Jekkal's Notes: The following Short Stories don't necessarily go together. I'm not sure yet if I want to stick to strictly canon R&C characters, or to toss in a few of my own in order to hit all seven. In the meantime, there's plenty of deviance to go around.
If the summary didn't tip you off, each chapter focuses on a different character, a different sin, a different prison and a different game; each one has to find their way out or die trying, even as the worst aspects of their character hold them back. Will they survive, or will they decide they prefer their new prisons over their lives?
After all, they say nobody's safe from temptation . . .
Ratchet looked at the great stone room before him, containing an almost endless spiral of criminals chained to the walls and floors.
He hated them all. Each one had a sign around their necks detailing their crimes, all worse than the last. He'd started with terrorists, petty thieves, bank robbers and spies . . . he ran up ahead to notice murderers of passion, traitors, child molesters . . . rapists of all degrees were interspersed among them, and among the worst were the ones who swore they did nothing wrong, at least not in the names of their Gods.
Somehow he'd been left orders to kill each one of them. In order, through the line, until the very last one was left, and then he'd have to gut the worst one's stomach and rip out the key to leave. He couldn't just skip to him, though, if only because killing them out of order would free enough of the ones he'd 'spared' that he'd find himself flayed and violated in every available orifice the Lombax had — including his ears, to be perfectly honest — like something out of those human porn films.
So he had to kill them all. It was a minor obstacle. They all deserved death; that was obvious. It was not obvious enough, however, to keep him from wondering —who could possibly be at the center of this maelstrom of maliciousness, though?
No matter. He had a task to complete. He had to make it as swift as he could, because they were always screaming and begging him to stop . . . but he knew he'd have to get through every last one of them in order to get out of here. He'd have to put up with the cries of anguish and despair, the professed innocence, the 'rebirthing' of those who tried to hide behind Gods . . . He wouldn't care, and he didn't have the time to care.
The sad thing was, he didn't know if he did it because he wanted out . . . or just because he wanted.