Mary placed both hands on the bars of her cell. Could it be that easy? She pushed.

The bars didn’t budge. Mary pushed harder, but the only effect was that her feet slipped on the floor, and she almost lost her balance.

Ok, it wasn’t that easy.

Mossie looked like it wanted to tell Mary something, but for some reason couldn't. It flew around her and performed a few barrel-rolls, but that wasn’t exactly helpful.

Well, ok. She probably got that wrong. Veritas didn’t mean that ‘open door’ aspect of the heck after all. Why couldn’t he just tell her anything straight?

Whatever, she’d just have to find another way. Hm… the other part was about the will being the key aspect of imprisonment, wasn’t it? Well, she wanted to leave… right?

Mary looked at the little room she was locked in. It had a single bunk, three grey walls, a smelly hole in the ground and a tiny barred window. At this point, she couldn’t even smell the stench radiating from the always open sewage system, which worried her about her own odours. Obviously, she didn’t want to stay here.

But… a tiny part of her had something different to say. She was pretty safe down here. Her stomach chimed in that it really liked the recent change in food delivery quality, and it’d like to keep it that way. She sighed.

It was sad. Mary glanced at her pale wrists covered in black veins. She had what, a couple of months left? And she’d want to spend them here, soaked in a stench she was so used to that she stopped noticing it?

She was disgusted with herself. The worst part was that the realisation didn’t change that pathetic desire. It still lingered deep down, crawling somewhere in a part of her from which she turned her sight away.

But Mary wasn’t just a piece of flesh puppeteered by feelings. She was much more. She took a deep breath.

“I want to leave,” she said, and meant it. That ugly, stinking part of her was shouted back into line. Still there, but in its proper corner of shame.

She pushed the bars again. They remained still again.

Mossie flew around her in a circle before flying in a straight line between the bars and the cell's back wall.

“What are you doing?” Mary asked.

Her SJW froze and buzzed in place for a moment. “Bip. Nothing, bip. I can't solve your problem for you, bip.”

It sounded strangely guilty about it. Was it possible that the annoying can had actually developed some feelings and was really regretting its apathy? No, it was just a robot, a mindless machine programmed to torment her... Or was it?

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Why can’t anything be simple for once?

----------------------------------------

“Bip. It’s a quarter to midnight, bip.”

Mary paused pacing around her cell. She had been at it for hours, but she couldn’t find any way to convince the missing door that she wanted out.

Was it something different that Veritas meant? Or was he just wrong? Whatever it was, Mary had to do something. She focused on the shadow within her and poked at the hidden darkness. It was time, and this time, it'd have to work.

She took a deep breath, then started to slowly exhale. Five seconds... ten seconds... her lungs began to protest, but it wasn't about them. Fifteen seconds... she felt her heart slow, as her shadow stretched further, then turned back and started to envelop her in a chilly hug.

She raised a fist to her face, relaxed it, then clenched it again. Her skin turned oily black.

She took a swing and punched one of the bars.

The resulting bang would have probably thrown her away if the shadows didn't anchor her in place. Clouds of metal dust filled the air as the iron casing shattered and revealed the gold beneath it. Mary examined her hand with unnaturally calm curiosity. There were no marks, no scratches, no nothing. Just the dark casing.

She swung again, and this time the sound resonated twice as loud, but the bar refused to budge. She leaned forward and examined the cage in front of her. There was a tiny crack where she struck the metal. Not large, at most a quarter of an inch long, and so thin she could have mistaken it for a stray hair. But it was there.

She punched again. And again. And again.

At some point, her hand started to hurt. It was only a minor inconvenience, but deep in her mind, she felt a trace of concern - she should probably do something about it, shouldn't she?

After ten minutes of constant pounding, the shadow retreated, and she finally gasped for breath. It just wouldn't work - she barely managed to damage one single bar, and whatever it was she was readying for was coming.

For some reason, Mossie kept flying back and forth, doing more and more complicated figures on its way to the bars and quickly returning without any showing off. Whatever he meant by that, it was well above Mary's head.

Was that it? Would she just find herself locked in her cell as the rescue mission goes past and collects anyone who could figure out simple riddles? Would she fail everyone she cared about again?

No. No, there has to be something she could do.

Anything.

Desperately, Mary grasped the bars with bare hands and pulled, trying to tear them away with just her tiny hands.

The next second, she found herself lying on the ground with her hair just inches from the stinking hole.

A door-shaped cut-out of bars swung inside her cell. Clean-cut endings looked a bit surreal hanging in the air, even after everything else Mary had seen here.

She pushed herself back up and groaned as her back complained about the recent landing. Mossie was hanging in front of her face and buzzing its engines quietly.

“You really could have come up with something clearer, you know?”

The robot just kept staring at her.

Mary sighed. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Bip. One minute to midnight. Bip”

Just as it finished speaking, the first explosion reached Mary's ears.