Weaved into the humid, oil-scented factory air was an electric sensation, a tension so real and physical Flint could almost feel it pricking and poking his skin. To the guards within The Ray, right now was simply another day in the factory, watching the prisoners toil as they assembled weapons, spacecraft, or otherwise. To Flint, and hopefully the other prisoners around him, it was a day of bottomless anticipation. In only a few hours—maybe even minutes—the resupply ships would arrive, and the escape would begin.
Flint felt for the small golden ball he had tucked into his sleeve. He panicked for a brief moment, thinking he had lost it, but then found it again in his sleeve’s hem. He had been doing this constantly since the day had started, endlessly fearful of losing it.
Veteran prisoners had told Flint that every time a resupply ship docked with The Ray, there was a brief lapse in power as the prison’s central reactor was refueled. That was the signal they were waiting for. Once the lights in the prison dimmed, the escape would begin.
The minutes stretched longer than Flint felt possible. He assembled landing wheels as he waited, but he could hardly focus on his work—all of his attention was on the lights in the factory. Every time there was any fluctuation, or a shadow moved over him, he flinched, tensing every muscle in his body, thinking, hoping it was time.
When it did happen, Flint was almost too lost in his own thoughts to notice. But, subtly, there was the faintest shift in the ground underneath him, and the stark white factory lights unmistakably blinked. They dimmed, went dark, and then back, and in that moment, nothing happened.
“So,” the prisoner next to Flint told him, Flint’s heart racing. “Is it time?”
A guard behind him turned on his stopwatch with a beep.
And then hell broke loose.
There was a massive, simultaneous yell from every prisoner in The Ray, and every guard was immediately swarmed. Flint turned around and slammed his fist into the guard’s stopwatch, which she was holding just in front of her stomach, and smashed it with a crack as it was crushed between his fist and the guard’s torso. Prisoners, many of them wielding spaceship parts as weapons, were attacking the guards with the pent-up energy of years of imprisonment. Flint, heart pumping, sprinted through the chaos with the gold bomb in hand, taking care to step on the remains of the stopwatch on the way, broke his stamp one final time, and pushed through the factory door, emerging into the corridors of The Ray.
The corridors, too, echoed with the cries of battle. Prisoners were pushing out of their assigned rooms, brawling with guards, and Flint had to jump over and around the growing number of injured or lifeless bodies spilling out of every room and the crimson of blood spraying into the sterile white hallways.
Flint’s goal was the M-Rails, the vehicles that transported prisoners and guards alike around the inside of the ring-shaped prison. Presumably, they were the only way to get to the prison’s center where the Panopticon was, but as to how he would get there, Flint had no idea.
Eventually, he found it—a wide hatch in the ceiling, with a glowing blue panel on the wall next to him displaying the words “M-Rail” in white text. He assumed that the hatch opened with a guard’s fingerprint, and searched for the nearest guard to kidnap.
Just then, an unconscious guard was thrown into the corridor, quickly followed by a crowd of prisoners. Flint carried the guard’s limp body over to the keypad and pressed her hand against the screen. The blood on her hand interfered with the scan, and when Flint looked through the guard’s cracked helmet, he saw a deep gash on her head. He wiped the blood off of the guard’s hand and tried again, reflecting on the unexpected ruthlessness and brutality of the escaping prisoners as the scan completed and the hatch to the M-Rail opened. Out of the hatch came a steep set of stairs which he climbed into the M-Rail.
Inside of the isolated, clear-walled chamber, the sounds of chaos grew distant. The void of space consumed his field of view, innumerable stars dotting the velvety black landscape and spinning slowly and nauseatingly before him.
Flint rushed to the controls, trying to get a sense of how to control the M-Rail. There seemed to be a diagram of The Ray on the screen, and it gave Flint a better idea of the true shape of the penitentiary he had spent the last several months of his life in. He noticed it looked a lot like an old wagon wheel. The actual prison itself was a wide, thin ring with four spokes connecting the outside ring to the inside core. The core is where he’d find the Panopticon.
On the moving, real-time diagram of The Ray were several highlighted points: several points were moving along the outside ring—probably other M-Rails like his—and there was one point on each spoke. Flint tried to click on the spoke to get more information, but instead found himself suddenly moving. The M-Rail had activated.
About thirty seconds later, something interesting happened—a hatch opened in the M-Rail’s roof. The diagram showed his M-Rail just below one of The Ray’s four spokes. Flint climbed into the hatch and found himself inside a long, straight vertical shaft—he had entered the spoke.
There seemed to be the option to call an elevator to take him from the spoke to the prison’s core, but Flint didn’t have the time for that, nor did he want to risk encountering the prison warden and Tymin leader, Hazni. He found a ladder on one side of the shaft and began to climb.
As he climbed, Flint noticed a strange sensation—gravity was disappearing. Every rung of the ladder was easier to climb than the last. This was first met with nausea, then confusion—why was this happening?
He then realized—as he was getting further and further away from the spinning edge of The Ray, there was less and less centrifugal force acting as artificial gravity. At The Ray’s core, he would be weightless. As he got closer, gravity waned to the point where Flint could stop climbing and instead throw himself higher and higher into the spoke. Once his idea of up and down had been sufficiently destroyed, Flint double-checked he still had his gold bomb and opened the hatch into The Ray’s core.
The core of the prison was far larger than Flint had imagined. Unlike the sterile white coloring of the prison portion of The Ray, the core was a massive donut-shaped chamber made entirely of unpainted grey metal. Controls and camera feeds littered every outer wall in sight, with surprisingly few people manning them. Considering that most of the prison’s management was done by the Panopticon, it made sense—human presence was largely unnecessary. The center of the donut-shaped core was where The Ray’s tokamak fusion reactor and Panopticon supercomputer could be found.
Flint wielded his ghostly guns and began to fire at the few people within the core. They weren’t guards—they provided little resistance. Once the coast was clear, he floated towards the core’s center and opened a hatch to climb inside.
This area, too, was donut-shaped, only the open space was far thinner and tightly-organized wires lined every surface. They were converging on a massive, highly-intricate device just ahead—the Panopticon. A large panel on one wall displayed vital information about the Panopticon’s inner workings, and a red button in the corner caught his eye. It read:
EMERGENCY PANOPTICON DEACTIVATION
“Well, would you look at that,” Flint remarked out loud, and pressed the button. Behind him, the ever-whirring supercomputer slowly powered down until it was silent. The panopticon had been dealt with—now, he just had to get back to his friends.
Flint floated past the display screens displaying blaring warning messages and alerts, responding to the innumerable out-of-place prisoners that were fleeing the prison and moving to the outer docks. One screen in particular caught his eye—the status of all docked ships to The Ray. Like the M-Rail, it sported numerous labeled points along the diagram, each labeled point describing the ship that had docked with the prison. Those were the ships that he and the rest of the prisoners would escape on.
Suddenly, the light-blue points that represented each docked ship began to turn a dire red. One by one, the connection each ship had to The Ray displayed “ERROR” before disappearing until every labeled point had been extinguished. This could only mean one thing—the ships they had intended to use to escape had been sabotaged. But by who?
Then, the prison-wide announcement system came to life. A gravelly female voice said:
“This is The Ray’s prison warden, Hazni.” Sounds of chaos, yelling and shouting were audible in the background. “I have made the order to self-destruct every ship attached to The Ray. Now there is no escape—for me, or for any of you. I will quell this riot and punish every last one of you myself.”
Flint’s heart dropped into his stomach. Was there really no longer any escape? The faces of his friends coming to mind, Flint set his intention on getting back to his fellow escapees.
Just then, another figure floated into The Ray’s core. He was wearing prison garb and had a split lip. When he noticed Flint, who had aimed a translucent blue gun at the man’s head, he raised his hands in surrender.
“Don’t shoot!” the man said. “I’m just here to hijack the comms and contact my faction! Since that damn warden destroyed our means of escape, I was just going to get Vior to pick me up!”
Flint slowly lowered his pistol. Maybe he would be able to hitch a ride as well.
“Fine. Go ahead and make it quick before a guard catches you.”
Then, another prison garb-donning figure entered. He locked eyes with the first prisoner with the split lip.
“You’re here to contact Aikajo as well?” the new prisoner asked.
“I’m contacting Vior. Don’t try to stop me,” Split-Lip replied.
Split-lip pushed off of the wall and landed by a computer, where he began to press keys to contact his faction. A moment later, the new prisoner floated over to split-lip and kicked his face into the screen.
“I’m not letting any damn Vior ships come here. Vior can rot in this prison forever for all I care…” the new prisoner took advantage of split-lip’s stunned state to switch the contact address to Aikajo’s.
Flint watched the screen display a successful connection.
“You have connected to the Aikajo Hyper-C comms line. May I have your-”
“There’s an escape at The Ray!” the new prisoner shouted. “There’s no escape ships! Aijako needs to pick up their escaped member-”
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Split-lip suddenly returned to lucidity and grabbed the Aikajo prisoner by the head, throwing him backwards and sending him tumbling through the microgravity. Split-Lip killed the Aikajo line and tried to contact his own faction when the Aikajo prisoner bounced back off a wall and began to brawl with split-lip. They sent vicious punches at each other, blood flying in every direction due to the lack of gravity, until both their lips were split and Flint had a hard time telling who was who.
Flint pulled out his ghost gun and aimed it at the fighting prisoners. This had to stop. The shocking realization of the prisoners’ dormant violence had worn off on Flint, and a sense of duty consumed him. He had to stop this madness. But, he didn’t know who or if to shoot.
Before Flint could even ponder the decision, two more figures floated into The Ray’s core and each found a computer to stop at. They both began to contact their own factions and connected to their respective Hyper-C communication lines around the same time.
“Keila is finally free of The Ray’s grasp! Assemble as many ships as you can to pick us up!”
“There’s a breakout at The Ray! Get all the Talo members out of here, now! Tymin is already sending a fleet to quell the riot!”
The two new prisoners locked eyes. Violence sparked in their expressions, and Flint quickly realized what was about to come.
The Talo prisoner grabbed the computer screen he was at and began talking desperately. At the same time, the Keila member left her confused Keila representative on the line as she jumped over towards the Talo prisoner. “Quickly! Talo needs to get here before all the other factions escape!”
Even more prisoners were entering the core as the new fight between the Keila and Talo prisoners began. They all followed the same cycle, first trying to contact their own faction and then trying to stop another faction from coming, always resulting in the genesis of another brutal brawl. The chaos left Flint slack-jawed, and he came to the realization—this had to be happening all over the prison. What he had expected to be a straightforward albeit chaotic escape had turned into total pandemonium. He had to get to his comrades before they were consumed by the same fate.
Flint left the brawling prisoners behind to find the rest of his friends. According to the plan they had discussed, they would meet in Sector 2 to regroup and escape together.
In sector 2, Flint found Myasma, Allef, and Aurein each independently fending off guards among the chaos. Everyone was fighting everyone now—the guards, a minority of The Ray’s population, were shrinking into an afterthought as everyone struggled to keep members of their own faction alive long enough to be picked up while simultaneously stopping all other factions from escaping. Flint couldn’t help but think that, with everyone wearing the same grey prison uniform, telling who was friend and who was foe would be near-impossible.
“Flint! There you are!” Allef shouted, turning the heads of Myasma and Aurein. “Let’s get out of here! We’re going to grab my arms and legs!”
Flint had a brief moment of confusion, then remembered what she was talking about all at once. Myasma took the lead, breaking away from the fighting guards and prisoners and urging the rest of them to follow. Flint caught up with her and they sprinted side-by-side through the prison.
“After we retrieve Allef’s battle limbs, we’re making a break for the nearest factory,” Myasma explained. “There are two factories in The Ray that build spacecraft, each opposite each other in the prison, and where they’re keeping Allef’s limbs is near one of them. With Allef’s help, we can finish building one of the spacecraft and use it to escape.”
Once again, Flint was shocked at Myasma’s resourcefulness and quick thinking. “I’ll follow you,” Flint said. “Tell me how I can help.”
“Keep any threats off our trail. Especially if they’re trying to get into the place Allef’s limbs are kept.”
They sprinted through corridor after corridor, the ground slowly curving upwards before them, the blood-spattered hallways packed full of fighting prisoners. They ran and ran, encountering more of the same, until the density of guards ahead of them suddenly took a sharp increase. They were different from the guards Flint was used to—their uniforms were darker in color, and based on the loud gunshots now echoing through the corridors, they were using lethal force.
“Tymin soldiers!” Myasma exclaimed, slowing her pace and waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.
“Tymin sent their fleet to put down the riot?! They got here so fast!” Allef added.
“Just keep going!” Myasma ordered the group. “Fight anyone who engages us, and don’t let-”
In an instant, Myasma’s head was blown off her body. A purple-red mist lingered in the air, carried slightly by the ultrahigh caliber bullet that had beheaded her.
“MYASMA!” Flint screamed.
Then, the mist moved. Myasma’s headless body was still standing, and the mist that had once been her skull floated through the air above it as if it had a will. It moved hastily towards the soldier that had shot her, who was standing in the corridor with his massive, intricate gun still pointed at Myasma’s body. The rest of Myasma’s body turned to mist as well, and like a conscious wind, it enveloped the guard’s head. He immediately dropped his gun and grabbed his throat with agony. He foamed at the mouth, shivered for a moment, and then fell face-forward onto the floor, limp. The mist returned where Myasma’s body once was and then slowly returned to a physical form, solidifying itself back into the woman Flint had thought died.
“Good,” Myasma said, giving a nod to a shocked Flint. “It’s been a while. Let’s keep going.” She continued running.
Flint followed behind, shooting any soldier who tried to pursue them, until Allef was running side-by side with him. Her mechanical limbs made metallic clicking sounds as she ran.
“Did Myasma not tell you she can turn into a toxic gas?” Allef asked. “That’s her Val. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who can beat her.”
“Good to know,” Flint commented.
Eventually, they reached their destination. The label on the door read “CONFISCATED MATERIALS.” Myasma had already turned her arm into gas and was sending it through a crack in the door. With a click, it opened, and Myasma retrieved her hand from the interior of the room, urging the others inside.
The confiscated materials room was larger than Flint had expected. Flint also realized that many parts of the prison were larger than he had expected. Countless crates of various objects, trinkets and weapons lined the walls from floor to ceiling, with some open crates scattered sparsely away from the walls. Several large tables full of countless instruments and tools were present in the room’s center, where half-disassembled objects of interest lie. One of the tables had two pairs of large, silvery arms and legs.
“MY BABIES!” Allef shouted, rushing to the table. She picked up one of the mechanical arms and caressed it as if it was the first time she saw it. “I’m so glad you’re okay. They removed all your screws, though…”
Flint watched as Allef began reassembling the arms. He couldn’t deny it—the craftsmanship was impressive. The fingers, which Tymin scientists had apparently taken apart to study, were made of smooth, dark-colored metal. Taken apart on the table, the components of the arm—the wires, hydraulics, servos and motors—almost resembled real organic viscera, giving the table Allef’s limbs were taken apart on a surgical feel, as if Flint had walked in on an autopsy.
Allef put each piece back in its place with practiced speed, and the limbs had been fully reassembled in under five minutes. She took her limbs behind several stacked crates and began to change them out. As the rest of them waited, Flint asked Myasma:
“How are they powered, anyway? Allef’s limbs?”
“She has a miniature fusion reactor in her body where her liver should be. There’s an artificial liver in its place. Provided she has enough deuterium and tritium to keep fusion going, which isn’t hard to find when half of this galaxy’s spaceships run on fusion, her robotic limbs can function indefinitely.”
“Amazing. But wouldn’t fusion produce a lot of excess energy?” Flint asked, recalling his meager fusion knowledge—he knew how to fly ships, not power them.
Myasma showed a rare smile. “That’s the beauty of it. All of that excess energy allows her battle limbs to do some fantastic things.”
When the metallic scraping sounds behind the crates had ceased and Allef had finished switching out her limbs, she stepped out. Flint noticed an immediate difference in appearance.
“You’re taller,” Flint pointed. Previously, Allef was noticeably shorter than his current body.
“I am,” Allef pointed. “I’m a bit taller than you now.” She stood near Flint and used a metallic hand to compare their height. Myasma, who was shorter than the rest of them, now stood almost comically small against her younger sister.
“Enough height comparisons,” Myasma’s authoritative voice said, drawing the attention in the room. “We need to focus on getting to sector seven.”
Myasma led the group out of the door and back into the chaos. There was a massive group of Tymin soldiers just ahead.
“Let’s take the M-Rail to sector seven!” Flint shouted over the gunshots echoing through the corridor. “We can avoid the soldiers!”
Myasma nodded and let Flint take the lead, who led the group to an M-Rail entrance not far away. He grabbed a fallen guard nearby, pressed their hand against the keypad, and a staircase descended from the ceiling. He let everyone else climb up before he, too, entered the M-Rail, shutting the hatch behind him.
Now more familiar with the controls, he directed the M-Rail to sector 7, only two sectors away. As the machine chugged along its predetermined path, Flint took a moment to gaze into the cosmos outside.
There were, as the sharp increase in resistance had indicated, several ships from the Tymin fleet on their way to docking with The Ray, Tymin’s signature aquamarine-adjacent colors decorating each one. The battleships were coming one after another, each waiting for the one ahead of it to dock with The Ray and deposit its countless fighters. Their presence alone seemed to narrow their odds of escape, looming over the prison like massive storm clouds.
But, looking closer, Flint could make out other ships against the backdrop of space, none of which donned Tymin’s colors. More ships of different shapes, sizes and colors were arriving at The Ray with the signature bright blue flash of a warp drive. He recognized the color schemes of Talo, Aijako—every faction’s fleet was arriving, each at differing proximities to The Ray, their shiny, colored hulls scattered across space like a poor imitation of stars.
Two ships in particular were incredibly close to The Ray. Flint could only make out parts of them due to the M-Rail’s limited visibility of space, but they weren’t Tymin. He could faintly make out the Keila insignia on the ship nearest to The Ray and black and red paint on the other one—Vior. The Keila battleship seemed to be sending smaller scout ships to The Ray in order to pick up Keila members, and he could see several of the scout ships docked around The Ray’s edges. The Vior battleship nearby didn’t appear to be moving, almost as if it was watching the sight.
Suddenly, streaks of light blossomed from the weapons attached to the Vior ship, impacting the Keila scout ships and turning them into superhot clouds of scrap. The M-Rail they were in reached its destination, but Flint didn’t get out—his face was practically pressed against the clear window of the M-Rail, watching the sight.
“Holy shit!” Flint exclaimed. “They’re firing on each other!” The others turned to the window just in time to see the Keila battleship turn its weapons to the Vior battleship and fire a series of railguns, each projectile leaving a trail of plasma behind it.
Similar scenes were playing out elsewhere in space, with ships from different factions taking free shots at each other in the hopes of fewer enemy factions being evacuated from the prison. Soon, the tranquil void of space was scratched and torn by streaks of light and high-energy projectiles. Metal and bodies alike soared scattered through space, reflecting light from the nearest star like gruesome glitter.
“This is mayhem,” Myasma said, pale. “The prison will be destroyed.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here!” Aurein shouted, opening the hatch to the M-Rail.
As soon as they stepped out of the M-Rail, they were greeted by a platoon of Tymin soldiers. They pointed their guns at the group.
“Allef!” Myasma shouted.
“Got it!” Allef confirmed.
Allef planted her mechanical feet. Metal spikes emerged from her legs, embedding in the floor. Allef reached down to the ground and gripped the metal floor, crumpling it like it was made of paper, and then, with a resounding grunt, flipped the entire top layer of the floor up at the soldiers.
“Let’s go, while they’re stunned!” Allef said.
They arrived at the factory where spacecraft at varying stages of assembly lay alongside unconscious or dead prisoners or guards who had fallen during the first few minutes of the escape. Allef found the ship closest to completion and got to work on getting it ready to fly.
As Flint, Aurein, and Myasma brought Allef the pieces she requested, Flint noticed the prison was shaking. Stray bullets from the battleships fighting outside were impacting The Ray, causing several quiet booms and reverberating shudders. Flint looked around the room as if to check on the status of the warring ships around the prison, but only thick metal walls could be seen.
Allef started, “Alright, we’re almost-”
A colossal boom rocked Flint’s entire world. The massive metal wing of a battleship had slammed into the factory, splitting it in two. The Ray’s artificial atmosphere rushed out of gashes in the walls, flowing around the wing of the ship that had crashed into the prison amidst the outside battle. The wing had isolated Flint from the other three, and by the faint image he could make out from his watering eyes, the ship Allef had just finished assembling had been crushed, their only hope of escape reduced to scrap and being sucked into the endless void.