The Cursed Watchmaker

Seraphim Keep Prison, Tartarus, Heaven
February 15

The dropship plunged through the planet's atmosphere at full speed, the pilot relying with the bravery of a hero and the caution of a madman relying solely on the engineers who had built the machine to withstand the enormous pressure of such a perilous descent while trying to steal time. Inside was an elite assault team on a priority mission, led by none other than the great campaign hero Stella, the heroine of Inferno Point, accompanied by several of her best comrades-in-arms. They seemed to be ruthlessly heading straight into battle. But while each warrior was focused on the deadly battle ahead, Stella was receiving real-time mission details.

On the other side of the transmission on her tablet was the head of the Celestial Security Division, the great archangel Michael. His speech betrayed his concern and the reason for the urgency of the mission. Of all the existing prisons, the Tartarus planetary system had been used as a section of Heaven dedicated exclusively as a prison. The place had almost more than 70 different planets; the fewer the number of planets, the stronger the security. Right now, the dropship was crossing the atmosphere of the number one planet, heading for a place known as Seraphim Keep, one of the ten maximum security sectors of the planet itself. The triggering event had been the appearance of a riot within the walls of Seraphim Keep, where security forces were currently fighting to regain control. However, the mission of the team accompanying Stella was quite different. Their mission was to ensure that prisoner 627 did not leave her cell and to protect her from the riot until control was restored. The prison could fall and its walls crumble, but that cell had to remain under control.

Prisoner 627 had been imprisoned for the murder of a high-ranking Watchmaker fellow Angel. Apparently, she had corrupted herself and turned into a fallen angel. Characterized by erratic behavior and dangerous behavior, she was assigned to cell 627 in Seraphim Keep. Recently, she began to show signs of greater corruption, and the cell was quarantined for fear that she might be the source of a dangerous and contagious disease. The prison's jammers cut off all transmissions, so Stella was unable to hear the rest of the details, but with the information she had received, it was clear why there was concern, and why she had been sent to deal with the problem.

The pilot informed the crew that the landing site was in sight. Stella and the others put on their helmets, loaded their weapons, and waited for the door to open, ready for either victory or death. The ship's door opened, and the massive three-meter Paladins charged in with their wall-like shields as the main assault force. The others followed behind, with Commander Stella at the center of the formation as the mastermind. Fortunately, where they had landed was not the main site of the riot that could be heard in the distance, so they were able to quickly advance through the corridors toward Cell 627. As they advanced, however, they encountered something out of place: the quiet in this part of the facility. Far from feeling reassured, Stella quickened her pace when she saw that the prisoners were not only in their cells, but were quietly reading or exercising, as if unaware of what was happening just a few hundred yards away, despite the clear sounds of the disturbance in the distance. It was as if they were mocking the guards, and the soldiers were just carrying on with their routines and good behavior. Stella clearly knew that they were playing with her, that their plan had been completed just moments before her arrival.

The group of warriors was paralyzed when they saw the door of cell 627, a door weighing nearly 4 tons of reinforced titanium, bent in the middle of the corridor. Stella was already late. Looking inside, she could see the enchanted chains on the floor, the open locks, an empty plate of food, and a huge stain of blood splattered on one wall. A large trail of blood continued to the other end of the hallway. Stella quickly searched the cell herself; except for the door, nothing else had been forced - everything had been opened legally. The stain on the wall was still quite fresh, the blood still crimson rather than black. Otherwise, the rest of the cell was marked by its apparent austerity and cleanliness, very different from what Stella had thought when she was told that this cell was under quarantine.

One of the paladins commented that the blood trail led west, toward the administrative sector, where most of the disturbance from the riot was coming from. Seeing that the prisoner would not return to the cell without help, Stella decided to follow the trail, the only lead they had. With speed, they continued their way, trying to save their mission from certain defeat, stopping for nothing - even when the Paladins' shields had to crash into the prison guards to clear the way for the rest of their unit. As they continued their journey, Stella could see the security plans in action, with guards outnumbering inmates ten to one, marching in formation and using effective containment tactics. They battled inmates who used guerrilla tactics against them, but were easily recaptured. But in all the chaos, something was out of place: their great organization, in the worst way. How was it possible, in a situation like this, that a single corridor was unguarded as Stella walked down the corridor following the trail?

The questions only grew as the trail led to the prison warden's office, now brutally nailed to the wall with over a hundred gruesome metal stakes. The amount of blood around him and the victim's desperate face only suggested that the motive was slow, painful torture before death. The director was dead, naked according to the little intact flesh that remained, with the word "Sin" written above his head in his own blood. The crime scene, one with a clear past history, marked by the meticulous use of violence in it. Unfortunately, the trail ended there, with nothing to indicate where the prisoner might have gone after that. One thing was clear: she had managed to escape Seraphim Keep effortlessly, outwitting every single angel in the proces

By the time the riot was finally contained, only 15 minutes had passed. The efficiency of the place was incredible, and yet it was still enough time for someone. Stella, however, was not worried about the defeat. It was clear that the mission entrusted to her was lost before she had a chance, but her mind was on something else. It was clear that the escape had been too perfect, planned down to the smallest detail, even taking the liberty of destroying the camera footage stored in undeletable memory crystals. When they arrived at the room, they found only a million pieces scattered on the floor. According to the report given to Stella by Archangel Michael, Prisoner 627 was erratic and unpredictable, a raging lunatic. However, this was with the precision of a clock, with the one exception of the one death that occurred that day-the warden-indicating that he was also on the prisoner's target list, a step so important that had to take it before leaving the facility. It was impossible for 627 to accomplish such a thing without help. The question was, where did get it from? Could it have been the guards themselves? Or was it something worse, like from the outside? If so, it was clear that it had to be a very powerful group to accomplish something of this magnitude in such a restrictive system as Tartarus, where the planets themselves had shields all around and only two heavily guarded entry points that registered every spaceship that passed through their checkpoint to the point of a centimeter.

"Prisoner 627's records are a mess, even on the computer everything has black lines."
"The only interesting thing is that the notes say in red: known of the Atlantean Emperor".
"Is that some kind of code or something?" one of the agents asked.

Hearing these words, Stella's mind felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck her soul.

"Move aside, let me see," Stella said, pushing the girl away so she could see for herself.

There was only one word on the monitor that she needed to confirm her worst fears. Prisoner 627's name was as simple as Lisa, the exiled watchmaker. Such a mention indicated that Stella's mission had only worsened on a new scale, as it involved a loose end from the brutal war against the dragons. It was clear that the fallen angel's next destination was only one, Earth.