Chapter 138
Tartarus: the underworld, the kingdom of darkness in ancient Greek mythology.
It was from the titans trapped within it that the inspiration for the creation of Tartarus, the prison island that was the glory of Japanese justice, had come.
If those who had once been above the gods couldn't escape it, how could ordinary men - albeit endowed with extraordinary powers - dream of getting out?
The island, lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, was only a few kilometers in circumference.
Black, menacing rocks closed around the island like the sharp teeth of a monstrous mouth.
No sea creature dared to approach, preferring to keep their distance from the anomaly that was this outcrop in the middle of the waves.
The sea around Tartarus was always choppy, the sky always the same deep gray, heralding the imminent onset of a storm.
Nezu watched the sky above the island swell and darken, as if it were waking from a long sleep to swallow them all.
Tartarus had many names: military prison, concentration camp, Japanese Camp 22...
But Tartarus wasn't really a prison.
Or at least not a prison in the traditional sense.
On the surface, a twenty-story building of pure armored steel served as a decoy.
The real prison was below, submerged beneath the ocean, more durable and resistant than any of the purest metals.
There were no windows and no means of access from below.
A single entrance also served as the only exit: it was the armored door that separated the steel prison from the organic underground.
Tartarus was more than a prison: it was also the executioner.
The speedboat made a quarter turn and docked between two large rocks.
One of the soldiers turned off the engine, and Nezu immediately wanted to go ashore.
But one of the soldiers forced him to sit down again.
A team of hooded men - only their eyes were visible - in fatigues, armed to the teeth, came towards them.
The soldier who had led their boat from the ship stayed on board with Nezu, while the second soldier stood up and pulled out a stack of accreditation cards.
He chatted in a low voice with the island soldier, who nodded; the cold, salty wind picked up, drowning out the murmur of their conversation.
Nezu stood still, paws together, smiling and letting the good soldiers take care of the umpteenth checkpoint of his journey.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the rest of the welcoming squad looking at him sideways, their hands on the machine-guns strapped to their shoulders.
All he could see were their narrowed, suspicious, almost paranoid eyes.
Nezu continued to smile, but didn't risk rocking back and forth.
With a gesture, he was invited to step out of the boat.
His shoes landed on the shore with a splash, and the mud on the pebbles nearly made him fall over.
No one stepped forward to help him.
Nezu took only two steps forward, then stopped when he saw the raised hand of one of the soldiers.
He let himself be searched by two different people in a row, and saw the eyes of one of them suddenly fluoresce as he felt his fur.
Then the men stepped aside and nodded to his guide.
The rest of the group - six men - formed an honor guard that resembled a firing squad about to do its duty.
The floor of black pebbles gave way to a large, smooth, cemented runway that served as a helipad.
All around them, the waves raged against the rocks, smashing them violently as if trying to break them.
The wind whistled, pushing the newcomers away as if to chase them off the island.
Above the noise, Nezu could still hear the faint murmur of the boat that had brought them back to the ship a few kilometers away.
It was protocol: no flying or aquatic object or person was allowed within five kilometers of Tartarus without permission from the island.
Breaking this rule was tantamount to being shot down, regardless of the individual or the reason for such an approach.
They reached the first door of the steel building.
A series of clicks sounded and suddenly, the door creaked open from the inside.
Nezu saw two of the three soldiers inside finish opening it, while the third held Nezu and his guide at gunpoint.
They were stopped by a new team - only three men - who searched him again.
The hands of one of them glowed piss yellow, and Nezu was intrigued, though he refrained from asking any questions.
His guide again presented the commission's access pass.
They stepped aside to let them pass.
- Thank you, Nezu said.
The soldiers looked down at him, but didn't answer.
Security and professionalism in Tartarus were so perfect that it was almost frightening.
Nezu followed his guide as he led the way and saw a soldier break away from the trio to follow them.
He was so close to Nezu that had he been taller, Nezu was sure he could have felt his breath on his neck.
With a single gesture, the guide and the second soldier clicked on their large, opaque goggles that resembled ski goggles.
The guide led him down a different path than the last two times Nezu had been here.
He might have known that the door to the real prison was on the first floor, but it would have been impossible to find it by chance.
The corridors were gray, smooth, perfectly intact and clean, so much so that you couldn't tell one branch from another.
Thanks to a strange architectural trick, each corridor was just as long as the one before, and there were no right angles: everything was twisted and turned in a way that made you want to throw up.
Nezu had to close his eyes several times as he walked to regain his composure and continue to mentally map the place.
He counted the steps and focused all his attention on the shoes in front of him, memorizing and filing away in a corner of his memory every slight movement to the right or left of the soldier in front of him that indicated they were turning right or left.
He couldn't rely on his own footsteps or movements to the right or left as his weakened legs kept shaking and lurching illogically to one side or the other, his vision blurred against the unnatural infinity of gray.
A sudden urge to vomit rose to his lips, and Nezu admired - not for the first time - who had built the structure.
He himself had suggested a few years ago that the prison's labyrinth system be updated to make it more 'efficient'.
The Commission had had the good sense to reject his 'help' before he could even finish his sentence.
This had been Nezu's only opportunity to study the scientific mystery that was Tartarus, and it had been snatched away from him in the blink of an eye.
The humans may have been less intelligent, but there was indeed wisdom in those fragile skulls...
They walked for so long that Nezu almost lost his way more than once.
Then his guide stopped, and Nezu, a little late, followed suit.
The second soldier behind him pointed his weapon at him, as was protocol, while the first soldier slid the shoulder strap of his weapon behind his back, then leaned over the huge concrete slab nailed to the ground.
No retinal scanner or complex code to enter: a heavy, rusty black handle set into the gray slab was the only way to open the door.
Tartarus didn't need to be protected: rather, it was from her that the Japanese government sought to defend itself.
The soldier grasped the handle with both hands and pulled with audible effort.
Nezu stayed at a safe distance, admiring what a force of nature this man was, able to practically lift a door weighing over a hundred kilos with the strength of his arms.
The hinges creaked and the door - like a trapdoor to the cellar - opened like a gaping maw to the real Tartarus.
A wind of decay and suffering blew from the monster's guts,
Pink protrusions as thin as fingers covered the metal door.
The first soldier took the stairs and Nezu followed.
He was careful not to step on any of the pink veins that seemed to beat like human hearts.
Nezu remembered a quote that was supposed to be engraved on the gate to the underworld: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here".
The second soldier did not follow: Nezu glanced over his shoulder and saw him kneeling, Swiss knife in hand, cutting away the veins that had covered the trapdoor.
Nezu's soles squeaked as they hit the floor.
Absolutely everything in the basement was covered in the pinkish mucus: from the floor to the walls to the ceiling, the whole of Tartarus gave the impression of walking in the bowels of a titanic beast.
The soldier activated a one-hour stopwatch on his watch and set off. Nezu followed quickly.
His shoes whistled, the spongy floor sinking slightly under his footsteps before rising again as the pressure disappeared, like a sponge being squeezed and then released.
On the walls, pale pink brambles moved with the slowness of a snail, so gently you'd think you'd hallucinated. Short vines tumbled down from the plateau like filaments, brushing the shoulders of anyone who ventured inside.
As always, Nezu felt uneasy in the prison corridors.
He felt as if the prison floor was beating beneath his feet, as if it had a heart. The shifting walls gave him the vivid feeling of knowingly walking into a rat trap.
He tilted his head slightly to the side and watched the watch on the soldier's wrist.
54 minutes.
If the building on the surface was a decoy, so was the second floor of the underground.
There had never been any prisoners on this level: the goal was to waste as much time as possible on anyone who, by some miracle, managed to get in.
Then they would be locked in and waited for an hour.
After that, the prison would begin to devour them.
Nezu didn't know exactly how Tartarus consumed its inhabitants.
But he knew that madness lay in wait for them all.
They walked to the other end of the floor and then down the spiral staircase.
The mucus barely covered the ends of the stairs, as if metal wasn't Tartarus's favorite food and she wasn't interested in it.
The first cells were at level -2.
Armored glass doors opened into small white rooms, every fourth wall covered in metal, the rest nothing but mucus.
At each end of the steel wall was a camera. In the middle was a bulletproof glass window overlooking a room presumably used for interrogation.
In the very first cell, a violet-haired woman lay on the floor with her back to the mucous membrane, large pink veins winding around her neck, arms, and throat.
From the widest veins, tiny pink branches separated like twigs from a tree, covering her skin like blood vessels.
Her skin was translucent, revealing the pink threads running through her flesh.
The former hero's eyes were glassy, her chin resting on her chest, a trickle of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Her chin quivered as she seemed to pick up the sound of their footsteps, but she didn't look up.
They walked on in oppressive silence, deeper into the interior of Tartarus.
Everywhere, the same desolate scene repeated itself.
Nezu wondered what would happen to the world if they stopped feeding Tartarus and removed the metal walls.
Would they face an apocalypse caused by an organism created thanks to the arrival of the Quirks ?
They went down to level -4.
Then they stopped in front of the door that Nezu had come to see.
Tomura Shigaraki was written on it.