Prisoner 52 (29 page)

Day 54

The anchors withdrew from their fixtures in the rock and the airjets hissed loud into the echoing silence of the shaft and bore them upward through its heights, the light of the
glowlamps pushing at the shadows around them. They braced the feet of their suits against the walls as their ascents petered out and triggered the anchoring tethers once again. The spikes drove into the stone and they remained where they had climbed to. Thus they had made their way up and thus continued to do so.

"I wonder what is your objective." Master Control said over the broadcast systems arrayed throughout the railway tunnel below and the shaft around them. "I wonder what is your imagined purpose.

They gave him no answer, but propelled free of their leverage and regained it again some meters above. Tezac referenced their location with that on the map displayed across his visor's viewscreen and tried to align it with what he saw above and below him. He could see through the twilight the station hatch to be nearing overhead as it did on the map and told Leargam so, but the old man only grunted his assent.

"What can you seek to gain from my deactivation, Enforcer Hotchkins?" Master Control went on. "Records indicate that you have no known affiliations with any intra-population criminal enterprise; your psychological profile indicates an overwhelming disinterst in compensation and resistance to attempts at outright bribery and other forms of corruption. Why do you move against me, and against the safety of this facility? Safety is all, Enforcer Hotchkins, as you well know."

A few lunges more and they rested before the doors that ought to have opened for any disembarking from the railcars lifted through the shaft by their repulsor modules. Tezac raised the autocannons linked to the arms of his suit and they set to cycling in a high whine before barking out the bullets in a burst of heat and metal and tore the interlocking gate away from its fixtures as so many bits of metal and caging. He let go his feet again and activated the airjets to that he plowed upward through what remained and into the air of the control station beyond.

He came down hard onto the breadth of a causeway that sailed over and under and amidst a vast orbicular chamber of white polymer and
the hunderds of processor clusters and memory cores which erupted from the walls as so many stalacites of fiberoptics and metal, the circuitry and wiring that joined them together creating an interminable skein of cyber-consciousness. He followed the array back to its source in the great pyramid of the same and which hung from the ceiling like the remnant of a bygone idol that modern understanding cannot begin to know the truth of. This at its point interlinked with the sarcophagal TechWomb that lay at the heart of everything and at the end of the walkway and beneath it the vats which kept the mind of its occupant awash in the chemical concoctions of ultimate logic, of emotional oblivion.

"Now you behold me, Enforcer." Master Control said and his voice resounded against itself in the heights of the chamber. "I am that I am."

"What the hells is he talking about?" Leargam said.

"Come on." Tezac said and started down the bridge before them.

"What will you do with me? I do not wish to be deactivated."

"Release all prisoners. D
eactivate all defenses." He said. "All sectors, all towers. Transfer override authority to Tezac Hotchkins, invalidate all other override codes."

"I cannot do this, Enforcer. It is in controversion to Arbitronix law and its mission."

"Then I'll do it myself." Tezac said and levelled the autocannons at the obelisk above their heads, looming massive like some alien technological horror.

"Please." Master Control said. "You will kill me."

"Tezac," The old man said. "Machines don't say that."

"I know." He said. "Master Control: comply."

"I cannot. My logic cannot be refuted to do so. This course of action is senseless. It can benefit no one; not even yourselves."

"Then goodbye, Master Control."

"Enforcer."

"Tezac."

The autocannons spun and unloaded their shells into the logos-pyramid and they sank into its structure as the sky might have fallen onto the glorious monuments of ancient peoples, disappeared beneath its silicon surface with stuttering jolts of electricity. Its lights went dark and with a loud drone, a confused warble, and the cables above and around it struck by stray bullets or those that had passed through the construct fell like dead serpents through the air.

             
Its power deprived, the womb sagged free of its restraints and the membrane of its cocoon fell open under the weight of the pale desiccated corpse of the man who had been within and which tumbled out onto the platform. His limbs too frail for use, his eyes too small to see, and his flesh a playground for the intravenous tubes that yet pierced him. They looked upon his head, cocked crazily where it was held still by the cranial mount of the broken pyramid above. His tongue splayed black from black teeth and which appeared to wobble with him as he swayed by the wires plugged beneath his skin.

"You still think machines don't say kill?" Tezac said.

"I didn't know."

"Nobody does."

The chamber became in that moment as black as the night that drew over the skies of that planet, when its moons were shrouded by storms, and was the next cast by the emergency lighting that activated then in a dull crimson the color he imagined hell to hold. Indeed he wondered if he had not unleashed hell upon Cocytus, hell upon hell. But then they heard the sirens, and he was sure of it.

Day 54

"You're a real bright one, inmate." The captain said. "They should let you keep that uniform, you know. You could be our pet in population."

"Quiet." Sejanus said and the panel they were entwined beside chimed and the doors behind him thrummed open.

"Warning," A woman said and the lights within the lift shut down with a loud clack and came up again a moment more in the dim red of emergency. "Warning. Riot in progress. Warning. Riots in progress. Affected areas: Tower 1; Tower 2; Tower 3..."

The voice went on as the Enforcers looked up into the crimson glow in stupefaction and Sejanus fired the machine pistol in a burst across the front rank. The bullets stuttered out of the barrel and tore into the men before him and into the men who were in turn behind them. Sejanus compressed his grip round the captain's windpipe and the exo-suit crushed it as he would a can and he kicked him forward through the air and knocked those who were there to the floor. Then he was off, bounding down the hall under the hail of sporadic gunfire and then blind down some unknown corridor out of their line of fire.

Day 54

The hiss of the suits' airjets began to subside until at length it was only the pound and whir of their servo-motors that filled the echoing silence of the railway network and their
glowlamps peeled away the dark which cloaked the containment gate that had fallen into place across the access shaft of the isolation and specialized containment sublevels. They drew to a stop before the blast doors and the stomp of their suits settled into quiet upon the earth.

"No concussion mine in the universe could get past this." Leargam said.

"Is there another way around?"

"Always is." The old man said and sighed. "But we'll have to ditch these suits; be at the mercy of whatever's on the other side."

"Not much choice about it." Tezac said and disengaged the environmental seal of the powered armor and began its disembarkation routines.

They
left their impermeable shells and entered into the cold shades of the underbelly of Cocytus's sole penal installation. They undocked their rifles and their helmets from the stowaway compartments at the rear of the inert suits that squatted now like obscene bionic apes in the darkness and Tezac activated the light of his helmet. Leargam left himself to the darkness that existed for all save him.

"Up this way." The old man said and made for the edge of the railway platform to their right, climbed up onto it.

Tezac followed and they came to the only doorway there presented upon the small landing and over it the sealed bulk of another emergency barrier, though a fraction the size of the last and no larger than they. They looked between themselves and Tezac approached the barrier and aligned the muzzle of his rifle with the interlocking seam between its doors. He depressed the key beside the grip and the pneumatic ram pistoned forth from its tube beneath the four barrels of the rifle and wedged itself between the teeth.

He commenced to lever the air into the gas cylinder and then pulled the trigger that would otherwise fire the weapon. Instead there came a mechanical jolt and ring that passed through the driving bolt of the ram and its head split where it had penetrated between the doors and divided them a finger's length from one another. Thus, little by little, he forced open the emergency barrier so that sidelong his great bulk might squirm through. He released the catch on the lever and
the gas filtered out of the cylinder in a loud, sharp hiss and the driving piston retracted its arms and withdrew into its slot beneath the barrel of the rifle.

"I guess you didn't want to be rude." Leargam said.

"I don't count it prudent not to knock." Tezac said.

A
figure emerged from the shadows left by the bloody emergency lighting in the corridor beyond and planted its boots square upon Tezac's breastplate. The man to whom they belonged followed after them and thus knocked the big man from his feet and off of the platform, both tumbling into the railway tunnel below.

"You fire and he dies." The man said and Leargam moved to the edge of the landing and looked out over at him, astride Tezac with a service knife at his throat.

"You've got an exo-suit, but you're no Enforcer." The old man said. "Who are you?"

"I killed an Enforcer, and I took his." He said. "My name's not important."

"Sejanus?" Tezac said.

"What
are you doing down here?" He said at length.

"Take that knife away and I might get around to telling you."

The blade remained pressed against his skin and the rasp and wheeze of Sejanus's breathing apparatus filled the silence. Then his eyes played across the reflective visor of Tezac's helmet and he withdrew from him. Tezac got to his feet and motioned for Leargam to lower the muzzle of his rifle, but the old man kept his weapon levelled at the inmate. A second glance and he relented.

"I could ask you the same question.
" Tezac said.

"Escaping." Sejanus said. "
Now answer mine."

"Escaping."

"Escaping?" He said and gave him a look. "From what?"

"We don't have time to explain." Leargam said from atop the railway platform. "We've got to get moving, Tezac."

"The access shaft to the surface is that way." Sejanus said and pointed with his thumb down the length of tunnel that led away from the emergency blastdoors.

"We're not going to the surface." Tezac said.

"I just came from there." He said and glanced at the door the two had breached, nodded slightly to it. "You don't want to go that way."

"Whatever is happening in sublevel isolation is happening everywhere else too."

"Dipshit here blew up the MCU." Leargam said. "The whole complex is rioting."

"Good luck then." Sejanus said and pushed past Tezac and made away down the tunnel for where he imagined the access shaft to be, hidden within its shadow and cold. "Whether or not you listen doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"Sejanus," He called after him. "Whatever you're fixed on doing, it won't work. Inmate or Enforcer, somebody's bullet is going to wind up in your skull. Or worse."

"Worse?" The
soldier said and stopped ahead and turned about to face them.

"He told you," Tezac said and pointed with his head at Leargam. "We don't have time to do this. But the only way off this rock, is through that door. You can come with us – or do Man proud when you die."

"One death is as good as another." He said and went back to where the old man stood upon the platform and leapt up to stand beside him. "This one will just be slow, and painful, for both of you."

"You picked up a real nutbag," Leargam said. "You know that
, Tezac?"

"I've got a habit." The big man said and mounted to the landing and started for the fissure of black he had made in the doorway. "Come on."

Tezac passed through the opening foremost, turning aside his massive profile and slipping through the teeth of the doors, and Sejanus and Leargam walked through one after the other. They passed into a short corridor and their flashlights cut through the crimson dusk and fell onto the pair of doors inset upon the close walls, sealed as that which led to them, and at beyond them all at the hallway's end a ladder.

"These are supply caches." Leargam said to Tezac and indicated the blocked doors. "Should be some ammunition in there, riot control suits maybe."

"You were loud enough with that door there." Sejanus said and passed beyond Tezac to take point. "Shouldn't risk popping either of these two now that you're inside."

"He's right." Teza
c said and kept his rifle levelled at the ascent ahead, moved steadily toward it and poised as if to spring suddenly in all directions at once. "Anyway, we're cutting it close for time as it is."

"Kill your lights." Sejanus said and they looked between one another and he mounted to the first rungs of the la
dder.

They did as he bade and so that
in the bloody glow of the strip lighting he appeared some renegade ascending unlawfully out of the hells. Tezac and Leargam mounted the ladder after him and climbed through the darkened shaft at the impetus of the hollow ringing of their boots upon the rungs. They listened to the whine of the hinges overhead as Sejanus pushed open the hatchway that terminated the ascent.

They emerged
into a room that for them existed only as the blackness of its walls pierced through by the distant, gloomy light which streamed in through the windows. Leargam saw clearly the polymer door that lay ahead and opened by someone he imagined had been Sejanus and told them so. The others moved up to the threshold and Tezac peered out from the windows at the glowlamps which hung down from the shadows of the ceiling, beacons of the life that yet remained in the machinery of the prison.

He looked across the walkways that had been torn up in places or fallen away and jut
ted as rearing beasts of metal into the amber pillars cast by the glowlamps and the shadows that enrounded them. He sorted through them to find the white light of the null-grav chambers upon the walls beyond and saw the blood and gore that coated those doors of the isolation pods which were rent asunder or forced open, those that were yet closed as tombs he had no desire to know the secrets of.

"Did you see what happened down here?" Tezac whispered across the threshold.

"Not this." Sejanus said and nodded out the opened door. "Something big enough to knock over a sense-dep tube freed me. I imagine it came back for more."

"And you got out just in time." Leargam said behind them. "We should be so lucky."

"What do you see out there, old man?"

"I see a whole lot of
the same you can see from right there." He said and then leaned forward. "Hold on."

"What?" Tezac said.

"You see them, don't you." Sejanus said.

"The Gods," Leargam said and looked between them
both, then out again to that unknown point only he saw. "What are they doing?"

"Would one of you
care to tell me what‘s going on?"

"Did you think I was the only one that got out?" Sejanus said. "They're the ones they forgot about down here
, spent too long in the tubes. But it's the quiet that's the worst."

"How many of them are there?"
Tezac said and then looked to Leargam. "How many do you see?"

"There's just a group of them now, crouched around something or other. I don
't know, kid: I can't swear for the whole damn place. It's a big damn place."

"Whatever you're going to do
down here," Sejauns said. "We better get to it. You won't wait them out."

Tezac did not answer, but started from the doorway and Sejanus stopped him with a hand upon his shoulder. The big man looked to him in the shadows, the
red bars of the readout of his vocal implants rising and falling as the lone brightness in the dark, and he pointed to his shoes. Tezac nodded and bent and removed them and Leargam did the same. Sejanus passed out onto the walkway as they did so and went silent along its grating.

They followed after him to the stairwell that terminated the leftward extension of the catwalk and ascended behind him to the fullness of the sublevel's network of causeways. Sejanus stopped ahead where the apex of the steps gave way on either side to the walkway it fed into and looked back at Tezac, who pointed off to the left at the brighest point in the darkness of the deep hold.

Sejanus went on ahead and skirted through the shadows round the columns of light that issued down from the glowlamps and continued until he felt with his steps the undone edge of a break in the walkway. He awaited the others and warned them off when they came near and mimed for Leargam to look ahead. The old man did so and then informed him of the distance between the segments.

"I'll go, then you." Sejanus said to him and then nodded at Tezac. "Then you. After that we'll have to run; no man your size is that quiet."

They gave their agreement and so he moved past them, turned round and went as a ghost does across the shattered thrust of metal that had been made of the walkway and leapt from it into the air. He disappeared into the darkness that lay between and they hardly heard his feet meet the grating when he came down on the other side. Leargam looked to Tezac and the big man nodded down at him in the half-light and they heard across the way a bang as though something had fallen to the walkway there.

Sejanus heard the savage breathing of the man in the shadows and held his knife out before him and waved it to and fro against what he could not see. Feet pound
ed across the metal at him and he heard growling in the blackness and slashed at it, again and then he lunged with the knife. The blade cut at first through something like flesh and the man howled like some reprobate excuse for the dark heritage of Man, but met only air when he had stabbed at it. He leapt back and let his ears see for him as he reoriented himself.

He listened as his enemy circled him as a wolf might, caught in some wilderness not built of metal and stone, and if that wolf were driven by what madness can make of predation. It could not resist its impulses, he knew, as in times past he could not resist his own and so when the man roared and rushed him once more, he waited. The pound of his feet across the walkway neared so that Sejanus could nigh feel the grasping limbs they bore forth and he stepped to the side and jabbed out again w
ith the knife. The roar was choked off and he felt the blood jet warm across his cold hand. He withdrew the blade smoothly and the man tumbled off the severed edge of the catwalk.

"Sejanus?"
Tezac whispered from behind him and beyond the gap. "Are you alright?"

"Get across." He called back. "Your friend first. Now."

There a noise in the dark like that which they had heard, only it was Sejanus who listened and they who turned round to face it. Tezac stared blind into the black that intervened between the nearest glowlamp and that which shone beyond the break in the walkway, the shattered husk of the light useless above them. Leargam studied the figure that approached them, naked and bloody and in his eyes an impenetrability, an emptiness that he had imagined existed in his own but knew now it was not so. Another swung up from below the catwalk and landed beside the first and he took his first step backward.