Chapter 191 - Prison Break

“I saw a few exits on the sides, but that would require us to get through the thugs. I don’t think we will be able to escape without a fight.” Niko went over the layout of the power station that he saw, drawing lines on the dusty floor of the basement with a dozen other prisoner thugs gathered around him in varying states of injuries.

“What’s the escape plan?” Damian asked, not fighting Niko for the leading role. This slightly surprised the prisoners, Damian’s name is far more well-known for being nearly unkillable due to his Harden engravings. They exchanged glances among each other, wondering if the nineteen-year-old Niko was stronger.

“We should wait until Lionel moves away. There’s no way in hell we’ll make it out with him around! Even Damian lost against him.” One of the prisoners exclaimed, a tinge of fear running across his face as his arms trembled slightly, already taking a step back. Niko quickly grabbed him by the neck, staring him right in the eyes.

“No, we need to go now – they’ll know the prison guard in charge of us is missing in just a few moments. We can use a few catwalks on the upper floors, which gives us the advantage. Once we go up, we go out guns blazing, got it?”

Most of the prisoners were hesitating, staring at the handgun in their hands. Niko watched them in confusion, wondering why they were so weak. “Hey! Where are your guts? You call yourself gangsters of Raktor?”

“There’s still no way to defeat Lionel! That dude is insane!” A prisoner shot back. “He killed all of my crew members! And if he managed to defeat both of you, how the hell are we supposed to fight? You’re vipers!”

“We got fucking ambushed and outnumbered – I can take LioneI in a straight fight one on one! Don’t you dare believe for a second that man is invincible: we just need to focus on taking out the thugs around him in a surprise attack, then we can lynch Lionel together.” Niko explained, his mind running back to the sparring sessions with Sasha. Lionel isn’t anywhere as strong – but he’s definitely an obstacle.  “If we work together and catch them all in a crossfire, we can hit them before they even know what’s happening. If you see a gun nearby, don’t reload; use it!”

Niko finally managed to convince the prisoner to work together, with Damian taking the main point up the stairwell due to his defensive arcia tattoos, allowing him to take a few pellet hits head-on. “Once we’re out, split up as fast as you can. Kill like you mean it, but don’t kill each other!” Niko urged. More importantly, don’t shoot me.

The prisoners lining up behind him in the stairwell nodded in response, their hands gripping the handguns tightly. “Now, we’re going to act like we belong, just walk out and – “

“Hey! Who the fu-“ The guard for the next shift exclaimed before Damian grabbed him by the mouth in a flick reaction, slamming him against the wall.

“GO GO!” Niko roared, a dozen prisoners spilling out the staircase and unleashing a flurry of pellets from their handguns. The thugs repairing the war equipment were caught off-guard, more than twenty already falling in the initial barrage.

Niko rushed forward to the first workbench, his handgun’s shots already killing two thugs right in the head. He slammed his shoulder into the workbench, flipping it to form a dense cover as the etcher and tools clattered to the ground, the din of the firefight masking the metal clicks.

He quickly scanned his surroundings, noticing a repaired machine gun nearby in a crate. He swapped his handgun into his belt for it, ducking as a few pellets sang over his heads. Popping out again, he squeezed the trigger hard, feeling the arcia energy drain out of him as the machine gun tore through the weak point defense systems of the thugs.

The firefight was intense, the air filled with green arcia bolts, screams of pain and shouts of battle, but the prisoners gritted their teeth and stuck to the plan, immediately scaling the catwalk while Damian and Niko drew most of the attention. “Don’t let the vipers escape!”

“Wait, watch the catwalks!” The thugs yelled, their attention split as they were flanked from above, the prisoners laying waste to everyone below.

However, they were not safe either, the counter barrage tearing through the flimsy metal grill of the catwalk, pellets lodging themselves in the feet and limbs of the prisoners and causing them to fall to the ground, screaming.

The complete chaos allowed Niko and Damian to move up, their battle instincts honed over the last two months of war. Unlike Lionel’s ambush, Niko and Damian had a proper distraction in the form of the dozen prisoners, giving them an edge up. With alarming precision and brutality, Niko and Damian slaughtered their way through the thugs.

Lionel’s thugs were far from efficient, having no proper training. However, they were no slouches either, fighting back with everything they could muster. A distinctive roar could be heard in the distance, the echoes of an arcia fuel generator ramping up – a sound Niko and Damian recognized very clearly as they both ducked instinctively behind a metal containter, their feet pressed hard against the floor.

“You didn’t say anything about a warmachine!”

“I didn’t see one!”

As if on cue, a scavenged warmachine churned to life, its armour half ripped apart and exposing the crew within. The caterpillar threads rattled as the warmachine moved towards Niko and Damian, machine guns swivelling to aim right at the prisoners on the catwalk.

With a deafening gurgle, the machine gun delivered a hailstorm to the prisoners, shredding through the entire catwalk and snapping through the metal beams and wires holding it up. The catwalk crumpled to the ground; the metal creaks resounded through the power station's ground floor.

Niko did not falter nor pause to wonder if the prisoners were still alive, instead moving ahead in sync with Damian, their actions drilled over the months, leaping from cover to cover as they blasted their way through. As Niko rolled into cover again, he found an unexploded fragmentation mortar round lying next to him. He quickly armed it before flinging it towards the warmachine as hard as possible.

The mortar round crashed into the exposed section of the scavenged warmachine, the ensuing explosion and fragments piercing everyone and everything in the cabin, the driver’s body riddled with metal splinters that dug deep into his flesh, causing him to yell in agony.

“Warmachine down!” Niko roared back to Damian, who was still covering his flank with a handgun in his right and a scavenged warmachine armour plate as a shield in his left, taking out any thugs who dared to approach. Within a short few minutes, they had taken out nearly all of the thugs on the ground floor, save for the remaining dozen who were too afraid to confront Niko and Damian head-on.

“Let’s get out of here – where’s the exit?” Damian urged as he raised the armour plate to block an incoming shot again, slowly stepping back.

“Wait, we should blow up the place!” Niko grinned, his eyes darting and landing on a few flame arcia grenades, mass-produced by the Ardent Cretins in the war. “Make sure Lionel can’t come back from this and bite us in the ass.”

As if on cue, Damian suddenly found a bandaged left hand right in front of his face, barely having enough time to lift his armour plate. The fist struck the shield with force enough to knock Damian off his feet, sending him flying and crashing into a pile of rusted metal, scrap from the war.

“If it isn’t my favourite viper – Niko.” Lionel grinned as a few dozen more thugs entered from the exit that Damian and Niko were planning to escape through.

Niko grimaced but was not about to give up that easily, unleashing the machine gun right at them with abandon. The machine gun tore through the thugs, forcing all of them, including Lionel to take cover.

The machine gun’s barrel began to melt, forcing Niko to throw it to the side before he was nearly shot in the head by Lionel’s handgun, his body ducking instinctively behind a pile of metal beams. “Give it up, Niko – the Seven Snakes are over! Nearly a third of your gang belong to me: your observers are compromised; your men don’t listen to you anymore!”

“So what? As long as I am alive, the fucking Seven Snakes live on!” Niko bellowed back over the cover, retrieving his first handgun from his belt and checking the remaining number of pellets.

“Don’t act like you’re indoctrinated – the rest of the vipers despise you.” Lionel taunted. “You’re the runt of the pack: no respect, no power, no authority! Even Keith who is younger than you is placed higher than you!”

While Niko was aware Lionel was trying to sway him, the words truly hit him right where it hurt, making him double-guess what he was doing. Is it even worth to fight for a gang who treats me like shit?

The awkward silence from Niko gave Lionel a smile, Lionel knowing that he had hit the nail on the head. “Is it really worth it to die for a gang leader who hardly knows your name, and doesn’t even bother to remember you? When was the last time you talked to him, hmm? The leaders don’t care about us, the small guys. I know, because I was the same as you!” Lionel motioned for the thugs behind him to slowly move up, forming a semi-circle around Niko.

“And yet here you are, bossing around the smaller thugs.” Niko shot back.

“A small step for true equality. I never forced the thugs to break up their gangs – they keep their entire crew. But to earn respect in Raktor, violence is the only currency that can buy that when you’re starting from rock bottom. Look at you – you’re running in place now, stuck in a rut of always being the ‘weakest’ viper. When are you going to dream better, fight better and aim higher? Do you always want to be subservient? Chasing after the others like a panting dog?” Lionel kept talking, buying time for his thugs to surround Niko from all angles.

Niko recalled how he joined the Seven Snakes in the first place, being enamoured by Kyle’s strength and dominance over the other gang members. He was nowhere near to achieving that yet, and it was true that he never really had much interaction with Kyle, who seemed to have left the Seven Snakes behind entirely save for the final battle against the Ardent Cretins. Are we really just cannon fodder to him?

“Don’t listen to him, Niko! You’re the youngest viper with the most potential!” Damian suddenly interjected, recovering from his initial pushback. “You’re destined for greater heights that we can ever achieve, which is why we’re so tough on you!”

Before Damian could react, Lionel shot Damian right in the stomach, but the pellet failed to penetrate the skin, prompting Lionel to lunge forward and deliver a brutal combo, bruising Damian badly despite the Harden engravings. As Damian grovelled at his feet, Lionel delivered yet another kick to Damian, sending him tumbling across the floor.

“Haha! Only when the underboss is afraid of being betrayed will he resort to such lies! I can give you true strength, unlike the Seven Snakes!” Lionel cackled. “Don’t you want to know how I obtained such power? There are mysteries to this world that you have never even heard of before. A truth of why we’re even here on the planet, to begin with! Last chance, Niko: a dog forever, or a human who knows the reality of this world!?”

Niko gritted his teeth, his sweaty palms wrapping around the holster of the metal handgun, cold to the touch, as he took a deep breath, knowing that he could very well die in the subsequent firefight exchange. “I…. refuse. Better a dog than a cunt under you!” He steeled his heart, preparing to die. At least I went out with a bang.

“Fine. Die an ignorant bitch!” Lionel motioned with his hand, signalling the thugs to attack. However,  at the same time, the glass ceiling windows of the power station burst apart, shattering in a brilliant display of reflecting glass shards that rained onto the floor, revealing close to a dozen Seven Snakes suddenly rappelling down from above, armoured to the teeth unlike the usual guards. Niko’s eyes lit up upon seeing them. The elite squads – is it Sasha?

Lionel quickly shot upwards with the other thugs, but the point defence systems of the armoured elite soldiers were far too strong, deflecting every shot and allowing them to touch the ground. The moment the armoured Seven Snake landed right in front of Lionel, Lionel threw a left hook with all his strength, the air rippling from the sheer speed of the first.

However, the armoured hand of the Seven Snakes grabbed it easily, stopping it dead in its tracks. A distinctive voice echoed out of the sleek exosuit, yellow arctech traces on the inner layer sparking as the crystal burst into life. A voice that immediately boosted the morale of both Damian and Niko.

“All of you, save some for the lady. As for you,” The threatening visage of the Version 1 exosuit turned to face Lionel directly. “You’re going to tell me exactly where you got that hand.”