Chapter Thirteen: Reunion
Joe and Polly snaked their way through labyrinthine corridors choked with a thick web of mechanized apparatus and the lingering stench of grease and sweat. Despite their earlier encounter with the servitor robots, they pressed on with freedom and anonymity.
"We're walking into a trap." Polly was the first to say it, but Joe had long since come to the same conclusion. A place this big, he realized, should be guarded around the clock and armed with the latest security measures, yet they had traveled in the bowels of the ship unmolested for hours. Someone knew he had arrived, but chosen not to act on that knowledge. For now, he had no choice but to play along and continue walking. He pulled his Colt .45 out of its holster then paused, reached under his jacket, and withdrew a second pistol. "Just in case," he said to Polly consolingly.
An hour later, Polly was the first to hear it: a faint chorus of agonized wails echoing down the abandoned halls. Curious, she and Joe cautiously followed the trail to its source, and were horrified by what they found.
Rows of heavy steel jail doors were stacked atop each other, stretching down into abyssal darkness miles below where Joe and Polly stood. The cries came from behind those same doors, pitiful broken things calling for help where none would be given. It made Joe sick to his stomach, and when he saw that each floor was guarded by the same warrior monks that attacked his plane earlier, seething rage bubbled in his throat like bile. "This isn't right, Polly," he said, holstering his pistols. "This isn't right." His mind raced with stratagems. He considered the switchblade inside his jacket, a memento from his teenage years in the city, but decided against it; he'd put that life behind him when he joined the legion, and a corpse could bring down a world of unwanted attention on him.
KBAM! Joe spun around and saw one of the jail doors across from him be kicked open from the inside. A monk, donning the same crimson skull as his brethren, drew a barbaric sword from a sheath at his side and stormed the cell. Minutes later, a bloody, hulking figure staggered out and cracked the knuckles in his granite like fists. Polly threw all caution aside and ran to him.
"Reginald!" Polly cried, racing to embrace her cousin.
"Reginald?" Joe queried. He snickered and bit his lower lip, shaking in restrained amusement.
Flushed with embarrassment, Rock pried himself from Polly's vice-like grip. "Hell's bells, Polly, what'd you go and do that for?"
Polly's brow scrunched in confusion. "Do what?"
Rock thrust an accusing finger in Joe's direction. "You don't tell anyone about this, Sullie. We clear?"
"Crystal," Joe replied. "I'm just glad you're safe….Reginald."
"And I'm glad you finally decided to show up, Sky Captain."
The trio spun around and found themselves surrounded by the mysterious monks, brandishing ornate ceremonial swords. They flanked the woman in black who aimed an automatic pistol at Joe's head. Somehow, Totenkopf's deadly assassin had survived.
"You!" Sky Captain hissed. "Don't you ever die?"
Stay Tuned for Chapter Fourteen: The Extinction Agenda