MB-6 Making Plans

Well, now I understand why you said that even though Robin joined the team, it wasn't that simple.

Looks like Jesselton talked her over, and she joined Anthony's side as a spy.

Yes.

And here I thought there wasn't gonna be any more surprises in the story.

I didn't know that Robin'd been through all that. Not even the intel I read mentioned it.

And Jesselton. I'd heard about him, but I didn't know he could be this difficult to deal with.

You know about him?

Yeah.

He's one of Parasol's ace hatchet men, and I heard that as long as you've got the money, he's more than willing to be your errand boy. He's HydeBro's top trump card for this whole kerfuffle.

Known to have a dainty fine taste, but most people just think he's beyond repulsive.

I thought he was just some normal hitman, but who knew he was such a thinker.

I knew he was HydeBro's trump card, but I didn't expect him to make a snap decision like that.

He made it seem like he gave her a choice, but she actually didn't have much of a choice.

It's just exactly as he said, though. He had information on Robin's background that Anthony didn't have.

What's more, he'd been watching Anthony the whole time without him knowing. It's no wonder he had the advantage.

If I were in her shoes, faced with that kinda predicament, I would've picked his side too.

You're right.

Oh, I thought you would disagree.

I don't agree with the way he thinks, and I don't like him.

But, at the very least, I think what he said to Robin was at least more forthcoming than you trying to test me over and over.

How you talk like you know who I am makes you just as repulsive as my mentor, Director Muelsyse.

Looks like I went a little overboard. Guess I should apologize.

To tell you the truth, even I feel the same way about him. He's kinda boring.

It's not easy to find someone like Robin if you don't go out of your way. Someone who has a complicated relationship with Anthony.

And to bait her into the game like that...

Well, whatever. In any case, we have all the players in the jailbreak party by now, right?

Yes.

We've got a pretty smooth informant, an assassin who's not half bad, a girl working part-time who gets to go anywhere she wants in the prison, a morgue doctor who's been there for ages, and an excellent leader...

It's pretty well-rounded for a ragtag team.

Right, long story short, after all the groundwork was laid, they more or less moved on to a preparatory phase. It almost went without a hitch.

Did anything happen during that time?

Nothing other than the assassinations.

Oh, right, I almost forgot. The hit was still on, wasn't it?

Yes, but since the jailers had no way to handle it other than looking into all the prisoners, and the hitmen were only going after Anthony, they gave up on doing anything about it.

Aha, that's just like them.

Oh, I just remembered something Robin told me.

What is it?

That thing about how they convinced Domma to leave with them!

Huh? What's this about? I thought Domma was part of the team?

Oh, that's right. They didn't find out until later that even though Domma said she'd help Anthony break out of prison, she didn't intend to leave herself.

Why is that?

Because she hadn't ever been outside the prison.

Eh?

You heard me right. I ain't actually goin' with you.

How come? Don't tell me you actually like it here.

No, I don't like it here. Not one bit.

The last morgue doctor took me in when the prison was docked. Far back as I'n remember, I only ever lived here. This is where I grew up.

The patronizin' jailers, the hate, the inmate violence. Their deaths, too. That's all I ever seen in my life.

I sometimes take a walk around outside when we pop into a city. I'n tell I don't belong there.

I'm... scared.

Then why're you helping Anthony break out of this place?

cause he's my only friend.

It wasn't until Anthony got here that I knew there were people like him in the world.

He gets into scraps like the others, but he got some self-control.

He gets angry, but he don't let his anger make trouble for nobody.

He's always polite, downright fair to everyone.

He pushes books on me, and tells me what life's like on the outside.

When he first got here, he'd belly-ache 'bout how fate's unkind to him. I's already thinkin' of helpin' him get out back then.

But I don't know anything, and I wasn't being much of a help to him. So I didn't say nothin'.

Then he started gettin' calmer and calmer, 'n' everyone else started lookin' up to him. I's happy and a little sad at the same time.

Felt like he was missin' something.

sides, I always thought that he shouldn'ta been locked up in here. He shoulda had a better life.

That's why I's awful happy for him when he decided to leave after Kafka spilled the beans to him.

And just helpin' him get out is more'n I need.

Don't say nothin' to him, but I'm ready. If somethin' goes wrong somewhere, I'm more'n willin' to give my life just to see him out of here.

This isn't right.

Whassa matter, Robin? You don't look too good.

Nothing.

I'm just thinking. You're really willing to go so far for him?

Yeah.

I don't think that's a good thing, though.

You're right. Life on the outside's a lot more complicated than life in here.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows outside, either. There're probably more bad things out there than good.

But I also think... it's a shame if you don't try to live all that just because you're scared.

You don't think Anthony belongs in prison.

But I think someone kind-hearted as you doesn't belong here either.

You deserve a better life.

Do I?

I dunno.

And I'm pretty sure he'd think just the same way about you too.

He wants a better life for you.

......

Let me think about it, okay?

Yeah.

I can see how someone who's never known life outside the prison would be scared of the world.

Well, thankfully, I know how it all turned out in the end. She left with them. If I didn't know that, this is about where I'd start getting all anxious.

Isn't that great~?

So after that was when they started preparing for the jailbreak, right?

That's right.

It should've been about a month and a half after Kafka was put in prison when Anthony made the decision to get out. Then, it took them about another month to come up with a concrete plan to get out of there.

Which means there was about a month and a half from the time they finished their plan till the actual jailbreak, right?

It was four months altogether. It's not that long, but it's not that short either.

But I guess we're finally at the part I'm interested in the most.

...What's this diagram?

Oh, I know. this is the prison's layout, right?

That's right~ It's kinda crude, but it's got everything you need to know on there.

The part that I'm the most curious about is how they got out.

Of course, I'm interested in the story behind the team, but this is a prison break! That's the part that keeps us all on the edge of our seats~!

You told me you wanted to understand the whole process. Is that really just because you're interested in the jailbreak?

Sure, you can think of it like that.

Fine.

If we're going to talk about it, we might as well start from the beginning.

First, let's take a look at the prison's design. The architects clearly learned from their experience with the nomadic cities. The prison wasn't built directly on top of the chassis.

They built a mountain base first, like what you'd find in the real world, and then they finished the prison design on top of that.

This is a pretty common technique these days, but, back in the day, it was ahead of its time, and it was very successful.

Now, let's set aside the prison's outside appearance for the time being.

The prison has three floors, and each floor's structure is more or less the same.

At the lower-left of each floor is the A-Zone. This is where the non-Infected are kept.

To the upper-right is the B-Zone, the Infected block.

The upper-left and lower-right corners are where the guardhouses are. That's where the jailers usually stay.

The black monolith in the center is the C-Zone, where the most serious felons are kept.

The area in the middle here is the underground factory. This is where the prisoners work together.

Over here is the clinic. It's also Domma's room. Next to that is the morgue.

On the other side is the library that they built at Anthony's suggestion.

That's more or less the prison's layout.

Mina spent a bit of time exploring, and with the basic idea figured out, they came up with a way to escape from the prison.

Mhm.

You can tell by looking at the layout that the C-Zone tower isn't actually built directly onto the ground.

There is an elevator in the middle that goes to the basement. Not only that, but the tower itself can actually be lowered underground.

Ohhh? No kidding?

Yeah, these kinds of structures aren't very common. They probably designed it that way so that they can keep the inmates underground during emergencies, where they can't cause trouble.

Right, and to lower the tower, you normally need to flip the switches in two of the guardhouses at the same time.

Oh, I get it.

The info I got after the fact did mention that the tower sank all the way to the bottom, so they probably activated the mechanism at the guardhouses, right...? Huh? Wait a minute... That doesn't make sense.

Even if they made it underground, was there a way out down there?

First off, they didn't go to the guardhouses. They thought about it at one point.

However, they found out the mechanisms could only lower the tower very slowly.

Anthony figured that out from a document he found in the library.

The document was probably a design diagram left behind after the prison's construction. My assumption is no one thought about it, so they stuck it in there when Anthony suggested building a library.

Hah.

They probably figured no one would ever need that for anything. After all, the prison was built more than twenty years ago.

It was twenty-five years ago.

In any case, they couldn't just wait for the tower to slowly sink to the bottom. The guards would have tried to do something, and so they abandoned this idea altogether.

Huh? But in that case...

Fortunately, they found something else on the document—

Take a look at the top of the central tower. There's a room here, and it isn't a prison cell.

That's the real control room of the tower, if not the whole prison.

The control room... I see. That's where you can make the tower drop all the way to the bottom, right?

That's right, and it's also possible to cut off the prison's electricity there to cause a commotion, however brief.

There usually isn't anyone on that floor. You need a special elevator key to get inside. The regular keycards that the jailers carry can't access this floor.

I think I get it now. They went up to the control room, sank the tower all the way to the bottom, and cut the power off to cause a ruckus up above.

But that still leaves us a question—

What happened after that.

Is there a way out underground?

There is.

Domma provided that way out.

She said that, going by her memory, the last morgue doctor had told her there weren't any previous designs the architects could reference when building the prison, and there were actually a few abandoned structures at the bottom of the mountain.

And some of those led to the surface outside the prison.

In particular, there was one fairly close to the morgue.

It's close, but there's also a wall that's three meters thick in-between.

So... did they dig their way through?

Yes, they dug through the wall.

The walls themselves are made of rebar and concrete, but it's just soil outside.

Once you find a weaker section of wall and breach it, you don't need any advanced tools to dig the tunnel.

That's what they did, they took turns digging at the clinic.

Huh? Now that you mention it, if they were going to dig a tunnel at the morgue, couldn't they have left as soon as the tunnel was done?

Have you forgotten already? Getting to the surface outside the prison isn't going to do you much good when the prison isn't stopped at a city.

The prison also raises its security whenever it stops at a city. When that happens, the prisoners get much less free time.

Even Anthony hardly had any free time.

They couldn't just have gone to the clinic like before.

Oh, right. Teehee, I forgot.

Right, since the prison was stopped at a city, Mina left with the construction crew before the jailbreak, so she didn't actually participate in it.

She rendezvoused with the gang outside the prison.

Anyway, at some point in the last month and a half, they stole the key that gave them access to the control room at the top of the tower from Chief Barton.

Then, a few days before the prison was slated to make its next port call, they finished digging the tunnel and made sure it led them to the surface.

Now all the preparations were finally complete.