Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  Another concept of The Flow was that Packets were spread whether a Waster thought the info was relevant or not. This info was often itself a code, and it was good that not everyone knew what it meant. As long as it was passed along, it would mean something to the right person eventually.

  This meant that the Wasters in their randomized cell blocks and yards would stay tight. If there were thirty-three of them alive and only four yards to be spread between on a daily basis, it wasn’t much of a challenge to keep The Flow moving.

  “Where’s Moses?” she said.

  Jerrard reflexively looked at his feet. “Down in the Core,” he said, and she realized he was looking toward the center of the entire prison structure.

  “How do we get to him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his face hanging despite its puffiness. “We only see him once a month. His yard schedule is limited or something.”

  Polar Gary turned and smacked the crate. “Better get a weapon, Jerry.”

  Jerrard popped open the crate and dove in, rifling around like a starving animal. “How many are we?” he said, coming away with a bolt-action piece with a retractable blade.

  “Not many,” Thompson said quietly.

  He looked at them and nodded solemnly. “This is it, ain’t it?”

  “Half-Shot is back at the ship,” Dava said. “Along with five fly-boys. So we’ll need to jack some boats if we wanna get all thirty-three out.”

  “Then we should get Freezer,” he said.

  “You know where he is?”

  Together they looked at Dava’s map. Freezer and Johnny Eyeball were in the same cellblock, a circumstance that Dava couldn’t tell was coincidence or through the insistence of the big psycho. Last time she’d seen them was back on Vulca, and Eyeball was protecting Freezer like some prized piece; that’s how they’d gotten caught together. The prize being that Freezer promised Eyeball his allowance of liquor, which was of particular interest to Eyeball since he’d been put on the Diet.

  It was bad enough to imagine the torture for Johnny to have his drink taken away when he was a Waster, but as an inmate, the sobriety would be an extended period of pain.

  “Okay, we need to get them out first,” Dava said. “Frank will be able to help us get everyone else out. We need to protect him above all. And nobody gives him a gun, or else he’ll blow his own damn head off.”

  “The path inward to the cellblock we want is that way, about ninety degrees,” Jerrard said, pointing at the opposite end of the yard.

  “How many Wasters are in this yard today?”

  “Six, including me.”

  “Can you round ’em up and get them to meet us at the other hatch?”

  “Of course.” He turned to go, then looked at her sideways. “How are you going to get over there?”

  She frowned, looking at her small crew. “We don’t know the currents. We’re gonna have to follow the wall.”

  Jerrard regarded her for only a second, then seemed to agree with her assessment. He reached above the doorway and scrambled up the wall before snagging a current and swimming into the void.

  “Well,” Thompson said, pulling the cord of the bleeding warden tight. “Should we go up or down?”

  “Or left or right?” Seven-Pack said with a shrug. “Same distance, no matter which way we follow the wall.”

  “Come on,” Dava said. The way the framework was structured, she could see that out from the sides of the hatch, it made a straight circle. If they followed it in one direction, they’d be guaranteed not to wander. She led them, hand over hand on the holds that speckled the frame.

  Just beyond the frame, she began to realize the outer wall was always clear. It was a trick of perspective that when she looked toward the inner part of the prison, it appeared to be more opaque. It was just that there were more walls beyond, representing whatever the next layer was. Cell blocks, as best she could tell. As they went, she could look through the wall and see the corridor they’d come down to reach the yard. It connected to a maze of other corridors that went both outward, to the docks they’d landed at, and inward, disappearing from view.

  Toward the center of the yard, she could see Jerrard’s sprawling form making its way from cluster to cluster. The currents weren’t fast, but they were certainly more direct. The slow path she and the others were making would give him plenty of time to get the word around the yard.

  Judging by the angle of her view through the glasslike wall, she guessed they were about halfway across. There was a crackle and a hum, loud and unnerving. Dava couldn’t tell where the sudden sound was coming from. Then it spoke.

  “Everyone in Yard Beta, your attention.” The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. “Unauthorized individuals have entered the facility. This yard is now on full lockdown. Proceed to the nearest wall and prepare for magnetic restraints to engage.”

  “It’s in their clothes or something,” Polar Gary said sadly. “In the standard-issue uniform. They can glue you to the walls whenever they want.”

  Dava glanced around. Many of inmates in the yard seemed to be aware of the maglock restraints and were attempting to dance between currents in order to keep themselves hovering near the spacious center.

  “They’re just going to change the air to push everyone to one side,” the warden said. He’d followed Dava’s hopeful gaze out to the crowd avoiding the walls. He looked at her. “Any minute now, all of your friends will be glued to the wall.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and he flinched, which was followed by a wince of pain at his still-open wound.

  “To the infiltrators,” the booming voice came again. “Release Assistant Warden Perzynski immediately and don’t move. Securibots will arrive shortly to collect you. Repeat, do not move from your location, or we will be forced to fire upon you.”

  “Ugh, they never miss a chance to call me Assistant Warden,” Perzynski said with a small sigh.

  “Fire on us,” Thompson said, looking around. “From where?”

  “Turrets,” the warden said. The single word conjured back images of the weapons Dava had seen as they’d approached the spherical prison in the black maria.

  “Aren’t those facing outward?” Seven-Pack asked on behalf of the rest of the group.

  Perzynski smiled, though the pain made it look lopsided. “They have full three-sixty rotation. Which means they can target the yards just as easily as anything else.”

  “Repeat, release Assistant Warden Perzynski,” the speakers bellowed. “You have ten seconds to comply.”

  “What are they going to do, shoot through the wall?” Thompson said. She tugged the warden closer to her. “I don’t think so, will they?”

  Dava shared her skepticism. “Come on,” she said. “Keep moving.”

  They began pulling themselves along the wall again when Thompson suddenly cried out. “Ow, what the fuck?”

  She twisted at her torso, like she was trying to see the back end of herself. Her arms flapped around in the zero-G, flailing to stop some unseen assailant. A string of obscenities erupted forth. “God damn, motherfuck that burns!”

  Dava froze for a moment, a spike of fear at the unknown. Then she pulled herself closer to the wall and got a look at what was happening. A thin beam of red shot through the clear wall and danced around on Thompson’s body, drawing a line of smoke as it snaked about. “What the hell is that?”

  The warden was being tugged at odd moments thanks to Thompson’s gyrations, as though he were only getting the aftershocks of the attack. “It’s a focused light beam,” he managed through sporadic coughing and yelping. The jostling was causing more blood to pop from his wound in spouts with each hard jerk. “The walls filter out a certain amount of background radiation, but the beams are tuned to a frequency that can penetrate.”

  Dava suspected there was a reason they hadn’t been outright fried: the turrets could get through the thick, clear walls, but not without some loss of intensity. It was probably good for crowd
control in the yards, but not good for actually trying to kill someone.

  “Gary, grab him,” she said. “Hold him in front of you with your back to the wall.”

  Polar Gary complied with a snakelike strike of one large hand, his torso barely moving. With his other hand, he reached back to steady against the wall, grabbing one of the handholds. As Thompson continued to spasm and yank against the tether, Gary pulled the warden in close to his chest and held him tight.

  The beam left Thompson and sought out Gary. He scrunched down his head and pulled in his arms as best he could, shielding himself behind the massive crate strapped to his back.

  Dava kicked off the wall and grabbed the warden by a tuft of hair as she began floating past. He yelped, and she pulled in closer, drawing her blade up to his throat once more.

  “Do I have to prove my violent tendencies again?” she said.

  “No!” He attempted to squirm, but under Gary’s grip, there wasn’t much room to move.

  “Tommy, Seven,” Dava said. “You two keep moving. Get to that other hatch.”

  Without protest, Thompson popped her end of the tether from her belt. The two Wasters began moving as quickly as they could fling themselves along the handholds of the wall. Without the warden or Polar Gary and the crate slowing down their progress, they moved much faster.

  Dava grabbed the loose end of the tether and attached it to Gary’s belt. “I’m not trying to treat you like a packbot,” she said to him. “But I got a plan.”

  She sheathed her knife and slipped her hands and legs in and around the warden, under Gary’s massive grip. She tapped a control at the end of the tether that was attached to Perzynski. The tether went slack, several meters of it spooling into a floating mass of thin cable.

  “Okay,” Dava said, winding her fingers tightly into the drab uniform of the warden. “Gary. I need you to fling us as hard as you can. Aim at an angle – we need to be able to hit the wall, but we need to get a good distance out. Can you do that?”

  His answer was to perform the maneuver without comment. With a sudden shove, he sent Dava and the warden sailing. Despite the impulsive action, the route was direct and smooth, and the wall beyond a bit of curve rushed at her fast. She could make out the laser as it tried to follow their trajectory. It looked as though the turret operator intended to sever the cable, but was having a hard time locking on long enough to burn through it.

  With a hard whump, they smacked into the wall. One of her hands lost its grip on her human counterweight and she struggled to maintain her hold, constricting her legs around the tall man’s waist. She used the free hand to grab a handhold, and she pulled them closer to the wall.

  The tether was connected to Perzynski’s belt, so she had to keep her legs wrapped around him high enough to avoid the now-taut tether. She reached both hands past him and threaded each arm through a handhold, hooking at her elbows. This pressed her so hard into his body, she could feel the chest wound seeping wetly into her thin clothes.

  She intended to signal to Gary the next move in the maneuver, but the big man seemed to have an intuition that launched him into action. He pulled his legs under and pivoted so that the wall became the floor. And then he jumped.

  There was a tug of force against Dava’s elbows, but it was not as bad as she expected. Polar Gary coasted through the space, anchored by the tether around Perzynski’s waist. The cable pulled him into an arc that smoothed out instantly. Twisting her head, she watched him fly deep into the yard and then disappear from her vision. She whipped her head around to the other side to catch him on his downward path. Somehow he’d managed to rotate so that his legs extended toward the wall. He landed like an animal, the legs touching first, his back and the crate angling forward, so that he pitched over and brought his hands to the wall. He froze for a few seconds, getting the proper grip. The laser found the cable again.

  Gary looked up and met Dava’s eyes. She unhooked her elbows. He wrapped the cable in his arms and pulled as she pushed off from the wall.

  Her arc wasn’t nearly as smooth as Gary’s was. She felt like she was careening out of control through the air, barely connected to the world by a thin cable and a thin warden. The yard spun around her and she lost her bearing. When the wall came, she wasn’t ready for it. She squeaked a cry when her shoulder and thigh slammed hard into the clear surface. She lost control of her limbs just long enough for the warden to slip away from her. In a panic, she scrabbled at the wall but came up emptyhanded.

  Perzynski meanwhile had managed to grab one of the handholds. His head was tucked between his arms, and the shudder of his back gave her the impression that he was softly sobbing.

  The nearest handhold slowly spiraled in her vision, growing smaller as she drifted away from the wall. She felt a twisting in her stomach, a churning nausea. The thin cable stretched past her, just out of reach. She could see the red glow where the laser was once again trying to sever it.

  She turned and looked at the expanse of the yard. Bodies swirled, trying to navigate the changing currents and avoid the walls. It was like watching people trying not to drown. They spun recklessly in her vision and her breath went shallow. Her organs seemed to be sliding down to her feet and back up to her skull. A burning heated her throat, and expanding pressure was building inside her.

  She took a look over her shoulder and saw the cable. She reached back toward it, a few meters from her extended fingers. Then she turned her head the opposite way. As directly opposite as she could get it as the dizzying nausea overtook her.

  And she vomited.

  *

  A sick feeling of frayed consciousness tormented Dava, making her wonder where she was, when she was. It quickly passed. The cable was firmly in the grip of her right hand. Behind her floated the partially digested chunks of her breakfast, yawning outward in a cone-like shape. The force of the discharge had pushed her close enough to grab the tether.

  She turned back to the cable. Hand over hand she quickly pulled along it until she grabbed onto the sobbing Assistant Warden Perzynski. He seemed to have a death grip on the wall. She weakly wrapped her legs around his midsection from behind him and reached out, finding room on the same handholds he was clinging to.

  His weight shifted under her slightly and he gave a startled yelp. The cable was swinging. She looked over her shoulder to see Polar Gary in another arc. As he peaked, she swiveled her head around to the other shoulder to watch him land.

  Only this time the cable didn’t hold. The laser had weakened it, and it stretched thin, the nanofibers splitting apart where they had been burned. It split just as Gary’s arc was coming back down and he sailed untethered through the yard.

  “Shit!” Dava watched his trajectory. Fortunately, he was well on his way toward the wall and it looked like he would land close to the hatch.

  That just left her and their keymaster. She grabbed the cable and reeled in the limp, impotent remainder. Without a connector at the end, she couldn’t do much with it except wrap it around her left arm to secure it.

  She pulled herself against the wall, planting her feet against it in a squat. She could see the hatch. They were close, maybe a couple of dozen meters.

  “Let go,” she said. Perzynski didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. “Hey, fuckerhead. I said let go!”

  He didn’t respond other than to shake his bowed head. She lifted one leg and kicked him with the point of her foot, right into the ribs where the chest wound ended. He yelped and reached down with his left hand reflexively. The right hand twitched as well, but the instinct to hold on took over and his fingers curled back around it.

  Dava repositioned her legs. Left arm still wrapped with the cable, she pulled her blade from its sheath with the right. With a one-two motion, she severed his digits and kicked off the wall.

  Chapter 10

  They found Johnny Eyeball and Freezer in cellblock four. Their cells were side-by-side, two in a great long row, of which there were several above and below. The bloc
k was like a grid. At the back of each three-meter-to-a-side cell was a cot with straps; though the way it was fixed to the wall made the back of the cell seem like the floor. It didn’t much matter. Dava and her crew were looking in through a mesh screen.

  Johnny and Frank were both naked.

  To be more precise, Freezer was wearing a pair of gray underpants, his skinny yellow form clinging to one wall near the mesh. Eyeball on the other hand was stark naked, winking furiously and doing some kind of calisthenics, his arms raising up to a clap above his head and back down, his legs spreading apart and coming together, his flaccid penis jouncing with the rhythm of his exercise.

  “Dava!” Freezer cried. “Boy, I’m glad to see you! Wait, you’re not a prisoner are you?”

  “N—”

  “No, of course not,” he said speedily, words running together. “Lookit, you have a gang with you. And lots of weapons!”

  “No guns for you,” Thompson said.

  “Whatever, Tommy-Gun. That’s fine. I don’t want a gun. Just get us out of here! Hey, is that a warden? Did you guys kidnap a warden?”

  “Not that I don’t enjoy the show,” Seven-Pack said. “But what are you doing, Johnny?”

  “He does that all the time,” Freezer said. “It’s hard to exercise in this place. They have some stretchy things in the yard, but you have to check them out and there’s a timer and everything. It’s like they only want you to get the minimum amount of exercise to keep your bones from completely deteriorating. Like if they could, they’d take it all away. But there’s something about it being torture. The brittle bones thing, I mean. I think it’s torture that you have to exercise at all. But here, if you don’t exercise, you get so weak you’d break your ankles just walking in normal gravity.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Polar Gary rumbled. “Does this kid have an off switch?”

  Dava looked at them. Frank had always been skinny, but the way his flesh clung to the bones, she knew there had been significant muscle loss, and it had only been a few months. As she watched Johnny’s muscles flex with the wing-flapping motion, she could see the desperation in his good eye. The fight against the decay. A fight he was losing. His muscles shrinking, becoming stringy, veins running blue underneath the paling yellow skin.