Each passing day in The Ray varied drastically between mind-bending boredom and adrenaline-fueled practices of stealth. Flint tried his hardest to stagger the days he ventured outside of his assigned sector in the hopes of minimizing potential suspicion. Because of this, most of his days in The Ray consisted of silently thinking to himself during recreational time or reading poorly-concealed pro-Tymin political propaganda under the guise of a hero’s journey.
The days in which he decided to venture elsewhere in the prison, however, gave Flint a constant reminder of the sheer volume of responsibility resting on his shoulders. Those days always consisted of a recreational period that began with the painful snap of the stamp embedded in his neck, accompanied by the overwhelming fear of screwing up the loophole. Flint would wander the prison, spreading the word of the Cannonball Man to men and women from seemingly every possible origin. He learned to enjoy seeing the subtle change in their faces the moment they realized the story he was telling them was, in fact, an escape plan.
“On the day the Cannonball Man’s boss delivered the third feast to their company, the Cannonball Man snapped,” Flint explained to a young red-haired prisoner. “He went on a total killing spree and murdered all the higher-ups in the building, destroying everything along the way. Isn’t that crazy? All over some food. People say it looked like the building was hit by a cannonball by the time he was done.”
The red-haired prisoner gave Flint a blank look. Then, all at once, his eyes widened in realization and he subtly nodded, throwing a glance at a nearby guard.
Flint, too, nodded knowingly. “If you know anyone else who might get a kick out of it, tell them, too. It’s been nice meeting you.”
“The same to you,” the prisoner said.
Flint walked away from the prisoner, hardly able to contain his satisfaction. The plan was working brilliantly. The first resupply day hadn’t even occurred yet since Flint had entered The Ray, and he had already seen dozens of other prisoners with the same understanding expression. He didn’t need to tell every prisoner, just enough to hit a critical mass—the point at which enough prisoners knew the story that everyone told everyone else without Flint needing to step in.
Flint left the sector he was in to find Aurein. Flint had also been transferred to a new sector in the weeks following his imprisonment, and due to the fact he no longer shared a sector with any of his co-conspirators, he had to find and discuss with them only after performing the loophole.
Only two sectors from his own, Flint found Aurein reading alone in the corner of his rec room. Flint sat down next to him with a closed hand behind his back. He nudged Aurein, who placed an open hand under Flint’s closed one. Flint dropped numerous screws, nuts, and bolts into Aurein’s open hand.
They had been building the gold bomb piece by piece, Flint carefully sneaking spare parts out of the factory he works at and bringing them to Aurein to be turned to gold. Aurein had first attempted the loophole with Flint shortly after their first meeting in the prison, Aurein being injected with blood coagulant and Flint quickly giving him a stolen antidote. Even Aurein himself had been occasionally wandering the prison and spreading the word about the Cannonball Man.
“How is it so far?” Flint asked Aurein.
Aurein pulled a tiny, bead-sized golden ball out of his sleeve and placed it into an open hand. He dropped the nuts and bolts Flint had just given him on top of the golden ball. The metal pieces, upon making contact with the ball, turned immediately to gold and were seemingly absorbed by the ball’s small surface.
“There’s probably several kilograms worth of material in the gold bomb,” Aurein explained, hiding the golden ball in his sleeve again. “But we need more.”
“That’s fine. We have time,” Flint said, nodding.
“And, Flint,” Aurein said.
“Yeah?”
“I saw something interesting while telling people about the Cannonball Man. Were you aware that they’re keeping a member of Keila’s Big 5 as a prisoner here?”
“Yeah,” Flint replied. “Myasma told me a while back. I think his name was Tro.”
“I think I talked to him yesterday. I told him about the Cannonball Man, but he said he had already heard of it.”
“Really? What was he like?”
“Not what I expected a high-ranking Keila soldier to be like. He was surprisingly talkative.”
“Huh. Hope I meet him.”
“If we get Tro on our side, he could be indispensable during the escape,” Aurein explained. “I recommend finding him if you can.”
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There was one notable exception to the rule of every prisoner looking the same in their drab grey prison garb—Big T. He towered above everyone else in the recreational room, and unlike Myasma, Aurein, and Allef, missing Big T in a room was harder than finding him.
Everyone seemed to be, unconsciously or not, avoiding Big T. It was as if there was an invisible forcefield around the man created solely by his extraordinary size, a forcefield nobody dared to enter. Flint walked straight through it.
“Hey, you’re still alive,” Big T said upon seeing Flint.
“Always will be,” Flint quipped in reply.
Big T let out a single chuckle. “How’d you get here, anyway?” he said in a low voice. “I was just thinkin’ ‘I probably ain’t gonna see that man again’ after they moved you to a new sector. Is this what you weren’t tellin’ me about these past couple weeks?”
“That’s right. Benefits of being a ghost.”
“Heh. Unlike you, dying’s not something I’m used to doin’. You think you even actually count as immortal if you die over and over again?”
Flint sat down on a plasticky armchair and Big T sat across from him, barely able to fit his massive body on the seat.
“I suppose so,” Flint replied. “If you define immortal as ‘not mortal,’ that is. My soul can’t die, but my body sure can. It already has. My old, original body probably isn’t even worm food anymore.”
“Tell me more about your ghost ability. You died when you were a kid, right?” Big T asked.
“I was executed. A rival family wanted our land. We got into a fight, I killed their eldest son, and they left both me and my parents alive long enough to hang us themselves. Only, after I was hung, I woke up. I must have had this latent ability for my whole life. Now, I’m stuck like this forever,” Flint finished simply.
“The way you put it makes it sound like a curse,” Big T pointed.
“Isn’t it, though? Am I even really alive if I can’t die?” That same existential frustration Flint was so familiar with was creeping back into his mind. “What can I even really do as a ghost? I can barely even affect the physical world, and I need to erase someone else’s soul just to have a body. I’m not even totally free—I can phase through things, but if something’s dense enough, I can still be trapped like everyone else. That’s why I’m here in the first place. What difference can I actually make? I can’t even be martyred.”
“You said you have to erase someone’s soul?”
“Oh, yeah, that. I can actually die, in a sense. To possess a body, like the one I’m in right now, I have to kick out the soul already within it. But nobody’s soul but mine can actually exist in the physical world, so if I kick out someone else’s soul, it’s gone forever. Erased from the universe. If I possess a body and the soul within beats me, if my soul itself is destroyed, I’ll reach the same fate. I won’t even go to the great beyond, where the souls of the dead stay. I’ll be… gone. Every time I possess someone, and I destroy their soul, I can never hear their soul’s presence in the great beyond. I can’t let that happen to me.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Big T gave a pondering look, scrutinizing Flint. He wasn’t angry, or judgemental; just patient.
“What keeps you going, then? I mean, look at you. You’re here, well outside of your own faction’s bounds, obviously plannin’ to escape. There’s something you’re lookin’ for.”
“Well… you’re right. You know… I can’t even remember my own last name. It’s been so long since I’ve been alive, all I remember about my name is that it’s Flint. I want to see my parents again and ask them. Even when I was alive, my parents were all I had. My life was like a dream, a brief hallucination acting as the blink-and-you-miss-it prelude to my eternal death. It barely even feels like it was real, a time when I had a body, my body… There’s nothing else tying me to my life anymore—my home was taken by that enemy family after I died, and then the whole planet was taken over by the domain after that. My parents are the only things I have left, and I can’t even reach them. I’ve made it my mission to try.”
Big T chuckled. He laughed for a long time, and Flint didn’t know if Big T was making fun of him.
“The way you make meaning out of your immortality sure is a lot more intense than mine,” Big T said. “You know what my goal is? I want to see a sunset. In all of the universe, there must be one, just one most beautiful sunset, right? On one planet, in one place, at one time. I have billions of years to find it.”
Flint recalled the gorgeous sunsets he used to watch on his family’s farm before he died. He felt a deep moment of admiration for Big T. The idea of pursuing something so simple, so transitory in an infinite life seemed absurd. But it seemed… right.
“There’s something I need to get if I want to see my parents again. I think, if I find the Terminus, I might be powerful enough to enter the great beyond.”
Big T raised his eyebrows. “The Terminus? That fairy tale?”
“It’s not a fairy tale,” Flint dismissed. “It’s real. Tymin is pursuing it as we speak. That’s why I need to get out of here.”
Again, that rare expression of surprise consumed Big T’s face. He seemed lost in thought for a moment.
“How long have you been immortal for?” Flint asked.
Tro rubbed his chin.
“That’s a complicated question to answer. Let me put it this way: I’m a washed-up god.”
Flint recoiled at hearing this. “What?”
“I think I used to be a god. Some kind of higher being. I don’t remember anything clearly from that time, but I could’ve been alive for millions or billions of years for all I know. I don’t remember what led up to it, but I eventually encountered Teo Nora himself. He defeated me, weakening me to the state that I’m in today,” Big T gestured at his massive body. “I might have been much stronger than I am now.”
“Teo Nora? What was he like?”
Big T bit his lip. “I like to think that I was ‘born’ the day he defeated me. That’s the earliest memory I have, and I was pretty lucid then. But somehow… I can’t remember. I can’t remember a single thing about him. I remember seeing light, a lot of light, I remember blood, and the idea that I had been completely and utterly bested… but I can’t recall a single thing about what had happened or what the man who defeated me was like. All I remember is a voice. I don’ even know if it was his voice or not, but I remember two words: ‘Obey me.’ I think he spared me so I would help him.”
“Did you?”
“Oh, you bet I did. I don’t think he would have let me do otherwise and live. Immortality—it means nothing to that man. I did exactly what I was told and became loyal, and after he disappeared, I followed one of his children and became a part of Keila. Following that kind of power, I decided, would let me do what I wanted in my life.”
Flint pondered this, and then realization stabbed him in the chest.
“Big T,” Flint started slowly, “Did you happen to meet a golden-eyed man recently?”
Big T frowned. “I did. I was meaning to ask how word of your escape plan had gotten around the prison so quickly.”
Flint’s eyes widened. “You’re Tro! How did I not see it? You’re one of Keila’s strongest fighters! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tro simply shrugged. “Was there really any point in you knowing? Dealing with people gawking at me is a headache.”
Flint found himself suddenly repulsed by the man in front of him. Keila was Talo’s enemy, and he was sitting right in front of Keila’s strongest fighters. He had probably killed countless Talo members.
Then, reality hit. Flint wasn’t part of a faction anymore—why did he care who was and wasn’t against Talo? The instinctual fear of someone opposing the faction he had been a part of for so long had consumed Flint without thinking.
And countless prisoners in The Ray belonged to other factions. Why should a Keila member, or a Keila official for that matter, be treated any differently? There had been no reason to assume from the beginning that Tro subscribed to the same ideals Flint did. He internally kicked himself for his hasty judgement.
At the very least, Aurein was right. Tro would be a powerful ally in escaping The Ray. No matter what faction Tro belonged to, they were all opposing Tymin. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“Well, regardless, would you be interested in helping with the escape?” Flint asked. “It seems you’ve already caught wind of it.”
“You kidding? Hell yeah. I’m tired of waiting for Keila to buy me out, and I’m getting bored as hell in here.”
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The passage of time surely would have blended together completely in The Ray if it wasn’t for Flint’s constant anticipation of the escape. As the weeks stretched into months, the first resupply day went by, then the second, and by then the story of the Cannonball Man had spread to more prisoners than it hadn’t. Flint continued to bring Aurein parts for the gold bomb until that, too, became massive enough to be effective during the escape.
Over time, Flint and Aurein worked to disable the stamps on Allef and Myasma, allowing all four of them access to every sector in the prison. Three weeks before the day of the escape, the four decided to meet in the same sector for a final meeting, excluding Tro, who Flint was unable to invite—the eight stamps in Tro’s neck made disabling all of them at once impossible.
They met in sector 2, the sector Myasma happened to reside in at the time. Flint arrived first, positioned only a sector away. Not long after arrived Aurein, who sat inconspicuously in a seat near Flint’s, and then finally Allef. The four of them moved silently towards the corner of sector 2’s rec room and sat down as far as possible from the patrolling guards.
At first, no words were exchanged, only awkward glances. Allef seemed especially fixated on Myasma. Myasma broke the silence.
“This is the first time we’ve all been together,” she pointed. “Allef and I haven’t seen each other in at least-”
Suddenly, Allef got up and hugged Myasma. Myasma was surprised at first, her narrow eyes widening, but she quickly embraced her sister as well. For a moment, the four were silent again, the reunited sisters simply hugging.
“Careful,” Myasma said to her sister at last, though her tone was soft. “We don’t want the guards thinking we know each other.”
“You can just say you missed me,” Allef said.
Myasma hesitated. “I did. Now let’s stop before they separate us again.”
Allef relented, sitting back down.
“So what are the rest of you planning?” Myasma asked Allef and Flint. “After all this?”
Flint’s mind jumped once more to the Terminus, and his heart burned with anticipation.
“Aurein and I are going to pursue the Terminus,” Flint explained. “How we’re going to do that…” Flint and Aurein made eye contact. “I’m not sure.”
“You mentioned the Terminus before,” Allef pointed. “You’re sure it’s real?”
“It exists,” Flint said. “I was there. We got imprisoned here because we were finding out how much Tymin knew about it, and I was right there where the Terminus once was. That kind of power… it’s real, alright.”
“Though, no matter how powerful it is, pursuing something so taboo isn’t at all within our interests,” Myasma said dangerously to Allef. “Right, Allef?”
Allef looked apprehensive. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”
“Really though, Flint,” Aurein interjected. “How are we going to go after it? Our ship is abandoned on Erista, half the galaxy away. Who knows what Tymin did with it? We’ll have to go back to Talo if we want resources, and we’re both well aware that there won’t be a warm welcome, if any.”
“Oh, yeah, Talo…” Flint muttered to himself. “Shit. What are we gonna do about that? I mean, they might let us in, right? We will have freed hundreds of Talo prisoners by then. They have to at least give us credit for that.”
Then Flint had an idea. “Hey, Allef, Myasma. Would you want to join Talo? Tagging along with us might be a better idea than going it alone, especially now that your parents are gone.”
“Sure,” Allef replied. “Joining Talo sounds fun.”
“Allef, wait,” Myasma interjected. “We need to think about this. Don’t make any impulsive decisions. Every faction is our enemy, remember? Teo Nora is our enemy. We can’t simply enter one after all the things we’ve done against all of them.”
“If the higher-ups like the fact that we freed a bunch of Talo prisoners, we might be able to give you an in. We could say that you two are with us,” Flint proposed.
“That could work, though it assumes you two are accepted back in,” Myasma said, nodding. “Regardless, I think allying with you would be beneficial to us all. Aside from some personal business I must attend to after we leave The Ray, I agree that we should stick together.”
“Wait,” Allef said, looking at Myasma with wide eyes. “What personal business?”
Myasma gave her sister but a glance. “You don’t need to worry about it. I will have it taken care of quickly.”
“Myasma, you have to tell me,” Allef demanded.
“Should we make it official, then?” Myasma asked, addressing the group. “Our alliance?”
“Yeah,” Flint said, putting a hand in the middle of the circle. After a moment, Allef’s hand joined his, then Myasma’s, then Aurein’s.
Flint looked at everyone in the group, a smile creeping across his face.
“To freedom.”