Mist

The Mysterious General

After a few minutes, I stand and gaze down at the creature. It's barely recognizable. Also, my hands are barely recognizable and hurt a lot. Serdityy stands behind me and he makes a face like I peed in his food. I ask, “How do you know how to do this?” He squints me, “I’m used to it. I’m an Empiric general who likes breaking out of prison.” I stare at him with big eyes.

He's an Empiric human. A human group that broke away thousands of years ago. We haven't been friends with them since the human separation. He’s confused and shouts, “Why do you look like an animal staring at a bright light?” I shake my head and he starts to loot the bodies, strips them down, and tells me to do the same. I go to the guard. He's humanoid and the armor fits badly, but it's believable from a distance.

I follow him through a few hallways and hear screaming everywhere. People who have been tortured were being dragged back to their cell to wait for the next horrifying way to torture them. It's sad and chaotic with all the tortured, escape attempts, and suicide attempts. It's easy to walk and be unnoticed.

The only place you can get noticed are closed doorways where there are often six random buttons with symbols. Serdityy knows this, and he just walks right by without anyone noticing, even though his stomach is obviously poking out under the armor. He looks fabulous.  

An alarm sounds and a P.A. system says, “TWO GUARDS FOUND STRIPPED OF ARMOR. LOOK FOR TWO GUARDS WITH POORLY FIT ARMOR.” They know us so well, it's magical. Serdityy yells out in a weird accent, “FUCK!” I become concerned and every guard looks at us. He looks at one of them with messy armor and says, in his weird accent, “LOOK AT THAT FUCKER! HE LOOKS SUSPICIOUS!” The guards look at the guard. That guard who Serdityy pointed at starts to run away.

Serdityy whispers, “These guards didn’t get much training. These Unity planned for a quick invasion.” While the guards chase after the other guard, Serdityy takes off a nearby guard’s helmet and punches it in the face. It flies back a couple feet. He places the helmet back on and yells, “THERE'S ANOTHER FUCKER IN OUR AREA!” The prison completely riots. Guards punch each other and the prisoners look to us. Some of them make the connection that we are the escapers and join us. We slowly gain an army. There's no hiding now.

Serdityy turns to me, sniffs several times, smiles, and whispers, “The oven is warming,” before he sprints away. I follow and see a group of heavily armed guards stand at the end of the hallway. He screams, “FUCK! JUMP WHEN I RAISE MY HAND.” The guards all throw down these unusual grenades. He raises his hand up. We all jump simultaneously. The floor under us glows with electricity for a split second.

On the way down, Serdityy drop kicks a guard. I fall on one. It throws me off and tries to regain its footing. I spot it's weapon on the ground. I grab it and shoot at it. The creature seems unaffected. I toss the gun behind me to the prisoners with us. As the guard lunges at me with a baton, Serdityy jumps behind it and grabs its neck. The creature flails around trying to throw off Serdityy, but more prisoners jump on the guard and force it to the ground.  

The P.A. system blares, “LOCKDOWN. LOCKDOWN.” Doors everywhere start to close. Serdityy takes one of those grenades and runs towards a door. He plies open this small invisible box with several cords and buttons are located inside. He bites a cord and spits it out, plants the grenade in the box, and quickly closes the door. The wall shines with bright electrical currents. The P.A system abruptly halts. Everything seems to be stopped. Serdityy looks back at me and smiles an adorable smile, “Easy.”

We follow him as he sprints to an armory where the confiscated weapons and armor are stored. Hopes are high in the group. Serdityy says, “The size of this prison makes me think there's only 20 guards, which means that this prison is made mostly for killing things,” He kicks a rock and scratches his stomach, “You did good, whatever your name is.”