The guard remained unswayed.
“His granddaughter is watching,” Cal elaborated. He held a hand down at knee level. “She’s, like, yay big. Huge eyes. She’s just staring helplessly. Just crying her little heart out as some nasty bamston pummels the shizz out of her wheelchair-bound…” His voice trailed off. “Is any of this convincing you in any way?”
The guard rocked back on his heels. “Not my problem, son,” he said.
Cal looked back at the alleyway. Man, that would’ve been perfect.
“Fair enough,” he said, then he drove a right-hook into the officer’s jaw with enough force to shatter three bones, two of them his own.
The guard pirouetted clumsily, then went down hard, a wail bursting from his bloodied lips. Cal grimaced and flexed his fingers a few times as the fractures knitted together again, then stamped down on the EDI man’s wrist as he grabbed for the blaster on his hip.
“Not so fast there, Tex,” Cal said, taking the man’s gun for himself.
The guard sobbed when Cal caught him by the front of his uniform and heaved him up onto his knees. “I need you to answer a few…”
Cal grimaced. “Oh, Jesus, your face,” he said, staring in horror at the way the guard’s lower jaw was now a full inch to the right of his upper one. “God, I am so sorry. I’m sure that’ll just pop right back in,” Cal told him, then he got back down to business.
“What did Manacle do with the page?” he demanded, shaking the guy violently.
The guard’s eyes bulged, terrified. “Whath pathge?” he slurred, saliva dribbling from his sideways slanting lower lip.
Cal glanced around. None of the passersby had stopped. If anything, they were speeding up, trying to get as far from the scene as possible.
“You know what page,” Cal spat, giving the man a shake. “From the book. In the Library. What did he do with it?”
The guard drooled in confusion. “Whath libthathy? Whath boothk?” He let out a little moan of distress. “I dothn’t know whath thou’re talthking abouth.”
Cal backhanded him across the cheek and flinched almost as much as the guard did. “Shizz! Sorry, sorry,” he said, before pulling himself together and fixing the scowl back on his face. “You know damn well what I’m talking about,” he barked. “The page. The book. The fonking… The page.”
He waved the blaster pistol in the man’s face. “You want me to shoot you? Is that it?”
“No! I donth’t! I donth’t want thou to thoot me!”
“Because I’m going to shoot you,” Cal warned. “I’m going to shoot you right in the feet.”
“The theet?”
“Yes! The feet!” Cal barked. “And then I’ll shoot you in the shins, and then the knees, and then the thighs, and then the… Well, you get the idea. I’m moving upward. That’s the point.” He gave him another shake. “Unless you talk. Unless you tell me where Manacle took the—”
The barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his head. A voice spoke, low and menacing.
“Don’t move a goddam muscle, shizz stain.”
Cal knelt in the center of a perfectly transparent box that hung suspended several feet above an electrified floor, his wrists cuffed together at his back. He had woken to find himself curled up on the floor of a plexiglass cube, his backpack having been swapped for a pounding headache and some fading bruises.
There were two other similar cubes hanging on either side of him. The one on his left was empty. The one on his right was occupied by something that made him think of a shaved Ewok. It was toddler-sized and ratty-looking, with gray, insipid skin, long, twitching whiskers, and eyes that were checking if the coast was clear in at least two different directions at once.
“Psst,” he hissed, even though Cal was staring right at him. “You. Over there.”
“Uh, yeah. Hi,” Cal said.
“Rank.”
“Don’t have one,” Cal replied. “I’m not in the space army, or whatever.”
“No. Rank. That’s my name. Rank.”
It was an unusual name, Cal thought, but it fit him perfectly.
“You?” Rank asked.
“Ca—Uh, Nob. Nob Muntch,” Cal said.
The conversation resumed once Rank had finished laughing. “What you in for?”
“I beat up a guard,” Cal said. “Big guy. Real strong,” he added, because he knew from experience how important it was in a prison environment to appear tough and mean.
“You beat up a guard?” said Rank. “And they put you in here?”
Cal glanced around. “Looks like it.”
“Why would they stick you in here for beating up a guard?” Rank wondered. “Punishment for beating up a guard is a good kicking. You don’t end up in the swingboxes for beating up no guard.”
His eyes gleamed greedily. “So, why you really in here?” he whispered. “Huh? Go on. Tell your old pal, Rank.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Rank,” Cal said. “I got in a fight with a guard, I got knocked out—probably by several people all working together, because I’m incredibly strong—and I woke up here.”
Rank’s whiskers twitched as he considered this. “Nah,” he decided, after much thought. “Doesn’t make sense. See, the swingboxes are for politically-motivated crimes. Treason. Terrorism. That sort of thing. So, unless the guard you beat up was the King of Earth, that ain’t why you’re in here.”
He rubbed his tongue across his two oversized front teeth. “They got more on you, friend. You might think you’re here for fighting a guard, but they got something more on you. Something worse. You mark my words.”
Cal chewed his bottom lip. “You think?”
“I know.”
Cal struggled to his feet and tried to twist his hands free of the cuffs. There was a knack to getting handcuffs off. All it took was a certain turn of the wrist, some meticulously applied pressure, and a thumb that was prone to dislocation.
Unfortunately, Cal had no idea which direction or how far to twist, or how much pressure was just the right amount. He could dislocate his thumb, if he had to, but without first mastering the other steps, it would likely prove to be more of a hindrance.
“How about you?” Cal asked. “What are you in for?”
“Spying,” Rank replied. “I’m a spy for the… You know the Burracks?”
Cal shook his head to say that no, he didn’t.
“Little gray fellas. Whiskers.”
“Like you?” Cal asked.
“Yeah! Yeah, like me. Know them?”
Cal was forced to confirm again that he didn’t know them.
“Oh. Well, I’m a spy for them. You know, sniffing around the EDI, scoping them out, reporting back. That sort of thing. We’re planning on taking over one of these stations. You know, eventually.”
“Right,” said Cal. “A spy. Cool.”
“I mean, I’m not a very good one,” Rank said. “I realize, now that I look back on the last little while, that I just told you everything about me, which is generally frowned upon. In spying circles, I mean.”
“It’s fine. Your secret’s safe with me,” said Cal.
Rank gave a dry little chuckle. “Thanks. For the next few minutes, anyway, eh?”
“Exactly,” said Cal. He rocked on his heels, making the cable holding the box aloft creak. “Wait, what? What happens in a few minutes?”
“Well, they kill us, don’t they?”
“Do they?!”
“Course they do. Political prisoners. They kill us,” Rank explained. He shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “It’s the risk we take, innit? Death.”
Cal groaned.
“Slow, agonizing death.”
Cal sobbed.
“No more than we deserve, of course,” Rank said, sniffing. “Spike through the head? Internal acid wash? Good enough for the likes of me and you. Too good, some would argue.”
“Aw, Jesus,” Cal murmured, twisting his wrist. “Mech, we have a problem with the plan.”
; From Cal’s ear there came nothing but silence.
“Mech? Loren? Anyone there?”
“Who you talking to?” asked Rank.
“No one,” said Cal. And he was right.
“You praying? I wouldn’t bother,” said Rank. “What kind of twisted, demented god is going to listen to a couple of crims like us? Worthless, we are. Worthless crims. Hang the lot of us, I say. Hang the bloody lot of us.”
Cal chose to ignore all this. He pursed his lips and looked down past his nose.
“Well, at least I still have the mustache.”
“You do,” Rank confirmed. “Well done. It’s a good one. It’s… what’s the word? Luscious? Is that it? It’s very nice, anyway.” He shook his head, ruefully. “Too nice for someone like us. We don’t deserve a mustache like that. Not me, and not you.”
Down below, a door slid open in a wall.
“Oh-ho. Here we go. Death awaits,” said Rank, twitching his whiskers and straightening his back. “And rightly so. Has to be done. Only fair.”
Cal side-eyed the rat-creature. He seemed to be genuinely excited about the prospect of his imminent death.
“Who’s up first, d’you think? You or me? We could put money on it, if you like. Not that it’d do us any good. And not that either of us would deserve to win a penny of it. Scum, we are. Filthy crim scum.”
He smiled, showing off his big front teeth. “Nice to meet you, Nob Muntch. See you on the other side!”
“Uh, yeah, you too,” said Cal.
“By which I mean I’ll see you in Hell,” Rank said. “Which, if you ask me, is no more than the likes of us deserve. Too good for us, if anything.”
If Rank said more, Cal didn’t hear it. The figure in the doorway had grabbed his full attention. She was tall and broad, with bad skin and greasy hair. Her eyebrows were painted on and sperm-shaped, the real brows concealed beneath a layer of fake tan.
Her piggy eyes glared up at Cal disdainfully, her mouth twisting into a sneer that showed her yellow-brown teeth.
“That’s the jumped-up little fack, alright,” she spat. She stepped back and gestured for two armored men with batons to take her place. “Now, get him facking down and then bring him to me. Me and him are going to have us a little chat.”
Twenty-One
“Look at you. Look at you fackin’ sitting there.”
Sergeant Heseltine stood flanked by two armed guards in a room that Cal had been dismayed to discover was marked, ‘Interrogation Chamber 9.’ He wasn’t sure what bothered him more—the fact that he was being taken to something called an ‘Interrogation Chamber,’ or the fact that the other eight were presumably all occupied.
Cal had been shoved into something that was not unlike a dentist’s chair, complete with recline function, overhead spotlight, and a palpable sense of dread woven into the wipe-clean fabric. His hands were still cuffed at his back, which only served to make the whole thing even more unpleasant.
His backpack sat on a little wheeled trolley beside one of the guards. Both guards were tall and Nordic-looking, with blond hair and matching closely-cropped beards. They made Heseltine herself seem even more repulsive by comparison. Considering where she’d started from, this was quite a feat.
“I said look at you fackin’ sitting there!” she said, her bloated features twisting into a grimace.
“Uh… OK,” said Cal. He looked down at himself. “Yep, that’s me, alright,” was all he could really think to add.
“Thinks he’s a funny fack,” Heseltine said. “He won’t be laughing in a fackin’ minute.”
Her eyes flicked briefly to a locked metal box marked, ‘Equipment.’ Cal’s own gaze followed, then immediately wished that it hadn’t.
“I owe you an apology,” Heseltine said, folding her hands together behind her vast back. Or getting them as close together as possible without mechanical assistance, at least. “See, I thought you was some fackin’ alien nonce, but then I had me a chat with a few of the higher-ups.”
She sucked air through her horrible teeth and smiled. “And, well, seems you’s one of us.”
Heseltine cocked an ear toward him. “That right? You one of us?”
Cal looked across their faces and winced. “I mean, I know I should say yes, and then maybe offer to take us all out for dinner, but… I can’t. I can’t say it. The thought of being one of you…” He shook his head. “No. Thanks, but no thanks. Hard pass. I’m out.”
Sergeant Heseltine’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t get a fackin’ choice. You’s a human, just like what we are.” She took a step closer. Despite still being several feet away, her sheer girth meant she was dangerously close to encroaching on Cal’s personal space. “You’re the other one, ain’t ya? You’re the other Cal Carver. The one he saw when he were a tiddler. The spaceman. That’s you, ain’t it?”
Cal groaned inwardly, and felt Splurt’s grip on his face loosen a fraction. He tilted his head back a little to make sure the mustache didn’t plop down into his lap.
“You got me,” he said.
“I fackin’ knew it,” Heseltine cackled. “Boys, we’s in the presence of celebrity here! I remember the kid used to talk about you all the time on TV back in them days.”
“TV?”
“Oh, yeah. Once the press got wind of the big fackin’ spaceship dropping in to see him, everyone wanted to talk to him. He was the most famous kid in the world. Made sense that the government got him to front all their EDI recruitment stuff. Everyone fackin’ knew him. Proper little celeb, he was.”
Cal wasn’t sure what to feel about that. It was simultaneously too much and too little information to form any real opinion.
Her eyes blazed wickedly. “He used to say you was some kind of great space hero. Said you saved the galaxy.”
“It has been known,” Cal admitted, with what he liked to think was his trademark modesty.
“Must fackin’ eat you up knowing what you became, eh?” Heseltine sniggered. “Vicious, you was. Proper vicious.”
“He.”
“You what?”
“What he became,” said Cal. “Not me.”
Heseltine snorted. “Same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
“Well, you keep telling yourself that.”
The bottom of Cal’s mustache came loose and flapped limply in front of his chin.
Heseltine motioned to the backpack, and the guard on her right retrieved it. Undoing the zip, he held it open, allowing her to fish out the darkened orb inside.
“So, this is the Symmorium Sentience, is it?” she asked. “Don’t look like all that much to me. Don’t know what all the fuss is about.”
She tossed it from hand to hand, and Cal squirmed uncomfortably. “Please be careful with that.”
Heseltine held his gaze as she deliberately missed the next catch. The orb hit the floor with a loud crack that made Cal flinch.
“Oops. Clumsy me,” the sergeant said, then one of the guards retrieved it and handed it back.
“If it was up to me, I’d keep you around. Maybe have a bit of fun with you,” Heseltine said. “But the higher-ups want rid. Can’t risk you walking around with a fackin’ face like that, spoiling all the real Carver’s hard work, they say.”
She shrugged her whale-like shoulder. “Couldn’t believe their luck. They were building up a whole fackin’ division designed to hunt you down, and then you just come striding in here, and suddenly we’ve got you right where we fackin’ want you!”
Cal raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe I’ve got you just where you want me,” he said.
Heseltine frowned at him.
“Wait, no, that’s not right,” Cal said. “Maybe I… No. Maybe you’ve got me just where you want me.”
“Yeah. I know. That’s what I fackin’ said.”
Cal’s brow furrowed. “Is it? Shizz.”
He mouthed silently, replaying it.
“Damn it, you’re right. I had this worked out back on the ship. Knew I should’ve wr
itten it down,” he said. “Maybe I’ve got me… Hold on. No. Wait. I’ve got it. Maybe you’ve got me just where I want you!” he finished, triumphantly, then winced. “Want me, I mean,” he corrected. “Maybe you’ve got me just where I want me.”
He gave a nod of satisfaction, but the expression on his face said he wasn’t really buying it.
“That wasn’t really worth the wait,” he admitted. “It sounded much better in my head.”
“What are you even fackin’ talking about?” Heseltine demanded.
Cal opened his mouth as if to respond, but then shook his head. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter. You’ll find out.”
“Find out what?”
Cal shrugged. “It’s just… No. You’ll see. We’ll leave it as a surprise.”
Heseltine sneered, showing her teeth and the dark, hairy caverns of her nostrils. “You want us to think you’s got some great trick up your fackin’ sleeve. Think you can get one over on us, grab the Sentience, and get the fack out of here, don’t ya?”
“Something like that,” Cal admitted.
“Still thinks you’s some big space hero,” Heseltine smirked. “You know you killed millions, right? Men. Women.”
She leaned forward a little. “Kiddies,” she whispered, then she rejoiced at the expression that flitted across Cal’s face. “Oh yeah. I heard you liked doing the little ‘uns especially.”
She straightened again and went back to passing the Sentience from hand to hand. Cal’s skin felt prickly and hot against the cool vinyl chair. His body was suddenly heavy, like it wanted to sink through the floor and keep falling. Most of his mustache peeled off until it was hanging on by just a thin strip immediately beneath his nostrils.
“Don’t seem much like no space hero to me,” Heseltine cackled. She nudged one of her guards. “Do it.”
The sound of a blaster being drawn from a holster kicked Cal back into life. “Wait! OK, I’ll tell you. I did have a trick up my sleeve,” he admitted.
He nodded to the ball being passed from hand to hand. “That’s not the Symmorium Sentience.”
Heseltine sneered. “Fack off.”
“I swear,” Cal said, bracing himself as the guard raised his blaster. “I swear! It’s not the Sentience.” He swallowed. “It’s a bomb.”
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