The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (2 page)

She hoped she wouldn’t pay for this forever.

TWO

NO HUMAN GUARDS were on duty in this part of the prison, at least not this late. The guard station had a full android unit behind the windows. Its yellow eyes tracked Jhena as she slapped her palm against the cool reinforced plastic.

“Didier Conte sent for me,” she said as a purely cover-her-ass sentence. She suspected she could have opened the double-latched security entrance all on her own.

But the android recorded everything, just like the security cameras did, and if anyone challenged her presence, she had her words as well as the link contacts to back her up. Unlike so many people, she kept track of every link contact instead of letting it fade into nothingness after a few weeks of time.

She had learned young that it paid to be cautious.

“Proceed,” the android said in its gender-neutral voice. The locks thumped, and the door into the decontamination/examination area swung open.

She stepped inside, waving the box of evidence bags as a kind of notice that she had something unusual.

Not that it mattered. Lights changed inside the decontamination/examination area as it checked her. Blue lights for biological hazards, and smuggled diseases; green for contraband goods; and orange for actual weapons. If the system found anything on her, the lights would either become bright yellow to signal possible trouble or bright flaring red for an actual discovery.

Sometimes, when she slept, she dreamed that she was trapped in the decontamination/examination area as the red lights blinked and sirens blared. Guards would find dozens of weapons secreted on her person, or biohazard spread like goo along her clothing.

She always woke from those dreams so terrified that she would have to get up and walk around, hoping the dreams would fade.

Even though she had never carried anything into the prison proper. Even though she had never even
thought
of doing so, except when she stood here, afraid of being caught with something that someone had stashed on her.

The air smelled faintly of ozone, like it always did at this part of the process. Then the lights returned to their low-watt whitish gray intensity, and the doors on the other side hummed open. Three sets of doors, each on a different timer, each opening from a different direction—the first to her right, the second to her left, and the last with the doors sliding up to the ceiling.

Her heart pounded. If she went in there, she couldn’t get out without help, no matter how much she wanted to.

She thought of tossing the box of evidence bags into the area, and then letting Didier know that they had arrived without her; he would have to come and get them.

But two things stopped her: his tone, which had been odd, almost secretive; and the chance to see PierLuigi Frémont in what would be his natural environment from now on.

She stepped through the doors, and into the cellblock.

The air was noticeably colder and thinner. The theory was to keep the prisoners so cold that they expended some energy every day just to keep warm. The oxygen content was as low as it could get for human survival so that the prisoners were constantly short of breath.

Every time she stepped in here, she hated it because she always felt momentarily lightheaded. If she stayed too long, she would get nauseous.

She brushed the back of her hand, setting a timer that appeared in the corner of her right eye. The timer was an automatic one for the cell block. If she stayed longer than twenty minutes, the timer would go off.

Twenty-five minutes was her maximum time without some kind of environmental suit in this oxygen-poor environment. That’s why she set for twenty minutes: she always gave herself five minutes to escape.

She opened her link to the prison’s internal system.
Find Didier Conte
, she sent.

Off-line
, came the response, almost immediately.

Her face warmed. Was Didier playing some kind of game with her? Off-line meant that he wasn’t in the prison at all.

Her heart started pounding hard, and she suspected it wasn’t just because her body was struggling in this environment.

She sent a message across her private link.
The prison system says you’re not here, Didier. What are you playing at?

Nothing
, he sent back.
I’ll reconnect to the system in a minute. I’m exactly where I should be, okay? Get here now.

She frowned. He was playing a game of some kind, but she still thought he sounded terrified.

She contacted the prison link system again, not covering her tracks.
I thought Didier Conte was on guard duty tonight. What section was he scheduled for?

High security, senior prisoner, Frémont. No record of Didier Conte’s departure and none of his presence. Would you like to reboot the system?

Not yet
, she sent, uncertain how that would play to someone examining her actions much later. But she couldn’t really say no to the system (imagining in her mind how that would go over with the bosses:
Why didn’t you want to find Conte? Did you know where he was? Weren’t you concerned that he had left his post?
) and she couldn’t say yes in case Didier really was doing something untoward.

She walked through the corridors, passing a dozen expensive android guards, all of them high security. They were thicker than the average android guard, taller, and made of some shiny black polymer material that hid any access ports. According to the specs, these guards carried a dozen weapons just on their torso, but she couldn’t see any of them.

The guards had no mouths or noses, just those damn big eyes that looked like they could see everything.

They were androids because they theoretically could think for themselves, and they had a very human form, but she never really thought of them as androids. They seemed like a hybrid between the thinking android and the brainless robots that were everywhere outside of the prison system.

In theory, the system couldn’t have a brainless contraption anywhere near high-value prisoners. The prisoners might be able to subvert the bot’s functions and create everything from a gun to a bomb. In theory, androids wouldn’t let that happen, but after the prison riots of twenty years ago, where the androids got turned to the prisoners’ sides, the androids were redesigned. No mouths, no noses, no obvious entry points, and absolutely no empathy.

None.

Not for anyone.

Jhena shivered. It seemed colder the farther in she went.

The cellblock was locked down for the night, which meant that each cell had been walled off from the others. Doors darkened, no windows, no access to the outside at all.

In fact, it looked like she was walking past black wall after black wall after black wall, when she had actually passed twenty cells so far.

At the end of this corridor was the specially designed cell that held the highest value prisoners that probably would not be permanent guests of this facility. They were supposed to lose their cases, and move to maximum security prisons far away from the Criminal Courts, prisons in the far reaches of the Earth Alliance, prisons that made this one look like a resort in the prettiest place on Planet Earth.

The light around that cell was red, but it wasn’t flashing and there were no sirens. Just a deep red light that she should never see this far inside the prison.

“Oh, no.” She didn’t realize she’d said that out loud until she heard her voice echo off the walls.

A dozen scenarios flashed through her brain: Frémont had somehow co-opted Didier and gotten him to contact her; together, Frémont and Didier would overpower her and make her help them escape; Frémont had
killed
Didier and would get her next—

“Oh, thank God, Jhena.” The voice didn’t belong to Frémont. It belonged to Didier.

He stepped into the light. He was a burly man, mostly muscle, and his uniform made him look more formidable than the android guards. Although at the moment, he didn’t look formidable at all. The red light bathed his bald pate, and put his eyes in shadow. He seemed creepy, almost like a prisoner himself.

“I’m not coming any closer until you tell me what’s going on,” she said.

“Um, it’s better if I don’t say. You need to look.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t getting near that light, particularly now that a smell was reaching her. It was foul—as if someone hadn’t cleaned the toilets in this section ever.

“I’m going to throw your evidence bags at you, and then I’m leaving,” she said.

“Okay,” Didier said, sounding like it wasn’t okay. “But then you’ll miss your only chance to make a small fortune.”

“I’m not helping a mass murderer escape,” she said.

“Oh,” Didier said. “There’s no need to worry about that. Frémont’s not going anywhere.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I told you,” he said. “Take a look.”

But shut off your links,
he sent through her private link.
All except emergency links.

She bit her lower lip. She hadn’t shut anything down, not yet, and that little request would be recorded. If she complied, it would mean—what? That she had conspired with Didier? Or that she simply didn’t know better?

God, she hated second-guessing.

“If you don’t join me in fifteen seconds, don’t bother,” he snapped.

She still couldn’t see his face. That worried her.

But she would probably get in trouble just for being here, especially if something had gone wrong. After ten seconds clicked off on the timer she displayed on her right eye, she shut down all the various recording links, then shut down her contact links except for the emergency links.

As she did, the timer in her eye vanished.

Oh, great. She had forgotten the timer was connected to the network. Now she wouldn’t know how much time had elapsed. She could probably set another timer with her emergency links, but that would require a jury-rig, which she doubted Didier would give her time for.

She stepped forward.

The red light was actually warm or, at least, warmer than the rest of the corridor had been.

“What the hell’s going on?” she asked, trying to ignore the way her stomach flopped at the stench. It felt like a live thing, as if the air itself had sewage molecules, and they were coating her.

Didier nodded at the cell.

She could barely see inside it—the cot that extended from the wall was still out, not recessed like it should have been at this time of day. The toilet didn’t look like it had overflowed, but it was hard to see in the deep red light.

Frémont was nowhere in sight. Had Didier let him out? Was Frémont going to attack her?

Her heart rate went up even farther, although she hadn’t thought that was even possible.

“Hurry,” Didier said.

She looked around. The walls nearby were black from the closed cell doors. She couldn’t see any androids at all.

There was, as far as she could tell, no place for Frémont to hide.

Her mouth was dry. She swallowed against it anyway. She couldn’t remember ever being this frightened as an adult. As a child, yes, but as an adult—

Her mind skittered away from the thought.

She took another step, and then another, not sure how she was managing to make her feet work. Somehow she was, though.

Somehow.

She peered over that bed, and finally saw Frémont. He was sprawled on the floor, legs twisted, one arm still on the bed, the other extended toward the toilet.

The smell was coming from him, and it was so bad here that her eyes watered.

“What the hell…?” she muttered, but she did so not to be answered, but because she couldn’t remain quiet.

Something had dried around his mouth, and there was a lot of liquid on the floor. His face was bloated—or it seemed that way. She couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the light.

“What the hell?” she repeated, this time looking at Didier. “Is he dead?”

Didier smiled at her. “Yep,” he said. “And we only have a few minutes before the administration finds out.”

THREE

JHENA STOOD NEAR the entrance to the cell. She stared at PierLuigi Frémont’s feet because she didn’t want to see any other part of him. Certainly not whatever was causing the stench that seemed to get worse with each passing minute.

She kept a hand over her face, and really wished she had worn an environmental suit. Then, at least, she would be able to breathe fresh air, with the proper amount of oxygen, and she wouldn’t be so cold.

“You didn’t report his death?” Jhena asked. “My God, do you realize what they’ll do—”

“They won’t do anything. Not if we act fast.” Didier looked like some kind of alien she’d never encountered before with his black guard’s uniform reflecting the flaring red emergency light.

With that thing on, wouldn’t the authorities know something was wrong?