The heavy insulated bulkhead hissed shut behind them, sealing off the roaring thermal nightmare of Blazing Hell and plunging the rescue team into an immediate, breathless vacuum of glacial cold.
Level 5—Freezing Hell—did not feel like a prison level so much as a tomb carved directly into the ocean floor. Thick, unmoving frost coated the interlocking steel plates of the deck, and every breath plumed into dense white clouds in the sub-zero air.
Giovanni took his first step forward and immediately caught his breath through his teeth. The sudden thermal drop contracted the muscles across his torso, driving a spasm of pure white-hot agony straight through his cracked ribs. His left arm, wrapped tightly in Hongo's stiff gauze, throbbed with a dull, freezing ache where the poison burn pulsed beneath the fabric. He leaned his weight against the icy bulkhead for a second, his vision tunneling as dizziness rolled over him.
"Ribs?" Shanks asked quietly, pausing without looking back, his own breathing frosting around his collar.
"Cold doesn't help," Giovanni rasped, pushing himself upright and forcing his boots forward. "Keep moving."
Hongo dropped back beside them, his breath misting heavily as he scanned Giovanni's pale face and shallow chest movements. Without breaking their slow, deliberate stride, the doctor reached into his pack and pressed a small vial into Giovanni's hand.
"Half of this," Hongo told him, keeping his voice quiet and steady against the chill. "It won't mend bone or pull the rest of that toxin out, but it keeps your nerves from seizing up as the temperature drops. Easy steps."
Up ahead, Shanks kept his eyes fixed on the dim, frosted service corridor stretching into the dark, his Observation Haki sweeping the dead air for any sign of movement. Beside him, Limejuice checked the locking pins on his electrified staff, striking the butt against the frozen deck to clear the frost from the contacts.
"Air's clean," Limejuice murmured, his breath pluming in the dark. "Nobody's behind us yet."
They pushed deeper into the frozen expanse, navigating the silent, frost-rimed rows of general cells where frozen inmates hung suspended in perpetual ice. But as they approached the perimeter of the maintenance holding block, a faint, metallic clinking broke the dead silence of the level.
Shanks raised a hand, signaling a halt.
Stepping cautiously past a stack of frozen supply crates, they found a small group of political detainees huddled together behind a breached maintenance barrier. Among them was an unnamed engineer in a tattered, frost-rimed work uniform, his hands raw and calloused from labor on the sub-levels.
"You're... not Marine guards," the engineer whispered, his voice cracking from thirst and cold as he shrank back against the frosted wall.
"We're leaving," Shanks said plainly, lowering Gryphon. "If you want out of the ice, talk fast."
The engineer swallowed hard, stepping forward into the dim light. "I know these service spines. I helped wire the secondary ventilation hubs down here before they locked us away. I know where the pneumatic maintenance lift connects directly to the upper administrative yards, not the main shaft, the service bypass behind the old archives."
Robin stepped closer, holding the recovered scrap of administrative custody records up to the dim glow of her lantern. She traced a finger down the water-stained column of names.
"Your sector assignment?" Robin asked, her voice clipped. "In the winter maintenance log?"
"Block four-C," the engineer answered immediately, pointing to the text in her hand. "Sub-station wiring. We ran the auxiliary trunk lines behind the third-tier exhaust."
Robin turned to a second prisoner, a gaunt, frost-bitten man huddled behind a support beam. "Do you recognize him?"
"He worked the trunk lines," the second prisoner rasped, coughing into his frost-covered sleeve. "I carried his cable reels before they threw us both down into the dark."
Robin held her lantern closer, matching the faded ink stamps on the maintenance rosters against the physical identification patch sewn onto the engineer's tattered sleeve. "The sign-off code matches. He built the conduit framework he's talking about."
"We can't take everyone," Shanks said, looking over the huddled group in the cells. "Choose who we can realistically carry and keep moving."
Hongo knelt beside a prisoner shivering uncontrollably on the ice, checking the man's rapid, shallow pulse against the freezing ambient draft.
"If we pull him out into the open maintenance shaft right now, the thermal shock will stop his heart," Hongo said, glancing up at Shanks. "We have to wrap him in an insulated salvage blanket and take turns carrying him, or he stays behind where the air is still trapped."
"We take him," Giovanni rasped, stepping forward despite his aching ribs. "We didn't come down here to sort bodies."
Nearby, an inmate in a barred cell shook his head, pressing back into the shadows. "I'm a debtor from the West Blue. I have no records here. If the Marines catch me outside this cell, they'll skin me twice. Leave me."
They didn't force him. They left the unverified behind, lifting the shivering inmate into an insulated carry-wrap alongside an injured political dissident whose broken leg had been splinted with scrap metal. Robin quickly checked off the validated names on her slate, locking in the final count of eight survivors cleared for the ascent.
The engineer immediately stepped in to help organize the survivors, gesturing toward the narrow bulkhead hatch. "Get them inside the lower valve junction," the engineer instructed the other verified prisoners, pointing toward the dry, recessed maintenance alcove set just past the iron threshold. "Stack the crates to block the draft; we'll use this as our staging point for the ascent once the path is clear."
"This way," the engineer said, turning to lead the rescue team toward the frost-choked service hatch set deep into the rear bulkhead. "The maintenance spine runs straight up behind the frozen ducts. It hasn't been used since the automation refit, but the manual override is right here."
The engineer pointed to a rusted brass plate set into the lower casing. "Don't force the top. You have to trip the pneumatic release by grounding the secondary circuit."
Limejuice stepped up to the hatch, jamming the reinforced tip of his staff into the indicated contact seam. As the engineer manually cranked a rusted gear-nut to release the physical jammed latch, Limejuice channeled a sharp surge of electrical current through the circuit. With a heavy, pneumatic sigh, the rusted locks blew open, and the iron plate swung outward.
Before the group could secure the area, a low, guttural growl echoed from the dark frost-tunnels behind them.
Freezing Hell wolves.
Three massive, pale-furred beasts with frost-crusted manes and predatory eyes emerged from the shadows, charging silently across the ice toward the rear of the column.
Shanks didn't draw Gryphon. Turning instantly toward the charging pack, a sudden, crushing wave of Conqueror's Haki rolled off his frame. The invisible pressure slammed into the oncoming beasts. Their eyes rolled back, and all three wolves collapsed heavily onto the frozen deck, unconscious before their paws could slide another inch.
"Move!" Shanks commanded.
While Shanks held the rear, Robin and Hongo hurried the injured detainees straight through the newly opened hatch into the recessed staging alcove, ensuring the salvage-wrapped inmate was settled safely out of the direct draft. Giovanni stepped up to a blocked stone stair nearby where a collapsed masonry pillar choked the descent toward the lower transfer tier. Keeping his poisoned left arm tucked tight against his belt, Giovanni shifted Ace into his healthy right hand and released a sharp, controlled burst of cutting pressure that sheared through the fallen block and knocked the debris cleanly aside, clearing the path without damaging the load-bearing stone walls coated in frost.
Leaving the engineer to coordinate the staged evacuees inside the alcove, the team pressed onward along the descending maintenance trench, bypassing the frozen holding tiers until they reached the threshold of the Level 6 transfer antechamber.
Robin slipped into the shadows beside a reinforced observation window, peering through the glass. Inside the brightly lit security post, a senior custody supervisor stood actively sorting through stacks of transport manifests behind a thick security screen, while two armed guards flanked the reinforced door. Numbered Seastone restraint keys hung in plain sight from the supervisor's belt.
---
Find early chapters on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]