"Some prisons use steel. Others use memory."
The Pain of Lineage
The room did not feel like a dungeon.
It felt like a clinic with its humanity removed.
Cold white light washed over metal restraints bolted into the floor. There were no bloodstains, no chains hanging from hooks—nothing theatrical. Only precision. Sterile surfaces. A faint, continuous hum.
The sound of a place where truth was extracted the way a surgeon removed tumors.
Ricardo and Sybill were forced into opposite chairs, wrists and ankles locked by suppression clamps. Myth-tech nodes activated with a hiss, binding their relic signatures and sealing away every instinct their bodies wanted to obey.
A single man entered the room.
Not masked.
Not armored.
Not angry.
White coat. Black gloves. Expression neutral. A datapad in his left hand, a clinical stylus in his right.
An Anino interrogator—
**not a sadist, not a butcher.**
A technician.
"Operatives Magno. Lucero," he said in an even tone. "The datapoint. Where is it?"
Neither answered.
He did not sigh. He did not lean closer.
He simply tapped the stylus on the datapad once.
A panel slid open behind him.
And the device inside awakened.
The Pain Of Lineage - It resembled a black obelisk made of shadow-glass, its surface carved with deep spirals that never fully aligned. At its center pulsed a dim ember—red, then blue, then white, in slow rotations.
Ricardo felt the temperature drop in his bones.
Sybill straightened, jaw tightening.
The interrogator continued as though explaining a mundane procedure.
"This device compiles ancestral memory," he said. "Pain passed down through bloodlines. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual."
With two gestures, he calibrated two separate resonance coils—one for each of them.
"Your ancestors suffered so that you could exist. You will now experience what they endured."
He pressed a button.
The world folded inward.
A pressure—not physical—struck Ricardo's chest first. A memory that wasn't his own slammed into his mind: the cold hunger of someone who had survived a famine decades before he was born. Another wave followed, sharper, the sensation of a bone breaking under colonial punishment—yet no bone broke on his body.
**It was pain without injury.
Trauma without blood.
History forced through the nerves like electricity.**
Sybill inhaled sharply as generations of Luceros cried through her veins. A mother who lost a child. A brother who died in a flood. A witch burned for defiance centuries ago—their agony echoing inside her skull like a chant.
She let out a low, shaking breath.
It did not break her.
Ricardo locked his mind behind MID-Zeta conditioning—breath control, focus compression, pain reframing. His hands clenched, but his voice remained steady.
The interrogator observed readouts on his tablet.
"You are both trained," he said.
Not impressed.
Not frustrated.
Simply noting data.
He increased the intensity by a single notch.
Ricardo felt an echo of drowning from an ancestor he had never known. Sybill felt a scream that belonged to a long-dead aunt who had lost everything in a war.
Neither spoke.
"The datapoint," he repeated. "Where did you hide it?"
Ricardo met his gaze, eyes steady despite the shaking beneath his skin.
"You're wasting your time."
Sybill added, "Try asking your crow."
The interrogator did not react to the jab.
"Your refusal is predictable," he said calmly. "But pain reveals patterns in behavior. Even lies have footprints."
He activated the device again.
This time, the Pain of Lineage did not strike their bodies.
It went for their hearts.
Their memories of loss.
Their deepest grief transformed into weaponized feedback.
Ricardo's jaw locked.
He forced himself to breathe—one second in, one second out.
The world narrowed, steadied.
Sybill's witchflame reacted instinctively, flickering along her fingers despite suppression clamps. She dragged the pain inward, converting it to heat the way she had done against curses and illusions.
"You will eventually break," the interrogator stated as if reading a weather report. "All men and women do."
Ricardo replied through gritted teeth, "Then consider us outliers."
Sybill spat blood on the floor—not from injury, but from pressure bursting capillaries. "You should worry less about us…" Her voice cracked, then steadied again. "And more about who finds out you mishandled MID-Zeta personnel."
It was the closest she came to a threat, wrapped in a whisper.
The interrogator did not rise to it.
Instead, he turned the device off.
The pain evaporated instantly—but the echoes remained, crawling beneath their skin like ghosts.
He stepped aside as two Engineered Anino operatives entered.
"Separate them," he instructed. "Cells on opposite ends."
The operatives hauled Ricardo up.
Another dragged Sybill away.
As they were pulled into the corridor, Sybill caught Ricardo's eye—
A single blink.
Three beats.
A code.
Ricardo returned two.
They understood each other perfectly:
**We endure now.
We escape later.**
The metal doors slammed shut between them.
The interrogation was over.
The war inside the prison had only begun.
Confinement & Escape Initiation
Darkness settled in after the interrogation—heavy, unmoving, absolute.
Ricardo sat on the cold floor of his cell, back against concrete that still held the chill of the night. The suppression glyphs etched into the walls pulsed in dim red intervals, draining the air of any sense of time. His wrists throbbed faintly where the restraints had been removed, leaving only the soft burn of residual Anino energy.
Across the block, another cell door slammed shut.
Sybill.
He didn't call out. She wouldn't either. They didn't need to.
Instead, they listened.
Boots moved down the corridor in predictable patterns—three guards patrolling in rotating intervals. One walked heavy on his right foot. Another's armor brushed the bars with each pass. The third—silent except for a faint equipment click every nine steps.
Ricardo breathed quietly through his nose. He counted every sound.
Nine paces.
Pause.
Turn.
Nine paces back.
Sybill heard the same rhythm. She matched the pacing with a soft tap of her fingertip against the floor—barely audible, but enough for someone trained to spot patterns.
Ricardo answered with two taps.
"I hear you."
She replied with three.
"We act on the third cycle."
Ricardo exhaled softly.
But before any attempt on the door, both MID-Zeta operatives followed protocol:
**Search the cage.
Find a tool.
Create an opening.**
Sybill searched first, feeling along the drain grate. She found a sliver of rusted wire and twisted it free silently.
Ricardo began his own scan.
He lowered himself, palms sweeping across the concrete, feeling for breaks, chips, anything loose. His fingers brushed along the underside of the bolted-down bench frame—old, rusted, barely hanging on.
He pressed harder.
*Crackle.*
One bolt shifted.
He twisted, slow and precise, using the vibration of the suppression field to mask the sound. The corroded metal finally gave way.
A thin, sturdy bolt slid into his hand—jagged on one end, narrow enough to slip into a hinge seam, but strong enough to act as a pressure lever.
Perfect.
He hid it against his palm, body angled toward the wall to conceal the motion from passing guards.
Two taps.
**I'm equipped.**
Sybill replied with the same.
The memory of the keypad sequence flashed in Ricardo's mind.
*Tap-tap… tap… tap-tap-tap.*
Spacing. Rhythm. Pressure.
They would need all of it soon.
Minutes passed. Or an hour. The prison swallowed time whole.
At the far end of the block, a metal panel hissed open—an automated myth-tech sweep. The flicker in the suppression glyphs was small, but their training made it read like a signal flare.
Ricardo inhaled.
This was the moment.
A faint scrape came from Sybill's cell—her wire sliding into the door seam, probing hinge tension, mapping locks.
Ricardo mirrored her.
He slid the bolt into the lower hinge seam of his cell door, feeling where rust met retrofitted myth-tech plating. The outer frame was old, worn—but not replaced.
A vulnerability.
The guards marched again.
Nine steps.
Turn.
Nine back.
Tap.
Sybill signaled.
Ricardo answered, lightly brushing the floor.
Another vibration hummed through the old prison—deep machinery shifting load. The perfect cover.
Sybill moved first.
A soft click. Her hinge loosened.
Ricardo waited for the guard's pivot—armor scraping metal—
*crrk.*
He pressed the bolt into the hinge seam, forcing it a fraction off alignment. The lock resisted—then grudgingly shifted.
Not open.
But ready.
Two taps.
**Ready.**
The next part would be precision.
Every five minutes, a guard stopped at Sybill's viewing slit—leaning close, checking the cell interior. That was the window.
Ricardo listened.
Heavy right foot.
Armor brushing bars.
Breathing through a cracked vocoder.
He stopped at Sybill's door.
Sybill's breathing vanished, dissolved into silence.
The guard leaned forward—
—and she struck.
A muffled impact. A soft exhale. The body fell.
Ricardo's fists tightened, but his pulse stayed steady.
One guard down.
Two left.
A soft scrape followed—Sybill dragging the body away from view.
Another tap.
**On my mark.**
Ricardo returned one.
**Ready.**
The door to Ricardo's cell shifted again.
A millimeter.
The millimeter they needed.
When the last guard walked past—
They would move.
Together.
As one.
Sneaking & CQC
The moment the last guard's footsteps faded around the distant corner, Ricardo pushed.
The hinge gave with a breath of metal fatigue—quiet, controlled. He caught the door before it could swing too far, easing it open just wide enough for his frame. Sybill's cell door clicked open at the same moment.
Perfect synchronization.
Ricardo slipped out, crouched low, bolt still in his palm. Sybill emerged from the darkness across the corridor, her outline steady, her eyes sharp. A single nod passed between them—no words, no gestures, just shared intent.
MID-Zeta training never required speech.
They moved.
Lightly.
Efficiently.
Every footfall placed with surgical care.
The corridor stretched ahead—dim, damp, lit only by intermittent red pulses from the suppression glyphs. Shadows pooled in corners where the old prison's architecture resisted the Anino's alterations.
Two guards patrolled the next junction.
Ricardo stopped.
Lifted two fingers.
Sybill answered with one.
Two targets. Single cycle. Silent.
Ricardo stepped forward first, melting into the darkness until he aligned with a stuttering patch of dead light between two failing wall lamps. Sybill mirrored him on the opposite side—two blades sheathing themselves in shadow.
As the guards crossed paths—
Ricardo moved.
Fast.
Quiet.
Exact.
He closed the distance before the guard registered the shift in airflow. The rusted bolt in his hand slid beneath the man's chin, not cutting—levering. A twist. A choke. The guard seized, legs folding as Ricardo guided him down silently.
At the same moment, Sybill stepped behind the second guard. Her arm wrapped around his neck, elbow cutting under the collar plate. A precise thumb pressed against a pressure node at the base of his skull.
He dropped without a sound.
Two bodies.
No alarms.
No noise past what the old prison already swallowed.
Ricardo dragged his target into a maintenance niche. Sybill did the same. They blended seamlessly back into the hall, already scanning for cross-cameras.
None.
Anino relied on live human overwatch here, not myth-tech optics.
Useful.
They continued.
Down the stairwell.
Through the narrow service hall.
Past a cluster of derelict cells sealed under layers of myth-tech plating.
Occasionally, a guard wandered too close.
Each time—
Ricardo's fist struck the solar plexus, folding lung and breath in one motion.
Sybill's fingers found the jaw hinge, snapping consciousness into black instantly.
Clean.
Clinical.
Lethal only when necessary.
A small metal service door appeared at the end of the next corridor—bare, rusted, out of place among the newer Anino reinforcements. Ricardo brushed its edges with his fingertips.
"The old layout is still intact," he whispered.
Sybill nodded once.
"The relic vaults will be beneath the execution wing. We're getting close."
They slipped through.
A stairwell spiraled downward, lit only by a faint underglow of myth-tech lines. Voices echoed below—two operatives on a break. Leaning. Talking.
Ricardo and Sybill exchanged a look.
Silent. Fast. Together.
Ricardo descended first, stopping just above the landing. Sybill took the opposite flank, footsteps noiseless on old concrete.
The two Anino operatives never saw them.
Ricardo seized the first by the collar, yanked him upward, and slammed him into the stairwell wall—forearm crushing windpipe, stealing breath. Sybill swept the second's legs, dropping him prone. One sharp blow to the neck ended his function instantly.
The path cleared.
They continued downward.
Another guard stood by a reinforced checkpoint door—alone, bored, glancing at his myth-tech wrist screen. Ricardo veered right, Sybill left. The guard's posture relaxed—
Sybill flicked a pebble-sized concrete chip at the far wall.
The guard turned.
Ricardo struck.
A knifehand blow to the carotid.
A second behind the knee.
He collapsed silently.
Sybill caught him before his armor hit the ground.
They laid him gently aside.
Now the reinforced door.
Sybill placed her ear against it.
Ricardo checked the panel.
A square keypad.
Six digits.
Exact cadence.
Ricardo tapped her shoulder once.
She nodded.
Together, barely above a whisper, they mouthed the sequence they had memorized hours earlier:
*Tap-tap… tap… tap-tap-tap.*
Sybill entered it precisely.
Red light.
Denied.
Ricardo inhaled and typed again—
Red light.
One attempt left.
He closed his eyes, recalling the rhythm of the operative's fingers…
the micro-hesitation on the third press…
the heavier tap near the end.
He pressed the code again—
Green light.
The door clacked open with a soft hydraulic hiss.
Beyond it waited the vault.
And somewhere inside—
the fire-star heartbeat of
Alab ng Tala
and the whispering cruelty of
Kandila ng Dilim.
Ricardo exhaled once.
"You ready?"
Sybill smirked, eyes sharp.
"I've been ready since they blindfolded us."
They stepped inside.
To reclaim the weapons that made them MID-Zeta's deadliest pair.