The authoritative man had tried to use Presence to deflect the laser bolt from his face and only managed to make it hit him in the eye instead. His eye was burned through in an instant and half of his brain liquefied and boiled off in the next instant. He dropped to his knees and his one remaining eye gazed over my shoulder and at the wall. I put a laser bolt into that eye, just in case losing half of his brain wasn't enough to kill him. The body slumped to the floor and I didn't bother searching it before I walked over to the two remaining guards.
“Hey, fellas. No, I didn't forget about you.” I said and crushed their wrist coms and their wrists. “I know that wasn't strictly necessary, especially during an electrical storm.” I smiled at them and crushed their ankles next. I was surprised that my hands weren't getting sore from crushing so many bones.
“Stop! STOP!” One of them yelled. “We'll tell you everything you want to know!”
“Good for you.” I pat the top of his head. “It's just too bad that I'm not asking you any questions.” I said and crushed their elbows and then their knees.
The guards were whimpering by this point and the prisoners scattered around actually started to feel bad for the guards.
“You see, one of the prisoners you have here is someone that raised me for seven years.” I said, and the guards let out a defeated moan. “Yeah, you know that I'm not letting you off easy after having to kill everyone else so quickly.”
“Wh-which prisoner?” A guard asked.
“That is a good question.” I said and pat the top of his head with my homemade device and hit the button. The wooden bat on a watermelon sound happened and the man died. “It was the wrong one to ask, however.”
“Oh, Goddess! Please, grant...”
I kicked out and shoved my toes into the side of the man's face, which tore off his jaw, his cheek, and his nose. His tongue wagged and he made a gurgling sound.
“I can't have you calling for help before I'm done.” I said. “I'm taking the prisoners out of here and away from this place.”
The guard looked at me and his eyes were full of disbelief.
“Don't worry, you're not going to see any of them again.” I said and turned my foot the other way and kicked again. My heel crushed the rest of his face and the force of the blow snapped his head back and popped his spine apart. The body dropped backwards to the ground and only the flesh of his neck held his head in place.
“How can you do that?” One of the male trainees asked. “I've been here for three months and I don't think I could treat them like that.”
“This isn't the time for sentimentality over caring about your guards because sometimes they were nice to you.” I said. “Do you remember that they took a couple of you out of here already?”
The man fell silent.
“Yeah, you know exactly what they do when they take people out of here. Both the bad and the horrible.” I said and searched the guards for the keys to the cell doors. I found them on the sixth guard I checked and I hadn't missed that none of the trainees had pointed him out. “So, does that mean none of you actually want to leave?”
“You said that you were here to kill us all.” A woman said.
“I wasn't counting the prisoners.” I said and her eyes went over to a man that laid face down in one of the cells. “It's okay. He's faking it.” I went to his cell and opened it. “You can get up now. The guards are dead.”
“You let them shoot me!” The man said and rolled over to show that his thigh had a laser burn on it.
“You'll be fine.” I said and took out my father's laser pistol and shot him in the other leg. “Hey, now they match!”
“ARRGGHH!!! You're crazy!” The man yelled and tried to move away.
“Uh. Uh. Uh.” I said and aimed for his head. “Tell me your name.”
“It's John Mal-”
*P-TEW!*
“Eeeennn! Wrong answer.” I said after shooting him in the face. I went to the next cell and the terrified woman stared at me. “Hello there, I'm your current rescuer.”
“Please don't hurt me.” The woman whispered.
“I'm sorry I scared you with that.” I said and pointed at the other cell. “What's your name, beautiful?”
“It's Sara Ba-”
*P-TEW!*
“Eeeennn! Wrong answer.” I said and went to the next cell. “You now what? This is taking too long.” I said and moved back out to the center of the room and started shooting. Of the twenty-eight prisoners left, I shot twenty-two of them. “There we go.”
The remaining six prisoners were completely terrified now.
“Hey, it's all right.” I said. “The others were trainees for this camp and were going through hazing.”
“H-how do you know that?” One of the braver men asked.
“I have a list of descriptions and names.” I said and they all looked at me like I was crazy. “I wanted to make them think I was going to give them a chance to live; but, it really was taking too long. I need to get you out of here before anyone shows up.”
“I thought you said you killed everyone.” A woman said as I opened her cell.
“I did. I'm worried about someone coming to the camp looking for a worker... or worse, one of you.”
She didn't say anything and I used the keys to open her shackles. She swung her fists at me to try and push me out of the way.
“Whoa, easy there.” I easily caught her wrists and used a calming technique on her. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
“You just killed how many people?” She asked and tried to struggle, despite being calm.
“About a hundred and ten.” I said and used a quick Presence Heal on her to help get her mobile. “They were involved with torturing my guardian and I needed to make them all pay.”
The woman stopped moving at my words and the healing energy. “Your guardian?”
I nodded. “I was captured when I was a child and raised on The Order's home world.” I said and the other five prisoners stood up. “Long story short, when I wouldn't join, they took my guardian away and tried to kill me.”
Small pulses of Presence came from them and I could feel them regaining some backbone.
“I've been biding my time and trying to build up a force to counter everything they do; but, it's taken me years to get where I am and I don't have the infrastructure I need to attack directly.”
“You're peeling the onion.” A woman said from three cages away. “You're going to take out the support structure one piece at a time and whittle them down until you get to the core.”
“Okay, I need you to join my cause immediately and take over.” I said and she barked a laugh at the partial lie. “All right, just joining is fine.”
“What about these things in our heads?” A man asked.
“I can only pop the wires and the charge. I won't be able to have them completely removed until we get back to the station.”
“Are you really getting us out of here?” The woman in front of me asked.
“Yes, and I'm joking about having to join up.” I said. “I've got a network set up to smuggle you out of The Order's sights and you'll have new lives and identities provided to you.”
“Then hurry up and get us out of here.” The other woman said and I went to each cage, opened it up and unlocked their chains, then used a quick Presence Heal on them to get them mobile as well. One of the men ran out to the authoritative man's corpse and searched him, then grabbed his Light sword.
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“What are you doing?” The woman asked.
“I'm getting us out of here.” He said and held a hand out to her. “Let's go.”
“Are you crazy? We can't escape looking like this!”
“We can steal some clothes or something.” The man said, a little urgently. “Let's GO!”
The woman looked at me and I chuckled.
“Either he's pretty stupid or he's trying to impress you. Or both. It's hard to tell.” I said and she smiled.
“Hey!” The man said and she looked back at him. “Come on!”
The woman hesitated and looked back at me.
“Oh, before you run off without a plan, money, or common sense... I have clothes, food, weapons, a way off the planet, and more money than I could spend on normal things in a single lifetime.”
The woman looked back at the man and he sighed in defeat. He walked over to me and held out the Light sword.
“You can keep it.” I said to his surprise. “It's broken.”
“Wh-what?” The man looked at it. “I can feel the focusing crystal!”
“Try turning it on.” I said and it spit and sputtered, then the crystal audibly cracked. “Now you know why he didn't draw it himself.”
The man tossed the useless weapon aside and looked at me. “I guess I'm going with you.”
“What if I changed my mind?” I asked and he had a worried look on his face.
“I'm just kidding.” I said and walked around him. “Now take her hand like a man instead of asking for it, and follow me.”
“Hey!” The man said and both women laughed. All six of them followed me and I went around and stored all of the bodies.
“How are you doing that?” The first woman asked.
“I could give you a short explanation of extra-dimensional space and how I'm carrying a small pocket of it around, or I could keep it simple and say it's magic.” I said.
“Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to those that hadn't seen it before or understand the principles.” She responded.
“Ooo, nice.” I said. “It really is magic, though.” I said. “Spells and incantations and everything.”
The woman blinked her eyes and stared at me as we all walked up the stairs. “You aren't joking.”
“Nope.” I said and opened the door at the top of the stairs. “Say, do any of you know where the control room is?”
The woman that held the man's hand raised her free hand.
“Lead the way.” I said and followed her to the third floor. We stopped at a security door and she pointed to a keypad. “I was here cleaning and saw inside.”
“This looks really sturdy.” I said and admired the door.
“It's six inches of tristeel.” The woman said.
“Not a problem.” I said.
“But... what... how...”
“Just watch and be amazed.” I said and moved four feet down the hallway, took two steps back from the wall, then I stepped forward and kicked. My foot went right through the normal wall.
“Oh, goddess.” The woman whispered, amazed.
“I learned this trick when salvaging a ship's armory.” I said and finished kicking out an appropriate sized hole in the wall. “They were so concerned about people coming in through the door that it was heavily armored and even booby-trapped.” I chuckled. “I just walked around to the back and cut through the bulkhead.”
“That really is amazing.” She said.
“I told you.” I grinned at her and went inside the room. They followed me and I quickly found the main database and did the same trick we did to get the data from the last place we raided. I had the computer list everything and recorded it, rather than copy the data the normal way. While that was going on, I searched through the room and didn't find anything noteworthy, not even an inventory list.
“Hey, there's someone on the security monitor.” One of the men said.
I looked over and saw Simone and Emari holding hands and talking. “That's my partner and my guardian. I better go and get them.” I paused by the hole in the wall. “Don't wreck anything until I come back.”
A couple of the men laughed and one of the women nodded. I left the building and walked across the compound to the first building and went into the torture room and shot the man there in the head. He was one of the trainees and that was why his mind was muddled. He was drugged so that he wouldn't feel the pain from the torture and would be healed to make it look like he actually went through it.
I left there and went to the maintenance building to get Simone and Emari. “Hey, you two.” I said and walked over to them. “I bet you two are fast friends.”
Simone chuckled and showed me their held hands. “She's a delight and loves you very much.”
“Like I didn't now that already.” I said and knelt beside Emari, then took her free hand and used a quick Presence Heal on her. She took in a deep breath and let it out.
“You've become very skilled.”
“This?” I shook my head. “I'm hiding pretty much everything while I'm here on this mission.”
“You are?” Emari reached out and sent a pulse of Presence through me. Since I was completely blocking myself from detection, she didn't feel any response from me. “What technique is that?”
“There's a lot that we can catch up on later.” I said and helped her stand. “For now, we need to get back to the control room and retrieve the data I'm mining.”
“What about the other prisoners?” Simone asked.
“I took care of them.” I said and Emari caught her breath.
“Hunter! That's what I wanted to warn you about!” Emari said and clung to my arm. “We aren't all prisoners!”
“I know.” I pat her hand and led her from the building. “We suspected it long before coming here, then confirmed it when we found the datapad on the guards that had taken you.”
Emari relaxed at my words and continued to hold my arm tightly as we walked across the compound to the main building. She shivered as we approached and I stopped just outside the door. The storm overhead raged at us and I ignored it.
“I killed them all, including the administrator.” I said. “Only the actual prisoners are left and they are in the control room waiting for us.”
Emari nodded acceptance and I led her and Simone into the building and we went up to the third floor, then Simone laughed at my improvised door. I took them through and saw that most of the things inside were smashed. Monitors, consoles, filing cabinets, desks, and chairs were pretty much scrap.
“Don't be angry.” A woman said a bit sheepishly, then she pointed to where I had set up the equipment. “We left what you were working on.”
“How do you know you didn't destroy what I wanted to record?” I asked as my anger rose. “Any of those consoles could have had the data we needed to stop this from happening again!”
Simone reached out and tried to calm me down and her efforts were in vain.
“So help me god, if there are gaps in the data I'm retrieving, I'll take an equal gap out of your Presence!”
“Hunter!” Emari exclaimed.
“Do you really think the stupid and useless tantrum they had wrecking the place is going to help anything?” I asked her. “No! All it did was jeopardize me helping other people that have been taken like this!”
Emari couldn't argue against that, so she remained quiet.
“I changed my mind.” I said and looked at the prisoners. “I don't want any of you near this operation if this is how you act when lives are on the line.” I waved at the destroyed control room. “You will be sent off to live new and anonymous lives as soon as you are properly healed and have those devices removed from your heads.”
“I want to join.” A woman said. “I don't want anyone else to end up like me.”
“It's too late for that.” I said. “You failed the trust test.”
“Excuse me?”
“After all the time you spent here, you couldn't keep your head on straight for twenty minutes when left alone.” I shook my head. “How are you going to act if you come across another facility like this one and are supposed to rescue people?” I asked and looked at their guilty faces. “Yeah, none of you would be any good at all.”
“Hey, we've been prisoners for years!” A man said loudly. “We have a right to be angry!”
“Yes, you do!” I said loudly back. “You have every right to be angry! I understand that! We all do!” I said in a bit of a rant. “I want to burn this whole goddamn planet to ashes for what they did to my Emari!”
Emari's eyes overflowed with tears at the truth in my words.
“I'm not going to do that, though. Do you know why?” I asked and they didn't respond. “Even though I have every right to be angry, what I don't have is the right to be stupid. Taking revenge for what happened has to be planned meticulously or it could get you killed.” I said. “I almost died the first time I tried to come here.”
Emari's grip tightened on my arm and her tears kept going.
“But, that's okay. I learned from my mistake and corrected it, then came here with a different plan. It worked, thank god.” I said and two of the prisoners winced a little. “It seems we still have two devout followers, despite everything she put them through.”
“What? No!” The man said and raised his hands. “I'm not a devout follower!”
I felt the Presence waver. “Then praise god.” I said and both men winced a little. “Thank him for sending me to rescue you.”
The man only shook his head and didn't say anything else.
“Simone.” I said and she walked over to the man.
“What are you doing?” Emari asked.
“She's going to muddle these memories in their minds.” I said. “I can't kill them like I want to, so I can only remove their knowledge of what happened here and let them go.”
“You're not taking them from the planet?” One of the women asked and moved slightly towards the console with the data retrieval equipment.
I sighed and pointed my father's laser pistol at her. “I'll change my mind again if you don't stop threatening me.” I said and she stopped moving. “I said I have passage off the planet and that I'll get you new lives. Why isn't that enough for you? You've proven that you can't be trusted, so why do you keep expecting me to trust you again?”
None of them said anything.
“Go ahead, Simone.” I said and she touched the man's temple. After a few minutes, she nodded and went to the other man.
“Don't touch me.” He said and backed away.
“I'm not giving you another choice.” I said. “You had one already and chose poorly.”
Simone reached for his temple and he moved to swat her hand away. I shot the hand and then his shoulder, then the other shoulder for good measure. A few people flinched from the violence, then a feeling of defeat filled the room.
“Stop that!” The other woman said and slapped the man beside her and the feeling disappeared. “He's right! We might have ruined his chance to rescue more prisoners with what we did here.” She looked at the two passive men Simone had put into a sleepwalking state. “If they are still devoted to her, then they are even more gullible than you are.” She looked over at me. “I'm sorry for what happened.”
“I don't care that you are. I just hope it won't impact the data retrieval.” I said as the equipment finished. I quickly packed it up and tucked it into my bag of holding. “Unfortunately, I can't leave this place intact like my original plan called for.”
“What?”
“I wanted it to be completely empty. No signs of people anywhere. Like they had all just left in the middle of the work day and didn't come back.”
The woman looked around at all the smashed consoles and her heart deflated.
“Yeah, it's going to look really suspicious if this is the only room in the whole compound that suffered catastrophic damage and every single one of the guards are gone.”
The other prisoners looked at me and didn't know what to say.
“I guess it's time for Plan B.” I said and motioned for everyone to leave the room. As they left, I took out every body that I had gathered and stuffed them into the control room. Apparently, over a hundred bodies was a lot, because they were piled pretty high by the time I was by the door hole I had made and shoved the last body into the room.
“You really did kill them all.” The first woman said.
“You can tell when people lie and you still seem surprised.” I said and took Emari's hand and led everyone downstairs and out of the building. We went over to the main gate and walked right outside. I clicked a button on my wrist com and kept walking. After ten minutes, Gleas drove the large rented off-road vehicle over to us.
“Hurry!” Gleas said and we all climbed inside. It was a tight fit with the seven prisoners, Simone, Gleas, and myself inside. No one complained about it until we drove away and hit the first rough bump.