by Ethan Cross
“If you’re testing a theory, I can see you, Agent Williams. But it was worth a shot. Put on the bracelets as well.”
Marcus picked up the bracelets and clicked them into place around his wrists. He motioned for Powell to do the same, and then he tugged against the device a bit to adjust the fit. He felt a mild electric tingle from the bracelet as he started tugging. He remembered Powell referring to the restraints as “tamperproof.” But they couldn’t have been functioning as designed inside the container. The restraints would only work properly when coupled with the prison’s software and monitoring systems. Still, even here, the experimental restraints from Foxbury appeared to detect tampering.
Powell looked like he was scared but managing it well, as Marcus would have expected from a former member of a Shepherd team. Marcus wanted to feel bad for allowing Powell to be put in this position, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to warn him. Maybe Powell was starting to realize that Foxbury wasn’t a dream worth sacrificing anyone’s life over.
“Where are Renata and Ian?” Marcus asked.
“I’ll give the stage directions on this production, Agent Williams.”
Marcus listened for further instructions, but Judas seemed to be making them wait for dramatic effect. Marcus guessed the killer had some acting or stage background. Maybe even someone who just worked on the crew at a playhouse. He listened for any other noises within the container. Any other surprises. There seemed to be a slight buzzing beneath the hum of the fluorescent lighting, but that was all. Maybe that was the sound of the solar panels or batteries.
Marcus wondered where Judas gained the knowledge and resources required to set something like this up. It all seemed overly sophisticated. Too high tech for Judas to be some simple disgruntled employee or former prisoner Powell had wronged somehow. Judas had specialized resources and knowledge way beyond the reach of a normal person. As if he did this kind of thing on a regular basis. Perhaps even for a living. A private or government-trained assassin?
“Agent Williams, there is a black bag on the table beside you. Please retrieve the contents.”
He did as he was told and pulled a syringe from the bag.
Judas said, “That is a shot of epinephrine. I doubt that Mr. Powell has informed you of this, Agent Williams, but he’s highly allergic to the venom of stinging insects like bees and wasps.”
He looked across at Powell, whose eyes went wide as he scanned the container for bees.
“He’s so allergic that he has to carry a shot around with him in case he’s ever stung.” As if to illustrate the point, Powell pulled out the syringe from his pocket and readied it. Judas continued, “Unfortunately, I’ve replaced his shot with saline solution. The one in your hand, Agent Williams, is the real epinephrine shot.”
Powell looked at the syringe in his hand and then to Marcus, and then he opened his hand and let the EpiPen fall to the floor.
“What do you want?” Marcus said.
“I find that the people and things we love most are the ones most likely to betray us.”
“So who betrayed you?” Marcus said to the disembodied voice. “Did Powell betray you?”
“Life is betrayal, Agent Williams. To trust is to be betrayed. And now Mr. Powell will know what that feels like. You see, he will be betrayed by the thing he loves the most. His own prison. His precious predictive software. In a moment, Mr. Powell will need the contents of your syringe injected into his blood stream, or he will die.”
Powell’s gaze shifted around the container, searching for the threat.
“But the problem is that you won’t be able to inject him. You won’t even be able to get close to him with that deadly weapon. The software will recognize you as a threat, and since you are attempting bodily harm on another person, you will be subdued. Your friends outside won’t be able to hear your screams for help. And Mr. Powell will die.”
Marcus glanced at the syringe in his hand. It made sense that the large needle would be viewed as a weapon if they were within the walls of Foxbury. But how could the software do anything when they weren’t at the prison? Unless Judas had his own copy of the software or very high-level access to it. The implications of that were staggering.
Marcus stood up and said, “Powell, get out of there now.”
Powell rushed to the clear door, but when he yanked against it, the hinged piece of polycarbonate material wouldn’t budge. Marcus pulled and pushed against the door himself. He said, “Stand back,” and then started kicking.
A buzz and a click startled them both.
They looked toward the origin of the sound, and Marcus watched helplessly as a trapdoor built into the corrugated metal of the ceiling opened up and a massive hornet’s nest fell to the metal floor.
*
The hornet’s nest shattered like it was made of glass and spilled out a black cloud of angry stinging insects. Marcus had no idea how hornets identified their targets. Maybe they just flew around and stung everything in sight. Whatever the case, a squadron of them had zeroed in on Powell. The warden ran to the back corner of the container, slapping at the hornets and trying to escape their wrath.
Marcus yanked against the door with even more force. Putting his feet up on the clear barrier and throwing all his weight into it, he screamed as he pulled.
He heard the sound of low, distorted laughter from the speakers. Then he heard a buzz and a click come from the door he was tugging on. It flew open, now moving easily with the lock disengaged. Marcus, caught halfway into his pull, fell backward onto the corrugated metal floor.
Scrambling to his feet, he lunged through the doorway, hoping to avoid any further surprises.
The hornets immediately attacked. Swarming around him like a pissed-off sandstorm. He swatted them away and ignored their stings. Luckily, most of their attacks were ineffective because of his body armor.
He slapped and pushed his way through the swarm to reach Powell.
The warden was already on the ground and gasping for breath in the container’s back corner. Marcus wasn’t sure how long it normally took for the effects of a hornet’s sting to reach critical levels, but he knew that Powell’s system was flooded with venom and more was being injected by the second.
Marcus reached for Powell’s neck to check his vitals, but the closer he came to the man, the more intense the electric shocks grew from his wrists and ankles. Powell hadn’t explained that there was a kind of warning system built in that increased the electrical output as you grew increasingly closer to a violation.
He swore and pulled his hand back. He looked to the syringe that he held in his left hand. Judas had already told him that he would never get close to Powell with the dangerous weapon, but Marcus had to at least try. He refused to believe that Judas would ever tell him the truth, or at least the whole truth.
With as slow and nonthreatening movements he could manage, he reached his left hand toward Powell. The electric tingle started before he had even stretched out his arm to its full length. By the time he had closed to within two feet of Powell, the shocks were so strong that he could no longer stand, his muscles quivering and losing control.
He dropped to his knees and rolled away, and the shocks subsided. His muscles felt like he’d just run five miles, and the hornets were still on the offensive. He slapped at them with his right arm as he thought of a different tactic. Maybe he could throw the syringe into Powell like a dart? Then Powell could press the plunger himself. He looked at the needle. In terms of a dart or throwing knife, it was a flimsy substitute. It would never stick, even if he threw it perfectly.
Marcus dropped to the floor and rolled as close to Powell as he could before the invisible fence kicked in. Powell had started to convulse and his eyes were closed. Marcus said, “Powell! You need to take this syringe from me. I’m going to roll it to you. You have to inject yourself or you’re going to die!”
Powell’s eyes fluttered open. His stare was glassy, but he nodded in understanding.
Ma
rcus placed the syringe on the metal floor. The injector was completely round, like a toilet paper roll, the kind that an allergy sufferer carried in their pocket. It would roll easily. He gave it a little push toward Powell, and the warden shakily fumbled his fingers around it.
Powell raised the syringe with great effort. He brought it up to a position directly above his thigh, and then he allowed gravity to pull his arm down, driving the needle into his leg.
He pressed in the inset plunger and closed his eyes. The hornets had also, thankfully, lightened up on their attacks, but Marcus hoped that it wasn’t all too little too late.
Powell kept gasping and shaking. His breathing seemed to be growing more shallow and forced. Something was wrong. The shot wasn’t working.
The distorted voice of Judas said, “You know, I may have gotten a bit mixed up. Maybe the saline solution was in the syringe I gave to you, and Powell’s original EpiPen did contain the epinephrine.”
Marcus gritted his teeth but said nothing. There was no point in wasting time complaining or cursing at Judas. His laser focus was on the task at hand.
He replayed the scene from earlier in his mind. Powell pulling out the syringe. Judas saying he had replaced the contents. Powell letting the syringe fall from his right hand. The syringe hitting the floor and rolling.
He scanned the floor where it should have been, but there were chunks of the nest scattered everywhere. He rushed over and scanned the debris. The hornet attacks grew more ferocious and coordinated the closer he came to what was left of the hive. He could feel himself starting to succumb to the venom of the stings, even though he wasn’t the least bit allergic.
Beside a chunk of papery nest, he spotted the syringe. The words EpiPen were stenciled on this one’s side. He slapped away at his attackers and snatched up the emergency injector.
Then he returned to Powell and repeated the procedure. Lying on the ground, rolling the syringe.
This time, Powell barely had the strength to lift his arm, but he feebly completed the maneuver and managed to inject himself.
Marcus didn’t have time to decide whether the medicine was working or if Judas had betrayed them again before light flooded the container and the tactical team entered in a swarm of their own.
*
Foxbury’s laundry room was a large open space with twelve-foot ceilings and green tile. Steel cages filled one end where the clean clothes were stacked and handed out through a window that opened into the connecting corridor. Right now, the windows were shut and secured, and all was quiet. The workday had ended, and the worker bees had returned to the nest.
Ackerman had chosen this spot because it was the perfect place to test a theory.
He waited in the dark for Lash’s men to arrive.
He considered where he should visit in his mind.
The prison setting prompted the memory of the infamous Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The maniac at the heart of the regime was named Pol Pot. He tried to return the country to the Middle Ages. After declaring that the year, in their country at least, would return to “Year Zero” and abolishing money, private property, and religion, the Khmer Rouge started murdering anyone who could have been considered intelligent, going as far as executing people for wearing glasses or speaking a foreign language.
That was where Pol Pot lost Ackerman. He could understand the isolation and Marxist views, at least in theory and principle. Pol Pot was trying to start anew, to make his vision of a perfect society a reality by any means necessary.
Ackerman could respect that. Pol Pot wasn’t just sitting on his butt complaining about what was wrong with society. He was out there doing something to change it.
Pol Pot was also deeply disturbed, and his ideas ludicrous, but Ackerman could at least see where the man was going up to a point.
But executing people for wearing glasses, that was a level of insanity that had abandoned all rationality. Pol Pot should have at least kept the intelligent people around for breeding.
Ackerman imagined himself inside one of the most notorious and bloody facilities where such executions took place. The S-21 jail. He wondered what it would have been like to be a convict at that prison. Diseased, starved, exhausted from back-breaking labor, in constant fear of death.
He wondered if Powell was making a similar mistake with Foxbury as Pol Pot had made with his society. Powell was forcing people into roles that they were not meant to play, in which they didn’t fit, and wielding over them godlike power.
The light in the laundry room clicked on, and the warming and humming of fluorescent bulbs filled the space. Before Ackerman opened his eyes, he analyzed the sound of their footsteps. He dissected the footfalls and guessed that there were five different men entering the room.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was wrong. There were six of them. Lash and five other strapping young men in tight, white thermal tank tops.
Ackerman said, “I didn’t expect you to come down yourself just to give me a thumbs up, Mr. Lash. To what do I owe the honor?”
Lash placed a small, black electronic device on a table along one wall of the laundry room. He pressed a button on top of the device, and then he gave a head nod to one of his men, who closed and barricaded the laundry room door.
Ackerman pushed his way off the metal table and said, “That seems like something that would trigger an alert. It has obvious implications that you’re planning bodily harm on another resident. I’m sure you just sounded an alarm. Unless that device you activated is some type of jamming or camouflaging gear. Something that makes this room invisible to the eyes of the prison’s predictive analysis software. If that’s the case, then you could do or say whatever you wanted while inside this room.”
Lash started clapping softly. “Wonderful analysis, Professor. Now, tell me why we’re here.”
“The presence of such a device confirms most of my suspicions about you. Your use of it now implies one of two possibilities. The first is that you considered my gracious offer and have made the wise decision of accepting my allegiance. Then you would use such a device to inform me of the details of your escape plan.”
Lash said, “Not so much. What’s the alternative possibility?”
“That you decided that me being an unknown quantity is a threat to your plans. So you and your associates are here to kill me.”
“Ding ding. We have a winner.”
“But you’d have to have a way to dispose of me without alerting the prison when you turn off your device.”
Lash said, “Don’t worry, Professor. We have our bases covered. So I’m here to respectfully decline the offer of your services.”
“I have to admit that I like you, Lash. You should have taken the offer. But you see, either way, you’ve confirmed for me that you are indeed planning something. The walls are about to crumble. And now, I have to decide how to best use that information.”
“You won’t be deciding anything. You’ll be dead.”
“Many have tried. Many have failed.”
The five members of Lash’s goon squad reached into their pants and removed finely crafted prison shanks. They held them up. The blades looked sharp and menacing. Beautiful, to Ackerman’s eyes.
“I like our odds,” Lash said.
“Do you ever watch National Geographic, Mr. Lash?”
“Not much of a TV watcher.”
“Neither am I, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for nature programs. The brutality. The elegance. My father only allowed me to view graphic educational programs when I was a boy, and I developed a lasting affinity for them. I recently saw a program detailing a battle between the Japanese hornet and the European honeybee.”
As he was speaking, the five members of the goon squad fanned out and took up positions surrounding him.
Ackerman continued, seemingly oblivious to his attackers, “I have to admit that watching those hornets attack the bees was one of the most brutal things I’ve ever seen. And
I’ve seen a hell of a lot. The hornets’ goal is to gorge themselves on the honey and kidnap the children of the honeybees as food for their own offspring. So the hornets fly in and start using their mandibles to bite off the heads of the bees. They go about it methodically. They exterminate the bees. The much smaller honeybees may kill a few of their attackers, but their stings are mostly ineffective against the ferocity of the hornets. It’s not really a battle. It’s a massacre. Thirty of these hornets can kill thirty thousand bees in a matter of a few hours and, when they’re done, the ground is covered with the severed heads and dismembered bodies of the fallen warriors. Many of them still twitching, hanging on to the last threads of life, of existence, refusing to give up the ghost. Maybe still thinking they can claw their way back up and rescue their offspring. It was so beautiful. So fascinating.”
Lash laughed and said, “Okay, Professor, before you die, I’ll bite. What’s the point of that big story?”
“The point is that you’ve made one very serious tactical error.”
“And that is?”
“You assumed that you and your men are the hornet in this battle.”
*
The goon squad was closing in from all sides, and they had him outnumbered five to one. Ackerman only counted the five ULF enforcers as attackers because he knew that Lash didn’t intend to lift a finger.
Leonard Lash stood beside the entranceway to the laundry room, hands in his pockets, and a sadistic gleam in his eye. Ackerman made a mental note: Lash likes to watch. The ULF leader didn’t drag over a seat and pull out a bag of popcorn, but for all his body language telegraphed, he may as well have.
Ackerman glanced around at his attackers with a circular motion, as if his gaze was the rhythmic ticking of the second hand of a clock. He analyzed each man, his eyes scanning for weaknesses, vulnerabilities. As he spun, he catalogued and quantified each man. Which foot did they lead with? Right or left-handed? Physical attributes. Big, small. Wiry, muscle-bound. How did they handle the knife? What was their skill level? Did they truly possess the killer instinct or were they just faking it?