Marduk's Rebellion

by Jenn Lyons

prison area known as the Yard.

  ggg

  The Yard was worse than I thought. In deference to Deimos’ generic design roots, the outer tube where the prisoners were housed might have been businesses or colony housing in another station. The Yard had simply been the space that would have been a very large park otherwise, forming a hub through the prison system, the easiest place to get to, and the easiest spot to die. The elevator platform led directly to it, which meant that while we cut a considerable distance off our journey, we were also in danger from the moment we arrived.

  [Back against the elevator wall. NOW.]

  I flattened myself against the back panel of the large elevator. Zaladin moved as quickly, pressing himself next to me so I felt his arm next to mine. Jack changed shape again, flattening out and expanding. He was changing, I realized, to look like the back panels of the elevator, effectively creating a secret compartment using his own body.

  [Be silent.]

  The elevator doors opened.

  I smelled burning flesh and smoke, and heard the sound of shouting and footsteps, the echoes as people rushed to the doors. The prisoners had to have been waiting for the elevator, had to have seen its descent. If Belisle had been sending strike teams down here, then anyone using this elevator had experienced this reception before us, but in a far more deadly and immediate fashion.

  Many of the prisoners at Deimos were political prisoners or the unjustly accused. Many, however, were not.

  “Can we send it back up?” A voice asked.

  “Give me a second!”

  “Get it working!”

  “Shut it! It’s locked out!”

  “Can’t we booby trap it or something?”

  “Nuts. Must be Jack playing his tricks.” I heard moans and a few superstitious murmurs, but finally the crowd dispersed and I remembered how to breathe. We waited, waited an interminably long time, but finally Jack must have felt that the yard boys had tired of waiting for an empty box to do something interesting and had wandered off. He formed into another prisoner, a big hulking brute as large as Zaladin, and guided us out of the elevator and into the smoke.

  Several times, I heard the sound of weapon’s fire, which meant that there were still prison guards or that prisoners had gotten a hold of weapons. Maybe it meant both. More people were dying, more people would die—they’d stopped sending down food. I shuddered, because there had never been enough food to begin with. The prisoners were killing each other, hoping to hoard what was left until the Solar Independence League took over.

  My mouth twisted. I wished I had Medusa’s link. I probably could have emptied the halls simply by fast-jumping a well-timed food drop.

  We turned down a hall and there was some disturbance up ahead. Jack opened up a door that I hadn’t even realized was there and shoved Zaladin, then me, inside. I bumped against Zaladin and there was barely any room for me.

  [Wait here.]

  Then he closed the door, leaving us both in darkness.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” I heard Zaladin curse under his breath.

  “Mind making a little room?” I said. “My back’s right to the door.”

  I heard him sigh, felt him sight really, because we were pressed so closely together I could feel every inhale and exhale. “Sorry, mine’s touching the wall.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” I muttered.

  He chuckled. “He’s doing this on purpose, isn’t he?”

  “Kantari do love their jokes.” I tried to shift around a bit, stopped when I realized there was no way I could politely do so without rubbing myself all over him. “Can you…reach around me? There’s probably a door handle?”

  “Should we leave? He said—”

  “I’d like to know how to get out if we have to.”

  He laced his arms beneath mine and felt the door behind me. “No door latch. No lights either. They probably only turn on when the door is open.”

  “That’s just great.” His arms were still around me, and he didn’t pull them back and since it’s quite awkward to be held by someone with your arms straight at your sides, I found myself wrapping my arms around him just to make some room. His fingers tightened around my waist and I edged my hands under his shirt until I could feel his skin under my touch. I could feel the occasional shiver pass through his body and knew that he was doing just as terrible a job of remaining detached from this was I was, which somehow made it easier. At least I wasn’t alone in being all hot and bothered.

  We waited and tried to pretend this wasn’t happening.

  “I can’t believe you slept with him,” Zaladin whispered, and his grip on me tightened when I tried to pull away from him.

  “It was one time,” I snapped. “It was only ever going to be one time. What business is it of yours anyway?”

  “He’s slime. You can do better than that.”

  “He was there when I needed someone.”

  “You don’t need someone like that.”

  “Who do I need then? Someone like you?” It was long past time for me reign in my temper, but I felt purely incapable.

  “Someone like—” He hesitated, and I could feel his breath against my cheek. “What you deserve is someone who will love you and be there for you and not get you killed, but that isn’t what you want is it? It’s always going to be men like Jester or Zaladin.” He said the last word like it was a curse.

  “Is that what you think? That my attraction to Zaladin is a form of—what? Self-loathing?” The irony of this conversation was far from lost on me.

  “I think you’ve never put yourself in a position to have a real relationship with anyone and you never will. You don’t think you deserve to be happy with someone. It’s always impossible. You make it impossible.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Have you ever fell for a man who could have genuinely loved you back? Just once? Who wasn’t homosexual or emotionally unavailable or an alien assassin? Name me one stable relationship. Something, anything that lasted longer than a few weeks.”

  “I—” The words stuck.

  “You’ve never had one. And now this thing with Zaladin. It’s sick.”

  I tensed even tighter than I was. God. “Sick?”

  “He killed you.” His voice was calm, but venomous in its intensity. “Put a dagger in your chest. Most girls would take that as a sign the relationship isn’t working out, but not you. Oh no, you came here anyway, following in his shadow like a puppy who’s been hit too many times!”

  “Whoa there. I didn’t have any choice about showing up here. You damn well know that. One moment I was on Keeper’s Island feeling myself die and the next I was waking up here! I wouldn’t have chosen to come here! Not in a million years!”

  “What do you see in him? What could you possibly see in him? I want to understand. Do you think you can fix him? Do you think you can save him?” His laugh was contemptuous, dark and mocking. “You can’t save him. He’s been killing people for the better part of a century. He’s not deluded or misunderstood. He knows exactly what he’s doing. To him, you’re just a complication, an obstacle, something to be done away with or used and discarded. Do you really think that you mean something to him? That he has feelings for you?”

  “Yes,” I answered, feeling the tears sliding down my cheeks. “I do.”

  He didn’t answer for a brief shocked second that hung on the air like a diamond, sharp pointed and glittery. Then he brought his face down to mine and his kiss was so violent it was very nearly an attack in its own right. I couldn’t even tell if it was a good or bad kiss; I was only aware of the swirling emotions, the lust and love and heartbreak and queasy dull searing pain of self-loathing and regret. I put my hands to his head and kissed him back, losing everything but the feel of his lips and tongue, his hands on my body, a frozen, perfect moment.

  He stopped though, finally, and when I opened my eyes and looked up at him I realized that I could see his face, that there was light. I turned to see the door had opened.

&nbs
p; Whisper Jack had returned, grinning at us both.

  I slipped out of closet and straightened my prisoner’s shift. “Timing, Whisper. We have to work on your timing.”

  The Kantari laughed, and gestured down the hall for us to continue.

  ggg

  Whisper Jack stopped in the hallway.

  [There is a manned barricade ahead.]

  “There’s a way around it, isn’t there?” Zaladin asked, indicating that the Kantari had spoken to both of us simultaneously.

  [No.]

  “No?”

  [There is no better way. There is little time.]

  “I see,” I motioned for us to continue. “Let’s find out if they can be reasoned with.”

  As we rounded the next corner, I could see that the barricade was impressive, even ingenious in its way; a two-meter high wall of mattresses, stolen grating and ore cargo pods that would be difficult to cross without permission from the other side, who could then lower a section of ladder like a drawbridge for us to climb. The men who stood watch over the barricade did not look like they were starving, which meant they were either new arrivals to the station or the Yard roughs who survived by stealing the food of those around them until the weaker ones starved to death and were replaced. One touch of their minds, stagnant and dark, and I knew it was the later.

  “Hello?” I called out from quite a distance away. “Hello there! Yes, we’d like to pass through your territory, please.”

  An unwashed, unshaven man with a nasty fresh slash across his cheek that would leave an impressive scar, assuming it didn’t become fatally infected, responded back. “What