Executioner's Lament

by Justin Rishel

  “Looks like things have settled a bit,” she said. She was right, the prison had settled into some sort of mundane existence. Most of the violence had occurred in the first few hours. Now, a majority of the prisoners looked … bored.

  Inmates were still gathered in the mess halls and some in the social areas. Overall, it looked as if they were waiting out the interim until the authorities retook the prison.

  “Check on progress to retake the prison,” Aubrey said, momentarily distracted from the search. “Try the lower levels.”

  She clicked the control pad and punched a few keys. The screen showed half a dozen views of a single level. “This is level one,” Malina said. “It’s empty.” She tried more camera feeds. “No one is there.”

  “Try the cells.”

  She changed the feed to the inside of a cell on level one. “There they are,” she said. Inmates lay on beds or the floor in each feed from inside the cells. Some were bruised and bandaged, others appeared fine. It looked as if their numbers had thinned. Many beds stood empty.

  “Try each level until you see one that is not cleared yet.” Aubrey glanced toward the door of the control room. A feeling that they should hurry settled over him.

  Malina rapidly scanned feeds from each level until she found it. “Here,” she said, pointing. On screen, officers stretched across a corridor clad in body armor, face masks, and carrying clear curved shields stalked the corridors and passageways. Prisoners were surrendering to them. Others tried to fight, but the officers, numbering in the hundreds from what Aubrey could tell, and their tight phalanx style formations quickly overwhelmed them.

  “What level is that?” Aubrey asked.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Shit,” he sighed. “It’s going to be a while before they make it all the way up here.”

  “Here’s something new,” she said. “I can see into the Tappers’ quarters.” She typed commands and manipulated a touch pad. “I couldn’t see those feeds on the connection I hacked into from Rudolfo’s room.”

  “Try this floor,” Aubrey said.

  Malina typed a few more commands and brought up several feeds on one screen, each with a location stamp in the lower corner that read 48. Every view from the forty-eighth floor was blank. She kept cycling through the various feeds as if to confirm.

  “What the hell happened to the feeds from …” A sound made Aubrey turned on his heel. Something moved past the door to the control room behind him. An object rolled in. A metallic tink tink from the floor. No, he thought, it was thrown in. A flash of light burst from it. So bright, Aubrey was blinded momentarily.

  Shielding his face from further flashes, he felt around for Malina. He found her shoulder and forced her to the ground, shoving her under the console.

  “Get down!”

  Smoke filled his mouth and nose. Another tink tink. Then another. Two more flashes visible through his eyelids. A second later, more smoke. The light from outside cut off as the door was slammed shut.

  “We have to get out,” Aubrey coughed into Malina’s ear.

  “It’s a trap, Martin.”

  “I know. But we have no choice.” The flash bangs and smoke grenades had been brilliantly deployed into the confined space with no way out but the way they came in. Whoever was out there, was waiting for them just outside the door.

  He deduced they had no guns or they would have used them already. He needed to shield them from attack for about half a second. He looked around the narrow room, but there was too much smoke. He tried to remember what was inside the space. A small plastic trash can. A flimsy, cumbersome desk chair. Nothing else not bolted down. He needed a literal shield.

  Then he realized they were staring him in the face. Through the thickening smoke rising from the floor, shone the video monitors. Large, flat, and lightweight, they’d make a pretty decent emergency shield.

  He handed Malina his axe. “Hold this,” he said and reached up, grabbed the nearest monitor by the bezel, and lifted it off its mounting hardware. Malina yanked the cables from its backside and the warm screen that pressed against Aubrey’s cheek went dark.

  The door opened to the right, which meant the attack would most likely come from their left. He held the monitor lengthwise vertically on that side and turned to Malina.

  “Stay on my right,” he said through wheezing breaths.

  She gripped his shirt, coughing violently near his shoulder. Her hands trembled.

  “Now.”

  They sprinted toward the door. Aubrey lifted his foot and kicked the door in midstride. It flew from its casing in a splintering crash. They kept running. Aubrey stiffened, tightened his grip, braced himself for an attack from the left side. The shield side.

  The impact he expected never came. What came instead was a muscle clenching, heart stopping, unmistakable shock of thousands of volts of electricity pumping through him. The surge paralyzed his body and he fell like a deadweight to the hard, glossy floor. He landed flat on his back. The monitor turned shield crashed into his face, his nose and teeth crunching against the plastic.

  Malina screamed somewhere near him, maybe a few feet away.

  His paralysis left him as quickly as it came. He threw the monitor to the side in time to see blue sparks coming right at him. They hit him in the chest, seizing his muscles, paralyzing him again. His body froze as pain coursed through every muscle and joint. All he could do was stare straight ahead at the man on the other end of the stun baton.

  James Sarazin glared with eyes in slits, like a predator. A snarl crossed his face.

  “You thought you could just sabotage everything I’ve created. My life! My legacy!” He screamed into Aubrey’s immovable face.

  Sarazin pressed the baton harder into Aubrey’s chest, leaning with what must have been his full weight into it, just over Aubrey’s heart. Tremors coursed through him along with a tight, binding pain he’d never felt. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air. He tasted copper in his mouth. His breath had stopped completely. He continued seizing from head to toe, small high frequency jitters so fast and so violent he thought his bones might snap. No matter how much he concentrated, he could not resist.

  He knew that in a few seconds, his heart would stop.

  All he could do was watch Sarazin murder him.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re not even a goddamn cop, Martin Aubrey,” Sarazin said. “You just a fucking …”

  Sarazin flew to the side within a blur of green hoodie.

  The seizing in Aubrey’s body stopped instantly.

  A shout came followed by a woman’s scream. Aubrey couldn’t look up. His body had relaxed slightly, but the residual effect of the baton lingered in his muscles. With considerable effort, he rolled to his side and curved his neck. Slowly, Sarazin and Malina’s struggle came into view.

  She was on top of him with her knife out, her arms held at bay by Sarazin. He bled from a cut on his face. His baton had been knocked away. Malina, though small, was wickedly quick. Several times she twisted out of Sarazin’s grip and cut him on the chest, neck, and face—only superficial cuts but it kept Sarazin busy. Aubrey used the time to focus on regaining control of his limbs.

  A second passed and he was able to bend his legs. It was like breaking dried clay from a mold. His arms were immensely sore. His chest burned.

  He rolled onto all fours, got one leg under him just as he saw Sarazin connect a right hook with Malina’s jaw. She wavered backward, stunned. Sarazin’s leg shot out, landing a powerful kick to her chest. Her body collapsed in on itself and she flew back, unconscious.

  The Ventana CEO twisted toward Aubrey. “You’ve got quite the fucking crew, Aubrey.”

  Aubrey’s muscles were still in shock, refusing his commands. Sarazin got to his feet and took two long strides toward him delivering a swift, unfettered kick to Aubrey’s abdomen.

  He folded onto the floor once again. His head smashed into the glass floor for the second time in as many minutes. Aubrey’s li
mbs, however, were coming back under his control. He got back to his hands and knees, quicker this time, then onto two wobbly legs.

  Sarazin had walked back to the control room door and picked up Aubrey’s axe. He hefted it over his shoulder as he walked casually toward Aubrey. His shirt had been slashed open by Malina’s knife. Through the slashed fabric, Aubrey could see black body armor.

  “I was just telling someone earlier,” Sarazin said in a conversational tone, “I’ve never actually killed anyone with my own hands. Shit, what I did there,” he pointed at Malina laying unconscious on the ground, “was the first time I’d ever hit anyone. I mean like, flesh on flesh and not during some jujitsu workout or something. You know what I mean.” He held up a fist and looked at it like he just learned of its existence.

  Sarazin rambled on while Aubrey slowly backed away farther out onto the glass floor. “Even when I was kid, I would just convince someone else to beat up bullies for me. I wasn’t rich back then, but I’ve always been exceedingly persuasive.” He stopped and placed a hand on his hip, surveying a spot in space with a triumphant expression. “I like it, Aubrey. I like the intimate, visceral nature of hand-to-hand combat. So much better than hurting someone through a computer, phone, or a … proxy.”

  “Like OFP,” Aubrey said. “Or should I say the mercenaries who pretended to be OFP. They did your dirty work for you.”

  “Such a smart boy, Martin.” Sarazin smiled and pointed a finger at Aubrey.

  “All those innocent people died just to cover up your lie.” Aubrey continued moving backward, regaining strength with each step. “To hide what Zentransa does to the children of longtime users.”

  Sarazin’s eyebrows shot up. “Figured that out too, did you? I had a feeling you did when you found not only the kids, Jorgetson and the other one, but how you found them! The game A Word With You. That really made me laugh. After I found her,” he pointed at Malina with the axe head, “poking around in our servers, I knew it was only a matter of time. I didn’t know exactly what Alkorn and his cronies were saying to each other in that game, but I knew it wasn’t good and I knew where it would lead.”

  “And the Tapper? Wilcott? You got him to kill Alkorn and his team. Someone else doing your work for you.”

  “A story for another time.” Sarazin swung the axe off his shoulder, the wood slapping into his open palm. “This isn’t a goddamn movie, Martin. I’m not going to spend the next several minutes divulging my entire plan.” The CEO took a step forward. “But I will say this: if you were to succeed here today, if you were to bring the problems with Zentransa to light, it would throw our whole way of life into a downward spiral. Civilization is not just addicted to Zentransa and what it can do for them, it’s now a part of them. It’s connected to them as much as they are to it. It’s symbiotic. Remove it now, and society will wither.”

  Aubrey stopped backing up. He was weak, slow, and injured in more places than he could count. But Sarazin was an inexperienced fighter and the axe was top heavy and unwieldy. If Aubrey could bring him in close, he might have a shot.

  He exaggerated his very real exhaustion by bending slightly, blinking rapidly and taking deep, stuttered breaths. With eyelids half closed, he waited for Sarazin to strike.

  “Now, I’ve already been here longer than I planned.” Sarazin stepped forward holding the axe like a baseball bat. “So, let’s get on with it.”

  With a growl and an expression that was a mix of exertion and rage, Sarazin swung the axe at Aubrey’s head.

  Aubrey snapped himself fully upright and arched his back. He watched the red and silver axe head pass two inches in front of his face. He saw Sarazin’s eyes go wide with surprise as the axe’s momentum carried him around.

  Aubrey pounced. He threw his full weight behind a kick to Sarazin’s exposed rib cage. The man tumbled away but managed to stay on his feet. Aubrey closed the gap, wrapped Sarazin’s neck in a rear naked chokehold. The man scrambled to his full height, thrusting his shoulders back. Aubrey steadied himself. The axe head came up, Sarazin punched at him with it but Aubrey dodged it.

  He tightened his chokehold. Sarazin’s face went gray, then a shade of blue. He fell to his hands and knees, Aubrey still tight on his back. The CEO crawled, pulling both men along for a few feet. Aubrey risked a glance around at Sarazin. His hand was wrapped around the baton; blue sparks flew from its sharp chrome tips.

  A second later, Aubrey felt the familiar jolt of electricity in his thigh. The waves of pain coursed through him again, incapacitating him. Sarazin flipped, crashing down on Aubrey in his weakened state. The chokehold released.

  The man stood over Aubrey, the axe held high over his head. The blade flashed down toward Aubrey’s head.

  He rolled just as the head of the axe collided with the glass floor in a spray of glimmering shards. He rolled back and reached for the wooden handle only to find Sarazin struggling to extricate it from the floor. The blade had cracked the glass and knocked away a chunk, burying itself into the alloy support strut running beneath them and under the floor.

  Aubrey kicked Sarazin away from the weapon. He rocked the axe back and forth, yanking it free just as the man was nearly on him again. The blade swung away, off the floor, the blunt end of it smashing into Sarazin’s orbital socket. The CEO fell to the side but was back on Aubrey with surprising quickness.

  He held the baton again, aiming it at Aubrey’s chest. Dropping the axe, Aubrey grabbed the wrist holding the stun baton with one hand and gripped Sarazin’s neck with the other. The baton grazed Aubrey’s left arm, sending a tremor down his forearm and bicep. His left arm went slack for one heartbeat and the baton sank toward his chest. He released the hand on Sarazin’s throat and slapped the baton away, gripping it as he did.

  He rolled slightly, pushing the tip with its fiery blue sparks into the glass floor.

  Aubrey had never believed in luck or coincidence, but the next two seconds would make him question that belief.

  As the baton’s tip hit the floor, still in both men’s steely grip, it landed squarely in the crater left by Sarazin’s axe swing. There it found the alloy support strut. Thousands of volts traveled through the strut, instantly heating and expanding it. A crack formed, growing with lightning speed, shooting across the floor and splintering into a thousand strands of a massive spiderweb.

  Sarazin fled, turning and dashing across the still intact glass behind him toward the walking path.

  Aubrey scrambled into a crawling position and followed him, his feet slipping on the glass. Behind him, crunching and buckling echoed off the curved walls. He felt the floor wrench violently. Malina lay ahead of him, her upper half on the walking path, her lower half on the glass. With a burst of energy, he didn’t know he possessed, he pumped his legs and stretched out toward Malina grasping her ankle as he dove for safety.

  He reached the path just as the floor fell away, sliding Malina’s entire body onto the smooth white floor. He watched several tons of glass fall into the open air of the Great Atrium. Like the throat of a terrible beast that swallowed all things, it devoured the downpour of glass.

  Movement to his right, but Aubrey reacted too slowly. A red flash in the corner of his eye and something hard slammed into his head. Blackness washed over his field of vision. Someone pulled on him, propping him up. Aubrey’s hands felt around; looking for a weapon. Looking for anything he could use to fight. His right hand felt a back pack. Long rods of what felt like clay.

  Sarazin’s hot breath in his face.

  Eyesight returned in waves of color reminiscent of the unusual library from moments ago.

  “Like I said, Martin,” Sarazin sneered, “this is not a fucking movie. The good guy doesn’t win in real life. I’m going to throw you down that convenient hole that just opened up. And you’re going to die. Then, I’m going to throw your little girlfriend into the hole and she’s going to die.”

  Aubrey pushed against Sarazin. Pressed his hands into Sarazin’s chest, against his body armor.
Sarazin didn’t budge. Aubrey’s arms were so weak. Dizziness flooded his brain. His head lolled to the side.

  Sarazin didn’t even attempt to fight him off, Aubrey’s resistance was so feeble.

  He closed his eyes. Felt himself being lifted up. On his feet, then dragged. Cold wind rushed across his face. His hands feeling, searching for something he knew was there.

  His heels over the edge. Fingers finding it. Finding the tab, the small plastic circle. Clutching it with desperate little strength he could summon.

  “Good bye, Martin,” the man hissed into his ear.

  And Sarazin released him.

  Aubrey fell back and only then opened his eyes. He saw his own hand, outstretched, still holding the small plastic circle tab. Saw the wire attached to the tab pulling away from the welding strip. Saw Sarazin look down in confusion then shock. Saw sparks come to life on the man’s chest. Saw the strip give birth to smoke and fire. Watched as Sarazin’s upper half disappeared in a fireworks display of white and yellow light.

  A heartbeat of time passed and Aubrey’s body began a slow mid-air turn. The last thing he saw was the flaming, smoking mass of Sarazin’s body falling into the Great Atrium, toward Aubrey.

  The ground came quicker than Aubrey had expected. And he felt it. Felt himself impact the hard floor of the bottom of the Great Atrium.

  He could still feel it, seconds later. He could feel the ground but knew that it couldn’t be right. He shouldn’t feel anything at all. He didn’t know what death meant, but it wasn’t what he felt after falling from the forty-eighth floor of the Keep.

  Pain, a great deal of it, all over. He also felt his own weight pressing against his chest and … air … in his lungs … going in and out involuntarily.

  He could think of nothing else to do except open his eyes. He blinked the world into a blurry funhouse map of mixed colors and indiscernible shapes. Then, something close to focused.