Chapter 1
“We are almost there Lina”, Kane said.
Lina nodded in agreement, seeing the prison from afar. It was dark, about an hour past midnight. The moon was not visible. She could not make out any of the building’s features, only its shape. She matched it to the pictures she had seen a few days earlier. She had been given photos and blueprints of the area to prepare for the prison break.
They were making their way through the forest to reach the prison undetected. Both were wearing black hooded outfits and grey masks that covered their heads’ front side, with no eyeholes. The masks let their wearers see through them however others on the other side of the mask could not see through it. Kane walked ahead of her. He was muscular, in his late 20s and 1.79 m tall. He was highly experienced and powerful enough for her father to entrust her safety to him. She was slim, 15 years old and 1.55 m tall.
As they got to the edge of the forest, she saw the prison clearly. Circular fences surrounded the prison. They were around 10 m high. Inside, a 2-storey grey circular building stood. The prison seemed defenceless to the naked eye. However as per the info she got, the prison was surrounded by an invisible barrier and guards monitor the prison’s surroundings via satellite imaging. They were safe so far as the forest had thick leafy trees to hide them.
Inside the prison was another matter entirely. It was built underground with 37 floors. Each floor had security cameras monitoring and guards patrolling. In addition, prison cells rotated 12 degrees clockwise every 15 minutes, making it difficult for any intruders to locate their target. Furthermore, sweepers roam the lower floors. They are highly skilled enforcers, who were trained rigorously. A sweeper would do whatever it took to complete their mission even at the cost of their own life. She really hoped she wouldn’t run into one of those. Both Kane and she knew the dangers of attempting this prison break, yet they didn’t hesitate. They didn’t have another choice. They needed their target’s help.
Kane held out his right hand and a black orb, twice the size of his palm, appeared, showing the time 12:59. A few seconds later, it turned to 01:00. He turned to her, “It is time.”
She marched ahead and activated her Heka, a small amount just so that the prison’s sensors didn’t detect her.
Heka is the energy that is emitted from the soul. Each soul is an enormous amount of heka energy with each body acting as a limiter. The amount of Heka emitted depends on the body’s strength, the stronger the body the more heka can be emitted. At least that is the case for most people. She heard that exceptions existed.
Most people have the potential to access Heka at an early age. However, without proper training, they lose the ability to activate it. Since Heka is not public knowledge, most people are unaware of its existence and view it as they see fit. Some see it as a blessing from God, while others see it as a reward from the devil. Heka is used in two main ways among its users.
Firstly, it can be used generally to boost the body’s abilities such as vision, hearing, stamina, speed, strength, etc. She found them all amazing advantages to using Heka.
The second way that Heka is used is unique to each person and depends on their specific abilities (their adaptability to heka for example) and how they choose to develop it. She thought it was an art, a “style” as commonly called by heka users. She wasn’t sure what her style was yet. The situation with her abilities was a bit complicated. She was special. She could access multiple heka styles and master them in theory. In reality, she could only manage a few basic techniques in each style… for now at least.
Lina activated her Barrier Heka Style. She was nervous and could barely keep her hands from shaking. She wasn’t an expert, but it wasn’t a hard feat for her to manage a simple barrier. It was just her first time going on a dangerous and illegal mission. If Kane noticed her nervousness, he would call off the operation. His line of thought would be: if she couldn’t manage to do the first step, then she would be useless throughout the rest of the mission. She had to keep her calm in front of him.
She took a deep breath, concentrated, and made an invisibility barrier that surrounded them both. It couldn’t protect them from attacks, only hide them from unwanted attention. She started walking towards the prison, the barrier moving with her and Kane moving one step behind her to stay within the barrier’s range.
They reached the prison’s fence. She crouched and Kane did the same beside her. She shifted the barrier’s centre from herself to the wall. The barrier now cloaked them and this small part of the wall. Kane activated his heka and put his hand on that wall. That section of the wall started to melt. He possessed Fire Heka Style. She could tell how skilled he was as she couldn’t feel the heat emitted and he only melted the section that was cloaked. Such precision and focus can only be achieved through years of training and experience.
When the wall melted, she could see he left the wires intact. The walls were full of wires that formed a large circuit. If any part of that circuit broke, sensors would activate and alert the guards. She nodded to him to go ahead. He had melted a small section to be less noticeable to patrolling guards. They crouched to get through. As she passed underneath the wall, she expected the ground to be warm.
It wasn’t.
She whispered as she passed to the other side and stood up, “You just melted the wall. How come I couldn’t feel the heat?”
“By absorbing the heat,” he responded while eying the building ahead of them.
Her eyes widened, “You could do that?!”
He turned his head to her, “Yes. Now focus on the mission.”
“Right”, she set herself as the barrier’s centre again.
The yard around the building was huge. It could probably hold over two thousand people. They walked towards the grey building, passing a few guards. Lina added another feature to her barrier. The guards couldn’t see them. With her new feature, they couldn’t hear them as well. It took up more heka though so she had decided to turn that feature on when guards were around and to turn it off when the coast was clear.
They got to the front door, where a guard was standing beside it. He was wearing the standard uniform: blue shirt, black vest, blue pants, and boots. He was carrying an assault rifle and looked bored. As per the information they had gotten, guards would be switching posts soon. A few minutes later, they heard a beep from the other side of the door as the door slid open and another guard came through.
“Hey how was your shift?”, he said to the other guard.
“Boring.”, he replied.
Chuckling, the second guard answered, “So it was peaceful. You should be glad.”
As the second guard moved away from the door, they went through quickly before the door closed behind them. They were in a long, narrow hallway with three doors on each side. The hallway was dimly lit. She could see elevator doors at the end, with a card reader besides them. The idea of taking the elevator entertained her, but of course nothing could be easy. They walked to the elevator doors, turned right, and went through the emergency exit door. They saw stairs leading up and down. To their right, stood a door leading outside.
They moved down ten flights of stairs and reached the end, a door with the number “-10” on it. They opened the door slowly, to check if the coast was clear. The hallway was circular like the building. In the centre was a cylindrical pillar. The top split into 30 horizontal pillars. Each pillar connected to the wall directly above a prison cell. As she looked at the prison cells, each cell was small, made to fit one person. The cells had dark purple barriers covering them, keeping the people inside and outside the cells from seeing each other.
Lina disabled the invisibility barrier around her and Kane. They were told by their source that no guards would be patrolling this level at this time. Their source had also hacked security cameras to show pre-recorded footage. This was done to not have Lina expend too much of her energy on maintaining the barrier. Afterall, they needed to account for sudden changes in their plan. It also allowed them to move freely, instead of being stuck in a barrier.
In the centre, she saw the elevator doors and, on doors’ right, another door that leads to this floor’s central control room. The door was locked with a card pad beside it. Kane put his hand to the pad and melted it. No alarm was sounded, just like their source said. The door slid open, and they entered.
The room had white floor and walls. At the far end, a desk was found, projecting four hologram monitors above it. The room was surrounded by glass windows, allowing them to see the cells from inside the room. From the outside, the glass was dark so as not to allow people from the other side to see the inside of the control room.
Kane held out his hand and his orb appeared. Their source had installed a program to help them hack the system and locate the target’s cell. The orb lit up and started emitting blue rays, scanning the hologram monitors. The orb beeped, turned off, disappeared and the monitors converged into one large monitor with a message:
“I am in”, the message changed, “Locating target.”
Lina started looking around. She thought that it was odd that an underground prison would have a limited number of prisoners per floor. Building this prison would have been more expensive, so why have a limited number of people locked there.
She asked Kane, “Why aren’t there more cells in this prison? It seems to be a waste considering it is an underground prison.”
He turned to her, “What makes you think it is only thirty cells per floor on every floor? This is only public information. However, lower floors can have more.”
Puzzled, she asked, “Why would there be more on lower floors?”
“Each country has secret prisoners that they don’t wish to make public to other countries. There could be prisoners locked her that have sensitive information on this country or another. The world is always one step away from war, so each country can’t risk handing information to others but at the same time attempts to retain inmates with information on others, giving themselves the advantage should a war break out. Ironically, each country does this and criticizes others for violating human rights.”
He continued, “To avoid political pressure, these prisoners are kept secret. That is most likely why we could not locate our target’s location in our attempt to hack the prison’s system from the outside.”
“I understand why other countries would want to get some prisoners, but how would they pressure other countries to hand them over? Under what pretext would they make such demands?”, she asked.
“Good question”, he sounded impressed. “That is why the United Prison exists. It is the largest prison made by the shared efforts of various countries. Its purpose is to have a more secure prison for extremely dangerous individuals, ensuring that no single country can make use of these individuals and reducing political tension with other countries.”
She remembered hearing about that and gleamed, “I remember something like that. My teacher called it Deadlock though.”
“Yes, that is the common name. It holds the most advanced security and despite how some of its prisoners are dangerous and influential, no one has managed to escape or break someone out of there.”
She became more curious about Deadlock but decided to stop asking questions when she heard a beep from the monitor and looked to see that the message changed to “Level -37”. The message then changed to “There is interference_” and the monitor turned off.
Suddenly, the alarm went off and the prison’s lights started flashing red. Lina looked around to see the cells’ barriers clearing and the prisoners coming out, men and women, all wearing orange prisoner uniforms.
“What’s going on?”, Lina shrieked.
Kane walked towards the door, “A complication. Get ready.”
