Chapter Text
The Cell was like a living thing, and the Alpha-Delta wing was its beating heart. The lofty stone ceiling echoed back all the sounds from below, from the clapping of shoes to the grinding of wheeled carts to the shouts of the wardens.
A woman stepped into an alcove, out of the flow of foot traffic, and bent to level her eye with a scanner, lifting her warden cap out of the way with one hand while tapping a long code into the keypad with her other. A flat red beam swept over her eye, up and down, and then the screen blinked green.
The Cell was too large for any but a few of its wardens and the odd prisoner to know its layout top to bottom; most wardens knew how to get from the main entrance to the dormitories, and from there to their duty stations, and for anything else, they could usually find a guide or pass off the duty to someone who knew the area better. Warden Pendersen was no exception to this; she’d had to grab one of the floating camera drones and have it guide her here, far from her normal work in the security center.
“Follow,” she commanded the sphere, not waiting for a response that wouldn’t come as she pushed on the stone wall and entered the antechamber of Alpha-Delta Cell Block 2. She passed through a grand marble arch, fixing her cap back in place, and glanced around. Walls made of layered large stones, decorative pillars and apparently empty suits of armor ready to spring to action in an emergency. It was a little reassuring to see that the A-D cells were just like the ones in C-M. She should be able to find her objective just a little further, through a double door of enchanted wood and across a warden common room.
Her temporary clearance got her through the automated security without any holdups, but the other wardens were a different matter.
“Hey, fresh meat!” A slim warden spun a quarter-turn in his swivel chair, his hand of playing cards spreading across the table as he went. The other players- a plump woman and a muscular man- groaned as his hand apparently had beaten theirs.
The man who’d spoken pushed himself up out of his chair and walked toward Pendersen, arms wide in greeting. “Welcome to Alpha-D! One of my requests for new personnel finally went through, I see. I-”
Cutting through his words- though not so rude as to keep going and walk right past him- Warden Pendersen said, “I’m not here to stay. One of the prisoners in your block is being pulled for a duty shift, I’m here to fetch her.”
She ignored the unprofessional swearing from the two still seated at the impromptu gambling table- ignored the table too, while she was at it- and slipped a folded paper out of her pocket, handing it to the slim man. “Here’s the order. Signed by the director, gives the details.”
The man- whose face had so quickly fallen from a smile into a squinting, scrunchy look that might have been disappointment or concern- took the paper and unfolded it.
“Tell me it’s not one of the hounds,” the woman begged.
“Gods, tell me it’s not [i]Crazy Eyes[/i],” the man threw in.
After further consideration, Warden Pendersen figured that she probably didn’t owe these three any more of her time, and she continued forward, avoiding the tense man reading the paper and skirting around the outside of the circular room to keep distance from the other two as well. Now, there should be a handful of cells further ahead, labeled with the details of whatever strange and dangerous beings were held within them.
The first cell she came across was thankfully the one she was looking for. The words of the slim warden in the other room drifted over, just barely loud enough for her to hear, as if he was reading the plaque by the door aloud.
“Shirori Novella.”
The muscular man swore.
“The Archiver.”
- - -
The hallways of the A-D wing were as crowded as ever, but with two suits of animated armor stomping down the halls, between them a girl dwarfed by the magical shackle-circle keeping her contained, the traffic had squeezed itself all to one side, clearly afraid to get too close.
The prisonerwas just as clearly enjoying the situation, though whenever Pendersen turned to check on her, the Archiver dutifully schooled her expression from a look of manic interest into something more neutral.
Warden Pendersen had read the girl’s file. She wasn’t a Class A threat; despite having a background within organized crime, there was no evidence that she’d even been trained in combat. That said, as a Class E threat, she was the keeper of secrets that could be far more dangerous than a single superhuman or demi-godlike being. As Penderson’s training officer had once told her, a Class E threat might level a particular building not by punching through its support beams like a Class A might, but by speaking an incantation which unleashes a demon sealed in its basement. The damage they could do was limited in scope, but extreme in its impact.
That meant that the suits of armor weren’t the real security measure here: it was Warden Pendersen herself. A combination of magic and technology had neutralized all of the esoteric tricks that they’d had a reason to suspect that she would have access to, but it would be the wardens’ work to make sure she never had an opportunity to use anything she knew to escape or cause further havoc.
The halls of The Cell always made Pendersen nervous. Despite the fact that people were constantly moving in either direction down most hallways, it was impossible to get back to the security center by retracing her steps, as the same hallway that connected point A to point B would then connect point B to point C if you went back the other way, so she had to rely on the camera drone hovering a short distance in front of her to know the way back.
She glanced back at the Archiver again. Would her charge be able to navigate The Cell if she somehow got away from both the warden and the suits of armor? Her ability to ‘archive’ recorded events and store them within herself wasn’t limited to books and grimoires, but would it extend to the process of being led from her cell to the security center? Without her full cooperation, there was no way to know just how her ability worked and where its limits were, and like most of the prisoners here, she’d rejected that opportunity when it had been offered.
It was a long walk full of nervous glances, but eventually Warden Pendersen was back in familiar territory. If the Alpha-Delta wing of The Cell was like its heart, collecting and distributing supplies and personnel throughout the facility, the security center was like the brain, collecting information and distributing orders.
Instead of entering the main surveillance room where she normally worked, she led the Archiver past the grand doors to a more discrete staircase just around the corner, where she dismissed the drone with the wave of a hand.
Like most things in The Cell, the stairs were made of bulky gray stone and lit from above with halogen bulbs, giving them an odd quality that somehow reminded Pendersen of home. An unfinished basement in a childhood house, maybe.
Soon enough, they had reached the bottom of the stairs. The space beyond was like a medieval torture chamber had been fused with a grade school computer lab. Carved oak tables supported beige computer towers with CRT monitors, and server wires were bundled together with iron shackles set into the wall.
Warden Pendersen turned to the two guardian armors standing at attention on either side of the Archiver and said, “release her.” Immediately, they moved their lances to parade rest and the glowing red circle around the girl flickered out of existence.
Shiori Novella didn’t immediately turn tail and run or try to lunge at Warden Pendersen, which put her above a quarter of The Cell’s residents in Pendersen’s opinion. Instead, the girl tilted her head a fraction and continued staring at the warden.
It wasn’t as if the Archiver was staring [i]through[/i] her, or seeing something that wasn’t there. She simply… looked. The sheer attention was unsettling, but Warden Pendersen had dealt with worse.
“You can speak now,” she said. “And I’m sure you have questions.”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” the Archiver said. Her voice was just as young as she looked, with the hint of a slur on some words. “I can guess that I’m here because you require my… unique talents, but I have to question what it is that you think I can do for you, and what you’ll do for [i]me[/i] in return.” She clasped her hands behind her back, the picture of deranged innocence
Warden Pendersen nodded. Straight to the point; good.
“We had an incident in one of the other wings, and the sequence of events is difficult to piece together just from the reports and security footage. We need you to ‘archive’ the incident and give us a full report on what happened.”
The Archiver blinked; once, twice. “And what do I get if I do this for you? Perhaps a reduced sentence?”
Pendersen fought the urge to huff out a breath. “No,” she said simply. “A sentence to The Cell is for life, you should know that. You [i]will[/i] earn some goodwill, however, and maybe some privileges. There are some prisoners who are more like wardens themselves, with all the freedoms they’ve earned.” She didn’t add that there was no chance for Novella to earn that kind of status, as a Class E threat. Too many risks of a security breach.
Where someone else might have pouted or scowled, Novella simply smiled a bit wider, showing a flash of teeth. “I should have expected as much. Okay, I accept your generous offer.” She brought up a hand to wave a lock of white hair back into place. “Now, may I see what is it that you would have me work upon?”
- - -
The Cell is a prison constructed by the very gods themselves, imbued with cutting-edge technology and primordial magics. It houses demons, monsters, mages, and more than humanity has words to describe.
Sometimes, a prisoner breaks out of their containment. It’s inevitable, given how diverse and esoteric their abilities can be. None have escaped the facility itself, but the havoc which can be wrought before they’re contained has the potential to be massive.
One prisoner, a creature known as The Red Mask, escaped containment at time 10.14 on day 5-739-51, and remained at large until time 13.20 of the same day. The following is an archived account of that incident.