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Post by Deraldith on Aug 20, 2006 20:29:18 GMT -5
Deraldith had a job. The first thing she'd had to do was get arrested. The second thing she'd had to do was get tried and convicted.
The van bulged with unclean humans, inhumans and things she'd rather not learn the names of. They were all going to the same place. Anachron. The clockwork prison.
The van shunted to a stop, the hiss of the engine died and suddenly light was stabbing in at the hand-cuffed passengers, Deraldith among them.
"Everything out!" A voice barked and she was swept up in the tide of limbs, scales and fangs as it leaked into Anachron's court-yard. The gears of the prison spun around her, gigantic and loud, an oily, clanking monster. Time stopped in this place. Literally. You could spend your whole life locked inside the prison's gears but barely a second would have ticked by outside. Hardened prisoners joked that on their way into Anachron they'd seen their corpse being driven out in a hearse.
The third thing Deraldith had to do was find a gangster inside this whirling cosmos of dank cells and escape.
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Fiske
Crimson Key
[M:0]
Posts: 24
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Post by Fiske on Aug 30, 2006 0:01:09 GMT -5
"Remind me why I'm here." Fiske muttered as he lined up with Deraldith for inspection. Overhead the springs of the machine squealed under the weight of a thousand cells, all of them turning on iron cogs.
He'd been able to hack Crafe's computers and make up a new ID complete with records and certificates to match. If his luck held out, no one would realise they had the Demon Empire's former Emperor in their grasp.
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Post by Deraldith on Aug 31, 2006 12:04:55 GMT -5
"Once I find this guy I'll need an egghead to break the straps on this over-sized watch." Deraldith whispered. "You're the egghead. Plus, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about your history of murder and megalomania that makes me uncomfortable with leaving you alone in the Castle."
Ten navy-coloured guards wheeled out a monolithic television covered in rivets and crowned with a jagged pair of rabbit ears. There was a burst of static and Deraldith cast a quizzical eye up at the towering screen as a suited, elderly man came on.
"I am the warden." The television boomed. "From this point on you will obey me. There will be no truth except the truth I broadcast, no laws except the ones I televise. In the outside world your funeral has already happened, your families are already grieving and your friends are already forgetting you. If you play by the rules your life here can be comfortably numb. We have ways of dealing with troublemakers. Are there any questions?"
There was silence from the line of inmates. Finally, Deraldith held up her hand.
"Can you turn on the sports?" She asked. "I'm not a troublemaker I just hate infomercials."
A guard walked the line to where she stood. He jammed his truncheon in her stomach and she went wheezing to the grille floor.
"How about a good prison movie then?" Deraldith gasped.
Two other guards joined the first one and they laid into her, slamming a rain of boots and batons into her chest and face.
"Put her in the hole." The warden barked after it was over and they dragged her away, a bleeding, disheveled bundle of bruised skin and bones.
The rest of the inmates were herded to their cells, Fiske among them.
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Fiske
Crimson Key
[M:0]
Posts: 24
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Post by Fiske on Aug 31, 2006 14:26:46 GMT -5
Fiske's cell was number 112 on cog 6. The cell was barely bigger than a wardobe. The mattress doubled as a floor and a hole under his pillow served as a toilet.
"Lovely." Fiske sighed. Time wasn't the only thing missing here. As he gazed through the bars at the clicking, steam-drenched maelstrom he was struck with a wave of vertigo. There was no up or down in Anachron. The prison was enchanted so that, while the cogs turned, gravity remained the same in each cell.
He heard the echo of a woman's voice from the next cell over. He tried to push his head through the bars to see her face but they were too narrow.
"I saw you on the way in." She called.
"Are you addressing me?" The cyborg asked.
"If you're name's Fiske then yes, I'm addressing you." The woman answered. "My name's Saoirse. I had a husband and two little girls. You took them from me. I've waited a long time for the circle to close and finally it has. You're going to die in this prison. You're going to die in a lot of pain."
She broke off and the cyborg heard her weeping as the cages wrenched on, the sound of agonised, euphoric tears.
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Post by Deraldith on Sept 25, 2006 14:17:05 GMT -5
It was dark in the hole, the kind of dark that made you forget yourself, that turned you into disembodied nothing. On her knees in the black cylinder, Deraldith stuck her fingers down her throat and vomitted. Scrabbling blindly in the acrid stench she found the only thing she'd managed to smuggle past Anachron's security: a tiny piece of green crayon. Before she gave into to the cold and the dark she managed to scribble a message on the cylinder wall:
'ArRivEd. dEraLdIth.'
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