As the Guardian joined Kazaaak and David below the gravlift opening, Copen was heading off to investigate the cells before everyone moved on totally - after all, they still hadn’t affirmed if there were other prisoners. JULIAN was silent, watching the gravlift activate to ferry up the other three.
Keyes would have preferred if the robot had gone with them, but it was a little late for that now... these weren’t soldiers waiting for his orders, so he wasn’t surprised they’d been quick to the gravlift without any kind of plan mentioned.
It might be a suicide mission on their part.
“We’ll be up in a moment,” Jacob told the others, David specifically, tone unable to hide a grimness to it. The funnel of light shone down, and the three individuals were lifted up. To them, it wouldn’t feel like being carried, instead feeling as though their bodies had suddenly become weightless, lighter than the air itself, and they were rising free of gravity’s influence.
“Hold this position,” Keyes told JULIAN before he followed Copen.
Out of the atrium Keyes and Copen entered the stairwell down to the cells that neighbored the hall they woke up in, to the right. There were a total of six different cell halls, judging by the six doorways on the bottom floor. When Copen stepped into the hall, he encountered a hall identical to the first. Twelve cells in total, six down either side, the dark lighting only broken by a festering red hue from the lights in the metal paneling.
Nobody seemed to be in the cells within this hall.
“Let’s make this quick,” Jacob advised Copen, turning and heading back up the hall, expecting the Adept Slayer to head for the next one.
David Kavarr, KazaaakplethKilik, and the Guardian with a Low-IQ Facial Structure were lifted upward and through the circular hole in the ceiling, rising upon a grated platform, painted black, into another large room - the Upper Ward. Notable at first were the four pillars, identical to the individual one down in the Lower Ward. They were positioned uniform in front of them, with the ground sloping upward to bring the ground up by about five feet. At the elevated position, about twelve feet further, was an opening into an empty shaft, no doubt where an elevator would normally be, though it wasn’t there now.
Going left from the elevated position, the wall was done away with to lead into a wide hallway, stacked with glowing fusion coils, energy humming inside of them, and south of them along the wall, west of the Upper Ward atrium, was another door to another section of the prison. Going to the right (east) of the elevated floor was an identical though mirrored story, meaning two connecting rooms.
Additionally, a look to the left revealed a rectangular window, long in length, where a room could be seen through it. Within was some kind of chamber with white walls, and human men could be seen inside, wearing battle-worn military fatigues, their arms clamped down in alien cuffs that covered everything from the elbow to their knuckles. Collars had been attached to their necks, and they all stood uniform with their heads down, bodies facing northward toward a blank wall. More prisoners, like them. There was no obvious way to reach them, meaning it would likely be through the door in the left hall.
Up the floor’s incline, there were barricades positioned, metallic walls for cover, placed haphazardly. Behind them were an array of aliens with their weapons aimed at the three escapees. Two brutes, both bearing pulse carbines, and five grunts. Four of them had plasma pistols, while the fifth was carrying a new weapon, pink spikes emerging from the top of it.
Big Dab could be seen by the three, sitting on the ground in the cover of one of the torture pillars. He waved toward them. “Better find cover!” he warned, just as the Banished forces opened fire, globs of green and blue plasma flying through the air, accompanied by pink crystals. The pulse carbine was a decent enough weapon, with its tracking, but the pink needles were far more advanced, curving quickly through the air to track onto ther targets, capable of swerving around even cover - though they could be avoided by evading at the last second.
[[ OST - Barrel of Monkeys ]]
