Elian's body was a roadmap of bruises and cuts, but his mind—his mind had never been clearer.
Each crack in the wall, each rusted bolt, each schedule of guard rotations—he memorized it all with a quiet, simmering rage.
Pain had taught him patience.
Suffering had honed his instincts.
Every humiliation had sharpened him like a blade.
And now... he was ready to cut.
---
It happened during a shift change.
A slim figure slipped into Elian's cell while the main guards were distracted by a fight in the lower chambers.
It was a girl.
Maybe seventeen or eighteen.
Short-cropped black hair, sharp green eyes, wiry frame.
Her name was Kaelina 'Kael' Brooks, and she moved like smoke — quick, silent, deadly.
Kael crouched beside him and pressed a grimy finger to her lips.
"Don't talk," she hissed.
Elian's breath caught in his throat.
Was this a trick?
Another "test" from Marcus?
But Kael didn't hit him.
She didn't sneer or spit.
Instead, she pulled a tiny folded note from her sleeve and tucked it into the waistband of his filthy pants.
A scrap of old newspaper, barely legible in the flickering light, but scrawled in tight handwriting across the back were two words:
> "Not alone."
Before he could react, she was gone — slipping out just as the heavy bootsteps of the guards echoed back down the hall.
The door slammed shut behind her.
But Elian was no longer alone.
---
That night, lying broken on the stone floor, Elian read and re-read the note until the ink nearly blurred.
Not alone.
There were others, then.
Others like him — prisoners, victims — planning something.
Waiting for the right moment.
Waiting for someone reckless enough... desperate enough... to light the match.
A bitter smile curved his cracked lips.
Maybe it was time he stopped being the hunted.
Maybe it was time to become the fire.
---
Over the next days (or weeks — he still couldn't tell), Kael returned.
Each time bringing tiny slivers of a plan.
Smuggled paperclips.
A thin wire.
Snippets of whispered instructions passed between beatings:
"When the third shift ends."
"Wait for the blackout."
"Strike fast. Strike hard. No mercy."
Elian pretended to be broken.
Pretended to shuffle when ordered.
Pretended to cower.
All the while, he was winding that wire around his fingers, fashioning a crude garrote.
He studied the guards — their movements, their blind spots.
He mapped the halls in his mind.
Kael was the spark.
Elian would be the explosion.
---
The night came suddenly.
One moment, the humming lights filled the corridor; the next, utter darkness swallowed the prison whole.
Screams echoed down the halls.
Confused guards shouted orders.
Generators sputtered and failed.
It was now.
Now.
Elian ripped the wire from under his sleeve.
Two guards rushed past his door, keys jangling.
Kael slipped by moments later, tossing a shiv made from sharpened pipe scrap through the bars.
"Time to wake up, little lamb," she whispered.
Elian caught it.
A chill raced down his spine.
The hunted was now the hunter.
---
The first guard never even saw him coming.
Elian slammed the garrote around the man's neck and yanked hard, cutting off his shout mid-breath.
The second guard spun, raising a baton — but Kael was there, a flash of metal, a wet gurgling noise.
The guard crumpled, blood pooling around him.
Elian ripped the keys from the first man's belt, heart pounding so loudly it drowned out everything else.
He looked at Kael.
She nodded once.
No words needed.
The rebellion had begun.
---
They moved fast through the prison halls, freeing other captives along the way.
Some were too broken to stand.
Others... others grabbed whatever weapons they could find, eyes blazing with long-buried fury.
There were more of them than Elian had ever dreamed.
Boys. Girls. Men. Women.
All betrayed.
All desperate.
All ready.
The Order's fortress, once silent and invincible, now rang with chaos.
Screams.
Gunshots.
The clash of metal and bone.
Elian fought like a demon.
Every strike a message:
You chose the wrong boy to break.
---
Not all made it.
Elian watched friends — strangers he'd barely met but already cared for — fall.
Kael took a blade to the side but gritted her teeth and kept moving.
Blood stained the concrete floors.
But the door — the main door to freedom — was in sight.
One final charge.
One last battle.
Elian tightened his grip on the shiv and roared, leading the charge like a fallen king reclaiming his throne.
He didn't care what waited outside — only that he would never, ever be caged again.
---
And so it was...
As the first rays of the sun pierced the blackened sky, Elian stumbled out into the ruined city streets, covered in blood, breathing freedom for the first time in what felt like eternity.
But he knew the fight wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.
The Order had lost prisoners.
They would hunt him.
They would hunt them all.
Elian wiped the blood from his eyes, glanced at Kael, who gave a weak but defiant grin.
Together, they melted into the city's shadows.
The real war had just begun.