Azure: Gunner

Interlude 6-II

Arcadia State Penitentiary, commonly known as ASP, is regarded as the most brutal prison in the Lost Angels area. While you can easily spot ASP when passing through the nearby town of Arcadia, a visit to the prison is not recommended.

Should you forsake this advice, at best you will be ordered to withdraw by the heavily-armed guards patrolling the walls. Should you insist on a tour, you may find yourself staying quite a bit longer than you planned.

To safely assuage your boundless curiosity, read on for a brief description of the history of ASP.

- Fodorick’s Lonely Traveler – Guide to LA’s Townships and Minor Attractions

Elin descended what felt like at least two floors worth of stairs until they reached a landing with another locked door. She followed Smith through it into the first cell block she’d actually seen. They’d been described to her during her stupidly short training, but seeing it for the first time in the flesh was quite a different experience.

It was brightly lit, which startled her, and she had to blink a few times before her eyes adjusted. There was a central corridor running between open ‘walls’ made of thick metal bars. Stone walls separated the prisoners' cells from each other. Each one was exactly six feet wide and perhaps eight feet deep, with a single straw mattress on a stone bench spanning the back of the cell.

There was nothing else in each cell, except for a chamber pot. The stench was hard to describe. She could only speculate how long it had been since the pots were emptied. Clearly, the putrid, gut-churning smell was intentional. She was sure that, compared to the cost of the prison’s many other wards, an air-purifying ward would have been a drop in the bucket.

A clanging sound distracted Elin from the assault on her nose and she saw Smith slowly walking down the row of bars, smacking his truncheon into each one with a harsh ringing sound. Curses and jeers erupted from groggy prisoners. The mostly-male criminals were a varied bunch. Tall, short, thick, thin – the only thing none of them were was fat. They wore bright orange clothes that in some cases failed to hide the corruption underneath.

A wolf whistle cut through the noise and Elin turned to the cell to her left. The occupant was a man who had to be at least forty years old, with a shaved head that glistened in the – no, she realized with a start, his head wasn’t shaved. It looked like his flesh had turned partly to scales, and something must have been oozing out among them, because it looked like his head had been dipped in oil. He was dirty, if not filthy, under the orange jumpsuit, and his fingers ended in ragged claws instead of fingernails.

“Hey boys, looks like we got some fresh meat in here!” the thing – the man, she supposed – cackled gleefully. “Come here, pretty girl, let me get a look at you. Yum, I bet you’d taste absolutely delic – AARGH!”

The man’s taunts dissolved into a scream and Elin cast Pain Bolt a second time for good measure. Her Spell flashed between the bars and smacked the man right in the gut. Suppression collars also prevent your barrier from regenerating, she remembered from her training with a feral smile.

The noise around her died off abruptly, except for the corrupted man now whimpering in pain on the floor of his cell. Then ragged laughter broke out from some of the other convicts, along with taunts, mostly aimed at the downed man.

“Are you finished?”

Smith’s voice startled her, and Elin braced for a reprimand. She was expecting him to be angry with her for punishing the mocking prisoner, even though the scum clearly deserved it. She’d been told not to respond to insults or crude remarks from the prisoners – only direct threats were supposed to merit the use of force.

Instead, she found him looking at her with an interested expression, as if he was measuring her. When she finally nodded away from the whimpering prisoner, he simply turned and continued down the row of cells, banging his stick on the bars of each one as he passed.

At the end of the corridor, past what she thought were maybe fifteen cells on each side – all but a few of them occupied – they moved through another locked door. When Smith closed the heavy metal-reinforced wood behind them, it effectively cut off almost all of the noise the prisoners were still making.

“First floor is just a little taste for first-time offenses or the ones that just can’t keep their mouths shut. The lights stay on all night, and we wake ‘em up every hour or two, make sure they can’t get any real sleep. Few nights of that takes the fight right out of most men, especially when we still send them into the mine as usual,” he told her with a smirk. Then his eyes hardened.

“But not all. Some don’t get the message, and we need a little… sterner treatment for them. Follow me.”

They descended another flight of stairs. This time, the stairs went on and on, every half turn having a small landing with a single room, split in half by a wall of bars. The light in these rooms was viciously bright, almost searing her eyes at first. The cells here had no stone bench, no mattress, just a chamber pot. Not all of the prisoners seemed to care to use the pot, and she saw shit smeared on the wall of the third cell they passed.

The men here fell into two categories. Either they were watchful, angry, following her and Smith with eyes full of hatred – or they were broken, quietly whimpering or loudly shouting into the air, spouting nonsense like madmen. None of the noise carried into the stairs, however, as a sound barrier blocked all sounds from leaving each cell.

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“This section is like what you saw above, just… turned up a notch. They’re kept isolated from each other, lights always on, no comforts, no exercise breaks in the yard or even trips to the mine.”

The stairs continued past ten of these isolation cells, and Elin wondered how deep underground they were now. She found herself dreading the climb back up after all of this, but it still beat being stuck on door duty all night. Finally the stairs ended with yet another door, which opened into a tiny room with another door on the far side and much dimmer light.

Smith turned to a cabinet set against one wall and unlocked it with yet another key, pulling out two pairs of… glasses? They looked like something she’d only seen once or twice before, on very old people who had trouble seeing. He handed one to her, and she gingerly copied him as he put his on.

“Feed a few points of mana into them,” he instructed her, then before she even had a chance to comply he hit a switch on the wall and the room went completely and utterly black. Elin had never experienced anything like it, not on the darkest of nights, in the dungeon, or the Tutorial. She inhaled sharply, but managed to control a rising panic long enough to follow his instructions.

Once she did, she discovered that she could see again. Strangely, everything was in shades of grey, drained of all color. It was like seeing things under starlight with a new moon, but much brighter. She looked at the older guard and nodded. Smith then opened the inner door of the room.

This led them to a long corridor with widely-spaced cells on either side. Like the ones they’d passed on the stairs, each one was well back from the corridor and there looked to be at least twenty feet of rock between each of them. When she looked out of the corner of her eyes to the sides of the glasses, she could see nothing.

The entire corridor was utterly devoid of light. She tried to imagine what it would be like, down here in the dark, without the enchanted glass on her face, trapped behind the bars. Then she looked into the nearest cell, and saw a man alternating between banging his head – hard – against the stone wall of his cell, and scratching viciously at his own flesh. She could see tendrils of blood, almost black in her colorless vision, running down his arms and bare shins.

“He’s been down here a month,” Smith said coolly. “Caught that fucker trying to rape his cellmate. From the looks of it, I’d say he’s just about done.”

Done with what? Living?

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us – sound barriers on every cell. No light, no sound, no rhythm. Cells are so far apart you can’t even hear someone pounding on the wall of the next one over. No Comms, of course. Nothing to do but, well,” he gestured towards the madman in front of them.

Then he turned and walked along through the dark, whistling cheerfully. Elin followed, admiring the ruthlessness of whoever had come up with the idea for this place. Who would have thought you could destroy someone just by taking away their light?

Smith carefully looked into each cell they passed, so Elin copied him. They were six cells down the corridor when she noticed the man she was looking at staring back at her, looking her right in the eyes. Fuck, he looks like he can see me! But that shouldn’t be possible!

She froze for a moment, and he grinned at her, revealing a mouth that opened much wider than it should. Startled, she took a step back, then felt a wave of anger rush through her. That scum, how dare he look at me like that!

She stepped forward now, the man’s dark eyes still locked on hers. Elin felt her heart beating faster. Another step. A third, and she passed through the sound barrier in front of his cell. The man looked her up and down, lecherously, despite the total lack of light. She could feel his gaze on her, tracing the outline of her body through her armor, and it made her nauseous.

“Little girl,” the man hissed suddenly, and Elin jumped. He laughed then, a dry, rasping sound that sent shivers down her spine. Her heart pounded in rage and embarrassment.

“Such a pathetic little thing you are, scared of a man behind bars, a slave collar around his neck. How… pitiful,” the man hissed, clearly enjoying himself.

“Fuck you, you criminal shitbag!” she retorted, but he just laughed again.

“It would be your pleasure, I assure you,” he hissed, and she felt her face flush bright red. The man wasn’t finished taunting her, however.

“Sadly for you, I prefer my lovers more… how shall I put it? Attractive? Yes, that’s the word. Attractive. I assure you, little girl, they’ll have to keep me down here quite a bit longer before I’d get that desperate.”

HOW DARE HE?! THIS PIECE OF HUMAN FILTH, SAYING

SHE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR HIM!?!Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt!

The man hissed as she hit him again and again. But he was still standing.

Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt!

His face tightened, and he closed his fanged mouth, yet he was still standing. Elin felt dazed and almost stumbled. She forced herself to wait just long enough for her focus to return.

Pain Bolt. Pain Bolt. Pain Bolt.

Pain Bolt. Pain Bolt. Pain Bolt.

He screamed finally, and it sounded like music to Elin’s ears. She wanted more, but once again she had to wait while her focus regenerated.

Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt!

Now he was on his knees, clutching at his head. She wanted more. She needed more.

Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt! Pain Bolt!

Elin swayed on her feet and would have collapsed if Smith hadn’t caught her. She came to a few minutes later, finding herself sitting on the stone floor of the corridor while Smith crouched in front of her.

“That was quite a performance, kid. Not many people at your Level could make that bastard even twitch. Even fewer would keep casting until they nearly ran out of mana and passed out, just from sheer spite.”

He paused for a long moment, staring at her in the dark, colorless in the enchanted vision of the glasses. For a moment, Elin was reminded of the way Mason looked at night. Then Smith smiled at her. It was a far different expression than she’d ever seen on the big corrupted Delver.

“You’ve got potential,” he said, with a viciously satisfied smile.