by C. G. Hatton
There was no way I was going to make it easy for him. I started moving, got my momentum back and chased him all the way to the top. He waited for me, gave me a grin and jumped backwards to abseil down.
I reached the ground to shouts of, “Show’s over. Everyone get cleaned up and report to the hall.”
My knee was throbbing. Hilyer gave a laugh and took off, Jem hooking her arm into his and throwing me a grin. I couldn’t see Kat or Brennan around anywhere. I limped into the changing rooms and waited for everyone to go before I stripped off and showered.
I stood there, lost in the stream of hot water, soaping slowly. The jagged scar on my stomach was still red, the holes and surgical scars on either side of my hand still raw. They’d said it could take a while. Kheris was still keeping its hold on me. I rinsed off the soap and turned.
Hilyer was standing there, a couple of the bigger kids behind him.
The water was still pouring. I was butt naked. They were all dressed, boots and all. If they came at me, I’d have no chance.
“All alone, Anderton,” he said, his voice low. “Not smart being alone here. Just us. No guards.”
I glanced up and around. There’d be surveillance.
“Trust me,” he said, “they wouldn’t get here in time to make a difference.”
I didn’t say it but I’d thrown the climb to make him look good. What the hell else was I supposed to have done?
The others moved up close behind but he waved them to stay. He leaned in through the doorway. “Take this as a warning.”
I stared at him, wishing Mendhel had told me how to play this stupid game. All my training had been the AI strings, the codes, what they wanted and how they wanted me to get it. Hilyer was supposed to be watching my back.
He turned and walked out, his new cronies following.
I half expected them to be waiting to jump me in the changing room but it was empty, just a guard at the door banging his stick on the frame and shouting me to hurry the hell up. I dressed, rewrapping the bandages round my knee and hand, and left. Hopefully the hall meant food.
It didn’t. The hall was set up with little individual desks not tables, all separated like they were about to give us a test. There was a board on each table, inert, everyone sitting there waiting, segregated out into the four blocks. There was one table free, at the back. I sat at it and looked up, checking out the staff in case one of them was Markus. No such luck.
“You have sixty minutes,” an instructor announced from the front. “Your time starts now.”
The boards lit up, everyone started entering data furiously, solving puzzles, calculating formulae that got harder as you progressed. I read through it right the way to the end before I started. The board was set up to look like it was an isolated unit but it wasn’t, it hooked up to the main system. I nudged it, got access to a database further in, and looked up. No one had noticed, none of the guards giving me a second’s glance. All the other kids were at it still. Hilyer was working slowly, not like him. I’d seen how fast he could work. And there was something weird about how he had his board angled, sitting back every now and then and moving it aside before carrying on. It was so blatant it was ridiculous. The kid next to him was huge, tape across his nose like it had recently been broken. He was copying Hilyer’s answers. Raine. It had to be. I couldn’t believe none of the guards were calling them on it. It was all crap anyway. Some of the questions were so easy a six year old would know it, some of them so hard they were impossible, like they were setting us up to fail.
I pulled back out of the main system without setting off any alarms and started working through the test. It was simple enough stuff they were asking for but I could feel everyone else getting slower as they worked through it. I got half way through then skipped to the end and ran through it backwards. The questions at the end were similar to the puzzles Charlie and NG had given me. Patterns, logic crap, random questions that made no sense, a load of math strings that I knew by then were AI logic strings. I sat there for a moment looking at it then started filling it in. At the guild, I’d always got it all right. It hadn’t occurred to me to do any different. There at the prison, I answered exactly fifty eight percent of them incorrectly. It was more difficult. Some of them took a while to figure out an answer that wouldn’t look fake.
I checked my last answer, hit end and pushed the board aside. It went black. I didn’t realise I was the first one to finish until I looked up. One of the instructors caught my eye before I could pretend I wasn’t done. I thought I’d taken ages to complete it but the rest of them were all still heads down.
The instructor walked across, loomed over me and said quietly, “Anderton, stand up.”
I half hoped that meant an early dinner and expected to see other kids start to finish but no one else was even looking up.
He said, “Come with me,” and a sickly chill settled in my stomach at his tone. I ran every answer back through my head as I pushed back the chair, double checking what I’d done, sure beyond doubt that I hadn’t tripped any alarms in the system.
They pulled me out of the hall and escorted me to an interview room. I was sitting there for what must have been an hour. I ended up with my head down on folded arms, fast asleep, running the gauntlet of the garrison on Kheris in my dreams.
I jerked awake as a guy came in. I wasn’t sure if he was a guard, an instructor or something else. He was wearing the same black uniform but there was something about the way he stood that was too casual. He was holding a board, but he also had a battered old notebook tucked under his arm. Real paper by the look of the curled edges to the pages.
I was still shaking, unsettled by the nightmare, having to sit on my hands so they wouldn’t see how much I was trembling.
He sat down opposite me and put the board on the table. “Not smart.”
I just stared at him.
He didn’t introduce himself and he wasn’t wearing a name badge. He looked disappointed. “Luka,” he said with exaggerated disapproval, “this is a correctional facility. We have a duty of care to rehabilitate you so you can re-enter society as a useful member of the community.”
That was the standard line. A useful grunt to use as cannon fodder more like.
I didn’t care. That’s not why I was there. I was just waiting for a chance to get to the library and get on with it.
“Whatever has happened to you before…” His voice was soft, phony as hell, like the teachers at the missionary school I’d flunked out of. “…Whatever you’ve done, this is a fresh start. Work with us, not against us, and you will find being here much easier.” He tapped at the board. “Complete the test again. Don’t screw it up. And don’t try to break into the system this time.”
Busted.
He stood up and threw a casual, “You’re smart, Luka, but perhaps not as smart as you think you are,” as he left, conspiratorial, as if knowing they’d caught me out would throw me somehow.
I kept my expression neutral. We’d all known it wouldn’t be easy. Now I knew how closely they were watching, I’d know how far to push it next time.
Chapter 13
They let me loose once I was done. The commissary was closed and everyone was being chased out of the central rec area into the bunkrooms already. I limped into ours, hoping no one would try anything. The big lad, Raine, was in there, laughing with Hilyer like they were old mates. I got a few shoves, jibes about the wall, mutterings about where the hell I’d been while they were on damn cleaning duty, a few hardly veiled threats but nothing worse. I still couldn’t find my pillow. I got into my bunk without upsetting anyone and lay there thinking.
It was a long night.
Next morning, we had classes. It was interminable. History and politics followed by spatial engineering and geometrics. I was hard pushed to stay awake. They didn’t cover anything I didn’t know and the teaching staff were going through the motions like they couldn’t wait to get out. I couldn’t wait to get out. After classes we were supposed
to get library time.
I could feel the apprehension building in my stomach.
But once we were done, they told us to get to the hall for lunch then get into gym kit.
I trooped out of the classroom behind Jem.
“What the hell happened to library time?” I muttered.
She laughed. “You want library time? You’re Delta now, kiddo. We don’t do freaking library time.” She shoved me in the back. “Library time was cancelled three weeks ago. We don’t have to suffer that shit anymore.”
Damn.
They gave us soup for lunch that had a strange aftertaste to it. Thinking about it, a lot of the food tasted strange but I just put that down to lousy prison catering. Didn’t even occur to me at the time what supplements they might be feeding us. Once we’d eaten, the shouting to get into gym kit and get out into the yard started again. I wrapped the bandage tight around my knee, hoping it wasn’t going to be a thirteen mile run, desperately trying to come up with a new plan and vaguely hoping that Markus would turn up, take control of the tab and make everything work out.
He didn’t.
But it wasn’t a run. And it had stopped raining. They made us line up in our blocks then took us round to an open area where there was some kind of pitch marked out. Then they gave us each a stick with a curved end, threw a small hard ball out there and told us to go beat the crap out of each other. Or they might as well have done. Two teams, god knows what the rules were, and a son of a bitch instructor who was quite happy to wait until you were on the floor bleeding before he’d stop the game.
I don’t play well in a team. Never have. Never will. And my knee had swollen again overnight, every muscle and joint aching. I watched from the sidelines, running every scrap of intel through my head, twisting it around and trying to figure out a way into the system if I couldn’t use the library. Or figure out a way into the library. There’d be a way somewhere.
When it was my turn to play, I ended up leaning on the stick more than running with it, and avoiding the ball every time it came close to me. There was a way you could hook it with the end of the stick and send it flying. If you knew what you were doing. Which everyone else seemed to and I didn’t. I ducked it twice, missed the next one and was flat on my back before I knew it had hit me. The instructor ran up, screaming at me to get back on my goddamned feet and start playing. My head was ringing but it gave me the idea I needed.
I got up, tapped the ball away and backed off.
Jem ran up with a grin, whacked the ball away and gave my stick a crack with hers. She pointed up the field. “Come on, Thirteen, you gotta hit it. You never played hockey before?” Like it was the most weird thing she’d ever heard.
“No.” On Kheris, we’d sometimes kicked a football around the streets. Never anything organised.
She laughed. “You’ve never been inside before, have you? I knew with a tan like that, you hadda be brand new. C’mon, we’ve gotta get the ball back or they’ll annihilate us.”
They weren’t annihilating us. Hilyer was on the field. He got the ball as I watched, ran with it, nudging it ahead of him with the stick at full stretch, sprinting full speed and dodging round the kids of the other team. It was Gamma Block we were up against. Kat was standing in the middle of the field, blue hair tied in bunches, hardly making any effort and looking as unimpressed as I was.
Hilyer hit the ball hard and it flew into the net at the far end. There were cheers from the kids standing around the edges. The instructor yelled out names, subbing kids in, sending others off and shouting for the game to restart.
Hilyer was subbed out, I wasn’t. I turned as he passed me, stuck out my stick and caught him on the ankle. He turned on me, had me round the neck and landed me on the floor before I could say a word.
“I need to get into the infirmary,” I breathed before he punched me in the face.
He leaned close. “Yeah, I can arrange that.” He let up and shoved me aside, walking off with a laugh.
Five goals later and I still hadn’t been subbed. I’d given up even trying to run. Everyone was looking at me like they didn’t know why I was still out there when everyone else had been given a break and a chance to get a drink.
Hilyer got subbed back in, along with Raine. The other kids shouted to them as they both walked on, wielding their sticks like they were weapons. Hilyer had the ball in his hand, tossing it up and catching it. He walked to the centre spot, waited for the instructor to blow his whistle, then looked at me, eyes narrow, threw the ball forward and hit it, mid air, right at Kat.
She didn’t duck in time, spun round as it struck her and collapsed to the ground.
She didn’t move.
I was yelling obscenities at Hilyer and running towards her before I could think. One of the big kids from Gamma stepped in my way and shoved me backwards, swearing at me like it was me that had done it.
I stumbled, felt a body run up next to me and couldn’t get out of the way as Raine slammed into me. I went flying, lost the stick and rolled, getting to my feet as someone else knocked me from behind. A stick rapped against my shins. I tried to sidestep, turned, and came face to face with Hilyer as he ran up, hockey stick in a two-handed grip like he was holding a staff. I saw what was coming and I still couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, slipping in the mud. He swung it at me, striking hard. I tried to catch the stick but he had too much power behind it. It hit me in the chest. I folded, went down, and another blow landed against my head as I hit the ground. Game over.
I woke up inside, in the infirmary from the sterile, medical smell of it. My head was pounding, eyes sore when I blinked them open. I tried to sit and couldn’t, nausea pulling at my stomach, my left wrist rattling, the handcuff chaining it to the bunk clanking softly. I was in a cubicle. It was cold but I could handle that. Apart from being restrained, I couldn’t see what was so bad about it.
There were people outside, voices, someone saying something about concussion, lucky there wasn’t a skull fracture. I guessed they were talking about me. I’d had concussion before. It felt like concussion. And my chest was hurting every time I took a breath so I reckoned cracked ribs too. Not great, but not terrible. Hilyer was being a dick but he’d just got me exactly where I needed to be.
I waited until lights out, after they’d done the rounds for meds and obs. There’d be a terminal or a data board somewhere. I just needed to steal a pass from someone and get free.
In the end, I decided to keep it simple. I can dislocate my thumbs if I want to. I never appreciated growing up on Kheris how useful that would be. I twisted my hand and snapped out of the cuffs, pulled the IV line out of my arm and climbed off the bunk.
I didn’t have long. I slipped out of the infirmary, ignoring the urge to see if Kat was in any of the other cubicles. I half expected the collar round my neck to zap me again but it didn’t. The corridor outside was empty, dark except for faint red nightlights, some light coming from under a few of the doorways, soft voices at one end. I crept in the other direction, keeping close to the wall. I didn’t think they’d shoot me if they found me out of bed but I still wasn’t expecting the ferocity of the reaction when it came. There were yells, heavy footsteps descending on me, and I was hit by a blow to the back, hard enough that my knees buckled. They grabbed me and pushed me against the wall, twisting my arms behind my back, an elbow pushing hard into the back of my neck.
I didn’t resist.
They turned me around as one of the medics ran up, protesting, and they backed off then, still keeping me in a restraint hold but letting me stand at least.
It was Brennan. She reached a hand to my cheek, hitting a sore spot where I’d hit the wall.
I raised my eyes.
“What the hell were you doing?” she said.
“Needed the bathroom,” I muttered.
She didn’t look impressed but she didn’t look pissed at me.
I sucked in a breath, and didn’t need to act as a stabbing pain shot through my ches
t. I felt my knees going again. She snapped something at the guards and they let go, releasing me into her care and she took hold of my arm gently and led me back down the corridor.
She persuaded me back into the cubicle and back onto my bunk, taking her time setting up the IV line again. “This isn’t summer camp,” she said quietly. “You need to remember where you are or you’re going to get hurt.”
I don’t know what her definition of hurt was but I was lying there with broken ribs and concussion after a crack to the head. I mumbled something about being sorry, yawned and gave her my best, most shy smile. I was hoping she wouldn’t want to check my stats again.
She didn’t. She injected something into the tube that caused the pain to subside almost immediately, stood aside to let the guard refasten the handcuff, then left with a soft, “Get some sleep.”
I waited until she was gone then pulled the blanket over my head, pulled her data board from under my pillow where I’d stashed it after I’d lifted it out of her pocket, and went to play.
It was simple enough to check superficial records. I was listed as admitted to the infirmary. Nothing about a girl so she must have been okay. There was a record of Raine and his bust nose. And a couple of other kids with minor injuries. I couldn’t resist digging around, trying to see if there was any mention of the little kid who’d come in with us but there was no mention of anyone his age they could be keeping in there.
I ditched it, he’d be somewhere, and went deeper. I was more careful that time, got past a load of protections without alerting the AI, and I found Markus. Or rather I didn’t. He’d gone. Transferred out on promotion according to the records. I stared at the entry in the personnel file, heart thumping.
We were on our own.
Chapter 14