New Alcatraz (Book 1): Dark Time

by Grant Pies

  Over the years I had read hundreds of arrest reports. I had seen this series of events acted out on paper. In all of the reports, the suspects kicked and screamed. They cussed and spat at the arresting agents, screaming that they were innocent when all the while acting guilty. If they had nothing to hide they would comply. They would let the system work and clear their name. If they were innocent, they would stay calm and explain their side of the story.

  I stepped towards the door, and reached for the knob to start the process of pointing the agents in the right direction. But the agents grew impatient. I was only a meter away from the door when the frame broke and splintered. The door fell open and the hinge at the top of the door fell to the floor. An agent reached in and threw an object into the apartment.

  The disorienting blinding burst of an ultra-bright flash filled my small apartment. A sudden bang bounced around the walls, and everything was silent afterwards. It felt like my eardrums had burst from the expanding pressure of the device. A faint yellow smoke wafted about in the room, emanating from a tiny canister in the middle of the floor, filling my tiny apartment with the noxious smell of sulfur; just one more horrific smell to add to the list. My sight, sound, and smell were gone; like an android whose sensory systems had been disabled.

  This had to be a mistake, I surmised. If they only gave me a moment to explain. Whoever they thought lived in my apartment was not here. Maybe they should go one door down; maybe one floor above or below me. They were wasting their time with me. They have lost the element of surprise, I thought. Whoever they were really looking for must have heard this commotion, and fled the building.

  Men in boots piled inside my living quarters. My eyesight returned, but it was still faceless masked agents that charged at me. I held my hands out in front of me, but the wall of agents did not stop. I opened my mouth to tell them I was not the person they were after, but multiple agents wrapped their hands around me and threw me to the ground, flipping me over onto my stomach before a word left my mouth.

  Air rushed out of my lungs as my body smashed into the hardwood floor. A silent gasp pushed out of my open mouth. The agents pressed my face hard against the stained wood. Bits of dirt and crumbs embedded themselves into my cheek, and stray clumps of dust floated around my mouth. My head was turned in one direction. My limited eyesight ran parallel to the floor.

  “What are you doing!? I whispered before my breathing had a chance to return to normal. “I haven’t done anything,” I wheezed, but either no one heard me or no one cared. One agent drove his knee into my upper back, and I felt the outline of a plastic knee pad press against my spine.

  “Suspect is down!” I thought I heard one of the men shout, but his words were muffled from the mask that covered his face. The yellow sulfur smoke drifted up toward the ceiling. Another agent grabbed my wrist with a gloved hand and twisted plastic restraints on my wrists until the plastic cut into my wrists.

  “I am not a suspect!” I regained the air in my lungs and was able to speak at what seemed a normal volume. “Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you looking for?”

  A third agent knocked the stacked boxes of old ARC case information onto the ground. Old and yellowed papers fluttered to the ground, kicking up even more dust and dirt in a wave that pressed against my face. The agents acted swiftly in concert. Long before the ringing in my ears fully faded. Before the synapses in my brain relayed what was happening, and the stench of sulfur wafted out of my nostrils, the agents had secured my hands and dragged me out of the apartment.

  “Your name Powell?” the man whose knee was pushed into my back asked.

  How did he know my name, I wondered. “Yes,” I said as if my answer would make him realize he had the wrong person.

  “Then shut up and get moving!” he shouted in my face and jerked my restrained hands up until my shoulder felt like it was going to rip.

  The agents lifted me, but my stomach still faced the floor. With my hands behind my back, the agents wrapped their hands under my elbows. My arms torqued upward putting pressure on my shoulders; one agent on each side of me. My bare feet hung down and dragged on the cement hallway of my apartment building. The agents marched me down the stairs, and pulled me out of the front door of my building.

  The act of my arrest spanned the length of 180 seconds. It took me just that long for my shock and naiveté to diminish enough for me to ask the proper questions.

  “What am I charged with?” I asked. The lawyer in me took over and demanded answers. I demanded the agents at least try to adhere to the law. I jerked and twisted my body. The agents grasped my arms tighter. I flailed even more.

  “If you don’t calm down I will restrain your ankles and hog tie you, you piece of shit!” one of the agents screamed at me through his black ski mask.

  “What are the charges!?” I screamed back. “You can’t do this! I have rights!” I said as I slowly became just like all the other people I had read about in the hundreds of police reports. I kicked my legs and the agents contorted my arms more and more in response.

  Red and blue lights flashed and blurred my vision. An otherwise loud siren blasted from the car, but I only heard it as a hushed wailing that seemed to be far off in the distance. My toes grazed the rough asphalt of the street.

  “You can’t do this!” I screamed in progressively louder volume. The agents approached one of the police cars parked at an angle in the middle of the street, and slammed me against the side of the car. My nose was the first part of me to make contact with the car, and it accepted the full force of the agent’s push. My nostrils immediately filled with blood and snot that rushed and spilled down my chest.

  The agent leaned in close to my ear. “I can do whatever the fuck I want to do. You murdered an agent. A good agent,” he growled and pushed my body further into the side of the patrol car. “I could lay you on the ground and stomp your head in and not a single agent here would stop me,” he said. I could tell he smiled when he said this just by his tone.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed and pushed off the side of the car with my legs. The agent stumbled back a minimal distance. “I am innocent. I didn’t do anything wrong!” I said. My transition from calm and innocent to deranged and guilty was complete. Only the most damning acts would make their way into the arrest report. They threw me into the back of an armored patrol car like a worn out gym bag, and slammed the door behind me. My shirt was covered with dark red blood; the metallic taste filled my mouth.

  The car was ice cold. Another agent was already waiting in the driver’s side of the patrol car. The agent that tossed me in the car walked around the car and stepped into the passenger side of the vehicle. The driver was the only one without his face concealed by a ski mask. He was young. Probably just put on the task force.

  “Is this the guy?” the rookie asked. The man who threw me into the car nodded and let out a short grunt. The driver peered at me through the wire enclosure that separated the front and back of the car. “He doesn’t look that scary,” he said as he put the car into gear and drove off.

  CHAPTER 17

  2070

  PHOENIX, AZ

  At the holding station, the agents kept me in a two by two meter concrete room with a two-way mirror. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all the same matte gray finish; seamless concrete. The room must have been poured as one single mold. Besides a fluorescent light that hung overhead, which cast dark shadows under any prominent facial feature, the room contained only a table and one chair.

  Upon arrival the agents cut the plastic restraints that dug into my skin, leaving reddish pink rings around my wrists, and replaced them with old-fashioned metal cuffs on my wrists and ankles. A thick chain connected each pair of the restraints, and it shook from side to side as I walked. An officer read me the official charge: Murder of a Federated Agent and Defilement of a Corpse. I shook my head when they read me the charges and my rights; my stomach cramped like someone had applied a tourniquet.

  “You have got to b
e kidding me,” I mumbled under my breath. My teeth were coated in the blood that dripped from my nose. By now large dried clumps of it clogged my nostrils, so I had to breathe out of my mouth. My entire face hurt with each tiny facial movement. A small part of me still hoped that the system would work. I tried not to let myself view the Federated Judicial System through the same jaded lens that I viewed the Android System; an almost insurmountable act for someone in my position. But maybe once I talked to someone higher up, a person who wasn’t simply a hired thug with a badge, I could explain this was a mistake; had to be a mistake. After they read me my rights, no one said anything more to me than single word orders. “Move!” “Sit!” “Stop!” “Turn!”

  In the cell, they pushed me down into a cold metal chair made from a single piece of metal, the edges smoothed to a non-lethal roundness. The table in front of me was the same, no joints, screws, or rivets; nothing to bend or break. The door slammed shut behind the agent. Several keys rattled on the other side, and the deadbolts slammed into place. For a long time, there was only silence. Nothing to look at, to listen to, or to say. I sat and stared at the door, and fought the thoughts of a future I couldn’t envision without panic setting in.

  I hoped that whoever came in next had at least a touch of respect for someone in my position. Maybe they would give me the benefit of the doubt. I am an attorney, I thought. We are all here to uphold the law, after all. As long as I remained calm my words would carry more weight. I lowered my head to wipe the blood from my shattered nose on my shirt. The pain shot through my body and erupted inside my face.

  Sometime later, the deadbolts rattle inside the door again, and, after all of the locks were disengaged, the door swung open. A female agent entered. She was homely with features that everyone had seen before. Nothing stood out. She was young yet her disheveled and frizzy hair was a bright gray color with only streaks of dark black. She looked as if even before she aged she was an unattractive woman. I assumed she carried bitterness inside of her because of that. Her pantsuit matched her hair, and was traced with deep wrinkles. She wore a white shirt underneath her jacket. Her badge hooked on the waist of her pants.

  In one hand, she carried a file stuffed with glossy photographs. In the other, she dragged a steel chair behind her. The same type of chair I sat in. The legs of the chair dragged against the concrete, a scraping sound following her. She pulled the chair up to the table and sat. She didn’t speak at first; just sat and tugged on her wrinkled jacket. She calmly placed the file in front of me and opened it. One at a time she spun each photograph around to show me; six in total. I forced a smile and made eye contact with the woman. She offered no expression in return.

  “Look, this is all a mistake,” I said. “I didn’t do anything. The officer, the one who arrested me, he said you think I killed someone. An agent? There’s got to be an explanation.” The woman said nothing.

  The pictures on the table were from a crime scene. A woman lay in the middle of a warehouse in a large pool of blood. Large cuts on her body. The base of her skull cracked open, and what was left of her brain sat next to her. Her hair was matted to her head. Her chest was cut open vertically down her body, and ripped open. Her ribs pulled apart. Her lungs dangled out of her body in a rosy clump. Her eyes gouged from her skull. Large vacant holes sunk into her face. The body looked like it was crushed by a car and picked over by vultures and other scavengers. Unlike the agent across from me, this victim appeared as if she might have been beautiful before someone did this to her.

  I winced at the sight of the gruesome photos. I looked up at the agent. My brow scrunched in disbelief. “You think I did this?” I asked and pointed at the glossy photos. I chuckled at the thought, which in hindsight probably seemed a bit callous.

  “I am agent Lee,” the woman said stiffly. “You are charged with the murder of Agent Emery. She was an agent with the Time Anomaly Agency. Has an officer read you your rights?” I nodded my head slowly as my stomach now turned into an infinite pit. I stared at the photos on the table. The colors were vibrant. The red blood spread across the dark oil stained floor of the warehouse that was littered with old machinery. Bolts and screws covered the floor like confetti on New Year’s Eve. The agent’s body looked peaceful almost. Like it had already forgotten what just happened to her.

  “Have you ever been to Warehouse Twenty-Eight in the Industrial District?” agent Lee asked. A hint of deep rooted anger seeped out of her mouth, and mixed with her otherwise pleasant tone.

  I knew enough as an attorney to stay quiet. My adversarial nature kicked in and I became immediately defensive to the idea of my guilt. My plan to persuade her that I was innocent evaporated. I offered her nothing. I knew that other agents observed me from behind the large mirror, looking for clues in my body language. They wanted my body to involuntarily give myself away.

  Typically, a liar keeps their arms close to their body. They take up less space and avoid eye contact. So there I sat, arms opened, placed straight out on the table before me. I stared at agent Lee for my observers behind the glass to see. I stared at Lee like the gray wolf pack leader stared at me when I was in Yellowstone as a child.

  “I see you were charged with the unauthorized possession of tech components and the acceptance of bribes in the practice of law, back in 2065,” the agent said as she looked down at an open file folder.

  “Those charges were dropped before we went to trial,” I said and broke my vow of silence. “They were supposed to be expunged from my record,”

  “Right…the ARC,” she said under her breath.

  Liars will not use contractions. A liar will say, “I did not do it”, whereas a truthful person will say “I didn’t do it.” Another agent entered the room and placed an empty glass and a pitcher of water on the table. Agent Lee poured water into the glass and slid it across the table to me. This was a test. Liars will unconsciously place objects between themselves and their accuser. I grabbed the glass in my hand and drank the entire contents of it. Once I was done I placed the glass back on the table, and I slid it to the edge of the table out of the way.

  “Have you ever been investigated for any other crime?” Agent Lee continued to question me, as if I had agreed to an interrogation. Her hidden cohorts behind the glass tracing every line on my face and measuring each muscular twitch.

  “Were you currently being investigated?” Agent Lee asked. She leaned back and settled into her metal chair. “More specifically, was Agent Emery currently investigating you?” Agent Lee raised her eyebrows.

  I clenched my jaw and resisted the urge to both answer her questions and ask my own. Why would I be under investigation, I thought. I hadn’t been to the Industrial District for years. I didn’t think anyone went there anymore.

  I tried my best to not move an inch while she questioned me. Most times, a murder goes unsolved unless there is a direct confession. I knew that I only needed to remain silent. My face was frozen. Unmoving; I offered them nothing. I sat stoic.

  “We know you did this, Powell,” Lee said. Still no movement. I stared past Agent Lee. I looked beyond the heavy dead bolted door and down the hall. I pictured I was back in Yellowstone looking out over a green valley just as the sun fell behind the distant mountains. I gave them nothing.

  “Well I know that I didn’t do it,” I said; almost surprised by my own voice. Agent Lee ignored what I said, but the agents behind the mirror surely jotted down notes.

  “Why did you kill her?” she said with a smirk. “Did you kidnap her and bring her to Warehouse Twenty-Eight or did you lure her there?” I shook my head in disbelief. How could this be happening?

  “Was that a ‘no I didn’t kidnap her’ or a ‘no I didn’t lure her’?” Agent Lee asked as she moved the pictures around on the table. “Why did you remove her brain, Powell? Why did you remove her heart?” She looked up at me for a reaction. My stomach twisted and my body moved in discomfort. With each movement the agents behind the glass would take note. “Why did you remove her
eyes?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I told her in a whisper. My insides felt like a twisted knot, and I was both hot and cold.

  “Where did you take the organs? What did you do with them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know this person!”

  “You don’t know what you did with the organs? Did you sell them? Did you ingest them?”

  “I don’t know because I wasn’t the one who removed her organs.” Sweat beaded on my forehead and the adrenaline in my body finally masked the pain of my broken nose.

  “Is this the first time you’ve killed someone?” Agent Lee asked in a tone that was only meant to taunt me. “Have you ever travelled through time?” With her last question Agent Lee tilted her head to make eye contact with me. She seemed to gauge my reaction, and then she sat back in her chair like someone who just got a Royal Flush in a game of poker.

  “I don’t need you to confess, Powell. We have all the proof we need,” she said quietly. I made sure not to cross my legs, and I faced my chest towards Agent Lee; all purposeful signs that I am not hiding anything. “If you talk now, you might not get sentenced to temporal prison. But maybe you want to go to New Alcatraz?” she asked, in a final attempt to trap me. A final threat of the worst punishment possible to get me to confess was a tactic from a desperate person; someone with no real proof. Maybe the cards in her hand weren’t so good after all?