Escape, Part 2

After the last encounter, every step was earned with the blood, sweat, and tears of them and their enemies.

It seemed that every time they rounded a corner or opened a door at a dead end, a gang of guards would be there, and they would fight. Fate was profoundly happy that the only Personification they encountered on this ship was Norman because it meant the rest were grunts, cannon fodder that died within seconds of encountering them.

It wasn't all easy, though. Fate had underestimated an Avatar guard at one point, and earned himself a paralyzed arm, courtesy of the man's Lightning Manifestation. He paid the man back with two broken arms and a shattered ribcage, but he was severely weakened until managed to siphon off enough Divine Energy to heal himself.

During his moment of vulnerability, another Avatar had cut a deep gash across his stomach with metal he conjured from thin air. Fate settled his debt with that guard as well, and then tore off the right sleeve of his jumpsuit and tightened it around his new wound.

"You need to be more careful," Cait admonished. "Both of them could've easily killed you if you hadn't noticed them in time and dodged. Even then, your carelessness caused you to—"

"I know, I know. It won't happen again," Fate promised.

"It shouldn't have happened at all. Weren't you trained to take every threat seriously?"

"I was, and I did. This was more due to a lack of skill fighting fourteen against two than it was carelessness. Regardless, I'll pay more attention from now on."

"See to it that you do. I don't want to be the one to lug your corpse back to our friends," she replied and stormed off down the hall. Fate sighed and ran after her, keeping a hand on his wound to keep it from moving too much.

"You know," he huffed as he caught up to her. She was running slowly for a Personification, but she was still running at Fate's maximum speed, something that left little room for Fate to talk without disturbing his breathing, but he did so anyway.

"It occurs to me that that entire interrogation was pointless. It's no secret where our base is; the Advanced even found our mountain base when only we should've known about it. I think Norman just wanted an excuse to hurt us."

"Probably," Cait said, her breathing deep and even. Running at this speed, she barely even broke a sweat. "I wouldn't put it past them. But we should focus on getting out of here."

"That's why I brought it up," Fate puffed. "There's got to be a data room of some sort, one with blueprints for this place, as well as information they have on us. The Advanced love their little libraries. If we don't find the hangars first, we should look for that."

"I suppose we should," Cait said. "I just wish they had signs in this infernal ship. I find it hard to believe that they made every single person on board memorize the entire layout."

"But what if they did?" Fate said, eyes widening as he came to a realization. "What if they figured that was the safest way to deter intruders? Anyone without the knowledge would get as lost as we are now."

"You're right!" Cait said, her eyes lighting up. "It's settled, then. We'll take a hostage from the next group we find and coax them into telling us where we need to go."

"'Hostage' is a weird term to use," Fate replied. "I doubt whoever we grab will be useful for bargaining power."

"Quit nitpicking."

"Just tell us what we want to know, and this'll all be over," the dark-skinned woman said sweetly.

"I can't! They'll do things to me that are far worse than anything you two can cook up!" He screamed. Fate and Cait were looming over him, cornering him against the wall he leaned against. Around them were the bloody and broken corpses of his colleagues, some of whom he had even called friends.

His legs had already been snapped by the two Embodiments before him, removing his chances of running and causing him to sit on the floor. "And even if I wanted to, the chip would kill me the second I thought about it!"

He flinched as the dark-eyed man grabbed him by the arm and lifted him, slamming him against the wall.

"Stab him with the baton," the escaped man told the woman.

The man squirmed in the prisoner's grasp as the woman brought the baton closer. She thrust the device toward his stomach, and he braced himself for pain, squeezing his eyes shut. He opened his eyes after nothing happened, peaking down to find the baton lodged halfway inside his stomach.

"Oh god… What did you do to me? Why can't I feel the fucking steel rod lodged in my abdomen?!" The dark-eyed man slapped him across the jaw, rattling his teeth and reddening his cheeks.

"Calm down," the man snapped at him. "I turned you intangible. That chip you're so worried about is down there," he said, pointing at the floor.

The guard chanced a look down at the floor, and sure enough, there was the chip that had been in his neck since he was a child. It was then that he noticed the dull throb where the chip had once sat, and he knew the man's words to be true.

The woman gestured with her hand, and the chip zipped into the air and zoomed down the hall. Shortly after, he heard a dull explosion as the chip detonated.

"Now," the woman said. "Tell us what we asked you."

"And no point in lying, either. Cait here can tell if you're lying."

The guard, of course, had no way to know if that was true, and indeed it wasn't, not technically. At most, Cait could tell if he *wanted* to lie, not if he did so. But what the man didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Fine," he said, his gaze lingering on the corpse of Rebecca, the woman he had been trying to ask out for the past three months. "I'll tell you."