Chapter 1 - from Stalker: Valloilleen

Chapter 1 - escape

Section 01

The pain from her own scream filled Martta's soul. It wasn't like the pain from a cut that just hurt where the cut was. Nor was it like an allover pain, like a body ache from a case of the flu.
This pain was so deep and vicious that it hurt her to the deepest recess of her soul. It filled her soul like water filling a balloon. In this case, it was filling the balloon to the bursting point and the balloon was giving way just beginning to rupture.
Martta knew that if the torture did not stop her soul would explode from the pain and there would be nothing left of it but minuscule pieces. It had happened to her before. Every time it did, she did not know if they got all the pieces back together again or if they did it right. She could only believe that they did, so they could make sure it was truly all of her they were torturing completely and that no part of her had escaped her eternal torment in Hell.
Martta could feel the rupturing of her soul, She felt her soul starting to disintegrate into a fine mist. She thought to herself "at least I will get a little respite from the pain."
But, then she felt the mist reforming back into one piece. After she reformed she lay there gasping for air, crying from the pain. "Damn it," she cursed to herself, "only one torturer could pull off that move, Izabar. How did I get on Izabar's rotation again so soon?"
Martta looked up to see Izabar standing over her. His face held no emotion. He had just used the misting of her soul to get her attention and let her know that he was there.
Izabar was a mystery. He was not sentenced to Hell, nor was he a servant of Hell. One day he had just shown up.
No one had known what to do with him when he first arrived. Since there was no judgment against him, they could not torture and punish him. Since he had no infernal contract of employment, he could not be ordered around.
When he first arrived, he had just stood there, watching. Then, after a while, he started to wander around. He had wandered from one realm to another just watching the workings of Hell. It was the opinion of Hell's staff, he was just a lost tormented soul.
Eventually, Izabar stopped at the deepest part of the pits and stood there. Some thought he was just a new malformed part of the settings, until he picked up his first knife.
He showed a horrific understanding of torture and its limits. He showed understandings and techniques that terrified even the most experienced torturers, leaving most of them with nightmares. When he tortured, it was with a determination that was disconnected from all emotion.
Now he was torturing Martta again.

Section 02

The torturer that should have come to relieve Izabar had not shown up. This was nothing new to Izabar, so he started to leave to go to his next victim.
"I can't believe how you treat me. You just show up without calling first. You just do your 'business' and then leave with no after play or cuddling, how rude. Plus, you never buy me dinner or take me dancing" Martta said as she put on an exaggerated pouting face.
This made Izabar stop and look at her in disbelief.
"What is it? Am I not good enough for you? Don't I 'do it' for you anymore? You get to do anything you want with me. We do all that kinky stuff you want. I know it's not me. You seem to be OK. So it has to be something else, someone else." Martta looked in Izabar's eyes, enjoying that she had affected him in an unusual way that no one else had, if only for a moment.
Martta then gave a shocked and hurt look on her face as she accused Izabar, "It is someone else! Who is it? What does she do for you that I don't?"
Martta continued with mock anger, "If I ever find that bitch your cheating on me with I am going to scratch her eyes out." She looked at Izabar and blew him a kiss. This caused Izabar to do something he had never done since arriving in Hell. That was laugh.
"See you later lover," Martta teased as Izabar walked away shaking his head, "don't miss me too much when I'm gone".
Izabar stopped and teased her, "You are going to be on that table for quite some time. You're not going anywhere anytime soon. Get used to it. Make it your home. Put up some curtains. Throw down a few carpets," and then continued walking away chuckling.
As Izabar walked away Martta gave a final tease, "That's what you think," as she waved good bye to Izabar with her foot.

Section 03

Hell has two major problems that are not revealed to the living. The first is lack of talent. The second is lack of morale.
Despite what people may believe, there are very few people who have the talent and steadfastness to inflict pain on someone day in and day out for a prolonged period of time. The misconception is that there is an endless supply of such people.
The reality is there are actually not that many. Because of this, Hell has a shortage of quality tortures. With this shortage, Hell has to rotate the tortures between victims. Also, Hell has to use tortures that are not of as high a quality and professionalism as the others.
This touches on the second problem with Hell, morale.
People talk about an employer from Hell, when they mean a really bad employer. In Hell's case, the employer is literally Hell itself.
Hell is the poster child for an uncaring and incompetent system. The entities that put the system in place did not fully think about the ramifications of having eternal employees in those type of situations.
The three main contributors to the morale problem are 1) rewards, 2) penalties and 3) lack of change.
In Hell there are no real rewards for doing your job well. You cannot be promoted to Heaven or anything similar. If there are no rewards for outstanding performance, then no one is going to try to be outstanding.
As a result, the employees do just the bare minimum that they have to in order to avoid any disciplinary action. This causes a lack of innovation or new ideas because there is no reward to do so. This attitude is permeated throughout all of Hell, to all employees tortures, workers and bureaucrats alike.
The only way to punish a worker in Hell is to demote them down to a worse menial task. If you are already at the bottom, then there is nothing that can be done, except make you one of the damned and torture you for a while. However, in time, you will be reinstated back because of their lack of personnel.
Hell has also learned its lesson and will not ever again use "inmate" labor to help. As a result, there is no real punishment for an employee that doesn't do their job.
The last problem is lack of change. Once you are put doing a job in Hell, that is the only thing you will ever be doing, forever. There is no changing of jobs or cross training. That is all you will ever do. Nothing you do will ever change.
This, eventually, creates a complete lethargic view towards doing your job. Doing the same job day in and day out can make you either incredibly incompetent or legendary proficient. If you do the same thing long enough you become calloused to it, whether you are good at it or not.

Section 04

The lack of morale in the employees in Hell causes apathy. As a result, many employees do not always do their jobs as well as they should. This was one of the reasons that the torturer that was supposed to relieve Izabar was not there when he should have been.
The one thing that gave consolation to Martta, after a session of being tortured by Izabar, was the knowledge that Izabar's replacement never shows up. It would be a few days before the next torture would show. This normally gave Martta time to relax and recuperate. This time it would be different. This time Martta would act on her plan.
After the eight decades of torture, Martta had learned to recuperate faster than she let on. She laid there for several hours recuperating. Then she started acting.
Martta looked at the shackles on her wrists realizing she would have to do this carefully or her plan would fail. She brought both hands together, grasping the fist of the right hand in her left hand. She then yanked as hard as she could with her right arm, causing the shackles to sever her right hand at the wrist.
Martta screamed as though her soul was being torn apart, which it was. Normally others might have looked in to see what was going on. However, since Izabar had just been torturing her, everyone thought it was just their session continuing, totally ignoring her screams.
After the initial shock, the pain subsided just enough for Martta to regain some control of her thoughts and body. Using this control, she moved her arm to reconnect the wrist to the hand. But this time her hand was outside of the shackle.
Afterwards Martta rested, for about 15 minutes, long enough for her wrist to heal just enough so she could repeat the same process on her left hand. Martta then repeated the process on her left hand and then eventually both legs, one at a time.
Having freed her hands and feet from the shackles, Martta now had to work on freeing the rest of her body. Luckily it would not be so painful nor intense.
Martta grabbed the shackles and manipulated them out of the hooks that held them to the table she was strapped to. Once they were free, Martta pulled on one end until she had the cuff in her right hand. From there, she moved the cuff to the bolts holding the first strap.
Martta used the cuff as a wrench and undid the bolts holding the straps in, one at a time. She did this, over and over again, until all the straps holding her down were loose enough for her to wriggle free of the table. Once she was free from the table, she stood on her own two feet, one of the few times in nearly 80 years.

Section 05

After taking a few minutes standing and catching her breath, Martta started to walk around the table in order to exercise her leg muscles and get them use to walking, squatting and standing again. Once Martta got used to her legs again, she started on the next part of her escape plan.
Martta looked around the room and saw all the filth and mess. The room was in a constant state of mess for two reasons. The first was that the torturers were always adding to the mess by tossing their victims body parts away in random directions. The second reason is that no ever cleaned up the mess.
In the nearly 80 years Martta had been there, she had seen the room cleaned up only two times. Again the lack of moral, lethargy and apathy of the workers of Hell had their effect.
The torturing released all different body fluids in various sprays and leaks. Arterial blood sprays, urination and discarded bowels all littered the room . Cutting, beating and raping weren't the only tortures used. They used all sorts on her, electrical, fire, water, acid even biological and chemical. If it could be thought of, it was used.
Flesh wasn't the only thing they tortured. They also tortured her soul, emotions and memories. These too they tormented in various ways, discarding them when they were done.
Literally every part of Martta body, soul, memories and emotions were littering the floor. Because Hell itself regenerated all parts of the victim over time, the torturers could cut away any pieces of her, discarding them repeatedly.
Normally these cast off pieces would degenerate over time and the original would regenerate them back. It had been discovered that if you put two different pieces together it could keep the two pieces healthy, even though the pieces regenerated on the victim. Looking around, Martta guessed that there were enough different pieces of her lying around in various decaying states to have made over 20 copies of herself, which is where she had gotten the idea to make a double of herself.
Martta grabbed grab tools from the around the room and started prying up the flooring while digging in the piles of muck and dirt. She got various small bundles and put them on the table. Once done, Martta said the incantations and watched as the pieces merged until it formed an exact duplicate of her body, memories, emotions and soul.
She secured the double into place and then set about covering up what she had done. She told her double "I need you to hold out as long as you can. Only one torturer will know the difference between you and me and he just left and won't be back for months. In the end, they will sterilize this room and you with it. Your pain will end. If I succeed, mine never will".

Section 06

Heading out of the room, Martta walked with a false calm and certainty down the busy corridor. She hoped, that if she acted right, no one would stop her or delay her, she had done this before, but this time she was really weak because she had not consumed different parts of herself to revive her strength. She had used most of her life force to make her double.
However, Martta knew another way to heal.
Martta walked down the hall and opened one of the doors. She walked into the middle of the room, to where the victim was laying on the table. This room, like her own, had bits and pieces of the victim lying around. She collected some of the smaller pieces of the victim. They would be useful later.
Martta looked into the corner and saw the female torturer, Chantal, asleep in the corner. Chantal's victim was screaming from the pain of having part of his soul ripped from him and devoured.
It was in Chantal's stomach.
Torturers were not supposed to eat parts of the victim's soul. It was forbidden. It could cause the torturer to be put on the table themselves for a decade as punishment.
Chantal had developed an addiction to eating souls, just like a drug addict. She would always take a nap after each snack.
Martta knew this, because she had been Chantal's "snack" many times. People knew about Chantal's habit, but chose to ignore it as long as she was reasonable about it. If it ever came to light to certain supervisors, Chantal would be punished. Like an addict, Chantal could not stop and was deathly afraid she would be found out. Today, Martta was going to use that to her advantage.
Martta walked up to the table and looked down at the victim. The victim's scream was starting to quiet down.
Martta grabbed a ceremonial knife and started to carve out some of his flesh and soul. Then without hesitation she started to devour it.
Instantly Martta could feel the warmth inside herself as she regained some of her strength. This was the first time Martta had consumed part of someone else's soul. It felt so good that Martta lost control and wet herself. She could see why Chantal was so addicted to it.
The change in the victim's scream caused Chantal to stir from her sleep. She looked at Martta, starting to rise and grab a weapon.
Martta gave her a stern look and told her, "Do anything about it and I will tell them about your habit. In my stomach is the proof they need."
With this revelation, Chantal's face went a pale white and she dropped the weapon and sat back down.
"Go back to sleep and I will leave to your rest," Martta stated as she left the room. She knew Chantal would never raise the alarm, for fear of her own fate.

Section 07

Chantal was not the only "snacker" that Martta knew about. There were over 100 and they went by various group names. Martta had not experienced them all, but she knew about them, thanks to Elana.
Elana was Hell's gossip torturer. Martta was convinced Elana was physically incapable of keeping her mouth shut and was not able to keep a secret. Elana's constant prattling often drove Marta to violence, in an attempt to shut her up. It had driven many to try suicide, which in Hell was impossible.
Elana came off as the large, overweight and talkative woman that worked for human resources, who was always trying to make friends with you. Even while she was sticking a knife in your back. In Elana's case it was a real knife, not a figurative one. Also it wasn't in your back. It was in all areas of your body. The only torture considered worse than Elana's unending babbling was what Izabar did.
Martta, unlike others, believed that Elana was actually not incompetent at her job, but instead was legendary like Izabar. She just used different tools to break people.
While Elana would never shut up, she was also an unending fountain of knowledge if you could get her talking on the right topics. It was through Elana's constant talking that Martta had learned so much about the secrets of Hell and Heaven.
One of the most important things Martta learned about was the side effects of "snacking". Eating the pieces of other's souls and bodies would corrupt and dilute hers for the short term. This would help her out as it would make tracking her more difficult, because as she diluted and mixed with others, so would any scent or evidence or hers that could be tracked.
The effects would only last in Hell, once she was back on Earth she was on her own. But, Martta had learned other methods to fool any trackers on Earth.
The problem with this method was that eating too many pieces of others could cause insanity. Martta would have to strike the right balance between not being able to be tracked and being able to move and function without going insane. She would need some multiple personalities later on to get her into certain areas of Hell.
Martta moved to the next room on her list. She would need many pieces of many victims to get healed. Every piece made her feel better and restored some more of her health body, mind and soul. After about 20 victims, she was starting to feel great, better than she had in a long time.
She remembered, if she ate too much she would start to glow and that glow would stand out like a firefly in the darkness. Even though it was dreadfully difficult, she started to consume smaller and smaller pieces. After enough victims, she knew it was time for the next step, which was irrevocable.
Martta stepped outside of the compound and into the rest of Hell itself.

Section 08

Leaving the compound, she had been tortured in since getting to Hell, was a new sensation for Martta. She had been in the compound for almost 3 times longer than she had been alive on Earth. It was almost like leaving home for the first time.
Even though Elana's stories had prepared Martta for what she saw, the sight almost drove Martta insane. The tangled mess of Hell was mind staggering. It was as if all of humanity had been put in different cities of all variety, shape, organization and disrepair. All of the designs and layouts had been decided by corrupt comities whose decisions had been changed as needed as building and upkeep progressed.
Through it all, the enforcers could be seen going about their daily job. The enforcers were Hell's police force. Like any police force they had their good, their bad, and those with different levels of dedication and competency. While a lone enforcer was no problem, the enforcers could swarm you. Martta saw swarms happening at different locations. Their results were always messy and viscous.
Martta knew, if her plans were going to succeed, she would not only have to make no major mistakes but she would also have to be able to adapt to any situation that may arise.
There were too many variables with the people in Hell. While many in Hell were apathetic, like those in any major city, most were looking to improve their situation by any means. This meant everyone was a potential snitch, mugger or murder. She would have to act carefully to not bring any attention to herself. But first she needed to get certain things she would need. The problem was she didn't own any of them.
Martta knew of one method she could use over and over again if she used it wisely, lateral promotion. Lateral promotion was Hell's street slang for a mugging. Blatant violent crimes normally drew the attention of the enforcers. But, like most police forces, if you could make it look like a random mugging then they would easily lose interest.
The first thing Martta needed was clothing to blend in. After she got a change of clothes she started to get other tools and equipment she would need. She would change identities, looks and locations frequently. She stayed in one place only as long as necessary to get what she needed and then moved on.
Martta would still occasionally need more pieces of people and their soul, but she could take them more covertly and in almost undetectable amounts now. In time, she was able to get more specialized supplies that made what she was doing faster.
Martta was no longer street mugging people. Now she was drugging them in their homes so they woke up and had no idea what she had done. Along with parts of their body and souls, she was also stealing information from them to make breaking into other places easier.
When Martta was ready, she headed for the information vaults.

Section 09

Hell's information vaults were impressive. They were the one of the few things in Hell that were kept up to date and in good repair. They were also the largest things Martta had ever seen. Like their counterparts in Heaven, they contained all known and recorded information. They did not know everything at every time, just those things that had been recorded or written down.
Most of the information in the vaults came from the angels and devils on everyone's shoulders. What people didn't know is that both the angel and the devil on their shoulder constantly watched them, read their mind and filed reports on what the person did, felt and thought.
The rest of the information and items in the vaults came from other records, such as status reports, case studies, observation reports, procedure documents and others, including evidence and samples of body tissue and souls.
The vaults had been setup beautifully when they were made. They were designed like a library and were originally very organized. However, as time passed, they outgrew the original buildings and organizational structure and had to be expanded. They expanded by adding more buildings, more categories in the databases and more numbers to the length of the file names. This caused different vaults to have different categories and different filename lengths.
This method was working OK for a while, as you could tell the age of the files in the vault by looking at how old the vault looked and you could guess what categories and filenames might be in it. But then, some bureaucrat decided to update and standardize the entire system all out once. That is when its organization went straight to hell.
About halfway through the reorganization and upgrade process, the project was abandoned. As a result, to find something now was incredibly complex and time consuming. If you needed several files that were scattered among different buildings, you could spend an entire lifetime looking for what you wanted. The easiest way to find the files you needed was to check the index vaults. Thanks to Elana's teaching, Martta was able to find the index vaults she needed relatively quickly.
Earlier in their history, the vaults were well organized. The few people that went to them could find what they needed quickly and leave. The more complex the vaults became, the more people wandered around them lost. Now there were so many people in the vaults, that it over taxed the security systems. That resulted in the decision to just check access at the vault entrances, exits and certain restricted areas. Otherwise security would just do random spot checks.
Some of the information Martta needed was in restricted areas. Illusion and destruction incantations were forbidden in the vaults. Any violation would be quickly and severely dealt with. In order to gain access Martta would have to impersonate people with the access she needed. To do this, she would get the things from people she would need in order to disguise herself as them and to access what she needed.

Section 10

Martta spent most of her time in the fugitives sections. This was a duplicate of all the information on an escapee and their current status. She needed this information in order to fulfill her mission, which was to track down all of the Hell escapees that were on Earth and send them back to Hell where they belonged.
Martta studied each escapee's history, their mannerism, their habits and what they had accomplished. She studied their methods, their skill sets and what they had done to be sent to Hell. She was building working profiles for them. In short she studied everything about them.
Any photos of the escapees from their previous life would be almost useless. When an escapee arrived on Earth they had to reform their bodies and they could reform them to look how they wanted. Fortunately, this was the only time an escapee could decide what they looked like. Once they chose, they were stuck with the shape and look they took, when they first arrived. They could not change their looks at will, so this would make tracking them down easier, thank fully.
In order to survive long enough on Earth to do her job, Martta would also need to know similar information about the Revenants and the searchers so she could either avoid them or send them back to Hell.
Each time there was a break out from Hell a Revenant would be called up from the damned souls. The Revenant would be given the task of hunting down that breakout's escapees and sending them back to Hell.
Because Hell would not make the job easy, the employer was Hell after all, the Revenant would not be given any information on the escapee, not even their name. The Revenant would have to find out everything on their own. The only information a Revenant had on the escapees was the escapee's name, that was tattooed on the Revenant's skin. Unfortunately, the name was written in an ancient demonic symbol language that the Revenant did not understand. When a Revenant succeed and sent an escapee back to Hell, that escapee's tattoo would painfully burn itself off Revenant's skin.
In certain cases, a Revenant would become a searcher. The most common way was that the escapees were in a place that they could not be reached. If the escapee was unreachable, the revenant would have to wait around until they had access to the escapee.
One particular escapee had been put in a block of cement that was then dropped to the bottom of the Mariana trench, another one was at the bottom of the kola superdeep borehole. Hell knew their locations because any time an escapee was killed but not sent back to Hell, Hell receives a signal that tells them where that event happened.
Martta also had to make sure not to set off any alarms, because the vaults were the most guarded locations in Hell. She could only use limited incantations in the library because the wrong incantations would set off alarms. As long as you didn't break one of the rules you were left alone.

Section 11

Martta would use duplication incantations to take the information back to her place in order to memorize all the information. Duplication incantations were allowed in the vaults and you could remove the duplicates. Any attempts to remove the originals resulted in a swift immediate and always brutal response from the guardians.
A common earth misconception about incantations is that incantations will work anywhere. This is not the case. Incantations only works in its own realm, unless it is authorized by the Grand Compact. This is why mortals can be given incantations from Hell but they will not work on Earth because they will only work in their own realm. This is true of all realms Hell, Heaven, Earth and Purgatory.
The regular tattoo method worked for the Revenants, because they were sponsored by Hell and it was allowed under the Grand Compact. It would not work for Martta, because she was not sponsored, and she would have to use another way to keep the escapee's information with her when she reached Earth.
Martta would have to brand the tattoos into her soul. That way she would be able to know when she succeeded in sending an escapee back and she would not have any distinguishing marks that could be seen.
In order to have a tattoo seared into your soul, you have to use another piece of soul to do the tattoo with. In her case Martta would use pieces of the escapee's souls for her ink. To avoid the no removing items from the vault safeguard, she would have to duplicate the pieces of souls she would use. Even then, she still couldn't remove the copied pieces unless they were covered up by her soul. This meant she had to perform the tattooing of herself in the library.
The tattoo process caused several problems to be dealt with. First, the soul tattooing process was forbiden in Hell so she had to find out how to do it and to master it. Through trial and error she was able to discover the information she needed and practiced in areas that were not monitored that well. After mastering it on others, thanks to gratuitous "lateral promotions", she was able to start on herself.
The second problem she had to overcome was that it was incredibly painful to get a soul tattoo, about 100 times more painful than a regular tattoo. This would always cause severe screams of pain. To solve this this she used a silence incantation in one of the private research rooms. Because the vaults were libraries, a silence incantation was one of the allowed incantations.
The third problem was that the act of making a soul tattoo released a lot of energy, enough to make a large explosion. In order to deal with this she used a cleaning incantation and placed the energy into containers that she would use latter when it was time to leave Hell.
Once Martta had branded all the tattoos, each breakout had its own color and layer; she was ready to move on to the next part of her plan.

Section 12

The goal of Martta's plan was to return all the escapees to Hell. But, if she didn't do away with their various means of escape before she left, then the escapes would just continue in a never ending cycle. She was going to put an end to the cycle once and for all.
In order to do that Martta made additional trips to the archives and various locations in Hell to see how the escapes had happened. She researched what had been done, since their escape, to seal up the holes in the security and what was needed to seal the escape routes forever.
This required more resources that she could manage on her own. In order to use the resources she needed, Martta setup various networks. Some were trade networks, some were information networks and some were criminal networks.
Martta had to set up the networks quickly but without attracting attention. Some she would successfully bargain the transfer of ownership. Some she lost to the enforcers and some she lost to other criminal organizations. She was creating networks almost as quickly as she lost them.
Through it all, Martta had to evade the enforcers. Several times she was almost caught. After one such time she decided to take steps to help prevent this.
Martta made a small secure hideaway apartment that she would be able to lock herself in for several months and not be detected. It was in a remote, abandoned and unvisited area of Hell so she knew she would not be disturbed. There she detoxed all of the pieces of others from herself and made herself purely just herself.
After this was done, Martta then took samples of herself and her soul and put them in small containers that she could dispense onto others with. She had learned that the enforcers would follow the trail with the strongest purity of her scent. With these vials she would be able to put the enforcers tracking down someone else and believe it was her. After she had sufficient vials of pure Martta, she started to dilute herself again.
The plan worked well. In one case she dripped some onto an unknowing vault guardian when she was being swarmed. The results were spectacular. The enforcers started to swarm the guardian who wasn't too happy about it and that guardian called in other guardians for backup. This led to a viscous cycle of inbound enforcers and guardians. By the time a higher bureaucratic authority stepped in all the buildings in a seven mile radius had been demolished.
Martta was able to do this so many times that there was now a street slang name for such events. They became known as "Martta's Traveling Circus". They were fun to watch, but not fun to be a part of.
Eventually Martta learned to use the traveling circuses to her advantages. She could use them to clear the enforcers out of areas she needed access to. She could also sell her vials for difficult to get resources.

Section 13

As time went on, the enforcers and bureaucracy kept increasing their efforts and methods to catch Martta. Each time they were getting closer to succeeding. Her escapes were becoming narrower and more difficult.
As a result Martta's underground fame grew. She became an icon of resistance to the system.
It even became fashionable, in some circles, to be the one that set off a "Martta's Traveling Circus". They even started to become useful tools for someone to wreak havoc on an enemy. As a result the price for Martta's vials went astronomical. She learned to sell them for influence. In one rare case, she was able to influence the list and order of candidates for her own potential revenant!
Over time, Martta had found every means of escape from Hell, not just the ones used by past escapees but all future ones as well. Once she had this data, Martta started to formulate plans for the destruction of all the possible escape routes. It took years to put everything in place.
During this time it became an ongoing struggle to stay out of the hands of the enforcers. With so many resources being focused on her, Martta decided it was time to make the enforcers deal with other issues.
The enforcers' main weakness and main strength was communication. They could communicate with each other almost instantly. However, the information they had was too vast and the bureaucracy members suffered from the apathy of Hell. The bureaucracy just sent whatever data to whatever enforcer they felt at the time.
This was complicated by the fact that the data lines used were a total chaotic mess. When they had first been installed they were efficient. Now it was a miracle if the right data got to the correct enforcer. As a result, the enforcers would most of the time only catch someone if they stumbled on that person doing something wrong.
Martta decided to use this to her advantage. She set multiple charges on the data nodes and blew them all in a one week event that came to be known as "Martta's Kiss". The resulting loss of data prevented the enforcers from receiving updates, until the data nodes and lines were rebuilt. As a result, a lot of illegal activity blossomed.
Soon enough the data nodes and lines were redesigned and rebuilt. The much needed upgrades and redesigns had happened and not too soon for Martta.
In fixing the problem the bureaucracy had fixed the communication problems between them and the enforcers. For a very small while, the dragnet around Martta slowly tightened almost catching her.
Then it happened. With the improvement, the enforcers were able to see all the criminals and started to detain them. The problem is they saw all the warrants for all the criminals, all at once. An enforcer couldn't go a single block without having to perform an apprehension. The enforcers became overwhelmed and couldn't respond fast enough. With the enforcers attention now back on others, Martta was able to continue.

Section 14

With the enforcers in chaos, Martta was able to move freely once again. She was able to go into places she otherwise couldn't. She was able to meet clandestine with the designers and builders of Hell. Because of her notoriety, they were happy to help her.
With their help, Martta was able to find all of the possible escape routes and plan how to either fix them or force them to be fixed. For the first time in eons, the designers and builders were happy to have someone willing to fix the flaws that they themselves were not allowed to fix. They also helped because they couldn't stand the current bureaucracy and the way it worked, so any problems they were able to cause it was just fine with them.
After Martta shared her plans and what she wanted to do, Martta practically had her own army making the devices she needed and planting them where they would go. All of the devices were marked with all evidence pointing to Martta alone. To her surprise, even some of the guardians helped her knowingly. They must have still been pissed at the enforcers for the first "Martta's Traveling Circus".
As her final days in Hell neared, Martta reviewed all the data she had learned.
The single largest capacity storage device ever created in existence was the human soul. Because she had the memories of over a thousand escapes she needed to keep, she had used parts of their souls when she made her soul tattoos. This would store all the information about the escapee in that escapee's tattoo in Martta's soul. She needed to do this because once she left Hell the only thing she could take with her was her soul, since she wasn't sponsored by Hell.
In the last few weeks before she was to leave, Martta went on a tour of Hell. This one was unlike any other tour of Hell. Those who were helping her showed her parts of Hell that only privileged few had or would ever see. They showed Martta all the wonders and splendors of Hell in a way only an honored guest would be shown and treated. Some of them even showed her the underground betting pools that had been established, based on what she was doing and what she planned to do.
The last few days Martta spent in quiet contemplation and final preparation. She knew, no matter what, she would never see the outside of the torture compound she had been in ever again. If she was caught she would be returned to her table. If she succeeded her fate would still be the same. That was one of the reasons that she decided to do this.
There was literally no penalty for Martta and Hell was not doing enough to fix the problem. Because of this, Martta, like a worker who becomes frustrated with the system, decided "Fuck it, if no one else will fix the problem, then I will".
On the final day, she started to set off the devices. That day is known as "Hell's Rape" because of what Martta's devices did to Hell on it.

Section 15

Right before she set off the last device Martta began the process of going to Earth.
The process was incredibly dangerous and taxing on her. Ordinarily the process was quick, painless and direct. Since Martta was not sponsored by Hell it was none of those. Because she was taking the last possible escape route, it was even worse. This one no one had ever successfully completed before. The difficulty was that great.
The pain would have been soul breaking and ended her plan right then if she had not endured so much at Izabar's hands. Others had tried. When their soul broke into pieces, those pieces slowly drifted back down to Hell. In Martta's case she was able to retain control and keep going. It was one of the few times Martta was actually grateful for all the torture she had endured.
The path was a convoluted mess that would go up one turn and back towards Hell the next. Many obstacles had to be overcome or gone around. Some were impassable and new routes had to be taken. Some worked and some didn't. When they didn't, Martta would have to return to a previous point re-enduring all of the hardships on the way back. Time and again, she hit dead ends and had to either go back or try new paths.
The dangers were not only the physical environment. There were also those who lived there. Some were passive, others weren't. In the space between the worlds there lived creatures. Some were majestic, some were dark and malevolent and some were everything else in between.
Martta would find new enemies and new allies. Some would try to kill her, some would help her and some just wanted to talk to a stranger and hear stories from other places in exchange for telling her about what they knew.
Her supplies ran out only 25% of the way. The next 50% she made through trade, barter, theft and violence. The journey tested her in ways she had never thought of. Martta needed all the resourcefulness, determination and diplomacy she could muster and then more. Somehow she kept making her way. The last 25% of the journey she made on her pure determination only. When she ran out of tools to dig her way, she used her bare hands.
Most people never saw the variety and wonder of the space between, because they were always expedited to their destination. The things Martta encountered in her journey were beyond description and would leave their memory on her forever.
Finally, Martta began to reach the curtain. This was the barrier that separated the realms. As Martta got nearer she began to fell a sensation she did not recognize. It was then she noticed, the closer she got the less tangible her body was becoming. She then began to realize it was the last protection of the realms. It kept the beings of one realm from going to another realm.
The curtain was striping her of her Hell flesh.

Section 16

The curtain would leave only her soul once she passed through it. This was why spirits wandered the Earth unable to do anything but advise, because they had been stripped of their flesh. Martta realized this was why angels and devils were almost never seen in the flesh, because their flesh had been stripped from them and only their soul still existed. It was the ultimate defense against invasion from other realms. No one could invade another realm if they couldn't bring their flesh, weapons, amour and incantations with them.
Even though it was just her soul traveling, Martta still had to finish navigating to Earth. The misconception that a person's soul form is not physical so it could just quickly travel through any material in the way and nothing could stop it was wrong.
Things that are physical may also have soul forms. Beliefs that planets were alive and have a soul were correct. When someone claimed a storm was alive, that a mountain had a soul and was angry, they were correct more times than not. All the terrain in between was alive and had souls so even in soul form Martta still had to navigate through the various terrain and its hazards.
Like any border between countries, the curtain had cities and protector patrols. These patrols specialized in hunting down unauthorized people. However, like regular cities, there were smugglers and other ways to cross if you were brave or stupid enough to try.
The patrols didn't stop at the curtain. They went on for a significant distance on either side of the border. She learned to defeat the ones she could and avoid the ones she couldn't. The hiding and surprise attacking helped to hone her already considerable stalking skills.
Once Martta got past the border area on both the Hell side and then the Earth side she had to go through the between space from the curtain to the Earth. Like the between space for Hell there was grandeur and variety in the terrain and what resided there. She saw ancient societies that had been lost and new creatures that were evolving and being brought to life before her very eyes.
This part of her journey taught her to be more of a strategic thinker instead of just using brutal straightforward soldier tactics. It tested her creativity, patience and adaptability.
Martta greatly expanded her researcher and scientist skills. She had to learn to use things in new ways and to be creative in getting things she needed. The most important lesson she learned is what to do when a plan failed and how to learn from it or adapt the plan as it fell apart around her.
Martta had spent 2 years traveling between the curtain and Earth almost twice the one year between the curtain and Hell. Those three years traveling plus plus the twelve years in running loose in Hell made it 15 years from the time she escaped from the torture table until she arrived.
At last she was finally on Earth.