The Prisoner

by Carlos J. Cortes

  “You’ve got to be joking.” Lukas held on to his towel and jerked his head around like a caged animal.

  “Be my guest.” Raul shrugged. “You can try the front door if you like.”

  “Better get him ready to travel.” Floyd had moved to the table and was drawing the catheter from Russo.

  Laurel stared at Floyd. “You can’t stay here,” she said.

  “A brilliant conclusion.”

  “Look—”

  “Plan to hit the sewers decked in towels?” Floyd sounded amused.

  Laurel turned to Raul and froze as the image of waders with an inch of fatty sewage inside flashed through her mind. Unconsciously, she bunched her toes. “Shit.”

  From the far side of the theater, Floyd unfolded a thermal sack to place Russo in and nodded to Raul for help. He then reached for the sack’s fastener and ripped. “Another brilliant conclusion.”

  chapter 15

  22:01

  Their script gone, Laurel fought the waves of terror radiating from her belly, blanking reason with images of dark corners where she could curl up and cry. Their carefully researched plan called for a precise set of steps. Once Russo had been stabilized and housed at Nyx, Dr. Carpenter would have driven them to a prearranged meeting point on the northern fringes of the city to rendezvous with Shepherd. Then they would have laid low for as long as necessary until Russo recovered. Not long, according to Shepherd. Now, like cornered animals, they could only run. But where? She was racing toward the showers to throw the filthy gear back on when Floyd grabbed her arm and pointed to a storeroom where the cleaning detail kept clean wet suits, waders, and tools. Laurel could have hugged him, hard. A minute later, when Lukas, Raul, and Laurel rushed back into the surgical theater, Floyd had already cocooned Russo in a bag, probably one of those used to move cadavers to incineration. She recalled Shepherd mentioning that, even with the lavish care bestowed by Nyx, often the bodies were so badly damaged after protracted commercial hibernation—by whatever sickness had gotten them there in the first place—that the only thing the family ever got back was condolences.

  Floyd threw loaded syrettes, an instrument case, and handfuls of drugs from a shelf into a duffel bag and nodded for Raul to carry Russo. Then he bolted down the corridor to return almost at once with a lightweight folded stretcher, which he handed to Lukas. “Two floors down. Same way you came.” Floyd pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. “I’ll catch up with you.” He turned on his heel and pushed the door to the cleaner’s storeroom shut.

  In the basement, they recovered their discarded flashlights and stood by the metal door leading to the sewers.

  “Good stuff.” Raul pinched the dark-gray material of his suit and rubbed it between his fingers.

  “Steam disinfecting gear,” Lukas said.

  Raul nodded. “But they have no tanks.”

  Suddenly Laurel jerked, pivoted, and ran toward the stairs. “The computer!”

  She almost collided with Floyd, who was barreling down the steps.

  “Where’re you going?” he yelled.

  “Forgot the Metapad. We’re fucked without it.”

  “We’re fucked anyway, but hurry up!” He squeezed past her and crashed through the basement door.

  When Laurel returned, wheezing from the effort—the computer dangling from her neck—the men had already strapped Russo onto the stretcher with stout woven belts.

  “Here.” Floyd handed his bag to Lukas, nodded to Raul, then bent over to grab one end of the stretcher.

  Sixteen minutes and thirty seconds after discovering the broadcasting implants, they were back in the sewers.

  Nikola stood, his back to the security air locks joining the reception area with the underground accesses. Whoever had designed the complex didn’t believe in feng shui but understood human nature. Nyx’s reception area was a hangarlike monstrosity—a domed void rising one hundred feet into the air and spanning a circle of perhaps three hundred feet, with a doughnut-shaped counter in its center. The rest was empty but for clusters of plush seats arranged at the edge of the circle. Like an ancient temple builder, the architect had designed the brutal empty volume to awe visitors into insignificance.

  As he waited outside for the arrival of the DHS Fast Deployment Units, Dennis’s voice had crackled in his earpiece. “Signatures gone.” A short sentence that altered the rules of the game.

  “All of them?”

  No hesitation on Dennis’s reply. “Yes.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Within seconds of one another, anyhow.”

  To destroy the locators required surgical removal, and the fugitives hadn’t had enough time. Besides, if someone had surgically excised the sensors and left them lying around, they would still be live. Yet all three sensors had stopped broadcasting nearly in unison, and unless the fugitives had a large team of surgeons, it was an impossible feat. No. They had neutralized the sensors, and that could only mean the bastards had learned of their dual role as beacons. Nikola sighed and ran a hand over the sleeve of his wool jacket—one of his affectations. Real wool—not the smart synthetic fiber that would change color and texture at its owner’s whim. The wool felt warm to the touch, as if it still remembered the heat of the animal it had come from.

  The waning signal left him blind and offered the fugitives two alternatives. They could have holed up in the research building and hoped to remain undetected—but this was a naive assumption, and whoever had planned the operation was anything but naive. On the other hand, they could be in the sewers, ready to surface almost anywhere. And he didn’t have the personnel to scour hundreds of miles of city bowels and seal the city exits. But he could seal the city, and the fugitives would have to come up sooner or later. He stepped forward to a dozen security guards lined up by the FDU lieutenant and eyed a row of frightened faces. “Who’s in charge?”

  A young security officer, almost a boy, straightened. “I am.”

  Nikola peered into the young man’s eyes, ready to deliver a rebuke that died before it left his tongue. Interrogation was an art where one posed questions and the other delivered answers. Problem was, if the questions were stupid, the answers would be even more so. He had wanted to know who the highest executive in the building was, but he hadn’t been clear. And the boy replied accordingly; he was in charge of the security detail.

  “Where are the medical personnel?”

  “In their offices or labs, sir.”

  A door opened on the far end of the room, and a short, overweight man in lab whites trotted toward them. “I’m Dr. Henkel,” he offered with a bland smile. “Director of—” He clamped his mouth shut at Nikola’s raised hand.

  “Give your name to the lieutenant over there.” Nikola glanced over his shoulder. “I have no need of you.” He’d decided the security boy would be easier to deal with. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Jeremy, sir. Jeremy Clark.”

  Nikola pointed to a hologram model of the buildings floating over a wider section of the reception counter. “Let’s start again, Jeremy. This complex has five buildings laid out like disks on the vertices of a pentagram. We are in this one.” He nodded to the pentagram. “I suppose this is admission and administration, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And these are the hibernation wards?” His hand waved through the ghosts of four orange-colored iridescent blocks.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He eyed the young man but found no sparkle in his eye. “And this?” He pointed to the remaining building—a blue cylinder, the precise location where the coordinates from the broadcasting sensors had crossed.

  “Laboratories and research.”

  “How many ways in or out?”

  “One. Through here, sir.”

  Jeremy’s voice would have been pleasant if fear had not ratcheted it tight. Nikola glanced around the cavernous reception space. As at Hypnos, hibernation stations, whether penitentiary or private, had only underground accesses.
r />   “And vehicles?”

  “Below us, but there’s only a single access.” Jeremy pointed to a glazed wall to one side that opened onto a wide ramp blocked by a squat black armored truck.

  “Who’s at the labs now?” Nikola asked.

  “Nobody, sir. Employees leave at six and the janitors don’t start until midnight.”

  “Could you check?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Please?” Nikola was aware of how unnerving his full scrutiny could be on whoever was with him and that it had often proved more than some could tolerate. He smiled and watched the boy darting a nervous glance to the men spreading through the reception area—large men clad in black uniforms with shiny body armor, hard hats, and serious-looking hardware cradled in their arms. Jeremy turned on his heel and marched to the reception counter. Nikola cocked his head to speak into his lapel mic. “Get the police, the National Guard, and the army. Ring the city with roadblocks and flash images and descriptions to airports and public transport stations.” He listened to Dennis’s question and shook his head. “No escaped convicts. Terrorists. Four: a woman and three—” He paused. “There could be four or five terrorists: a woman and three or four men, one of them sick or unconscious, possibly on a stretcher or in a wheelchair. Armed, dangerous, no contact, kill on sight.”

  It couldn’t be helped. Nikola would have dearly loved to interview the doctor, the lawyers, or the controller if they traveled together, but he couldn’t risk anyone listening to them before he got there. He leaned onto the counter, his eyes never leaving the young man’s face. Not a bad face—a predatory nose, almost patrician, above firm lips and jutting over a delicate jaw. High and intelligent forehead—an illusion. Most people with high foreheads seemed bright until they opened their mouths. He glanced at the young man’s fingers and flinched at the rough and ragged cuticles, the nails bitten to the quick. Nails, not the eyes, were the mirror of the soul. Abused nails belonged to throwaway people.

  “I—I’m sorry, sir.” Jeremy blanched, and whatever appeal he had deserted his face.

  “Yes?”

  “Dr. Carpenter.”

  “What about Dr. Carpenter?”

  “He’s not checked out; he’s still in the research block.”

  “See, I knew we would get somewhere. Lead the way.” He nodded to the lieutenant in charge of the FDU team and followed the young security officer. His earpiece blipped.

  “Floyd Carpenter, Caucasian, forty-one, five-eleven, medical graduate, Maryland, class of forty-four, AMM doctorate, Houston, class of forty-sev—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Advanced Mammalian Metabolism.”

  “Family?”

  “Divorced, no children. His mother is the only surviving relative.”

  “Pick her up.”

  Silence.

  “Confirm,” Nikola insisted irritably.

  “That may be difficult. Cecilia Carpenter, née Hailey, is the high priestess of Twilight’s Children, last heard of in Pidakkesh.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Northern Pakistan, a stone’s throw from Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. She’s running an enlightenment mission there.”

  “Try to find her, anyway.”

  “Will do.”

  In the garden outside, intermittent gusts of wind blew the leaves up and down. But Senator Palmer wasn’t watching their movements; his unfocused gaze was lost in the distance. He jolted, pivoted around, and dashed to his desk in two strides to reach for the secure phone a fraction of a second after the first blip.

  “Palmer.”

  For an instant he thought he’d been rash and messed up the link, but after a short delay, the scrambler kicked in its sizzling stream of exchange data before HORUS flashed on the terminal’s screen.

  A metallic cackle. “That was quick. Are we nervous, Senator?”

  Palmer waited.

  “Your boys are having a spot of trouble. Onuris tracked them to Nyx Corporation a few minutes ago.”

  An eddy started to swirl in his stomach. “How?”

  “That’s the beauty of technology. It appears the sensors carried by the inmates are also location transmitters.”

  “That’s impossible.” But after he said it, Palmer closed his eyes.

  “Is it? One must agree it’s a logical feature.”

  “Kept secret?”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true. The DHS knew.”

  “And so did Hypnos,” Palmer said.

  “Precisely.”

  Palmer’s mind raced. Your boys meant Horus didn’t know the names of those involved. The voice had sounded even, almost nonchalant. They had not been caught. There had to be hope.

  “They lost them,” the voice said.

  Dragging words from Horus was like getting credit from a hooker.

  “A few minutes before the troops arrived, they lost the signal.”

  “Meaning?” Palmer asked.

  “Either they removed the transmitters or found a way to interfere with the signal.”

  “And now?”

  “Onuris has lost their scent.”

  Silence.

  “Senator, your boys are running, probably frightened, and frightened folks are unpredictable.”

  After a burst of static, the screen went blank. Palmer stood from his desk, neared a credenza, and poured a shot of malt whiskey from a decanter into a cognac glass. As he was about to drink, he frowned, peered into the liquid, and sniffed. Right glass, wrong stuff—or the other way around. He downed it in one gulp and returned to his desk. He had to warn Shepherd.

  The tunnel passing under the bowels of the Nyx station was a dead end; they could only retrace their steps. Laurel trotted ahead toward the main sewer, as the men huffed behind her in single file and kept to the dry sidewalk flanking a trough filled with a lazy whitish fluid. With a flashlight in one hand slashing wildly over the crumbling brick surfaces, she reached by feel to the side of her computer to bring it online. Laurel glanced at a bunch of fluffy-looking stalactites dangling from the curved roof. Above their heads, the DHS would be positioning their awesome assets. A Machiavellian paradox, but the DHS involvement and the identity of the man on the stretcher worked to their advantage, affording them a slim chance of escape.

  Had Russo been a common criminal, the DHS would have mustered every agency and corps in the land: police, National Guard, the army, and even the fire brigades. Within minutes, the sewers would have been swarming with soldiers. They wouldn’t have had a chance. But Russo was a secret, a genie the DHS couldn’t afford to let out of the bottle. If they involved other agencies, the DHS would have to offer explanations and someone might recognize Russo—although after seeing his emaciated face, Laurel doubted even his mother would. No. The DHS would go solo. They might use forces from other agencies, but only to secure a perimeter of roadblocks and mass transport exit points. Their crack Fast Deployment Units, the dreaded FDUs, numbered a scant three hundred men scattered all over the nation. At short notice, the DHS could muster fewer than a third of their elite forces. Those had been Shepherd’s precise words.

  “Now what?” Dr. Floyd Carpenter’s voice echoed behind her as they piled out into the main sewer.

  A warm waft of rancid, fatty air enveloped her like a shroud. She moved forward to a wider section of the ledge so the others could move into the tunnel. On GPS mode, the Metapad displayed a digitized map of the sewers, courtesy of WASA’s Documents and Permits Section and exchanged for a large wad of cash from a supervisor at the Blue Plains sewage-treatment plant. Red lines identified sanitary sewers, blue lines storm sewers, and an overwhelming layer of brown lines identified combined sewers—a gargantuan network with almost two thousand miles of pipes and tunnels. Laurel peered at an alien universe of colored dots: flow-metering stations, storm-water-pumping stations, and thousands of catch basins, infalls, and utility holes.

  Hampered by the wrap around her neck, Laurel gazed into the impenet
rable darkness to her left and the fat fields. The stench grew and, with it, the uncanny sensation of fat dribbling down her throat. Floyd stepped away from the stretcher resting on the floor, bent in two, and spewed forth a thick gush of vomit. Lukas joined him with a Morse code of dry heaves. Laurel swallowed, intent on the Metapad screen.

  Please, not west. The main sewer ran east to west. The roaches and the slabs of clotted, festering fat lay a few hundred yards due west. She propped the flashlight on the floor, pointing upward, and glanced at Raul, who stood like a statue, with his stiff neck encased in a white band. From a depression on the computer’s rubber housing, Laurel fished a stylus and tapped the screen to transmitter mode. When a keyboard scrolled at the bottom of the display, she tapped with her stylus.

  >Help.

  Laurel jerked to a loud snort on her right. The edge of the band around her neck rubbed her chafed skin.

  Floyd leaned over her shoulder. “Calling for Mom?”

  “Look, Doc—”

  “Drop the title. I’m Floyd.” His breath had a tang of hydrochloric acid.

  The screen remained blank, a tiny prompt flashing white.

  “The goons above will thank you for the beacon,” Floyd noted.

  “No, they won’t. This uses a military-issue Squirt transmitter. It alters outgoing signals. After scrambling, it packs any transmission into a burst lasting a few microseconds.”

  Where are you? She was using the emergency procedure Shepherd swore they would never need. If this failed, she had nothing else to try. Once more, she tapped her stylus on the screen.

  >Help.

  “Mom must be out of earshot.” Floyd sounded amused.

  The Metapad’s screen flashed.

  >Coordinates?

  She addressed the GPS and clicked a window.

  Lukas had finished retching and now squatted, his back to the curved wall of the tunnel. For a paper pusher, he was behaving with commendable restraint. The tunnel echoed with wet, slurpy sounds. She screwed her eyes to focus on a round opening on the opposite bank, a pipe hiccuping gushes of liquid. It didn’t sound like water but something thicker, like bile.