Hey there, readers! I am just so buzzed from writing the next chapter so soon! I got the motivation juices flowing faster, possibly thanks to some extra juicy turkey! Anyways, this chapter is a little different than previous chapters, but still lots of fun to write! I hope that you enjoy it!

 

 

Found (Chapter 34)

 

 

by

 

 

Elite Shade

 

 

 

"Duke Wulfram had always been critical of the KPD, even back when his father was alive," spoke a human male sitting in a chair in a darkened room for a talking head interview. He had a dark skin tone with a shaved head. There was a T-shaped scar running down the side of his right cheekbone. His eyes were a steel gray and piercing. He was wearing a suit and gray tie. Underneath him in white lettering appeared Hiram Grimsley: Former KPD Chief of Police. The camera then switched to a black and white picture of the Duke, making a severe expression on his face with neatly trimmed white hair and beard. The image then shifted onto headlines reading District Attorney Arrested and 7 Officers Indicted in Raid.

 

"At the time, the department was dealing with scandal after scandal. Heck, my first three partners all ended up getting indicted. I just made sure to keep my head down and do my job by the book. Next thing I know, all of the top brass has been brought up on charges, and it was just us greenies. I was the only 'senior' officer there by six months, so I found myself more or less pushed into the position of Chief of Police. To say I was intimidated would be an understatement. Then the coup happened..." Images showed humans dressed in crisp white uniforms with unsmiling silver masks walking in unison down streets, other humans dressed in red and white uniforms kicking in doors and dragging other humans out, males, females, and even children.

 

"He cut a deal with the Abbey of Humanity, what was before just a barely tolerated cult, and allowed them to enforce their own rules on certain districts so long as they upheld the Duke's new laws. They're the ones in the silver masks. They are ruthless zealots obsessed with keeping the human species pure and unsoiled by lesser mammals... their words. Then there was the Duke's new City Guards. Just armed thugs, really. He started slowly, and then quickly, pushing the Kartakkan Police Force out, as we upheld laws that were officially voted into place, whereas his Guards would do whatever he told them." A black and white photo showed three humans, pawcuffed and standing in front of a brick wall wearing blindfolds with a group of Guards standing before them, one holding up an old-fashioned flintlock pistol. Two more cuffed and blindfolded humans were lying a little ways off to the right, dark stains on the wall just above them.

 

"Finally, I guess to tie up loose ends, any of us on the force that didn't join up with his Guards, we were arrested for 'seditionist activities'." Hiram practically spat the words out. "There were thirteen of us that they arrested, beat the living hells out of, and then carted off to Blackhole Prison." A photo of thick and tall concrete walls enclosing a squat fort-like structure in a four pointed star shape, resting a bit precariously on a rocky outcropping over the coast.

 

"Blackhole was the worst prison Kartakka had. And all the staff had been replaced with the Duke's Guards. Add in the fact that they had announced to the general population, some of the worst of the worst criminals Kartakka had to offer, that we were former police officers... well, you get the picture of how bleak things looked. And shortly after being stuffed into the red prisoner jumpsuit, I started noting a lot of my fellow prisoners were looking right at me. I recognized a lot of faces... basically, I had been responsible in some way for a number of them being arrested."

 

Black and white camera footage showed Hiram entering a large concrete area. Another human prisoner ran up behind him with something in his hand. In one quick motion, Hiram spun, grabbed the male's arm, and kept spinning. While the footage was silent, it was apparent from the wincing of other humans in the video that there was an audible sickening crack. The other prisoner was on the floor, while Hiram walked away.

 

"And... amongst all the other prisoners... I ran into someone I knew quite well... unfortunately." Back in the talking head interview, Hiram sighed and began massaging his temples. The screen faded to black before returning, now in a different darkened room showing a different human male, this one of a much lighter skin tone with long red hair and an excited smile on his face, and a more wiry frame. He was wearing a blue Pawaiian shirt and jeans. His bright green eyes twinkled mischievously.

 

"Am I on?" he asked with a slight giggle in his voice. Apparently getting a yes, his smile grew. "Well hi there. My name is Jack Silver. And I am an international criminal." Sure enough, shortly after he said it, his name and criminal status faded in underneath him on the screen, in white letters. "Me and Hiram go way back."

 

Back in the other room, Hiram's face was deadpan serious. "He was the single most annoying perp I had ever had to deal with. A flagrant repeat offender." A newspaper clipping appeared, showing a human in dark clothes and a ski mask running with a literal sack cloth with a dollar sign painted on the side, waving to the camera. Another showing Jack being handcuffed and grinning. And yet another showing him running nude, a censor bar covering part of him, running through a fountain, clutching a duffel bag with money spilling out of it.

 

The video shifted back to Jack. "We had us some good times."

 

And back to Hiram. "I once arrested him three times in the same day... apparently, he kept breaking out of holding."

 

Once more back to Jack who was clutching his stomach, laughing. "Oh gods, I remember that day! I was barely even trying to escape too!"

 

Hiram just shook his head and said nothing, the video shifting back over to Jack's interview.

 

"The thing about Kartakka at the time was, it was so easy for an ordinary person to be deemed a criminal. Usually some poor schmuck who would be snatched up by Guards or by Foremam's of the Abbey, to be taken in for questioning. But before the Duke had Hiram and his buddies sent to Blackhole, it was a place where only the BIG names got sent. Criminal organizations, hitmammals and assassins with LONG resumes, the major leagues. In order to be sent there, you had to do something crazy, something HUGE, something that would have everyone talking about it."

 

Grainy color camera footage started playing, showing a bulldozer with large chains attached to a large cube of steel being dragged behind it. The cube had a large circular handle with a combination lock in the center and chunks of wood and concrete still attached to the sides. In the driver's seat sat Jack, who was laughing and throwing live grenades behind the bulldozer, with them exploding in different colors, forcing authorities to keep their distance.

 

"In addition to smuggling in stolen tech from the rest of the surface world, I had a bit of a hobby robbing banks. And that there was the vault from Kartakka's First National, a bank no one had been able to successfully rob ever in the history of its opening... until that day!" The footage continued as old-fashioned vehicles with red and white lights flashing on them and blaring sirens followed behind. The vehicles were rather boxy-looking, similar to early automobiles, painted black and white, with KPD written on the sides.

 

"Needless to say," Hiram said, his mouth a frustrated line, "I was... surprised to find Jack there with us, and not a bloody red smear on a back alley wall somewhere out in the city."

 

"I had some connections in Blackhole, and so I was able to get most of the other prisoners to leave Hiram and his friends alone... for the most part. He and I started hanging out and coming up with escape plans."

 

"He wouldn't leave me alone, and kept going on about the dumbest escape attempts I had ever heard. They ranged from making a hang glider with torn out pipes and clothes stolen from the laundry room, to somehow making a gigantic catapult on the roof with homemade parachutes on our backs. In addition to Blackhole being... well, a hellhole, and with many prisoners watching us and waiting for the right opportunity, as well as the death games that prisoners would be selected for... I knew that if we didn't get out of there soon, we were all going to die... or maybe I'd snap and break Jack's neck. So, after a couple of days, I finally started working on a plan."

 

"It was so cool, how Hiram and I just walked in to a meeting of some high-ranking members of the Roarers, a dangerous group of thugs best known for things like protection rackets and underground gambling... well, before that Dice guy took all that over. They wanted out so that they could settle the score with him personally." Jack looked to the camera and gave it a wink. "I may have let slip that little nugget of information."

 

"It actually wasn't that hard to get them to agree to work with me on the escape, as my plan involved using just about every prisoner in the place. Basically, while they hated me and anyone from KPD, these Guards... they despised them even more." Hiram sat there, looking troubled.

 

"Of course, this plan would go belly up if our captors had any idea of what was going on. So that meant... that snitches had to be silenced." Jack leaned back in his seat, his smile fading a bit. "I may have had to help out with that too... sniffing out who was and who wasn't a snitch. I can't really go into just what happened... but pretty much, that part of the plan was carried out with ruthless efficiency. Thanks in part to the Hu Mio crime family members that were also locked up and in on the plan."

 

"Part of what made Blackhole so terrible, aside from the conditions and treatment by staff, and the dangerous prisoners sent there, was the mine. See, out on that outcropping, there was a silver ore vein that seemed to go straight down. Prisoners were scheduled to dig it out from early morning to late at night in different groups in varying shifts. Pickaxes, shovels, and even dynamite on occasion was used, all under heavy Guard supervision, and all locked up tight afterwards. We needed weapons, and..." Hiram sighed heavily, looking even more annoyed.

 

"I knew just where and how to get to them all," Jack said with a laugh. "Before Hiram was thrown in, I had been sneaking out of my cell time and time again. Sometimes to make contact with an outside source in order to smuggle in things to sell, and sometimes to just go exploring and get the layout of the place. I found a pipe system that I think was some kind of out of use sewage system. Only it was HUGE, big enough for me to walk upright in. And on accident, through one of the many cracks I found I could peek through, I saw where the tools and stuff were being loaded in one night, and even marked the walls so I knew where to go again if I ever needed them. It was in a storage room that always had two guards posted in front of it, no matter what." Black and white footage of the hallway in question showed a group of Guards loading tools and wooden crates into a room, closing the door behind them as the majority of them left, leaving behind two Guards.

 

Hiram just shook his head. "I have no idea how he keeps managing to do it... but yeah. That's what Jack Silver does. I don't think there would ever be a prison he wouldn't try to break out of." Hiram sat there for a moment. "So on the night our big plan was to be set in motion, Jack snuck a handful of guys into the sewage system and led them to the storage area. They waited until a while after the guard change to use a smoke bomb to set off a distraction a little ways off. The two guards turned to investigate, and that's when Jack and the others smashed through the crumbling wall and charged the guards. They used bricks and shivs to... eliminate them quickly, before Jack picked the lock. In it they found over a hundred pickaxes, shovels, thick wooden rods that could be used as clubs... and the dynamite, with the blasting caps as well."

 

The camera footage saw smoke coming out of a wall further down the hall from the two Guards. They looked in that direction, just before the wall across from them fell outwards, and six humans rushed out, swarming the two surprised unfortunate Guards. The graininess of the footage made it hard to depict everything, but it was apparent that a few of the humans were slamming bricks on them. They then dragged the bodies into the hole, with one of the humans using a rag to wipe up the blood. Then there was Jack using something small to pick the lock and open the door. Immediately, the humans rushed in, carrying out armloads of supplies, more from inside the tunnel coming out to help carry the rest. When the room was empty, the door was shut and locked, and two humans swept up the rubble, climbing inside, and building back up the bricks to give the impression the wall hadn't been broken. After a few more seconds, the white smoke dissipated.

 

Leopard Skinard's Freebird started to play.

 

"We distributed everything, except the explosives. That was stored somewhere safe 'cause we were gunna use that for something else. We were able to hand everything off to all the other prisoners thanks to some spaces behind the walls I had discovered, maintenance passages I believe them to be. You could access them by ripping the toilet away from some of the back walls of cells. Others passed the stuff between the bars in groups of movement right behind Guards doing their rounds." Jack looked excited as he said it.

 

"While old-fashioned, the prison was set up with electronic cell doors," Hiram explained. "It was actually the same system we used back at the station, just on a larger scale." An image of a large gray desk-like device appeared, with dials and blinking white lights next to numbers ranging from 001 all the way to 600. Next to it was a lever. "So using the maintenance tunnel, me and my fellow former officers snuck into the control room, thanks to a map made by another prisoner."

 

"Another prisoner? Please! I made that map," Jack said, sitting in the other room, sulking. "No one ever appreciates my work."

 

"There was a vent in a custodial closet that were were able to squeeze into, just barely, packed in there like sardines. Looking through the keyhole, we saw that there were six Guards, four playing poker, one standing and watching a little black and white TV that would shift from surveillance camera to surveillance camera. And finally, the last Guard was standing next to a large red button. It didn't take a genius to figure out that that was the alarm system. But those two missing Guards would not go unnoticed for long, nor would the missing tools. It was now, or never. So, quietly opening the door, we ran out. I tackled the one by the button and we... well..." Hiram sighed again. "We did what we had to. We killed them. And, after a little bit of tinkering with the device, I started opening all the cells as fast as I could."

 

The music started to pick up as black and white surveillance footage showed cell doors sliding open, with armed prisoners running out and attacking unaware Guards.

 

"The Guards tended to be sadistic monsters. Unfortunately for them, so were a lot of the prisoners that they liked to torment, who were now loose and armed. It was a bloodbath. One we participated in." Hiram looked away.

 

"It was AWESOME! Just chaos! I saw this one HUGE guy hurl his pickaxe, where it spun through the air, and impaled a guard across from him in the chest before he could get his pistol out. I, of course, grabbed said pistol up, and I wasn't the only prisoner doing so. By then the Guards knew what was happening and started to fight back." Jack looked excited to tell this part of the story.

 

With the music playing, black and white pictures were shown, with some being quite graphic. The prisoners outnumbered the guards, but the guards did have pistols and rifles. Mammals on both sides fell, with some of the Guards running towards the entrance, only to be ambushed by prisoners who had been waiting there.

 

"I, of course, was no slouch," Jack said. Black and white pictures showed him, now only wearing trousers, mid-run and firing a pistol, half of his face painted a darker color. Another picture showed him with what looked to be some kind of cobbled-together flamethrower, spraying flames and apparently laughing. The camera cut back to Hiram, who sat in his chair, looking disturbed.

 

"I genuinely believe that Jack Silver might actually be a type of psychopath. Not just because of the prison riot. I mean it."

 

Jack just shrugged and smiled. "It was a rip-roaring good time. A shame it only lasted, like, five minutes. After which, all the Guards and that rutting Warden were all dead."

 

"By then an alarm had been sounded, so reinforcements would be coming from the city. Making a run for it would only get us recaptured or shot," Hiram explained. "Of course, some prisoners decided to take their chances anyway. After they left, we barricaded the doors, and started to enact Phase 2 of the plan."

 

"It was WAY better than anything I ever came up with! It turns out instead of dumping right into the ocean, the old sewer system I had been exploring used to feed into the city's main sewers! Decades ago, they changed it in the prison and so sealed up the hole with THICK layers of bricks and stuff. So remember the dynamite?" Jack grinned mischievously. "Well, we only used one stick to blast a hole in that wall. We could all only go through one at a time, so while that was happening, Hiram and a few others were setting up a sweet trap!"

 

"There were some other prisoners who had been city engineers. With their help, we were able to dig holes into key load-bearing walls and structures in Blackhole. We had it all set up to the shot exploder. It's the box with the lever, or plunger, in the middle of it that you use to detonate explosives wired to it. Or, well, what had been used in Kartakka while in just about everywhere else, you use some kind of computer thing for demolition. Anyways, there were miles and miles of wire, so once it was all rigged, we covered the wires and took the exploder down into the sewers with us. With someone acting as lookout, we waited for even more of the Guards to break through the barricade and storm the place." Hiram paused and looked pensive.

 

"You gotta understand something. No one who was innocent was a member of the Duke's Guards. He only wanted the most violent and obedient mammals working for him. And at that point, as well as even now, I considered the whole situation as no different than enemy occupation. Some mammals might disagree with my actions leading up to, and even after our escape from Blackwell, and I don't blame them. I certainly don't like that I helped release a lot of violent offenders. But if you ask me if I would do it again? You'd better believe I would."

 

Grainy colored footage showed a small army of red and white Guards, over two hundred, breaking down the large doors and rushing inside the prison, their rifles drawn. Just after the last of them entered, there was a silent blast, as there was no audio, and flashes of light lit up the barred windows. Then the structure collapsed in on itself, massive clouds of dust billowing outwards.

 

"Oh mam! If I could do it again, I would have brought a GrowlPro and worn it while we were fighting!" Jack laughed, wiping his eyes. "So we all trudged down into the sewers, looking around and mapping the place out, a lot of the others running off I guess figuring now was as good a time as any to ditch us. We moved around under there for... I think maybe three days, until our little make-shift camp, which had been running out of clean water I might add, found ourselves surrounded by more folks with rifles pointing at us. I thought we'd been captured by the Guards. That was until this fine-looking lady with an eyepatch started speaking to us in a Schottish accent. She said, 'You lot've given the Duke a nasty black eye. Welcome to The Underground.'"

* * *

Wade sat on the couch, leaning into Giselle's lap, his megafauna mate munching on some popcorn.

 

"I can't believe that this all happened under the noses of the Kittish government!" the cockney giraffe said, looking down at her mate. The dark-colored wolf looked back up at her.

 

"Ya shoulda seen the lifeboat Marcus got here in! It looks like somthin' from the turn o' the century!"

 

"I think I can see why Qali was so upset after watching this series, Love. To think that Marcus had lived in that kind of an environment," she said.

 

"What's important is that he's safe now. Plus, after watchin' this, we can have a better insight ta the boy's culture, and maybe surprise him with somethin', like some kind of traditional dish or other."

 

"Love, that's a brilliant idea!"

 

As the two talked, they missed during the end credits, a picture of Marcus with a metal collar and chain around his neck, along with the title of the next part of the mini-series. Cruelty in Kartakka. The timer until the next episode started counting down with the two still completely unaware.

 

 

 

Well... that sounds kinda sinister, don't it, folks? Please consider leaving a comment or a review, and thank you so much for reading!