Unordinary | Perfect World

Chapter 9 - Jailbreak (3)

While Remi and Kuyo continued their search, Valerie sat on the bottom floor, in one of the official rooms.

"Finally, you came, you fell into my trap!" Valerie exclaimed triumphantly. With those words, she reached for the ability-dampener weapon she had received from Spectre.

As Valerie held the device on the ground floor, a few stories above, Seraphina and John were causing quite a commotion.

"Where are we?" John asked.

"I don't know. I sailed straight down. I'm surprised you could keep up with my pace," Seraphina replied.

"Me too. I think I've gotten a little stronger," John said.

John paused to look around as they wandered through Lovun Jail, naturally destroying everything in their path. This place didn't seem unfamiliar at all. Dark corridors, identical cell doors lining both sides—John was experiencing déjà vu. He slowed down for a moment.

 "What happened?" Seraphina asked, noticing John lagging.

"Nothing. Let's move on," John answered, his tone lacking sincerity.

They moved a little further, now just the two of them. There was no one around. They had ventured deep into the heart of the prison.

"We've come this far, what do we do now?" Seraphina asked.

"Arlo must be in one of these cells. We need to search them one by one," John replied.

"Really? That's too time-consuming! If we shout, we might get a faster response from Arlo," Seraphina proposed, suggesting a more practical method.

"It won't work! These doors are soundproof! They're designed that way... if you don't have someone open the door from the outside, no one from the inside can do anything..." John replied, his tone brimming with overconfidence.

"How do you know this?" Seraphina asked, but John didn't answer. Instead, he headed towards the first door.

"It's not here! Come on, start looking! You're faster!" John urged, prompting Seraphina to begin searching. After his prompting, Seraphina also began searching.

They searched for a while, but the cells were all empty. As John opened the door of each cell, the sense of foreboding, pessimism, and darkness within him grew more intense.

"How are things?" John asked Seraphina, his voice trembling.

"It's not good. We've already opened half of them, but there's been no progress. And why would they build so many cells?" Seraphina complained.

"To 'correct' the rebels who have gone astray," John replied, once again exuding confidence. Seraphina was startled by how confident John spoke.

To dispel the chill emanating from John, Seraphina headed towards a cell with a different door. Strangely, there was a sign on this door unlike any other, and it read 'Symbol of Pride'

With a shudder, Seraphina opened the door of the next cell and encountered something she never expected.

Inside the cell where she opened the door, there was a table, and on the table was a picture of John from 4 years ago. 

Seraphina was stunned. The cell looked as if it had not been touched for centuries. A piece of dried bread lay on the floor of the cell, with traces of dried blood on the table in the middle. Seraphina was shaken to her core.

"I fucking knew it!" John quietly approached behind Seraphina, who froze, and spoke. Naturally, Seraphina was startled.

"W-what do you mean?" Seraphina asked, her voice trembling slightly.