Rating: PG-13 (for the mentions of adult themes and blood and fighting)
Warning: This chapter contains a brief mention of attempted rape and LOTS of blood. If this is a trigger for some please wait for the next chapter to be uploaded. Again, this story is NOT for Maggie Beckett fans!
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyright material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual. I only own my original characters.
Author's Note: Here's the soundtrack for the story (the scenes will be marked with two **):
1. Inti Illimani - El Pueblo Unido (SCENE: "El Pueblo Unido")
2. 21:16 of "EL OLIMPO DE LOS DIOSES"- Suite for Symphony Orchestra - Oscar Navarro (SCENE: "The mine was hot and poorly lit.")
3. Berserk Golden Age Arc I: The Egg of the King OST - Blood and Guts (closing credits) (SCENE: "Now this is what happens to thieves here within the camp,")
4. Star Wars Dies Irae -uploaded by House 13 (SCENE: "It didn't take long for the inmates to rally behind Martin")
As the sliders arrived at the camp, they were immediately ushered out of the crowded bus and into a line of many different people.
Being the tallest of their group, Quinn could see that they were shuffling through a walled area. The walls looked to be made from concrete and was at least sixty feet tall, topped with barbed wire, and went around the entire perimeter. The further along the came in the line, Quinn and the others could clearly see a large treacherous looking mountain sat within the camp. They could see some people coming in and out of the mountain pushing carts filled with rocks.
As the sliders came to the front, they saw that there were six men sitting at a desk. On the desk were piles of papers and one large map of the camp.
Being ahead of the others, Arturo was the first in their group to come up to one of the men at the desk. "Last Name."
"Arturo."
The seated man wrote it down and gave the shackled professor a card with a location and number on it. "Arturo you're going to be working in welding. That's Sector Ten. This man to my right will give you your uniforms and brief you on what's going to be expected of you during your incarceration. Next!"
Quinn came followed behind.
"Last Name."
"Mallory."
Repeating what he did before, the man at the desk gave Quinn a card with a location and number on it.
"Mallory you're going to be working in the mine. That's Sector One Hundred and Four. This man to my right will give you your uniforms and brief you on what's going to be expected of you during your incarceration. Next!"
Rembrandt followed behind Quinn.
"Last Name."
"Brown."
As he did before, the man handed Rembrandt a card with a location and number on it.
"Brown you're going to be working in the mine. That's Sector One Hundred and Four. This man to my right will give you your uniforms and brief you on what's going to be expected of you during your incarceration. Next!"
The last of the sliders came behind Rembrandt.
"Last Name."
"Welles."
Like he did three time before with the sliders, the man handed Wade a card with a location and number on it.
"Welles you're going to be working in uniform repair. That's Sector Fifty. This man to my right will give you your uniforms and brief you on what's going to be expected of you during your incarceration. Next!"
As they moved further into the camp, they were instructed to go into a cabin and change. Once they did, they were escorted to a platform that stood in the middle of the camp.
As the sliders stood in the mist of all of the workers, the warden spoke in a quiet yet commanding tone on his pistol grip loud speaker. The warden was a balding and clean shaven man was of average height with piercing blue eyes that shone through behind his steel-rimmed glasses. Over his right eye though was a long meaning scar. Like the guards around him, the warden was clad in a grey uniform and on his chest was a Manticore within a blood red crest.
"Welcome," greeted the warden, "As you all know, this is the San Francisco Labor Camp. It's obvious that you're all here because in some way, shape, or form you've all broken the law. But this doesn't have to be a harsh punishment for you. If you work hard and with diligence you may be able to earn a few extra rations in your dinner. But if you disregard you work or if you are neglectful in you work, there will be painful and long lasting repercussions. Am I understood?"
The collective body of people all said, "Yes Warden."
With that understanding, the warden left and another guard took the loud speaker and instructed the new workers to their stations for the remainder of the day. And like that, the sliders were separated to begin their work.
By the end of the day, the sliders finished their first, albeit half, day's work they met up and walked over collectively to their cabin to get some sleep. But as they walked, Wade looked up at the blackness of the night sky as was met with bright shining stars. The view was relaxing the young woman's frazzled nerves and then all too soon, they had reached their cabin.
Within their new sleeping quarters, were just dirty mats on the floor with dusty old sheets on top of them. Due to their exhaustion, the sliders didn't complain and laid their bodies down for the night. But just as they were about to drift off into a dreamless rest, some voices could be heard from a far distance. A distance they all guessed to be beyond the camp. But despite the distance, the collective voices could be heard singing.
The singing brought smiles to the sliders as they listened to the uplifting song. The song unintentionally lulled the sliders into a restful sleep.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, **
el pueblo unido jamás será vencido...
De pie, cantar
que vamos a triunfar.
Avanzan ya banderas de unidad.
Y tú vendrás marchando junto a mí
y así verás tu canto y tu bandera florecer,
la luz de un rojo amanecer
anuncia ya la vida que vendrá.
De pie, luchar el pueblo va a triunfar.
Será major la vida que vendrá
a conquistar nuestra felicidad
y en un clamor mil voces de combate se alzarán
dirán canción de libertad
con decision la patria vencerá.
Y ahora el pueblo
que se alza en la lucha con voz de gigante
gritando: ¡adelante!
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,
el pueblo unido jamás será vencido...
La patria está forjando la unidad
de norte a sur se movilizará
desde el salar ardiente y mineral
al bosque austral
unidos en la lucha y el trabajo irán
la patria cubrirán, su paso ya
anuncia el porvenir.
De pie, cantar el pueblo va a triunfar
millones ya, imponen la verdad,
de acero son ardiente batallón
sus manos van
llevando la justicia y la razón mujer
con fuego y con valor ya estás aquí
junto al trabajador.
~|S|L|I|D|E|R|S|~
The next couple of days were rough for the sliders. Within those couple of days, the sliders were yelled at, hit, and spit upon. The work was grueling and the breaks were nonexistent. The times to eat were also, few and far between. The food was small rations of corn and two slices of bread served with brown water. But like everyone, the sliders found themselves too hungry and exhausted to complain.
The one saving grace for at least two of the sliders, was that Quinn and Rembrandt were working the mine together. Although they were grateful to have each other's company, it still was a struggle to work in the harsh environment.
The mine was hot and poorly lit.** The only thing that helped keep the workers focus was that the rhythm of the picks striking the wall played in an interesting syncopated rhythm to the welders a few yards away who clanged their hammers in an ostinato fashion.
But even the funky organic rhythm wasn't enough to keep Quinn from exhaustion. Quinn had swung his pick away at the walls for hours on end; however, the exertion became too much for the young man after a while. Eventually, Quinn's vision became spotted and he dropped heavily to the ground.
Rembrandt, wiping the sweat off of his brow, came over and tried to cox Quinn backup. "Come on Q-Ball. You gotta get up."
Quinn sluggishly nodded but just as he was about to get up a guard came over.
"What's going on here?" the guard asked as he loomed over Quinn belligerently.
"I'm sorry sir. Was just catching my breath," Quinn said as he pushed himself off of the ground with the help of Rembrandt.
But before he could fully stand, the guard grabbed Quinn roughly by his throat and then shoved him into the rocky mine wall.
"Look scum, you don't stop or breath until you're told. Now Get Back to Work!" screamed the guard. Then spontaneously, the guard hit the young genius in the face with such force Quinn saw spots for more than a few seconds.
With a smirk of satisfaction, the guard left the mine. As the guard left, Rembrandt rushed over to Quinn and helped the younger man stand.
"You all right Q-Ball?"
"Depends on your definition of 'fine'," Quinn retorted more harshly than he intended. But Rembrandt didn't take any offense and sympathetically pat the young genius on the shoulder before helping him get back to work.
A few hours later, the dinner bell rung and everyone dropped their tools and began to filter out of the mine.
As they existed the mine for dinner, they were met by Wade.
"Hey sweetheart. You ready for dinner?" asked Rembrandt as he squinted his eyes due to the harsh sunlight.
"More than ever before! Where's the professor?"
"He's got a few minutes left. We were just going to go see him."
"Well then what're we waiting for? Let's go," said Wade as she made her way to welding cave. The others followed close behind until they came to the sector Arturo was working.
There in the welding cave stood a soot covered Arturo dressed in a dirty brown apron with a dirtier brown long sleeved shirt. They were just in time to see the large physicist pick up a large rock with sheer brute strength and place it on a table. Which in turn surprised the others who were welding because the size of the rock would generally need five strong young men to pick up it. But thanks to New Wakanda's improvements, the professor was physically the strongest out of their group.
"Hey Professor, are you ready to eat?"
"Oh I'm more than ready Ms. Welles."
Soon the four were served their rations for the day and as they were seated at a secluded table they had a quiet conversation amongst each other.
"We've been here for several days now. When are we supposed to meet this 'Skurge'?" asked Rembrandt.
"I don't know. But the last time we saw the timer it read that we had just a little over a month here," answered Quinn.
Wade then asked, "Do you think our lawyer set us up?"
Arturo looked thoughtful before shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. But there must be some sort of delay…" But then a frantic scream broke up their conversation. Allowing their curiosity get the better of them, the sliders got up from their table and went to investigate.
As the sliders left the mess tent, a horrendous spectacle was displayed right before their eyes. There were two women and a little boy standing on a platform with several guards surrounding. They were all dressed in rags like the rest of them within the camp but they're garments had specks of blood clearly spattered on them.
"Now everyone! These three prisoners have tried to take more than their fair share of the food rations. And then resisted the officers who caught them!" said the warden on the loud speaker.
The little boy who was on the platform then made eye contact with Wade. His eyes glittered with fear and help. With the intense desperation in the boy's eyes, Wade felt fear and sickness fill her stomach.
Then she felt something grab her hand. Wade saw that it was Rembrandt who looked at her with a sad expression. Wade looked across the musician, she saw that Quinn had the same expression. But she noticed that the professor had a look of pure rage and hatred spread across his face.
"Now this is what happens to thieves here within the camp," said the warden as he motioned for the guards to start the punishments.**
With the command given, the guards flicked their hands and then fire appeared within the palms of their hands. Then each of the guards proceeded to grab the prisoners on the platform and burned them on their faces and arms for ten minutes.
During the ordeal, Wade chocked down a sob that threatened to burst through her throat and closed her eyes to not watch the living nightmare that was going on before them.
Once the torture was over, the guards dropped the prisoners and their bodies hit the floor of platform with a loud thud. The crowd could see that one of the women died due to the excruciating pain and the remaining two would still screaming and crying from their wounds.
"Now let this be a lesson to all of you: don't steal. Because when you steal there won't be anything else for the others. Now you all are dismissed to retire for the evening."
With that the crowd slowly but surely dispersed. Even the sliders were moving in slow mournful as they left. But as they were leaving, someone poked Quinn in the back.
Looking back to see who poked him, Quinn was met with a man with brown spikey-ish hair and hard eyes.
"Follow me," the stranger said before heading off to a cabin they hadn't been in before.
The sliders then followed the stranger and once they walked into the cabin another man was already there.
Once the door was closed, the man introduced himself.
"I'm Skurge and this is Sgt. Jason Barnes," the spikey brown haired man said, as he motioned toward himself and a grey eyed man with scars that surrounded his right cheek down the his chin and he wore a dark green bandana.
"Are you all Naomi LaLache's most recent clients?" asked Skurge.
"Yes! Oh man fella, are we glad to finally meet you," exclaimed Rembrandt in hushed tones.
"Nice to meet you guys as well. Listen let's get down to it because we don't have a lot of time. Especially due to the curfew."
Jason took over the explanation from there. "Within in the next few days, we're tasked with getting as many people out of here as we can. To do this, we have to make a disturbance of such magnitude that the guards won't question why there are people missing. So when the time comes, make sure you're in Sector thirteen. That's another mining area but it's our ticket out of here."
"This disturbance. Will people die?" asked Arturo.
"Oh yes," Jason responded callously.
"So the plan is only so many people are going to leave. Others have to die so that we and a few more can live? How's that fair?"
"Look. The harsh reality is not everybody's going to make it. We can't and don't have time to screen everyone to see whether or not they're spies. Face facts lady, they are here! Our priority is to get as many people that we're able to trust out and into a safe heaven. Now you all can stay here for all I care. I've got a mission to fulfill. Are you in or out?" Jason asked in a rigid tone.
As much as the sliders hated this and it sickened them to their very core, they knew this was their only chance. "We're still in," Quinn answered in dismay.
Skurge picked it up from there saying, "Good. Now listen, the word to announce the escape is Leviathan. Once you hear that word get to Sector Thirteen and make sure that you keep quiet no matter what. Any kind of noise or disturbance will blow this thing out of the water. And when it does, you can count on the warden killing each and every person here. He has that authority. Now are there any questions? I'll answer anything but it's got to be now."
"Yeah sorta. How were those guards able to control fire like that?" asked Quinn.
"You really don't know?" Jason asked skeptically.
"We're from Canada!" blurted Rembrandt.
Skurge shook his head in disbelief and said, "Well the guards are called Fire Benders. Forty years ago now, the king of this nation, King Chase Unomaraq, inherited the kingdom when he was only ten years old but by the time he was thirteen he was weak and dying of a disease. So he commissioned his best scientist, who was also doctor, to make him a cure. The cure was to be tested on anyone and everyone they could kidnap. This cure killed many; however, it turned a lot of people into what we call benders. These benders can wield one of the many elements. This so called cure was then modified a few more times and another type of benders came out of it called Avatars. These Avatars can bend all of the elements. Once they found this, the product was altered once more and then the final product was given to the king. The king then received many powers, one of which allows him to transform into a beast that looks like a lion, dragon scorpion looking monster."
"The emblem on the guards and the warden!"
"Exactly."
"What about the people? To these benders I mean most of which look too young for something that happened that many years ago," asked Arturo.
"Well, the king wanted an army now. One that extremely powerful. So he drafted those with powers into special guards like the ones here and the rest into his military. But when there wasn't enough people to his liking he started kidnapping children from as early as three months old to as old as twenty-three years old and put them through a newly improved treatment. One that would have no more deaths and only power inducement."
"Oh my goodness!"
"Well now you know that story we should get some sleep. There's still a lot to do," Skurge said as he motioned for the sliders to leave so that he could continue planning with Jason.
As the sliders entered into their own cabin, they each silently were happy to leave soon but still did not like so many people had to die. Unfortunately, it was the unforgiving reality that they were in.
All four sliders found themselves resting in an agitated sleep that night.
~|S|L|I|D|E|R|S|~
Two days later, those who were going to escape were getting anxious and they made it known to Skurge one morning during breakfast.
"We should do this now!" whispered a man that they've come to know as Martin. Martin was a middle aged man who had a buzz cut with a stout nose and had harsh green eyes.
"NO!" Skurge exclaimed in a harsh whisper. "The plan is for tomorrow. You can wait another twenty-four hours. Our partner still has to require the amount of horses that we need to cross the desert."
"Forget that man! Look, we've been living in this hell for too long. We have no problem walking," argued Martin. A few murmurs of agreement came back to Skurge's ears. But then Jason slammed his fist on the table loud enough to get their attention but not so loud to alert the guards in the mess tent.
"Look you ungrateful dogs, we don't have time for this either follow our instructions or get left behind. We can and will replace you with some others that are just as desperate to get out as you."
With the message sent loud and clear the workers got back to finishing their food before going to start their day of work. However within the first five hours of works, there was another disturbance.
But this time, the disturbance was loud enough to get the attention of the entire camp. The sliders, following the crowd, came to see what's happened.
What they saw was shocking. On the ground laid a man who had been stabbed and a young girl was sobbing into the dead man's still bleeding chest. Her brown bands had already started to clump together with blood as she refused to lift her face from the dead man's chest.
"What's happened?" asked the warden as he made his way to the seen.
The guard still holding the bloody sword answered, "I saw that the man wasn't working and he refused. Then for no reason he tried to attack me. I naturally defended myself."
Before the warden could open his mouth, the distraught teen answered loudly, "That's a lie! I was working and came to give my father his garments that I had fixed. But before I could reach his work area you tried to rape me! My father saw you lift up my dress and tried to stop you!"
The crowd gasped and then Martin came forward and yelled, "You see everyone! This monsters think that just because we're prisoners that they can get away with anything. But this ends today! Who's with me?!"
It didn't take long for the inmates to rally behind Martin as they all attacked the guards.** Soon battle cries field the whole camp as angry prisoners stampeded the guards who in turn returned fire with literal fire. But this did not stop the inmates. They had returned fire with the rocks, pikes, and the very swords they were welding.
Within minutes there was a flowing river of blood along with mangled body parts bobbing up and down within them. And for many, what was once inside the body in life was seeping outside the body in death. The ground was gummed up with the blood as many people tried to get out of the way of the riot.
However, no one could escape the smell of death as it hung in the air as the butchered and smoldering bodies lied in a gruesome heap.
The lone saving grace came from two voices screaming over the clangs of weapons and those who were screaming in pain, saying, "Leviathan!" Then the voices repeated itself twice more.
With the signal now given, the sliders and many others ran toward the Sector Thirteen. As the sliders ran away from the carnage, they couldn't help but run past multiple –and sometimes over-the writhing injured souls that fell to the ground. But they couldn't escape a lot of the fight.
In mere seconds, Quinn dodged an oncoming rock that he hoped wasn't intended for him. And as he looked over his shoulder to see who threw the object, Quinn's eyes were met with the horrid scene that was unfolding behind them.
Behind those who fled, there were people dying an excruciating death. Quinn witnessed one fire bender dodge a sword being flung at him; however, the fire bender did not see another inmate come up behind him and thrust a pike through his chest.
Just as the fire bender fell to the ground with a loud gurgle, Wade forcibly grabbed a startled Quinn from behind and pushed the tall man toward the escape route in the mine.
As the two caught up with the others within the mine, Skurge and Jason both instructed then in a loud whisper, "Move it everyone! Remember, don't make any noise. Watch where you step and if anyone sees you on the outside feign normalcy."
Everyone heeded the warnings given and began to move quickly and with as much efficiency as they could. The sliders stayed as closely to each other as they could but within twenty minutes of their escape a loud explosion came from the out and that in turn caused great rumbling came within the mountain.
The rocks within the mine started to fall and collided with several heads of the escapees. This in turn created a greater panic than the one that was barely contained before.
This deep rumble caused people to trip over each other in a great hast and the mine to started to collapse inward.
Within the panic, the sliders started to get separated in the mass chaos as everyone ran toward the end of the mine. Once there, Jason-who was happened to be ahead of the crowd- started dig pick up the picks that were left in their preparation. The man started to slam the pick against the wall as some others used their hands to grab at the rocks.
It didn't take long for the combined effort to break through the wall and then everyone scurried out of the mine's cave in. Among those who had already gotten out, Arturo, Quinn, and Rembrandt were waiting for Wade to emerge with the rest of the crowd.
But a deeper rumble caused everyone on the outside to freeze in fear. The crowd witnessed the deeper rumble cause the exit cave in and slowly close itself up with falling rocks which cause a mist of sand to blow into the air.
As the exit closed, Quinn attempted to lunge for the opening that was disappearing before his eyes; however, Skurge and Jason held him back as several other men held back the other sliding men.
As the opening sealed itself in a dusty fog, Quinn cried out in desperation, "WADE!"
..:TBC:..
A/N: Alright! Now we're getting somewhere. But the real question is: Does Wade Live?! Stay Tuned to Find Out! *cue maniacal laugh* XD