“An executive? Dad, isn’t that one of those guys you said we should be careful of?” Lisa asked me.

“Yes, I’d rather not fight those unless we need to,” I said, glancing at the prison. Though my daughters could beat an executive, I had no interest in bandying about the information.

Rosalind looked between us, and then turned to Arim. “When did he arrive?”

“Yesterday,” Arim replied, “solitary, and displeased.”

“Displeased? Why?”

“The President sent him to download Samara.”

Rosalind’s eyes widened at that, and then she almost started to run for the door. “Hold on!” I called out to get her to stop, “what’s he talking about?”

There was a moment where Rosalind looked like she was going to ignore me, and instead run into the prison. Then she turned and hurriedly walked back. “Samara is getting downloaded.”

“And what’s that mean?”

Rosalind paused at my question, and then inclined her head slightly. “I apologize, I failed to realize your limited knowledge of our society. Downloading is forced memory acquisition, followed by elimination.”

“And without her your group falls apart, doesn’t it?”

“Negative,” Rosalind said with a shake of her head, “but her memory contains critical information on our organization.”

If I was to make use of them as a tool, it was obvious how this would be bad for me. “Fine, don’t worry I’ll help you get her out before they kill her. Do you guys know where she’s at in there?”

Rosalind glanced at Arim. He gave a very slow nod of his head, but then frowned. “I never saw her personally, but she was in the south-western corner of the second floor.”

I studied the prison again. The hard metal exterior had a nigh impossible smoothness to it, but aside from that I saw nothing else. No sign of weapons, no slits or traps, and that gave me an idea.

“Follow me then,” I said, as I walked away from the front of the prison, instead moving over to the right.

“Where are you going? The entrance isn’t that way!” Rosalind called out after me, but I ignored her and continued on.

The unnatural smoothness of the wall continued even as I walked the full extent of the prison wall. I continued to keep an eye out for any sign of something different, like perhaps a window, but by the time I neared the south-western corner I’d found nothing.

“Guess we’re doing it the hard way then,” I commented to myself.

I stepped up to the wall and put my left hand a few inches away from it, with my fingers fully extended. The crystal system in the forearm hummed as I activated it, and thin beams of light shot from each of my fingertips into the wall.

“What are you up to?” Lisa asked as she, and the others, followed after me.

“If we go in the front door we’ll have to deal with whatever defenses this place has,” I said, “but if we go in from the side it should be a lot easier.”

“Arim could’ve gotten us past the first security checks though!” Rosalind shouted, “if we go in this way they’ll know as soon as you open the hole!”

“That’s fine, we’ll be close enough to your friend that it won’t matter.”

With my disagreement of her Rosalind took a few steps away, but she didn’t run off. Instead she crossed her arms and glared at the prison.

Since I’d been left alone my progress went smooth, and as I continued to cut away at the metal exterior I adjusted the aim of my fingertips. After almost an hour of work I’d cut a rough rectangular frame into the wall.

“You didn’t pierce all the way to the interior,” Rosalind commented.

“Like you said, once we breach the wall the alarms will probably start,” I told her, and then I motioned toward Lisa, “if you would be so kind as to knock?”

“Aw, thanks daddy,” Lisa said as she almost skipped over to the wall. She lifted up one hand, clenching it tightly into a fist, and then punched the center of my makeshift door.

Even without her halo the strength she had was excessive for the task, and the chunk of metal slammed into the wall opposite of the exterior.

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I went in first, making certain to stop Lisa from charging in, as I didn’t want my daughters to potentially step into a deadly trap. The interior of the room we’d opened into was dim, but it was flawlessly clean of any type of dust. The walls were lined with numerous tools, most of which I couldn’t recognize, and a single body was forcefully hung via straps on the southern wall.

Rosalind was the next one through the hole I’d made, and her eyes narrowed at the sight of the person stuck to the wall. When Arim came through the hole she whispered a few words to him, and then turned her attention to the only door in the room.

When Lisa started to come through the gap in the wall I held up one hand. “Hold your position here, you two will protect our exit,” I told her, “and don’t pout. If I need your help I’ll call you.”

“It’s not fair, you keep leaving us out of these fights,” Lisa protested, though she didn’t come any further into the prison.

“With Toma here I believe it is unwise to leave them outside,” Rosalind said.

I shook my head. “We’re not here to fight him, this is a rescue mission. Trust me.”

I studied the door, noticing that it wasn’t a thick and heavy armored one. Instead it seemed to be a very mundane type, though why a prison would have such a simple door for a cell was beyond me.

When I glanced back over at the person who’d been hung up, I saw that Arim had taken them off of the wall and laid them on the ground. He was in the midst of sliding his fingers all over the body, his eyes half-closed as though he was meditating.

“How are we going to find your leader?” I asked Rosalind.

“Uncertain,” she replied.

I resisted the urge to knock her upside the head, and instead reached out and slid my hand along the side of the doorframe. Though I moved my hand over the control system it didn’t respond to the shell’s fingers.

“Allow me to unlock it,” Rosalind said as she started to take a step forward.

Yet when she waved her hand in front of the scanner it didn’t respond. I gently put one hand on her shoulder, and then said, “Don’t worry, just stand aside.”

Once she’d stepped to the side I imitated Lisa, as I punched the door as hard as I could. I set limits to the shell, so that it wouldn’t break anything in the process, but it was still enough force to break the door open.

The hallway that was revealed was wide, though on the opposite side was another closed cell. I strode out into the hallway, the red light that coated me one that seemed to pulse at a slow rate. It took me a few seconds to realize that the lights of the hallway were all pulsating, and that the pattern of it seemed to lead to where I was.

“Some sort of guidance lighting?” I wondered aloud as I studied the lights.

“Correct,” Rosalind said as she followed me out into the hallway, “this helps the security locate the intruders.”

As if in response to her comment three identical figures approached us from the north. Each of the Architect drones carried no visible weapons, but given their nanite tech I knew that was only temporary.

I unslung the rifle that I’d carried on my back, the new sleeker design fitting comfortably in my hands. I pumped the grip that ran along the bottom of the gun, and then before the drones got closer I fired off the energy grenade.

The tactic they opted for surprised me, as the closest drone was pushed even closer by the other two. The ensuing explosion destroyed the drone on contact, and during the bright flash I lost sight of the other two drones.

Which didn’t matter to me, as I calmly aimed the rifle at where their heads had last been and fired off two quick shots. By the time I could see past where the grenade had exploded, the two remaining drones had collapsed with precise holes through their heads.

“Efficient,” Rosalind complimented me.

I slung the rifle back over my shoulder. “Only because they’re weak. Where do we go?”

Rosalind motioned in the direction of the dead drones. “There should be an elevator near the center.”

With that information I moved on ahead, ignoring the fact that Arim had yet to join us in the hall. There was little he could do at the time which would worry me.

As we walked past door after door I started to wonder about the prison itself. “Exactly what metal is this?” I asked Rosalind, my curiosity finally winning out.

“A customized type of titanium. There’s an excessive quantity in the mountain.”

I nodded my head, as I’d thought it might be something along those lines. Though it also explained why the prison was here, as it’d require less transportation of materials.

It was that thought which made me pause in my walking, as I started to wonder something. The almost insidious metallic spread of the Architects had barely even touched the previous floors, but could it be for so simple a reason?

“No,” I whispered with a shake of my head, there was no way that was possible.

Rosalind had continued on without me, and she’d also reached the entry point to the central area. When I caught up to her I stepped into an open area that stretched from one side of the prison to the other.

In the center of the room was a single pillar that stretched all the way up to the ceiling, along with walkways for each of the floors above that stretched past the pillar.

Our arrival into the chamber was met with an attack from above, as two more drones jumped down from one of the higher floors. The rifle on my back swung forward again, and the one closest to me took a grenade straight to the chest.

Rosalind dealt with the other Architect before I got to it. She took one step toward it, her left hand stretching out in front of her, and her fingertips extended all the way into the chest of the drone.

She jerked her hand to the right, causing the drone to be sliced near in half, and then her fingernails retracted. “I would recommend against elevator,” she said as she looked up at the walkways, “the coordinator will control it.”

While I studied the vast open central chamber I could only ponder as to why. It seemed utterly pointless for the prison to have such emptiness to it. It was only after I noticed scaffolding near the outer walls that I realized the prison itself was still under construction.

“They haven’t finished yet?” I asked, just to make sure, and even pointed at the distant skeletal metal framework.

“Negative,” Rosalind replied, her attention far more focused on the walkways above us, “resources and manpower are scarce, main cells were prioritized.”

“What a shame. Can you jump up to the second floor?”

Rosalind scoffed at my question. “Easily.”

I didn’t bother with any more words, and instead bent my knees and then leapt up. The shell easily cleared the height to reach the next floor, and I reached out and caught the railing that ran across the walkway.

As I dragged myself onto the walkway I heard a loud clang, a noise brought on by Rosalind’s own jump. Unlike me she’d precisely leapt onto the middle, and crossed her arms while she waited for me.

I didn’t waste my time talking to her, and instead I headed south along the walkway. No more drones popped up to get in our way, a nuisance I was glad to be rid of.

The thought of them brought back memories of my first encounter with them as an Elf, an encounter that had left me permanently crippled. The thought of my body caused me to instinctively clench my one hand.

The lights near me continued to pulsate red, a somewhat eerie effect that might’ve distracted me during my earlier years. Now it was tedious, since at the very least they could throw in some other colors.

Ahead of us, along the right side, one of the doors opened and a figure emerged. He was about six and a half feet tall, with short hair that’d been combed back. When he turned his red eyes peered past small reading glasses, and he reached up with one hand to tug at his black vest.

“Executive Toma,” Rosalind said, as her steps faltered and she seemed almost ready to bolt at any moment.

Toma studied the two of us, his eyes disinterested by what he saw. With a sigh he turned and started to walk back into the cell, the one that I could only assume held Samara.

“Rosalind!” I yelled in an attempt to snap her back to reality, “I’ll slow him down, you grab your friend and get out of this place.”

I didn’t wait for her confirmation, and instead I began to activate one of the crystals inside the shell’s arm. There were a total of three that it could be embedded with, and I already knew that two would be mostly useless against the executive.

The first was the gravity crystal, and due to the inherent physique of Toma he could shrug it off. The second was the tried and true energy crystal. There was no way I could catch him with that, unless I was willing to sacrifice the shell’s body.

So instead I activated the third crystal, and then I took one heavy step forward and slammed my foot down as hard as I could.