Anti-Hero || Leo Valdez

11 - I Believe I Can Fly

Forget what Taylor Swift said, karma was a bitch, not a relaxing thought. Via should've known that even if Leo himself didn't get back at her for knocking him out, someone else would.

Turned out that someone was Lity-fucking-yerses.

She'd made it to the prisoners. She'd stumbled around Commodus' palace for at least thirty minutes, demanding directions from terrified cleaning maids and killing any guards or blemmyae who came her way before she finally made it to the vault door to the prison. She'd threatened a blemmyae for silence and the key to the vault. The door had swung open and she jumped through.

In the nearest cell on her left, huddled in a corner, Via saw two painfully emaciated teenage boys. Their clothes were rags. Shadows filled the cavernous recesses of their clavicles and ribs. When they looked up at her, their eyes widened in shock and recognition.

"Oh, gods," she whispered, walking over to them. "Deacon? Stan?"

"Via?" A girl's voice came from the next cell. Via looked over and saw a girl in gray camouflage with shoulder-length hair that was stark white.

"Hunter!" Via exclaimed. Hunter, who was one of the Hunters of Artemis (there were way too many jokes about that, all of which annoyed Hunter to no end), had been captured recently. Artemis had sent her to do recon, but she'd found out about Georgie and had tried to save her. This resulted in her getting captured.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to get you all out of here, starting with Georgie. Where is she? Have you seen her?" Via looked around and counted six other cells, each one occupied. In the center of the room was a metal post with iron hooks and chains—the sort of place where someone could fasten slaves for inspection before sale.

"How dare they treat prisoners like this?" Via growled, shaking with fury. "And why weren't they given food?" She gestured at Deacon and Stan, the two emaciated boys.

"They weren't denied food," Hunter explained. "They went on hunger strike."

That was even worse. Via frowned at the two boys. "Deac, Stan, when I get you out of here, we will have words. Oh, yes. We will."

Deacon and Stan both managed weak but amused smiles.

"Which cell is Georgie in?" Via asked.

Hunter pointed down the cell block. "All the way at the end."

Via raced down the cell block, passing a dracaena and a large wrestler-type clad in nothing but a red and white loincloth. Sure enough, at the end of the block, there was Georgie, hunched in the corner, sitting on some kind of bronze suitcase. She was wearing the same lavender wool sweater and green jeans that she'd been wearing when she was taken. On her lap sat a plate of prison slop, which she was using to finger-paint on the wall.

"Georgie!" Via knocked on the glass, hoping to draw her attention, but to no avail. Georgie was fascinated with her finger-painting. Via placed a hand on the glass, wondering how she could break it. Maybe if she hit it really hard with her bow? She slung it from her shoulder, gripped it tight with both hands, and hit the glass with all of her might.

She didn't even crack it, and in addition to that, the bow narrowly missed her face during the rebound.

"Shit," Via muttered, after trying two more times and getting no results. She started to rummage in her medical bag, hoping to find something she could use to break the glass. Maybe the knife? Via took it out and stared at the glass. She doubted that the thing in the movies where the hero cut a perfect circle in the glass and tapped it out without shattering it was real, but it couldn't hurt to try, could it? She positioned the point of the knife against the glass and dragged it down. With a sound like nails on a chalkboard, she managed to scratch a wide, crooked arc into the glass. She paused for a bit, listening for anyone who could be coming. She wasn't exactly being quiet. Hearing nothing, she continued to work at the glass, putting her full concentration into it.