I stopped the bike at the visitors' entrance and switched off the engine, removing my helmet and hanging it from the handlebars as someone shouted from behind me, "You took your damn time."
"Hi, Olivia," I said. "Nice to see you, too. Takes a while to fly from Canada."
Olivia marched over to me and opened her mouth to say something, but instead her shoulders sagged and she leaned against the nearby wall. "Sorry, I'm just tired. How are Kasey and Tommy?"
"Good; Tommy took Kasey home. I told them you'd call."
"So, did you manage to get us any help?"
"A necromancer should be here in a few hours, maybe sooner depending on where he or she is coming from."
"And with your necromancer in tow, we should be able to stop this thing, right?"
"That's the plan. Now, what happened here? Tommy said that a bunch of prisoners are dead or missing"
"I'm at a loss for words." Olivia rubbed her eyes, the past few days had clearly been hard on her. "You need to see this for yourself."
Olivia led me through the prison entrance, which was guarded by another uniformed officer who nodded to us as we walked past. A series of corridors later and we reached a heavy-duty door, made of steel and painted blue. It was the last gate to freedom for those locked up inside. Olivia unlocked it with a key and a buzzer sounded from above us as she pushed it open, ending when the door was closed once more.
We continued on; passing a small breakroom where several LOA agents were talking with a few of the prison guards.
We went through another two heavy doors, and we were in the prison itself.
"How many wings are there?" I asked.
"The prison is made up of one central hub, that's the smaller building we just walked through. That hub feeds into five spokes, all of which house the prisoners, and a sixth much smaller spoke, where they keep the supplies. Each spoke is capable of keeping about five hundred prisoners, along with the various guard facilities, waiting rooms for visitors, interview rooms and the like. All of the spokes are independent of each other; to travel between them you need to come though the main hub.
"The wing we're currently in houses those who are considered highly dangerous to themselves or others. There are thirty four-guards working exclusively in this spoke on every shift. Each shift is ten hours long; overlapping so that there's never a complete change of guard all at once."
"It looks quiet here." I glanced around the magnolia walls and blue and white tiled floor, which probably hadn't been changed in decades.
"We've not reached where we need to go yet. There's a large hall at the far end of this building. It was considered a reward for prisoners to be allowed to work in there."
"What did they do?"
"The usual metal and wood work. There's a library, too. Most of what happened earlier took place in that part of the prison."
We walked along one row of cells and down yet another long corridor with barred windows down one side. A second corridor intersected it, and the lack of lighting down that hallway gave it an eerie quality.
"What's down there?" I asked Olivia
"There's another security door and after that, a second guard checkpoint. Beyond that are the solitary confinement cells. Not everyone in this place is able to play with others. The most dangerous prisoners were housed down there."
"Were?"
"You'll see in a minute."
We walked on, and before long I noticed blood smears on the walls, continuing through the closed doorway at the far end of the corridor.
"You need to be prepared for what you're about to see." Olivia's words were spoken with such trepidation that I was certain walking the other way would spare me a lot of misery. Unfortunately, my path was set and walking away was no longer an option.
Olivia stopped walking a few feet back from the open door.
"You're not coming?" I asked.
"I have no intention of stepping foot in there again if I can manage it. There's a door on the opposite side. It leads to the cells. I'll meet you there. And here, you're going to need these." She handed me a pair of shoe covers, which I quickly put on.
As Olivia walked away, I wanted to mock her, to say something to break the tension, but I bit my tongue. It didn't feel right.
Instead I turned and pushed open the door.
The stench of death hit me like a train as I stepped through the doorway. The first thing I saw was the remains of… of a human, although considering how little was left of him, it was hard to be sure. Dozens of bodies littered the large area, their blood and gore soaking the floor and walls.
The machinery the prisoners had worked with was scattered in pieces around the room, deep dents in the wooden walls testifying to the violence of its destruction. Some bodies lay over their workstations, others had clearly tried to get away and were caught before they reached anywhere near freedom.
At one end of the room, in a portion devoid of the blood that covered so much of it, stood Agent Reid.
"I thought you were off healing up?" I said as I got closer.
"One sec," he said, and then started counting. He stopped at thirty-two. "Shit."
"Thirty-two bodies?"
"Thirty-two bodies which are identifiable without serious medical knowledge."
"Where are all of the Avalon agents? I thought there'd be dozens of you in here."
"They've got to wait for the docs to finish in here," he said. "Doc Grayson didn't want anyone else going through here until his people had finished. I don't envy their job."
"So why are you here?"
"Waiting for the doc to come back. Director Green wanted a count of the bodies, but there's too much mess in here to give an accurate number."
"What do you know so far?"
"These people were torn apart," Agent Reid said. "Grayson said he thinks ghouls did it. The barren wouldn't have left any flesh for us to find, his words, not mine."
"So let's say forty people died in here. Where are the rest of the prisoners?"
"Forty-seven," Doctor Grayson said as he entered the hall wearing dark blue coveralls that even covered his shoes.
"And you know that how?" Agent Reid asked.
"I have a very special sense of smell, Agent," Doctor Grayson said, tapping the side of his nose. "Nice to see you again, Nathan."
"You, too, Doc, although this isn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending my day."
"On that, we can agree," he said with a forced smile. "Forty-seven dead down here-a further eighteen upstairs in the library, it's quite the display of brutality."
"Were they all killed in the same way?"
"Partially eaten, yes. But that's not all. I believe Director Green has something to show you in the main hall. You may wish to steady yourself for what you'll see there."
"Olivia said the same thing about what happened in here, how much worse can it get?"
"Ah, Nathan, now you know it can always get much, much worse."
More people arrived to help clean up, or tag the bodies, or whatever horrific job they needed to do, and I for one was happy to leave them to it.
"You never answered my question," I said to Agent Reid, who'd received the information he'd needed and had left the hall with me via the nearest door.
"I can't really sit on my ass all day when there's someone out there doing this," Reid said, removing the shoe coverings from his boots and placing them, and his blue latex gloves, in a yellow hazard bag that had been left outside the hall.
I removed my own covers and shoved them in the bag, then used fire magic to heat up my hands, burning off any blood that might have remained on my fingertips.