Prisoner 52

by S. T. Burkholder

  Then the embattlements of the Concillium lay stretched out before him across the hills cleared months thence by the orbital cannons of the assault barges. Hands without faces took him in like some doomed penitent bound for one hell or another. Men stood with their backs to him in darkened bunker corners and muttered to the shadows there. He heard the music of the lower orders playing over a transmitter that sounded as though within the room but he could not see it. The instruments played on, but the words sung were spoken by Ersatz Legion platoon commanders crying out that the left expeditionary wing had collapsed and their whole advance was rolled back.

  The men who stood around him with their rifles dropped them and said in unison and in no more a tone than that of a stone's constant silence: 'retreat'. He glanced down at his hands and they were bloody and next he held in them the flag of his people and ran amidst the cheers of men, but away from them. Onto a bridge of stars and death and unguided rage that wanted for no discrimination. There he dwelt and floating on celestial zephyrs like a spirit of the billion suns that revolved around him and toward a great effervescence of golden light that had opened itself to him from the depths of space as with a ladder. But as he reached for its first rung his luminous hands passed through its luminous materials. He fell away and the vaults of the heavens were shut closed and its healing glow swallowed into darkness. The deepening void took him and whispering time. That it was time.

  His eyes opened. He breathed deep the reek of his own sweat and blood and viscera in the tube with him and, though the air reached him, he smelled nothing. He listened as the respiratory implants wheezed through their cycles in place of nose and mouth and blinked through the haze that cloaked the gloom of the tube. There was a weight that he felt upon his breast, as if the heart he carried within had finally been burdened with the iron that was made of it long ago. He craned his neck about to see if he could.

  "Attention." A voice said and familiar and he blinked at the blue face cast across the screen close before him. "Power failure. Equipment malfunction. Containment intact: sedation torture comprimised. Please await assistance."

  He looked from Master Control to his arms that hung pale and rigid beside him and he strained against the restraints that held them. They shook and his muscles grew taut and burned and he thought he might vomit had he still the luxury. Then there was a metallic groan and the restraints popped free and he dropped of a sudden to hang by the NervLink cables fastened into his spine and felt flame course from their anchors throughout his nervous system. He cried out, his pain echoing back on itself tenfold in the steel darkness, and he stood swaying until at length he balanced himself against the cold walls of the tube and then reached behind with shaking hands to tug out the wires as though they had done him some unutterable wrong.

  The mists in his head took him against the wall of his prison and he laid his hands upon it and commenced to drive himself against the metal with dull, hollow thuds that rang in his ears. A noise came from him then as he rapped his skull, inarticulate and without tone and unconscious. It dimly lit the dark before him by the light that rose and fell with the volume of the transmitter built into his vocal cords.

  Thus he saw its red glow across the steel. He grew quiet. He touched sightlessly with trembling fingertips its mesh vox, the metal rings and ballooning air-drums of the respiratory implants above it where his cheeks had been, and at last he looked down to the chassis that supplanted all of his breast and abdomen. He studied the flesh that was puckered as so many stitched wounds at the seams that ran down from the pits of his arms and across his shoulders and round his clavicle. How it felt when he moved, when he tried to breathe.

  A low sound built in him. The meditative sonorization of some machine monk at worship that then erupted into an obscene howl from beyond the pale of technology's encroachment upon humanity, the baleful chorus to the heathen song he had played in his beating against the confines of the tube. He shivered in his cold sweat and slumped naked to the floor and peered about himself at the half-light made by Master Control's interface. He saw the rust of old bloodstains upon the floor around him and knew them for his own and traced absently his fingertips across the cold metal of his chest, down to the pliable polymer plating of his stomach.

  "Battery depleted." Master Control said. "Atmosphere replenishment will cease in seventy seconds. Containment uncompromised. Emergency release forbidden: sublevel isolation protocols. Arbitronix United and its staff apologize for any inconvience."

  Sejanus raked the shadows with his eyes and shrugged. His respirator worked steadily and seemed to him to count off the seconds. Its mechanicals breaths did less and less for him and he felt the black close in around him and the beads of sweat drip sluggishly down the scars of his face like rain upon the mountains. Master Control reiterated its warning, but he did not listen to it.

  There was a yowl then. As though some feline beast had been put through the mouths and trials of the hells at the edge of the universe and spat out again. The pod jerked sidelong and groaned and snapped free of its anchors, began to lean to one side beneath the great weight that bore down upon it. He heard the harsh zap of cables uprooted somewhere outside and saw the sparks they shot through the fissures made in the tube when it had collapsed inward. A force pushed off again and he fell to the side of the tube that was now the floor and looked up at the light of distant glowlamps through the rents in the crumpled steel.

  He listened through the moments to the heavy, monotonous cycling of his respirator and the only sound to be heard as he watched the breaks in the hull above him. He sprang to his feet and then hauled himself onto the wall by the exposed cabling and dislodged machinery within the tube. He swung up his feet and kicked at the ruined section of plating and it buckled under the force, but remained secure. He set his grip again upon the cables and launched himself a second time against the bent and cracked metal and it whined and broke free of its rivets at the corners upwards of where his feet had laid into it. He kept himself aloft, with shaking arms and the calm passing of air through his implants, and booted the weakest corner until it peeled back into the world beyond.

  The diffuse light of the distant overhead lamps reached down to him as the pockmarks of where the veil of hell was pierced and the light of better worlds shined through. He waited for some daemon or other to shamble across their rays and wondered if indeed he had descended. Nothing disturbed the columns of light and so he leapt up and grabbed onto the edges of the hole he had made. He hauled himself up to stand upon the tube that leaned drunkenly onto its fellow beside it. There he climbed the incline it made and leapt up onto the apex of its neighbor and again to grab hold of the ledge of the docking platform above and then pulled himself to the walkway beyond.

  The air was cold against his skin and still he shivered and glanced about at the lights that seemed still too bright, as though orbited by halos of luminescence. He raked the walkways that wound labyrinthine through the shadows around him and found no other souls lost as he. The nightmare tubes stretched out like the grim crops of a universe advanced beyond mankind and for what seemed miles before him and all sat untouched save his own. There was a crackle behind him and sparks shot forth again from its broken foot and it groaned full off its fastenings, crashed down into the interminable blackness below.

  Then he was off. He rounded the foot of the stairs at a sprint and charged up them without a care for his noise and found himself upon the main causeway that ran the gap between the lift and the control booth and above the nightmare tubes. He glanced between the doors of the lift and the panel beside them and then back at the control booth again with its windows painted in blood and the glass window that ran the length of its walls shattered.

  He padded across to the abattoir made of the level's command center and craned his neck beyond the broken duraglas and peered within. Limbs and viscera were scattered at random throughout and were all that remained of the man whose blood it was that coated everything. His head stared dumb and mouth
agape in the far corner, jowls slumped against the floor and his beard glistening with red. His skull was splayed open at an angle at its rear and the edges of the puncture, dripping idly, were all Sejanus could see of it. Beside it he saw the man's bracer and the object for which he had come.

  Sejanus crept carefully over the jagged edges of the glass and onto the inactive holopedastals before it, slick with blood. He slipped from them and landed amidst the gore and came up plastered in it. He went to the severed head and the bracer and picked up this last and turned toward the doors. He keyed for them to open and the panel requested that he supply it with his designation and so he presented the bracer to its reader.

  There was a sickening crack and then a long tearing noise and so he pivoted round, crouched as if ready to meet the onset of wolves. A spindly limb of chitin waved at him from the puncture in the man's skull that lay in the far corner and settled onto the floor slick with indescribable juices, scrabbling for purchase. Another sprouted and did the same and another soon after that so that a manifold of such legs reached out as the limbs of a dead tree blowing in the wind. They found their balance as he looked on and overturned the head so that it rested upside down atop them and began to quiver. With a dull crunching and further widening of the hole in the cranium a cruel face appeared from within. Dozens of black eyes that seemed to squint at him and mandibles that gnawed at the air and appeared some simulacrum of his own breathing implants.

  It began to crawl after him, silent but for the clacking of its digits upon the polymer flooring and he glanced toward the frozen process of the door's reader. In the time it took for his eyes to return to the thing, a tentacular appendage of barbed sinew whipped out from beyond its mouthparts and entwined about his ankle. He stomped upon it with his other naked foot and caught the tendril up in his fist, wound it about his arm though its barbs sank deep. He tugged back hard and with it then in the air swung the creature powerfully against the wall and the severed head burst in a cloud of blood and bone and meat. The thing within fell to the floor, dazed and upon its back, and he pounced upon it and with his feet mashed it into ichorous bits of chitin and death. The tongue that had arrested him fell limp and lifeless and he shook it away.

  Sejanus searched across the floor as though he were some vizier out of ancient times reading portents in the innards of a sacrifice and then took the eyeball which glared up at him from amidst the random gore. He glanced about himself at the bloody and broken windows and then, bleeding from his feet as he walked, bounded out the hole by which he had entered and onto the walkway outside. Bracer in hand, he made for the doors of the lift that lay shut still against him.

  Day 54

  "This is an emergency notice for all personnel." Master Control said over the mass broadcast system. "All personnel: Prisoner #1871, Hastur Victor Sejanus has escaped from Tower 8 Sublevel Isolation and Containment. Command directive is to terminate on sight. Warning: Prisoner #1871 should not be engaged unless outnumbered or unarmed."

  "There's your buddy." Leargam said.

  "I don't believe it." Tezac said.

  "You believe what you want; I'm convinced." The old man said. "He's a mean son of a bitch, I'll say that."

  "Come on." He said and the big man rose from his seat at the bar and started for the door.

  "Where in the Hells are you going?" Leargam said and pivoted upon his stool to watch him go. "If you're fixing to spring him,"

  "He won't be much of a chance if I have to explain it all before we take advantage of him." He had turned round to say, but made still for the door. "Just follow me."

  Day 54

  The doors parted and they stepped out onto the long walkway that led on either side to the stairs that mounted to the banks of riot control suits. Tezac climbed to the first that he neared on the left and Leargam the first on the right and each entered his designation into the control panel of the mobile armor emplacement.

  "Superior approval required." Master Control said to them, an echo of itself. "Superceded: emergency conditions: prisoner escape. Acess granted."

  The duraglas tubes revolved open to them and the powered armor stood ready for their use. They climbed into the hulks of steel and wiring and gunmetal and the plated carapace closed over them. The displays within flickered to life and lit their faces and they looked across the way at one another like ghouls in the graveyard moonlight. Then they heard the hiss and whine of the environmental seal and the floor dropped out from under them.

  The carriage screeched and sparked through the darkened shaft and Tezac felt as though he were ages ago, looking into one of the assault tombs and plummeting through the atmosphere of an alien world. The personal lifts rattled and shook as they tumbled through freefall until suddenly the elevator broke with enough force to snap the spine of a man not secured in the shock absorbent endoskeleton of the suits.

  "Subterranean tactical deployment railway reached." Master Control said to them. "Please state your destination."

  "Offsite control station." Tezac said. "Neural network hub, Interface Mainframe for the Master Control Unit."

  There was a lull filled up with the darkness of the tunnel, lit by the outpour of light from within their suits, and the looks they exchanged with one another as they awaited its response.

  "Justify." It said at last.

  "Prisoner escape; preventitive patrol. Prisoner could hijack the rail terminal and get to the mainframe."

  "Highly illogical. He would not have the proper clearence levels or override codes. Further: No order has been issued to that effect. Thus: Justify."

  "Orders wouldn't have been given at all if he hadn't got hold of someone's bracer or something else with the access credentials." Leargam said. "They would have just sent a kill team down into isolation."

  "By which the inmate could bypass the security protocols to reach the railway terminal. But to progress further the inmate requires the use of a personnel car and which in turn requires my personal clearence, at which point he would be indentified as other than the Enforcer he has thus far impersonated. Thus: Justify."

  "This inmate is highly resourceful." Tezac said. "He's not just some ganger; I know."

  "Indeed." Master Control said. "Records indicate that you have a personal history with Prisoner #1871. Is it yourself you will be arriving to defend me against?"

  "Godsdamn it." Tezac said.

  "You will remain here with me, Enforcer Hotchkins, until you have either starved to death or a search party has found you of their own volition and summarily executes you. It is my own wish that it is the former course."

  "You computerized hamsterwheel. You cheap hunk of plastic."

  "And as to your legacy, I shall have it seen to that you are condemned with this Hastur Victor Sejanus as a traitor to the state and people of the Concilium of Man. I do hope you enjoy our remaining weeks together down here."

  "Leargam."

  "Yeah." The old man said and together with Tezac engaged the autocannons that hung from the arms of their suits.

  The shells blew through the floor of the railcars they had been dropped into and uprooted them from their anchors and they fell over onto their sides in the dark of the tunnel. Sparks shot from the cables thus snapped free and the power drained from the car so that the restraints which bound them slackened. The magnetic locks deactivated with a sad tone.

  "Computer," Tezac said and struggled to bring the suit's limbs to bear against the door of the car. "Master Control Unit has been comprimised; engage signal defense shields, accept no inbound requests."

  "Invasive signal defense shields activated." The suit's onboard AI said to him and then to Leargam once he had followed suit.

  "We going to walk there?" Leargam said and there was a loud clang as the door of his car popped free, then a groaning of metal and it burst free of its hinges.

  "No." Tezac said and added to the cacophony, brought it to a crescendo as he freed himself of the bonds of his car. "We're going to run. These suits top out at 5
0 per."

  The chestbound glowlamps of their suits clicked on as they climbed out into the gloam of the tunnel. Leargam drew up beside him and then, with a look to one another, they started off into the blackness ahead. At first at a mechanical and automated trot, then the airjets upon the spinal column of the suit and beneath its shoulder blades self-activated as the appointed speed was reached and thus they began to move with great bounds that carried them so long through the air before touching down again that they imagined they would at once take flight.

  Day 54

  Sejanus had almost rounded the corner before him when he withdrew at sight of the oncoming troupe of guardsmen marching forward and swung back round into the hallway from which he had come. The stamp of their boots neared and then grew loudest before fading down the corridor. He crept back to the edge and peered beyond and, finding it empty, stole out into the hall.

  He cast about under the diffuse lighting of the overhead lamps burning above him and for some indicator as to where in the grime and the gloom the three hallways presented to him led. He read the lighted characters of the holosigns thrust out into the shadows before him and followed the arrow of that which directed him down the rightmost of the corridors and to the residential atriums.

  He skidded to a stop as he heard the door begin to open which terminated that stretch of steel and stone. He dashed toward the wall beneath the din of their voices and kicked off from it to catch hold of the dangling cabling that ran bunched along the corner between wall and ceiling. He turned himself about by his purchase upon the wires and reached for the piping that ran bare across the ceiling and climbed up through the gaps between it. The door opened full and spilled the light beyond across the floor and his legs disappeared into the cavity. He settled into the darkness there above and the boots of them below pounded across the grating as the Enforcers stepped through into the hallway.