Free Web NovelChapter 28: Foolish Ambitions.
『"A confident person checks the manual first. A dumbass doesn’t."』
Amara reached the restricted door with Ethan close behind. A keypad was beside it, requiring a code she didn’t have.
But she had something else.
Her eyes began to glow brighter blue as she activated her intent sight, perceiving the truth of the keypad’s purpose as the correct sequence revealed itself like a map she could read.
Her fingers moved across the keys: 7-4-1-9-2-6.
And the lock disengaged with a soft click.
"Neat trick," Ethan said quietly.
"Thanks." She flashed him a smile even with the tension.
They moved into the restricted zone, finding themselves in a corridor that was noticeably different from the public areas. Colder with harsher lighting.
Following the sounds of machinery and muffled voices, they eventually came across a room with a small window.
Inside, a prisoner sat strapped to a chair. A complex helmet with tubes and wires connecting it to a machinery covered his head. His yellow jumpsuit was stained with sweat and what might have been blood.
The prisoner was crying, his voice breaking. "Please, I already gave last week. And the week before that. Please, I’m begging you. There’s nothing left to take."
"Take it up with the Warden," one of the guards said with a laugh.
The other guard moved to a control panel. "Ready for extraction?"
"Do it."
With the push of a button, the suppression collar around the prisoner’s neck powered down. Simultaneously, the helmet activated with a whine of building energy.
It began draining something from the prisoner... Awakener energy made visible as streams of light pulled from his body into the tubes. He screamed, back arching against the restraints, while the lights throughout the facility flickered in rhythm with the extraction.
"When it’s done, send him to the lower levels with the others," one guard said casually, watching the display. "Warden wants maximum output this cycle."
They watched until the prisoner went limp, his body looking somehow less, like something essential had been hollowed out.
Amara’s mind raced as she watched. "That’s why he lied about the suppression system. If it’s always on, they can’t extract any energy. They need the prisoners’ powers active to drain them."
She then turned to Ethan, holding back the anger in her voice. "Still think I’m overreacting?"
Ethan’s expression had transformed completely. Gone was the calm dismissal.
His jaw was tight, fists clenched at his sides. And when he spoke, his voice went cold.
"I was wrong," he said simply. "You were right. This place is..." He couldn’t finish.
"A nightmare," Amara supplied.
"Yeah."
Despite the horror of what they’d just witnessed, Amara couldn’t help but smile a little from hearing Ethan apologize.
"Was that an apology from Ethan Bass?" she teased. "I should mark this moment for posterity."
"Don’t push your luck, Murray," he said. But there was relief in his voice that she wasn’t angry with him for doubting her.
"For the record," Ethan said quietly, grabbing her hand. "I’ll try not to doubt your instincts again."
Amara looked down at his hand on hers. "So long that you try."
"Hey! You two!"
The moment shattered as a guard’s voice came from across the corridor, forcing Amara and Ethan to spring apart, but it was too late. They’d been spotted.
"This is an authorized restricted zone! Hands where I can see them!"
The guard reached for his communication device.
"Shit," Ethan muttered.
The guard’s finger was on the button, about to make the call, when his entire body suddenly twitched. Electricity arced across his frame as he collapsed, smoke rising from his uniform.
Naomi stood behind him, electricity still crackling between her fingers. "Wow, Ethan. You were never this naughty when we were together."
"Good to see you too, Naomi." Ethan said drly. "Did you follow us?"
"So what if I did?" She stepped over the unconscious guard without concern.
Amara, for once, was glad to see her. "The guard mentioned something about a lower level. We have to check it out." She met Naomi’s eyes. "We could use your help."
"Don’t make this weird," Naomi grumbled, but she was already helping search the unconscious guard for his clearance card.
Ethan grabbed the guard’s limp form and hauled him over his shoulder. "We’ll need him for biometric scanning"
They navigated deeper into the restricted zone using the stolen credentials, Ethan occasionally pressing the guard’s hand against scanners.
The elevator descended. And descended. And descended.
The counter kept going: -1, -2, -3...
When it finally stopped at -12, the doors opened to reveal something that definitely wasn’t on any official map or blueprint.
They got out and moved towards a railing, and what they saw below made the energy extraction room look merciful by comparison.
A massive chamber stretched before them. Prisoners in shock collars wielded high-energy pickaxes that glowed with the same iridescent quality as the facility walls.
They moved like automatons. No talking. No rest. Just endless mining.
Some looked like they’d been down here for years, skin pale from lack of any light, bodies emaciated, eyes hollow.
They were mining something at the center of the room, where tubes connected to machinery in the ceiling.
The machine was shooting concentrated energy downward into a massive pit, and where that energy struck, margaronium was materializing, growing like pearl crystal formations.
"What the hell is this place?" Amara whispered.
"That’s margaronium," Ethan said. "And those energy pickaxes must be fashioned from it. The only thing hard enough to mine more of itself."
"I thought this stuff only spawned naturally every ten years?" Amara’s mind was trying to reconcile what she knew with what she was seeing.
"Yeah. I thought so too." Ethan’s expression was grim. "They must be forcing it. Using extracted Awakener energy to artificially accelerate the process."
"This is worse than I imagined," Amara said. "They’re running an illegal mining operation inside an Institute prison."
"Now this is interesting," Naomi whispered, forcing her way between Ethan and Amara with obvious satisfaction at the chaos they’d uncovered.
***
While Amara descended into the truth, Weesil decided to ascend into stupidity by having what he considered a brilliant idea.
He’d noticed the control panel the guards kept consulting, a station that apparently monitored suppression collar status across the facility.
The warden had stepped away momentarily to handle some administrative issue, leaving Professor Gaius distracted by student questions.
A perfect opportunity.
Weesil sneaked toward the console with an exaggerated casualness that almost got him caught.
His plan was simple: cause a minor technical difficulty with maybe three or four collars, then "fix" it by pressing some buttons in a way that looked competent.
Everyone would see him as a hero. The Lockwood name would be validated. Maybe Naomi would stop looking at him like he was something stuck to her shoe.
He reached the console and studied it with the confidence of someone who’d never actually operated a complex machinery in their life, but assumed it couldn’t be that hard.
"Let’s see... suppression field controls... that looks important..." His fingers hovered over what he assumed was the right section. "Just a little disruption. Nothing major."
He pressed what he thought was the "localized field adjustment" button.
It was not the "localized field adjustment" button.
It was the "emergency mass release" button, protected by exactly the kind of safety protocols that someone with actual training would have noticed.
But Weesil had never been trained. He’d been indulged.
The console lit up with warning indicators in six languages. This should have alerted every guard in the facility.
Should have.
Would have, if Weesil hadn’t also accidentally disabled the alarm system when he’d been fumbling with the interface ten seconds earlier.
Throughout the facility, suppression collars began changing color, shifting from steady green to flashing red as their restraining fields powered down.
On three dozen prisoners spread across two cell blocks, the collars simply... fell off.
They clattered to the floor like discarded jewelry. And for one perfect moment of silence, the prisoners stared at their fallen restraints in disbelief.
Then chaos erupted.
"FREEDOM!" someone roared.
Power signatures began flaring across the facility. Shapers who’d been suppressed for months or years suddenly able to access their abilities again.
Someone’s scream turned sonic after what looked like a choker manifested across their neck, shattering every light fixture in their cell block.
Another prisoner’s shadow detached from their body and started moving independently.
A woman’s tears crystallized mid-fall, hitting the ground as diamonds, then the diamonds began growing, spreading across the floor like ice.
The old lady from Cell 47 stepped out slowly as her knitting needles fell to the floor, clattering. Then they were immediately replaced by a different set of needles that looked like bones.
And at the back of her neck once covered by the suppression collar were three bars.
Weesil who watched from the monitors in the control room felt like he was going to throw up. "Oh no," his face was drained of color. "Oh no, oh no, oh—"
On Screen 7, a prisoner’s hands burst into flame.
On Screen 12, another’s body began phasing through the cell wall.
On Screen 19, someone was growing—seven feet, eight feet, nine—
The old lady from Cell 47 looked directly at the camera and smiled.
Then the screens went dark as alarms began screaming throughout.
