EXPERIMENT

by Cyma Rizwaan Khan

  Connor dropped his car keys on the table and sat on the couch, poured himself a drink. “If Dominic is to be believed, some cop harassed them in a park. Started touching the girl. Lane lashed out and the cop became personal.”

  “What were they doing in some park in the first place?”

  “What do you think?” Connor said. “They were making-out and getting high.”

  “We used to do that too.”

  “Yeah, but we never got caught.”

  “What’re they charging him with?”

  “Murder.”

  Kevin’s face showed the shock he had suffered. “What?”

  “Lane mouthed off to a cop,” Connor explained. “Hit him when he tried to harass the girl. They let the others go, but not before shooting one of the girls and pinning the murder on Lane. And worse still, the girl’s a Zyre.”

  “What were they doing hanging out with some Zyre girl?”

  “Apparently she had a thing for Dominic.”

  Kevin took a seat on the couch. “What did Lane have to say about this?”

  “They won’t let me talk to him,” Connor said. “Won’t even let me see him. He’s in the Holding Cells, they keep saying it’s a high-priority case, no one knows much.”

  “I was just talking to Lane.”

  Connor took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, saw you passed out on the steps when I was going to the precinct.”

  “You should have woken me up.”

  “You’ve had a rough past couple of nights.”

  “So did you.”

  “There was nothing we could have done.”

  “Holding Cells is where they take their worst criminals,” Kevin said. “It’s just a glorified torture cell.”

  There was no way Connor was letting his mind go that far. He swallowed the drink as fast as he could to get away from the depressing thoughts. He needed to concentrate on what he was going to do instead of what they might be doing to Lane right now.

  “I’ll talk to my contacts,” Kevin said. “I’ll find out what’s going on, they can’t just take him away like this, there’s got to be a way out.”

  “They say there’s nothing anyone can do,” Connor said and was surprised at how dejected the cops at the precinct had made him feel. “You should have heard the way they were talking. Like it was one of the millions of cases they have. Like its nothing but a number, a rap sheet. My brother’s life means nothing to them.”

  “Well we’re going to make them listen. This is not going to be one of the millions of cases they have.”

  “All this time, I’ve kept him away from my life just so he wouldn’t end up this way,” Connor said. “And now, all that means nothing. He might go to prison and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “We can always talk to Easton. He does these things for his people. We’ve never asked him for favors before, he has to help us with this.”

  “So he can make use of Lane too? Make him a professional killer or something? You even remember the kind of stuff that we’ve done for him? The people we’ve killed? The money we’ve collected in all this time and the things we had to do to make it happen? You want Lane to become a part of that? There’s a reason I haven’t done it so far.”

  “Look, if Lane is in trouble and if the lawyers can’t do anything, I don’t think we’re going to be in a position to be choosers. Would you rather leave him to rot in prison? Have you seen him? He won’t last a day in that place!”

  “And you think he’d last here? Being the boss’s lackey?”

  “I’m just saying we need to consider that possibility, Con. I’m not going to let him rot in prison no matter what, that’s not an option.”

  “So what else can we do?”

  Kevin stood up. “There might be something,” he said, and started looking through his phone.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’ll use some contacts,” Kevin said. “Don’t worry, no one boss-related. These are some personal contacts I’ve gathered over the years, they’re completely clean.”

  “If they’re that clean, how come they’re your contacts?”

  “I said clean, I didn’t say they were virgins.”

  “And you’re going now?” Connor glanced at the watch. “It’s three in the morning.”

  Kevin grabbed the keys for Connor’s car. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE CONFESSION

  The Administration Building Cell Block,

  Zyron Region-One

  It would have been an understatement to say Lane had lost track of time. He had pretty much lost track of everything. He sat huddled to one side, hugging his knees close to his chest, shivering in the obscene cold of the cell. They wouldn’t let him sleep. Every time he started to nod off, the place would burst into noise, some shrill buzzing that wouldn’t stop until he thought he was going insane. They would turn it off long enough to make him feel secure in the silence, but the minute he closed his eyes the sound would go off again.

  And now this cold.

  The impact that Mackenzie’s death had made on his mind was there, and the incident was still fresh in his mind even though it had been over five days. It was a shock he hadn’t gotten over. Over and over again, his mind would take him to the same place in time, the place where the cop shot her and where she dropped to the floor, and became a lifeless corpse in a manner of minutes. The blood, there had been so much of it. He had never witnessed anything like it. No matter how much gore he saw in the movies, the real thing was still shockingly real. He could still hear her throat making obscene gurgling sounds, but the cops hadn’t cared. They could have done something to help her, but they had wanted her to die.

  Lane had been shocked into silence, but even Dominic hadn’t said a word when it happened. Arianna was crying when they shot Mackenzie and she was crying even harder when they started taking Lane away and Lane was aware what that must have felt like. He had felt the same ache when the cop had touched her, like some kind of protective instinct he had felt it in his bones that he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Arianna had a terrible past with a step-father, and what the cop did must have been a reminder of that, and Lane hadn’t wanted her to feel as defenseless as she was when it happened to her before. He wanted her to know she wasn’t alone anymore.

  He just hadn’t known it would lead to this.

  The only thing he was guilty of was wanting to protect her, so what was he doing here in this mess? He tried to think of better times, tried to distract his mind from the icy temperature inside the cell, and the odd weakness he was feeling in his chest. Connor, he thought. Please get me out of here. You know I didn’t do it. When he heard the sounds of the mechanical gates opening, he knew someone was coming and he sat there rocking himself in the same corner, waiting. In the next few moments, the cell door opened and a man wearing the navy blue garb of the Zyron Force stood in front of him.

  “You can’t keep me in here,” Lane said, shivering, barely able to speak. “I haven’t done anything.”

  The guard hauled him up by the arm while he was still talking and cuffed his hands behind him, dragged him outside. Lane went without a word. He told himself he was bound to see someone with some concept of basic human rights. They would have to prosecute him, take the case to trial instead of charging him and putting him in a cell for days like they had without a case. They walked along a hallway that shared design elements with the Starship. No wonder. The Zyre Administration was a suck-up, and The Force was no different. If it was up to them, they would turn themselves into aliens just to prove their compliance.

  The atmosphere in the hallways was warmer than that cell but it took him a while to stop shivering. The guard finally stopped at a massive door and gave his hand-print to the electronic reader to get through. He dragged Lane with him, and they entered a doorway to get to the main office.

  The man sitting behind the desk was about fifty with a stern face and black hair that were a shade too dark to be natural, a hig
h ranking official by the looks of it, though Lane had no way of knowing what the insignia on his uniform or the green code on his temple represented. Politics and anything remotely related to current affairs had never been Lane’s strong suit. Connor was always the one drilling these things into him, so the little knowledge Lane did have was left behind from Connor’s never-ending monologues and commentaries over just about every news story he came across. The officer didn’t even look up, he kept working, scribbling away on an e-file with the glowing end of a pen.

  “Sir,” the guard said. “The prisoner you called for.”

  “Prisoner?” Lane said, feeling the anger coming back to him. “How can you even hold someone prisoner here, it’s against the law!”

  The officer stopped working and gave Lane a cursory glance then returned to his file. “What’s your name?”

  “Laison,” Lane said. “Laison Volze.”

  “Age.”

  “Don’t you have that on file?”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Says here you’ve been charged with murder,” the official said. “How do you plead?”

  “How do I plead?” Lane said. “Get me a fucking lawyer, or let me make a phone call!”

  The officer closed his file. He got up and walked up to the other side of the table, stood in front of Lane. “I asked you a simple question,” he said. “How do you plead?”

  “And I told you I need to speak with my lawyer before answering any more of your questions.”

  For a minute the man just stared into Lane’s face as if he wanted to see if Lane would do something, and then, without warning, his fist landed heavily across Lane’s jaw. “First things first,” he said. “You’ll refer to me as sir.” He caught Lane’s jaw in his hand, the grip of his fingers vicious. “Second, you’re going to keep your voice down. And third, you will not swear at me. Are we clear?”

  “Yes,” Lane said, just to play along, and the officer’s hand let go of its grip. What Lane really wanted to do was to kill that guy right there with his bare hands, but he knew that wouldn’t be wise. He was still hanging on to the hope that there was a way out of here, and he knew it wouldn’t come by talking back to the official. “I’m sorry, sir. Please, just let me talk to my brother.”

  “You can make all the calls or visit you want after your confession,” the officer said and went back to his seat.

  “What?”

  “What’s the matter Laison?” the officer said. “Did you not hear me the first time?”

  “I could have sworn you said confession.”

  “That’s exactly what I said.”

  “I haven’t done anything—”

  “Let me make this clear for you,” the officer began. “You give me a confession, on record, right now and I’ll make sure no one hurts you. I’ll even let you call your brother, meet him if you want.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then, I’m afraid I’m going to have to persuade you.”

  This isn’t happening. “You’re asking me to confess to a murder that I had nothing to do with?” Lane said. “Why in the world would I do that?”

  “You’ll do it because your life depends on it,” the man said. “With the confession, you’ll just be another criminal, and you’ll be prosecuted as such. The worst you get is a life sentence. Without it, I’ll make sure you never make it out of here alive.”

  The man was clearly out of his mind. Was that even possible? Did anyone possess that kind of power? What if the officer was bluffing to get that confession out of him? All that time spent in that cell in the cold and not being able to eat or sleep had taken a lot of Lane’s drive away. He couldn’t stand being back there another minute, but as much as he wanted to get this over with, he could see how much the officer needed the confession. And if he wanted it that bad, then it must be important. Which means you can’t give it to him, that’s what Connor would do.

  “I won’t do it,” Lane said at last, trying to be assertive, hoping it would conceal the fear he was feeling inside. He had to make an impact. If the officer was bluffing, Lane would find out soon enough. “I’m not confessing to something I didn’t do,” he said.

  The officer went back to his chair and signaled to the guard who gripped Lane’s arm. “Take him away,” the officer said, his eyes spewing fire that must have made even the guard nervous. “Take him to the cells and bring him back when you have his confession on tape, or I’m going to skin you alive before I deal with him!”

  Lane couldn’t believe his ears.

  The man wasn’t bluffing.

  It was the first time it dawned on him that he was going deeper down this rabbit-hole with every passing minute. And yet there was one tiny bit of hope that still remained. They wanted the confession, everything they had done so far was to get that statement on tape, and as long as Lane had that he still had leverage.

  When the guard started hauling him away, he hoped he wasn’t fooling himself.

  *

  For an administration that took on just about every lifestyle from advanced alien beings, their torture chambers were still pretty medieval. Instead of the cell, Lane was taken to a dark room where he couldn’t even see the color of the walls, just a bare light-bulb doing what it could to illuminate the middle of the floor, a greasy surface that reeked of excrement. There was a guard on duty outside, bigger and stronger than the one holding him now and he came in when Lane was brought in.

  “You’re kidding me,” Lane said, when the guard led him to a pair of metal shackles hanging from the ceiling. The bigger guard handled Lane and the other one un-cuffed him. They began to place him in the shackles until the rusted metal cuffs sat snug over his wrists, and the chains were tightened until his arms were hurting. And all that time, Lane kept thinking this a joke; this has got to be a big fucking joke because there are laws. There are laws against this kind of thing, there have to be…

  *

  He must have blacked out. He was still suspended by the chains when he opened his eyes. He cried with the simple effort of forcing his feet to carry his weight again, arms threatening to be torn off from their sockets. The temperature in this room was boiling, the complete opposite of that other cell which looked like heaven compared to this place. His skin was raw and stiff and burning. Rivulets of sweat kept forming everywhere on his body and they made the wounds sting worse. There was no sign of the guards. Lane yanked at the chains, just to see what would happen and they didn’t even budge.

  The only hope he held on to, was Connor. He kept thinking everything would be okay, if only he could see Connor. Connor would know what to do, how to get him out of this mess, he would know because he was Connor. But Connor wasn’t here, was he? It was likely he may never know where Lane was, if these people decided to keep him down here forever. He needed his big brother more than ever before, but there was no way to get to him, that officer must have made sure of it. He couldn’t have been awake for more than a few minutes, when the guards came back.

  Seeing their smug faces, Lane was filled with a rage that couldn’t have matched any previous rage he may have had for them, but he kept his mouth shut. One of the guards walked up to him. “I’m going to give you one last chance to come clean,” he said.

  “Come clean?” Lane said, miserably. He wondered if the guards had any idea what had really happened. “I haven’t done anything! You have to believe me! I didn’t kill her!”

  “Well, then I guess he’s not quite ready,” the guard said, and the one standing on the other side took that as a signal and lodged his fist in Lane’s gut, and Lane screamed from the pain. “Say the magic words,” the second guard said, shoving another fist that brought even more pain than before and Lane heard the crack of bone. “Say the magic word, and this stops.”

  The pain was unbearable when the man hit him again, everything went black.

  *

  Lane couldn’t think straight.

  The need to survive became a priorit
y, but an even bigger priority was to not feel that pain ever again. So when the guard looked poised to hit him a third time in the same place where he had broken a rib just a few minutes ago, Lane couldn’t take it. “Please,” he said. The words wouldn’t even come, they were barely a whisper, he had no strength left. He just hoped the guard wouldn’t resume hurting him regardless.

  “Please what?”

  “I’ll do what you want,” Lane forced the words out. Words that had the potential to save his life. “Just please let me go.”

  The guard stopped hitting him. For a second, Lane thought he saw the flicker of mercy in the man’s face where he had only seen cruelty before. Maybe the guard’s true soul wasn’t dead yet, maybe he still had a heart. He obviously wasn’t a Zyre, his accent reflected that. Lane didn’t have a Citizen accent, but that was only because his brother always spoke in the Zyre dialect with him. A lot of Citizens, educated ones anyway, did that in order to blend in. But that man was obviously a Citizen and Lane wondered what The Administration had to do in order to get him to do things that were clearly against his conscience.

  Even now, the guard stood there, patient.

  “Think you’re ready to confess now?”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE EXTRADITION

  Apartment Building,

  Zyron Region-One

  The news was being telecast on just about every channel, you couldn’t miss it if you wanted to. Connor Volze paced in front of the holographic image of a reporter walking alongside the Chief of Zyron Force, thwarting questions at him. “People think Laison Volze is being framed,” said the reporter with the name tag Chang right next to the colorful emblem of her news channel. “What’s your response Mr. Ortiz?”