by Logan Hunder
“Wow. Well, that is something! Least the rest of the guards will probably be real busy with him for a while.”
“That’s the crazy part; it wasn’t a dude. It was a chick!” Cox’s cheery look melted away like a chocolate barbeque. “Ohhh, boy . . . I was worried this was gonna happen.”
“An inmate going crazy and killing people?”
“Not just any inmate, Willy,” Cox lamented. His bright eyes flashed as they stared a thousand yards into the distance. “My crazy inmate.”
“You had an inmate already?! I hadn’t even got to spin the wheel of torture yet.”
“I meant my wife, actually, but I can see how you might have gotten confused.”
“Were you guys inmates? Is that how you met? Are you actually terrorists after all?!”
“I, no. She was a waitress at—look, never mind. It was a bad metaphor. I should have just said who without using vague pronouns in an attempt to sound dramatic. The point is, if she killed two prison guards—for what I’m sure are completely justifiable reasons—the rest of the prison guards are gonna have it in for her. So we need to get her out before she kills all of them too.”
Gun in one hand, cuff of Willy’s space onesie in the other, he sidled along the wall and peered around the corner. The stragglers of the stampede were just starting to filter off into the depths of the station. Somewhere out of sight, shouts and commotion could be heard echoing their way up the metal corridors. Willy stumbled along behind him, allowing himself to be led but not without resistance.
“Dude, we can’t go out there! It’s a warzone!”
“Love is a warzone, Willy!” Cox declared, looking back to him. “Patrick Benatar.”
“Didn’t you say she was a cop or something?! If anyone could get away with the ‘She went that way’ gag, it’s her!”
“I may have stretched the truth on that a bit. But it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t do that anymore! Now take this gun and don’t use it; I have a plan. A real one, this time! A plan so great that if it works we will get absolutely no credit, because no one will even know we helped.”
12.
COOL HAND KIM
KIM TRIED TO WARN him. She really did. She avoided eye contact, she didn’t laugh at any of his jokes, she pulled her feet away when she felt him nudge them, and she broke two of his fingers when he tried stroking her hair. The guy just wasn’t picking up what she was putting down. It was for that reason she didn’t feel particularly guilty for putting him down, much as she probably should have.
Peters’s broken face lay attached to his broken body at her feet, staring aimlessly up into the ceiling with the same droopy scumbag look he wore in life. This probably could have been avoided if she didn’t smile and offer a sweet “sorry” after her initial assault. That was probably what made him think he’d had any kind of chance. It was a shame about his partner, though. While the fellow’s IQ had seemed about on par with the room temperature, he was at least able to comprehend the most basic of social queues. Shame he wasn’t as good at noticing the antisocial ones; a bit ironic, really, given his profession.
Satisfying as this little episode was, it severely cut short her time to prime an escape. Thankfully, none of their records or other identity-recognizing software gave them any reason to take extra precautions with her when she first arrived. However, soon as someone took a glance through the security camera and saw her holding a chair and standing over some mangled bodies, this was going to turn from a handicap match into a Royal Rumble. It was time to get creative.
Careful not to get blood on her shoes, she half-danced around her quarry and inspected his files on the table. They were not unlike the accounts she had already read during her hiring process. It was reassuring to see Whisper was every bit as vanilla as she claimed. It was also gratifying to see her suspicions about Donald not actually graduating from SIT confirmed. She chuckled. It was such a ridiculous claim to make in applying for what was essentially a secretary job for a garbage truck. And then there was Willy’s file. It seemed to fit the bill for what she had seen so far, with the abysmal psych evaluation noting such character flaws as poor critical-thinking skills and remarkable vulnerability to peer pressure. Apparently, he also rarely washed his hands after using the bathroom. Sounds like the kind of guy who gets accidentally left behind during a daring space jail rescue, Kim thought. Tragic, but happens. He used to work here. He’ll be fine.
Unless she got her act together, however, she wouldn’t be leaving either. The clock was still ticking. Having procured what little information she could, she tackled her next obstacle: the door. It was a real chore of a door, too; not simple steel or even titanium like pretty much every other door that’d been made in the last couple hundred years. It felt like being trapped inside a bank vault. Even if she’d had her infiltration gear from back in the day, it was highly doubtful she could bust through it. And then there were the locks themselves. Every entrance had a myriad of blinking apparatuses affixed alongside it, conveying the impression of sophistication. Each required a different form of data input. All together, they indeed would have made for quite a formidable barricade . . . if only the guards tried even a slight bit to hide the fact virtually none of them were functional. When they dropped her off at the cell they didn’t swipe a name card or scan their eye or any of the other high-tech crap. They didn’t even cover their hands when they punched in 1-2-3-4 on the key pad. They just opened it up and tossed her inside like some kind of criminal coat check. Sure, criminals—ones that get caught, anyway—weren’t exactly famous for being the most intellectual bunch, but to be kept under these conditions was almost insulting.
Regardless, when life gives you lemons, you might as well exploit their defects. Kim was in enough trouble as it was, so she didn’t hesitate for a moment to punch the code and add attempted escape to her offense tab. It worked like a charm doesn’t. The door slid aside with that inexplicable hissing noise they all had and revealed the wide-open cramped and dingy hallway that she had already seen and therefore found wholly unremarkable. The employee standing on the other side of it was new, though.
He was a younger man; had neat cropped hair and a clean shave. His teeth could have been whiter. But he had lovely dimples that showed on either side of his mouth when he gaped around the room in astonishment.
“Damn!” He announced, stepping past Kim and walking inside. “Looks like you went a little overboard, huh? It’s like an episode of Hannibal Reloaded in here.”
“Yup,” Kim agreed. “I was just about to . . . go get an orderly.”
“But why’s there two of them?” The guy continued, nudging the bodies with his foot. “One CO interviewing two detainees in one holding cell? I’ve never seen that before. It’s usually the other—oh . . . Oh jeez. You don’t work here, do you?”
“Nope.”
“This is really awkward . . . did I just walk in on you trying to break out?”
“Kind of,” Kim shrugged. “I was doing pretty good too.”
“You were, yeah. You were through the door and everything. That’s pretty good. But, uh, now I’m here, sooo . . .” He cleared his throat and cast a glance upward. “Hey, Siri, pacify all non-staff members in the cell, please.”
“Please state name of individual authorizing command.”
“Really? Ugh, it’s Private—”
Kim leapt from the floor and caught him on the jaw with her knee. He keeled backwards, stumbling over the bodies of his fallen coworkers. One of his hands caught a handhold on the wall and wrenched him back upright. With the other he snatched up a collapsible cudgel from his side belt and levied an uncoordinated swing with it. Co-Captain Cox ducked the wild side strike, coming up on the backswing and trapping his arm under one of her own.
“Private—OW!”
Once again he was cut off; this time by a quick sock to the nose. Kim jammed her whole hand into his mouth when it opened and leveraged him backward into the table like a kinky workplace romance.
“CALL ME SOME SECURITY, SIRI!”
“Okay. From now on I will call you ‘Some Security.’”
“OH, COME ON!”
The wily inmate reached for his mouth yet again. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite reach with her grasping paws since the leg attached to the foot digging into her chest and narrowly holding her at bay was slightly longer than her arms. With all his remaining strength, the officer gave a mighty shove, launching her off of him. Kim tried to hang on, but the boot she grasped simply came along for the ride. She missed the door opening by mere inches, instead crashing into the wall and sliding down into a sitting position. Neither remained motionless for long. They both hopped to their feet; the woman still wielding the wearable weapon and the corrections agent adopting a bizarre fighting stance that resembled a man throwing up his arms in submission.
“Alright stop! Please stop!” He implored. Blood oozed out of his nose and his arms trembled in their outstretched position. “This was a bad idea. You’re obviously a bigger shot than I expected, and I’d really rather not be part of the trail of bodies you leave on your way out of here.”
Kim lowered the boot, still eyeing him with suspicion.
“I just work here,” he continued. “I tried to stop you, but I clearly can’t, and it’s probably just gonna get worse for me if I keep trying. . . . So how about you go off and do your escaping thing and I pretend to pass out on the floor from the intense beatdown you just laid on me.”
“That’s a great plan. Except the part where you sound the alarm thirty seconds after I leave.”
“Hey, cut me some slack. I’d give you at least a minute.”
“You’re a terrible negotiator.”
The nameless private reclined back into a sitting position. He let his neck go limp until his head bumped against the wall. “Ma’am, I don’t know if you’ve ever escaped from a prison. I feel like you have. But the alarm always gets sounded eventually. Now you can either head out, bump into somebody else, and let them do it . . . Or you can give me a couple minutes, let me do it, and be well away from the area everyone’s gonna come running to.”
“Or one of a million other possible outcomes happens.” Kim rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m gonna go now—not because I trust you or anything—but because I’m kind of on the clock at the moment, so . . . Sorry, not sorry, about your face and . . . do whatever you feel is right.”
Without so much as a goodbye, she scampered off into the hot territory. It was hard to tell if the rush she currently felt was endorphins or simply adrenaline. There was nothing quite like a nice high-risk situation to flush out the brain like a can of Drano and give her that lovely clear-headed feeling. Her objectives were apparent and her only limitation was her imagination. It felt . . . empowering. It had been so long. And boy, did she hate how much she missed it.
The first stop was cell number eighty-eight. With her current state of mind, it was easy for her to maintain that air of assurance that made people less likely to question her authorization to be there. Just as an extra precaution, she picked a person at random in the bustling hallway and spat in their face. It was the mental equivalent of wearing a hard hat and reflective vest. After all, drawing attention to yourself is the best way to avoid looking like someone who doesn’t want to draw attention to themselves.
She milled around for a little while. Locating anything in this place was quickly proving to be a massive headache. The eighty-eight might have implied some sort of sequential ordering to the cells, but after discovering her neighbouring cells were labelled with a Star of David and an ampersand, she stopped trying to make any kind of sense out of it all. But she was never one to need directions anyway. After enough shambling around, she eventually found a room labelled with two sideways infinity symbols and punched the code from before into the door. Behind it she found her adolescent space navigator huddled alone on a chair and whispering sweet nothings to her knees, by the looks of things.
“Sup,” Kim greeted her, curling her body halfway into the room. She gestured with a thumb out into the hallway. “This place is lame, wanna go to the mall?”
“Hey!” Whisper exclaimed as she leapt from her chair. “What are you doing here? Did you somehow convince them to let you go or something?”
“Uh . . . sort of. Just don’t mention it to anybody, and we’ll be fine.”
“Is that detective guy going to be coming back . . . ?”
“No, no. That I can promise you. Don’t worry.”
The pilot’s arms fell limp to her sides as her face gaped toward her savior with incredulity. The chair made a soft thud when her body slumped back into it.
“What the hell, Miss Cox! I was gonna marry him, and we were going to have adorable psychopath babies!”
“Oh for Christ’s sake . . .” Kim grumbled, rolling her eyes and snatching a dainty wrist.
Hand in hand, they exited the room. More specifically, Whisper’s shaking and not entirely committed hand was used by her boss to drag her outside. She stumbled slightly at first when Kim jerked her out of her chair, but after regaining composure, lurched along with that sunken-shouldered dog-who-just-broke-a-vase stance. It was not exactly the confidence required to fit in with the hyper humble and respon-sible-with-power-types who ran the place. Kim could feel every quizzical glance in their direction. As soon as she got a moment alone, she released her grip on Whisper’s wrist and instead snatched up a handful of hair instead.
“OW! Let go!”
“We’re trying something new,”she stated, dragging Whisper back out into the hall. “I’m a guard, you’re you. Act like you.”
“This plan is stupid!”
“Yeah like that. You’re a natural.”
They returned to the stage. Whisper walked out slightly in front, wincing each time she was steered one way or the other, her fuzzy black hair held like reins. This whole arrangement was so barbaric and dehumanizing that not only did it eliminate the glances of suspicion, but actually replaced many of them with chortles and smirks of approval. One passerby even stopped to high-five Kim. It got a little weird afterward, though, when he bent down to pat Whisper on the head and offer her a piece of his Pop-Tart. He had no right to be as surprised as he was when she bit him. By the time they reached the antiquated transport room known as the elevator, they had settled nicely into their roles.
“Oooh, nice take on the psychological angle,” the man sharing the ride with them commented. “Where’s this one going?”
“Shut up, Dave,” Kim grumbled. “You wanna ask questions so bad? Go ask Gerry why he’s sleeping with your wife.”
“I’m—I’m not Dave . . .”
“Oh. Well, next time you see Dave, it’s up to you whether or not you want to tell him.”
He didn’t say a word for the next couple seconds of the ride. When the doors opened at the next floor, he still regarded the master and slave looking combo with a bewildered leer. His day became spiced-up even further when the elevator was plunged into some mood lighting and the elevator music suddenly changed to house music. At least, Kim thought it was house music at first, but when the melody hadn’t changed by the time the elevator doors opened, she realized this was the alarm she had been warned about.
“You might wanna go check that out,” she suggested to not-Dave. The man couldn’t exactly just ignore a jailbreak alarm, so once the doors opened, he had no choice but to obediently oblige her suggestion. It was nice to have some more alo
ne time, but Kim knew it was too much to hope he was stupid enough to not have even the slightest misgiving towards his brief former roommates. They would have to move as well.
It was sure lucky they happened to have their incarceration take place on casual Friday. Nobody had even the slightest semblance of matching clothing. In fact, looking at the dozens of coolly clad cogs that filled the hallway, Kim saw that they probably weren’t even in the bottom tier of best dressed. Not that it ultimately mattered; when they dared step out of the elevator into the running of the COs, they found themselves standing like rocks amid a river, the stream simply parting around them.
Rather than fight the flow, they drifted along with it. More of the same peculiarly marked holding cells flew by during this impromptour of the facility. As 3D renderings of past wardens passed them by and the occasional legitimate prisoner transfer was forced to sidestep the stampede, it became increasingly clear that they had not become part of some well-organized response team; some of the guards were armed with guns, while others were armed with forks. Murmurs echoed from high and low rank alike asking questions, sharing memories, and expressing hopes that they might finally get to be on an episode of COPS. The excitement was so contagious that Kim, for the briefest moment, forgot that they were en route to where she had come from in the first place.
So she stole away into the first open hall she found. Whisper flew along behind the hand that held her like a reluctant, person-shaped kite. A hitherto-unseen door slammed shut behind them seemingly without any prompting whatsoever, almost as if to tell them they were acting a little too free and should be reminded they were still in prison. But that probably wasn’t why it closed, as that was a little too much moral contrivance to be assumed of a door. (Though in the age of smartphones, smart cars, and smart potatoes, maybe it wasn’t.)
Whether or not inanimate objects could develop philosophical worldviews, there was no sense in stopping to assess the motives of a door. As the saying goes: If you’re going through Hell or Space Guantanamo, keep going. They jogged along at a squirrel’s pace. By this point they had stopped paying attention to door markings, instead focusing on finding hallways to explore. Surely one of them would eventually lead to either a docking bay or a map of some sort.