Xcalibur Xc
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[Shazam] Ch: 2 [Death either way]
🕑 Added 2025-05-06 21:12:52 +0000 UTCWords: 2.7k.
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A few months later. Or maybe more. Time didn't mean much anymore.
John Mason couldn't remember what day it was, or if days even existed in this place. There was only digging. Heat. Death. And the smell of sour sweat, blood, and burnt rock, always clinging to his nostrils like a brand.
He was thinner now. Hollow-cheeked. His ribs showed when he bent over, his back a web of bruises and healing welts. The man who once lit joints in office windows didn't exist anymore. That man had been broken down, piece by piece, and left to rot in the sun-baked filth of Kahndaq.
There was no escape. No hope. No plans of rebellion.
The last group that tried got paraded out in front of the entire camp. A family... mother, father, their two little boys, maybe five and eight, and a few young men who thought they could change something. The guards shot the children first just to make a point and give the parents pain. Then the parents. Then the rebels.
Luna had watched without blinking. Her jaw clenched so tight it bled.
John had puked behind the barracks when no one was looking.
That night, he tried to kill himself.
He waited until lights-out, until the drills stopped screaming and the guards got bored of beating anyone. He found a jagged chunk of metal under the workbench and slipped it into his pocket.
He walked out to the pit, past the work lines, past the place where the bodies were dumped when there were too many for the fire trench. He held the shard to his neck, and he thought about his last meal on Earth. The Principal's wife. The smoke. The gun.
But when he pressed the edge to his skin, he thought of Luna.
A week ago, a machine belt snapped and whipped across her hand. Two fingers gone. She didn't scream. Just bit down on a piece of cloth and staggered behind a crate until the bleeding slowed. John had wrapped her hand and never said a word. Then he started doing her share of the load. Every day. Quietly. Because if the guards noticed, she'd be dead before she could blink.
If he died now, she'd be next.
He dropped the metal.
That was the night John found his reason to live. Not for himself. But for the girl with missing fingers, who still looked at the horizon like something out there was worth waiting for. She saved his life once, now it's time to pay back.
He didn't speak much after that. Just worked. Ate what little he could. Slept like a soldier in a foxhole, one eye open, every muscle half-tensed. He carried Luna's weight and his own. He learned to walk quieter, move smarter, and keep his head down even when it burned to lift it.
Luna grew weaker, but she was still there. Still watching the guards like she was memorizing their patterns. Still whispering rumors in his ear when they passed by, the kind of whispers that made him think she still had a plan. Even if it was insane.
One night, while cleaning a broken drill part in the shade of the old wall, she said, "There's a map."
He looked at her. "A map of what?"
"Passages. Old ones. Before this place became a mine."
"You believe that?"
"I don't have to. I just need it to be possible."
He didn't answer.
She stared at him. "You still want to die?"
John shook his head. "We are already dead. It's just a matter of time before this body falls. But before I go, I will kill something first."
Luna smiled. Just a little. The first time in weeks.
The next morning, the guards marched in a new shipment of prisoners. All in chains. Most were barely standing. But one of them caught John's eye... Tall, gaunt, face covered in soot, and the other guards kinda seem afraid of him.
The announcement came at noon.
The gaunt new guard stepped out of the building with a scrap of paper in his hand. He didn't shout. He just spoke, and the way he said it... flat, like a judge reading a sentence, somehow made it worse.
"New order. Mining output to double. Effective immediately. No breaks. No meals during shifts. Anyone collapses, they're left where they fall."
No one moved. No one dared breathe too loud.
Then one of the older guards barked at the crowd and fired a round into the air, and the camp jolted back to life. Picks slammed into stone. Chains dragged. Cries echoed against the pit walls.
Another week of hell began.
Luna didn't cry. John didn't flinch. They just got back in line, shoulders hunched like everyone else.
That night, under the cover of drills and dust, they made their move.
Luna had the map tucked in the lining of her shirt, a faded scrap of parchment with ink nearly bled away. She'd found it in the boiler room weeks ago, hidden in a broken panel behind the old furnace. Or maybe someone gave it to her. She never said. Just called it "a gift."
They slipped out during the third shift rotation. There was a momentary gap in the guarding session when the new shift came in and the old shift went to rest. John led, hunched low, sticking to the walls. Luna followed, her bandaged hand cradled against her chest, feet silent on the cracked stone.
John made sure to carry makeshift torches, matches, an iron club, some digging tools, water, and whatever little food they had saved.
They passed the body trench. The fires were low tonight. Ash hung in the air like falling snow.
Behind the barracks, past the water barrels and the broken fence, they found it: a crack in the mine wall just wide enough to crawl through. Just like the map showed.
John hesitated. "You sure?"
Luna didn't answer. She was already on her hands and knees, sliding in.
Inside was dark. Choked with dust and silence. The air smelled old, like it hadn't moved in a hundred years. The tunnel sloped down, uneven and tight. John scraped his elbows. Luna hit her head more than once. But they didn't stop.
Hours passed. Maybe more. They couldn't tell. Only the sound of their breath and the soft crunch of gravel under palms kept them grounded.
Eventually, the tunnel widened. A chamber opened up, carved by hands long dead. Rusted tools hung from pegs. A rotten pile of wood and moss.
Luna lit a match. The flame danced, weak but alive. John took out a torch, and Luna lit it up.
"There," she said, pointing. "That way leads out. I think."
Suddenly...
An alarm.
Just one blare, echoing faintly through the stone veins of the tunnel.
John froze. Luna's eyes snapped to his.
"Shit!" she said, barely a whisper. "Let's go."
John nodded. No time to speak. He grabbed the torch and moved. Fast now. They both did, scrambling over uneven ground, ducking under fallen beams, slipping past jagged outcroppings.
Then Luna fell.
A hard crack of bone on stone. She gasped, clutched her ankle.
John turned back instantly. "Luna!"
"Keep going," she hissed, pain lacing her voice. "Take it." She shoved the map at him with her good hand. "Go."
He didn't even look at it.
He dropped the torch, tossed the backpack into the dark, slung the water bottle over his neck, and crouched low.
"You're insane," she muttered.
"Shut up and hold on."
She tried to protest, but he already had her up, one arm around his shoulders, the other under her knees. She was light. Lighter than she should've been. He could feel every rib through her shirt.
Behind them, another alarm. Closer this time. Muffled shouts. Metal clanking.
John pushed forward, his legs burning, lungs drawing in dust and smoke. The tunnel forked, and he followed the map's markings from memory: three notches, then a sharp bend.
Then the ground dropped beneath them, not far, but enough to rattle his teeth when he landed. Luna groaned. He adjusted her weight and kept moving.
Ahead, a shimmer of stone structure.
They reached it within minutes: a massive door, half-collapsed, embedded in the cliff face like a buried god. Ancient murals spread across the stone, faded but still clear. Warriors with flaming heads, spirals of fire, something that looked like a sky bleeding light. Words carved in a language John didn’t know.
There was no time to decipher.
To the right, a crack in the wall. Narrow, but wide enough.
He squeezed them through sideways, Luna half-dragged, half-lifted. The tunnel spat them into a chamber. Quiet. Wide. Air cooler, still.
It was a tomb.
Pillars rose in the dark like fingers from the earth. Statues loomed along the sides, crumbled and eyeless. In the center, a stone sarcophagus lay broken open, the lid split in two like it had been blown from the inside.
Luna slid from his arms onto the ground, breathing hard. She looked up.
“What is this place?”
He was staring at the far wall. Symbols glowed faintly. Lines curled like circuitry across the stone, pulsing once, then fading.
"No idea," John said as he handed the water bottle to Luna. "Drink some and take some rest. I'll look around... There has got to be a way out. Maybe some lever or something..."
Luna sat slumped against a pillar, her face pale and slick with sweat. She clutched her ankle and breathed in shallow bursts, like every inhale cost her something. John moved around the tomb, torchlight flickering against the carved walls, casting long shadows that seemed to watch him back.
No exit. No hidden passage. Just cold stone and the silent, looming presence of the statues.
He walked to the sarcophagus. The lid was cracked in two, jagged like a lightning bolt had split it. Inside was nothing but dust and a broken staff, dull and brittle-looking, curled like it had been twisted by heat. He leaned closer, expecting... something. A skeleton. Ashes. The charred remains of some godlike corpse.
Nothing. Just the staff, half-buried in powder.
"So much for legends," he muttered.
A click echoed behind him.
Then a soft clink. Something round rolled across the stone floor and stopped near his boot.
His brain caught up a second too late.
He turned to Luna...
"Get down!"
...but the flashbang went off before the words fully left his mouth.
White. Then black.
The bang shook the tomb like thunder inside his skull. His ears screamed. His vision shattered into stars.
Voices. Heavy boots. Metal on stone.
He staggered to his feet, torch dropped, eyes struggling to adjust.
Figures stormed in through the crack in the wall. Guards. Five, maybe six. Rifles up. Shouting commands that blurred into noise. One grabbed Luna. She kicked weakly, tried to scream, but her voice was lost under the ringing.
John moved. No plan. Just instinct.
"Argggg!" He tackled the nearest guard low, drove his shoulder into the man's gut, and brought him down. The rifle clattered away. John snatched it up, blind-firing as he spun.
Two more closed in.
He shot once, maybe twice. He wasn’t sure if he hit anyone. A baton cracked across his back. Another across his ribs. He dropped the gun. Hands grabbed him, pulled him backward. A fist split his lip. He tasted blood.
Someone hit Luna again. She collapsed. Her body folded like paper.
"Stop!" John bellowed, voice hoarse. He surged against the grip holding him. "Don’t touch her!"
A rifle butt slammed into his face. The world turned sideways.
Darkness took him before he hit the floor.
..
..
A splash of cold water snapped him awake.
John gasped, choking, blinking through pain and blur. His arms were tied behind his back. Knees dug into stone. Blood crusted his mouth. The tomb was still around him, the broken statues now lit by harsh, artificial light. Battery lamps. Brought in by the guards.
The new guard stood over him, calm as ever. The one who made the announcement. Still gaunt. Still unreadable.
"Thank you," the man said. His voice was dry, almost polite. "You and the girl did us a favor. We’ve been digging for years. Moving rock, wasting lives. All to find this place."
He knelt, almost at eye level with John. "And here you are. Leading us straight to it. Did you know she's the daughter of the rebels we just killed the other day? I tortured that bastard to give up the map, but well... He gave it to her daughter."
Luna's eyes widened.
"Oh, yes. We knew it from the beginning, but it was a necessary step to reach our end goal."
John said nothing. Just breathed. Watched. Waited.
"As for how we found you so fast?" The man smiled without warmth. "You’re not as clever as you think."
He pulled something from his pocket and tossed it near John's knees. The dented, scorched water bottle. John's water bottle.
"Tracker was in the cap. Easy. And one of the other workers… well. Let’s just say some people want out more than others. Freedom makes traitors of everyone, eventually."
John's jaw clenched. He thought of the tired faces in the lines. The desperate glances. He didn’t know who sold them out, but he knew why. Hunger. Fear. Hope. All poison in the right hands.
The guard stood and turned to Luna.
She was barely conscious, slumped against a pillar, breathing shallowly. Her left eye was swollen shut, and blood streaked down her cheek. The moment she stirred, the man grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her forward.
She didn’t scream. Just grit her teeth and let him pull her.
He threw her down in front of the sarcophagus with a thud. Her injured ankle twisted under her, and she cried out. The guard crouched beside her and pointed to the faded inscription on the base of the tomb.
"Read it."
Luna shook her head, weak but defiant. "No."
A kick landed square in her ribs.
She coughed, curled inward.
"DON'T HURT HER!" John yelled in his hoarse voice, only to earn a punch on his right cheek. "Kuggg!"
"Read it," he said again.
She looked up at him, one eye full of hate. "Go to hell."
The man straightened.
One of the soldiers stepped forward, rifle raised. Pressed the barrel against John’s temple.
Luna saw it. Her lips parted, breath shallow.
John didn't move.
The guard's voice was calm. Cold. "Last chance."
"You think you are so tough?" John said after spitting a mouthful of blood. "Hitting a woman like a panzy ass bitch... Ha! What a joke."
"What did you say?" The head guard turned around.
"Ah! A deaf panzy ass bitch... Hahaha!" John mocked again.
The soldier punched him again. His body slammed against the floor.
"Hahaha..." John continued laughing. His teeth were covered in blood, and a stream of blood was rushing out of his nose. "Did I hit a nerve? Cough! Cough! You think you are a man? Why don't you cut me loose and fight me like a man? Oops. You are just a bitch who hits woman and hides behind... twenty armed men."
"Interesting," The head guard smiled without getting angry.
"Yeah, very. You'll kill us either way. But let me tell you, I'll at least kill one of you before I die. But if you are afraid of a thin mine slave... Well," John said with his usual grin. He knew there was no escape from this. They will kill them either way. So, why not go with a little more struggle?
"Don't," Luna said meekly.
But the guard gave a nod to the one holding John. He pulled John up to his feet and gave him a knife.
"You want to fight? Let's fight," The head guard simply stood there with his hands behind his back.
John's eyes fell on Luna. He just winked at her before rushing toward the brute before him...
Everyone's eyes were on the two of them. Luna took this chance to grab her makeshift metal knife from her boots.
'If we are going to die, we'll take you motherfucker with us.' She thought and prepared herself.
