by Estes, Danny
The robotic device of cold steel rolled without judgment of Randolph’s disgraceful display of self preservation moved into a sterile room of white and rotated its passenger so that he faced a closed curtain. This curtain hid the faces of those possibly victimized by his criminal deeds. And although Randolph knew he had been judged rightly on most of the minor and major crimes, it wrenched asunder his soul to die for another man’s crime! Indifferent to how it might look on video, Randolph fought his restraints, regardless of its futility, and pleaded his innocence at the top of his lungs unto deaf ears even after a neck ring had been forcibly applied to help immobilize his head and press his jaw closed.
“Please...” Randolph begged through pressed lips. “I didn’t do it! I’ve never killed anyone! Please!” He begged on without any conscious thoughts on how history would view his apparent cowardly cry. While he continued to strain every muscle to regain his freedom, Randolph saw through teary eyes the change of staff, which meant the standard deaf medical attendant now oversaw his demise so no one need-be offended by his last words, save those who chose to behind the curtain and those who paid out the credits for the court’s recorded video.
Now with the inconceivable last chance of a reprieve gone, Randolph let out a stream of obscenities and vows of retribution while the deaf attendant administered several drops on his lips of a foul-tasting liquid, which burned like fire once it worked its way onto his tongue. Several more drops were then added to the first from another dispenser which cooled Randolph’s tongue but also caused it to swell up in his mouth like a dried-out sponge, so he could no longer voice any complaints. Once these measures were taken, the curtain before his eyes was pulled aside. Still whimpering his innocence, Randolph looked on the witnesses and blinked in disbelief as Mr. Hilden’s face came into focus among the six present. The sight of Mr. Hilden’s old face and appropriately disdaining look caused Randolph’s heart to turn black as night and overflow with his first ever wish to kill a living person.
To sit there so smugly in my last moments of life! Randolph raged within his mind. If ever there was such a thing as hell, Randolph would have turned over his soul to give him the strength and time to break his bonds and smash that face back to hell with him!
Not able to look to his arm as his sleeve was cut open and the needle of death bit into his body, Randolph closed his eyes and tried to banish from his sight the slight up-curve grin of Mr. Hilden’s lips. But as the cool liquid crawled up his vein in search of his heart, Randolph’s imagination showed Mr. Hilden break out in hideous laughter, knowing only moments of Randolph’s life remained. The insanity to bear such an image to his grave caused Randolph to rant violently within him; to vow whatever remained of his soul into death would descend onto Mr. Hilden like a merciless corporate giant engaged in a hostile take-over.
Chapter Three
What Randolph supposed the afterlife to feel like was anything but groggy. However, that’s how he felt. And to add to his bewilderment, Randolph found he could barely pull a thought together till the last image of Mr. Hilden comfortably seated behind the window floated up into his irises. With a start, Randolph jerked fully awake and for a second or two he blinked before he sat up on a plastic-steel bed, covered with an allergenic non-cotton fiber cushion. In his next thoughts, Randolph realized this wasn’t the execution chamber, nor was he back in the city’s cell. The next surprise superseded all this when Randolph understood, I’m alive? Beyond astonished to find this realization true, Randolph rolled his eyes in his head and over his new seven-by-ten steel enclosure, with its single entry door and stainless steel toilet under a folding sink. I am alive, but alive where? Randolph probed ever corner within view. Is this more of Mr. Hilden’s surprises? Perhaps some sort of torture for implicating him in the Henderson’s deaths instead of going to my grave in silence? Questions as these Randolph knew to be a waste of time till some interactions was done to give clues or answers. As Randolph cataloged the obvious questions, his trained eyes automatically picked out the video camera and audiphones mounted in the ceiling, disguised as mere rivets. Typical... he mused as he wiped his face with both hands, only then realizing the restraint rings were gone and his face held four days of stubble growth. With this revelation, Randolph stood and did some stretching movements to A. work out some kinks in his bones, as the previous cell allowed little movement, B. check out the elasticity of his new orange coveralls, and C. to better have a look around without appearing to do so.
To all appearances, after Randolph’s examination, he was indeed in a normal maximum containment cell meant for dangerous inmates. And as the security people would be watching him for the fight or flight need in all humans, Randolph moved to the rectangle hole in the door like a good boy, so all would nod their overpaid heads in approval. Besides, I could use some idea as to what lies outside the cell. The first thing Randolph took note of was that the designers held some level of education. For the cell doors had been placed so no guard would have his back turned directly behind another cell door. Next Randolph figured his new quarters resided in a small prison, for he counted only five doors on the other wall, which meant the total cells on his block was around nine or eleven. This he confirmed with the presence of a single doorway in the end wall with the all-important red EXIT sign above its frame. Further examination placed his cell three doors away from the opposite wall.
Randolph next bent an ear to the ambient sounds of the air circulation unit, the steady drip, drip of a leaky water pipe, and the unmistakable sound of a florescent light tube in need of replacement. These rather mundane sounds informed Randolph his cell held the only occupant. Strange that, unless everyone is in the exercise yard, which is mandatory for inmates in normal city prisons, however, unheard of in corporate-owned federal prisons, where Randolph felt certain he must now reside. After all, he was supposed to be dead. “Hmm...”
Randolph disliked the notion of what this might mean and turned away from the hole to straighten out his spine on the cell door. By all accounts everything looks normal but yet not. Randolph then absently rubbed his face before he checked his eye brows and hair stubble. A good month will have to pass before any plans of escape could be seriously considered, that is unless I shave my head. But as Randolph objected to the bald look, awaiting his hair to grow out would gave him time to get the pattern of the guards, food delivery, and identify the magnetic key circuitry in the wall by the door. All important preliminaries regardless of his hair preference, though totally useless until some knowledge of what lay beyond the door at the corridor’s end presented itself.
While Randolph considered, he ran a hand over the back of his neck and winced in pain. “What the hell?” he exclaimed to the sudden explosion of angry nerve endings. Why he had not noticed the damaged skin before now was irrelevant; however, what was relevant after he gently explored the bruise located on his spinal column was the suture layer approximately one inch in diameter. This is not a good sign. Randolph removed his hand to lay his head back on the cool door. To the best of my knowledge I’ve been in no accident to warrant spinal exploration. Conclusion, Randolph surmised, closing his eyes in apprehension, a controlling chip has been inserted.
By force of will Randolph refrained from scowling up at the video camera while he considered this all-important discovery. As he remembered it, the news video implied such devices were still in the experimental phase and had yet to yield up all their capabilities. However, if I remember rightly, the chips have been deemed illegal to be used on humans, as the Mental Health Institute, about the only governmental organization that could over rule the cooperate world, has vetoed the project. This far-sighted ruling had been decided so corporations couldn’t make it mandatory for their employees to have one installed. A logical outcome of the chip to further manipulate their workers as the corporations owned and ruled everything else, including most of the government agencies. Though that knowledge is kept on the hush hush. Which bring to mind why I’m still alive. By manipulating
certain drugs, a presumed executed criminal could be removed to such a facility as a perfect guinea pig for further testing. “Hmm...” Regardless of the reason for the suture, Randolph had to admit he had jumped to an unverifiable conclusion. There could be a dozen reasons for the surgery to his neck, all possibly just as distasteful. With a look skyward, Randolph pushed off the door, filled a small metal cup with warm water from the sink and sat down relaxed-like, legs crossed, back to the wall, and took small sips from the cup. He’d found out everything he could without any interaction with his captors, so now was not a time to panic on conjecture, now was the time of recon.
Five days of observation set the pattern for meal delivery and the unwillingness of the guard to say words other than “meal time” or “hand over your plate.” However disappointing this was, Randolph was still able to discern an elevator some distance past the door to the prison block. Another confirmation his new home was no normal prison, for most placed a sound barrier in between elevators and cells to limit outbursts from echoing through the shafts. This bit was cataloged along with no other prisoners present on his cell block. Add this to no yard time and no showers meant he would have to use a wash cloth for personal hygiene and make up an exercise program to keep in shape. Of course an entire week had yet to pass, so it was still plausible yard and shower time was given once a week. As Randolph debated on waiting out the time or simply stripping down and wiping himself off, the unexpected sound of the corridor door opening, followed prominently by the voice of a pleading woman, caused him to delay a bit longer on his decision.
“Let go! Please...you can’t do this! No, no, no, stop it!” The panic-filled voice echoed down the hall, mingled with the sounds of someone struggling against one or two stronger people. “It’s all just a mistake!” she wailed as Randolph bent to look through the meal slot. “I was only dong research!”
Randolph focused on a slender woman with short brown hair who struggled against two brutes while she cried. “You’ve got it all wrong; I can show you!” As she continued to plead, her long oval face showed cosmetic stains of tears, a sign she’d been crying for about an hour, depending on how much make-up she applied.
The two muscle men in unremarkable standard corporate uniforms held tightly to her upper arms and ignored her pleas like well-trained goons. Upon halting at a cell near Randolph’s in the other wall, they turned and slammed the woman face first into the wall, so one could open the door to his left by inserting his card key. “No, no, no, you don’t understand, I’m claustrophobic!” she then screamed.
From his angle, the woman was no corporate looker, but rather built like an athlete with braless breasts barely showing through the white ruffled blouse and small hips under the black mini-skirt which just covered her fanny. Randolph lowered his eyes beyond the new fashion black mini-briefs, meant solely by their designer to catch male eyes when women bent over, and noted tanned, strong-looking legs which if used right could be very detrimental to any man’s family jewels. At a guess when they shoved her in the cell, Randolph figured her to be around 31, and around five-seven. Quick too, he observed, as she bounced off the cell floor quick as you please trying to make the door before it closed.
Randolph eyed the two impassionate men as they walked out of the cell block while the new captive rapidly pounded her fists on her door. But as this pair allowed the steel door to slide back on its own, instead of closing it themselves, it afforded Randolph the chance to count out their footsteps to the far elevator, even over the hysterical woman who for several minutes reacted like a wild animal, before she wore herself out and slid to the floor in frustrated sobs.
Randolph rubbed his growing beard and stood. The addition of this woman gave him new information to his growing list and possibly an invaluable source to more in the woman herself. That is, if he could get her talking. “Hmm...” With a shrug, presently indifferent to her obvious distress, Randolph knew now was not the time to explore this new avenue of possibilities. But later, when she calmed and stopped sobbing, she might open up and fill in the gaps. So he walked away from the door, refilled his cup with warm water and settled in to wait.
Sometime later Randolph awoke from a light doze to the sound of the woman pitifully calling out, “Hello, is anyone here? Please, if anyone is, say something. Please, I can’t take this seclusion.”
Still unmoved from his position on the bed, Randolph pondered the benefits of silence while her mental state broke down. That would make her easier for extracting information however, Randolph had to admit his own humanity wouldn’t permit it, at least not until he knew why she was here, for some people deserved such treatment. “Hmm...” Oh hell, I’m just a softy.
“Please talk to me. I’ll go insane if I don’t talk to someone. I can’t take this loneliness.”
“So, what are you in for?” Randolph broke in while she was in a fit of crying.
Her first words were not understandable, but finally she calmed enough for them to be understood. “Jill! My name’s Jill, Jill Wander. Who are you?”
“John,” he lied simply.
“John?” she asked in a quivering voice that began to steady. “John who? Do I know you?”
“I rather doubt it,” Randolph replied as he changed positions to relax against the wall with hands clasped behind his head. “I normally don’t work west of the Eastern time zone.” Which was true, but his last successful job had led him into the state of Luashess after a rich corporate CEO whose bank credits needed removal after screwing over his employees when he rewrote their pension and pocketed seventeen million credits in the process. Randolph gave a rueful smile of remembrance on that job. Hired by the employees to recoup their hard-earned retirement funds, Randolph had transferred equal funds to over seven-hundred bank accounts, minus his commission and expenses, leaving the CEO 2.23 credits in his personal account, which was just enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee. Randolph’s smile broadened slightly further as he recalled the two secret accounts he’d stumbled on, buried deep in the bureaucracy of the corporate finances, where the CEO had his two girlfriends’ monthly expenses and apartments included in the company’s house cleaning finances. This bit of information was the coup-de-grâce when he unlocked the security code so any competent accounting clerk would find it easily in the monthly book balancing.
“John, are you still there?” Jill’s voice broke into his reminiscing.
“Yeah sure, it’d be rather hard for me to be anyplace else right now.” Randolph turned his head toward the door in a normal bid to make himself better heard and inquired, “So tell me, what corporation is this?”
“Seriously, you don’t know?”
“I was rather unconscious when I was brought here, wherever here is.” Hopefully she’d tell him.
“No kidding, who do you work for?” Jill asked back without answering his question.
“I am but a lowly business man, in finances really, when men like those two brutes who brought you here busted into my office and knocked me out.”
“You work alone, then?”
“I find it better to do so, or so I thought till I wound up here with no one to wonder where I am. So tell me, where am I?” Randolph tried again as plainly as possible.
“The city of Calaway,” Jill finally answered. “Do you know it?”
Randolph shook his head. “No, never heard of it. What state is it in?”
“Yanncy, some miles in the Hopeless Desert,” she supplied.
Yanncy, he mused, picturing the continent. Yanncy was the redefined lower half of California and Arizona borders when the Yanncy Corporation bought all mineral rights to land and air quality. Definitely out of his operational range as he preferred the East Coast, where the buildings were built to withstand hurricanes and therefore much easier to break into for a competent thief.
“Do you know it now?” Jill questioned, her voice sounding more even and controlled.
“Only as a place on the map,” Randolph answered truthfully, then he faced fo
rward and asked, “So tell me, do you work here?”
“Yes, no. Well I did but I guess I just got fired.” She sniffed. “Ten years down the drain because I tried to help out a friend.”
“Ten years, huh, so you would know a great deal about this place, such as the roads and the nearest skimmer-port?”
“Yeah sure, but what good is that? These cells are five levels underground. And if you’re thinking of overpowering the guards, forget it. Their passkeys are coded to their current height and weight when they log in each shift, so when the passkeys are used, any change will alert the security system,” Jill freely supplied that rather useful information and then caught on to his question. “Wait a minute—you’re planning an escape aren’t you?” Jill became quiet for a moment, then her voice perked up. “John, take me with you, please. I don’t want to go to jail. I’ve heard what it’s like there.”
“Hold it, girl, who said anything about escaping? I was just trying to figure out where I am.”
“I maybe a lowly secretary, John, but I’m not stupid. You’ve figured a way out. Well, if you don’t take me with you I’ll tell you nothing else of use.”
Okay, so I hadn’t been subtle enough, Randolph admonished himself, a mistake that.
“I mean it, John,” Jill stressed. “You either take me with you or I swear I’ll tell the guards.”