“Even if we wait here forever for someone to save us, all we're gonna get better at is Monopoly. You used to say that with a laugh.” - 脱獄 Datsugoku (song by Neru)
Ace of Spades is a project created by Maerichii in June 2025. The story features modern dystopian aesthetics and is set in early 21st-century Russia.
After escaping near death, Lukas Orlov gains the ability to predict time and fate, which turns into an advantage to fight against the forces of a powerful and corrupt correctional facility. Under the codename ‘ACE’, he single-handedly establishes a rebellion that becomes a threat to his jailhouse while he gambles wth his life to discover the nature of his ability.
Genre: Action, Mystery, Supernatural
Date Created: June 2025
Status: WORK IN PROGRESS
Monopoly Hartlovka wins the seat of prime minister, after having manipulated minds and influenced the entire political system with his wealth, to pursue his goal of securing the entire country and strengthening its systems through discipline on the condemned. He established a vast correctional facility called C-C.O.R.D (Criminal Consequence and Offense Retribution Department) located in a discrete area of the capital, where every one of the country’s prisoners are being tortured, or for those lucky, used as test subjects to various experiments, which involved an accused fortune teller, Lukas Orlov, who managed to escape after being experimented by multiple drugs. After being taken in by Hartlovka’s secretary, Barok, Lukas discovers that his left eye altered and gained the ability to ‘read a person’s early death’ at the cost of his vision—calling this ‘Fortuna’.
Using Fortuna and Barok’s collection of stolen weapons, Lukas was able to kill Hartlovka’s subordinates under the identity of an unidentified vigilante called ‘ACE’ in hopes to threaten his authority. He establishes a rebellion syndicate called ‘The Dzhokers’ after recruiting survivors Kieran Tabachnik, a quack neurosurgeon and a rejected cybersecurity specialist with color blindness, Stella Miriam. Another person who possesses Fortuna is a physically skilled forensics officer called Marina, who later reveals herself to be the assailant of Hartlovka’s political rivals and his daughter. She was the only person whose fate cannot be read by Fortuna, and it was her DNA that was used on Lukas during his prior experiment—proving that Lukas was supposedly the only successful experiment among all the prisoners.
Despite their demented relationship, Lukas manages to alter Marina’s perspective and recruit her into joining the Dzhokers, to which she reluctantly agrees. Their next action was to infiltrate the facility’s administration building and assassinate Hartlovka in order to release the prisoners. Marina eventually reveals the poisonous injector implanted around her brain (with a remote control owned by her father) that would kill her when she disobeys her father’s commands or passes the deadline of her mission, which was to hunt for Lukas. Barok suddenly offers Lukas a contract in exchange for freedom and a large sum of cash if he agrees to surrender himself for the continuation of the experiment and betray his group. When Lukas declines, he is betrayed and taken hostage after being knocked out by Marina. Lukas, Kieran, and Stella find themselves imprisoned and Hartlovka forces them to escape near deaths before the time limit.
To test their resistance against the fatal drugs injected into them, Kieran must perform surgery on himself, Stella has to decipher a bomb without a manual while being intoxicated, and Lukas has to shoot the criminals among a group of prisoners before one of them with a loaded gun shoots him. When the three successfully fled albeit severely wounded, with Lukas losing his left eye, Hartlovka makes them decide whether to rescue their traitor, Marina from drowning and getting electrocuted, or let her die in exchange of his own life, merely to test their sanity. The group save Marina, only for the four of them to be imprisoned once more—concluding Hartlovka’s experiment to be a success. Barok explains to them that Hartlovka has been seeking to create a drug that resists insanity at all cost, and he claims that the reason behind his betrayal was for their sake. Marina offers sacrificing herself to kill her father as an apology, much to the group’s refusal.
The other members of the Dzhokers rescue the group, but Lukas insists on chasing after Hartlovka’s head. Since Kieran and Stella are terribly weakened, Marina joins Lukas. They then face Barok, who turned out to be a member of the Lovli Family that possesses the supernatural trait of Fortuna and Marina’s uncle. He reveals that Hartlovka had been his abilities to manipulate his rivals and the country’s systems since Marina’s abilities have become limited since her surgery—only to obtain the deactivator for Marina’s injector. Confident for having fooled Hartlovka, Barok exposes confidential codes in order for them to progress before he gets shot by the security. Hartlovka is killed and the C-C.O.R.D suspends as the Dzhokers disbands. The prisoners are sent back to the capital and the criminals face proper trials.
From Hartlovka’s deceit, Marina’s injector suddenly activates and began shooting people senselessly during her recorded interrogation in a live broadcast, which Kieran deduces that the injector contained a mind-altering drug as one of the abandoned facility’s former experiments. Lukas is forced to shoot Marina and the capital rejoices in the end of the corrupted Hartlovka legacy. The story leaves Lukas permanently distraught, Kieran confined in a mental hospital, and Stella emotionally scarred by her beloved cousin’s death—which they all claim that dying seemed more peaceful than living through the traumas they witnessed.
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