Peyton Prison was said to house some of the most dangerous and psychotic prisoners in the State of Illinois.
The official reason for closure was down to lack of funding. The unofficial was actually because of the unsavory practices that went on within the walls. Lobotomies were just the start of the type of things doctors would do to prisoners who displayed any form of mental health condition. In the end I imagined that the doctors were the psychos looking for any excuse to carry out their experiments.
The shutdown of this joint opened up the door for other types of psychos like Ilya.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard of the place being used by criminals of the underground. It certainly won’t be the last.
As I walk through the rusty front gates with my heart beating so wildly in my chest and my nerves on end, I pray for the first time that Marguerite’s pleas to the Lord will help me.
It’s the first time I’ve turned my sights that way because I get the feeling that I’m going to need miracles in abundance.
Two guards come through the large wooden doors that would have been the entrance to the main reception.
Two more come out carrying guns. They aim them at me, then Dmitri steps out with a smug-as-fuck expression. Asshole. I hope I put a fucking bullet in his head before the day is out.
Fucker… look at him. He’s got a bright smile on his face and is looking at me like he has me right where he wants. I hope I’ll get a minute with him, any of them. They all hurt Ava. Him though… it was him she looked at the most on the night of the party. She glanced at Yuri, but Dmitri terrified her.
“Hello, Boss,” he mocks.
I’m not going to entertain his conversation with any kind of pleasantries.
“Cut the shit. Take me to Ilya,” I tell him.
“Wow, testy, testy. You really are a prick.”
“Yes, I am.” It’s important I stop talking to him now. I don’t want to lose my shit and blow my chances. That rage inside me, though, is hard to calm in this shit storm.
“Search him,” Dmitri orders, and the guards start searching me with a pat down on my sides to make sure I’m not carrying any weapons. As if I would be that stupid.
I don’t know who would be. When we enter shit situations like this, the enemy’s weapons are what we look to take the first chance we get.
My weapons are going to literally be whatever I can get my hands on when the fights starts and the bullets fly.
That’s when the guys—my backup—will come.
That’s what I hope for, anyhow.
I don’t actually know how it will all go down. Or if I’ll make it out with Timothy and Ava.
Satisfied that I’m not a prick with any weapon concealed up my ass, Dmitri calls off his dogs and they nudge me forward to go inside the building.
It smells old and unused. It has been decommissioned for the last twenty years or so.
These guys look comfortable, though, like they’ve been here awhile. It’s not uncommon to use a place like this that’s supposed to be derelict for other purposes if you want to do things under wraps.
I just pray that the surveillance is as we think it is.
I left Christian and Georgiou on it. Christian assured me that the place is as Claudius said it was. The older section of the building has no surveillance, so that’s we’re my guys will be coming up. The section with the surveillance is where Christian will be hacking into and should be in there now.
“Vincent,” he says in the earpiece I’m wearing. I at least have that to take some comfort in. I walk on like I can’t hear him. “Brace yourself. What you’re about to see is not good.”
Holy shit. Fuck… I wish he would tell me more than that.
“The guys are on the way, Vincent,” Christian says in my ear. “They’re in the building making their way to you. Hang tight.”
Hang tight? My thoughts of where they are, are stolen away. I’m not left wondering for too long about what shit I’ll have to face.
I’m led into a massive courtyard, and my stomach twists into knots when my gaze lands on the horror ahead of me. Off in the distance in the field are Timothy and Ava, about thirty feet apart.
Timothy is in a glass tank. He’s standing on a stump and tied up to a pole. Water starts to fill the tank. He’s crying and screaming.
Ava is tied to a pole. I can’t quite figure out what it is they’re doing with her. She sees me. Her gaze lands on me, and even from here I notice the sadness in her eyes.
I ball my fists, seething at the sight.
“See what I got for you?” booms a voice. It’s Ilya.
I turn my head to the left and see him on the stone platform the guards would have used back in the day to watch over the prisoners.
He walks down the wide steps with a bright smile on his face. This is the first time we’ve met in person.
The last glimpse of him was just that.
The fucker looks just as twisted as he did in the back of that car.
“I want them back!” I shout, and he laughs.
“You Italians are all the same. So strong-willed and of the belief that you’re above everything and everyone else. Not so. You’re part of my game now. I’m calling the shots. Not you.” He chuckles and tilts his head to the side.
“You son of a bitch. How can you do that to a child?” I don’t know why I bother to ask. It’s a very foolish question.
Out the corner of my eye I keep an eye out on the tank. It’s filling up. It’s big and could take a little time, but it doesn’t take much for a child to drown.
“Do I actually look like I care? This is a game to me. You are the joke of it. The toy. This is what we do to fuckers who think they can screw with us,” he declares and presses the button of some device I’m just noticing in his hands.
As he does, a little wall of fire shoots up from the ground about six feet away from Ava then starts spreading over the grass like dominoes falling, setting alight the ground as it moves. It looks like they’ve poured something flammable on the ground for the direction and pattern it moves. It’s too uniform for it not to be.
Ava screams, and my heart stops beating. They want to burn her and drown Timothy.
“I thought I’d make it interesting since you want to save her so badly. I wonder if you’ll try to save them both. Or will you save the girl and leave your son to drown?” Ilya taunts. “First, though, you got to fight. We’re Russians. We love a good fight.” He laughs.
The crackle of glass turns me around as a guy with a tub full of broken glass approaches us. He sets the tub on the bench table nearby. Another guy follows with another tub. This one has some white sticky solution in it.
Dmitri smiles wider, devilish, and starts wrapping his wrists with a white hemp cloth and knotting it in a manner I’ve seen common to Muay Thai fighters.
He walks over to the bench and dips his hands in the solution, which I’m sure now is glue, and then he dips his hands in the glass and laughs.
I remember my first thoughts when I met him. I thought he looked like a cage fighter.
I know what sort of fighting we’ll be doing.
The dirty kind. And it seems that I’ll be using my bare hands.