by wildbow
I glanced at the others. Speaking was dangerous, if it could give us away to the woman. All we needed to be utterly ruined would be a single word from her.
Mary was standing next to me. My hand touched her hip, traced down her leg, and reached the bottom of her Academy-uniform skirt.
I slid my hand under it, along her leg, and found the sheath with knives placed along it.
She gave me the funniest look as I plucked one knife from the sheath at her inner thigh. Mingled curiosity and suppressed outrage, all bound together into a quirk of the eyebrow and a smouldering look in the eye, so small an expression that the convict woman wouldn’t see it.
I looked at Jamie, who was as cool as Mary was heated. His eyes flicked over in Sub Rosa’s direction.
I had to read so much from so little. Jamie had a focus, he remembered. What was he remembering? What was he dwelling on, more than any of us?
We were on the sixth floor. The relative of the dead scientist, Sub Rosa’s creator, was somewhere on this floor.
And he was looking over in the direction of the deeper sixth floor labs. Which Sub Rosa was in the process of breaking into.
I gave him the slightest of nods, my chin moving by hairs.
He blinked confirmation.
The convict leader stepped out of the one lab, and his weapons were splattered in blood. Had things gone differently, it might have been mingled with my own.
With a spring in my step, blade palmed in my hand, I headed in his direction.
“Next one is mine,” I told him, my expression cold and flat, as I headed to the next door.
He didn’t respond right away. He finally offered a begrudging, confused, “We’ll see.”
The others were already moving in their individual directions. To other convicts and other people who were slated to die.
It was a merry dance, dangerous, but merry. Each of us moved in coordination.
And we still lacked answers. We were dancing in pitch darkness, and one misstep here could end us all.
Previous Next
Lips Sealed 3.4
I tapped the handle of the knife against the side of my leg as I walked, the flat of the blade pressed against my wrist.
People were about to die. Depending on how this played out, those people could include us.
As experiments, we’d been subjected to all kinds of testing. Most of the time, the testing was specific to us and our individual situations. Helen had started out doing a lot of tests that involved passing muster among her supposed peers, while I’d been tasked with studying up new tasks and long, painful sets of memory games.
One of the tests, however, was one that involved all of us, probably because Hayle liked it, and because he was interested in how we functioned as a group. Each of us were given a set of choices to make, selfish and kind. He mixed it up, added new rules, and organized us into teams, pitting us against regular students. The dilemma was simple, usually. If both parties were kind, both received a minor benefit. If both were selfish, both were punished. If one was kind and the other selfish, the selfish one was rewarded, the kind one punished.
It stuck in my mind because it was, for me, the circumstance of my meeting Gordon and Helen, taking a seat across the table from them, with Hayle introducing us. Curiosity had won out and I’d gone to find and meet Jamie on my own, which had been a lifesaver in many respects.
But that wasn’t my focus right now. It came down to the game. Sometimes we’d played and we’d been allowed to communicate. Sometimes we’d been silenced and forced to communicate through decisions alone. There was even a point in time where we’d played with territories and quadrants, and I’d been the only one silenced, because Hayle was tired of me skewing his results by winning as often as I was.
Right this moment, we were playing the game.
The convict leader walked beside me, periodically giving me curious looks. He was a sadist of the worst sort, and his innate savagery had been given an almost desperate edge. He ruled by fear. A simple show of strength could inspire that fear and cow others, but he’d spent some time in prison, he’d spent some time with his fellow experiments, and at some point he must have realized that others were just as strong as him.
Sometimes people found a kind of uneasy peace with that kind of power. If everyone had a gun, cocked and aimed at the next guy, nobody was willing to shoot. That went for prison muscle and voltaic spikes sticking out of people’s hands.
This was a guy who hadn’t backed down or found that uneasy peace. He’d learned that when everyone else was hitting as hard as he was, he could still scare people by twisting the knife, maybe being a little crazy or a little scary.
No guarantees about particulars, of course, but in terms of drawing up a mental picture of who he was and how he operated, it served. I knew what things I had to watch out for, and foremost among those things was the notion that this was a man who asserted control through fear and pain, and with more than a few ongoing mysteries at present, myself included, he might be feeling a little out of control.
I’d put myself within arm’s reach of him. I was walking in step with him.
He moved the spike in my direction. I watched it, but didn’t flinch.
“What makes you think I’m going to let you do anything?” he asked.
“You’ll do it because you want to see what I can do,” I said. I wiped at the blood on my lower face, doing my best to get as much off my face as possible. It hurt, but I didn’t let the pain show. I left the blood cupped in the palm of my hand. I still had the knife palmed in my other hand.
“That so?”
“It is,” I said. I picked up the pace, moving ahead of the convict leader. And you’ll do it because you probably feel insecure letting the other three out of your sight. Like I did with Mary.
I reached the door. It was a large piece of metal work, thick, with a slot halfway down for paperwork. Whatever was inside wasn’t big enough to escape through the slot. Still, it was very nearly as secure as the doors that separated the sections here.
I stopped, paused, and then knocked. Shave and a haircut, two pence.
No response. Something moved within, rummaging. I didn’t hear words, which meant it was only one person. Probably.
Probably heard the screaming just down the hall.
With two clean fingers, blood still mostly on my palm, I plucked the badge from under my pocket. I passed it through the slot for the papers, and it dropped a short distance before clinking landing in the tray on the far side.
The simplest answer was often the best.
The door opened a crack. The person on the other side took a second to look down enough to see me.
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing on the door. They resisted for a moment, then grudgingly let the door open. Which was good. If the convict standing behind me had felt the need to push his way through, I wasn’t sure I could have stopped his forward momentum.
The man who looked down at me was thirty or so, hair cut short, beard longer, trimmed into a point at the chin, his mustache styled. His white coat was pristine. No doubt one of several.
He was new to this, no doubt new to this sixth floor lab within the Bowels.
His experiment was still in an early stage, within a heated incubator at one side of the room, sealed off behind jail doors and glass panes.
And here is where the game comes to a head. The others are in other rooms, facing similar situations. Convicts nearby, scientists and scholars in the rooms, and between Sub Rosa’s vague instructions and the convict leader’s example, the other thugs are going to want to kill other scientists.
The choice between selfish and kind. If I killed the scientist and the others killed the convicts in other rooms, I’d have a crazy bastard at my back who’d want to put me down the moment he realized what was going on. If I killed the convict and the others killed scholars, they’d be at risk. There were so many variables to take into account. How capable were they of doing one thing or the other?
The trick with Hayle’s game, the reason I’d been able to win so consistently, was that the game was never a standalone thing. There were a hundred or a thousand clues communicated over past iterations of the game, informing the most current game.
It was these clues I relied on now. I could trust Gordon and Helen to match pace with me. We’d faced Hayle’s test enough times as a group to know how each of us thought. Jamie could remember the results of each game he’d participated in, and that would inform his decision. I trusted him more than anyone.
The real question, the test of our group cohesion, was, well, what choice would Lillian make, and what choice would Mary make?
Lillian was kind, a healer more than a killer. Mary was the opposite, though she wasn’t unkind, exactly.
I had to figure out which decision they’d make, and I had to figure out what decision Gordon, Helen, and Jamie would think those two would make.
“I’m going to kill you now,” I told him, giving him a very pointed, obvious wink. With my back to the convict, I kept my hand and the knife in front of me, and scraped up the blood with the blade.
“Huh? What?” the man asked. Then, in a tone more suited to rebuking a very small child for stealing candy from a store, he told me, “No!”
“Yes,” I said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
“What’s the difference? What are you even talking about?”
“Hard way it is,” I said.
Holding the knife upside-down, I punched the butt-end of it into his nether regions.
Most available, vulnerable spot, given the difference in height.
He made a strangled noise, then fell to the ground.
I turned on the spot, flipping the dagger over, and showed the convict leader the knife that was smeared with the blood from my hand.
“Cut it at the root,” I said. I gave the convict leader a wide smile. “He’s going to bleed out.”
The convict leader didn’t look impressed. “These doctors are good at patching themselves up.”
“Good point!” I said. Upbeat, chipper, still channeling Helen. “Help me. Stand on his hands?”
“You’re giving me orders?”
“It’ll be fun!” I said, smiling, holding the knife up. “Please?”
“What’s going on?” the man managed to speak. Every syllable was colored with pain. “Ohhh, it hurts so much. Please!”
The convict approached. He stepped on the man’s hands.
“Wait, no, on his wrists,” I said.
The convict leader gave me a dirty look.
I waited patiently, keeping the same dead-eyed smile on my face.
He shifted his footing.
“What are you doing?” the man on the floor moaned. “Please.”
I bent down, closer to his head. I was stopped by the point of the skewer, an inch away from my neck.
“Lose the knife,” the convict said. “I don’t want you getting close to me like that, after what you did to him.”
Keeping the knife would have been better. I tossed the knife off to one side, at the desk. It clattered onto the wooden desktop.
Disappointing. I’d hoped it would land point first. Would have been so damn cool, just casually throwing it like that and having it stick.
I bent down just behind the convict. I grabbed one of the scholar’s fingers in both hands.
“Please. What’s going on?”
“I severed something important between your legs,” I told him. “Now…”
I bent the finger back until something gave.
He screamed, thrashed and howled as much as he was able to without moving his legs all that much.
“…I’m making sure you can’t fix it,” I told him.
The convict leader let out a light chuckle at that, looking down at me over one shoulder.
I repeated the process with each finger, faster now. Each one brought fresh screams.
My heart was pounding, but it had nothing to do with what was going on in this room. What were the others doing?
What was Sub Rosa doing, even?
There were so many factors to consider, too many people in play, too many unknowns.
Even on my own team, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could predict Lillian or Mary. After today, after I saw the decisions Lillian made on what she’d admitted was her worst day, I might have a better idea. Mary, I couldn’t decide on until I’d seen her on her best day, whether that day was the day she finally had a family or the day Percy came back for her.
I broke the last of the fingers, leaving each one curved in the wrong direction, then stood. The convict leader released the man’s wrists and stepped back to admire my handiwork, while the man writhed belly-down on the floor.
I crossed the room to go collect the knife, then sauntered over to the fallen man, hand and knife behind my back. I sliced my own palm, at the base, suppressing a flinch, then worked my thumb into the wound, opening it up.
The more blood, the better.
The rest was posing and posturing. I was fortunate, in a way, that the convict leader’s attention was on the back of the door. The mail slot. He had the badge.
I knelt between the legs of the man I’d maimed, and used my bloody hand to grip his bits.
I look forward to being taller than five feet, so I’m not limited to going after the balls all the time.
He yelped in pain, and the convict leader looked my way.
When I raised my hand, it was covered in blood.
“You’re going to bleed out, sir,” I told him. “You can’t do anything to stop it, now, it’s just a matter of time.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I could have made this a lot worse. I’m betting he would have put the skewers through you in two different directions and tried to make the points touch. All I did was cut you,” I told him.
I gave him a kick in the side for good measure. He grunted.
“You get me?” I said. “Or do I have to show you how mean I can really get?”
“I don’t understand,” he said. He was panicking a little.
“Thank me,” I told him. “Thank me for going easy on you.”
“I don’t—Thank you.”
I nodded slowly.
Then I kicked him again for good measure.
I walked over to the door.
The convict leader looked more wary than ever. Had I pushed things too far? Left him confused enough that he’d try simplifying his life by removing me from the equation?
I had to put myself on his terms more.
“Did I do good?” I asked. A child looking for a parent’s praise.
His brow knit in a frown.
“What’s this?” he asked me, showing me the badge.
“Before she let you out, she let us out,” I said. “Got that from the guy who was in charge of our experiment.”
“Uh huh,” he said.
I plucked at my uniform shirt. “We got these from some kids who were wandering around. Mine doesn’t really fit, but…”
“Uh huh,” he said, taking it in.
Were the pieces falling in place, or was he contemplating how to deal with me?
“I like you,” he decided.
I grinned, a genuine smile.
“Come on,” he said. “More witnesses to remove.”
My heart sank a little.
While fine, this situation being something I could work with, each room we cleared out was another chance for things to go wrong.
Doubly so when the others were off on other branches of this floor, and we were engaged in our game, our merry dance where coordination was so vital.
I slammed the door closed behind me as we returned to the hallway. The man would hurt, his balls might swell, his fingers would take some time to fix, but he would live.
I walked with one hand in a pocket, knowing that bloodstains were spreading through white fabric, but I had to staunch the minor flow of blood, and pressing i
t into my hip was the only available option that wouldn’t attract too much attention.
“Badge,” I said, reaching up.
“Hm?” he asked.
“I’m wearing a uniform. I can use it better,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’m going to hold onto it, I think.”
Damn him.
That was my badge.
I contemplated killing him and letting the game be damned.
“Okay,” I said, smiling, stowing the dark resentment and anger deep inside.
We reached the next door. This one lacking a slot for files and mail. We didn’t get far enough to do anything with it. My head turned as shouts came from the far end of the hallway.
The others.
Did we misstep?
Lillian.
The convict headed that way. I did too, but where he started off walking at a brisk pace, I broke out into a run.
If this went sour, then I wanted enough space between him and me. I needed to be able to act, speak, do something. It wouldn’t do if he could simply assess the situation and then murder me in the next moment.
My head was a storm of possibilities and half-formed plans. I swapped the knife over to my right hand, with the cut at the base of my palm, and held it with the blade between the index and middle finger, handle gripped hard against the cut.
What do we do?
How do we tackle this?
I need more information!
In the end, it wasn’t Lillian.
Mary was backed up against the wall, chin raised. Baldy-beardy had his spike at the base of her chin, ready to penetrate the part just below the bone.
The other convicts were alive. The woman, shaggy-beardy, and the older man. They stood back, keeping the other Lambs from rushing to Mary’s rescue.
Passing the junction in the hallway where Sub Rosa was, I could see that she was still working through the wiring and protections. Whatever was beyond warranted steeper protection.
I got closer, and the woman with the spikes at her hand pointed her other spike at me, stopping me from advancing.
“What the hell are you doing?” the convict leader asked.
“This little bitch just tried to stab me in the back!”