As soon as the reinforced door clicked shut and the locks began to slide into place, Eik leapt to the door and took the handle, hoping they had done it correctly as he pulled on the door. With a quiet sound, it opened. The golden strings of Bind still held the lock firmly in place.

“Alright, alright, we’re good, Mikey. You can release the ability,” Eik said in a low voice. Michael breathed as the lock popped back out and joined Eik in the door.

It was warm in the office and, like the rest of the prison, the air was thick and stale with an undertone of old, sweaty socks. From the out side it had appeared larger, but in such a small room the mess of papers, notebooks, and ledger, stacks and boxes of them, looked all the more daunting.

There were shelves lined with more boxes and something that looked like filing cabinets along both of the side walls. In the middle was a wide, heavy desk that gave off the piercing but not unpleasant scent of old wood. This too was practically flooded with paper.

How a man exuding the air of someone who follows rules and protocols to the degree that Warden Harfol did was also mentally capable of spending his days in a space so utterly dominated by apparent disorder and clutter was truly a mystery. Eik would not be surprised to see a half-eaten sandwich forgotten somewhere in the room.

Perhaps it was simply a case of order being a matter of being familiar with the particular mess.

The two of them groaned in chorus as they took in the work ahead.

“How long do you think we have before they come back?” Eik asked.

Michael picked up the first page of some document as he mouthed the title. It seemed to be some kind of complaint about scheduling. Not relevant to their case at all. “Depends on how long Sonja and Heath can keep them, I suppose? If Menka has as little to contribute to the conversation as she did a couple of days ago then I’m not sure how long they can realistically stretch it.”

“Let’s get to it then. Keep an ear out for the locks when they come back. We don’t want to get surprised.”

The door could be unlocked without a key from the inside so they pushed it gently closed to minimize noise.

“I’ll check the papers on the warden’s desk,” Eik and read the first page lying on top of the first pile. “Can you take that box there by his chair? It hasn’t been that long since she was arrested again, so it could still be here somewhere.”

They rifled through page after page of dry reading and complicated legal speak. Nothing on the desk seemed to mention anything about Menka Tokanami and the box Michael was looking through also didn’t have anything of use.

Eik checked a case of drawers next while the healer moved on to another box of paper. At least the warden kept each document properly ordered so the pages weren’t scattered haphazardly around. For most of them they really only had to read the first page to determine if it was anything of use. The translation ability was extremely useful.

Where the hell was that damn information? It had to be in here somewhere!

Eik gave up on the drawers and had just knelt down to riffle through three thick ledgers when the sound of locks echoed in the waiting room. Eik’s eyes flew to Michael’s and they exchanged silent expressions of panic, their bodies frozen as they thought of what to do.

Eik tip toed over to the door and opened it as quietly but quickly as he could and stuck his head out. “It’s the front door! I mean the one that opens into the hallway! What do we do?” he hissed.

“Who is it?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?”

“At least close the door again then! It locks, right? They probably can’t get in.”

“Right, right.” He pulled it close again, even more carefully this time. They used the time while the locks were still being opened to go through a few more documents and jumped in behind the large desk once they heard the door swing open.

Someone knocked on the door as they huddled together, concealed from view from the office door. Even if the person did come in, they would have to weave through boxes and furniture to the back of the room in order to actually see the two Earthlings.

That did not mean Eik and Michael weren’t stressed out by the prospect of that, even if it seemed unlikely.

After a pause they knocked again followed by a muffled voice. “How long do you think he’ll be? I’m in a bit of a hurry to be honest.”

A different voice, presumably one of the guards still holding open the thick door, was too muddled to hear but the answer was short.

“Well, then I’m just going to come back later,” the voice of the knocker said and Eik and Michael breathed sighs of relief.

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Eik had already crawled all the way out to the ledgers again when the voice rang once more. “Actually, can you just let me in really quickly? Then I’ll just leave this on his desk.”

He practically threw himself back under the desk as a hand rattled the handle of the door slightly. They listened while the guard said something unintelligible. When the visitor spoke again, he sounded a little annoyed.

“Fine then. At least tell Warden Harfol that I came by. I need to speak with him.” Seconds later they heard the outer door close again followed by the many locks sliding back into place. But just to be on the safe side, Eik and Michael remained seated under the desk for another thirty seconds before getting back to their search.

Eik had just finished looking through the three fat ledgers and moved on to a filing cabinet with cases ordered into a variety of categories when the plaque inside his shirt vibrated.

Now? He hadn’t been doing anything that would result in a level up though. No, it could only be one thing. This was what he had been hoping for for the last few days. He snuck out the plaque, keeping an eye on Michael who had his back turned.

[Reached threshold: Evolution to ??? possible]

[Evolve?]

Holy shit, this was it. His breath caught in his throat as he read over the notification five times as his heart rate climbed past twice the resting rate. He glanced over at Michael several times. Initiating the evolution now was incredibly tempting but it would take time for it to resolve, and they needed to find the information on Menka’s sentence now.

The thought of Michael having to frantically haul his dead weight out of the room in a hurry was kind of funny though.

In fact, he genuinely had to restrain himself from triggering it. In the past, the desire to one day join the ranks of the Awakened had always been present in the back of his mind, but that was all it had been back then. A simple desire. Like a boyish wish to fly or punch through solid walls, combined with the ability to protect himself.

Now, however, it was a desperation that tended to keep him up at night, make his stomach hurt, and rob him of his appetite. He felt like he was carrying the fate of humanity on his shoulders and it was weighing him down more than he was willing to show.

He stuffed the wooden plaque back into his shirt and took a few deep breaths as he directed his focus back to the filing cabinets. Each row contained dozens of files but they were much better structured than the rest of the confusing chaos of an office and he could rush through them much quicker.

It would have been great if they were organized in a way he could understand but to Eik’s eyes affected by the translation skill, the documents were jumbled as if at random. While the skill would interpret written and spoken words to a reasonable degree regardless of foreign sentence structure and whatnot, it would not rearrange physical space to accommodate his wish for alphabetical order.

He started on another filing cabinet once he finished looking over the files in the first and made it through the uppermost row and the back half of the next row before the sound of locks sliding once more clacked outside.

“Shit! Mikey, can you check?” Eik said, not letting his eyes leave the files. The complicated legalese was gradually beginning to lose all coherent meaning as he took in one after the other.

The sound of Michael tip toeing around the clutter tore at his concentration but he forced himself to keep going despite the stress of the situation. The healer cracked open the door just enough to peek out.

“It’s them this time!” he said, anxiety in his voice. “They’re coming!”

“Then get back to searching, Mike. We have at most forty seconds before they unlock those damned l—”

There had been something there! He’d actually skipped over it in his haste and had to backtrack a few files. “Tokanami…” he mumbled and pulled it out to take a proper look. “Mike, come take a look at this!”

The young man’s E-rank strength carried him to Eik’s side in a second. “Tokanami, Menka! This one is about her!” he said quietly. He scanned through the pages. The constant rattling of the locking mechanisms in the reinforced doors functioned exactly like the tense background music when the robbers were working against the clock in a heist movie.

Except this was real life instead of a film, and it wasn’t a bank but a prison situated in the heart of a gigantic, multiversal super alliance.

Luckily there were only three pages in the document but they were bulging with excessively complicated jargon that he had to look through until finally finding the relevant information near the bottom of the second page.

“I found it!” Eik said. “Keep the door open for me and I’ll put this back!” Despite their rush, they had been careful to put everything back in its disorganized place to the best of their ability.

In a single motion Eik leapt across the room, over all of the clutter, his head nearly scraping the paint off the ceiling. He flew out the door, stumbling, and Michael managed to close it as quietly as he could with only a couple of seconds to spare before their friends emerged from the cells.

Warden Harfol lead the way back into the waiting room and threw Michael a puzzled glance but seemed to dismiss it. The healer had done the best he could to appear nonchalant in the last second and ended up leaning awkwardly against the wall next to the office door.

Heath and Sonja came out next and they looked tired. The meeting with Menka must have been a pretty horrific experience this time as well.

“How’d it go?” Eik asked.

“It was… awful,” Heath sighed. “The moment she saw us she broke down crying. I mean, I’ve seen many people lose their children at this point and nobody comes out of something like that with their minds intact, but this is just… it’s insane. Literally.”

Mikla brought them outside into the afternoon sun where he ripped open a fracture to their local fracture hall. He went through first but Sonja took Eik’s arm before he could follow, her grip firm and insistent.

“Did you manage to find something?” Her voice was steady but Eik saw the anxiety in her eyes clearly. Heath and Michael had similar expressions. Although it was about a woman’s life, Eik couldn’t hold back a smile of relief.

“I found the verdict. Atla wasn’t lying. Menka Tokanami I going to die soon.”

Heath swept his sister up in a hug and Michael also came in for one with Eik who laughed, reassured by their findings. Moods lifted, they followed Mikla through the fracture.

Back in his room, Eik laid down on his bed. Mis hopped up and curled up on his chest, licking the remains of her latest meal from her tri-colored chops, well deserved after a long day of doing absolutely nothing.

He pulled out his wooden plaque again.

[Reached threshold: Evolution to ??? possible]

[Evolve?]

Hands trembling, Eik initiated the evolution.