“Excellent, really very excellent, but you missed out the final task—a tradition, and one that will now be my last. When this project is complete, I’ll be retiring, and this will be the crowning achievement of my career. Professor, well done and congratulations.” The commander reaches down to his desk and picks up his prized silver cigar box, presented to him over thirty years ago after he defeated a notorious pirate who was causing havoc around the sol system. Opening the box, he offers a cigar to the professor and then takes one himself. Putting the box back down on his desk, he picks up his lighter and cigar clipper. “This is the tradition I talk of, Professor, a fine cigar, but the best-quality ones need to be cut. I only have a few of these left now due to them being rather hard to come by. Being illegal does not help, but I would like to consider this one of the perks of the job.”
The commander reaches over and cuts the end off of the professor’s cigar and then his own perfectly. Putting the cutter back down and then motioning to the professor, he raises his lighter, lighting the professor’s cigar. The professor takes a few puffs, and the cigar brightens and crackles softly. After lighting his own cigar, the commander places the cutter back down and takes a few more puffs off his cigar, savoring the taste.
The commander then places two fine glasses down on his desk and pours a generous amount of a rich, golden liquid into both. He sets down the bottle before picking up both glasses and handing one to the professor. “One-hundred-year-old Martian brandy. It’s extremely rare, but I was lucky enough to come across a bottle a few years back. I only bring it out for special occasions, this being one of them.” Raising his glass, he says, “Here’s to you, Professor. Facility Zero and the completion of my final project, your life’s work, and the means of ridding the federation of all its most dangerous criminals and embarrassing undesirables. To Facility Zero!”
“Facility Zero,” repeats the professor.
The commander and the professor both take a sip of their drinks. They smile at each other and remain silent for a moment until the professor says, “Earlier you said ‘embarrassing undesirables.’ What did you mean by that?”
The commander smiles an almost uneasy smile before replying, “As you know, the federation is big and powerful, and no governmental institution can achieve such without stepping over the line a few times; in error or by design, certain obstacles are removed or replaced. I’m not saying the whole system is corrupt, but you are bound to have a few not so pure of mind. The types that when they see an issue, they have no problem coming up with unique ways to resolve the problem. Don’t get me wrong…the federation on the whole is a good system—protect the innocent, give all equal rights to a fair deal, reward those who work hard and bring to justice the criminals and the dangerous individuals that threaten the federation’s way of life—but sadly on occasion someone who is doing right might find themselves on the wrong side of the line, and some powerful individuals now have an ideal place to silence such opposition.
“I’m sorry, Professor, if it sounds terrible if a few innocent people end up here, but please rest assured that your work will do more good than harm, and in a slightly ironic way, these people will be safer—fewer accidents, not so many friendly-fire incidents, and far fewer unresolved murders. The federation has far more positive effects than negative ones, and you can also take heart that even these will be reduced in time, and the few bad eggs might even end up experiencing your wonderful achievement firsthand. Come now, drink your wonderful drink, smoke your wonderful cigar, and feel proud in your work.”
Six hours until Facility Zero comes online
After spending far too long with the commander before making his excuses to go check on some items, Brookes heads back to his room for a few hours’ sleep. Waking suddenly, with the nightmarish faces of helpless innocents being sent to his creation still vivid upon his mind, he looks up at his clock and realizes he slept far longer than he planned to. By his calculations, the station should now be in the process of being lowered closer to the black hole.
Rushing from his quarters, Brookes heads up to his lab where the other scientists and engineers are busily entering information and reading data. He’s handed a data tablet with current status reports and thumbs through the green status flags.
Feeling slightly less anxious, he takes a seat at one of the monitoring consoles and begins to read off the minute-by-minute reports. He almost misses the amber flag that appears on the last page, but he opens up the report and reads the flag: “Power fluctuation detected. Possible cause: Power induction line, panel 4b, not activated.” Brookes rereads the flag and says, “This damn fault. They replace the line but forget to activate it?” Mumbling a few choice curses under his breath, Brookes heads out of the lab, now fuming again that a stupid mistake could cost the whole project.
Back in the lab, the comms speaker crackles, “Th-s s bro…ha-t-he po-iti-ni-g-roc-du-e,” before it sparks and stops altogether. Heads turn toward the comms unit with looks of concern and confusion. An engineer tech heads over to fix it, but no one understood the message, and the positioning procedure continues on.
Moments later Brookes docks at the temporary maintenance bay and heads down to the engineering level of the facility. This should only take a few minutes. He arrives at panel 4b, and the sight of the panel hanging loose makes Brookes feel nervous. These panels are meant to be secured with bolts that can only be removed with a special tool.
Opening the panel fully, he reaches in and pulls down hard on the lever. The red indicator light turns to green as the mechanism locks into place. He closes the panel and uses the securing tool to lock it into place, the idea being that once the station is online, there is no way to gain access to these panels without this tool. Brookes then starts to head back to the docks and checks the time on his handheld, stopping dead as he looks at the facility’s status monitor in disbelief: “Facility Zero now online.”
Brookes slowly realizes what must have happened. The trip that seemed to him to take only a few minutes most likely took him the better part of a few hours from the relative standpoint of others away from the black hole, and if the time dilation is this bad, that can only mean one thing: the station was still being lowered into position as he docked. He’d have to figure out later why his orders were ignored or misunderstood; his top priority must be to get back to the dock. He tells the computer his desired destination, and the corridor opens up before him. Wasting no more time, he heads off down the corridor.
Brookes realizes the inevitable outcome to his situation just as the doorway opens up into the main dining hall, which was set up as the primary destination in case the desired destination became unavailable en route. Entering the hall, Brookes scans the room, his eyes being almost drawn to a lone figure. A look of pure incomprehension covers Brookes’s face.
Samuel smiles and stands up just as Professor Brookes enters the room. “It’s such an honor to meet you, Professor. Welcome to Facility Zero.”
3
Freakers
Facility Zero, 180 days online: federation year 2424
I reenter my quarters, noticing that my room has been changed around while I was away. A new terminal has been added. Professor Brookes mentioned I would be getting an upgrade due to my new position as junior security officer. I chuckle to himself, thinking, I’ve had a few titles in my time, but never a junior security officer, and especially not in a prison. That just beats them all. Glancing again at the new terminal, I decide that it can wait until tomorrow. For now all I can think of is sleep.
I wake up earlier than usual, the short conversation with the professor the previous night still spinning around my head. Laughing to myself again, I get out of bed. First things first: I need a workout before breakfast; it’s how I think well. I tell the room to take me to the gym.
The corridor opens before me, and I head out of my room. Within a few minutes, I find myself walking into a reasonably fitted-out workout area. It’s pretty impressive, with a nice rack of runnin
g machines, rowers, brace benches, free weights, and an info terminal, very handy. To my surprise, the new girl from the other day is on one of the running machines, and she seems to be running well.
Taking advantage of the situation, I head over to a vacant running machine next to her. “Morning,” I say as I program a five-mile flat circuit and start my run. The woman next to me says nothing and continues running hard. I start my own run and pick up speed. Whoo, she is running hard. Glancing over at her readout, I’m impressed to see that she’s on target for running a twenty-eight-minute 10k.
A few minutes later, without showing signs of fatigue, the mystery woman slows and then stops as the machine beeps and shows her final time, a very respectable twenty-eight minutes thirty-one seconds. Trying again, I say, “Good morning. I’m Sam, the latest security officer of Facility Zero.”
Only glancing at me for a second, the mystery silent woman gets down from the running machine and then stops as she turns and regards me fully.
“The Sam McCall?” she replies, with a sound of slight disbelief in her voice.
“The one and only,” I reply with a smile, noticing a slight shimmering in her right eye. Normally that would mean it’s not a real eye but some kind of implant. But I’m feeling happier that the silence now seems to have been broken, and I’m intrigued that she recognizes me from somewhere.
“The same Sam McCall that’s broken out of over twenty-seven of the federation’s best detention centers all across federation space?” she asks in a curious tone.
“Yep, that’s me,” I reply again, my smile getting bigger.
“And you’ve been made a security officer of this place,” she says, her tone now slightly skeptical.
“Yes, that’s right,” I reply once more, my smile now threatening to explode out of my face.
Rolling her eyes in disbelief but resigned to the fact that she knows it’s the truth, she replies one last time, “Keep away from me. In fact, don’t even talk to me, but thanks for confirming to me that this place is obviously being run by idiots.” Her shimmering right eye stops as it returns to normal, and she turns and heads out of the room without saying anything else or looking back.
I stand there stunned. “What the hell was that all about?” Then moments after the woman left, the room opens up again, and Frank walks in with a towel over his shoulders.
“Heya, Sammy boy. How’s things? Oh.” He stops and looks at me. “You look like you’ve just been slapped in the face.”
“Yeah, I kind of feel like it. I was just talking to that new girl,” I say, still feeling a bit bewildered.
Franks laughs and then replies, “Oh, you must mean Jessica. Yeah, she’s a tightly sprung girl, that one.” He laughs again and then stops and gazes about the room as the lights start to buzz and flicker. “Oh crap, here we go again.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I’m not entirely sure why, but every now and again, the whole place goes nuts, and the routing system gets all messed up. Wait here, and it should resolve itself. You’re just lucky you are not en route somewhere,” Franks says with an air of danger.
“En route somewhere? What do you mean?” I ask as I get off of the running machine and head over to the terminal.
“I mean, my story the other night wasn’t just a story. Sure, I embellished it a little, but mainly, when the lights flicker and buzz, you stay put.”
The terminal comes to life and shows the usual “Welcome to Facility Zero” on the screen. I tap the terminal as before, and it displays the message “Please speak your request.”
“List my commands and allowed accessible location,” I say to the terminal. The following appears on the screen:
Sam McCall’s room
Dining hall
Information room
Workout gym
Main security
Lost and found
Medical
Dismantling bay
Levels 1 through 20: your current level is 2
Current prisoner population: 1150
Warning: Power fluctuation detected
Current community level 2 reaching maximum capacity
New level 3 activating; time to completion: 3 hours
Backup power generators now online
Terminal locked out until further notice.
Well, that sounds delightful. Turning to Frank and motioning to the lights, I say, “So we have three hours of this?”
“Yep, that’s about right, although I’ve never seen that information about levels before, but then again, I never experienced one of these with someone with security access before.” Frank smiles and then continues, “Anyone with security access is nowhere to be seen normally.”
Interesting, I think, but of no use at this time. Just then a corridor opens up along the side of the room away from us, and Jessica leaps through. This time she has built up a sweat.
“What the hell is going on?” Jessica says aloud while looking back down the way she had come. Moments later the sound of mad laughter and jeering drifts out of the open doorway. Jessica, already backing away, murmurs, “What the fuck?” her facial expression changing from curiosity to consternation.
The lighting from the open corridor begins to cast odd and distorted shadows upon the floor of the room as someone or something scrapes and claws their way closer to our room and the laughter and cooing noises become louder.
“Cancel route, cancel route, CANCEL ROUTE!” Frank shouts as Jessica stops backing up. Her facial expression changes once more, this time to one of determination as her hands form fists.
A bloody hand holding a crudely made blade comes into view from my angle of the corridor. My only thought at that moment mirrors Jessica’s moments before: What the fuck? Then without warning the system voice, also slightly distorted in tone, says, “Command accepted.” The corridor entranceway vanishes silently but slices off the hand of the unknown figure, causing the hand and blade to thud and clang down upon the floor as blackish blood oozes out from the severed hand.
“Frickin’ freakers. Frickin’ freakers” is all Frank repeats over and over.
I stare at the severed hand as several of its fingers continue to twitch. Jessica calmly walks over to the hand and steps on it, and then, grabbing the blade with a torn-off piece of cloth, she steps away and with a fluid motion, stabs the still twitching hand as she says, “Calm down, Frank. It’s dead.”
I walk over to stand next to Jessica as she steps on the hand once more to pull her blade free. As she bends, I notice the blood and a nasty slash from her right shoulder and down along her upper arm. “Oh shit, let me take a look at that,” I say, but as I start to reach out, her reaction is to pull away.
“It’s okay, it’s not serious,” she says.
“It’s not serious? Don’t be silly. You have an eight- to nine-inch-deep cut here. If we don’t stop the bleeding, you’re—”
“It’s not serious,” she snaps, interrupting me and again pulling away.
“You are one stubborn—just let me take a look.” Again I step in and take hold of her arm, but as I take a closer look, I feel her body tense, and I get the sense that I’m about to regret trying to help her. Moments later, though, she sighs and relaxes, allowing me to continue to look. “I’m going to need to borrow your blade and make some bandages from your sleeve, if I may. I have to try and stop this bleeding.”
“It really isn’t that bad, but I appreciate your concern. Just give it a moment,” she replies.
“Give it a moment for what? For the wound to bleed more?” I snap back, and then something deep within her arm, a metallic mesh, glints from the light. As I take a closer look, the mesh vanishes from sight as the flesh around it starts to knit itself back together. The wound then stops bleeding, and in a matter of seconds, the cut itself closes, leaving just a jagged line of blood where the wound was moments before.
“As I was trying to say, it wasn’t bad; it just looked bad,” she says, giving me a half smile.
She walks over to Frank, who now seems to have stopped repeating himself but still looks terrified.
Now it’s my turn to be stunned. Whatever is under this woman’s skin is not something you can just buy over the counter. That’s more likely to be some kind of high-grade military dermal mesh, slow to activate but very effective, like wearing a superlightweight suit of chain mail under your skin. Remembering back to the shimmer in her right eye, I wonder what other surprises she has and how the heck she’s been allowed to keep it. Putting that last thought to one side, I decide to head over and join the others.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask.
“Not much we can do but wait it out. Normally we are asleep when it happens, and that way it’s much safer, but from time to time it happens during the day, and that means the freakers can find us more easily. Moving around tends to draw their attention,” Frank says.
“Sounds sensible, then, if we just stay here and, as Franks says, wait it out,” I reply.
Then the corridor that Jessica had run out of earlier reopens, and on the opposite side of the room, another corridor opens up, followed by the sound of laughter and sinister cheering. From the first corridor, the cheering changes to a disturbing chant:
We only want to have some fun,
We just want to eat your thumbs,
Fingers and knuckles too,
An elbow or an arm will do,
We just want something of yours to chew.
This is followed by an outburst of more laughter as something is thrown into the room. It lands with a thud and rolls along the floor, turning and spinning as it slows down and comes to rest. The horrified face of the leader of the good-time boys stares up at us, his broken nose now missing, just leaving a few ribbons of flesh.
Come be our friend,
You don’t want to offend,
Otherwise you might end up like your friend!
As the second verse ends, Frank, who had started to manically repeat, “Frickin’ freakers! Frickin’ freakers!” again as the cheering started, screams a terrified scream and bolts for the opposite corridor, away from the chanting and thrown head.
Prototype: The Lost and Forgotten Series Page 4