"You're doing this to spite me, right?"
"You know me so well." You smooth your tracksuit one more time in front of the intercom, punching in the number. Yuexia rolls her eyes as she slips out of the view of the camera. You think she's doing that more and more around you. After all, she can't come with you inside. Too many failure points in the story if she does. "Hello!" you say when the fisheye camera lights. "I'm from Kirisaki. Lemme in."
"I don't know your face."
"Yeah, I know I don't have one. Han sent me. Want to check up on the storage."
"Would've texted."
"Sure. And get tapped. Let me in, or I'm going up to Kirishima."
Magic words. The door opens, and a fat, sweaty man stands blinking behind the threshold. Piggy eyes. It's this cold, why is he sweating? A wave of hot, humid air rushes past you in an answer. Oh. It's so wasteful! Does he have a coal boiler in there? Sweaters exist! "Why is it so warm?" You take off your jacket and tie it to your staff. "It's like Shanghai here."
"It's healthful," the man grumps. "I'm the warden. You're Kirishima's new hire."
"It's wasteful, that's what it is. Are we Americans here? Dial it down." You follow him inside. The floors are dirty tile. You count a dozen soldiers sitting around. There's a nice, handy map. Looks like the upper floors store… goods. Wonderfully nonspecific, but if you had to guess you would try hostages and uh, human trafficking vics. Hmm. Shit. Might need to break them out too.
"Don't you have any respect for your elders? This cold, I need heat to warm up my humors and bones."
"Did you get that diagnosis from a legit doctor or did you find it online?"
"...shut up."
The first floor was a tangle of dirty corridors. Would it kill to hire a janitor? Probably. A janitor means someone who snoops around everywhere and the people you would trust to sweep the floors would probably bury a spoon in your eye if you handed them a mop and told them to clean. The walls look weak. A normal ass person could probably bury their arm in the flimsy drywall. Eventually the warden led you to his office, where he sat down on a secondhand leather chair striated with cracks. "Well!" he shouts in the heat, illuminated by a weak, wavering light. "So, you are from Han and Kirishima. What do they want from me?"
You hear bitter envy. Makes sense. Locked up in this dismal fuckin' place, he might as well be tossed in a cell with the rest of the traitors. While everyone out is hustling, feeling like bold thieves and canny underworld operators the poor warden is stuck in here like a wage rat. "They're concerned," you say. "See, you lock up traitors and malcontents here, right?"
"Right."
"And the situation is becoming tenser and tenser."
"I heard about Huaran Street too."
"I totally kicked their asses." He snorts and you remember to leave him behind if anything happens. "Anyway, point is, prison. Lots of malcontents. Wanna see if everything's in tip top shape." One day you're gonna master how to speak in pointed implications. And possibly upgrade to cigars.
The warden nods slowly. "And not free them for an advantage in the civil war?"
"Clever shit," you croak. Your knees tense forward. Violence is imminent. You can burst forward, smash the desk, break his neck in a second. Then you'd charge through the flimsy walls and punch through the beige stone that makes up the outer walls. Run fast. Run far.
"Thank you. I consider it one of my few remaining virtues." The warden, this frog trapped in this well, regards you. "Anyway, there's no need for violence. You'll kill me, throw a giant wrench in whatever you're planning. It'll be a whole thing."
"Violence is no longer imminent. Make your case."
"So good to speak with someone of sense. Well, then. I want out," he says plainly. "I've been doing this shitty job for high on ten years. If Han or Kirishima gives me a better post- anything! I'll give them the key. Hell, I'll unlock the cells myself."
"I'll guarantee it." Now you're curious. Kinda wanna see what they look like on the inside.
"Not good enough," the warden declares. "I want something concrete."
"Give me a knife and I'll sign my own name in blood or some shit like that."
"Hmm." The warden stands up. "Let's walk. I hate this place but there's a weird fucked up pride I have for it."
"Sure it's not just sadism, watching visitors squirm?" You follow him. There's no elevators, so you go down staircases. Wonder what's up with the pipes. It really completes the dingy prison look, soul sucking and industrial. Lines of solid iron doors set in bloodstained hallways. Steam vents from the pipes.
"Hm. Might be something to that, actually."
"Why's it so quiet?" You leave his side, walking into the hallway to knock on one of the iron doors. It's bent- a palm print presses it's way out. Lots of the other cells look the same. "Fuck off!" a voice yells. That's entirely fair.
The warden's already on the next floor. And then the next. Each floor looks like the last- a single hallway, a single miserable, dismal hallway. Nine in total. "Lots of them are empty."
The warden grunts at your observation. "Kirisaki did a sweep couple months before. Pardoned all the ones with lighter sentences." At the last floor, he turns and walks over to a cell and unlocks it. It's cleaner than you would have imagined. Then again, the bucket of soap and the prisoner obsessively wiping every inch of the cells would have something to do with that. "Fu, stop scrubbing for a moment. This here's.."
"Ming Jian." You stick out a hand. The dirty basically a goblin blinks at you, and then gingerly takes it.
"Pleasure," he croaks. "What are you doing here?"
"Doing a check up for Kirishima."
Fun scratches the back of his head, and wipes a grimy hand on his overalls. You have no earthly idea of his age. He looks like a sixty, but under the grime you could even hazard a very stressed and very overworked thirty. "Thought we were breakin' for Oogami."
He what?
"Explain, shit-"
The world sparks. Voltage runs through your back, Fu grabs you by the collar and shoves you into the wall, your nose crunches against it and you fall down flopping. Your limbs trace crazy circles and foam goes up in your mouth. They are leaving, the motherfuckers, the betrayers, you will chase them down and shove that cattle prod down their throats and watch them dance, that is a promise, and while you were inventing curses they've fucked off and slammed a steel door five inches thick in your face.
And now you feel water, cascading down from the leaky pipes. So that's why. The warden is a through motherfucker, you'll give him that. "Dreadfully sorry," his voice comes from outside the solid steel door with a little cat-door flap a bit smaller than the width of your shoulders. The water is filling fast, now it's up to your ankles and soon it'll be up to your knees. You stand up, you fall, it's like that bathroom again, but this time you're going to drown in the cold bilgewater. "But Oogami made me an offer of a cool three million to open the prison for him. You can't-"
[1.2] {Wrathful Manifestation} Punch a hole in the door and break his neck. Everything else comes after.
[1.1] {Pain Is A Teacher} Dislocate your shoulder. Crawl through the cat-flap and break out of here.
