Cade wasn't expecting someone to have fallen for the trick so easily. So he and Nowad were both completely unprepared for the moment when the lock clicked, and the heavy metal door was slowly pushed open, letting soft yellow light from outside seep through.

As Cade mused over how in the world their stupid plan had worked, he reached up to the top of his head, to wake and warn Nowad, but it was already buzzing away, hiding behind the stinky toilet. He strapped the shield to his arm as he stood, grabbing the satellite phone as well.

Suddenly, a large, hulking shape appeared, walking in. Wait...not walking. There was something odd and wrong about the way it moved. A weird clip-clop sound followed it. It was definitely taller than Cade, and had to dip its head to avoid hitting the top of the door; around seven or eight feet. When it fully entered Cade's cell/room/whatever, the space felt tiny. Cade had to take several deep breaths to keep the panic from rising in his chest. Claustrophobia is an awesome thing, isn't it.

He examined the newcomer to distract himself. The creature's body was in almost an L shape, and he recognized a part of it: the body of a horse. Then he looked up at where the head was supposed to be, and saw in the dim light the vague shape of a human torso...

"Alright, have fun in there," a gruff voice outside said. "Just don't kill him; the Key-ler will send the both of us to Boreas if you do—if he doesn't kill us first. But give him a few permanent injuries for the migraine he's been giving me."

The creature right in front Cade snorted very much like a horse. "Of course."

Then the door slammed closed, and Cade had to force himself not to wince.

He stood warily in a defensive stance, the shield in front of him. The dim light it gave off was just enough to make out the creature's features. Cade was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating, but then again, he had been in a dark cave for who knows how long, and only managed to stay somewhat sane with the help of a sentient sarcastic droid. But he was pretty sure this creature was a centaur. It explained the weird way it moved, and the sound of its footsteps—well, hooves.

"So what made you decide to give this poor old prisoner a visit?" Cade asked, squelching the rising panic. Admittedly, the plan was mostly out of the nonexistent window now. Originally, the sat phone was supposed to attract someone or something—like one of those horse-legged ladies. Then, one way or another, they would hopefully get into the cell, where Cade might be able to interrogate them by annoying them with the sat phone's frequency and wavelengths and radio waves and...whatever.

Look, he was no genius in engineering. Nowad was literally a walking (flying) computer, so he just asked it for numbers and logics and stuff.

Anyways, the plan. It was definitely out the window. It seemed like it would be more willing to fight Cade than talk, which was unfortunate.

The centaur tossed his head, flipping his brown hair—the same shade as his horse flank—which was in a low ponytail. He snorted. "For a poor old prisoner, you have some nerve, using that machine of yours to bother us. Do you have a death wish?"

Slowly, he started trotting in a tight circle around Cade, counterclockwise, who stayed still where he stood.

Cade shrugged. "Well, I honestly don't know. But if you want to kill me, go on and try." He didn't point out that in this tight space, Cade had more of an advantage than the centaur. It was the first thing he always noticed when trapped between a rock and a hard place. This time quite literally. The centaur would have a hard time moving around, and while it wasn't exactly easy for Cade either, it was easier.

"I wasn't going to kill you, but now the temptation is overwhelming. Would you mind?"

"Eh, I do kinda—"

Before Cade could finish, there was the sound of metal sliding against metal from behind him, around where the centaur's torso was, and he whirled around, bringing the shield up, just in time to block a strike from a short sword to his neck.

"That was a little rude. I said that I did mind."

The sword seemed to have come out of a sheath on the centaur's left side, out of sight from Cade. Clever.

The centaur made a horse-like snort. "I thought you were smart enough to know that I don't care."

Abruptly, he reared up slightly, turning and trying to trample Cade, which, admittedly, wouldn't be a hard thing to do due to the space. Cade dropped to the floor and rolled under the centaur, and slammed into the toilet, and he nearly gagged. He caught a glimpse of a dim red light before he turned to face the half-horse man again, finding a sword swinging at him, face level, and narrowly dodging it.

The fight was over within two minutes, but it felt ten times that time. At first, Cade was actually nervous that he would get skewered by the centaur's sword—if not accidentally. With the way he swung it and stomped his hooves as he twisted and turned in the tight space, Cade barely missed losing a limb or two several times.

Slowly, however, the centaur began to tire. This was evident from the way his chest rose and fell rapidly. His movements became gradually slower as well, and more sloppy. His sword swings—once narrow and precise—became wilder, slower, and it often clanged against the stone wall.

Cade ducked a particularly slow strike, and took the opportunity to grab the centaur's hand, twisting it, and disarming him. Cade grabbed the sword as it dropped out of his hands, then had to spin out of the way of a sloppy kick. He used the toilet (ew) to give him a bit of height, enough for him to get onto the centaur's back.

"Sweet dreams," Cade said casually. Then, raising the sword, he hit the centaur in the back of the head with the pommel.

The centaur stumbled, then collapsed, unconscious. Cade had to jump off of him to avoid being crushed.

"Whew." Cade sighed.

Holographic red text appeared in front of Cade.

[Insert slow clapping]

Cade turned, and saw Nowad hovering right above the centaur's body, poking it with one of its claws.

"You can't clap sarcastically! Also, I could've died!" Cade protested.

Melodramatic much?

"Hey, give me some credit," Cade grumbled slightly. "He was better than he looked."

So anyways, is the plan a bust? I knew it wouldn't work.

"Before you go in that downward spiral, no. The other guy didn't lock the door."

Nowad paused at that. They must be dumber than you if they didn't lock the door. Try it!

Cade turned towards the door, then turned back, and pointed at the centaur. "By the way, you see that right? It's a centaur? I'm not hallucinating?"

You do hallucinate a lot, but not this time. It's a centaur. Unless someone hacked my system and I'm seeing things too. My program is taking this information surprisingly well. Not struggling to understand it at all.

"Wait, really?" That's odd. Cade hadn't thought about it much before, figuring that Nowad's program was just flexible, or something. Or maybe it was self learning. But now that he had thought about it, it made sense that its program must have limitations. AI or not.

Just try the door, idiot! Time is running out!

"Alright alright." He turned back to the door again, and grabbed the handle, then, with all his strength, pulled it open. It slid open surprisingly easily and soundlessly, swinging on its hinges. Stronger light from outside blinded Cade for a second, and he had to wait for his eyes to adjust, tense.

When he could see again, he was surprised at the fact that nothing had attacked him. No alarms were set off, and no one was waiting outside for him. Very anticlimactically, nothing happened.

"What kind of security is this?" Cade muttered, cautiously stepping forward to poke his head out, looking up and down a long stone hallway, with metal doors similar to his lining the sides. On the ceiling, every few feet, were ceiling lights embedded into the stone, letting off a yellow, light-bulb glow. And not one person, centaurs or weird looking humanoids in sight.

Unless they could turn invisible. Could they turn invisible? At this point he might as well consider all possibilities. But if they could turn invisible, he was screwed.

He gestured back to Nowad. "Coast is clear. Come on."

It didn't need telling twice, zooming past Cade on silent propellers, and into the hallway, then looked both ways. Eeny meeny miny moe...

"Can't you just flip a virtual coin?"

It projected a hologram of an emoji with its tongue stuck out at him. Right is the right path!

It zoomed down the corridor, right. Cade quickly followed, still holding the golden shield. Hey, it looked cool, and finding it was part of the reason he got here in the first place, so he was going to keep the thing.

The corridor ended at around twenty meters down from Cade's cell at a fork, with two paths going directly left and right.

They both paused.

Cade threw up his free hand. "Flip the virtual coin."

A moment later, it projected on the wall: Left!

It zipped down the left corridor. Cade whisper-shouted a protest to slow down, then lightly ran to catch up.

This went on several times. Along some corridors, there were more doors, but they weren't metal, just normal wooden doors. There were often movements that could be heard from inside, though they never stuck around long enough to figure out any details lest they get found by someone.

Cade's heart pounded every time he heard the slightest noise, and he had to force himself to stay calm. Despite having learned fencing, and used those skills to thwack a kidnapper on the head with a plastic pole a few years ago, he had never actually been kidnapped, and had never felt this nervous before in his life. More than once had the thought of giving up and going back to the cell (because the stress of sneaking around was about fifty times worse than sitting around not having to do anything and just waiting) but he pushed it away.

This place is deserted, Nowad noted, like, I hear people but it's unguarded! What kind of—

Right on cue, as they moved down a corridor, voices flooded in from a hallway leading to the right. Nowad was just flying through, in sight of whoever might be down it, and Cade instinctively grabbed it from the air with his free hand, pulling it back towards him as he scooted to face his back to the wall.

He could feel Nowad pinch his hand with its claw, and he stifled a hiss.

The voices sounded like two people having a conversation.

A voice said, "Sir, is this a good idea? Going against...you know? The chances of everyone getting killed..."

A second voice replied with amusement in their voice, "It wouldn't be a good idea if there was not a risk, Leo. I know it sounds unachievable, but I promise you, once I cut everyone's threads, we'll be free, and we will make it happen."

"Cutting Fate already sounds impossible... But going against the gods? Marching Olympus is no laughing matter. Why did you come up with this?"

"I was contacted by her again."

Cade had no idea what they were talking about. Heck, he could barely hear them over his pounding heartbeat. But a few words sank in.

Gods. Olympus. The name, Leo.

Information. Clues. But knowing these were of no use if he still didn't know what the heck was going on. Gods? Olympus? Wasn't Olympus a mountain in Greece? Why did they want to march to a mountain in Greece? If it was a different Olympus...he wasn't sure what to think. He was in extreme denial, and also confusion.

And who was this her? What did that have to do with anything?

If someone doesn't explain something right now...

The first voice, Leo, sighed. "The Plan was to create chaos and a diversion with the Ancile, right? So why don't we just destroy it now? It's in our hands."

"We need it and the boy as bait."

Cade had to force himself to stay still. Internally, he could not help but jump. The boy... Was that him? Was the shield thingy this Ancile?

The second voice continued. "I didn't mention this at the meeting, but we need that daughter of Letum out of the way. She can ruin everything for us."

"Why don't we just kill her, Sir?"

"Actually, I was thinking—"

Suddenly, the hall went deadly silent.

Cade gulped. The silence was already unsettling, but he also had a feeling that the two people were suddenly aware of his presence.

The second voice suddenly sounded again, the tone seemed to be purposefully creepy and...amused. "There's an eavesdropper. How...curious."

Cade tensed. He took a careful step back, and opened his hand with Nowad in it, palm up, hoping it would get his meaning.

Footsteps suddenly came from the hall, and Cade started walking backwards. He didn't dare start running, or turn his back to where the footsteps came from. He silently willed Nowad to get out of there.

Thankfully, it did. With a slight rush of air, Cade felt the weight of the tiny drone disappear as it took off and zoomed down the hall, hopefully back to the cell.

Relief briefly came about him, but quickly disappeared as a person came into sight.

Cade was surprised. He looked...normal. Brown hair, fair skin, normal human body—albeit taller than average. No metal leg cast.

But then he turned to Cade, and a grin spread across his face.

Cade felt a shiver run down his spine.

"Well, well, well...how interesting. We have an escaped prisoner."

He approached Cade, who froze, unspeakable terror seizing him. Everything in his mind screamed to run while he could, but his body would not obey.

"This is the first time such a thing has happened," he said. "So it begs the question: What are we going to do with you now?"

---
Nothing to say here
-Lunya

P.S Actually I do have something to say. If you see any mistakes or plot holes or OOC moments or things your confused about please tell me—
This is literally my first draft so yeah
There's definitely mistakes in there, so please tell me when you see them
Constructive criticism (right?)
COME AT ME CRITICS HAHAHA /hj