After much cursing, Red finished the sorry excuse they had for food. The stuff was much harder to get down today than it had been previously. There may have been some correlation with getting choked out only an hour earlier, but Red was fairly certain that the Gearborn no longer bothered to try to make the stuff edible.
The pain in his neck had mostly subsided, leaving him just a dull throb. If possible, he would have kept his mist flowing through his neck. That was not an option. His remaining mist would be needed if he wanted to take another step towards escape.
Red wished he had gotten more from his suffering, but now he'd be stuck waiting until his Gearborn friend came back in the evening. With a choked breath, Red released the mist that he had been circulating in his neck, allowing it to settle back in his sea heart. A pulse of pain caused him to stagger.
"Curse it," He muttered, rubbing his bruising neck.
He knew that he needed something to counter the pain, or he'd spend the rest of the day getting nothing done. After tearing a piece of cloth off his pant leg, he soaked it in ice-cold water that had been sent for him to drink. It wasn't very sanitary, but he didn't have many options. A quick knot later, and the cool water began to ease the bruising.
Red checked what remained of his water before leaving it in the corner. The cold definitely helped the pain, but it would unfortunately take a long time to heal. He couldn't afford to waste his mist trying to quicken the healing process. It was far too important to waste.
He grabbed the spoon off his tray and made his way over to the barred door. It had taken him a few hours to break out successfully the first time, but now he could do it in a matter of moments. With the spoon in his hand, he wedged it into the lock on the outside.
He had gotten lucky enough that the spoon could fit far enough in the keyhole to block it off completely. Red focused on his core and formed the image in his mind: the image of the key. Mist began to twirl out from his hand at an alarming rate.
It swirled into the keyhole, filling in the gaps left by the spoon. Red jammed the utensil further in, trapping the mist completely in the keyhole. He wasn't strong enough at his current level to force mist into a solid shape in open air. Whenever he tried, it simply floated away. But if he could compress it and trap it inside something, that would fix all of his problems.
Even after such a brief moment, sweat was already beginning to drip down his face. He pushed on the mist in the keyhole, which forced the pins inside to the correct positions. It only took a moment, and the door swung open with a click. The flow of mist cut off immediately, and the spoon clattered to the floor outside the cell.
The spoon fell from his grip and clattered to the floor. Sagging against the door, he released all control over the mist. What little remained trickled back into his sea heart, which did little to help his exhaustion. Exerting this much of his sea heart was like exercising a muscle. The more he did it, the stronger it would become. However, just like a muscle when he overworked it, he'd suffer from the effects.
"Man, spoons really are my favorite utensil," He muttered as he shook the weariness off, "Let's get to work."
Grabbing the spoon off the floor, he stuffed it in between the hinges to prevent the door from swinging closed. That had happened the first time and almost caused major problems. With that, Red stepped out into freedom.
"Who am I kidding?" He sniffed, "If it feels this good to get out of that cramped cell, then I wonder what it'll feel like when I actually escape this cursed ship?"
Sparing a glance towards the ladder leading to the upper deck, Red turned deeper into the bowels. There were rows of cells in this part of the ship, but he ignored them. Different cages wouldn't help in his escape attempt. What he needed to accomplish today was unlocking the door at the end of the hall.
The first day, he had spent exploring the entirety of the ship that he had access to. Unfortunately, there was not much. Most of the interior was taken up by the other cells. There were a few other rooms that he could enter, but they were mostly empty storage. The only meaningful thing he had found was barrels of fresh water. He hoped it was fresh at least because that was all he had to drink.
The other rooms were all empty except for the one door at the end of the hallway. That door was locked, but Red was pretty sure that his gear was being kept in there. Since he filled them, there was still a faint connection between the sea cores and his sea heart when he was close enough. If he could get those…well, he might actually be able to kill the blasted robots.
As of yet, he had been unsuccessful in breaking into the room. By the time he got out of his cell, his mist was already depleted, forcing him to try to pick the lock manually. That wasn't hard for someone with his skills. He knew a thing or two about lock picking… for no reason in particular. Red retrieved the two filaments of metal that he had scavenged on his first day. They were his makeshift lockpicks.
"Not that they help much," he lamented.
Gearborn locks were strange. Nothing like the type of locks he was used to. It was almost as if they were trying to be purposefully different. Red suspected that it was the only reason for their strange variation. With mist, he had been able to crack the lock fairly quickly. Without it, he was having a hard time getting the pins to align correctly.
However, today was the day he would finally pick the damn lock. Far too much time had gone into the bloody thing; he needed to succeed.
Red inserted his makeshift lockpicks and got to work. Not long later, he heard the first pin successfully click into place. A slight smile teased the corner of his lips, but forcing himself to remain calm, he redoubled his efforts. A few moments later, another pin clicked. He had managed to get up to three pins into place before, but never this quickly.
Patience was key, but not too much patience.
After messing around with the lock enough, he had realized that Gearborn locks naturally reset after a certain amount of time. It was strange, and if he could take the entire lock with him to study, he would. That wasn't really possible, so he'd settle for simply figuring out how to pick it. Another pin clicked into place.
He let out a slow breath, "Four to go, this isn't nearly as bad as last time."
The next pin clicked into place, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Click.
Red let out an angry curse.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" he wrenched his picks out of the lock.
The damn thing had reset already. If he had known the positions of the final three pins, he might have been able to open the lock successfully. However, by the time he picked the first four pins, his time would be running out. It could take days if he kept making such minuscule progress, as he was. With a sigh, he slumped to the floor and absently rubbed at the cloth around his injured neck.
Continuing the way he was going was not much fun. Not that it needed to be fun…but it would be downright miserable. Red had already devised a possible solution to the lock. It was possible that using mist could slow the pins from resetting, giving him more time to solve the lock.
The problem was that he had very little mist left. If he drained it completely, he would put himself in a dangerous situation. Not that he could really get into a more dangerous situation than he already was.
If he took it slow, he'd be able to solve the lock eventually. Besides, it wasn't like he had a time limit. The ship was still headed farther into Valencia. The only thing that he needed was patience. It was said that patience is a virtue.
"Well, if it is, I sure don't have it," he complained to the maddening lock.
Red shoved his picks back into the lock. After the first pin clicked, he pushed as much mist as he dared into the lock without leaving himself completely dry. Now he just had to hope that he could be quick enough to prevent his mist from going to waste. Fortunately, it seemed that luck was on his side. The final three pins clicked into place without resetting.
Red let out a triumphant whoop and pushed the door open before it could lock again. He didn't take any time to relish in his success and stepped inside. The room was much plainer than he had imagined.
It was nearly identical to the storage rooms that he had seen so far. The only difference was that this room had chests and shelves lining the wall. The shelves were empty, so Red stepped towards the chest that he felt the closest connection to.
It wasn't locked, and flipping the lid open, he smiled at the contents. All of his items were in here. Surprisingly enough, that included the core he had stolen from the Gearborn in the first place. Perhaps they thought it was tainted now that it had come in contact with a human. It was strange that they'd kept all of his stuff, but it was a good thing.
Red didn't bother with the rest of the items and focused on what he truly cared about. A pair of shockblasters lay across the rest of his stuff. These were his prized possessions: tangles of intricate wiring and mist channels warped throughout the weapons. Someone else might call them a mess, but he had designed them himself.
They may have looked like they would explode by simply touching them…which they had a couple of times…but he trusted them more than anything.
The sea hearts he had inserted into the guns were mostly empty now, but the faint trace of his mist still lingered. He picked the shockblasters up and felt the familiar grip in his palms. Without hesitating, he pushed his remaining mist into the empty sea hearts.
There was no reaction, and Red knew that it wasn't enough to fire them. It would take a lot more mist to charge them and shoot even once. But that was fine. It would take him a few days to set up the rest of his plan anyway.
A click echoed down the hallway, and Red jerked upright. Without missing a beat, he tossed the shockblasters into the chest and very nearly slammed the lid. He didn't bother hiding his lock picks and just tucked them in his pants as he ran.
"Crap," He muttered, "Why is he here now?"
Gearborn voices riveted down from the deck, and Red saw the line of light from the trapdoor flickering down into the hull. A foot stepped on the ladder as he dove back into his cell. He tossed his spoon onto his bed and quietly clicked the door shut behind him before collapsing onto the floor.