a few individual murders.]
[These crimes seem to have been premeditated, but there is no evidence showing that the victims possess any relations to each other, be it familial or work related. They also seemed to possess no relations to the perpetrator. Thus, the case closed as a string of ‘Random Murders’.]
[The Federal Court of [EXPUNGED] quickly found the Inmate guilty of multiple Class A felonies.]
[His sentence: Execution by lethal injection]
[Effective immediately upon admission.]
[End report.]
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“. . .” Yikes. The rookie skimmed through the remaining text. It was all stuff that old codger had been repeating earlier. No need to look any further, then.
Moreover, it seemed the Warden was finally done with his preparations.
He placed the checklist on the edge of a steel table.
“Preparations?”
“We’re ready to go, sir.”
And the old man’s scarred lips twisted into a faint resemblance of a smirk, “…good.”
He lifted a syringe. Clear, colourless, the liquid inside reflected the dull white of its surroundings. The officer even looked slightly put off by it, though the Warden simply smiled. His features contorted; a disgusting glee. His eyes finally gleamed wet with emotion.
“This is the best part.” Spittle flew as he uttered those words. As he laughed. A dry, gruesome giggle like the ones a gargoyle would make, grimacing all the way.
How disgusting.
“But no. Not yet, not yet… do you know what this is?”
The last part of his psychotic ramblings seemed to be directed at the rookie.
Crazy codger. “No, no I do not, sir.” Obviously, it was a damn sedative. Nonetheless, it was better to be answered than have to answer, especially when this ‘sir’ was—curse him—clearly out of his mind.
He stroked the cylinder containing the sedative, caressing it almost lovingly as he explained:
“Carfentanil.”
Ah. That…
“10,000 times more potent than morphine. 100 times more potent than fentanyl. We mainly use it as a tranquilizer for elephants. Of course, some idiots in the past also mixed them with heroin and sold them for cash. Needless to say… that caused a few dozen happy deaths.”
Black. A black void. A whirlpool of murky atrocities reared its head from beneath his falling mask.
“2mg is enough to kill. One single grain of rice’s worth is sufficient…”
The Warden’s voice cracked at the seams as darkness spilled out, piling gruesomely onto the floor.
“To think I actually get to administer it to a human! In 30-minute intervals, at an amount that’d kill even a crazed drug addict in seconds! Kehahaha! What great, great tolerance! Truly amazing!”
Insanity. Well, it did make sense that no one inside the world’s most secure prison would be sane.
The rookie scratched the back of his head in appal.
However, rather unfortunately, this caused the lunatic’s attention to turn once more, onto him.
“Are you laughing at something?” “No, sir.”
An abrupt pause. The Warden’s neck snapped towards his direction. Purple poison, leaking out of his bloodshot eyes, grasped at the officer’s neck, like the tendrils of some horrible monstrosity.
“Are you laughing?” “…no, sir.”
Frantic, crazed pupils darted around the room, without rhyme nor reason. The poison needle in his hands raised ever so slightly. Contemplating. Thinking.
But, alas, it lowered in the end.
Whew. The rookie breathed a sigh of relief as the old man turned away, as if not understanding the amount of danger he had been put under, ignorantly living to see another hour.
“Um. So, uh, you’re going to kill him with that, sir?” A sudden bold question. Senseless, even.
The Warden’s back shook upon hearing those words. His head of white hair trembled for a moment, though his syringe-hand remained stationary, positioned directly over the inmate’s IV catheter.
The old man had the look of someone desperately trying to hold in both a laugh and a yell.
“Kill him? No. This is an official execution, you insolent rookie. I don’t ‘murder’ anyone here.”
He held up the quarter-full syringe and flicked it with his finger once.
“Not to mention... this amount is only enough to put that abomination to sleep.”
“I’ll administer the sedative.” He then threw a needle, connected to a long, thin tube, at the officer. It was identical to the one currently inserted into the prisoner’s neck, “Take this.” Perhaps they were unable to insert a common peripheral IV, probably due to that stupid straightjacket locker nonsense, and ended up using something a tad more drastic. “Find a spot.”
The rookie took the backup needle and immediately smiled wryly, his features slightly contorting.
What could he even do with this?
All the usable veins had been covered, rendering them unavailable, and the external jugular vein was already being used… Hah. There was no easy way to access a vein at the moment.
And there was also no way a prison warden who could perform a lethal injection by himself—
The Warden empty eyes suddenly bent into a pair of crescent moons.
—wouldn’t know that.
“Are you just going to stand around? Insert the needle, you insolent rookie.”
This was blatant harassment.
The officer’s hand trembled for a moment. Was it out of fear? Out of rage?
Maybe he wanted to stab that needle straight into the Warden’s neck, and twist it until he’s pumped full of that poison he seemed to love so much.
The uniformed man’s eyelids briefly flickered. Until-
“Ahaha! My apologies, sir.” A smiling mask took over his face, “My medical knowledge is too basic, so I would only end up getting in your way, sir.” He lowered his gaze once more, his hands gripping the syringe tightly. Tch. Dammit. How embarrassing.
But it was all going to be worth it in the end. An opportunity of a lifetime awaited him.
“Humph. I will be having a talk with your superior later.”
The rookie kept quiet.
Turning around in disdain, the Warden inserted the tip of the syringe into the catheter, not daring to tarry any further. His dosage required precision. Timing. Amount. More than enough, and the inmate would suffer. Less than enough, and that abomination of a man… would wake.
He could not risk that.
Just as he was about to administer the dose—
Ring! Ring! Ring!
An old, out of fashion flip-phone rang from inside his pocket.
“. . .” The old man’s movements paused. “Why now?”, he muttered. There was a time and place for everything, but although he wished to ignore that call, not answering the caller would be dangerous.
Since only one person in the world possessed this specific contact of his.
Click.
“General.” The Warden cursed underneath his breath, “To what do I owe the displeasure.”
Krrk. Bzzt. The line was too choppy. Static, buzzing and clearing, droned out the surroundings, as the indistinct voice of a middle-aged man bore through the blurred reception.
“Warden.” The call immediately broke off, before reconnecting, “—you should be careful. [Tower]’s influence is growing greater than expected.” A notable crash sounded from the other side. Shouting could be heard. Screams. Gunshots.
The old man’s eyes darkened in shade.
“Some unknown personnel have infiltrated the prison.” Bang! “Hurry up and be done with it.”
In the distance, a hoarse yell of fear.
“Major General, it’s here! Fall back!”
It was at that moment when a chill crept up the Warden’s spine for the first time in a long while.
His every nerve standing to attention, at that familiar ‘tsk tsk’.
Like the strike of a clockhand on midnight.
A shrill tick-ticking, that anyone alive in the last two years would recognize.
But it wasn’t alone. Thousands of legs, thousands of ‘tsk’s’, snapped into the earth. Clicking, as they dug through soil and dirt. Clacking, as they snipped bone and slashed flesh open; like a blossoming, murderous red rose.
[Danger rank: B; Category: 3.0]
Human-like howling filled the metal cell. Human-like, but metallic. Artificial. Monstrous.
A howl so perfectly human-like that it betrayed its own inhumanity.
The deafening, defining shriek of a ‘Screecher’ pierced through his ears, plunging the room—and the call—into silence. In the background, something clattered softly onto the ground. The rookie gasped, bending down to pick it back up, his figure shaking.
The Warden lowered the phone’s volume to its minimum.
And for a long while… there was nothing. Just plain static.
Yet the next line the General spoke, after almost a solid minute, was the clearest of them all.
“Kill everyone that is with you. There must be no witnesses.”
Click.
The call ended as suddenly as it started.
The old man’s already grimacing expression twisted grotesquely. Was the situation worsening much more than expected? He silently palmed the handgun at his hip, keeping it out of view. Silencing the call was a good idea. Crying, begging, a struggle. All things he did not want to deal with right now.
Click.
His gun was already loaded.
“Hm.” The newbie was more silent than he expected. Maybe he had been scared shitless.
No matter. As respect for a fellow colleague’s subordinate… the old man would make his death fast.
Hm. But exactly whose subordinate was he again?
The Warden turned around—
Bang!
And the lights flickered off. The tremoring from the [Rift] had disrupted the electrical conduits inside the prison, something the old man was well aware of, having worked in the establishment for years.
It was also how he instantly knew.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
That he’d missed his first shot completely, despite pointing the muzzle directly at the rookie’s head.
Three panicked shots rang out in succession. However, it was far too late. The needle from a syringe, previously dropped on the floor, made its way straight into his neck. As the newbie officer’s laughing expression leered over him, the falling Warden only managed to squeeze in one single thought.
[Caeleste Iudicium]
Heavenly Judgement.
The old man knelt hard onto the floor with his head bowed, as if a devout priest, praying to his god.
A god that was currently grinning widely at his predicament.
“Ahahaha! You—you tried to kill me. Did the man on the phone order you to do that?”
Whatever remained of the anxious—yet weirdly senseless—rookie was gone. The man who replaced him carried an aura of pride and elation around him. With hands of bloody silver.
“The Major General, right?” He chuckled.
“We always knew he was an odd fella. The one general who didn’t succumb to our organization.”
“Nevertheless,” The smiling man swiftly stripped the Warden of his handgun, “To think he would be working with someone so important to us!” He then kicked the old man in the chest, causing him to wheeze terribly in pain, as symptoms of overdose were already starting to show.
“Ahhww, don’t be such a baby. You barely put enough in there to make me yawn.” A cruel drawl.
The imposter picked up a chair, before seating himself directly in front of the breathless Warden.
“It’s you, right? The person from the movies they show us.”
“I never thought I would meet the creator of ‘Mercy’ here.” His languid voice suddenly sharpened.
“So this poison which flows through my veins were of your making, huh? Doctor.”
Thump!
An iron-soled boot stomped ruthlessly onto the old man’s hand, shattering every bone within. Yet no chilling scream or shriek filled the air. Perhaps the one who called himself Warden could scarcely feel anything anymore, numbed by the opioids.
“Your acting was quite good.”
But the smiling man didn’t care much about that.
“Evan Hawthorn.” He bluntly stated, “Ex-director of the Drug Research Department. Changing your name and face cannot erase your sins as traitor to the organization, now helping another traitor at that.” A subtle pressure coalesced around the disgraced doctor’s throat while the man smiled.
“Urgh. Urp. Grah—!” The old man choked on his own spit, unable to breathe.
Like two invisible hands were wrapped around his windpipe. Their iron cage twisted a deep red. Was it the drug? His entire vision, tinted crimson. Blurring around the edges.
‘No, that isn’t it.’
It was his Bloodlust.
As the doctor’s subconscious began to fade away, he recalled this titbit from his past.
‘Children who are exposed to ‘Mercy’ will immediately undergo an extreme growth, akin to puberty. I presume it acts almost like a steroid, stimulating muscle growth, quickening their development.’
That cynical voice invaded his mind, of a memory he would rather die than experience again.
His breathing grew shallower and shallower.
“Capturing and killing two high profile traitors… Capt*** will surely be pleased—Hm? Doctor? *** you *****? Want ** to help *** with th**?”
The old man could no longer understand what his killer was saying; it was distorted beyond belief.
‘We did away with most of the side effects, but the withdrawal symptoms are rather severe.’
His head filled with a monotonous drone. A low hum, a sickening spiel, leaving him nauseous.
‘Most importantly, we found out that after training, the children’s mentality, which had been altered drastically, evolved a never seen before wonder!’
He squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to stop these images flooding his brain.
‘This is all thanks to you, Doctor Hawthorn.’
He wanted to die.
‘The Organization appreciates your continued efforts.’
The doctor’s eyes ripped open, staring bloodshot at the muzzle of a gun pointing directly at his head.
And the blank expression of one of his own creations, come to finally end him.
Working with the general. Betraying the organization. Killing. Saving. They were all selfish acts. Made to placate the regret that plagued him every waking night. Every time he opened his eyes.
Evan Hawthorn had been a crazed man of medicine.
But there were lines even he knew he never should’ve crossed.
The doctor struggled to speak.
“I… am… sorry. Child. Because of an old man’s… mistake, your life was… sorry, sorry. I am truly—”
Bang!
A corpse fell to the ground with a bullet through its skull.
The smiling man scowled, spitting on the floor at the body’s feet, “Fucking, that old geezer, begging for his life so pathetically. Rambling bullshit on and on! Sorry? Sorry?! How dare he, hah!”
He aimed the handgun at the corpse’s face. His hands shook from anger, before eventually relaxing.
There was no time for this.
The assassin’s attention cleanly shifted onto his main target for tonight’s mission:
The unconscious monster, still bound to its wheelchair.
The second traitor.