by Jamie Sawyer
“You’re one of them?” I said. “You’re working for the Black Spiral?”
Riggs smiled. “You don’t work for the Spiral. See, that shows how wrong you’ve got the whole system. It’s why you people can’t stop Warlord. You don’t work for him; you become part of the Spiral.”
“And now you’ve got the Hannover’s black box …”
“Not personally,” said Riggs. “Not anymore, anyway. But yeah, the Spiral has the box now.”
“You used me!” I said, my voice a muted hiss.
Riggs crouched. He wore heavy, Army-issue boots: the soles crunching debris as he moved.
“You let me do it, Jenk. You’ve got to take some responsibility for what happened.”
“I don’t have to do a damned thing, except die in this hellhole.”
“That’s true, I guess. Die again, and again, and again …” Riggs whispered. “You ever stop to think there has to be an end to all this?”
“I’ll end you, for what you did.”
“Calm down. I get that you’re angry, and I’m fine with it. That’s not what I meant.”
“You don’t mean anything,” I snarled. “Not to me. Not anymore.”
“I might not,” Riggs said, pressing one of his big hands to his chest. “But you want to ask yourself a question: how many times can you do this? How many times can you die before it begins to matter?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’ve said that already,” he said. Grinned some more. “And we already have, as well. Lots of times, as I remember. You seemed to like it.”
“You’re not real, Riggs. You’re not here, and I’m not wasting my energy talking to you.”
“It was so damned easy to get under your skin. You were a soft target. Older woman, younger man. Disaffected with her job.” He shrugged. “After what happened with your last big outfit, the Lazarus Legion, you were just so desperate to be loved …” Riggs pulled a face now, an exaggerated look of disapproval. “It was pretty gross, to be honest. You reeked of desperation.”
I snarled. Lunged across the cell, my fingers turned to claws. Riggs pulled back, into shadow.
“You’ll have to be faster, next time,” Riggs whispered. “But chin up, Keira. You’ll get through it one way or another.”
“I’m going to find you, Riggs. Find you, and kill you.”
Riggs’ outline was gone now, completely melded with the shadow. But I could see the slits of his eyes, reflecting the low light, and I heard his last words clear enough.
“You don’t know what’s coming, Jenkins. None of you do …”
His voice trailed off, just as another vibration hit the walls of the cell. Was it more violent than the last episode? It felt like it was. I reached out with a hand and steadied myself against the wall until the noise and motion had passed.
“You in there?” came another voice.
I expected at first to see Riggs again, but it wasn’t him.
“Ma’am? You there?” it repeated.
“Novak?” I said, on my hands and knees now, searching the mouldy cell wall. That was where the voice seemed to be coming from. “Where are you? How—how are you?”
“How am I talking?” he asked. “Cracked pipe, in wall. Am in next cell.”
“How’s that possible?”
Novak chuckled. “This is prison. I am lifer, yes? I know prisons, ma’am. I know places like this.”
“Thank Christo.”
“Keep voice down,” Novak said. “There are guards up there.”
“Please tell me that I’m not imagining you too …”
My chest suddenly felt tight with emotion. This was the first time I’d spoken to a member of the Jackals since our capture, and I hadn’t expected the stir that it caused in me.
“If you were imagining a member of the Jackals, wouldn’t you be imagining one of the others?” Novak asked, his tone amused.
“Fair point.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not badly,” I said. “I can walk. I can fight.”
“Good.”
“I saw you today. I saw you in the prison—”
“Yes, yes. I work. I am in gang.”
“That was fast,” I muttered. “We’ve been here, what, six days?”
I heard Novak inhale sharply. “We have been here long time. Weeks, ma’am.”
Although I’d expected as much, Novak’s words still shocked me. I was losing control in here, and things were only going to get worse.
“Have you seen the others?” I asked. “Have you seen Zero? Did Carmine make it out?”
Zero and Carmine: they couldn’t make transition. They didn’t use the simulants like the rest of us. Were the Directorate torturing their real bodies somewhere in the prison?
“They are alive,” Novak said.
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Like I say, I know prison. World is different: system is the same.”
“We have to get out of here, Novak.”
“I know,” he said. “We will. Be careful what you say. They are listening.”
The ever-present threat of surveillance wasn’t just paranoia. A spy-eye—a black half-globe, shiny and new, very out of place with the surrounding features of the cell—was attached to the ceiling. It winked the occasional light down at me, reminding me that I was being watched, being listened to. Everything and everywhere in the prison was bugged.
The cold ceramic tiling of the wall suddenly began to vibrate, and I jumped back. Another shockwave, or whatever it was, thundered through the cell. Followed by a distant roll of thunder that dissolved into something like boots drumming on the deck.
“Do you know what’s making that noise, Novak?”
“It’s happening,” Novak said. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Soon,” Novak whispered. “It’ll happen soon.”
“What will happen? Tell me!”
“The voice knows.”
“What voices?”
“Not voices,” Novak replied. “Voice. The Voice. In my head.”
“Okay,” I said. My heart sank with disappointment. “Okay.”
“It tells me things, and it will tell you, too.”
“What things?”
Novak paused, then answered, “Sleep, now.”
I collapsed back against the wall. So that was it; Novak had finally gone mad. Deep down, I wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t exactly been sane before our capture, and Jiog had tipped him over the edge. My hope that he had an actual plan to get us off this rock was fleeting, and I felt it drain from me as I lay in the dark.
There was another noise overhead, the clatter of a baton against the security hatch. A figure up there, glancing through the observation window. I recognised Fire’s broad face, the tattoo on his cheek just visible, watching me down in the dark. But he just moved off, disappeared.
When he was gone, I whispered, “Novak?” I searched the wall for a crack, a seam, some shred of evidence that Novak was on the other side. “Novak! Are you there?”
But there was no answer.
I sat alone in the whispering dark, and pondered his words.
Soon. It’ll happen soon.
CHAPTER FOUR
REDACTION
The observation hatch cracked open, bright light pouring down the shaft. A face appeared at the lip of the portal.
“Get up.”
I didn’t sleep in the hole, not really. The space was too wet, dark and unpleasant for any downtime to count as actual rest. But I had been dozing, and now I stirred.
“Hands open,” barked Fire. “Away from the ladder.”
I did as ordered, and an extendable metal ladder slipped down the shaft, clanking noisily as its feet hit the floor. Ice and another anonymous masked trooper began the descent into my cell, Fire covering them with his AUG-30.
“I’m not trying anything,” I said. Not yet, anyway.
Ice gave that same disappointed look as he reached th
e base of the ladder. He folded my arms behind my back and slapped a pair of magnetic manacles around my wrists. Pushed me forward, into the stress position. This was uncomfortable, painful even, but nothing new, and nothing like what these bastards were capable of.
“Up,” Ice said.
“You really should ask a girl if she’s busy before you take her on a date,” I said.
“You’re not funny,” Ice replied.
“I’m not trying to be.”
Up the ladder. Through the main prison chamber, and towards the medical wing, escorted by Fire and Ice. Tang and a gaggle of medtechs were waiting there, but something else caught my attention.
“Jackals!” I called. “Report!”
Feng and Lopez, manacled, eyes forward, were flanked by guards. At the sound of my voice, the troopers turned. They were both badly dishevelled, beaten, malnourished. It hurt to see them this way. Feng in particular had a face full of bruises, and angry red welts lined his neck: injuries that had probably been caused by an active shock-baton. But despite his condition, Feng’s face split in a smile when he saw me. I noticed a missing tooth when he did so, and that his left eye socket had ballooned.
“Ma’am!” he said. “You’re alive!”
“I knew that you would be,” Lopez said.
Lopez was barely recognisable. Dark hair hanging in lank strands, her face streaked with dirt. She swayed as she spoke, and a trooper propped her up.
“Guards,” Tang said, “ensure that the prisoners remain pacified at all times. If any of them misbehave, you have my permission to use force. Non-lethal, in the first instance.”
A dozen soldiers, each with the physique of Fire and Ice, milled around the medical chamber. All wearing Kevlar vests and head gear, decked out with personal defence weapons and shock-batons. The bay should’ve been crowded with so many personnel, but I realised that something was different.
The simulators were gone. I loathed the reaction, but my data-ports—where I made connection with the simulator, which would allow me to make the neural-link to my waiting sim—had started to buzz with anticipation. That sensation evaporated, to be replaced by rising anxiety.
“What are you doing, Tang?” I asked. “What’ve you done with the simulators?”
“Not your concern, Prisoner,” Tang replied. “Prepare them.”
We were stripped naked, manacles removed.
“They’re ready,” said Ice.
“Do it,” Tang ordered.
An army of medics, carrying hypodermics, descended on us.
“Where’s Zero?” Feng shouted. His voice was achingly hoarse, as though he had been screaming or shouting for a long, long time. “Have you seen her, ma’am?”
Zero wasn’t here. Neither she, Novak, nor Pariah were present. Novak was probably still on work duty, and I doubted that the Directorate would risk putting Pariah on release, but where was Zero? Panic gripped me.
“Where’s my officer, Tang? What have you done with her?”
“If you’ve hurt her—” Feng started, but his words were lost as a guard slammed an activated baton into his chest.
There was no time for further argument.
I felt the spike of a needle in my arm, and the world immediately started to lose clarity.
“Commence procedure,” said Tang.
Immediately, this was different, and immediately this was much, much worse than what had come before.
I woke, but I was in my real body this time. Standing up, more or less, restrained, pinned to another gravity-plate. I had never been inside one of the torture chambers in my real skin before today, and I didn’t like it much. Feng and Lopez were here too, arranged in a triangular formation, a distance between each of us. Restrained in the same way: facing forward. Feng’s body flexed and bucked with unbridled fury. Now that he was naked, I could see just how badly he had been beaten. Not simulated injuries; these were for real.
“Zero?” Feng said.
Zero. Sergeant Zoe Campbell. She knelt on the floor. Head lowered, but when she heard Feng’s voice she looked up with red-rimmed eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said, so quietly that I could barely hear her. “I’m okay.”
She so obviously wasn’t. The room closed in around me, and the Jackals dissolved into shouted protestations, insults, threats. But it was useless, and we knew it. The restraint equipment was simulant-proofed. What chance of escape did we have in our real skins?
“You motherfuckers!” Feng shouted. “You touch her, and I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands! I swear it!”
And not just Zero.
“Carmine …” I said.
She wore the remains of her Navy uniform, and had seen almost as much attention as Feng. The old captain’s face and shoulders were a seething mass of colourful bruises, a mouthwatering range of blues, greens, browns. She looked up at me and nodded. Yeah, that was Carmine. Too strong to give the Directorate the satisfaction of breaking her. She’d hold out until the very end, and then some.
“Don’t worry,” Carmine said. “I’m fine too. It’d take more than these ten-credit operators to finish me, that I can tell you.”
She still had spirit, but she looked so frail, so old. At her age, she was taking this worst of all of us. Her bionic leg was positioned awkwardly, the trouser hem of her uniform torn. Dried blood caked a wound on her cheek.
“Silence.”
Commander Kwan and Surgeon-Major Tang stalked the perimeter of the chamber, a safe distance from each of the gravity-plates. Fire and Ice were present too, both fully armoured. A flock of drones hovered overhead.
Lopez and I fell quiet, but Feng didn’t have that sort of control. He was rabid as an infected Krell, his eyes bulging, teeth snapping, foaming at the mouth. Kwan observed him with a contemptuous stare.
“How the mighty have fallen,” he said. “A proper Directorate trooper values loyalty. It is truly incredible that this one was birthed of the same crèche as my personal cadre.”
Tang nodded in agreement. “I was the progenitor of the cloning programme,” she said, looking in Feng’s direction. “Does that surprise you, Prisoner?”
“The Surgeon is known as the ‘Mother of Clones’ in some circles,” Kwan muttered. “She was even on Delta Crema, although before your birthing.”
Delta Crema was the place of Feng’s inception. The Alliance had liberated him from a crèche there, and it had once been a major cloning facility under Directorate control.
“I can do incredible things with the flesh,” Tang muttered. “It is a gift, and one that I proudly dedicate to the good of the Asiatic Directorate.” She smiled, a chilling, horrible expression. “The loyalty of my troopers is, ordinarily, unsurpassed.” She paused in front of Feng’s gravity-plate and evaluated him with her oculus. “But my work is not as flawless as I would have hoped. To a proper clone, loyalty is as vital as food and air.” She sighed. “Without it, most wilt. They simply cannot live.”
Feng growled at Tang, and she shrank back.
“That is no way to speak to your mother,” she said. “Of course, when an errant child does not appreciate the reasons for its existence, like any good mother I have methods to bring it back into the fold …”
“Damn you all,” Feng roared.
Kwan had grown bored of this discussion. “Shut the traitor up,” he said.
Fire stepped forward, and snapped his shock-baton across Feng’s stomach. The noise the impact produced was sickening. Feng was strong, and he kept ranting for a while, but after another few blows he got the message. The scent of burnt flesh, caused by the shock discharge, was thick in the air. I could feel the pain radiating off the young trooper, and it was almost too much to bear. Feng finally gave up: his snarls reduced to ragged gasps for breath.
“Good,” Kwan said. “The dogs learn.”
“We’re Jackals,” I spat. “Not dogs.”
“You will all learn,” Kwan said. “Sooner or later.”
Zero turned away. Eyes fixed on the
floor, she didn’t want to see the beating. She looked so much smaller than the rest of the squad. Her prison overalls swamping her thin body, she appeared painfully resigned.
“If you’ve hurt her,” I said with as much poison as Feng, “I’ll kill every last bastard on this planet!”
“You’ll do no such thing, Prisoner X-563,” said Tang.
She was already fussing over her tools. She selected a small electric saw and activated it. The saw’s razor-blade wheel buzzed to life. Tang waved it menacingly over my naked stomach. I had a sudden, retch-inducing memory of every other death I’d suffered on this planet.
“Please—don’t,” Zero said haltingly. “I’m okay, Jenkins. Th-they haven’t hurt me.
“None of this is real.”
“Shut up, Prisoner X-233, also known as Zero,” Kwan said. Then, back to Tang, “Restrain yourself, Surgeon-Major. You will have your chance.”
“As you wish, Honoured Commander.”
Kwan paced into the middle of the room, circling Zero and Carmine. The commander was dressed in an exo-suit—like the rest of his commandos, ready for deployment at a moment’s notice—and the armour hummed quietly as he moved. He even had a slim-line thruster-pack on his back, a mobility unit that would allow him to jump and fly short distances. The chest-plate of his suit was covered in various medals and badges, the product of a lifetime’s service in the Asiatic Directorate, and a heavy sidearm that looked more ceremonial than functional hung at one hip, a sword with a mono-blade at the other. His air of intimidation was magnified tenfold, which I guessed was exactly what he had intended.
“Today someone will break,” Kwan declared. “Today, someone will tell me exactly what I want to hear. Activate the display.”
Although it had that same torture-chic decor as the last, the chamber we were in today was different. One wall was filled with downloaded schematics, with tri-D plans and tactical reports. Mostly in Korean and Chino, but also Standard. This was everything that the Directorate had obtained from the Santa Fe’s data-stacks and mainframe: our entire surviving intelligence package. That was it then: Yukio had failed. Her attempt to burn the Santa Fe’s stacks had been unsuccessful. It wasn’t surprising, but it was still disappointing.