by Seven Steps
“What’s going on over there?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Nina replied, sitting back in her seat.
“I heard you say something. What did you say?”
“We didn’t say anything,” Nina answered.
Jesh stared at them for a moment before releasing a dramatic breath of annoyance and staring back out of the window.
Nic and Roland turned to see Paris waving them over. They inched their way over to the royal woman until they were in earshot.
The men bowed their heads in a show to respect to each of the women.
“Listen, slaves,” Paris said. “You will help us escape those two men. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Empresses,” they said.
“I thought I said to shut up over there!” Jesh cried. The ceiling exploded as he blasted his weapon over their heads. The women dashed out of the way as chunks of white plaster rained down from above.
“Are you insane?” Paris screamed.
“What did you call me?” Jesh demanded.
“I called you insane!”
“Say it again,” Jesh said, his eyes transfixed on her, a crazed smile on his face.
“You’re insane,” Paris growled at him.
“Say it again.”
“You’re insane.”
“Again,” he said, his eyes looking, almost sensually, at her.
“You're—” Paris was cut off by a blast to her left. The wall exploded, and she shrieked as a piece of it raced past her cheek. She put a hand up to her face and felt the blood begin to run.
“Don’t ever call me insane again.” Jesh's voice dropped into a dangerous whisper. He closed his hands into fist.
“What’s happening?” Melcus asked, his voice shaky. He’d appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“It’s okay, Mel. I was just making sure that everyone stays nice and quiet.” Jesh waved a weary finger at the women, signaling them to return to their chairs.
“What about them?” Melcus asked, gesturing toward a pale Nic and Roland.
“They’ll stay in the corner with the women. We don’t know where their loyalties lie yet.”
“Jesh, it’s Nic and Roland,” Melcus said. “They’re our friends. We can’t just kill them. That goes against what we’re fighting for.”
“I know who they are,” Jesh snapped. “But we can’t just let them go. They’ve seen everything. They know everything.”
“Jesh, what you’re doing is illegal and punishable by death,” Nic said.
Jesh sighed. “What does it matter? We’re all dead anyway.” He returned to the window, his face a mixture of defeat and sadness.
“Jesh, you don’t have to do this,” Nic said.
“It’s too late for that now,” Jesh said. “They’ll kill me anyway.”
~()~()~()~()~
The hour was almost up when Jesh disappeared into the kitchen after Melcus.
Paris quickly turned to Nic.
“When we give you the signal, you stab the beast in the neck with this.” She pulled out from within her robes a small needle filled with blue liquid.
“What’s that?” Roland asked.
Paris ignored him, her eyes turning wild. “The code word is dreams. When you hear the word dreams, you get the sacks of vomit. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Empress,” Nic said.
“Shut up over there!” Jesh shouted at them as he walked back into the room.
“How dare you show such a lack of respect for your empress!” Paris cried out.
Jesh opened his palm toward her. “I said, shut up!” he demanded.
“I would rather die than put up with such disrespect from a man!”
Jesh directed his palm at the czarina’s head and, for a minute, there was a stare off. Neither one backed down. Then, with a grin that twitched upon his face, Jesh put his palm down.
“What’s so funny, slave?”
“I was just thinking about how your wish may just come true,” he said.
“Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.”
“Or maybe it just will!” He pressed the weapon underneath her chin. “Maybe we can find out right here.”
She gave him a long, hard stare.
“In your dreams, slave,” she growled.
Roland’s brain registered the next moments in slow motion. He saw Nic jump up out of his seat, his face contorted in anger, his teeth barred. He pulled his arm back in a dramatic pose before using all of his strength to plunge the needle into Jesh’s neck.
Just a moment passed before Jesh hacked, coughed, and grabbed his throat. Saliva shot from his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he choked. He fell to his knees, his eyes bulging and going bloodshot. His tongue turned black, and his breath came out in wild spasms. His bloodshot eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and, with a loud thump, his limp body fell to the floor.
“Animal!” the czarina spat on him, and gave him a hard kick to the ribs.
Nic stood there, frozen, his face morphing into a look of horror.
“Is he dead?” Nic asked.
“If we don’t insert the serum he will be.” She held a needle with green liquid in her hand and played with it between her fingers. “Until then, he has twenty-four hours.”
Nic bowed slightly to the czarina, before returning to his seat. His face morphed again to what Roland thought was a blank trance.
The czarina pulled the Venian Blaster out of Jesh’s hand. She then proceeded to the window and hid behind a long white drape. “The other one is coming. Act natural.”
A few moments passed before Melcus walked in. He looked at where he had left Jesh. The chair by the window was empty.
“Where’s Jesh?” he asked.
All eyes went to the body on the floor.
Melcus followed their gaze and saw his unconscious friend. He shrieked, waving his blaster filled palm at them like a man trying to stop traffic.
“Nobody move!” he cried. His breathing became heavy and labored. “Where’s the czarina?” he demanded.
That was when the czarina sprung out of her hiding place, jumped up, and chopped Melcus’s neck hard with the side of her hand. He fell off the chair and thumped onto the floor.
“Hello,” said the czarina as she straightened out her suit. She stood over him and flexed the blaster in her palm, driving a golf ball sized hole through his skull.
The women applauded.
It was over.
Nic and Roland also began to stand.
“Don’t move!” the countess demanded. “We don’t know if you are friend or foe yet. You must be questioned to see if you can be trusted.”
Paris opened the door, and, almost immediately, a group of Enforcers ran inside.
“Are you okay, Czarina?” one of them asked, breathing harshly.
“Yes. I'm fine. We have two potential suspects in there. Take them to be questioned. Burn the two men’s bodies, and prepare a funeral for the princess. We will have a national day of mourning tomorrow. Alert her family. Tell them that a successor is required at once. We will have a council meeting in five days to confirm her.”
The czarina and the other women walked out, leaving Roland and Nic to the mercy of The Enforcers.
CHAPTER 15
This can’t be happening. I can’t be in prison.
Roland thought back to what had led him to that point. He’d begged Eva to run away with him, and she’d refused. Heart broken, he left, intent on making it to Habitat Beta and finding the free slave colony he’d heard so much about. On the way, he’d heard Enforcers and ran to the house of his friends, Jesh and Melcus. What he’d hoped would be temporary shelter turned out to be a grave error.
I was such a fool.
Infuriated by his own ignorance, he violently banged on the hard glass in the door.
“Let me out!” he cried. “Let me out! I’m innocent!”
“It’s no use,” a voice in the corner said. “There’s no one to listen.”
The odd vo
ice caused Roland to turn about, his eyes searching the darkness of the cell for its source.
“Who are you?” he asked, trying to peer through the darkness.
“A guy who has been in here too long.” A tall, pale man with a thin mustache and cracked glasses stood. “Zeph.” He shook Roland’s hand, then sat back down on the floor with his back against the wall.
“Why are you here, Zeph?” Roland asked. He quickly reasoned that it must have been something too petty for death, but too terrible forgiveness. Or maybe this was just a punishment from Zeph’s Empress?
“That’s rude,” Zeph said. “You are supposed to tell me your name and then pry into my personal business.”
“Oh. My apologies. My name is Roland.”
Zeph weakly grinned at him, as if the small act pained him. “Well, now that we're aquatinted, I'm in here because I ran away and got caught.”
Roland gasped. “You ran away? Where were you trying to go?”
“Mahala,” Zeph said, his sadness turning to excitement. “It’s in the Beta Sector. I heard that there’s a secret colony of free men there.”
Roland sighed. “It seems that we are both fools then.”
Zeph shrugged, his cracked glasses shifting lower down his pointed nose.
Roland leaned back against the wall. After everything that'd happened in that nightmare of a night, he was probably going to be executed soon. The worst part was that Joanna wouldn't know until she received a letter from the Hall of Judgement telling her he'd died.
Will she mourn me? he wondered. Will she care?
He closed his eyes, waiting patiently for sleep to overtake him.
It had been a long night, and he doubted he would see the light of another day.
CHAPTER 16
This can't be happening.
The thought raced through Terra's mind as she saw the news feeds announce to the planet that Nic, her love, was part of some plot to hold the leaders of the habitats hostage.
No. Not Nic. Not my Nic.
Abandoning her plans to pack, she'd raced over to Joanna's house.
Her friend's pale face turned white, giving Terra a slight sense of satisfaction.
She does care about him!
Together, they'd made their way to Paris's house, just in time to see Nic and Roland loaded into an Enforcer truck and hauled off to The Hall of Judgement to be questioned.
Or worse.
Careful to stay out of sight, they stayed in the shadows as they walked the short distance between Paris's house and The Hall of Judgement.
The brown brick building was shaped like an upside down trapezoid with two, long, horizontal windows running the top. The windows provided a perfect view of the executions. Below the windows were the prisons, where Nic and Roland would surely be.
Close by, piles of bricks and sheets of grey, shiny metal were neatly stacked on the grass. Work on the buildings new façade would start next week.
“Terra, I don’t know if I want to do this,” Joanna whined.
“Later, Joanna,” Terra hissed, creeping up behind two patrolling Enforcers. She'd scooped up two bricks from near the construction site and moved closer to the two Enforcers who walked at a leisurely pace as they patrolled the building.
“Did you hear that?” one of the Enforcers asked the other.
Before she could finish the question, Terra had suddenly and viciously swung the bricks at the back of their bald heads, knocking the women to the ground.
Joanna gasped behind her.
“Terra, what have you done?” Joanna gasped. “This is madness! We have to stop this now!”
“We have to get in, right? We needed disguises.”
“So?”
“So, take off their clothes.”
“What?”
“Take off their clothes!” Terra demanded.
Joanna looked at her in horror.
“Terra, this has gone far enough!”
“Then go tell the czarina that your slave ran away and you didn’t notify the Enforcers. Go tell her that you intended to steal a spaceship and run away to earth with your crazy friend. Let me know how that works out for you.”
Joanna choked back her tears. With trembling fingers, she slowly knelt down beside Terra and began to undress the Enforcer. She took the woman’s shirt, pants, weapons, hat, and boots.
“Now what?” Joanna asked.
“Put them on.”
“What?” Joanna cried.
“Put on the clothes,” Terra repeated. She slipped the shirt and pants over her own clothes, tucked her hair under her hat tightly and looked at Joanna. They had the height of The Enforcers but they didn’t have their bulk and the clothes were baggy on them. Besides that, they were far from bald. There was no time to do anything about it now.
“All right,” Joanna said, putting on the guard’s blaster belt.
Terra tucked a piece of Joanna’s hair out of sight and turned toward the gate.
“Follow me,” Terra said.
They crept around the compound, through the jail’s lobby, and up to the front desk where a pale woman slept beneath a dim light bulb.
Terra tried to puff out her chest, set her face seriously, and face the woman in a deep, commanding voice of an Enforcer.
Good thing it’s dim in here.
She pounded on the desk, jolting the woman from sleep.
“Wha? What?” The woman's droopy eyes darted around the room before they landed on the two slim officers.
“I’m Officer Okay Aruu and this is Officer Katriellis,” Terra said. “We are looking for two prisoners who were recently brought in.”
The woman yawned and stretched in her chair before typing a series of numbers into the computer.
“Names of the prisoners?” the woman asked.
“Roland EE - J81979 and Nicolas ET - J281981,” Terra said.
The woman typed the names into the computer.
“Security codes?” she asked.
Joanna and Terra looked at each other in a panic.
“Security codes?” Terra asked.
“Yes. Security codes.” She yawned again. “What are your security codes?”
“Oh,” Terra stuttered. “We weren’t made aware that we needed security codes.”
The woman frowned at them. “So nobody told you that they were sewn onto your sleeves?”
Terra and Joanna looked down at the inner fabric of their sleeves. Sure enough, there was a four-digit security code sewn in.
“Oh,” Terra said with a nervous laugh. She recited her number to the woman, followed by Joanna.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Look: I know we’re lax in our policies here,” the woman said without looking at them, “but still try not to come to work intoxicated. It looks bad on all of us. Besides, all we need is one screw up and this place is locked down for a long time, and frankly, I like to sleep on my shift.”
The woman filled out a form and handed it to them.
“You're mighty skinny for Enforcers.”
“It’s the new training system in Omega Sector,” Joanna said. “Muscles without the bulk. Genius really. We’re first generation.”
Terra snatched the paper from the woman’s hand and proceeded to the door.
The woman continued to look them over. “You got here mighty fast for prototypes,” the woman said, buzzing them in.
“Well, some of us don’t sleep on the job,” Joanna replied to her.
The woman scowled at them as they walked into the jail.
~()~()~()~()~
Their boots dully thudding against the linoleum floor as Terra and Joanna walked through the green double doors and past the elevators. They crept down a narrow hallway lined with cells, some containing sleeping prisoners, some containing prisoners up in the shadows, watching them.
Terra felt their eyes on her and quickened her pace. Fear crept up her back as she walked down the hallway.
So many eyes, she thought. All I need is for a chip to go berserk and o
pen those cells and all of those men…
She didn’t want to think about the rest.
Or maybe one is free already and he’s following us.
She turned around, but saw nothing.
I can't see anything in this darkness.
She walked closer to Joanna and took her hand. Joanna gave her a squeeze and they walked on.
“Roland is closer, so we’ll get him first,” Joanna replied.
Terra felt a twinge of irritation, but kept it inside. She didn’t want to start any problems now.
At least she’s stopped complaining. She can do whatever she wants as long as she’s not complaining.
The hallways were long, yellowing white, and badly lit. Row upon row of clear cell doors stretched up the ceiling.
“Where is cell 4468-E?” Terra asked in frustration.
“What cell are we at now?”
Terra looked around and walked over to no particular cell. She squinted at the numbers on it in the dim light.
“1199-A,” she said.
“They have to be at the end of this hallway,” Joanna replied, walking forward.
Terra squinted at another cell.
“This is 1488-A. I don’t think they are on this floor.”
“I think that you’re right,” Joanna replied. “Let’s take the elevator up.”
They walked back to the elevator, ducking to avoid the window in the double doors. They didn’t need any more questions tonight. They pressed the warm button in the shape of a red downward facing arrow and waited for the door to open.
A few seconds passed before they heard the gentle hum of the elevator approaching their floor.
Finally, Terra thought.
The door opened, spilling light and shadow into the dark hallway. They stepped in. The elevator slowly glided upward to the fourth floor. It let out a pleasant ding and the doors opened.
Terra and Joanna looked around them. This floor was identical to the first one. The hallway was only lit by the emergency lights and one sick light bulb situated halfway down the hall. Joanna and Terra froze for a moment until their eyes adjusted to the dark.
“We’ve got to get someone in here to fix up these jails,” Joanna said. “They’re hideous.”
“What did you expect? Their sole purpose is to hold men until they’re executed. You think that the council will spend any more of their precious funds on a holding pin?”