“Shizzzzz. F-forgot,” he slurred, then something hit him across the bridge of the nose. The last thing he heard was the excited squeals of the woman behind the screen shouting something about a ‘leg-humping spunk nugget’ and then the already darkened room became marginally darker, and silence poured in through his ears.
“PSST.”
“Wha—?”
Dan’s eyelids scraped open, saw that everything was blurry, so closed again.
“Psst!”
Dan grunted.
Psst. Someone was saying, ‘Psst’ at him. Not making a psst sort of sound, but saying it like it was an actual word.
Idiot.
“Dude. Psst. Wake up, brah.”
“I’m awake,” Dan said.
Or… had that just been in his head?
“I’m awake,” he said again, being sure to voice it aloud this time.
“Oh, dude. That’s awesome! I was starting to think you were dead.”
“I am dead,” Dan confirmed.
There was a moment of silence.
“Oh. Well, my condolences, brah.”
Dan forced his eyes open again. This time, the world was less blurry, but only just. With some effort he shuffled himself onto his elbows. Pain flashed like lightning inside his skull, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it.
“Hey, I wouldn’t sit up, dude. Those goobers did a real number on you. You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
“Again, already dead,” Dan replied. He rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb, then blinked a few times. A bronzed young man with dirty blond hair tied back in a loose ponytail squatted beside him, his facial expression slap-bang in the sweet spot between ‘confused’ and ‘concerned’.
“Who the fonk are you?” Dan asked.
“Name’s Finn. Finn Cariss,” the guy replied, smiling and showing off one of the most impeccable sets of teeth Dan had ever seen. “Well, technically it’s Finalan, but most folks call me—”
“Alright, alright. I didn’t ask for your life story,” Dan muttered. He started to get up, and shrugged off Finn’s attempt to help.
They were still in the room where Dan had taken the beating, but the screen the old woman had been sitting behind was now encased in the same mirror material he and Ollie had encountered when they’d first arrived. The word ‘closed’ flashed on the surface.
“Damn it,” Dan grunted.
“Yeah, they shut up shop maybe an hour ago.”
“An hour? How long was I out?”
Finn shrugged. “Ninety minutes. Give or take.”
Dan rubbed his head where it ached. Which was everywhere. “And what? You waited here the whole time?”
“Couldn’t just go leaving you, brah,” Finn replied. “Some of the people down here… Well, they’re not very friendly. No saying what they’d have taken.”
“I haven’t got much of anything to take,” Dan said.
“Arms, legs, teeth, eyes,” Finn said, pointing to the various parts of Dan’s body. “You’ve got enough.”
“Seriously?” Dan winced. “This place is worse than I thought.”
Finn nodded. “You can say that again, brah. Most newbies are lucky to survive the first couple of nights these days, but once you get past those then things tend to get…”
He stumbled as Dan shoved past him, the detective’s coat swishing out behind him as he broke into a run. “Hey, where you going, brah?”
Ollie.
Dan barreled through the door and out into the corridor, where he immediately stumbled over a garbage bag, ripping it open and spilling the contents across the floor.
He kicked through the debris and ran on, frantically searching the fog of his aching head for the address that Ollie had been given. Behind him, Finn shouted a, “Take it easy, dead dude,” but Dan ignored it and pressed on past the doorways and the garbage and the impending sense of dread.
What had the address been? Pod nine-nine-four. Corridor… what? Eight-four-seven, he thought, although he had no idea what corridor he was in now, so that information alone didn’t help him much.
He raced on, following what he hoped was the route back to his own place. At least from there he’d have a starting point to work from, although he’d wandered for so long trying to find Property Storage he couldn’t be sure he was headed in even vaguely the right direction.
His boots scuffed along the rough stone floor as he hurtled around a bend in the passageway. A group of prehistoric-looking creatures were bunched together around a doorway up ahead, laughing and jeering as they passed around a cigar-shaped metal pipe.
One of them – a rough-scaled yellowish guy in a gray jumpsuit – spotted Dan approaching and nudged the others. By the time Dan reached them, all five of the figures were watching him, their chests puffed out, their bony neck frills raised.
The largest of the five had the end of the pipe clutched between his teeth. His beady black eyes looked Dan up and down as he stumbled to a stop.
“What corridor is this?” Dan demanded.
“Why the fonk should we tell you?” the guy with the pipe snapped back, squaring his shoulders.
Dan slammed the heel of his hand against the end of the pipe, sending it straight to the back of the guy’s throat, making his eyes bulge.
“What corridor is this?”
“Shizz, OK, OK!” said the guy in the jumpsuit. “It’s eight-four-six!”
The leader hacked and wheezed while various members of the gang frantically pounded his back.
“Where’s eight-four-seven?”
“Up there, next right,” explained Jumpsuit. “Can’t miss it.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” said Dan. He drove a fist into the choking guy’s stomach and the pipe was ejected in one sharp, sudden cough. “Next time, less of the attitude,” he warned them, and then he was off running again, barely able to believe his luck.
Ollie was in the next corridor over, pod number nine-nine-four. He’d be there in no time.
Dan took the next turn on the right and stopped outside a pod door. Half-hidden by all the scratches, scorch-marks and graffiti was a number.
It read: One.
Turning, Dan looked along the passageway ahead of him. It stretched off for half a mile or more before curving out of sight.
“Oh, you have got to be fonking kidding me…”
FOUR
AS SOMEONE who didn’t breathe, it was physically impossible for Dan to get out of breath. Clearly, no one had passed the message on to his lungs, though, and by the time he’d reached the door to pod nine-nine-four he felt like his chest was about to implode.
“Ollie! Artur!” he wheezed, hammering a fist against the metal.
“Please state your name,” the door panel chimed.
“Oledol Lodelo,” Dan said.
“Voice print not recognized.”
“Damn it. Ollie! Artur! You in there?” Dan cried, hammering again.
No reply.
Fonk! He’d told her she’d be OK. He’d told her nothing bad was going to happen, and now—
The door slid aside revealing Ollie sitting in a plastic chair. A hulking multi-limbed figure was behind her, its tentacle-like arms snaking across her shoulders and around her neck. Dan caught a flash of two silver blades, then he was charging across the room, fist drawing back.
He connected with the thing right between its disproportionately small eyes. It crumpled to the floor, its arms immediately going limp, the blades clattering across the rough stone.
“What are you doing?” Ollie yelped, jumping up.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m saving you,” Dan said. He glanced at her, then did a double-take. Her hair was shorter on the right side than it was on the left.
Dan looked down at the blades on the floor.
Scissors.
“Saving me from a haircut?”
“Smooth, Deadman. Real smooth.”
Artur was sitting on the edge of the bed, blowing gently on his brightly p
ainted fingernails. He had a white facecloth wrapped around himself like a towel, and his own hair had been neatly trimmed at the sides.
“I mean, if ye didn’t approve of the style, ye could’ve just said something.”
Ollie squatted beside the fallen… whatever it was.
“Banbara? Banbara, are you OK?”
Banbara emitted an inquisitive sort of groan.
“Are you hurt?”
Barbara moaned in the affirmative.
“I thought she was trying to kill you,” Dan explained.
Ollie looked up. “Why would she be trying to kill me?”
“Pretty much everyone I’ve met since we got here has tried to kill me,” Dan said.
“Is that why ye look like a big bag o’ shoite?” Artur asked. “More than usual, I mean.”
Ollie gave Banbara a shake, but the response was limited to another couple of groans.
“I think ye’ve properly messed the girl up there, Deadman,” Artur said. “I mean, I’m no expert on the subject, but I think we can safely say she’s brain-damaged. Well done. Ye’ve made her a vegetable. And with poor Peaches’s hair only half-finished.”
“She had a weapon. Weapons. Plural. What was I supposed to do?”
Artur gave his fingernails another blow. “It’s a tricky one, alright,” he admitted. “But maybe not punching the poor cow unconscious might’ve been a start. I don’t know, d’ye think that might’ve been an avenue worth exploring, maybe?”
Banbara’s tentacles all jerked at once. Her marble-sized eyes fluttered open. “Ow! What the fonk?”
“She’s OK,” Dan said, visibly relaxing. “She’s fine. No harm done.”
“My legs! I can’t feel my legs!”
Dan shuffled uncomfortably and very deliberately avoided Artur and Ollie’s gazes. “They’ll be fine. The feeling, that’ll come back,” he said. One of her feet twitched and Dan cried out in triumph. “See? Her foot moved. She’s fine.”
“Uh, can I be the judge of that?” Banbara snapped. She prodded gingerly at her face, which sported a fist-sized indent. With some concentration, she managed to ‘pop’ the dent back out again.
One of her tentacles pointed accusingly at Dan, while the others raised her into a sitting position. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t get security in here right now, mister.”
Dan opened his mouth to reply, then sighed. “No. I got nothing.” He held a hand out to her. “Sorry, I guess that was my fault.”
“You guess it was your fault?” said Ollie. “You punched her in the face.”
“Or was it partly her fault for having her face right there in front of yer fist?” Artur asked. “Is there shared blame? Is that what ye’re sayin’?”
“OK, it was my fault,” Dan grunted. “Banbara, I apologize. It was my mistake. Let me make it up to you.”
Banbara scowled. “How?”
Dan hesitated. “Uh…”
He bent down and picked up both pairs of scissors, then held them out to her. “There.”
Artur snorted. “Ye’re a man of grand gestures alright, Deadman,” he said.
Dan shot him a look. “Shouldn’t you be locked up for the night?”
Artur shrugged. “Banbara gave me a massage. Worked the anger issues right out of me, so it did. She’s a miracle worker, that one.”
“Oh.”
“And ye punched her in the face.”
“Right.”
“Just square in her face.”
“I get it. And I apologize again.”
He set the scissors down on the chair Ollie had been sitting on, then puffed out his cheeks. “So, uh, I guess if everyone’s OK…”
Dan saw his hat hanging from a hook by the door. He took it down and squashed it roughly into shape, then placed it on his head. “Let’s meet in the breakfast hall in the morning and we can figure out our plans. It’s back the way we came in. Big place, can’t miss it.”
Ollie nodded. “OK. Yeah. Let’s do that.”
“Maybe try and not spangle this poor bastard next time ye see her,” Artur said, gesturing down at Banbara. “Just a thought, like.”
Dan tapped the brim of his hat. “Uh, sorry again,” he told Banbara, then he looked from Ollie to Artur and back again. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, stepping backward through the open door. He started to say more, but the door snapped shut between them, leaving him alone in the corridor.
Raising a hand, he considered knocking again, then realized he had no idea what he’d say if anyone answered. He turned away and started on the trek back to his own pod, instead.
“What a fonking day,” he grunted, then he pulled up his collar, pulled down his hat, and pressed on through the shouts, cries and sobs that seeped under the doors lining the corridor.
DAN LAY on the top bunk staring up at the ceiling, idly reading the graffiti etched into the rock. Much of it was about the Stagnates’ guards. Some of it was about the Tribunal. One was about someone called ‘Korolina’ who could apparently be counted on for ‘a good fun time’.
A couple of other people had been less complimentary about both Korolina and the services she provided, scratching their misspelled reviews beneath the original statement. Korolina was either too much of a ‘dirty bedge’ or not enough of one, depending on who you believed. It seemed the poor woman couldn’t win.
Dan sympathized.
Gunnak, the smaller of his roommates was lying on the floor at the opposite end of the room from the slop bucket, nestled on a pile of coats like a cat. Tor, the other, much larger guy, took up the bunk below. The frame shook every time he moved, and Dan had spent the first twenty minutes or so convinced the whole thing was going to come crashing down at any moment.
He tucked a hand behind his head and closed his eyes. His skull still ached from the beating he’d taken, but his lack of blood flow meant the bruising hadn’t come to much.
After taking off his coat and patting himself down he’d concluded that at least one rib was broken, possibly two. His left arm was dislocated at the elbow, but he’d been able to pop that back in without too much difficulty. It was probably the most positive development of the past twenty-four hours.
Damn, that was a depressing thought.
The memory of the exploding guy in the bathroom stall coughed politely somewhere at the back of his head. With all the stuff about the office, the Stagnates, and the getting the shizz kicked out of him, he’d mostly forgotten that.
Dan had been sure the guy was about to spill his guts, but he’d expected it to happen in a metaphorical sense, not a literal one. He’d been so close to getting information from him, only for… what? Something to come out of the toilet? That was about the only conclusion he could draw. Something had come out of the toilet, explosively murdered him, then dragged what was left down into the sewers.
What a way to go. Still, at least Dan could take comfort in the fact that someone was having a worse day than he was.
A blade stabbed through him from below. He heard the shikt of it passing through the thin mattress, then saw it emerge through his stomach just a little left of center.
Tor’s face appeared as he emerged from the bottom bunk. His eyes were narrow slits, his mouth twisted into a triumphant grin. The knife twisted in Dan’s gut, ruining another perfectly good shirt.
“Not so full of yourself now, are you? Not the big ‘I am’ now!” Tor hissed. “You see what happens? You see what happens when you come in here and try to throw your weight around, you ugly piece of— Urk.”
Dan hooked a finger into Tor’s single nostril and jerked him closer. “I suggest you shut the fonk up and go back to bed,” he warned. “If you’re lucky, I might pretend this was all just a dream, and say no more about it. If you’re unlucky, I might not.”
Tears rolled down Tor’s cheeks as Dan wriggled his finger further into the cavernous nostril. “Do we have an understanding? Have I made myself clear?” Dan asked him. “Nod for yes.”
&nbs
p; Despite the finger currently probing deep inside his nasal cavity, Tor glanced at the knife sticking out of Dan’s guts, then managed a single nod.
“Good call,” Dan said, yanking his finger free with a slightly mucusy pop. He wiped the fingertip on Tor’s cheek, then gave him a pat.
The bed shook as Tor clambered back into the bunk. Dan caught the eye of Gunnak, who had been watching the whole thing. The little man quickly closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, which Dan fully approved of.
Relaxing onto the pillow, Dan waited.
“You might want to take the knife out,” he said.
There was a pause, then a swishkt as the knife withdrew.
Dan prodded the hole in his shirt, then the one in his stomach.
Yep. What a fonking day. Still, tomorrow could only be better.
Or so he thought.
FIVE
OLLIE AND ARTUR were already in the breakfast hall when Dan arrived, although it was something of a miracle that he was able to find them.
The dining area was a vast cavern with hundreds of long metal tables bolted to the stone floor. A metal walkway ran around the walls halfway up, creating a sort of balcony on which dozens of other tables had been arranged.
Ten food stations had been set up around the room, each one operated by six staff. They all dispensed the same identical-looking yellow slop to the queues of hungry patrons impatiently awaiting their rations.
The room rang out with the clatter of plates, the hubbub of a thousand different conversations, and several accusatory shouts and accusations. Further into the room, near one of its many exits, a big green thing pushed a big blue thing in the chest. The big blue thing retaliated, then they both spasmed violently as taser snipers took them out from the balcony above.
The rest of the queue stepped over their twitching, semi-conscious bodies, acting like this sort of thing happened all the time. Which, Dan reckoned, it probably did.
Ollie had managed to find a space at a table near the door, and waved Dan over when she’d spotted him through the crowds. Banbara sat on Ollie’s left. She sported several knuckle-sized bruises on her face, and scowled at Dan when he joined them at the table. Artur took up a chair on Ollie’s right, but hopped up onto the tabletop when Dan arrived.
Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel Page 4