Prison Break
Part 1: Prison Break (ASAP)
Location: Earth. Central Empire of China. Beijing Maximum Security Prison. Date: December 1st, 2036. Time: 11:53 pm. Subject: Prison Break (ASAP)
Rumail is chained in place. Shackles at the wrists are each bound to the four upper corners of the room by heavy lengths of industrial chain. These chains are lengthed to keep his arms held up and out from his body, tight enough that he cannot budge his wrists more than four inches in any direction. The same has been done to his ankles, heavy manacles and chains bound to the four lower corners of the room, keeping him in a spread-eagle position with no room to adjust or relax, his feet utterly immobile. Furthermore, a massive steel collar weights his upper body, and is connected to yet another length of chain in back, which feeds through a system of pulleys and is welded to the upper, outer corner of the massive, vault-like door that bars entrance to his cell. The door opens outward, meaning that whenever his interrogator or the guard who brings his meals enters, the panther's upper body is pulled back several feet, forcing him into a permanant limbo position, until the door is closed. The confinement was intended to break him, by wearing out his body's joints, and forcing him to spend all of his endurance on attempting to tough out being held in such a structurally comprimising position. The prison warden checked on him a full six hours after he was chained in place, expecting to find a broken prisoner, ready to tell him everything... or better yet, a corpse. Instead, he found a disgruntled prisoner that had been asking the guards outside the supposedly soundproofed cell to use the bathroom in a loud, demanding voice for the past hour. Intense interrogation provided his captors with no useful information. Eventually, Rumail was allowed a 15-minute break in a rock-strewn courtyard, where he could stretch, relieve himself, and 'relax' before being reconfined. Since then, he has been given one of these breaks every six hours, spaced so to avoid letting him sleep for long. During them, he is supervised by a dozen armed guards, standing in firing line formation across the only exit, rifles shouldered and kept on him constantly. All he has to do is look at one wrong, or make any sudden movement, and they wouldn't hesitate to shoot him. It has been twelve weeks since he was captured. Interrogations took place daily - even twice-daily - at first, but in the past few weeks they've become more and more rare. The Chinese are tiring of his unbreakable silence. He knows that they will kill him tonight, at midnight, seven minutes from now. If he listens hard, stilling his breathing, he can hear footsteps in the hallway beyond his cell. They believe all their problems are about to be put behind them. Rumail's reputation has always preceeded him, but they still have no idea whom they are dealing with. A series of locks begin to disengage. The door, five hundred pounds of reinforced steel, swings outward, pulling the panther back. He leans backward into this forced movement with purpose, so as not to put pressure on the collar around his neck. They think him helpless. It is six minutes until midnight. The firing squad files into the room and takes their positions, standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, twelve strong. Beside Rumail is the prison warden. To each man in turn, Rumail offers a blatant grin, confident, genuinely amused... and vengeful. More than one of the guards are visibly unnerved. However, doubt is swallowed. Rifles are shouldered. Aim is taken. Rumail readies to make his move. The elusive tail was the key to his escape, or rather, the tool used to make that key. The tail that the Chinese didn't know he even had. The past twelve weeks were not wasted on the panther... he had spent them well, watching. Waiting. Listening. Planning. it had been easy to locate a suitable fragment of stone in the rockyard where he took his breaks, and snatched it right in front of the guards, in plain sight, facing right at them. He used his tail to grasp it, his legs and body blocking the view, and resumed keeping his tail pinned to his leg, within the short but thick fur, hiding the rock fragment, black fur blended into black fur. The rock was long and thin, hard to chip but not impossible. After hearing the click and fall of the tumblers within his manacles half a dozen times, the key inserted slowly, methodically, turned with steady, machine-like precision as the guards sought to prolong his confinement by whatever seconds possible, stealing away any bit of rest and relaxation from him they could in delaying their own movements, he had been granted something every bit as valuable as the keys themselves. He'd established a habit of holding the slack of the chains in his paws at all times. His often-rotated sets of guards never took notice, never cared. He filed the stone in the ever-present silence, the sounds of work shielded from the ears of the guards.
Five minutes until execution. The warden is spouting an endless, droning babble of foreign word and phrase, a rain of monotonous din that falls on deaf, uncaring ears. Four minutes. Rumail is holding the chains taught in his paws, like he has been doing for twelve weeks, so the unlocked manacles on his wrists do not fall away under the weight of the chain. He doesn't budge his feet the merest millimeter, tip or tilt his head, or move in any way for the same reason. The warden blindfolds him. Three minutes to go. The tension in the guards is greatly lessened once his piercing blue gaze is hidden away. A cigarette is pulled from a pack in the warden's coat. It is lit and placed in the panther's lips. The warden is not bitten as he expected to be. Trigger fingers are readied. Two minutes and forty seconds. The warden steps back behind the line of men. Two minutes and thirty seconds. They watch and wait is Rumail drags on the cigarette, allotting him until midnight to savor his strange, but classic, final request. In the near-perfect silence, Rumail counts the seconds on the tiny ticks of the warden's wristwatch. At two minutes and twenty-six seconds until midnight, he starts up a music track in his mind and makes his move. The chinese are NOT ready.
Noses broken as unlocked sections of manacle are broken apart, hurled by Rumail's paws into the outermost guards in the firing line, impacting fragile cartilage with crushing force. A fraction of a second later the forward-facing halves of the picked ankle-manacles are kicked into the next pair of guard inward, the quick snap and anguished cries of steel impacting unprotected groins echoing in the small room. The warden has already pulled free his handgun, aiming and preparing to pull the trigger. His reflexes are unnaturally fine-tuned, but not enough so for him to avoid the lit cigarette as it spins through the air, the burning tip striking his open eye. In his pained flailing he shoot down another guard, and drops himself. Six down. Seven to go. Several of those left standing actually have the nerve to shoot as Rumail sprints forward, striking the wall behind the panther with deadly accuracy as he hurls himself into their midst, his claws pucturing a windpipe, flexing to twist his body and connect a hard kick to the neighbor's temple. As the guard he tackled begins to drop, he pushes off and upward, snatching the guard's rifle in his open paw, hurtling himself at the door. Five left. He bounces off the steel door with a dull thud, pulling the trigger one time and splitting one forehead. The last four guards are on his right side, next to eachother, punishing the door with fired rounds when they should be hitting the feline instead. he lands in a crouch, his thumb flicking the weapon over to full-auto, and dropping his final adversaries with a spray across their knees. The clip is dry. Zero to go. The cell door was left unlocked. Foolish. Rumail streaks down the hall, two rifles in paw, skidding to a stop as he slides into a security office, spraying the room with gunfire. The two occupants fall down, dead, their pistols undrawn. A well-placed shot snaps the lock on a cabinet. Within, Rumail finds riot gear. Ten adjustable suits of hard armor, class four, several semi-automatic shotguns, operating on magazines. An M32 six-cylinder grenade launcher and six tear-gas grenades. Rumail grins. The newly-armored escapee is sprinting across the empty prison courtyard, gunfire coming in from all sides, bullets ricicheting off the ground around him and occasionally off of his high-tech armor. The heaviest opposition comes from a blockade of men in identical suits protecting the front gate. They can handle the barrage of four tear gas canisters at first, breathing through filters, but as the gas becomes a large, obscuring cloud, they abandon their positions for better visibility. Several fall down under the armor-piercing boom of huge, heavy shotgun slugs, as Rumail streaks through the fog and launches himself into the guard tower door, busting it in. Pounding up the stairs, shedding pieces of armor, obstacles left strewn across the stairs behind and below. Anything to impede the progress of his pursuants. Kicking in the door at the top of the stairway. Guard turns in his chair, alarmed, only able to sit there as Rumail's helmet bounces off his face, blacking out as his brain fails to properly handle the pain. Another guard is shouting, but the shout of Rumail's boomstick is far louder. His ears ring in the confined space, but he can still make out the heavy thuds of armored boots echoing up the stairs behind him. Rips the strap of the M32 off his back, swings the compact launcher around to the doorway and pumps the fifth round out, striking the lead guard in the chest and knocking him off-balance, dropping him into his allies. Using the bought second, Rumail turns again and fires the last canister into the reinforced glass window overlooking the parking lot outside the compound. The glass doesn't shatter, but splinters, held together by the metal wiring within. It even holds through the two shotgun slugs he has left, which punch small holes into the glass but leave the vast majority intact. Nearly out of options. Looking left and right, wildly. Grabs a fire extinguisher, slides into place beside the doorway as the first guard rushes through. Knocks his legs out from under him, dents the red cylinder on his head. In a flash he turns to the stairs, braving the threat of gunfire as he hurls the extinguisher down to the landing below, where the smarter guards waited, rifles drawn, pulling triggers as he yanks on the door, throwing it shut, feeling the lock click subtly as, overtly, a bullet pieces the flying extinguisher, a furious roar consuming the guards. The door flies back open, throwing the panther some yards. Stumbling back to his feet, stunned, dizzy, laughing. Down the stairs, turning bodies over, harvesting firearms. More combatants several floors below, eagerly rising. Rumail slams the door shut. Faces his adversary angrily, glaring daggers at the window blocking his path. Bullets pepper the glass from his rifles. Clips empty. He reloads and fires more, reducing the barrier to fractured webbing, chunks of gummy glass clinging to twisted wiring. But overall, the netting is still a barrier. A glance out the rear window, back into the courtyard, reveals yet more guards rushing to his location. No... not guards. He recognised the military uniforms even at this distance. The higher-quality weapons. The precision. He turns away and grabs a metal chair away from it's console, letting loose something of a roar as he throws it at the window, watching the heavy bit of furniture catch in the wirework, hanging suspended. He runs forward and tears it free, sensing heavy thuds on the steps below. Throws it again, with all his might, eyes widening as it tears through the window, defeating the barrier, leaving a sizable gap behind as it careens into the parking lot fifty feet below. He walks up, almost disbelieving, the forefront of his mind stunned, just when hope had been lost, his subconscious racing forward, picking out his landing pad below. Rumail backs up slowly, almost to the doorway. He begins to sprint, adrenaline filling his bloodstream as the door kicks in behind him, foreign shouts announcing wishes for him to politely remain where he is and if he could please lay down. Rumail flies through the window, kicking his legs, spinning with momentum to face the first soldier and catch his eye, using his middle digits to convey to the chinese man in a very american way that he may go and fuck himself. Five stories down and twenty feet out from the window above, some poor man's vehicle implodes with a shower of glass bits as the roof caves in, slowing Rumail's momentum to a standstill. He steps off the wreck and casually kneels behind the trunk of the car for cover as, above, M249 fire opens up, considering his next move. He is a fugitive in the epicenter of the world's largest country, surrounded by the world's largest empire, wanted by over two billion people. He cracks his knuckles. China might have taken America, Japan, India, Canada, and Mexico, as well as a multitude of other, lesser nations, for their own over fifteen years ago, while Rumail was away, but now he was not only back, but out of prison early. The clock strikes midnight. Time to do some damage.
((The above inspired by Two Steps From Hell's: ASAP (Choir) (Voice) Listen to it!))