There are three types of prisons in this world: those meant to contain, those meant to rehabilitate... those meant to break.
This one is small, no more than three paces from side to side. Floor, walls, all painted a uniform black. The furnishing consists of a single bucket of stale water, another for waste. There are no windows. There is no light.
There is one inhabitant. His hair is long, bedraggled, many days in need of a good washing. His bush of a beard might house rats. The clothes on his back are no more than rags, really, what might once have been serviceable cloth now torn in some places and outright slashed in others. But his eyes are not those of a caged and defeated beast. As much as the rest of him blends into the surrounding dinginess, those eyes are the most austere of blues, clear and uncompromising.
Most waking hours, he exercises. A standard fare of push ups, one-handed and explosive, lift his body a couple of feet off the ground. Squats, jumps and in-place jogging are mere warm-up, time fillers. There are more exotic moves, like bracing himself in a wedge between two walls, the tension in his body keeping him suspended for at least an hour at a stretch. Some are yoga-like stances for stamina and flexibility, hand-standing, balancing in the most improbable poses. It suffices to say that there is no concealing his industry: even sans the not-so-hidden camera, there is no mistaking his preternaturally good condition, unbecoming of a chronically maltreated prisoner.
He has tried to escape seven times. In each occasion they had thrown him back here worse for the wear, soundly beaten but yet alive. They are not ordinary men, cold, professional, and in overwhelming numbers.
On bad days he paces, mind lost in the maze of his past. Sometimes he halts and shuts his eyes, as a particular memory/hope surfaces.
Some days his rage is as palpable as a second creature, stalking the cell too small for them each, much less both. He does not yell, beg, nor beat his fists, for he knows these to be futile. He knows his body is his best and perhaps only weapon, so he sleeps, he eats jail slop, he trains. He plans, and he hates.
The prisoner is relatively quiescent today; some ineffable charge in the air has him on alert, and if anybody is watching they would have seen his eyes sharp behind the thin slot that is his only contact with the outside world. The guard rotation is too competent to let much slip, but details are not lost on him: the slightly more rigid stance in one back, the more terse words from another. His eyes narrow. His mind races over scenarios, strategies.
He waits.
The building is just two stories tall, ostensibly one of the new security firms that have popped up like mushrooms post the "Gutting of the Glades", as press drama calls it. The ground floor is a reception/office area, filled with bulky men in suits and the occasional female in secretarial and public relation roles - this is one industry where gender equalization is slow to encroach. The first floor is one large training area, equipped with as close to military-grade facilities as is legal to obtain, from gym machines to firing ranges.
There are actually two more floors underground. The elevator is a trick, with buttons for the two officially existent levels, but if one presses them just so, in a particular timed sequence, it will take one below.
To the dungeons, or the figure perched on the rooftop thinks.
The dark clothing, though modest and functional, do not fully hide the curves of a woman's figure. A half-mask obscures her face, but her hair makes a startling contrast with the dusk sky, long and silvery white. She is finalizing adjustments to a climbing harness roped to some convenient piping. Then she walks up to the edge of the flat industrial style roof, and jumps.
Momentum carries her neatly besides a small grilled window, the always-open kind that ventilates a bathroom. Her landing makes barely a thud in the quiet of night. She slips a prying tool in between the slats of the grill, and pulls until the hole that she makes is about a five centimeter in clearance. Through this she slips something akin to a spider, which begins climbing down the wall on its delicate, suction-tipped legs. Her gloved fingers control it via a handset.
The spider creeps across the floor, exits the bathroom and is in the training area proper. The soft whir of its motors are inaudible over the grunts of training men, and its dull gray coloring matches the floor tiles. The area, nay, the building, is far too well staffed for ten p.m. in a first-world enterprise, yet the little mechanical creature remains undetected as it makes its round across the gym. At strategic spots - a flower pot here, behind a couch there - it stops and a panel in its underbelly opens, depositing a small gray pillbox.
Eventually the spider returns whence it came, easily ascending the wall now that its payload has been delivered. Its owner scoops it up and gently deposits it into a padded case, together with the handset. The case goes into a utility bag strapped onto her back. Then she pushes off the wall again.
Her second target is on the ground floor, but the ventilation grating is the same. This one she removes completely with the help of a blue laser cutter, secures it to her backpack, which she then pulleys up to the roof. Her next action is perhaps a strange one for this scene: she takes a few slow, deep breaths.
The ensuing minutes are an art of pure motion.
With the rope as leverage, she swings through the window, feet first.
Lands fluidly on the bathroom floor.
Moves to the door, gun drawn.
Opens it, fires three silenced shots, near-immediately after.
Three bodies hit the ground, but she is already walking past them.
Five men are downed in their cubicles, one manages half of a shout.
A clatter of running feet builds up, a hornet's nest stirred.
Her left hand triggers a device attached to her hip, her right hand fires two more shots. Both meet their mark.
In the floor above, each of the spider's gifts cracks open, seeping an ochre gas.
She swings behind a wall just in time to avoid bullets now zinging her way.
The men upstairs begin to choke and collapse. There will be no reinforcements.
She darts from behind cover at irregular intervals, always in motion, always from an unexpected direction.
Six guards fall.
The gunshots stop.
She has reached the front desk, behind which a young woman huddles, sobbing for mercy.
The receptionist earns a knock-out blow to the head.
There is more muffled crying in the distance, but the assassin stands immobile, listening.
She whips around, squeezing the trigger as she drops into a crouch.
The man creeping up from behind lets out a strangled yell. His body thuds onto the ground.
Silence.
Satisfied that none of substance are left standing, she walks back towards and into the elevator. Her fingers press a confident pattern of buttons.
The doors slide shut as it descends.
The prisoner squints as light floods his cell. He is standing crammed in a corner closest to the door, still shrouded in shadow, poised for the element of surprise. Despite best efforts his eyes, many days unused to brightness, fails to make out much more than a back-lit silhouette. But he has not survived so far by hesitating, thus there is barely a pause before he launches himself bodily at the figure.
Rather than take the impact of his not inconsiderable momentum however, the intruder twists as they both tumble to the ground, rolling fluidly until it is he who is pinned below. Old instincts kick in to catalog his situation - the body above him is rather light, but there is a certain sureness in its form, its grasp. His arms are pinned securely if painlessly above his head, an expert move designed to hold yet not harm. That said, the captive is no ordinary man himself. Even a martial artist would be foolish to assume a foregone conclusion, much less one in an inferior weight category.
But he remains still, for even as his vision is clears he is struck by a faint, nostalgic scent of blue lotus. For a moment he is unguarded, despite caution, despite logic.
"Felicity?"
