The Sleepwalker

Part Three: 15

Overseer Vindicator


Vindicator shoved the Warden against the wall, hard.

"You fricking shot me!" He spat, right up in the Warden's face. His voice was still kept low, because who knew what monsters lurked in these halls, but Vindicator was still the kind of man who, no matter how quiet his voice was, he was still scary. His own men once said that he was most terrifying just after a loss of an Agent or friend

"Because he looks numb to the world," he overheard them once say, "and when he talks, no emotion is put into his voice. When he's angry, you can tell he's mad. When he's quiet... It's like his soul left his body. It's pretty freaky."

Needless to say, Warden looked frightened, as if Vindicator was the Sleepwalker himself.

Cogsworth's stovepipe hat was knocked off when he hit the wall. How it stayed on while they were chased by the purple creature was beyond Vindicator.

"It was a necessary evil!" Warden choked, even though the Overseer had him by the shoulders and not by the neck.

"About as necessary as you are right now," growled Vindicator.

Invoke suddenly stepped in, her hair a mess. her gold hairpin had gotten loose. "Stop. Both of you. We're exposed and in danger. Now is absolutely not the time to fight within our own team."

"A team cares for each other," Vindicator murmured, "right now we're acting more like a criminal gang." He glared at Warden. "We all love each other until the cops break in. Then it's every man for himself."

Nevertheless he let go of the Warden and turned to what was left of his 'team', which consisted of Pilgrim, Invoke, Sickle, three Agents and of course Warden and Vindicator. None of the others had come to the Warden's aid when Vindicator had confronted him, but neither did they cross to Vindicator's side.

Invoke, ever the leader, cleared her throat and got the ball rolling. "Sickle, how close are the cells?"

Vindicator glanced sharply at her. Invoke put up her hands as if to calm him.

"Remember," she explained to him, as if he were a mere child, "we will just to head to the hanger and see Warden off. You don't have to go, you can stay and wait for reinforcements."

The bald Overseer grunted and looked away but did not say another word. Something nagged at Vindicator, something residing in the furthest reaches of his mind that just wouldn't leave. Who disabled the turrets in the Expanse? It had to be an Overseer... or a Warden. A warden who would, say, kill his own men at the drop of a hat, or to save himself?

Vindicator studied Warden for a while. His coat had seen better days, his now-broken monocle, his lopsided hat that he just picked up. Warden definitely seemed to be shady, like he had some ulterior motive to getting to the escape shuttles. Or that could just be fear. Vindicator had seen fear turn good men into shallow beasts before, concerned with only their survival. Still didn't make it right.

"They should be nearby." Sickle said, walking forward a bit. Here, there was no smell at all. No rusty tinge of blood, no stink of anything. Which either meant that nothing died here, or whatever killed them cleaned up nicely.

"Down this hall," Sickle pointed with his metal arm. He took the lead; everyone followed, Indexers hot and ready. Vindicator made sure to walk behind everyone, including Warden.

Soon they reached a set of double doors that looked like they belonged on a bank vault. In the center, a three pronged keyhole sat, its edges glowing a weak blue.

Warden stepped forward and placed his robotic palm on the lock. He had the ability to override any door, otherwise it would have to be opened up at the central control room. Any cell block in the Solar System Station had this mechanism, including the Dark Chamber.

Three prongs extended and locked to the keyhole. On the tip of each prong small wires extended and hooked up with much smaller keyholes. The signature was soon accepted and the prongs disconnected as the door fully unlocked and rolled sideways.

The first thing Vindicator noticed was the smell. Rotting meat mixed with moldy fruit. He gagged, but controlled his reflex before tossing all of his cookies. The action was shared by everyone in the group, but Sickle was the only one who actually lost everything in his stomach. And this was all before the door fully opened, which just had to be indicative of what sat inside the Cell block.

"What the..." Warden breathed. Vindicator couldn't see, so he pushed a spaced- out Pilgrim aside to get a good view at...

Death.

On a normal day, the huge cell block itself was at least eight floors, with an elevator shaft in the center that led all the way up to the ceiling and a catwalk leading to each floor's balcony. And every floor had... Vindicator didn't know how many separate rooms, but he counted almost seventy cells on just one side the ground floor. In Vindicator's own Cell Block B, he had over four thousand cells, with over half being occupied.

But today was not exactly a normal day.

In the dim white and flashing red, he saw that the shaft in the center had broken open halfway up and exposed frayed elevator cables and a yellow ladder bolted to the side. What was left of the elevator cab sat on the floor, having been ripped out of the shaft, and it was disgustingly filled with what looked to be bloody meat and entrails.

The floor and the bottom row of cells were all red, and each cell door had been busted open. Glass and blood littered the floor, and in the shadows, what seemed to be spider silk hung from the roof. Huge pieces of metal were everywhere. But they were not as common as the corpses. The number was uncountable. Some were human-like, some were definitely not. What looked like a yeti (or what was left of it) hung half out of a cell, and Vindicator counted three large headless wolves, one looked very much like a furry human.

As the group stared at the mess, disgusted, something happened at the top of the elevator shaft. Two clouds, one red and the other blue, began to swirl downward. Electricity the same color as the clouds arced between them.

"Sickle?" Vindicator whispered, standing still as a gargoyle. "What do we...?"

Sickle stayed silent as the clouds alighted on the floor. Each began to shift and swirl more, changing eventually into humanoid bodies with disgusting faces that Vindicator knew not even a mother could love. The red one had round teeth, short fangs from the top of his mouth, straight horns, and wild hair. He sort of looked like a mutated ox. The blue one, though, had slim, sharp teeth, long fangs from the bottom, and horns that spun upwards for about three feet each; it was also bald.

The blue one was inhumanly thin, so skinny in fact that it looked like a bunch of shrink-wrapped bones, and the other looked like it ate the population of a small town in a single sitting. Each were twice the height of Vindicator, and he was already considered the tallest person in the room at any given time.

Sickle gulped. "Oni."

The blue one floated over, its legs still cloud-like, and the red one followed behind.

"Humans." Blue said in a raspy voice. "What brings you here?"

"J-Just passing on t-through," Sickle stuttered. Blue cocked its head.

"Passing through where? There's nothing in here for you."

Vindicator considered stepping forward, but let Sickle handle it. It was his Cell Block, after all.

"Sorry... sir. We just need to... to... to get to the escape pods."

The blue oni's pupils sharpened.

Crap. Maybe Sickle didn't have it, after all.

"What could you possibly need to get from there?" Blue said, leaning forward.

Invoke stepped forward, and the oni's head spun so fast its neck would have broken if it were human. "For food." Invoke continued. "We are starved. And escape."

Vindicator tried to ignore the thought of food, but it was difficult now that Invoke brought it up. He'd of course, survived longer without three square meals a day back when he was a field Agent.

The oni pointed at her and laughed. "But you have done terrible things." He gestured at the group next, finger lingering on each and every one of them. "You have all done terrible things. I cannot let you pass without punishing you."

The red oni walked out from behind him, now carrying a large spiked club. Upon closer inspection the monster looked almost as if it was crying, because streaks resided under his eyes all the way down to his chin. However, Vindicator assumed the grin on it's face was not that of sadness.

Sickle lifted his palms as if that would stop the club if Red swung it. "NO! We could... could we come to an agreement?"

Blue leered down at the Overseer, getting real close. "What could you give me that I don't have?"

"Err... friendship?"

Wrong answer. The oni shook his head.

"I cannot let you pass without punishment. That is the way."

"What if... what if we found something more evil?"

Blue eyed him, looking vaguely interested. "Whatever could you possibly mean?"

Vindicator saw Sickle's knees shake, but only slightly before the Overseer recovered. Faking confidence is the first step in getting some.

"If we found a human -or monster- that did more terrible things than we did, you'd have to torture them first, and let us pass. Right?"

The oni placed a hand on his chin and contemplated it for a few moments. "You are correct, mortal. Bring us a creature, human or beast, with an ice cold heart, and we would let you pass upward as we beat the everliving tar out of that lifeform," said Blue, smiling as he relished the thought. His smile was soon replaced with skepticism. "However... you would have to find something that is more wicked than all of you combined."

"I'm sure we could find something like that." Sickle said smugly. He probably thought he had won. Vindicator knew that Sickle hadn't yet realized that his actions would cause a divergence to get hurt severely. He wondered what would happen when the thin Overseer did.

"Yes, I have no doubt that you could." The oni simply stated. "The world is a bad place, and humans are even worse."

Vindicator reasoned that they weren't technically on a world now, but decided to keep his piehole shut.

"Also," The oni smiled for the third time in what did not look like a friendly way, "if I may... assist you, there lived a beast here. That beast has gone and died, but its spirit has been... passed on. You should still be able to find the new hosts. It is most wicked. I give you twenty-four human hours to catch it. If you fail you will suffer greatly. I will make you wish you were never born."

The red oni sniffed loudly and said something in a language that Vindicator knew a human never uttered before. Blue whipped his head back, and the Red shrank back a bit.

"We will give them a chance anyway."

Red spoke again in a small voice.

"You will eventually hurt something." The blue oni turned its cold eyes on the humans. "Eventually."

In a flash, each oni became a swirling tornado before the cloud dissipated and the bloody room only had eight creatures in it once more. Or at least eight living creatures. And at least it had eight living creatures in sight. Vindicator never let his guard down, and by that he put his Indexer up. The three Agents did the same, understanding that if Vindicator thought they were in danger it was safe to assume they were, in fact, in danger.

"Sickle what's our game plan," Vindicator asked. He would have rather not turned to the Animal-loving Overseer for ideas on how to hunt an evil monster, but the alternative was the Warden, and Vindicator would rather take a hammer to his foot then go to Warden for advice.

Sickle, ever timid, backed away from the doorway. "Let's leave this terrible room first..."

Once they were all outside, they resealed the door without Warden's key. And they all turned to each other, silent.

Warden had the balls to speak first. "How many divergences escaped..."

"And how many were killed." Invoke continued.

"But killed by what?" Pilgrim ended.

Vindicator recalled what he saw. Most of the cells had been smashed open, so it was safe to assume that divergences escaped, but there was a certain smell to the place that told another story. A story of monster against monster. It was undeniable that these smart and animate creatures had a pecking order, but what divergence came out on the top of the food chain? The thought of the most terrifying monster just waltzing around, unhindered, scared Vindicator, which was definitely not normal.

"Sickle... What monster could have done those things back there?" He asked. Sickle blinked repeatedly, thinking hard.

"Well... it wasn't the oni. They torture but rarely kill... under certain conditions. I could see the werewolves doing something like that, but they don't think about storing meat for later." Sickle shivered slightly, but attempted to hide it. Vindicator admired the effort. "Couldn't be a bunyip, they live mostly underwater... On the other hand it could be a special divergence, like the Jersey Devil or Minotaur. It's almost impossible to correctly guess with the amount of cannibalistic creatures holed up back there."

"I also agree." Pilgrim said matter-of-factly. "We would have to search around for clues if we were to figure it out. Yet I do not think that is high on our priority list right now."

Warden, ever the annoying conversationalist, jumped in. "Exactly. We should just find another route up to the escape pods and alert the Council instead of finding out what monster is most likely to kill us."

From down the hall something screeched. It sounded human. Like a human in pain.

"That is our easiest way up!" Sickle murmured. "Everything else is risky."

"More risky than finding a wicked person more evil than all of us?" Warden countered.

Vindicator couldn't help but smirk. "Without Warden here I could see us finding someone like that. But with him I think it might be impossible."

"Watch it Overseer." Warden glared. "I'm still superior to you."

"Because the rules are really in play right now. Look around you Cogsworth. You have a fancy title. 'Warden of the SSS'. That's great, but pay attention to the wreck that is the Station. The Station you should have defended." Vindicator licked his lips. Man, his throat was dry. "This is chaos. Rules mean nothing. Roles mean nothing. Survival, on the other hand, does."

Warden opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, like a fish trying to survive outside of its comfort zone, which worked both ways in this metaphor. Sickle continued.

"There are two other ways up... One is on the far side of the entire prison. It would take us a few hours to walk there on a good day, but with monsters roaming..."

"Where's the other one?" Vindicator asked first.

Sickle grinned sheepishly. "Under maintenance, of all the worst timings I know. The cab was stuck on the tenth floor, its cables were cut, probably snapped. Finding the beast is the only way."

Another scream. This one was cut off abruptly by a hitch of a breath, yet it still echoed down the hallway.

Vindicator ignored it and crossed his large arms over his chest. "Then it's settled. We need weapons. Or when we find this thing, it'll kill us faster than Warden will."

"But we also need to identify the beast." Invoke said, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear and readjusting her gold hairpin. "Can't catch what you don't know exists."

"Then we will split up." Pilgrim said.

One of the Agents down the hall turned his head sharply. "With all due respect... splitting up never works in horror movies."

"Not helping, Agent. Return to your post." Warden barked.

Vindicator crossed his arms and looked at the door once more. "Good thing this isn't a horror movie." He was silent for a moment. "Or a horror book."