Chapter 1 - Prologue
As I stood out in the perpetuating desert, with only sunlight and rock formations in the field of my periphery. There was only one thing running through my mind at the moment. Where in the absolute hell am I?! As the reader, you're probably thinking the same thing. Where has this stories protagonist ended up? Well, before I can do any explaining on that front. Let's start from the very beginning. My name is Nigel, I'm nineteen. Me and my now ex girlfriend Alisha, broke up. Things had gotten kinda complicated between the two of us.
So, we split up. And evidently, it became obvious that there was no fixing things. With that, there was nothing left for me to do except be sad and attempt to smoke the pain away. I decided to load up my black backpack with a few things. A plastic bag filled with an ounce of grinded up sticky icky (Marijuana),an acrylic bong, a grinder, a rolling tray, rolling papers, two spare lighters, a can of spray deodorant, and a switch blade.
With my glasses on my face, my red bandana tied around my head, and my long black hair now tied back into a small bun. I decided to walk over to my favorite park, where I would attempt to make sense of the world. And get higher than a fucking kite. During my trek to the park, I could already tell that something was off. Halfway there, I could see smoke rising from the direction of my destination.
However, what I found when I got there was the last thing I ever expected. As I rounded a corner, I could see what appeared to be an alien spaceship. It appeared to be crashed at the center of the park, no fire or anything. Just lots of smoke, and twisted, mangled, hunks of alien metal. Now, one thing you gotta know about me is that I'm a huge fan and believer of extraterrestrials. So naturally, I decided to check out the crash.
Inspite of all the wreckage, the door of the spaceship was open. And thusly, I went inside to search for any signs of life. Once inside, I turned on the flashlight on my phone. After which, I proceeded to explore. The ship seemed to mostly be made from some kind of silver colored metal. The only semblance of color to be found, was the various buttons, knobs, wires, and hoses scattered throughout the interior. Eventually, I made my way to the main deck of the ship. Where I found the entire ships crew dead.
Well damn, I thought. There goes my shot at interviewing intelligent life. I couldn't help but be kinda sarcastic in that moment. Regardless, I decided to inspect the bodies to see if I could maybe find some semblance of an answer. After a while, it became clear that I was gonna get more questions than answers. But I decided to just roll with it for the time being. The aliens on the ship, appeared humanoid in nature. Except for the fact that they had royal purple colored skin, three eyes, green blood, and various shapes of small horns protruding out from different spots in there faces.
When I got to the last body, it appeared to be the captain of the ship. The evidence being that this body was in a big silver chair at the center of the room. The captain appeared to be clutching some weird looking type of silver colored gun. And although it took a second, I managed to free the gun from his grasp. Upon inspection, I couldn't find a slide or any space for a magazine. It did have a trigger though, and with the whole ships crew dead. They clearly didn't need it any more, so I decided to keep the gun. Like any curious fellow, I decided to try it out. I pointed the gun forward and fired it.
A silver colored laser fired from the gun, but rather than hit anything. It quickly shot out of the gun and created a silver ring in the middle of the air. Not even a split second later, I could see an image in the silver circle. That's when it finally hit me, the silver ring was actually some kind of portal. I stood there in awe at the discovery, never in my life did I think that I would just stumble upon something like this. And yet, here it was.
Suddenly, my amazement was cut short by some kind of loud alarm ringing in the ship. Shortly after that, a red count down began flashing across the screen at the front of the room. In that moment, there was only one thing to do. All of the hours I spent watching TV shows and anime had prepared me for this exact moment. I holstered the gun and my phone in the pocket of my shorts and jumped through the portal. After jumping through, the portal disappeared shortly after. That's when I found myself in this desert like environment, with various rock formations scattered throughout the surrounding area.
The sky appeared to be stuck in a hazy orange tint, along with light blue colored clouds. It was only after a few minutes that I began to notice something in the distance. At first, it appeared to be a fast moving dust cloud that was low to the ground. As it got closer, it became clear that it was some kind of fast moving hovercraft. There also appeared to be people, if you can call them that. Driving these crafts, and when they got even closer. It was abundantly clear that this was no welcome wagon.
Three hovercrafts soon pulled up and began to surround me. When the creatures left their vehicles, they began shouting at me in a language that I wasn't familiar with. And soon, they began to point weapons at me. Not wanting to risk death, I put my hands up and complied with their orders. While following what little direction I could, the first thing I noticed was how weird looking these guys were.
They appeared to be humanoid, except they had no eyes. Their heads were mostly made up of a large mouth with nothing but razor sharp teeth. They also had two slits on their face that appeared to be an indication of a nose or at least a sense of smell. Their skin was pale gray color and appeared to be shriveled while simultaneously looking too tight. After apprehending me, the creatures took my backpack, loaded me up into their hovercraft, and whisked me off to wherever they called home.
Eventually, we pulled up in front of this large, black, ominous looking tower. The entrance had gray, metal, sliding doors. Along with some weird alien looking skull hanging above the door. The creatures pulled me inside of the tower, and rushed me through what appeared to be a series of checkpoints in the building. After what felt like forever, they pulled me into a room. And threw what appeared to be a white jumpsuit, after which.
It finally became clear, this place was a prison of some kind. Not wanting to cause any issues, I put on my jumpsuit and then they finally led me to what looked like an elevator. After getting in, we moved down for about fifty floors before the elevators stopped. The doors opened and I was greeted with row after row of prison cells. After some time, they shoved me into a cell and I was trapped. I looked through the bars of my cell door and took a second to lament my decision to jump through the portal that brought me here.
Soon, my thoughts were interrupted by some kind of incomprehensible speech coming from behind me. I turn around, and out from the shadows of the cell. A fellow prisoner came into view, he appeared to be a four foot tall chameleon man. It seemed like he was trying to tell me something that I just couldn't understand. Before too long, he pulled out what appeared to be some kind of collar and handed it to me. Once he did, he pulled out another collar and put it on himself. Eventually, he motioned for me to do the same.
I followed his gestures, and put it on. After finally getting the collars on, he spoke. This time though, I could finally understand him. "So kid, whatcha in for? It's not every day we see your kind end up here." He had said. "Woah, I can actually understand you. What the heck!?" "That would be courtesy of these universal collars, capable of translating any language. No matter how complex or simple." "So....what is this place? Aside from obviously being a prison, and what are those creatures that brought me here?" "Well, this particular place is known as The Tower. Just one of many prisons that reside on a set of prison planets that are chained together. The planet we're currently on is know as Nophon, the third most brutal prison on this particular chain. Those creatures that escorted you here are the Torridians, they're the guards and overseers of this place." "Damn....this is definitely not what I was expecting from my first time jumping through a portal. Which reminds me, I'm Nigel Nevermore. Good to meet you." " I'm Rezar Jackson, don and godfather of the Abscondian mafia. My friends call me Rez, good to meet ya kid. Wait....how did you say you got here?" He said while shaking my hand, and after parting from it. I explain to Rez how I got to this point.
"So after noticing the count down, I hopped through the portal and managed to escape. A little after I ended up here, the guards pulled up and pointed their weapons at me. I didn't wanna risk getting hurt, so I complied. They took all my stuff and eventually brought me here." Rez stood up and pondered for a second. "Hmmm...this is definitely interesting indeed, I think I might know what it is that you stumbled upon kid." He says with excited eyes. " Really!?" "Yeah, the only thing is I'm not completely sure. We need to get your stuff back in order to confirm my theory. That also means we're gonna have to bust outta here." He said to me with a wickedly excited smile. "How are we gonna do that? This place is at least fifty stories underground, and unless we suddenly become mole people. I'm pretty sure we're outta luck here." "It wouldn't help anyway, this place is surrounded by seismic sensors to guard against those people from escaping." He says while pacing. "Oh, okay. Wait....what!?" " I've been here for about four months now, I've got a pretty good handle on how things work here." He says while stopping to address me.
"Seriously? We're not gonna acknowledge the fact that mole people are actually a thing!" I said to him with exasperation. " To be fair, those guys are kind dicks honestly. Either way, we need to plan this out carefully. These guys run a pretty tight ship around here, if we're gonna make it out of here alive. We need to do this the smart way." "Good point, what are you thinking?" Rez proceeded to explain that he had been watching the guards for the past few months and managed to memorize their routine.
They always send one guard to each floor to give prisoners their meals each day. That'll be our one chance to strike and escape from this place. Like clockwork, the guard came off the elevator and started delivering meals to the prisoners. Right before the guard got to our cell, Rez signaled to one of the other prisoners to get ready. As soon as the guard got to our cell and opened the slide to give us our meals. The prisoner that Rez signaled earlier began making noise to get the guards attention. The guard noticed and turned to look at him, and when he wasn't looking. I quickly grabbed the keys and hid them in my pocket.
The guard walked over to deal with the noisy prisoner, mean while. I passed the keys to Rez, and he managed to open our cell. Once he did, I ran up, jumped, and punched the guard in the face. His head hit the cell door with such force that it sent black blood splattering across it. After he was down, I moved his body out of the way and took his keycard. Afterwards, me and Rez freed all the prisoners on that floor. We all piled into the one and only elevator, scanned the guards key card. And made our way to the first floor. Upon arriving, the floor fifty prisoners rushed out and began attacking any guards they could get their fists, tentacles, or claws on.
Me and Rez hung back and ran to find where our stuff was being held. Thankfully, there were signs that told us where to go. Sadly, only Rez could read them since he was familiar with the language. And the universal collars were only capable of auditory translations. With the other prisoners distracting the guards, we were able to get to the lockup with ease. We located the drawers that had our prisoner numbers and got all our stuff back. My backpack still had all my stuff in it, and the gun was still in my shorts right where I left it. After getting dressed, I went to check on Rez. He was now dressed in an all white suit, with a red tie, all white cowboy boots, and he managed to comb his black hair back so much that it looked slick like oil. He also had what appeared to be a red rose pinned to the right side of his jacket.
"Ahhhh, now that's what I call dressing for success." He said with a relaxed and relieved smile. "Yeah, I know whatcha mean. Now what do we do?" "We're gonna have to fight our way out of The Tower and make our way up the rock wall. The flat lands up there is the only place these assholes can't reach. It's the only safe place I'll be able to signal my crew to come get us." "How are we suppose to get up there?" As if reading my mind, Rez pushes a button on a nearby console. Which causes the vault door at the back of the lock up to open. When it fully opened, I was utterly astounded to see all sorts of weapons, technologies, and various other forms of contraband that one could only dream of.
Rez walked inside and grabbed what looked to be two pairs of metal boots I've never seen before. "These right here, are anti-gravity boots. They'll allow us to run up the cliff without any problems."