Victor's pulse raced as the monitor feed dissolved into static, the bloody grin of the escaped inmate etched into his mind like a nightmare. Without wasting another second, he slammed his palm down on the emergency alarm button. A piercing siren blared through the prison's speakers, red lights flashing in rhythmic pulses along the walls of the monitoring room.
"Jax! Snap out of it!" Victor barked, shaking his colleague's shoulder roughly, but Jax only groaned incoherently, his eyes unfocused from the doping haze. Cursing under his breath, Victor grabbed the secure comms line to contact his superiors, his fingers trembling slightly as he punched in the code.
The line connected after a tense ring. "Control here," came the voice of Warden Hale—calm, almost unnervingly cold, like ice water in a storm. "Report."
"Sector 7 breach," Victor said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline. "Inmate on the loose—covered in blood, took out the camera."
There was a brief pause on the other end, the kind that made Victor's skin crawl. Then, Hale responded with that same glacial tone: "Understood. We'll handle it. Maintain your position and secure the room. Reinforcements en route."
The line clicked dead, leaving Victor staring at the console, the siren's wail echoing around him as the prison stirred into chaos.
Victor scanned the array of monitors before him, his eyes darting from screen to screen. Everything appeared deceptively normal—empty corridors, locked cells, no signs of disturbance beyond the Sector 7 blackout. The siren continued its relentless blare, but the feeds showed nothing out of the ordinary.
Damn, what the hell were the guards in Sector 7 doing? This is the first time something like this has happened, Victor thought, his brow furrowing as he gripped the edge of the console.
Suddenly, Jax jolted upright in his chair, the piercing alarm finally cutting through his doped-up fog. He blinked rapidly, rubbing his eyes. "Wha—what's going on? That noise..."
"About time you woke up," Victor snapped, not looking away from the screens. "Call the other monitoring stations. Get a read on the adjacent sectors—see if they've got eyes on anything."
Jax, still hazy and unsteady, nodded sluggishly and fumbled with his comms panel. He started patching through calls, his fingers clumsy on the buttons. Meanwhile, Victor leaned closer to his own monitors, squinting at the static feeds. There was an eerie stillness—no patrols moving, no reinforcements rushing in.
This is weird... Why's there no movement at all? The S-rank officers should be swarming toward the breach by now, Victor mused internally, a knot of unease tightening in his gut.
Then, without warning, a glitch rippled across the screens—a wave of distortion that blurred the images momentarily before settling back to that unnatural calm.
"Victor..." Jax's voice came out shaky, his face paling as he pulled off his headset. "They... none of them are picking up. No one's responding. What do we do?"
"Shit," Victor muttered, his mind racing. "Something's seriously wrong here."
He reached under the console, unlocking the emergency armament drawer with a quick scan of his badge. Pulling out a standard-issue pistol loaded with mana-infused bullets—effective against unarmored humans but useless against high-level monsters that could cloak themselves in protective mana—he checked the chamber swiftly. Victor tossed a matching pistol to Jax, who caught it awkwardly.
"Here, for protection," Victor said. "Just in case. Stay sharp."
Jax stared at the weapon, nodding numbly as he gripped it.
Victor tried the secure line to Warden Hale again, punching in the code with urgency. The line rang... and rang... dead silence. No pickup, no voicemail—nothing.
Either the signal's been cut, or something's gone down in central command, Victor thought, his heart pounding harder now.
"Victor!" Jax called out suddenly, his voice laced with panic. "Look—look at the monitors!"
Victor whipped his head back to the screens. Another glitch tore through the feeds, this one more violent, fracturing the illusion of normalcy. As the distortion cleared, the true horror revealed itself: bodies strewn across the floors of multiple sectors, guards and inmates alike sprawled in pools of blood, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, walls splattered with crimson. The prison's underbelly laid bare in a massacre.
Jax's face drained of color as he stared at the glitch-riddled monitors, the gruesome tableau of bloodied corpses searing into his vision. He stumbled back a step, his voice cracking with panic. "That... that has to be the new guy's doing. The guild slayer—he killed them all!"
Victor grabbed Jax by the collar, yanking him close with a fierce grip, his gray eyes blazing. "Calm the hell down, you idiot! Don't go spouting nonsense—we need to hit the quarantine button now!"
The quarantine button was the prison's last resort: a failsafe that would seal every door, vent, and exit in Blackgate, trapping villains inside to starve if necessary. It was designed to minimize civilian casualties should any powered inmates break free and rampage through the monster-infested world outside. The downside? It locked everyone in—guards included—with no overrides, no escapes.
Jax's eyes widened in terror, shaking his head frantically. "No way! You wanna die? That button's in the core room, and even if we press it, we're stuck here too—we can't get out!"
Victor released his collar but didn't back down, his voice low and urgent. "It's better than dying for nothing. Look, we don't have a shot at running anyway. You saw the monitors—that's Silver Rain's work using his illusion talent. His sealing cuffs must've come off somehow. We don't know how many others are loose right now, but we've got a window before they all break out and turn this place into a slaughterhouse."
Jax shoved Victor away hard, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "No! I'm not dying in here!"
In a flash, Jax raised his pistol, pointing it straight at Victor's chest. The barrel trembled slightly in his grip.
Victor froze, his hands raising slowly in shock, staring at his colleague in disbelief. "Jax... what the hell? Come on, we can do this together. What are you doing, you bastard?"
Jax's face twisted with desperation, his finger hovering over the trigger. "You're the fool here, Victor. We should've just run while we could. But if you keep pushing this, I'll shoot you—I swear I will."
Victor stared at Jax in utter disbelief, the barrel of the pistol pointed squarely at his chest like a betrayal etched in steel. His mind reeled for a split second before fury took over. "Daaammmnn it!" he roared, lunging forward with explosive speed.
Jax flinched, caught off guard by the sudden movement and the raw shout echoing in the confined room. His grip on the pistol wavered, his doped-up haze making him sluggish and unfocused—just enough for Victor to close the distance.
In a blur, Victor tackled Jax, wrapping his arms around him in a vice-like hold. Jax thrashed wildly, squirming and kicking in a desperate bid to break free, but Victor held firm, pinning him against the console.
Damn this guy, Victor thought, gritting his teeth as Jax's surprising strength pushed back. Where the hell is all this power coming from? The doping must be amplifying it.
With a quick twist, Victor grabbed for the pistol in Jax's hand, wrenching it away before it could fire. Shit, if this thing goes off, we'll alert every enemy in the prison, he mused internally, his heart pounding as he tucked the weapon into his waistband.
Jax gasped and pleaded, his voice breaking. "Victor—stop! Please, man, don't do this!"
But Victor didn't hesitate. He drove his fist into Jax's midsection with brutal force, following up with a series of hard punches to the jaw and ribs. Jax's pleas turned to grunts and whimpers, but Victor kept swinging, his knuckles aching with each impact, until Jax's eyes rolled back and his body went limp, collapsing to the floor in a heap.
Panting heavily, Victor staggered to his feet, wiping sweat from his brow as he steadied his breathing. The alarm's wail still pierced the air, a constant reminder of the chaos unfolding. "Even if I'm just some nobody," he muttered aloud, his voice steady despite the adrenaline, "I won't abandon my responsibilities."
Victor wasted no time, his resolve hardening like steel in the face of impending doom. He rummaged through the monitoring room's emergency locker, grabbing whatever gear could buy him a fighting chance: a couple of flashbangs clipped to his belt, a fragmentation grenade tucked into his vest, and a compact assault rifle slung over his shoulder—standard issue for high-threat scenarios, loaded with mana-enhanced rounds that could punch through basic defenses. Anything that might shield him from the horrors lurking beyond the door. He checked the rifle's magazine one last time, his hands steady despite the chaos raging in his mind.
With his arsenal secured, Victor approached the reinforced door, his boots thudding softly against the floor. His thoughts fractured, pulling him in conflicting directions. I could just bolt out of here and run, he pondered, fingers hovering over the access panel. It's the smart play—logical, even. For all I know, the villains have already scattered into the world, Gates or no Gates. No one would blame a low-level guard like me for surviving.
But the idea curdled in his gut like spoiled milk. No, that's cowardice, plain and simple. If I run and they get out, my name's smeared forever—branded as the guy who let the monsters loose on the world. Even if it's not all on me, I'd carry that stain. Besides, I'm sick of this half-life, scraping by in the shadows of the gifted. Why not seize this mess? Turn it into something bold, something that makes my existence mean a damn thing for once.
He punched in the override code, the door hissing open with a mechanical groan. The corridor beyond unfolded like a scene from a slaughterhouse nightmare—walls streaked with fresh blood, floors slick with crimson pools that reflected the flashing red emergency lights. Bodies lay crumpled in heaps, guards and inmates alike, their forms mangled beyond recognition, the metallic tang of death hanging thick in the air.