Opticon

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Samantha Waters sat on her cot, another mindless, boring day was passing here in her prison cell. The same one she’d been in for four years now, a sentence of twenty years and she still wasn’t used to it. This place was hell on earth, and hell was the lack of anything to do. Her left hand was absentmindedly pulling on a string that had frayed off her bright orange jumpsuit.

A jumpsuit that had to be specially made because she was taller than most of the people here, standing at six feet two inches, and her hair hung past her shoulders with ease. But in prison she had to keep it keep it up at all times. Dress code required it and common sense demanded it.

Here in the Dublin correctional facility, it was miserable. The place was overcrowded. There was three people to a cell that was only made to keep one. She was alone right now because her two cellmates were at some scheduled class; she didn’t care for them or the classes of this place. None of it. What she was enjoying, however, was the rare time alone.

Samantha also had a problem neither of her cellmates had. She was Mexican. Sure she was born in the United States, Kansas, but that made no difference to so many people who had been more than willing to share a wide variety of labels.

The scars on her knuckles and face had been proof she didn’t take kindly to any of that. Slowly word got around that if you liked your teeth, you’d keep your mouth shut around her.

Despite the miserable conditions of the place, she was lucky enough to have a small television in her cell, even though it only got one channel, the news. Despite being cut off from the outside world and society, it was really easy to simply keep up with it and as usual, the news was bad. That blue glow was reflecting off of her brown eyes and light brown skin; what was revealed of it, anyway.

“The remains of the oil tanker Lapiz was discovered in the Indian Ocean early this morning. All fifteen crew members aboard are presumed missing and officials are calling it one of the worst ecological disasters of the modern age. Over eleven million gallons of oil have been spilled and the slick can be seen from space,” the anchor said, and the screen switched views and showed a satellite image. The black oil spread out in all directions and to her, it looked like some kind of living thing reaching out with its tendrils. Something about it gave her chills, thankfully the scene switched back to the anchors.

“Scientists aren’t sure yet how this could have happened but right now something called a rogue wave is thought to be responsible for this tragic event, we’ll have more information as it comes in,” the man on television said when suddenly the door opened up and her cellmate came walking in. The door closed behind her and she turned to put her hands through the opening. The guard quickly removed the restraints.

“You’re in my spot,” she said with a glare. Samantha didn’t like Debbie, she didn’t like anyone else in here, either. “You left, Debbie, take the floor,” Sam replied. Debbie was all anger and no power to back it up at five foot four and one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, maybe.

“I didn’t really have a choice you-“ with a glance of her grey eyes, Debbie was silenced. She knew who was in charge. “Watch your next words very carefully. You and I both know I’m not getting out on good behavior,” she said as she never took her eyes off the television, but cracked her scarred knuckles just to make a point.

“Fine, whatever,” Debbie replied as she put her back against the warm cement wall and slid down to the floor. “Is there anything good on today?” she asked in a much calmer voice. “Not really, just some ocean oil spill or something. It just came on the news,” she replied. The oil spill was being shown from the view of a helicopter, and below there were lots of other ships in various places. “Well, at least that’s not our problem to deal with,” Debbie said, not caring about disaster a million miles away from here.

“Oh, you never know. They might decide that inmates should be called on to help clean up the mess. You know they do that, right? I heard of some cons that are recruited to be firefighters. I’ll bet within the week we get called up to clean up, or at least you will,” Sam replied and laughed. Debbie just groaned at the thought.

“Debbie takes the Ocean, that sounds like a bad movie title,” Debbie replied and wanted to change the channel, but the news was all they ever got in here. Every other station was clouded with static, and on rainy days not even the news would come in. “It sounds like a bad idea to me,” Sam replied and could tell the conversation was dying pretty fast. It always did. The two of them had little in common.

She was sure that the system did all of that on purpose just to increase the misery factor of being in a place like this. There wasn’t much a dealer like her and a thief had in common, after all.

The two of them let the quiet descend on them when suddenly the small opening on the cell door opened. “Waters, you have a special visitor. I’m instructed to take you to the room,” the guard said, sounding as mechanical as ever. “Visitors, I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she replied, but any excuse to get out of here on an unscheduled visit was a good thing. Sam stood up and walked to the door. It wasn’t more than a second before Debbie pulled herself into the cot. “I’ll want my spot back,” she said as the cuffs were slapped around her wrists. The door slid open as she stepped back.

Sam was taller than the guard but neither one of them had any reason to be tense. “Come on, Waters,” she said to her and started to lead her away, down the hall and down the next corner. The trip didn’t take very long and she was lead into a dark blue windowless room with a long table with three chairs on at it. One on the left side, two more on the right. Two rows of humming white lights above.

Sam walked to the one on the left and sat down. The guard quickly locked the chain on the table to the cuffs. “Protocol and all, you know how it is,” she said and Sam just grunted in return. “Do you know who it is?” she asked the guard. “No idea, I didn’t ask and I really don’t care, I was just told to bring you here,” she replied and turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

This room didn’t even have a clock, and she could only imagine what kind of nightmare things happened in here - the drain in the middle of the floor did not go unnoticed.

Time passed slowly. Minutes in an unchanging room felt like hours. Sam had been in solitary confinement before and hated it. It was only for a day but it felt as if it would never end and being in a place like this was making those feelings come rushing back in a hurry. She was starting to sweat a little, which had nothing to do with the air temperature. Then with no warning, the door opened and two men came in. They were wearing suits and were the first she had seen in four years.

One was wearing a blue suit, looked to be about fifty years old and had grey hair that was nearly white. The one in the black suit looked much younger, had black hair and ghostly pale skin. Both of them were easily taller than she was, however. The pale skinned one was holding, what looked to her, like a newspaper. She took a breath and prepared for anything.

“Miss Waters, it’s nice to meet you. We’re your new lawyers,” the man in blue said as they both sat down. “Lawyers, what for?” she asked and was confused, there was no reason for these two to be here. All of this was very random to say the least. The one in blue smiled and it was strangely familiar to her but she didn’t know why.

“You might have heard about that oil tanker disaster in the sea, well, your case is actually directly connected to that. We, us here, need you to find the survivor of the wreck and kill him,” the one in black said, but he never smiled.

Sam was deeply confused, there were so many questions. “What, why did you just come out and say it?” the one in blue said, shocked. “Well, I just wanted to get to the point. I hate waiting around and I have stuff to do,” he replied and it was immediately clear that the two of them were not lawyers. She wasn’t sure who they were but this was very strange. “Fine, jerk,” the one in blue replied and stared deeply at her.

“I don’t know what any of this is but I’m not killing anyone, hire a hitman like any normal person would. That’s the end of it,” she said to them, and the blue-suited man put a briefcase on the black table. She didn’t see either of them carrying one inside. “Okay, I guess I have to get to the point,” he said and his tone dropped. “I don’t even know why I’m here,” the one in black said with a huff. She didn’t like him.

“My name is Zeus and this is my brother Hades. We’ve come to recruit you for the mission he put in not so nice terms,” Zeus said to her and Sam just tilted her head. “What?” she asked in confusion. Hades rolled his eyes.

“Can we just get to the point, please?” Hades asked. Zeus rested his old hands on the top of the briefcase.

“I don’t understand what’s going on here, you’re clearly not Gods because they aren’t real, so you’re two insane people and your murder kit is inside that case. This is what you do isn’t it? Come into prisons, pretending to be lawyers for women so you can do things,” she rationalized it quickly and became afraid.

“Yes, that is exactly what we do, you’re one smart cookie so we might as well get started. I call the top half,” Hades said, and his eyes widened and he smiled for the first time getting in the room.

“As fun as that would be, no, we don’t do that. Ignore him, he’s just got a weird sense of humor. But unfortunately, he’s right. We have a serious problem and only you can help us,” Zeus said and Hades scowled at him as his fun was ruined.

“Okay, let’s say for a minute that I believe you. What could the great Gods possibly need with a criminal with me?” she asked them the obvious.

“Criminal, hardly child, I am so sorry but what happened to you really wasn’t your fault. You are the last living being on this world with Olympian blood. God’s blood in fact. Back in the day we had all kinds of kids, you might have heard of some of them. You are the descendant of one of those. However, this blood always goes bad. The spark within burns in all of you and it almost always turns out the same way, in jail or dead, usually both. It’s why we vowed to not have any more kids,” Zeus explained to her. Hades nodded. “Oh, sometimes it goes really, really bad. The insanity is stronger in others, all things considered I’d say you got lucky,” he added.

“Okay, right, this has been fun and all but I really need to get back to my cell and reality,” she said to them and Zeus raised his left hand and sent small blue sparks between his fingers. “You humans always need proof, I get it. No one really believes in anything anymore, so believe in this,” he said, and from his raised hand a thin blue line shot into the chains, and the cuffs disappeared on contact.

“I don’t know how you did that but now they are going to charge me for attempted escape, thanks for the help,” Sam replied as she looked at her now free wrists, but she had to admit to herself that it was a pretty neat trick.

Hades held up his newspaper, cleared his throat as he began to read. “Military officer from Project Spearhead claims to have opened a portal to another dimension to witness the attack of a giant, black and clearly alien shapeshifting dinosaur attacking Las Vegas, Continued on page nineteen,” he said and put the paper down. “Do you know why I read that?” he asked. Sam had no idea and shrugged.

She looked at the cover and recognized it now as Night Mind Weekly. She used to read that when she had some spare money in the past. Her favorite stories were by a reporter by the name of Nick Nocturne. No one used their real names in that magazine. The stories were pretty good, at least some of the time. One of her favorite stories was about Mimal the Elf, oddly, she couldn’t remember how that one went. Not exactly. It had been years since she’d even thought about stuff like this.

“This is a human tabloid trash publication. From now on I want you to think of all mythology, all the stories, everything you thought you know as this. Mythology is just nothing more than a bored writer trying to make some money so they made stories up. And a good story never dies, the details change, the words change, too. But the concept of this trash never died,” Hades said and glared. He had many issues with what the truth was, and what people believed to be true throughout history. Sam really didn’t know much about this stuff anyways so she shrugged. Hades rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“So, that tells me nothing, why are you here? If you have a problem why can’t you just magic it away like you did these?” she asked and Hades was annoyed with all the questions. “We don’t have time for this, one is already loose and the others won’t be far behind if they aren’t out already. Maybe we should try to stop this ourselves and leave her here to rot,” he said and stood up.

Zeus decided to tell her everything. “We call them the Yokaiju. I, we, created them to defeat our so-called parents in the war before creation. I used the Opticon to separate their souls from their bodies. We hid their bodies in distant places, and their souls were trapped here where we could imprison them in the underworld,”

“Someone was supposed to be watching them and basically only had one job, someone screwed up and that’s why we’re here. We need you to recapture the souls of the weapons before they can find their real bodies, we can’t do it because, reasons,” he said.

Hades looked away, Sam caught on to who had messed up at their job and it explained a lot.

Sam decided to play along with the gods, or people, or whatever they were. She didn’t want to be zapped into dust or anything. “Say I agree, how could I capture these things?” she asked them.

Zeus smiled and opened the briefcase. “The Opticon, of course,” he said and picked up the golden bracelet, only to slide it on the table towards her. “This is what is responsible for literally everything you see and know and have ever known, it seems strange such a powerful thing is so small,” he said and continued.

“Try it on,” he said with a smile. It didn’t look small to Sam, it was big enough to hold in both hands, and she had pretty big hands.

“To be fair, I have no idea how they escaped. It’s not like it’s a mortal prison. Only just a few of us knew where the thing was located at all and getting there wouldn’t have been easy,” Hades tried to make himself look better but she didn’t care.

“There are twelve of them and each of them need a living body to exist, parasites, I guess you could call them. They can take over anything living they come into contact with. Lysis already had found something, no doubt it’s hiding inside of a warm body. The others will follow suit very soon. This world, the whole of everything is at risk, you have to help. Okay, you don’t have to, but it’d be good if you did,” Zeus said and seemed almost worried.

Hades hadn’t seen him worried about anything in a long time. Also, all the explaining was getting tiresome for him. He knew Zeus was prolonging this visit just to rub it in even more that yes, he’d failed, but wasn’t sure how yet.

Sam reached out and picked up the Opticon. It was incredibly light and made her fingers feel tingly as she gripped the strange metal. “Put it on,” Hades said, and was really getting on her nerves. She slipped the thing over her left wrist and despite how big it was, it instantly reduced its size and latched on to her at once. She didn’t have time to even react or do anything about it besides stand up in horror. It didn’t hurt, it was just unexpected.

“Relax, it’s supposed to fit everyone,” Hades said to her, almost laughing at her reaction. Sam didn’t feel any different. “So how am I going to get it off?” she asked. “It comes off when you finish the job, not before,” he replied to her. “Wait, what do you mean finish?” she asked, still in shock over the whole thing. Still staring at the piece of metal on her arm.

“Don’t worry, no one can see that thing besides you, us, and well, the ones you’re trying to catch, that’s kind of a design flaw if you ask me. Don’t bring attention to it and you’ll be fine,” Hades replied to her and Zeus stood up, and closed the briefcase.

“We’ll be in contact soon,” he said, and the two of them disappeared. “Wait, what am I supposed to do now?” she said and sat back down quickly. The handcuffs and chains that connected her to the table reappeared seconds before the guard came back in. Sam was still looking around to try to find out where they went.

“I guess your visitors never showed up. Back to the cell, come on,” she said to her and unlocked the chains. Sam stood up slowly, still in shock but decided to play along. What choice did she have if she didn’t want to sound insane?

“I guess not,” she replied, shocked and still trying to accept everything she had just been told. If she told the guard she figured that it would be a one way trip to the mental asylum, it was tempting to be honest. One thing was remaining true, however. She didn’t notice the golden bracelet on her arm. If that much was true, maybe the rest was too. The time away from her cell, now that it was over, had gone by entirely too fast.