Red Cells

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  “Not as much as us,” one of the Maniacs observed with a sneer.

  “No, Jeremy,” Fetch said, “I’m not here to talk about money. I’m just hoping when you go on trial, you don’t get too detailed about me. You don’t need to say you knew I was dealing vortex. After all, did you ever see me selling an illegal substance? No, you didn’t. I just had that vortex for my own use. I’m going to fight my charges in any way I can, Jeremy, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t make me look bad.”

  “Just like you didn’t make me look bad with Cirvik?”

  “Hey, what could I do at that point? They had you, and they had me, and I needed to explain why there was another Edwin Fetch. No need to be bitter, man—like I say, you might get out of here with less time, now, while still keeping that twenty thousand.”

  “But remember what Ed says,” warned the Maniac with blond hair cut in bangs like a little boy, pointing a finger at Stake’s face as if aiming a gun barrel. “Just watch your mouth, okay?”

  “Kid,” Stake said, “you point that finger somewhere else before I bite it off.”

  The youth chortled in delight. “Oh-ho-ho…the mutant wants to play! You want to play, mutie?”

  “We know how to play with muties,” his friend joined in.

  Stake swung his legs over the side of his bunk and sat upright. “Ed, you might want to remind your barking puppies that there’s a big difference between hammering drunken homeless guys, and being trained as a Colonial Forcer.”

  “Oooh!” the boy with bangs said, exchanging grins with his friend. “Oh-ho-ho!”

  “Come on, guys,” Fetch told them, clapping them both on the shoulder, “I think my pal Jeremy here understands what’s in his best interest.” He turned his companions around and urged them out through the doorway, looking back at Stake and saying in farewell, “If there’s anything I can do for you in return, pal, you know where to find me.” He added, perhaps with threatening significance, “Orange Block.”

  Stake sighed, and had just stretched out on his back again to resume watching his movie when two new visitors appeared in the cell’s threshold. So much for seeing how the movie turned out. Once more he sat upright as the two men stepped inside uninvited. One was Hassan Billings, with that huge spudlike head. The other was the towering Null, his oil-slick skin glistening. Null: the leader of the gang known as the Muties.

  “Hey, man,” Billings said. “So this is what you really look like, huh? Jeremy, is it? Man…I understand why you didn’t tell me you were a mutie, too, but I still wish you had.”

  “But now we know,” Null rumbled in his dark baritone. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw those Orange fucks leave just now. Is the real-deal Fetch giving you trouble?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Oh, is that so? You aren’t afraid of the whole damn Orange Bunch? Biggest gang in this place? Their leader has a life sentence already, so that mad-dog fuck doesn’t care who he kills next. Seems to me you could use protection from those bastards, and anybody else here who might try to do you a dose of no-good.”

  “So, you want me to join up with my fellow mutants, huh?”

  “It would be in your best interest.”

  “Everybody thinks they know my best interest.”

  Null stepped closer to Stake, looming all the taller. “I’m not just here to recruit new members; I have a proposition for you. You help me, and I’ll protect you—not just from the Orange Bunch, but from another gang that could do you serious harm.”

  “And what gang is that?” Stake asked.

  “The Mutie gang,” Null said, glaring from under bony brows.

  “I see,” Stake said.

  “I hope you do.”

  “So what’s this proposition?”

  “We hear you’re a private eye. A good one.”

  “I was. Once. I made a not-so-good private eye move, and here I am.”

  “Well this would be a better move for you. I want to hire your services. The pay, like I said, is we take care of your skin as long as you stay here in T-P…however long that turns out to be.”

  “But what do I have to do? If it involves me impersonating someone, forget it. I—”

  “No, that’s not it. You’ve heard about the killings in this place, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The last victim was my cousin Chowder. We grew up together, like brothers. We got arrested for stealing from a warehouse one night. The job was my idea. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be alive, and he’d be free.”

  “So you…you want me to find out how these men have died. Chowder specifically.”

  “Right.”

  “And if it turns out they’re being murdered, say by a gang like the Orange Bunch, and you get revenge by killing the guilty party or parties, then I become an accomplice to murder.”

  “That part doesn’t concern you. If there’s blood, we’ll keep it off you. But you will help me, Stake. You hear me on that?”

  Stake lowered his face into his hands and kneaded its skin, as if to remold his features so thoroughly that he faded out of sight altogether. His voice muffled behind his palms, he said, “Tell me what you know about these deaths.”

  Five

  Examinations

  Stake, Null, and Billings ambled along the second-floor balcony as they talked, not afraid about other inmates seeing them together. Null said that was desirable, if Stake wanted the general population to know he was under the protection of the Muties.

  “The deaths started about four months ago,” Null said. “But we’re not really sure how many have died, because it’s not like the warden has announced what’s going on…we only know about it from witnesses.”

  “Witnesses? Have people actually seen some of the victims die?”

  “No, I mean cell mates waking up to find the victim already dead. Uh…but let me correct that. There are always killings in prison, but what links these deaths is you don’t find a body afterwards—just a whole lot of blood on the guy’s bed, the walls, even the ceiling. That’s why when this happens, the men will say, ‘The vampire got another one.’”

  “Vampire? A vampire would do the opposite—take the blood and leave the body. So the only real witness, then, is your guy Blur, and you can’t be sure if this ‘ghost’ or ‘skeleton’ he talks about is based on something he really saw.”

  “Right.”

  “But what about camera footage? There’s a security camera in every damn cell.”

  “Well, from what little leaks back to us from the guards, every time this happens there’s some kind of electrical interference and the camera cuts out. But how can we know if that’s true or not? Like I say, the warden isn’t talking to us about these deaths at all. I think the only way he would is if we could organize a riot, and nobody wants to open a can of worms like that. But if that’s what it comes to…”

  “You know what it sounds like to me?” Billings said. “A military experiment, and they’re using us prisoners as expendable guinea pigs, out here in limbo where they feel like nobody can see what they’re up to. Some kind of remote weapon that can target a man and vaporize him from a distance. And they purposely block the camera before they do it.”

  “Yeah,” Null said, “we’ve already considered that. It’s a good theory.”

  “The prison has a medical unit,” Stake mused, stopping to lean against the balcony railing and look down upon the prisoners milling about below. “A chief medical officer, right? They have to know something about this…at least, what’s being done to the victim’s body. They must have examined the blood. I’d like to talk to them, if I can think of an excuse to go to the infirmary.”

  Null nodded, then turned to Billings. “Break his nose.”

  “What?” said Billings.

  “What?” said Stake, looking around.

  “I can’t do it myself,” Null explained. “Can’t afford to go into solitary right now.”

  “But…” said Billings.

/>   “I told you to hit him.”

  “Hey, now hold on…” Stake began.

  * * *

  “With your special condition, couldn’t you have reconfigured your broken nose on your own?” the medical unit’s chief, Zaleski, asked Stake while examining the results of the restorative treatment he had just administered.

  Sitting still as Zaleski consulted a holographic scan display of his head, floating in the air beside Stake like a doppelganger of the doppelganger, the private detective said, “I can alter my appearance, but I can’t regenerate injury any better than the next guy. If I tried to morph a broken nose, I’d just be torturing myself.”

  “Well, in any case, everything looks good now.”

  Dr. Zaleski gave the impression of ill health: thin, pale as his lab smock, his eyes red-rimmed and high forehead moist with perspiration. When Stake had first come in, a young prisoner in a yellow uniform had quickly departed, and Stake had sensed he’d just interrupted an illicit transaction—either involving sex or drugs, or both. Stake wouldn’t be surprised to find the physician was an addict. If he were right, and had spotted it so quickly, he couldn’t believe Cirvik wasn’t aware.

  “I’ve only been here a week and already I’ve had my nose busted,” Stake said. “I’m not too confident about finishing my six months in one piece. Especially with those weird deaths going on.”

  Zaleski gaped at the prisoner for a second and a half. “Weird deaths?”

  “Doctor,” Stake chuckled, “you know—people exploding in their cells during the night? Leaving nothing but blood behind? Those weird deaths.”

  Zaleski immediately averted his bloodshot eyes, but couldn’t seem to help himself from replying, “It isn’t just blood left behind. If one examines the material remaining, there is in fact flesh and bone present. It’s just been reduced to small particles, mixed with the blood.”

  “What do you think would cause that, Doctor?” Stake asked. “I mean, I was a soldier and I’m familiar with all kinds of weapons. Strong plasma, of course, would dissolve the body, not break it up like that. But I’m wondering…some kind of ray weapon that could be fired right through the closed energy barriers?”

  “How could a prisoner obtain a weapon like that, here?” Zaleski said, eyes still turned away.

  “Who said it had to be a prisoner?”

  Now Zaleski did face him. “What are you implying? That the guards are executing prisoners in their sleep?”

  “I’m just indulging in a little idle speculation, Doctor, just out of curiosity. Okay…curiosity and concern for my own skin. But you must have a theory of your own. Don’t you?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve found no suspicious residue in the blood or body remnants I’ve examined.”

  “Okay, but how is that possible?”

  “I’m a general physician, Mr. Stake. I’m finding this matter to be outside my realm of expertise.”

  “Then other people with a broader range of expertise must be looking into it, eh? At the warden’s direction?”

  Zaleski hesitated, and then said, “Of course. Of course he’s investigating the cause of these events.”

  “Do you notice a pattern in the victims?”

  “No. Three were human, one was a Choom, and the latest a mutant.”

  “So there’ve been five. My fellow prisoners weren’t sure if it were only four.”

  “One of them died while in solitary confinement, so that one was less conspicuous.” Zaleski looked Stake up and down, lips twisted sourly. “Why so curious…detective?”

  “I told you—I’m just looking after my own skin.”

  Suddenly the medical unit’s overhead lights flashed as if they might extinguish, fluttered precariously for a beat or two, then regained their full strength. Static shot through Stake’s holographic image, which Zaleski hadn’t banished yet, and it blinked out of view a moment before returning as before. Stake noticed how the physician flinched as if startled, and glanced nervously toward the ceiling.

  “It’s been doing that since I got here,” Stake said. “Is that natural?”

  “Nothing is natural about this place,” Zaleski muttered, as if only to himself.

  Of course Stake picked up the physician’s unhappy vibe, and ran with it. “I’m a little concerned about the stability of this pocket we’re in.”

  Zaleski said, “Well, I’ll tell you this…we do have some strange ‘weather,’ if you will. Activity in the interstitial matter that we call storms, for lack of a better word. Disturbances.”

  “Are these storms responsible for the power fluctuations, then?” Zaleski didn’t answer, so Stake jumped to another question. “Do you think what’s happened to these men might be linked to the anomalies? If the disturbances affect electrical sources, might they be attracted to the electrical activity in a living body? Reach out and…I don’t know…disrupt the victim violently?”

  “That’s a wild and unsubstantiated theory, Mr. Stake.”

  “Better than no theory, which is what you claim your stance is, Doctor.”

  Finally Zaleski dismissed the holograph of Stake’s head. “You’re all better, Mr. Stake. You can return to your cell now.” He looked over toward the door to the medical unit, where the two guards who had escorted Stake here had stood waiting all the while, and motioned for the man and robot to come forward to get their charge. Then to Stake he said, “I suggest you try to avoid getting into any further fights. It isn’t wise to make enemies here.”

  Six

  The Looking Glass

  In the cell in which his cousin Chowder had recently died—now thoroughly cleaned, and repainted besides—Null said to Stake, “Be careful, friend…everyone in Orange Block gets pressed into the Orange Bunch gang, but a couple of the mutie members work for me as inside informers, and the word from them is Mr. Fetch is getting more nervous about you testifying against him. Apparently he wants his new friends to eliminate the threat.”

  “Great.”

  “Just stick close to us and they’ll be less likely to make a move. You’re doing the right thing, working for us. So tell me what you think the doctor knows.”

  “I don’t know what he knows, but he sure seems to know something…enough to threaten me before I left. The deaths are an uncomfortable subject to him.” Stake related how the conversation had gone, even to the point of describing their discussion about the anomalous power fluctuations. Null said everyone had taken note of these disturbances, which had become more frequent in the past few months, and they didn’t inspire confidence. Then Stake told the mutant, “A funny thing happened when I was leaving the med unit. The robot guard suddenly stopped dead and wouldn’t budge; he kind of just stood there staring at me. And his eyes—you know how their eyes glow red? Well, his eyes were flickering. So I asked the thing, ‘Are you all right?’ And he spoke to me.”

  “What’d it say?”

  “He said, ‘Your kind are not the only prisoners.’”

  “Huh,” Null said. “What did it mean?”

  “I don’t know. An existential robot?”

  “But you think it was having one of these power disturbances.”

  “Yeah…for a second. Then he seemed to snap out of it and acted normal again.” Stake shrugged. “Something’s in the air.” He turned to face the other two occupants of the room, both seated on the edge of a bunk: Billings, and the mutant called Blur, who of course was convulsing and whipping his head madly.

  Billings smiled apologetically. “So how’s your nose?”

  Stake ignored him and said to Null, “Now I want to talk to your pal Blur.”

  “You can try.”

  “I have to. He’s our only witness.”

  Stake stepped closer to Blur, looking down at him. “Hey, buddy. You know who I am?”

  “Jerry…Mistake,” the mutant garbled. “Jerry Mistake…”

  “Close enough. Do you know I have Caro turbida, Blur? I’m like you.”

  Spittle flew from the mutant’s mouth as
he became more agitated. “No…no…I’m like everybody…everybody’s inside me…”

  “We’re prisoners in our own bodies, aren’t we, Blur? But we have to fight this thing…this curse we have. Try to make it work for us, right? Try to make it into a gift, instead.”

  “I saw the ghost…ghost…saw the skeleton ghost…”

  “Yeah, that’s what I want to talk with you about. But I want you to settle down so you can think clearly. Can you do that? Can you slow yourself down?” Stake reached out and laid a gentle hand on the mutant’s juddering shoulder. “Look at my face, Blur. Focus on my face and calm down, brother. Hey, I can do it. I don’t have perfect control, but I don’t let this thing control me, either. Can you slow it down? Can you look straight in my eyes?”

  Null began to say something, but cut himself off when it became obvious that Blur’s head was not thrashing as fast as it normally did. As his head motions became less rapid, the other three men caught clearer glimpses of his repertoire of faces. There was an elderly woman (his mother?)…a small child (himself at an early age?)…a black man…a woman Stake thought he recognized as a porn actress. But the succession of changing visages slowed, as well, until Blur’s head finally stopped whipping, and his features stopped altering. Yet instead of Blur revealing his true self—as if that were irretrievable to him, as if he had never even owned his own countenance—the face that ultimately looked into Stake’s eyes was his face, that of “Jerry Mistake” as Blur called him, in Stake’s neutral “factory setting.”

  Before Stake could protest, Blur spoke in a surprisingly level, quiet tone. He said, “Before I saw the skeleton, I saw a fish. A white fish, swimming around in the air near the ceiling.”

  “A white fish,” Stake echoed, glancing up at the cell’s ceiling, where there were inset light strips and a single air vent.

  “Yes. And then…and then a bigger shape stepped out of the air, stepped out of the air right inside our cell. The fish swam down to the bigger shape and became part of it. It was like a skeleton, but not a human skeleton. It was like a demon’s skeleton. And it wasn’t really solid. It glowed like a ghost.” Blur’s eyes started darting back and forth. His eyelids fluttered.