"AGHHH! GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!"
"THE FLOOR! THE WHOLE DAMN FLOOR IS CAVING IN!"
"SOMEONE OPEN THE CELLS! GUARD! WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE GUARDS?!"
"AAAAAAGH!"
Screams ripped through the darkness of Block C, some of them cut short by the sound of snapping bone and crushing concrete. Blood splashed against the rusted iron bars and sprayed over the faces of men who were screaming too hard to even wipe it off.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.
Massive roots, thick as tree trunks and black as rotting meat, were punching straight through the three-foot-thick foundation of Blackwood Prison. Steel cell doors bent like wet cardboard, throwing dozens of trapped men into the open corridors, where everyone trampled everyone else trying to reach the main gates.
Men were dying in seconds. Some were crushed under falling ceilings. Others were pulled down into the cracks by the pulsing roots. Panic had turned hundreds of dangerous criminals into terrified animals, crying for mothers they hadn’t seen in twenty years.
Then the heavy steel door of Cell 402 groaned.
It didn’t collapse from the roots. Someone inside was pushing it open.
A tall, thin man in a torn prison jumpsuit stepped into the bloody haze of the corridor. Dust settled in his hair as his pitch-black eyes moved across the dying men. There was something almost like disappointment on his face.
Then Zarek smiled. He looked at the blood and laughed.
"Z-Zarek...?"
A prisoner crawling on the floor froze. He had a deep gash across his forehead, blood running into one eye, but the other stayed fixed on the figure standing near the broken cell. His jaw trembled so hard his teeth clicked together.
"Oh god... no..." the prisoner gasped, backing away on his hands and knees, ignoring the falling concrete around him. "The fucking monster... his cell opened..."
Another inmate running past caught the name and almost tripped over a dead guard. "Zarek?! That bastard is out?!"
In Blackwood, nobody cared about petty thieves or gang soldiers. But everyone knew Zarek. They knew him because of what had happened inside these walls. Ten men had surrounded him. Ten men had attacked him.
He didn’t fight back to survive, and he didn’t yell for help. He grabbed a piece of broken mirror and carved them up one by one, laughing the entire time while the guards emptied three cans of pepper spray into his face. He didn’t even blink. He kept cutting until there was nothing left to cut.
To the prisoners, the apocalypse outside was terrifying. But Zarek? Zarek was something they could actually see and touch, and that made him ten times worse.
Zarek ignored the men scrambling away from him. He took a deep breath, letting the smell of blood and panic fill his lungs. For three years he had been trapped in a tiny box, surrounded by boring rules and weak men. He had been so bored he thought he would go insane.
Now the world was burning.
"Hahaha..."
The laugh came from deep in his chest. It wasn’t loud, but somehow, in the middle of all the screaming and crumbling stone, the men nearby heard it. A few of them stopped screaming.
"Haha... hahaha!"
Zarek stepped forward, his bare feet sliding in a pool of fresh blood. He didn’t care.
"Hey! Give me that!"
A thick-set inmate with a shaved head shoved a younger prisoner against the wall and ripped a heavy iron pipe out of his hands. The younger guy fell into a crack in the floor, screaming as a root wrapped around his leg and dragged him down into the dark. The thick-set guy never looked back. He turned, pipe raised, looking for a way out.
Then he saw Zarek walking toward him.
"Get out of my way, crazy bastard!" he yelled, swinging the pipe with all his strength straight at Zarek’s head.
Zarek didn’t back away or flinch. He stepped into the swing.
The pipe grazed his shoulder and tore the fabric of his jumpsuit, but Zarek was already inside the man’s guard. His left hand shot out and closed on the guy’s throat. Before the inmate could react, Zarek drove his right thumb straight into the man’s left eye socket.
A wet pop.
"AGHHH! MY EYE! MY EYE!"
Zarek held on, twisted, and used the man’s own weight to slam his head sideways into the edge of an exposed steel beam.
CRACK.
The screaming stopped. The body went limp and dropped to the floor like a sack of wet sand.
Zarek leaned down, scooped up the iron pipe, and tested its weight with a casual flick of his wrist. It was solid. Unbalanced, but heavy enough to break bones.
"Much better," he muttered to himself.
Two more prisoners came rushing down the hallway, half blind from smoke and fear. One carried a guard’s bloody nightstick; the other held a sharp piece of broken glass. They were so focused on reaching the exit at the end of the block that they didn’t even see Zarek standing next to the body.
"Zarek’s out," one of them panted, eyes wild. "The guy who killed ten men. One against ten, and he fucking butchered them!"
"Shut up and run!" the other yelled. "Just get to the yard!"
Zarek stepped out of the shadows right in front of them. He didn’t say a word. He just swung the pipe.
It caught the first man across the kneecap, and the bone shattered with a sound like a snapping branch. The man screamed and collapsed to his side, but Zarek was already moving. He caught the second man by the collar, hauled him in, and jammed the butt of the pipe into his mouth. Blood and teeth sprayed into the air. Zarek let go. The man stumbled back, choking on his own blood, and Zarek stepped in and brought the pipe down on his collarbone.
Both men ended up on the floor, writhing and groaning.
Zarek looked down at them, pulse racing with adrenaline. No pity, no anger. Just the high that came when life got simple: kill or be killed, break or be broken.
BOOM!
A crash shook the whole building. Part of the ceiling above Block C finally gave way, and a slab of concrete the size of a truck slammed down thirty feet behind Zarek, crushing half a dozen fleeing men. Dust surged forward in a thick cloud, blinding everyone and making it impossible to breathe.
The black roots pushed deeper through the floor, wrapping around the support pillars and snapping them. The prison was coming down.
He glanced at the ceiling. The cracks weren’t random. The support beams were bending, and the roots had already reached the western wall. The entire block was going to collapse.
"Two minutes," he muttered.
Around him, men were still fighting over weapons. Zarek laughed. Idiots.
He wiped a smear of blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. His lungs burned from the dust and his shoulders ached from the impact of the pipe, but he couldn’t stop smiling. Dying under a pile of dirty rocks wasn’t his idea of fun.
He turned toward the gaping hole at the end of the corridor where the main gates used to be. Outside, the night sky was a bright, unnatural purple. The city beyond the prison walls was full of smoke and fire, and distant, non-human roars echoed through the dark.
The laws, the police, the prisons. All of it was gone. Zarek stepped over the last body and walked through the ruined gate.
Behind him, Blackwood Prison collapsed with a deafening roar. He didn’t look back.
"Finally."
For three fucking years, there had been rules. Rules about where he could go. Rules about what he could do. Rules enforced by guards, police, and those gun bastards who thought a uniform gave them the right to control him. Now there was nothing. No prison. No rules. No one left to tell him what the fuck he was allowed to do.
"Hehehe..."
Zarek’s grin widened.
"Heheheheheh..."
His laughter grew louder as he tightened his grip on the iron pipe. The city was burning. People were screaming.
The world was falling apart. And for the first time in three years, Zarek felt free.
"A world worth living in."