I wake and place my feet on the cold concrete floor, standing and stretching as high as I can until that satisfying pop sounds as my spine gives me what I want. Then it's a reach for the toes until my calves feel loose again.
I trot out of my small bedroom and begin jogging, as I have every single morning for a very, very long time. The air is stale but it doesn't matter much to me, you have to expect as much this deep underground. The prison is built to contain just one prisoner.
That would be me.
It's fully functional, even still, with the energy being drawn from core heat and everything built to last. They had to. They expected I'd be here for a long time. The cell I sleep in exits into a rectangular room, exercise equipment gathered in the center and a running track around the perimeter. At one end is the kitchen with a hydroponic farm and breeding pen for what sustenance I require. Food is the hardest thing to deal with now. The other end is a library, stocked at my request. I didn't expect I'd have this long so everything has been read more than a few times.
They did expect me to be here a long time.
Just...not this long.
As I finish running I stop and bend over, taking deep breaths to slow my heart rate again, letting the sweat drip onto the floor. As habit will do, I look up to the viewing station where the guards had once kept vigil. Not for years now. Many, many years.
I shake it off and make my way to the kitchen for breakfast. A single fried egg on a simple bread I have been making for millennia and a chicken breast. Delightful. Still tastes as good as ever, even if I've been eating it for what feels like eternity.
What I wouldn't give for...well I don't know. It's been too long I honestly don't even remember what food options there used to be.
I sigh and clean the dishes, pat the chickens for what small comfort they bring and head to the library. As I step I see something move out of the corner of my eye and I look to see figures in the viewing station.
Guards? After all these years?
A light comes on and I see them, tiny figures barely visible through the glass. I hear the click that I vaguely recall for the microphone.
"Who is it?" the voices say, along with other chattering and talking before they realize I can hear them.
"Who are you?"
How kind of them to pose it directly to me now.
"One of the great gods, has it been so long the mortals have forgotten that?"
"When were you locked in here?"
Now that is actually a good question. I think back to the day the mortals created this place for us, many thousands of years now surely. I do some quick math before answering.
"Nine thousand, seven hundred and eight three cycles. Around the sun, of course."
The murmuring again.
"Impossible," is the reply.
I laugh.
"No, just inconvenient. I was meant to be released after one thousand cycles but something happened, the guards disappeared."
Murmuring. Goodness these mortals do love to talk don't they.
"Perhaps you can release me? I'll be eternally grateful."
I chuckle at my own joke. One must become one's own entertainment I suppose. They don't speak for a long time. So long I begin to think they won't help me.
"I'm afraid we can't."
"Please," I say, hearing the begging tone slip into my voice, "please, it's been a very long time."
"I'm sorry."
Then the click again and the movements stop. I am ashamed to admit that I dropped to the floor and began to weep.
After recovering from my shameful display of emotion I found myself sitting in the library but unable to focus. There were mortals alive out there, that was something. Perhaps in a few more cycles they would release me. Surely, just a few more.
As I sit I hear something. This is different. Something I haven't heard in a very, very long time. The main door unlocking. I hear the hiss of the door opening and quickly make my way to the main room.
A young man stands there and looks at me, nervously. He holds up both hands in a sort of mock surrender.
"I just...I don't think it's right to leave you here."
I take a few great strides to him and he flinches but I simply wrap my arms around him and squeeze.
"Thank you," I whisper in his ear, tears filling my eyes, "thank you."
I release him and we exit the room together, hopefully for the last time. As I take my first step I am struck by several barbed objects that sink deep and then my body convulses. My muscles tighten and my jaw clamps shut and I collapse to the floor. A dozen men quickly converge and chain me with the restraints that must have been left in the guard room.
One of them, a burly man with a shaved head, stares down at me.
"Immortal, they said," he says it with a sneer, "thousands of years down here? Immortal. Well we'll see."
Then a thick rubber boot tread fills my view and it is the last thing I see before it is dark.
I wake, slowly. It slowly swing my legs off the low, thin bed and rest my bare feet on the cold tiled floor. I try to stand but my legs refuse the call to action. So I sit.
The long scars that run down my leg remind me where they drew their fill of marrow from, bone marrow for their studies. I remember screaming as they cut into me, screaming for them to release me and threatening to burn their world to ash and finally pleading for them to cease.
None of that worked.
I remember his laughter as I faded in and out.
"Some god," he said at least once, "some immortal."
I wanted to explain that immortal does not mean invincible but I don't think he would have cared. They wanted to know how to fight aging and disease more than they cared about semantics.
"Hey," I hear the voice from the door to my cell, "I'm sorry."
I recognize him. The one who "released" me from my former prison, only to bring me to another.
"You."
"Yeah...I get it," I hear the door unlock from the other side, "I'd be pissed too."
The door unlocks and he stands before me, sheepish.
"It's not right, I'm sorry."
I find the strengh to stand on shaky legs and glare at him but...here he stands before me. Apologetic and perhaps releasing me.
"Is it day?"
He nods, with a confused look.
"Can you get me outside?"
He nods again and leads me into the hall, devoid of guards for the moment.
"I opened one of the other cells, they're busy."
"Which one?" I ask, thrilled at the prospect of one of my brothers or sisters on the loose.
"Don't know, names are all faded off the doors. What...who are you anyway?"
I don't speak but we close the gap towards a door, a door that leads to stairs. I glare at him for a moment and he shrugs in response.
"Only way up."
I grunt and we begin the arduous trek up the stairs. Each one sends pain shooting through my battered legs. I mumble some curses but continue.
When the door opens I feel it. The warmth of the sun. I take a deep breath and stand on my own as the warmth and light do their work. The only thing I really need. I can feel lean muscles filling out, my hair turning from gray to it's deep brown and the lines that crease my face disappearing. I feel...I feel like myself again.
We stand on a flat space with a large white H painted on it, overlooking a mountain range that I barely remember.
He steps away and looks at me with fear. Without the sun I was fading in that deep cell, even if I would never die of age there. Like a mortal in his fifties or sixties, not the powerful man I am now.
"What are you?"
I turn to him and stretch until I hear that satisfying pop of my spine. Turn my head for the same in a stiff neck. Bend down to loosen up my calf muscles on healed legs.
"What is your name mortal?"
"Derek. Are you going to kill me?"
I throw back my head and laugh, it feels good to laugh again.
"No Derek, you have earned my favour. And a favour from me does not come easily. Shall we release my brothers and sisters?"
He swallows hard and nods.
"Who are you?"
I open the door back into that staircase, down into the bowels of the facility they have built over our prison. It's different now though. I have my strength back. I pause to look at him, applying just the right amount of dramatic pause that these mortals found so pleasing all those years ago.
"The Titan Hyperion. Now come. We have work to do."
We made our way into the bowels of their laboratory quickly, Derek leading the way as I followed.
I had two goals and only two goals.
Kill the man who had captured me and free all my siblings.
I told Derek as much.
"The guards should be busy with the others and I know where the Colonel is. Come on."
Good, very good.
We race towards the end goals and I flex my fingers in anticipation. I do so enjoy mortal bloodshed, from time to time...it's a vice I admit. It is deep within the halls and rooms that they had constructed before releasing me that I find the first of my goals. The guard watching the cameras dies quickly, his neck snapped like a dry twig.
Derek vomits in the corner so I ignore him for the moment, focusing on the screens. Each is one of my siblings, pacing their cells. I see a brawl in one cell where my brother Iapetus flogs the mortal guards with ease, they are his children after all and he knows them best.
Yet more guards come and he is weak, too weak and they finally overpower him. The old guards had left weapons and tools behind, they would have to be destroyed or we could still be defeated.
My second goal arrives on screen, the Colonel. At least that's what Derek had called him.
He stands over Iapetus and gloats, I'm sure of that. Even though I cannot hear it.
"Come!"
I sprint off and leave Derek behind, rounding corners until I reach the door. The door to Iapetus' cell. It is heavy but I push it open, grinding the door on it's track.
With it open I find him!
No.
It's empty. That is odd. Only Iapetus' body laying in the center of the room.
I wheel about when I hear it but it is too late.
The door slides shut behind me, leaving me in this room. I shout and hammer but it is no good. The doors were built when I was at my peak of power and they will withstand it now.
"Damn you!"
click
"Well done, Hyperion, well done. Didn't expect you would be so easy to manipulate but...well here we are."
Derek. He and the Colonel stand in the guard post and stare down at the two Titans they have captured. Proud of themselves.
Fool! Me, not them. I should have known.
I should have known.
Damn.
I kneel by Iapetus, ignoring the laughter from the guards. He is thin, unlike himself. They all were on those screens. Our power does fade and his is weak.
"Brother Hyperion!" he groans, opening his eyes a little, "look how they fight back. I'm proud of them."
He winces as I move him.
"Furious and proud."
I can't help but laugh. I look around at the prison that I remember so well, identical in every way. I close my eyes and allow some of my energy to flow into his body, healing the wounds and strengthening him what little I can spare.
"Thank you brother," he says, looking fractionally better. He stands with me and we both look up to the guard post where Derek looks...perturbed.
Good.
"Any ideas?"
He nods.
"One, now that we're together. Tethys is near and I have a mortal under my sway. It nearly ended me brother but I have him."
I perk up at that.
"What do you need from me?"
He looks to the guard tower where both the Colonel and Derek stand, staring.
"I need you to do what you do best brother," he smiles weakly, "get mad."
It's an odd request from any of my siblings. Usually they demand the opposite.
But, who I am to deny a request?
"You will suffer until the end of time!" I roar it at the guard post, shaking the room with the volume of my voice, "you will burn for eternity until the flesh peels from your bones and you beg for the sweet release of death but it shall never come!"
I use what energy I have left to bring forth a gout of searing flame that strikes the thick glass, with no effect. It does make the men stumble back though, which is something.
As they reel Iapetus closes his eyes and slumps, his mind leaving the room.
In the facility a maintenance worker jolts from his magazine, standing slowly and retrieving a toolbox from his locker. He walks through the maze, avoiding the running guards and ignoring the shaking that rumbles through the facility. He makes his way into a room, swiping his badge for access. Inside are dozens of pipes that feed water through the facility.
He pauses, looking them over for a moment. Then he raises an arm to point at one of the pipes, before taking a wrench from the box and using it to turn a valve to the on position.
Then he leaves the room. Once he is out he shakes his head and looks around in confusion, before shrugging and heading back to the maintenance break room.
Iapetus opens his eyes as I continue to lash the walls and glass with fire, shouting ever more creative threats. With every hiss of fire on concrete I feel my power fade.
"Brother, calm."
That's the request I'm more familiar with. I let the fire fade and take great heaving breaths. My power is almost spent.
"It is done."
Tethys sits in her cell and listens to the shaking and shouting, even through the walls she knows who it is. She smiles at her brother, somehow he must have gained access to his beautiful sun.
She leans back and wonders when they will come for her, it couldn't be long. Then she feels it. Flowing behind her. It had once before but they had quickly realized their error. Perhaps the guards had left records and information on the Titans.
Except it was back.
She placed her hand against the wall and felt it, even through the pipes and concrete she could feel it. It refreshed her. Empowered her. She drew the moisture from the walls, as much as she could.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Soon, I will be there soon."
