Terrestrial Undead

Chapter 22

The prison guards were patrolling the west side of the steely building when a small cylindrical canister rolled, quietly hissing, underneath their feet. 003 watched as they dropped one by one. They hoped 009, Juju and Tesla were having as much success on the other three sides of the prison. Armed with 20 small grenades and one large cylinder of the gas, they crept toward the building, searching for the central ventilation. As they toggled with a window and eventually slipped inside, lugging the cylinder behind them, they found it wasn't hard to find. The motor grumbled incessantly, circulating the foul smell that would have immediately hit 003's nostrils of it weren't for the mask. The prison was a grimy, mould ridden pit of squalor. As they released the cylinder's contents into the ventilation room, they guessed the gas would be a welcome respite to anyone unfortunate enough to be in here, prisoner or otherwise.
Silencing any guards who saw them wasn't hard; all 003 had to do was pull the plug on a canister and wave it around to make His Majesty's finest dissolve into a laughing, drooling, and finally sleeping mess. But as 003 plunged further into the vowels of the prison, the motor's grumbling lost its volume, and wild screams hit their ears.
It was worse than anything they had ever heard. Voices layered upon each other, each wailing their own misery to create a mural of perfect dejection. Dizzied with the hell of it all, 003 missed a beat, and that was enough to get them into trouble. A hand shoved them roughly to the ground, and they had just enough time to see a baton slicing through the air before it hit them between the eyes. Electrical bursts popped before them, but 003 still thanked their lucky stars for the gas. This monster could have hit a lot harder, but the way they swayed on their feet told 003 that the Analdine was doing its work, and they raised their feet with all their might into the drugged guard's stomach. They fell and planted their skull into some railing with a crunch. The thought that one of those voices may be Faith spurred 003 on.
Again the Analdine was a blessing— the screams subsided as their owners and their antagonists lost consciousness. Hammering padlock after padlock, the cells fresh from hell popped open revealing their sleeping inhabitants ensconced in their own filth.
003 wished they could carry every one of them out, but they had to find Faith, and none of the cell dwellers so far resembled her. Finally, they came to the end of the corridor and stepped through an arch, immediately planting their foot in some kind of slick. 003 felt bile rise in their throat. Blood.
Looking up, 003 had to swallow their vomit to avoid having to take off their mask. Breathing, heaving, mangled people hung from chains on the walls. Their captors still held machetes, hammers, a poker, still red hot. The ground was strewn with debris of the most sickening kind—fingers, toes, was that an eyeball? Holding their breath, 003 removed a hammer from one of those sick bastards and busted the chains holding the wretched prisoners, lifting their faces one by one, and finally sobbing as if their heart was breaking when they came to the last one. Faith.
It had to be her. Same hair, although matted with blood, same eye colour, although they were now cloudy. 004 would know that adored face anywhere, be it mutilated or otherwise.
Every bit of pain their beloved had gone through tearing through their chest, 003 hoisted Faith up and staggered back the way they came, crying and yet drinking in every rusty breath that the unconscious Faith's lungs blessedly forced her to take. She was alive.