Prison Break

by Jordan Peeler

“Why are we wasting our time keeping these kids alive?”

My eyes blinked open. I slowly propped myself up on my elbow, my skin sticking to the floor of the humid room, if you could call it that. As my vision cleared, I turned and faced a wall of metal bars. I drew my legs in closer and sat up, rubbing my temples with my fingers.

“Orders came in from Savion themself. So long as Montez is still alive, we have leverage over the Machinator.”

The Machinator. Farrah. It was coming back to me in small waves. Farrah’s parents’ execution, rescuing her from her own execution, coming face-to-face with an Argosy Enforcer—one of their robotic soldiers, the real deal—and now I’m here. And Farrah was nowhere to be found.

I crawled my way closer to the bars, limbs shaking since my full strength hadn’t come back yet. My heart leaped when I spotted another girl in the cell directly across from me. My excitement quickly faded as I realized it wasn’t Farrah. This girl had to be at least a few years younger than me. She wore her black hair in a low ponytail so long it went all the way down her back and curled around her body to lay over her feet. She wore a stone-faced expression, hugging her knees to her chest as her eyes darted around the room.

Our eyes met for a brief moment. I tried to read her; I could only determine that she was thinking about…something. Like she was trying to figure something out.

Heavy steps moved down the hall as two guards, an Enforcer and a human Agent, passed by. They went silent as they passed our cells, as if pretending they weren’t loudly debating my fate just a minute ago. The Agent looked me up and down, and I scowled in response. The Enforcer continued forward, snapping its head in the Agent’s direction to urge her to keep moving.

As soon as I heard a nearby door slam closed, I scrambled to the front of my cell.

“Hey!” I hissed. When the little girl looked up, I continued, “Have you seen a girl named Farrah? Kinda short, dark blonde hair, orange vest with a ton of pockets, insane looking back tattoos?”

No response.

“Do you know how long I’ve been out? When did you get here?”

The girl blinked twice and looked away. I then got hit with the realization that we may not speak the same language. Given the language the Argosy guards chose to speak, I assumed we were still in the Caelum region. But I had no clue where the girl was from, how far the ship traveled before reaching Caelum, or how long she’d been here.

I turned and looked around my cell. I’d been in my fair share of them, though all of them at least had a toilet and an elevated slab of concrete or something to sleep on. This was just a cramped, empty room. No wonder the Agent was set on killing us; I doubted they ever kept prisoners longer than a few hours.

I stood and pressed my hands along each wall, hoping something would give. When that didn’t work, I grabbed at the bars. Electricity coursed from them into my hands and arms, sending me jumping back. I growled in annoyance, hugging my arms to my chest as I waited for the pain to subside.

When I looked up again, the girl was gone.

“What…the hell…?” I muttered, moving to look as far down either hall as I could. No sign of her, no sign of her cell being broken into, or even opened. She’d just vanished. I shook my head, wondering if she was even there to begin with. Maybe the Argosy had done something to my brain while I was out; I definitely wouldn’t put it past them.

In an instant, the whole brig went black. My eyes adjusted to the darkness just as the electrified bars flashed and gave out, parting in the center. A cacophony of metal clashing, guns firing, and frantic, confused shouting grew exponentially throughout the ship. With the chaos as my cover, I decided this was my chance. 

I had to find Farrah.

Two steps out of my cell, stopped in my tracks. Pieces of bodies, both organic and robotic, littered the ground in front of me as far back as I could see. I found a decent-looking sword held in an Argosy Enforcer’s hand, sliced pristinely at the wrist and still sparking with electricity where the cut had been made. I’d never seen a cut that clean.

I jumped over the destruction and continued down the endless halls. I looked up and around for an exit, anywhere I could climb to a different floor and keep looking for Farrah. The chaos grew louder, Enforcers shouting orders at the Agents whose human emotions and fears were a hindrance.

I made a turn, nearly running straight into a pair of Enforcers. I raised my sword, hoping it was equipped with some sort of electrification function once I realized both robots were equipped with guns. 

“Tell me where Farrah is!” I demanded, taking a small step back.

Before I could get a response, they dropped to the floor, their heads rolling in the opposite direction. I cursed, my heart dropping to my stomach as I looked around frantically for the culprit.

I got a flash of her in the blinking red lights, her weapon gleaming before she sheathed it again. The girl from earlier jumped to the ceiling, leaping through the air like a supernatural predator, her long black hair making her look even more grotesque in the semi-darkness. Another Argosy Agent appeared, and within a second she dispatched them, falling apart in fleshy pieces like a tower of cards.

Against my better judgment, I followed behind her, keeping a sizable distance. She had to be trying to get out, too. If I could follow her to the deck, find a guard or two and get them talking, I could get to Farrah. I had to.

I kept the girl in my line of sight as best as I could dodging the mass of severed organic and robotic body parts she left in her wake. Natural light streaked the wall through a combination of tiny windows and bullet holes the higher we climbed. The girl jumped straight upward through an overhead door. Taking a second to catch my breath, I scaled the ladder after her.

My eyes readjusted to the sunlight just in time to dodge the swing of a massive, ornate double-edged axe. I leapt away from the main center of the action and got a look at the axe-wielder: A tall, iron-clad woman with wine-red hair.

It was easy to pick out the small team that had stormed the Argosy ship. Among the dozens of robots and humans, clad in black and silver and disguised with expressionless ivory masks, were women in unique, colorful uniforms. The young, black-haired girl was one of them, wearing a black and yellow suit that covered the bottom half of her face. Even in full view, it was difficult to keep track of her.

“Namiko, find Lilli!” the third woman yelled, pushing through droves of Argosy troops. She handled two handguns, one with electric rounds and the other with standard metal bullets. She used them simultaneously, maneuvering gracefully across the deck.

The young girl, Namiko, nodded, disappearing again into the ship.

“Hey!”

An Argosy Agent spotted me and charged in my direction. Quickly shifting my attention to them, I raised my sword. Our swords clashed midair. I pressed forward, parrying each swing until I got them to trip backward and fall overboard, plummeting through the sky to the desolate planetary remains below.

I continued to fight my way through the troops, making eye contact with the axe-wielding woman. Eyebrows furrowed, she quickly looked me over, and likely decided I wasn’t much of a threat at that moment.

Namiko reappeared on deck, followed closely by a dark-skinned woman with bright purple eyes. She reached back through the door, hoisting up another prisoner. My eyes went wide.

“Farrah!” I hollered. I began to push my way through the troops.

Farrah turned my way, craning her neck to try to see me. 

“Viva!” she shouted. She made a move toward me, held back by the purple-eyed woman.

“Get the Machinator on the ship, we gotta go!” the gun-wielding woman directed. The purple-eyed woman promptly guided Farrah toward a much smaller, repurposed Argosy ship that was anchored to the one we were on.

“Wait! My friend!” I heard Farrah say as she was pulled farther away from me.

Namiko and the two other women followed close behind, having cleared enough troops to make a quick getaway. I raced after them, just a hair too slow, as the five of them were on the ship and moving to pull away when I was a few feet from the edge of the ship. I took two huge steps and jumped.

I had a death grip on the side of their ship, crossing my ankles over their anchor line. I used it to pull myself up just as the line retracted.

My heavy breathing stopped abruptly at the click of a gun loading. The gunslinger towered over me, a handgun aimed directly at the center of my forehead as she stood maybe a couple feet away.

“I’ll give you five seconds to get the hell off my ship,” she said, her other hand reaching for her second gun.

“I’ll be damned before I leave without her,” I said, gesturing toward Farrah.

The woman let out a short laugh. “Yeah, okay. Try me if you want. Or better idea: You just stay right there and I’ll let you hop off at our next stop.”

I stood up slowly, going for my sword. She rolled her eyes and tightened her grip on the white-gold handgun, readjusting her aim.

“Eli, stop!”

The purple-eyed woman grabbed her arm, redirecting the shot. Shouting erupted as the four team members argued over what to do with me. I called Farrah’s name again and we tried to move toward each other, blocked off by the group. I tried to fight my way through, getting tossed every which way. I could hardly keep myself upright.

Then another shot rang out.

I felt the electricity spread from my shoulder through the rest of my body. I spasmed, completely losing control of my limbs. The voices faded and my world went dark the second I hit the ground.

✵✵✵

The next time I woke up, my back was against one of the ship’s masts, my wrists bound behind it. The red-haired woman sat in front of me, her arm leaned on her giant axe. Namiko sat cross-legged on the ground in front of her, lazily carving into the wood with a curved dagger.

Namiko looked up as I tried to pull my wrists loose. She tapped the red-haired woman on the knee and she turned my way.

“She’s awake,” the red-haired woman announced. She locked eyes with me as she stood, daring me to make a move. I immediately froze, deciding it was better than any other alternative.

The gunslinger, Eli, was the next one to come into my line of sight, pulling out both guns. She twirled them absentmindedly as she ambled closer.

“I’m guessing you wanna kill me now?” I asked. “That’s the only way I’m leaving without Farrah.”

“If I wanted to kill you, I woulda done it already,” said Eli. She crouched to my face level, tilting my head up with the tip of the white-gold electric gun. “Not gonna lie, I’m still mulling it over.”

“Eli, that’s enough.”

A strange lavender energy encircled Eli’s hand, quickly enveloping her entire arm and traveling across her shoulders toward her other arm. She was jerked into an upright position like a marionette doll. 

The purple-eyed woman walked over, her lavender-tipped fingers tracing intricate shapes in the air in front of her. My breath left my lungs. Magic. 

Being pirates under a decidedly anti-piracy tyrannical government was one thing, but using magic was on a whole different level of illegal. I was shocked no Argosy ship spawned into existence to kill her at that very moment.

“Apologies on behalf of our captain,” she said. Her voice was strangely soothing. “She can get riled up when things don’t go exactly to plan.

“My name’s Lilli. Your friend, Farrah, said your name was Viva? Is that right?”

I nodded. “Is she okay? Where is she?”

“She’s doing fine, she’s resting. I presume it’s been a rough couple of days for you both.”

“You know I can’t leave here without her, right? The Argosy’s after her.”

“We understand. That’s why we broke her out of the prison ship. We need her.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “So you know she’s a Machinator.”

“The last one in the Flex, yes,” Lilli said, sighing. “Meaning she’s crucial to taking down the Argosy.”

I nodded. This woman was shockingly calm, almost uncomfortably so, given the company she kept.

“So you’re a resistance movement? There’s not a lot of you.”

Eli scoffed. “And where’s your crew, huh? Maybe you’d be less hell-bent on taking the Machinator if you—”

“We’ve just started building up our ranks,” Lilli interrupted. “And we’re hoping Farrah can give us a massive advantage over the Argosy.”

I nodded again, seeing it all come together. Farrah was the last living Machinator in the Flex, the last person born with genetic modifications that supposedly gave her intelligence that rivaled even the highest ranked robots in the Argosy. Keep her on the side of humanity, and she could be insanely useful.

“We could use you, too,” said Lilli. “I saw you holding your own back on the prison ship. You’re incredibly skilled in combat. You could stay with us. I’m sure Farrah would be happy to know you’re fighting with us.”

“Or again, you can get the hell off my ship. Which will happen anyway if you try to run off with the Machinator,” said Eli. She forced a smile. “Choice is yours.”

I glared at her, then looked back at Lilli. Her gaze was calm, expectant. I thought about it for a moment. A chance to get rid of the Argosy for good, and a damn solid chance at that. This could work.

“I’m in.”