Red Cells

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  * * *

  When they stepped into the warden’s office, they found the lighting subdued but his array of holographic monitors and their associated controls unaffected. He at first ignored the trio aside from a disapproving glance, engaged as he was in conversation with the chief of maintenance. “You’re certain we won’t lose power to the cell barriers?” he was saying.

  “Sir,” the face on his central monitor replied, “this is a prison, so the importance of maintaining the cell barriers was top priority when the power system was designed. We won’t lose the barriers unless we lose everything we have left—which includes auxiliary life support. In other words, if we lose that, it won’t matter because we’ll all be dead, anyway. Well, aside from the robots…until their individual power sources slowly wind down.”

  “Yes…the robots.” The Tikkihotto glanced again at the three figures standing across the room from his desk. “All right, Klaus, stay on it.” Dinhoo Cirvik brushed away the virtual monitor and pointed to the mechanical guard. “What’s that doing in here, Flaquita?”

  Confused, Flaquita stammered through his helmet, “Just following usual protocol, Warden.”

  “This is not a usual situation anymore, is it? Our automated systems are no longer secure. Get it out.”

  Flaquita turned to address the robot. “You heard the warden; you’re dismissed. I can manage the prisoner on my own.”

  Without protest, the machine turned away and let itself out of the office. The door slid shut behind it.

  Stake spoke up when the robot had left. “It can influence electrical fields, can’t it? Technology…machines…even the minds of your robots.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cirvik snapped.

  “The creature that tried to attack me in my cell. I think it spoke to me through one of your robots when I was in the med unit. The robot said to me, ‘Your kind are not the only prisoners.’ This power outage…it’s angry, isn’t it? I should say, angrier than usual.”

  Cirvik sighed, swiveling side to side in his chair as he surveyed Stake with his profusion of ocular tendrils, which writhed restlessly. “You’ve stirred things up, Mr. Stake. Poking around…asking questions…”

  “All the prisoners aren’t asking the same questions? And from the ones I’ve talked to, I wonder how many of your guards know what’s going on. If any.” He motioned toward Flaquita, standing beside him. “You don’t trust them, do you?”

  Flaquita looked back and forth between the two men uncomprehendingly, as if to confirm Stake’s suspicion.

  Cirvik sat forward, and said, “Do you know how hard I worked at my career, how many years…decades…it took for me to achieve my current position, Mr. Stake? You’re a mutant; you should know the truth of these things. The Earth Colonies can paint on their benign face…talk about the glorious rainbow that is Paxton, with all its sentient species living in harmony. But we know the reality is that Earth people control that colony, stole the city from the native Choom and nudged them aside. For a non-Earther to achieve any position of real importance in the system is rare and difficult.”

  “I understand that you want to protect your own interests, yes. Assuming that the home office doesn’t know what’s been going on here, I understand perfectly that you don’t want them to realize you have a dangerous situation on your hands.”

  “Despite what I just said,” Cirvik growled, his eye tendrils becoming even more agitated, “it isn’t just about protecting my career! My job is to protect this prison, maintain order here, keep these dangerous inmates secure! I have been facing a challenge the likes of which you, or the home office, couldn’t imagine!”

  “To your knowledge, no interstitial life form has ever acted in a hostile way before all this?”

  “It’s unprecedented, yes!”

  “Well, don’t you think the home office should know it? And shut this place down…not just the prison, but close up the pocket it’s in?”

  “And do what, then? Build new prisons where? Do you know what’s at stake here? How much rides on the success of my prison? They want to open more of these pockets…build more prisons like this! We can’t cease those projects because I can’t deal with a single aggressive life form!”

  “But it isn’t really a single life form, is it?” Stake said. “Outside the windows just now I saw the components of the thing that attacked me—or at least, other creatures just like them.”

  Cirvik sat back slowly in his seat. “Now I see why people rent your services, Mr. Stake. And before that, sent you in to infiltrate the enemy. No…you’re right…it isn’t just a single creature. It’s more like a group of prisoners itself.”

  Ten

  Severed

  “Just like it told me,” Stake said. “It’s sentient. It can communicate intelligently.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve communicated with it yourself, haven’t you? What have you two talked about, Warden? Did you tell it how I’m ‘stirring things up’?” Stake smiled grimly. “Is that why it came to my cell to target me, specifically?”

  “I’ve wasted enough time talking with you about this as it is,” Cirvik said. He switched his attention to the guard. “Flaquita, do you trust me?”

  ”Ah, yes sir, of course, but…I got to tell you, I really don’t know what you two are going on about.”

  “Right now you just need to trust me and realize that Stake here is a dangerous man, who has exacerbated an already dangerous situation…”

  Stake cut in, “Flaquita, you better trust me on this. Cirvik is in over his head with something he’s trying to keep from the authorities. If you back him up, he’ll just drag you down with him.”

  Cirvik stood up from behind his desk abruptly, and thrust out a handgun he had surreptitiously removed from a desk drawer. “He’s going to attack me, Flaquita—shoot him!”

  “Sir, hold it, hold on a second!” Flaquita cried, putting a hand on the grip of his own pistol.

  “Stop him!” Stake shouted. He had begun dodging behind the guard the moment he saw Cirvik tense himself to bolt up from his seat.

  Flaquita hesitated, alarmed enough to pull his sidearm from its holster but still too intimidated to raise it against the warden. Cirvik, however, didn’t hesitate any longer in using his own weapon. His pistol was a throwback, a Decimator .220 revolver, but its cylinder was loaded with plasma capsules. Green plasma, the most corrosive. He fired off three shots in rapid succession, the unsilenced handgun booming in the confined room.

  The snub-nosed gun was inaccurate and Cirvik was nervous. The first capsule missed Flaquita and hit the wall behind him. The second struck him in the helmet. As Flaquita finally brought up his own gun and squeezed off a single energy bolt, the third capsule burst against the knuckles of his hand closed around the pistol’s grip.

  Cirvik was slammed back against the rear wall of his office, the short length of red beam having punched through one eye socket. With the tendrils there charred black and shriveled, the warden slid lifelessly down the wall, out of sight behind his desk.

  Stake eased Flaquita to the floor, at the same time struggling to get his helmet off before the glowing plasma could eat all the way through it. Flaquita was screaming in fear at the prospect, and in agony as the fingers of his right hand were melted down to nubs. He had dropped his pistol to the carpet. They both knew that if the plasma continued to spread, the guard might lose his entire arm or worse before it spent itself.

  When Stake had got the man’s helmet off and seen that Flaquita’s face was still intact, he spun, dashed to the far wall where Cirvik had slid down, and swung the sizzling helmet against the glass sheet covering the framed Tikkihotto axe. The glass shattered. He dropped the helmet, pulled the colorful e-ikko off its brackets, and before rushing back to Flaquita’s side stooped to retrieve the warden’s fallen revolver. Unlike the guards’ guns with the safety feature that prevented them from being fired by anyone but their owner, Stake could make use of this.

  As he
crouched beside the writhing, shrieking guard, he said, “Sorry I hid behind you…I didn’t think he’d go that far.” It was obvious to Stake—and he hoped to Flaquita, also—that when Stake had proved an elusive target, Cirvik had made the quick decision to kill Flaquita first, to eliminate a witness to Stake’s accusations and to frame Stake before killing him, too.

  Stake knelt on Flaquita’s arm, pinning it to the floor. The plasma had already eaten away most of the palm. As Stake raised the tomahawk above the man’s wrist, he asked, “You ready for this?”

  “Do it!” Flaquita cried.

  * * *

  When the two men stepped out into the corridor, Flaquita’s good arm draped over Stake’s shoulders, Stake saw a robot guard standing there facing them, blocking their passage. He had no doubt it was the same guard Cirvik had dismissed from his office earlier.

  Hoping for the best, Stake stopped and said, “Hey, help me get this guy to the infirmary!”

  The guard started walking toward them with jerky but rapid steps. Stake saw its red-lit eyes flickering. Its arms came up, fingers spread, reminding him of the bony digits of the nightmare figure that had come for him in his cell.

  Stake dropped the bloody tomahawk he was still carrying, drew the Decimator from his waistband, and extended it toward the oncoming machine. He fired two of his three remaining projectiles at the robot’s head. It was struck in its blank face and between those glittering eyes. The capsules burst, releasing their phosphorescent contents.

  The robot kept coming, wearing a luminous caul, but after only a couple more steps it veered off to one side and crashed to the floor, its limbs thrashing in a wild seizure. As the plasma ate deeper into the robot’s head, the seizure abruptly ceased and the machine went still.

  At that moment, something arose like a wisp of white smoke from a growing hole in the automaton’s metal skull. The white shape swam upward, wiggling its eel-like tail. Stake drew in his breath, bracing himself for another attack. Just one shot left, and would plasma even work against this thing?

  The animal continued upward, however, toward a small air vent in the ceiling, and wriggled its flat body through the grate. Whether it would travel to another part of the prison through the ventilation system, or at some point of egress work its way outside to rejoin its brethren, Stake couldn’t know, but when the creature was gone, he dropped his gaze to the windows lining the corridor.

  Along both sides of the tunnel, interstitial life forms had drawn close enough to touch the curved windows, peering in at the two men inscrutably.

  “Come on,” Stake said to prompt the moaning, half-delirious Flaquita into movement again.

  As they stumbled along—Stake trying not to look nervously to the left or right, and Flaquita holding his hastily bandaged arm against his chest—the guard groaned, “You’re my witness, man, you hear me? I killed him in self-defense.”

  “I’ll be your witness if you’ll be my witness.”

  “We’d better both stay alive, then.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Stake wondered if the creatures could simply pass through the solid material of the windows if they so chose, or if they had to find their way into the prison through other means. Were they refraining from attacking the two men right now, or just incapable of it?

  Whatever the case, the men reached the far end of the tunnel safely, and Stake felt relief when the door slid shut behind him. That is, until two guards turned a corner ahead and came running toward him, guns already drawn. Flaquita’s helmet with its communication mic was ruined, but before they’d left the office, in a clearheaded moment, Flaquita had used his wrist comp to call for assistance.

  “You!” one of the guards bellowed. “Freeze!”

  Stake dropped the revolver and slid it toward the approaching guards with his foot. “Hurry up,” he said. “We need to get him to the infirmary.”

  “Set him down!” the guard ordered, still training his gun on Stake. Stake realized this man was Hurley.

  “Take it easy,” Flaquita told Hurley. “Just help him get me to the fucking doctor.”

  “Yeah,” Stake said, “I need to go with you. I have some questions for the doctor.”

  Eleven

  Emergency Response

  So as to move more quickly, Stake and Hurley lifted Flaquita off his feet and carried him together. He was close to passing out, anyway. The other guard kept his hands free, still distrustful of Stake and ready for trouble.

  Just as when Stake had been escorted to Cirvik’s office, other prisoners stood close to their cell barriers watching the four men pass, calling out to them and asking what was going on. The brownout, the wounded guard, Stake aiding the guards…the men were befuddled, and thus close to rage with frustration and the fear that the prison might no longer be stable…but of course Stake and the guards couldn’t linger to answer anyone’s questions.

  Along the way Stake did his best to fill the guards in on what had happened. Hurley and the other man were horrified to hear that Cirvik had been killed. The latter man called the chief of security, a man named Ploss, on his helmet mic and told him to meet them in the infirmary. The guard then related to Hurley and Stake that Ploss was sending some men to Cirvik’s office to tend to the body.

  A number of times their little group hurried past a robot guard. Stake watched each one warily, but none of them gazed back at him with sputtering eyes.

  When they reached the infirmary, Ploss was already there waiting for them, along with several other human guards. He had been warned not to trust the robots. Ploss was a powerfully built Choom with his head shaved to stubble and his ear-to-ear mouth compressed in a long, stern line. Also waiting for their arrival was Dr. Zaleski, whom Ploss had contacted and ordered to his post. The medical chief looked more haggard and sickly than ever, either from having been roused too early from sleep…or with dread.

  “The assistant warden’s on the way,” Ploss rumbled, watching over the proceedings as Zaleski and a med tech assigned to the night shift immediately tended to Flaquita, now stretched out on an examination table. “Until he gets here, I’m in charge. You.” He pointed at Stake. “Tell me what happened to the warden.”

  “I will, but I hope you’ll have my memories downloaded, so you’ll be sure to believe me.” Stake gestured toward Flaquita. “His memories, too.”

  “It’ll be done. Until then, tell me!”

  * * *

  The assistant warden, a small and reserved white-haired man named Conant, arrived early in Stake’s story and didn’t interrupt him.

  When Stake had finished, he turned to gesture toward Dr. Zaleski and said, “That’s all I know. If you want more, I suggest you talk to this man.”

  “What are you saying?” Zaleski said.

  “Trust my instincts,” Stake said, looking from Assistant Warden Conant to Security Chief Ploss. “I always do.”

  Ploss faced the medical chief. “What do you know about this, Zaleski?” he demanded.

  “When I questioned him about the deaths here,” Stake said, “I could tell he knew more than he was saying. I’m certain Cirvik confided in him. He had to have had at least one person trying to help him figure out what was going on when this started.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” Zaleski cried. “All of what you just told us…who could believe it? You just made it up to cover up your murder of the warden!”

  “My memories and Flaquita’s will back us up on what the warden said and did.”

  Ploss narrowed his eyes at the assistant warden. “Cirvik didn’t tell you any of this? About this monster?”

  “Of course not!” Conant said.

  Ploss returned his attention to Zaleski and stepped in close to him; close enough to catch hold of his lab smock and jerk the man onto his tiptoes.

  “Hey, easy there!” Conant warned.

  Ploss ignored his nominal superior, growling at Zaleski, “Maybe you don’t get it—this prison is in chaos right now! We’re on auxiliary p
ower for no reason we can understand, the warden tried to kill one of my men, and a monster tried to kill this prisoner in his cell…after it’s already killed a bunch of other men. To top it off, we haven’t been able to communicate with the home office…we can’t get any kind of signal out at all. So if you know something, you sorry little junkie, you’d better spit it out now before I lose my patience. And I’ve never had a whole lot of that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘junkie’?” Zaleski stammered.

  Ploss said through a wall of clenched teeth, “We all know about you. If you want the home office to know, too, I can arrange it. Now tell me about this monster we’re fighting or I’ll throw you in the nearest trash zapper.”

  “Let’s not lose control here,” Conant advised. “We have to work together to sort this out.” But he was such a mild and rational man that no one even listened to him.

  “You said we can’t get a signal out?” Hurley broke in.

  Ploss looked over at him. “Right. If what Stake says is true, and this monster can affect our systems, it might be blocking transmissions. Maybe all those animals out there are doing it. Surrounding us…making us all prisoners in here.”

  Stake said, “If these things really want to, they can probably shut down the auxiliary power, too. Right now they might just be trying to threaten us.”

  Ploss gave Zaleski a shake. “You hear that? We could all die soon…including you. So talk!”

  “You have to understand,” Zaleski choked, and not only because his collar was knotted in Ploss’s fist, “I was afraid of the man! You know what Warden Cirvik was like! What could I do but keep what he told me to myself?”

  “What did he tell you?” Ploss let the man down and loosened his grip a bit.