Red Cells

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  “Then what happened?” Stake encouraged him, to keep him from slipping back into chaos.

  Blur’s gaze snapped into focus again. “The skeleton stood there in our cell and it looked at me…it looked at me…it knew I was awake. But it didn’t come here to my bunk.” He patted the mattress he sat on, then pointed across the room. “It went there, to Chowder asleep on his bunk. It stood beside him. It looked around at me…with that demon head…that skeleton demon head.” Darting eyes again.

  “Yes, Blur? And?”

  “Then it reached down with its hands…it touched Chowder’s head with both hands…and I tried to scream but I couldn’t! I couldn’t scream!”

  “It’s all right, brother.”

  “Then Chowder was gone…boom!...but no sound! Chowder was gone and the skeleton was gone, too! Both of them gone! Gone…gone…the ghost…I saw the ghost…”

  Blur flung his head from side to side with greater violence than ever, as if he might throw his tormented skull right off his neck and against the wall. Stake turned away from him to meet Null’s eyes.

  “Either he’s totally insane, or this prison is a haunted house.”

  Null sighed, blew out his cheeks sadly. “I think you got it right the first time.”

  “Hold on,” Stake said, spinning to look toward Blur again. “A white fish swimming in the air.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That sounds like those things that move around out there in the pocket,” Stake said. “Those interstitial life forms.”

  Seven

  Guard Down

  The organic guards were encouraged not to remove their intimidating featureless helmets in the presence of the prisoners; not only to ensure their safety, but to prevent being perceived as too human. They had their own, smaller cafeteria in which to let down their guard. Nonetheless, many of them had taken to the habit of sitting at a particular table in the general mess hall, where they took off their helmets to drink coffee and grab a quick bite. There were four guards seated at this table, where no prisoners ever sat, right now as Jeremy Stake walked toward them. They all looked up warily, their grins and chatter fading, when Stake was only a few paces away. One of the men had the name HURLEY on the left breast of his uniform, and Stake could now put a face to that name. A youngish black man with closely cut hair and a neat mustache. Stake had taken note of the man before, because he appeared patient but firm with the prisoners. He’d never seen Hurley lose his cool, flaunt his status or become bullying.

  “What do you want, mutie?” one of the other guards, bearing the name FLAQUITA, asked around a mouthful of imitation burrito. “You lost?”

  “I was hoping you guys could talk to the warden about letting me speak with him again,” Stake said. “I think I might know something about these deaths.”

  “What deaths?”

  “Come on,” Stake said. “Everybody with the ‘what deaths.’ You know what I mean.”

  The short but heavyset Flaquita looked about ready to rise up from his chair. “Don’t get belligerent with me, dunghole.”

  “What do you know about these deaths?” Hurley asked sternly. “You tell us, and we’ll tell you whether we think the warden needs to hear it.”

  “That mutant Blur, who was in the cell where the last victim got it…he says he saw a fish kind of thing floating around in the air. Then a figure appeared, that he interpreted as a ghost, and—”

  “What the hell is this dung?” Flaquita cut him off. “Why are you wasting our time with this? I don’t know who’s crazier—Blur, or you for listening to Blur. Man, I know you’re new here but you should know by now that freak is out of his mind.”

  “What I’m saying is,” Stake went on, “that fish-thing sounds just like some of those creatures swimming around out there in the interstitial matter. Is it possible they could get inside the facility? Through a vent, a port…or maybe right through the walls? Maybe they’re attacking…trying to feed on us, and something about their nature causes a violent reaction, like when matter and antimatter meet and annihilate each other.”

  “I’m going to annihilate you if you don’t get your ass back to the mutie table and stop bothering us when we’re trying to have our lunch,” Flaquita snarled. For unneeded emphasis, he rested his hand on his holstered pistol. The guards carried firearms, unafraid that the prisoners would take them; a gun was configured to recognize its owner, the only person who it would respond to.

  Hurley ignored Flaquita, and asked, “If that was true, then what’s that ghost Blur is going on about? That doesn’t sound like those animals swimming around out there to me.”

  “Yeah,” said another guard, “and we’ve been out here two years now. If those life forms could get in here, why would they start doing it only a few months ago?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they weren’t hungry enough before, but they’re getting more stressed and desperate. It could be we’ve trapped them in this pocket with us.” Even as he said this, some words came back to Stake; words spoken by the glitched robot guard. “Your kind are not the only prisoners.” Could the machine have been trying to relate these same thoughts to him? He wished now he’d taken note of its identification number, so that he might try speaking with it further.

  “What are you, a biologist?” the fourth guard at the table said. “You know all about these animals, while nobody else does?”

  “Sir, I’m just trying to show some concern here. It’s a serious matter, don’t you think? For all you know, it could happen to one of you guys next.”

  “You think the warden isn’t already looking into every possibility? Why don’t you let him worry about it? Remember, Stake—you’re not a detective in this place; you’re just another prisoner.”

  “So you won’t tell him I’d like to talk with him?”

  Flaquita started to speak up but Hurley spoke first. “I’ll tell him, all right? But don’t get your hopes up; he’s a busy man.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it, sir.” Stake nodded, and started back in the direction of his own table, where Null and the other Muties had been watching him intently from a distance. When he turned, however, he saw that a robot guard had been standing near enough behind him to listen in on their conversation. As Stake walked past the machine, they both turned their heads to regard each other. Did the robot’s glowing red eyes flicker for a second?

  He halted to talk to the machine, wondering if it were a different robot from the one he had just been thinking of, but it walked away from him to resume its rounds. Stake watched its back for a few moments, then continued on to the mutie table. There, he began relating what he had discussed with the guards. As he did so, a growing number of nonmutant prisoners from neighboring tables drew closer to listen in. Null looked around at them with hostile eyes. “What do you all want?”

  One man, a Choom, held up his hands and said, “Easy, Null, we just want to know what your man Stake here has found out so far about these guys blowing up in their cells. It has us all spooked, man. We hear your boy is trying to find out what it’s all about.”

  “It does concern all of us,” Stake said. “And maybe if the warden doesn’t want to talk to us, we might have to demand it as a group. Show some solidarity to get the answers we need.”

  “I’ll bet those mother-loving guards already know what’s going on, all too well,” that brain corral mutant spat.

  “I didn’t get the impression that they do,” Stake said.

  “Impression,” brain corral said. “You’re good at impressions, aren’t ya, shapeshifter?”

  “Listen, brother, I have to say my instincts and intuitions are pretty good from being a hired detective and a deep-ops soldier, so you might want to give me some credit.”

  On his own train of thought, the Choom prisoner mused, “Friend of mine named Athul went into solitary for fighting. I haven’t seen him since. I’m sure he’s one of the ones who got it.”

  “The medical chief did tell me that one of the victims had been in isolation,�
� Stake confirmed.

  “That makes five guys in about four months,” another prisoner said. “It’s almost like a regular thing, isn’t it?”

  “Like it’s…scheduled,” the Choom said.

  “Scheduled,” brain corral scoffed.

  “Well, the last few have been closer together,” Null added, “so things are getting a little ahead of schedule, aren’t they?”

  “Bottom line,” Stake said, “is right now we don’t know when this might happen again.”

  Eight

  Pavor Nocturnus

  Stake had tried convincing his two cell mates, the black man Kofi and the bipedal doglike Dacvibese, that they should take turns staying awake in three-hour shifts, to stand guard over each other. After all, Null had ordered all the members of the Mutie gang to do this if they could get their nonmutant cell mates to agree to it. But Stake’s two cell mates had resolutely refused. So it was that he lay on his bunk unable to sleep, listening to Kofi snore and smelling the foulness of the Dacvibese’s drool, while a parade of thoughts passed through his skull. He thought about the various types of interstitial creatures he had glimpsed out the windows on his way to the warden’s office. He thought about how the warden hadn’t sent word that he would grant Stake an audience. He thought about the ill-fated day Edwin Fetch had come into his little office. And he thought about a Sinanese woman named Thi Gonh, whom he had met and fallen in love with during the Blue War.

  Finally, with thoughts of blue-skinned Thi in his arms, he drifted off, but whether for a matter of minutes or moments he didn’t know. All he knew, when he unaccountably snapped awake again—the hair on his arms and the back of his neck standing on end—was that a white apparition was standing just inside the cell, as if it might have passed right through the doorway’s energy barrier. The apparition gave off a soft radiance, like bioluminescence, that reflected off the walls.

  Stake launched himself from his bunk and backed flat against the far wall of the cell in one movement, while crying out, “Hey! Help! Help us in here! Wake up…wake up…help us in here!” Yelling to his cell mates and, if it were functioning, the cell’s security camera at the same time.

  The figure had taken one step toward him, but it turned its head, distracted, as Stake’s two cell mates awoke and cried out in terror themselves. The Dacvibese was closest to the intruder, on the lower level of a bunk bed occupied up top by Kofi…who, afraid to leap down, pushed himself into the corner and tucked into a ball as if he hoped to evade notice. The Dacvibese screeched horribly and ejected two malodorous streams of mucus toward the intruder from glands at the corners of his mouth. At the same time, he took hold of his mattress and hoisted it up in front of him as a shield.

  This flurry of distractions gave Stake a chance, however brief, to take in the figure in greater detail.

  He could see why Blur had called it a skeleton. A demon’s skeleton, at that. The entity was roughly manlike in size and outline, but it seemed to either have the exoskeleton of an insect or to have never developed flesh upon its bony armature. He might have thought the being was mechanical if not for the organic, grown appearance of its composition. Thin arms and legs formed from odd sections of bone. A bare cage of ribs that were curved and yet also, inexplicably, multiply jointed. A complex pelvis, twisted but symmetrical. And a ribbed mask for a face, without eyes or other features, although it was ringed with a fringe of rippling cilia. From the back of its head, like windblown hair, white banners streamed in the air, though there was no breeze in the cell to blow them.

  Its hands were raised—long, fleshless digits spread wide.

  Then it swiped one of its arms in a vicious backhand. The mattress the Dacvibese had used as a shield was torn out of his hands and thudded against the wall. The Dacvibese’s screams increased to an ear-piercing level. He backed against the side of the bunk bed—the farthest he could go.

  Instead of advancing on him, however, the creature with its glow like white phosphorus turned its eyeless face toward Stake again, and started forward.

  It was just slightly out of focus…insubstantial, or at least not fully substantial in this environment. It hurt Stake’s eyes to look at it. No, not his eyes…it hurt his mind to look upon it. Pinned against the wall, Stake let out an inarticulate cry.

  Then, beyond the entity, Stake saw a guard framed in the doorway. The human guard was out in the hallway, on the other side of the red-tinted barrier, but he was raising his pistol in both hands and taking aim.

  Stake slid down the wall, into a crouch, out of the line of fire.

  The guard fired energy bolts straight through the closed barrier, streaking red like tracer rounds. Right into the back of the unsuspecting creature.

  It whirled around. It looked like it should be screaming but it lacked a mouth to do so. If it had meant to feed, it must feed by some other means, Stake thought in the midst of his paralyzed panic. And even as he experienced it, this panic angered him. He had never known such an immobilizing fear before. He had always been able to respond to danger with a trained imperative for survival. It wasn’t so much the creature’s appearance that inspired this new irrational fear, however, but some force or vibration it emanated. Despite the uncountable nonhuman races he had encountered as a citizen of Punktown, this being was something entirely other.

  The guard in the hallway triggered more molten red bolts, piercing the intervening barrier.

  With the energy bolts seeming to connect with its body and penetrate its animated bones, the creature appeared enraged. Despite its insubstantial aspect, it didn’t seem able to step through the barrier to counterattack the guard. Instead, it suddenly reached to the side and caught hold of the Dacvibese, gripping his head between both its wide hands.

  An explosion, then, deafened as opposed to deafening. A soundless nova blast. Bursting in every direction: the Dacvibese’s rotten-smelling blood, black as ink.

  Then they were both gone, like particles of matter and antimatter mutually annihilated.

  Immediately the guard was deactivating the barrier. Stepping into a pool of black blood. Calling in other guards over his helmet mic. Stake saw the name in white on the man’s left breast. It was Hurley.

  “Jesus mother-loving Christ!” Kofi blurted, cowering on the upper bunk.

  “Amen,” Stake murmured, sliding up the wall to stand again. Blood speckled his face.

  Hurley looked at Stake, though the guard appeared as faceless as the creature had been. “You all right?”

  “Yeah…considering that thing came here to kill me,” Stake said. Because whatever else remained mysterious to him, that much had seemed very clear.

  Nine

  Components

  Again, a human guard and a robot removed Stake from his cell so that he might be brought to the warden; to relate what he had seen, the human guard explained gruffly. The guard was Flaquita, not Hurley. Hurley had gone on before Stake to be interviewed by the warden separately. So had Stake’s surviving cell mate, Kofi.

  As the flanking guards escorted him away from his cell, prisoners roused from their sleep by the commotion stood close to the barriers of their own cells looking out at him. As he passed, they called, “What was it, Stake? What did you see?” But he couldn’t linger to reply.

  When the three of them at last entered into the tubular corridor connecting to the administrative wing, Stake was already craning his neck and looking sharply from side to side, watching for interstitial life forms out the windows that lined the tunnel. He was not disappointed. The creatures were more readily apparent this time, closer to the windows and seeming to gaze inside as if they had been expecting the trio. Though widely varied in form, all of them were white and luminous. Clinging to the outside of the tunnel was that large animal with the multiply jointed crab legs. Eel-like forms swam in place, their tails rippling. And a creature resembling a trilobite, with a segmented shell, hovered in place with the help of its wavering fringe of legs, like those of a centipede—or the cilia of a microo
rganism.

  Stake stopped in his tracks, his eyes locked on the trilobite-thing as it floated out there, stationary, at face level. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed.

  Flaquita spun around and seized his arm. “What are you doing?” he said. “Come on.”

  Stake pointed. “That thing! You see that?”

  Ignoring him, the guard tugged him along. “I said come on.” The robot took hold of Stake’s other arm.

  Stake looked back over his shoulder. That clinging spider-creature, its long white legs curved like a human rib cage. Those eel-things, rippling like long hair fluttering in a breeze. And that circular trilobite, like an ominous mask devoid of features…

  “That’s its face!” Stake cried, struggling against the two guards, but they only gripped him more tightly, forced him along more insistently. “Will you just look? That’s the face of the thing that came into my cell!”

  Flaquita stopped, and so the robot followed suit. The human guard glanced back down the corridor the way they had come, perhaps a bit spooked after hearing of his fellow guard Hurley having fired at an unidentified intruder. “What are you talking about? Where?”

  “Outside the windows,” Stake said. “It’s those interstitial animals!”

  Just then, the lights went out.

  For a moment, the three of them were swallowed in utter darkness, except for the interstitial life forms themselves, glowing against the churning blackness like a field of stars. But then a string of red lights came on in the ceiling as an emergency backup power source kicked in. This was no mere power fluctuation…not this time. The corridor’s regular lights did not return, and a loud buzzing alert had begun to sound.

  “What is it?” Stake asked.

  “What’s it look like?” Flaquita said. “The power’s down. Don’t ask me why. Come on, let’s get you to the warden…if he still wants to see you with this going on.”