The Opportunity

I'm not sure how long I was trapped in that cage for, but it honestly felt like an eternity. There were no windows inside the mountain, I wasn't even aware if it was either night or day. There was a guard patrol shift though, every so often a man or woman would walk through the doors to see if there were any of us trying to escape and to switch out the bodies that were dead with fresh ones.

These mountain men were monsters, the one I managed to interrogate didn't scratch the surface of their atrocities. The state of my people and how they've been treated makes my blood boil. They'd take my people out of their cages and hang them up by their ankles so that their blood would flow better. Those that were strung up, had tubes feeding from their bodies and flowing into the wall where their blood would be used for transfusions, if the information that the interrogated mountain so charitably had given us was correct.

Apparently the mountain men had all escaped Praimfaya by hiding in this bunker, they survived, but the problem was that their bodies never got introduced to the radiation outside in small amounts. What that means, is that they never evolved to be able to handle the radiation and so that's why they have to wear protective suits when outside their bunker. Our blood helps the men and women inside mount weather filter out the radiation, because of this, they use reapers to capture innocent villagers and warriors so that they have a constant supply of fresh blood. Whether it was pure luck or not, I haven't had the pleasure of being hung up and drained of my blood yet.

Every once in a while, a woman who I believe is in charge, comes in and chooses whose turn it is to get strung up. Once she decides, two guards grab out whoever the unfortunate being is. I've noticed that she tends to pick the weaker looking individuals, the ones who've been here for the longest. They never put up much of a fight against the two guards, they just don't have the strength to, and that's where my escape plan starts.

I've been using my time to observe the behaviors of each of the guards I've seen, especially the doctor. They treat us like we are nothing but animals, like we are beneath them when they are the ones that live underground. Then again, they need to tell themselves something to be able to do this type of thing to another human being. When they open the cages to take out one of my people, it's almost like they don't want to touch them, like we are disgusting animals. The only time they have a firm grip on one of us is if they are fighting back.

My plan is to appear weak and vulnerable, and so when they open my cage and pull me out of it, I will make my move. The doctor should be making her rounds again soon and as soon as I get free, I will take out the guards and make sure I take the doctor hostage. With her under my control and for some reason an alarm sounds, the mountain men would be too worried for her protection safety to judge barge in guns blazing.

However, if they threw some more of those sleeping gas grenades they could probably knock us out and come in without worry, but if they did that, I could still get a shot off from one of the guards guns and kill the doctor before I was knocked out… Honestly we would have better luck to just not alert anyone to our presence in the first place, so fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan.

-*-*-*

Hearing the doors to our prison open and people step, I curl my body up in the fetal position and start to shake slightly. When the doctor passes by, she will take my balled up shaking form as face value and hopefully she will choose me as the next blood donor.

I hear the doctor talking just a few cages from my own. "These savages have too much spirit, they will make the draining process very difficult. Let's see what a few days without food does for that spirit of theirs." The doctor's words make me beyond angry, but I force back down my anger and don't move from my current position. Soon, I will get what I deserve and make the mountain men pay.

The doctor and her guards stop in front of my cage, she is silent for too long and I begin to think that she can see through my act. "He will do." She says sinisterly, I can practically envision the smile on her face as she says those words.

I hide my own smile at her words and bury my face in my arm more. I didn't have to wait long before my cage was thrown open and I was roughly yanked out. I make sure to have a vacant look plastered on my face the entire process and go limp so that the guards are forced to carry my dead weight. They were dragging me towards an empty set of manacles when I realized I needed to make my move faster than expected.The guards' grip on my arms weren't very strong, it was more of them just trying to hold me up and drag me along.

With a smirk on my face I quickly broke free from their grasp, my unexpected rebellion seemed to startle the guards and I was out of their grasp before they could even react. The guard that was situated to my left was my first target, he was the biggest threat to my escape. Out of the two guards, he was the only one with one of the guns that shot multiple times very quickly, while the other only had a handgun.

Yes, some might think that the handgun would be more of a threat this close, but the wielder seemed to only be a teenager, probably was his first month as a guard, judging by his panicked look. The guard with the bigger gun however, was definitely more experienced and much, much older, therefore more of a threat to my escape.

I take advantage of their surprised state and throw a rather brutal elbow to the top of the older guard's jaw. Hearing a loud but quite satisfying crack, I don't waste any time and quickly send a kick to the younger guard's hands, which were in the motion of drawing his weapon and so it goes skittering across the room. Knowing I can't leave one of the guards unoccupied for too long until they were completely out of commision, I punch my current combatant in the throat, effectively stunning him and probably putting him out of the rest of the fight.

Spinning on my heel, I send a spinning back fist at the older guard. This time my attack connects with the opposite side of his face and drops him to the ground, almost folding over himself. Not wasting any more time on the two guards, I see that the doctor was sprinting towards the prison exit.

"Oh no you fucking don't!" I growl out, sprinting after her.

A few feet from the door I manage to catch up to her and tackle her into the ground. Knowing the younger guard might have recovered from my earlier throat punch, I quickly pulled the doctor up and got her in a choke hold to use her as a hostage if I needed to.

Turning around back towards where I left the guards, I noticed that they both were still on the ground. The older guard was out cold and the younger guard seemed to have difficulties breathing. "If you struggle against me, I will snap your fucking neck." I say aggressively into the doctor's ear, putting pressure on her neck.

The doctor's pitiful struggling ceases under the threat and we walk back towards the guards. By this point, I made quite the ruckus and so many of my people were banging on their cages and had an energized look to them. They understood that they couldn't be too loud for risk of alerting the enemy otherwise I'm sure that they would be much more excited.

Seeing no other immediate threats to our escape, I send a heavy punch to the back of the doctor's head, knocking her out cold and dropping her to the ground like a puppet with their strings cut. There is no other need for the doctor other than being a very valuable hostage and if need be, her security clearance.

Stepping over her unconscious form, I walk over to the younger guard's struggling form. I seemed to have crushed his windpipe, because it didn't seem like he was getting any air to his lungs. He had a frightened expression on his face that seemed to be changing colors. Shrugging, I stomp on the young man's throat, breaking his neck and effectively ending his suffering. Turning my attention to the older guard, I see that he is still knocked out from my back fist. Chuckling at how weak these mountain men were when it came to hand to hand combat, I kill him and take the cage keys off of his corpse. With the keys in hand, I make my way to the nearest cage.

The cage in question held a young boy, not much younger than the boy whose life I had just ended moments ago. Releasing him, I hand him the keys with orders to free everyone of their cages.

Picking up the older guard's weapon, I turn it over in my hands and examine it. It was the same as the type of weapon that The Mountain's scouting parties held. From intel, we've discovered that it was apparently called an M4A1, or M4 for short. Heda and the coalition usually leave the mountain men's weapons on the battlefield out of fear, fear that was built over generations of having The Mountain as an enemy. Apparently, The Mountain would send another missile towards the home of whoever picked one up, that didn't stop me though. In battle, knowledge was power, and I needed to know how the mountain men fought so I knew their weaknesses.

Back in Polis, I had the same type of weapon safely hidden inside of my quarters. I had no more ammunition for it though, so now it was more of just a trophy from battle. When I first got the weapon, I had taken it outside a few miles from any settlement and explored it more in depth. That was where I soon discovered that it only held thirty rounds in it's magazine, a piece of information that I used to my advantage against Skaikru.

Coming out of my thoughts, I noticed that a majority of my people were free. Scanning the quickly amassing crowd I noticed quite a few familiar faces from the battle with Skaikru, but not as many as I'd have liked… That meant many of my warriors had been killed when we were ambushed, I didn't realize before how lucky I was to have survived. Looking at each face, my smile slowly slipped from my own. While there were many familiar faces, I couldn't see Anya's face in the crowd.

"Anya kom Trikru!" I said loudly, but not yelling in fear of alerting the mountain of the growing rebellion.

There were murmurs among the assembled warriors and villagers, I could hear them talking amongst themselves, I could hear her name a few times but… she didn't appear.

I let out a tired sigh at the realization that she was dead. Personally I didn't care much for her, but Lexa was her former second and so Lexa was the one that would be impacted by her death. Anya, while we may not have been close, she was still a valued leader and warrior, she would be missed.

Making sure the doctor was still out cold, I then turned to address everyone. I didn't expect to be in another battle so quickly, it reminded me of when the coalition was first formed and we went to war with Azgeda. There were small battles everyday it seemed. Only now, this was no small battle… This upcoming battle would be legendary.

For generations The Mountain had been a horror story that would be told to kids if they were bad, for generations The Mountain men were the monster in the darkness.

Today The Mountain's head will roll… and I will be the one that swung the blade.