Hi, here is the next chapter. Finally someone from Harry's circle of friends finds out about his job. Who? You will have to read the chapter. Happy Easter.
A surprising development
Harry stood near the balcony at the annual charity event for the German 'Ein Herz für Kinder' foundation. It was his first mission as an adult wizard. He had turned seventeen six days ago and had celebrated with all his friends at Longbottom Manor. Mrs Weasley had offered to hold the party for him and he had gladly accepted for her taking care of the food. They had chosen the Manor as the location as there was more space and it would be easier on the Weasleys for they had to organize Bill and Fleur Delacour's wedding as well. Thankfully the wedding had been held in France the day after his birthday, so there were only some preparations the Weasleys had had to do before they went there with a portkey. So he had decided to make it a double party for him and Neville who had his birthday one day before him.
The party had started on the 30th and went well into the 31st. That way both boys celebrated on the day they were born. He had also had a party at headquarters where Sirius made sure to embarrass him thoroughly. Some things were better kept a secret. He shuddered about some of the stories Sirius had told. And why the hell did he have to bring baby photos? Even a secret agent hated being shown up that way. At least he had managed to get one prank spell into Sirius' defence. He had to run around for the rest of the day with neon coloured hair, changing the colour every five minutes. Sirius' cousin Tonks, whom Harry had met once, had been the inspiration for the spell.
Now he was observing the assembled members of high society, famous athletes, actors and actresses, several politicians, some scientists and so on. The MI6 had got a tip that something was going to happen during the gala and they had sent three agents to deal with the potential threat. Sirius, or more appropriately Lionel Morane, was leading the mission. He would be the one taking care of the high ranking threats. Jonathan Percer, a muggle agent with a lot of high ranking missions on his record was connecting their monitoring equipment with the surveillance cameras in the building.
Harry's job was to get close to the daughter of one of the politicians and through her get close to the target of the criminals, her mother, who was an outspoken opponent of a corrupt business man. Sadly the business man had hired a criminal organization to deal with his opponent. This operation was a joint mission with the Germans. Some of the criminals that were suspected to try and assassinate the politician had their base in England, so they had been involved.
Harry had already spotted the sixteen year old daughter of the politician. She was standing near her mother and obviously she was bored. Well, he could help with the boredom. He got a drink from one of the waiters and inconspicuously walked down towards the girl. He listened a bit to the topics the guests were discussing. Mostly it was meaningless small talk.
He listened now to the conversation the girl had with a friend that had just come over to her, carrying a glass of sparkling wine.
(I'll write the conversations in English as I don't want to translate everything from German, just think the conversations are held in German.)
"And then he had the gall to dump me with that bitch Schröder in the same room. I tell you, the guards these days are completely crazy. I mean, everybody knows that Schröder and I don't get along. The bitch then dared to blame our situation on me. As if it was my fault that she wasn't ready to leave the disco, at the time we had agreed upon. I mean, I only let her come along, because if I didn't, she would have run to her father and spilled everything." She said.
"But, Miriam, I'm sure your guards only want to keep you safe." The other girl, whose voice Harry found terribly familiar answered.
"No, Hermione, you just don't understand. My mum is going crazy with her obsession to keep me safe. It's getting out of control. I can't go anywhere without a bodyguard. They watch me 24/7. If you were in my situation you would go crazy too."
'Shit, it really is Hermione.' Harry thought. 'Well, no possibility to escape. But I wonder, what is she doing here?'
Before Harry could go on and do anything about the situation, he heard a shot in the air. Really, those criminals had to be stupid.
"Everybody listen to me!" The man with the gun shouted, gaining screams from the guests.
"This is a hostage taking. Don't even try to resist or we'll kill you. Follow our orders and you'll live!" He announced over the screams.
Harry quickly made eye contact with Lionel to try and get any hint what they would do. Lionel was calmly standing in the same spot he had been in before the criminals had stormed the gala. Harry concluded it wasn't time to act yet. So he started observing and taking in every small detail about their hostage-takers. Their weapons were standard guns. Each man had several additional packs of ammo in his pockets. He wondered if they would search the guests for weapons.
Soon the guests had been sorted into groups which were monitored by two criminals respectively. Harry stood near Hermione and Miriam. The criminals had put all persons younger than twenty in one group. The obvious goal of the hostage-takers was blackmail. They had taken all the famous actors, athletes and writers and put them in one group. The politicians were another group. Then there was a group for the guests they couldn't directly sort.
Harry soon noticed that Lionel and Jonathan were absent.
'They must have managed to hide in the commotion.' Harry thought.
Well, Lionel wasn't a 00 agent for nothing. He suspected some of the German secret agents were also hidden and waiting for an opportunity to take the hostage takers down. Well, they hadn't expected a full hostage taking. More like an assassination. Perhaps this was a separate group.
Most of the others around him were completely terrified. Harry knew it would be hard to support his colleagues. And he couldn't use any magic. Well, he was trained for situations like this. Thankfully Hermione hadn't recognized him yet. It would just get him attention he didn't want. And she would start to ask questions. Well, that would probably happen either way because he would be in action as soon as the hostage-takers were distracted from the youngest group. Today he really regretted not having insisted to go disguised. But who would have thought he would meet one person in Germany who could identify him?
"Boss, we have all the guests secured in separate rooms. Everything is ready to tell the government our demands." One of the masked hostage-takers said.
"Very good. It was fortunate for us to overhear the little plan those amateurs were going to enact." The leader sneered.
"As if just killing one politician would make such a difference. We can gain much more with the hostage taking and in the chaos nobody will even notice that she was killed for a special reason."
"Yes, boss. We have also searched the guests; nobody had any kind of weapons on them." The subordinate reported.
"I didn't expect anybody to have them. They had to be left at the entrance to ensure security at the gala. All the better for us. When will the line for the demand be ready?" The boss asked.
"Perhaps another thirty minutes. Parrot is checking everything at the moment."
"Good, return to your post, Spider." The boss ordered.
Harry recalled the location of their prison room in the building from the blueprints he had been given to study before they had started the mission. They were in one of the rooms on the north side of the building. They were on the second floor so getting the other hostages out through the window wouldn't work. Thankfully their guards were a bit bored. He could use that to his advantage. They were currently busy tying all their hostages up. In this they were professional. After all, a group of hostages could overwhelm two guards easily if they were left free. Not that common ropes would be a problem for Harry.
When it was his turn he flexed his muscles. It would enable him to just let the ropes fall off of him when he wanted to escape.
"Now you'll stay quiet. The room is locked and we have guards keeping an eye on you all the time. So don't even try something stupid!" One of the men said and they left the room.
Harry heard them lock the door and relaxed his muscles. The ropes loosened but he kept them on for show. He didn't know if they had cameras in the room yet. He carefully looked around and detected one camera in a corner but that was all there was to the security of the room. Well, the other hostages with him would probably be unable to do anything about their situation so it was understandable that the hostage takers would be overconfident.
He slowly made his way over to the spot directly under the camera. When he was sure the camera couldn't spot him anymore, he let the ropes fall down silently. He was glad that the other prisoners were busy with wailing about their situation. He looked at Hermione and saw that she was thinking about ways to get out of here. He just hoped she wouldn't do anything stupid. Using magic in a situation like this was a clear breach of the Statute of Secrecy. Obviously she had the same thought, as she frowned.
Harry immediately spotted a ventilation outlet which was big enough to let him use it. The only problem was it lay in the view of the camera. But he wasn't a secret agent for nothing. The research department had equipped him with the means to trick any standard camera like the one in the room. He used a camera function in his wrist watch to get a small video of the hostages in the room. He just needed four minutes worth of film. Finally he had enough material. He separated the tape from his watch, stuck the little playing device to the wall beneath the camera, connected the device with the camera and put it into repeat mode. Now for the next minutes he could escape through the ventilation system. The time he had to escape was four repeats, meaning sixteen minutes. After that the device deactivated to not alarm anybody watching the monitors.
Of course now the others noticed him.
"What do you think you're doing?" One boy asked.
"Getting out of here to get help." Harry answered and continued taking the screws out of the grill.
"Harry?" Hermione asked.
"Not now, Hermione, I don't have time for explanations. Later." He stopped her asking.
Finally he got the grill out.
"Listen, the camera is in repeat mode of the room for about seven more minutes. But you have to keep calm so nobody finds out I got out. I'll soon be back with help. But if they find out I'm missing, things will be more difficult for me." Harry said.
The others in the room were nodding. They really hoped he could do what he had said. It was like one of those James Bond movies.
In the monitor room the hostage takers were comparing notes of their hostages.
"Well, it seems we got some really valuable hostages here. The managing agencies for some of the actors will pay nicely for getting their stars back. The politicians are also valuable. Anybody interesting with the younger hostages?" The boss asked.
"Some children of famous people. One daughter of a leading scientist, some of their parents are also our hostages."
The man gave his boss a list.
"Well, well, well, isn't this interesting. I never had expected to find his daughter here." The boss said grinning.
"Boss, did you find somebody important?" One man asked.
"Oh yes. I never expected to get such a prize. Some years ago, before I founded this group, I was working with a scientist in America. I got there through connections with one of my acquaintances. Not important who they were. But that scientist had developed an interesting formula which is really valuable. Sadly the laboratory was found and raided by the CIA. I never heard of him again and thought he had been killed in the chaos. But obviously he survived. And now his daughter is here."
He looked at the monitor of the room where the younger hostages were being held. He soon spotted the girl.
"That girl with the bushy hair. Cheetah, bring her here. It will be nice to speak about my old friend again. I'm curious what he does for a living now." The boss ordered.
The man called Cheetah left the room to fulfil his order. He wondered how the boss could identify the daughter of a former acquaintance if he thought the man dead for years, but perhaps he had seen a family similarity.
What none of the men in the room had noticed was a small camera that had been installed quickly in the ventilation outlet in the monitor room. It was connected to Harry's watch and right now he was getting the images and sound of the conversation.
'Shit, that's Hermione. Well, I'll have to deal with it when the time is right. For now I need to silently take out as many hostage takers as possible. Thankfully they didn't think we could have stored additional equipment in the building.'
Harry had left the ventilation system and cautiously sneaked towards one of the storage points for the additional equipment. He found the nearest one in a cupboard for cleaning supplies. Not very imaginative but it worked after all. He took a box declared as disinfectant and lifted the lid. He took out ten small syringes that were filled with sleeping drugs that would work within seconds of entering the blood stream.
In a box with air fresher he found the same green pellets he had used two years prior during the infiltration of the crime syndicate building. In case he couldn't sneak up close enough to his victims to use the syringes. Then some grenades filled with them for farther away targets that needed to be taken out quickly. He took a mask to cover his lover face out of the sack with toilet paper and was ready to go.
Lionel was already busy taking out hostage takers. The first priority was getting the hostages to safety. He was sure Harry would be able to get them out as was the plan. Thankfully they had prepared the building for three different possibilities of events. The assassination attempt they had thought would happen, a bombing scenario and the hostage taking. But before they could do that, they needed to decimate the numbers of their opponents. It was just impossible to sneak that many people out of a building. One or two persons you could normally get out without a problem. But three hundred? Not a chance. He had avoided being taken captive and had listened to some conversations. The main objective of the hostage takers was to extort ransom for their hostages.
He estimated there were about fifty hostage takers. It would take some time for them to take out an appropriate number to take out the leader of the group. Jonathan was also somewhere in the building. His job was to sabotage the technique. The hostage takers had successfully brought the observational equipment under their control. But they didn't know about secret agents being among the guests. Roters and Kinkel, two of the German agents, were, as far as he had seen, in the west part of the building. Steffens had been taken captive as had Harry. But both would easily be able to escape.
Harry was busy injecting the drug into the veins of two hostage takers. He had quickly ambushed them and knocked them out. The drug would make sure that they wouldn't wake up until ten hours in the future. That would give them enough time to get this hostage taking solved. He quickly deposited the two in an empty office without camera presence and then locked the door behind them. It wouldn't do for them to be coincidentally found. Then he went to find his next victims.
Hermione sat in the room where the other captives were held. She was confused. How in Merlin's name was Harry at the gala? And why did he speak perfect German? She spoke the language as her father had raised her knowing it. He told her, her grandparents on his side were Germans and he wanted her to know the language he had grown up with. Her best friend turned into a bigger enigma than she had thought before. Miriam, her pen pal, had invited her to accompany her to the gala and she had been happy to see something new.
They had spent the last four days touring Munich and Hermione had been excited about the sights Miriam had shown her. While the famous 'Oktoberfest' was months away, Miriam knew the best places to party in the city. And the best places for shopping. The gala was one of the events Miriam hadn't been fond of, but with her mother being an important politician, she was obliged to go. Now the whole gala was target of a hostage taking which brought her back to her best friend. Harry seemed to know exactly what to do. The way he had disabled the camera and vanished through the ventilation system was like in a movie.
But it was ridiculous to think Harry could be a secret agent. He was after all just seventeen. But the thing that confused her most was that he did all the things he did without magic. She was sure of it. She would have a long talk with him once they got out of here. Then she heard footsteps outside the door. The door opened. A masked man looked inside, obviously searching for a certain person. Hopefully not Harry. Then his look stopped at her.
"Ah, there she is." He said.
Hermione was nervous, what could the man want from her? She was just a normal girl. While her parents had a well-to-do dentist practice, they weren't rich or so.
"You're coming with me. The boss wants to see you." He told Hermione, who now was very nervous.
She was led outside the room. She couldn't remember the way she was led to their destination. She just hoped nothing horrible would happen to her. She didn't know how long Harry would need to find help, but only forty minutes had passed since he left the room. When they had walked six minutes, her guard suddenly fell to the ground, passed out. She looked around and saw a hand waving at her from behind a corner. She went there and was met with a man in the middle of his thirties if she guessed correctly.
"Quick, you need to get out of here. The boss of the hostage takers obviously knew your father in the past and wants to use you to blackmail him."
He freed her of her bounds.
"Thank you so much. Who are you? Are you from the police?" She asked.
"No time for long explanations. My name is Lionel Morane and I work for the British Secret Service. I can't tell you more." He said.
"Okay, I understand." Hermione answered.
"How can I get out of here?" She asked.
"I'll take you to a safe point and from there on another agent will take care of getting you out of the building. At the moment we are disabling as many hostage takers in secret as we can, but once they realize that somebody is working against them, things could get nasty very fast."
Hermione understood. She had been in enough dangerous situations at Hogwarts with Harry to know how to act in those. She followed the orders of this agent without questioning him. Soon she was a good way away from the monitor room, which Lionel had pointed out as the centre of command of the hostage takers. The room they finally stopped in was away from the official part of the building where the gala had been.
Mr Morane looked into the deemed safe point.
"Alright, this place should be safe for some time. I need to get back to my job, time is of essence. Your contact should come here soon enough. He will lead you and other freed hostages out of the building as soon as possible. Keep quiet and if you hear something, hide. Good luck." He said and left her in the office.
Hermione decided to look around for some good hiding spots if the hostage takers happened to look into this room. While she was alone she would be able to use magic, so a disillusionment charm would work well enough for her, but she hoped she wouldn't need it. She just wanted to know what her dad had to do with the boss of the hostage takers.
Harry had just taken out his fifth and sixth opponents, when he heard shooting near him. He silently crept towards the place and hoped that none of the hostage takers had opened fire at the hostages. What he saw was one of the German agents having to defend himself from three masked hostage takers. This wasn't good, with the commotion they made it would make their job that much more difficult. Taking out their opponents if they knew that they were there was not easy. Harry took out his own gun, put a sound silencer on top of the barrel and aimed from behind a corner. He had much experience with moving targets from his training in the Room of Requirement.
He aimed without problem, shot, and hit two of the three into their legs, making them fall to the ground, therefore giving his German colleague the opening he needed to take out the last one. Harry took one of their guns; his German colleague took the other two. They quickly injected the drug into the fallen men.
"Thanks for the back-up, Potter. We need to hurry, with the shooting right now, I have attracted too much attention. They will send somebody here soon. How far have you got with your part of the operation?"
"Six out of ten are successful in dreamland, Kinkel. I need to go now; I need to get the other four before everything goes down the drain."
Kinkel nodded and both left their position.
"What do you mean we had a shooting?" The boss asked.
"Somebody is in the building who has a gun; he took out Monkey, Lion and Elephant. We found them injured and obviously drugged. Nothing we did to wake them up worked." The man reported.
"Damn, we need to find the one or ones who are responsible for this and take him or them out. Antelope, Owl, Cat, Mouse and Rat. Get to it immediately but don't neglect the guards at the rooms the hostages are kept in." The boss ordered.
"Yes, boss!" They replied and left the command centre.
The boss of the hostage takers was wary. How did they overlook an opponent that obviously knew what he did? They had searched the building and nobody had known of their plan to take the guests of the gala hostage.
Harry knew the time was up. He had managed to drug another two hostage takers before they started a thorough search of the building. Damn, now they would need to use bigger guns. They couldn't take them out in small numbers anymore. He just hoped they had reduced their numbers enough to make that job possible. He needed to get to the meeting point immediately. So he used his knowledge of the building to get there, evading any cameras on his way.
When he arrived he saw Lionel and Kinkel were already present.
"Report." Lionel stated.
"Eight drugged, helped with subduing two with Agent Kinkel." He said.
Lionel nodded. The complete report had to wait until they had the time to hear it.
"Six drugged and three shot and drugged." Kinkel said.
Just then Jonathan, Steffens and Roters came around the corner.
"Your reports?" Lionel asked again.
"The monitoring system is ready to be taken down. Drugged two of them." Jonathan reported.
"Seven drugged, one dead." Roters said.
"All the hostages are freed from their bounds and are awaiting rescue." Steffens said. That had been his main job. Get the hostages out of the ropes so that they could move them quickly and put permanent dummy images on the cameras in the rooms.
"That means they are down thirty-two with the six I got. Means we have twenty or so left. They have split the hostages in three groups, that means we have at least fourteen directly against us in a fight. Not as much down as I hoped, but we can work with it now. Percer, take the monitors down in five. Potter, Steffens get the hostages out in seven, Kinkel, Roters, you're with me, direct confrontation of the hostage takers. I have all the information you collected. The tapes from the camera in the ventilation outlet in the monitoring room are sent directly to our command centre, so they are aware what is going on here. Potter, the girl the boss of the group wanted to have is at safe point 3. Get her out with the others."
"Yes, sir!" They answered and Harry and Jonathan left to do their parts.
Harry and Steffens stood ready to take down the guards at the three rooms that held the hostages. Thankfully they held all the hostages on the same floor. Harry looked at his watch to time his attack with the timetable Lionel had given him. When the clock struck seven minutes, he threw a sleep grenade into the floor, filled with fast working sleeping gas. He waited until he heard four thuds, then he and Steffens went to free the hostages. They had miscalculated on the number of guards. There had only been four. Obviously the rest was ordered to help catch the intruders.
Harry used his remaining sleeping drug and injected it into the four. You could never be too cautious in his line of work. Then he stole the keys to the rooms from one of the drugged men and opened them.
"Listen, we have to get out of here immediately. Agents from the Secret Service are taking out the hostage takers while I'm speaking. I'm tasked getting you out of here. Follow my orders and you'll be home in a few hours." He spoke authoritarian.
"But Hermione…" Miriam, the politician's daughter started.
"Has already been saved by an agent and is at a secured location. We'll pick her up on our way out. I don't want anybody to create a panic. We have taken out over half the hostage takers and the best agents in the building are busy taking out the rest. If you keep calm this will be no problem. We can deal with anybody they can send to stop us. Now follow us. Walk quickly but don't run. The cameras on our way have been disabled but we don't want to tip our escape route too early." Steffens told them.
They got nods and went out of the room. They repeated the performance two times in the other rooms. It was just easier to take one room at the time. Harry then led the hostages out of the building. Steffens would take care of keeping any other opponents of their backs. Harry soon arrived in the part of the building where the offices were located. He went to safe point 3 to collect Hermione.
"Hermione, please come out, we are leaving the building." He called her.
"Harry?" She asked carefully.
"Yes. It's really me. To prove it, we have been friends since our first year at boarding school; it was on Halloween that we became best friends after getting through a dangerous situation that could have been avoided if Ron hadn't been such a git after class with Professor Flitwick." He said.
"Oh thank goodness you're alright. I was worried you would be hurt." She said, coming out of her hiding place.
"You know me; I have been in worse situations than this one. Remember fourth year?" He tried to calm her.
"Listen, I'm going to take you out of the building. We are leaving through the kitchens. It's located two floors down from here. If anything happens, like some of the hostage takers trying to stop us, I want you to take over for me while I deal with them. I hope the agents of the Secret Service will keep them busy until we are out, but you never know. Agent Steffens is already doing everything to distract them from our group."
"Harry, why are you talking like that?"
"I don't have time for explanations now, Hermione. Just do what I said." He cut her off.
"Come on everybody. We are leaving." He ordered and continued leading them to the stairs to get them to the kitchens.
The first fifteen minutes they didn't encounter anybody. Harry found the door to the kitchens and told Hermione to wait with the other hostages out of sight, until he had explored the room and the backdoor before they followed him out. Hermione reluctantly nodded.
"If I find resistance, I'll try to get them to follow me and leave the door unwatched. The most important thing is getting everybody out of here. Okay, Hermione?"
"Yes. Be careful, Harry." She said and he nodded.
Harry carefully opened the door to the kitchen. He used a mirror to look around, but the room was empty. He went forward to reach the backdoor. That was the point his luck ran out. Two men, who were obviously guarding the backdoor, came into the kitchen and spotted him.
"What are you doing here?" One of them yelled, pointing his gun at Harry.
"Uhm, would you believe me if I said I got hungry and wanted to get a little snack?" Harry asked.
"A joker? Well, you won't have much to joke about when the boss has talked to you. Hands behind the head where I can see them." He ordered.
Harry followed the commands. As long as these two went away from their post, the hostages could escape.
"Sparrow, contact the boss, we have caught a rat in the kitchens." He ordered his companion, who immediately followed his orders.
"You must really suck to get the code name Sparrow. Why didn't you complain? I'd have asked for a cooler codename." Harry commented, keeping any attention the two had on him.
"Shut up!" Sparrow shouted at Harry.
"I must have hit a nerve. Hey what's your codename?" He asked the man with the gun.
"That isn't important." He said.
"It can't be worse than Sparrow, can it?" Harry asked.
"Shut up, or you'll get acquainted with my gun!" Was the reply.
"I must have hit a nerve." Harry pondered.
"The boss says we are to bring the joker up to the monitor room. He wants to speak to him in person, Hedgehog." Sparrow said, stopping his call.
"Hedgehog? Well, it's better than Sparrow. I mean, there is that cool computer game about Sonic the Hedgehog." Harry said.
"I said shut up!" Hedgehog yelled, lowering his gun for a second.
But it was all Harry needed. He kicked out and hit Hedgehog's hand perfectly, sending his gun flying away. He followed his attack on Hedgehog with one on Sparrow, which disarmed the man as well. Then he proceeded to brutally knock Hedgehog around. Soon he managed to hit him on the neck, knocking him out cold. Sparrow tried to call for reinforcement, but his handy fell victim to Harry's next attack. He soon shared Hedgehog's fate. Harry took out the last syringe of drug he had and injected half of it in each of the men's veins. That would keep them out of the game.
He opened the door.
"Quick, there will be reinforcements here soon, because the two failing to deliver me to their boss." Harry said.
"There they are!" He heard a shout.
Five men were running at them, guns ready to shoot.
"Damn it. Get them out, Hermione, run!" He shouted, taking out the guns he had taken from his victims and began shooting at the hostage takers, which jumped out of his line of shooting.
He heard two painful shouts, he must have hit at least two of them. He couldn't say how badly they were hurt though.
Hermione looked like she wanted to help him, but remembered his earlier orders. She got all the hostages out through the kitchen and just hoped her best friend would survive that encounter. He had to explain a lot to her and damn if he died before she could grill him.
Harry was covering behind a column, shooting at his opponents, who had worse cover than him. But he knew he couldn't last long. He switched to one handed shooting and took out his last grenade with sleeping gas. He just hoped it was enough. He just needed either them getting closer to him or him getting closer to them. Then he was hit. A graze at his left thigh. He ignored the pain, he had been trained to endure worse. Pulling his mask up again, he waited for a chance to act. Finally he had a small reprieve and he used it to jump out of his cover, run at the now four remaining opponents firing his gun. Then he was close enough and threw his grenade. He got hit two more times but he managed to get his grenade in the centre of the group where it exploded and took them all out.
Harry winced at his wounds. One bullet had hit his left arm, the other one was stuck in his right lower leg. He limped towards the kitchen and used towels to rudimentary stop the blood flow. He was in too much pain to properly cast any spells to help. Additionally he didn't know how to get the bullets out and he couldn't really risk using magic here. It wouldn't do if somebody saw it on the tape. Well, the wounds weren't life threatening. He just had to get out and get medical help.
He took out a pen, which had been modified by R and bit the cartridge open. Instead of ink it was filled with a strong pain potion. It would help him getting out of here. The effect was immediate and he felt his wounds numbing. He knew it was only temporary and he had one hour until the effects stopped. That would be enough time to escape. He went out through the kitchens towards the command centre.
And cut, the rest will be up in two weeks, see you later.