Shackled Exalted

Emil

Emil severed the connection with his Azurite pendant. The blue light radiating from the stone disappeared as the door of the archive room swung open. He crouched. He was situated at the rear of the room flanked by two shelves.

Footsteps thudded across the wooden floor. Casual. No semblance of urgency. A bright incandescent light flooded the front of the room. The faint smell of naphtha indicated that it came from an oil lamp. From the shadows casted upon the ceiling, Emil deduced that only one person had entered.

The floor tiles squeaked as the research staff walked down the array of shelves. Light from the oil lamp intensified. Tracking the shadows on the ceiling, Emil had a solid idea of the person's position.

Suddenly, they paused. A grunt of confusion escaped the person's mouth.

"Did someone leave this here…?" the man muttered to himself.

Shit!

Emil realized that it was the budget proposal document that he had set aside earlier on a nearby table. He overheard the man placed the oil lamp down as he scrutinized the document. Emil slowly creeped towards the edge of the shelves.

"Whoa!"

There was a sharp squeal followed by a flutter of wings. Petra. The researcher jumped back, momentarily startled by the sudden appearance of a bat.

Emil pounced.

The researcher was mid-spin when Emil locked his head into a chokehold. The man tried to scream. Emil immediately covered his mouth with his off-hand. The muffled attempt wasn't loud, but the door to the archival room hadn't been fully closed. Desperate to silence the man, Emil squeezed hard on his neck, trying to choke the air out of him. The researcher, however, was stronger than he realized. With both hands, the man pulled down on his arm. Despite Emil's leverage, the combined strength of two hands prevented him from closing down on the man's windpipe.

They were locked in a stalemate.

Emil considered pummeling the man's head with his off-hand to knock him out, but that would leave his mouth open. He couldn't risk a scream that could alert the rest of the floor that something was happening in the archive room.

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of blue emerge near the man's head. Mana. It came from a set of Azurite earrings.

Crack!

The mana faded. The researcher's head drooped to the side. His hands suddenly went limp. Emil loosened his chokehold and let the man down slowly.

Fuck.

He just killed him. It was a split-second decision. The researcher was an Exalted and he was about to invoke his Gift.

I had to do it.

Haggard breaths echoed from his chest. Emil stared at the dead man's body. Even he hasn't entirely convinced by his own rationale. Sure, he was stuck in a precarious situation. But he had options. He could have removed the researcher's Azurite earrings to break the mana connection. He could used Mana Arts to strengthen his chokehold instead of trying to drag out the confrontation. There were a lot of ways he could have acted to take down the man without killing him.

He and Petra had agreed to minimize deaths when infiltrating this lab. They wanted to leave as little trails of their involvement as possible. Documents could always go missing or be misplaced. Researchers could always suffer injuries during the chaos caused by the facility's machines malfunctioning. But a death raised questions.

Emil stared at his trembling hands.

I killed him because I wanted to.

The realization stunned him. Learning and witnessing the horrors being committed inside this lab made him vengeful.

I think I wanted him to suffer.

The researcher was the victim of his desire for retribution. All of his penned-up anger, disgust, and vitriol had culminated in a single outburst. Someone had to be punished for all the injustice inflicted upon these orphans.

Think of the bigger picture, he told himself. This plan to infiltrate the Sixth Hidden Laboratory was shaky enough—he could not afford any more reckless actions that could compromise their mission. If he seriously wanted to help these orphans, the best thing he could do is to get this piece of evidence into Steiger's hands. Emil took a deep breath. Clarity returned as he clenched his teeth in self-admonishment. It was unfortunate that it took a violent murder to cool his head.

He silently dragged the corpse into the rear of the archive room. There was hardly space to hide a body, but hopefully this could at least buy him some time before the death was found. He grabbed the two pieces of evidence and tucked into the folds of his disguise.

Petra landed on his shoulder. Using the bat's claws, she gave him five light scratches against the side of neck.

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Five minutes. That was how long Petra had left to take possession of the bat. That was how long he had to coordinate the last phase of the plan.

It's time to leave.

***

The hallway remained quiet as Emil exited the archive room and closed its doors. At a glance, it seemed that the commotion between him and the dead researcher hadn't been noticed. He started walking down the corridor with a brisk pace while Petra followed closely from the ceiling. The malignant air of this floor pressed down on his chest once more. Now that he knew the details of Project Heilen, the closed rooms of this hallway took on a different meaning.

Keep moving.

He arrived at the stairwell. He nearly jumped as he came face-to-face with a research staff. It was the lead researcher who was escorting the orphans that he had arrived at the facility with. Emil muttered an apology while pretending that he was affected by the lack of lighting on this floor. He trudged down the stairs, passing by the rest of the researchers as he put on an air of importance and urgency. No one stopped him.

The orphans appeared next. The scrawny and dirty children struggled up the steps.

"Watch your footing," he overheard one of the research staff say.

Emil forced himself to look ahead. His heart throbbed with every orphan that he passed. It felt like he was being stabbed with a knife. The documents detailing the outcomes of Project Heilen flashed in his head along with the orphan who was suffering on the medical bed.

A wretched fate awaited these children. And they had no idea.

Endure.

He felt two more scratches on his neck. There were two minutes left until Petra's Animal Sibyl wore off. He had to hurry.

The ground floor came into view. The machine that powered the Azurite cluster was still offline. But there was more activity now as some semblance of order appeared to return to the facility. Moving blobs of incandescent light flooded the floor. Oil lamps and candles were being used as emergency lighting.

I need to get to a maintenance worker.

He needed to switch disguises again for the last phase of this plan. Emil looked around for an isolated target. With the floor lit up, however, it was difficult to steal an outfit without being detected. In addition, nearly all of the maintenance workers were in groups, busy trying to fix any machines broken during the electric breakage.

A single urgent scratch on his neck. Petra's Gift was about to deactivate.

Goddammit.

"Delay your move by five minutes," he whispered to the bat perched onto his shoulder.

A second later, the bat suddenly flew into the air in confusion.

Petra

Petra's mind trembled. Her conscious felt like it was being pulled by an external force. For a moment, she saw nothing but darkness. The vagueness of her senses made her question if she was truly awake. Then, a wave of nausea suddenly assaulted her. Pain screeched from the back of her skull. She opened her eyes.

Her vision was blurry. A high-pitch whine rang in her ears. The disorientation lasted for a few seconds until she finally got her bearings.

Her surroundings had changed. She was no longer in the interior of the lab. She looked down. She was seated on the ground. The earthy stench of mud tickled her nose. Her hands, human, raised into her view. She was back in her own body, hidden in the woods of the Third Sector. As the ringing in her ears faded, she could hear the heavy rush of water flowing close.

She was by the river that ran through the gated compound of the Sixth Hidden Laboratory. This position was selected specifically to enact the final phase of their plan to get Emil out of the lab.

Did he say something before I was pulled back?

She vaguely heard something from Emil right as her Gift dissipated. His muffled words, however, were unintelligible since she was already in the midst of being rejected out of the bat's vessel.

Petra clicked her tongue, frustrated. If the young man hadn't wasted time getting embroiled by his emotions, then they wouldn't be in this ambiguous situation. Now there was no way to coordinate their actions. Animal Sibyl required line of sight for her to take possession of an animal. Even then, she needed time to get back into the laboratory. By then, the maintenance workers of the facility might have already restored power to the Azurite lights. It would be difficult for Emil to move. Plus, there was always the chance of the researcher's body being discovered.

Why does Director Hortensia always pair me with all these emotional freaks?!

She groaned while trampling out of the dense forest. She was near the riverbank. The body of water was about fifty meters wide. For now, she decided to make her way towards her target.

While scouting the vicinity of the Sixth Hidden Laboratory, Petra had discovered something strange. The river running through the compound of the lab was surprisingly shallow despite its width. Given the river was being used as a source of water to fuel the steam engine powering a portion of the facility, Petra decided to investigate upstream. After a kilometer of walking, she found a shabby dam constructed out of stone. The structure was likely used to control the flow of water gathered by the facility to generate steam.

Petra wasn't an engineer, but if she had to hazard a guess, some sort of pipe or underground tunnel had been built to divert some of the river's water into a container inside the facility. The container was then heated to produce the steam necessary to power the engines.

But regardless of the reasons, it was clear that this dam was important to the Sixth Hidden Laboratory's operations.

With this in mind, the escape plan for Emil was simple. Petra would destroy the dam. The excessive water would flow downstream and flood the containers holding the water. That should cause another level of chaos inside the facility. Emil, hopefully, would have switched into the disguise of a maintenance worker. Using the destruction as an excuse, he would request to leave the Sixth Hidden Laboratory to investigate the cause of flood. After that, they would improvise depending on the situation. But as long as he was allowed to exit the facility, they had plenty of options to make a clean getaway.

Petra thought the plan was overly idealistic and simple. It relied too much on Emil's ability to play a convincing role, and the lack of a backup plan in case of failure made her anxious. But there was nothing better than they could think of. Not when there was only two of them to enact this plan.

I'm here.

The dam was a two-meter wide and ten-meter ten stone wall supported by several ramparts. It was a crude structure, hastily built and devoid of reinforcements from refined materials like steel.

How fitting that these researchers cut corners on the most important part of their infrastructure.

The oversight worked to her advantage. Petra approached the stone wall as she rolled up her sleeves. The Azurite pendant on her neck glowed a cerulean blue. With this structure, there was no need for elegance or careful planning. Just a simple brute force would do the trick.

Petra took a deep breath. This was going to hurt.

Good luck, Emil.

She stomped forward and unleashed a devastating punch against the stone wall. With her fists strengthened by Mana Arts, the concussive blow instantly tore a hole in the structure. Combined with the force of the raging waters, the structure quickly began to collapse.

Petra stepped back.

The rush of water roared in her ears.