Red Cells (9 page)

“Not truly helping us,” Buddha echoed in his dead, static-distorted voice. “Not our friend.”

“He forced us to kill him. We had no choice. But now that he’s out of the way, the rest of us want to help you for real…help you somehow. None of us mean you any harm.”

“Harm,” Buddha said. “You harmed us.
That
unit.” One of Buddha’s golden arms lifted from his lap, and still without opening his eyes he pointed to Hurley. The guard who had fired upon the skeletal apparition that had killed the Dacvibese prisoner in Stake’s cell.

“Hey, you killed one of our prisoners!” Hurley protested. “You’ve killed a
bunch
of our prisoners!”

Another burst of static, and the scene again changed, this time to a more humble Christian church with stained glass windows and at the front of the room, a life-sized statue of Christ upon the cross. But though his head rested forward with his eyes closed, he had already pulled one arm free and it was pointing to Hurley as Buddha had done.

“Give us this unit,” said Christ in that same emotionless voice, the voice of the chapel’s computer system.

“
What
?” said Hurley. He put his hand to his holstered gun, but Stake quickly laid his own hand over the guard’s wrist.

“No,” Ploss said. “We won’t do that! We won’t give you people to kill like Cirvik did.”

“We are angry,” Jesus said.

“So are we!” Ploss replied.

“We are angry,” the statue repeated, its pointing arm unwavering.

Stake eased Hurley’s hand away from his sidearm, whispering, “What are you going to do, kill a vid of Jesus?” Then, addressing the image of the crucified Christ again, he said, “There has to be a way out of this situation where nobody gets hurt any more. Not us, and not you. But you have to let us have our power back! You have to let us call home to our leaders so they can figure out a way to help you. We can’t do it on our own. You have to stop blocking our communications!”

In a blink, their surroundings were once more replaced. This time the men stood inside a gigantic metal head, one of the massive iron busts of the Choom god Raloom. Before them stood a white stone statue of Raloom’s wife, Lupool, her wide Choom smile benevolent. But she too was pointing one slender arm at Hurley, and despite her gentle smile, when her lips moved, she said, “Your leaders would destroy us. Destroy us to protect this place.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Ploss snarled, trying to look sturdy, but Stake could tell the Choom was quivering with bottled-up fear and rage of his own. “We can get them to sympathize with you if you will just…stop…killing…our prisoners!”

“Whatever he might have promised you,” Stake said, “Cirvik never tried to find a way to release you. He was only appeasing you one sacrifice at a time. Let us call our home office. I’m sure they’ll listen and can let you out of this pocket one way or another, even if they have to ferry all of you out in our transport pods!”

“The Director warned us about this unit.” Lupool shifted her alabaster arm. Now she pointed at Stake, as if she recognized him at last. “The Director warned us that you would tell your leaders to come here and kill us.”

“He only wanted to get you to kill me so I wouldn’t find out what was going on.”

“You would find out…and tell your leaders…”

“But our leaders are the only ones who can
help
you!”

“Lies…you are trying to trick us…”

“It was Cirvik who was the liar,” Stake told the ghostlike statue, “not us!”

Under his breath, Ploss said, “I ought to give you to the thing to calm it down, make it back off and restore power.”

Stake looked at the man sharply. “You had better be kidding me, Ploss.”

The looming security chief glared at him. “What if I’m not? I have to think of the greater good.”

“There’s nothing good about sacrificing people to these things!”

“Chief,” Hurley said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

Ploss switched his glare to his underling, but said, “Back down, Hurley—I was only speaking hypothetically.”

“You aren’t like Cirvik,” Stake said, “I know you’re not. And neither is Conant. More sacrifices isn’t the answer. We have to keep reasoning with them. That’s why they’re speaking through the chapel right now. However angry they are, they’re fighting to be rational.”

Lupool suddenly snapped her head to one side, as if she had detected a sound the men couldn’t hear. In a flash, the interior of Raloom’s head reverted to the Buddhist temple, Buddha seated on his lotus flower with his head turned to the side in the same way. Then static, and back to the Christian church, Jesus with his head turned in the same direction and his eyes now staring open.

Ploss’s wrist comp beeped and he lifted his arm to answer it. Over the Choom’s shoulder, Stake saw the prison’s head of maintenance systems, Klaus, smiling on the wrist comp’s screen as he announced, “I just called Conant, Chief. Good news: I overrode the firewalls, and put up new ones of my own. Full power restored. Better than that, I’ve cleared communications. Conant is sending out a distress signal right now…help will be on the way. Colonial Forcers, and more pods to evac the prisoners if need be.”

“Shit,” Stake muttered.

“Good thing you kept the monster distracted in the chapel, guys.”

Jesus threw back his head then, his mouth elongated in a howl, but the three men only heard an ear-piercing screech like feedback. And then the vidscreen walls, floor and ceiling of the chapel turned entirely to grainy, hissing snow.

Fourteen

Abandon Ship

At all times, four transdimensional pods were docked at the Trans-Paxton Penitentiary, but each one could only carry fifty passengers maximum. There were over three thousand inmates, and then the staff. Stake figured it would take about seventy pods of this size to evacuate the whole prison in one go. He supposed it had never been too much of a concern, evacuating dangerous criminals in the event of an emergency. Then again, the pods could make multiple trips to and from Punktown’s Theta Transport Station, and more importantly there were the pods the Colonial Forcers would be arriving in any minute now. Hurley said there would be eight pods carrying four hundred soldiers.

Ploss had gone on to join Conant and Dr. Zaleski in the operations center, while Hurley had escorted Stake to the recreation yard. This would be a staging area for the first group of prisoners to be evacuated back to Punktown. Men from Orange Block were already filing in, under the eyes and guns of only organic guards. Hurley had told Stake that Klaus and his team had been ordered to direct all the automatonic guards into the warehouse, shut them all down, and lock them in for good measure. Another detachment of guards had accompanied the team in the event that any of the robots became possessed during the process.

Stake had fallen into a long and barely moving line, looking out of place in his red uniform among all those dressed in orange. Some of the prisoners close by him asked him what he knew about all this, or simply why he was in their ranks, but he kept his eyes straight and his mouth shut. When a man covered excessively in muscles and tattoos ahead of Stake in line became loud in his demands for answers, one of the helmeted guards left his post by the exit the inmates were filing toward and came to the back of the queue.

“Shut your hole and keep your eyes forward,” the guard snapped. It was Hurley, of course.

“This little mutie your buddy now, Hurley?”

“I told you to shut your hole!”

When the prisoner begrudgingly complied, Hurley turned to Stake and explained, “In case you hadn’t guessed, Ploss figured you should be in the first batch to leave since this thing had targeted you specifically, and sounded like it still wanted to.”

“I appreciate that, but hopefully we gave it sufficient cause to doubt whatever Cirvik told it,” Stake replied. “So where are three thousand prisoners going to be moved to until this can be sorted out…
if
it can be sorted out?”

“Not sure where, ultimately…maybe they’ll split you all up across Punktown’s prisons, but I have my doubts they could handle that. Maybe they’ll have to ship you all to other cities. But for now, they’re going to secure some hangars and warehouses at the old Phosnoor Shipyard.”

“Huh,” Stake said. Long-range teleportation had rendered Punktown’s once bustling shipyard obsolete, and Stake knew the area well; for a time he had rented some rooms within the hull of a decommissioned spacecraft, converted into apartments, on the shipyard grounds. “Going home,” he murmured to himself.

“To be honest, I’ll be as relieved as anybody to be out of this bubble we’re in,” Hurley confided. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he asked, “Did you really care what was happening to these bad guys?”

“I don’t know every man’s story. I know they’re criminals. But for me, not doing my job right is a kind of crime, too.”

“Your job? How did this become your job?”

“Guess it’s my calling. But some of my fellow prisoners asked me to look into it. And after all, I’m one of them now.”

“I know you aren’t one of the bad ones, Stake,” Hurley said. “You shouldn’t be in the company you’re in.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Whatever time you end up getting after they look at your case, I hope when it’s finished you can get your life back on the proper track.”

“Thanks for that, too. I sure intend to.”

Hurley nodded, then left Stake to saunter back to his post by the exit.

When the guard had turned his back and walked a sufficient distance away, two of the inmates farther back in line left their place and moved up toward where Stake stood. Stake knew this when he heard another prisoner complain half-jokingly, “Hey, no cutting, you two.”

He turned and saw the nearer of the two men bent forward and lunging with a crude weapon in his hand: a sharpened plastic shank with a taped handle. Stake wasn’t surprised that it was one of the Tin Town Maniacs—the jug-eared one with blond hair cut in bangs—or that the youth wore a dizzy smile.

It was so easy for Stake to catch his wrist, trap his arm, and redirect the shank’s blade into the hollow between the boy’s collarbones that he almost might have felt guilty for it. The youth obviously felt that with a life sentence, he had nothing to lose in taking this shot at Stake before possibly missing any future opportunity. But Stake did have something to lose, his very life, and so he had not held back. The boy stumbled backward and fell comically onto his rump, eyes wide in wonder and making a wet sucking sound as if he drew on a bong, the shank’s handle still protruding from his throat.

Stake turned again, to meet the oncoming second Tin Town Maniac. This one held a plastic dowel with a long metal spike seated in it. Again he caught the young man’s arm and rerouted its thrust, but in this instance it made more sense to punch the spike into his thigh. Stake hoped it struck the femoral artery, but the spike was slim so just in case he slammed his elbow into the boy’s trachea. He too hit the floor with bulging eyes.

Guards came running, and Stake stepped farther out of line with his hands held up, waiting for them. The Tin Town Maniacs were hoisted up and rushed off toward the infirmary, the one with the constricted trachea squirming desperately for air and the other one so slack Stake suspected he was already dead.

Hurley appeared in front of him and Stake said mildly, “Maybe I won’t be free to pursue the right track for a much longer time, now.”

“It was self-defense, I have no doubt, but I think it wasn’t such a good idea to mix you in with the Orange Bunch, after all. Come with me.”

As Stake let Hurley take his arm and lead him away, he looked behind him and saw Edwin Fetch standing in line. His former twin stared at Stake with an ashen face and disbelieving eyes, as if he couldn’t draw in a breath himself. Stake nodded at him in a courteous good-bye and called, “Maybe I’ll see you in court, Ed.”

Fifteen

The Rage

Stake looked to Hurley as they walked toward one of the cavernous chamber’s alternate exits, and said, “So where are you taking me? If you put me in my cell, I’ll be backed into a corner if that thing decides to come for me again, after all.”

“I’m going to put you in an isolation cell for now. A change of scene if it does decide to look for you.”

“I’m not sure how much good that will do. There’s no telling when it’s watching…where it’s watching from. The individual animals, like those fishy types, look like they move through air vents and things like that. Take physical routes in and out of the prison. But the way the assembled being appeared in my cell, and how Blur described the attack he witnessed—bonded together they seem to be able to apport from one spot to another through a channel they generate, like their own little temporary wormhole. From outside the prison to inside.”

“You won’t be in there long, okay?” Hurley said impatiently. “Just until we can get this crazy damn Orange Bunch boarded on their boats.” He switched from speaking to Stake to addressing several of his fellow guards over his helmet mic. “Anderson, Grau, Pulver—I’m taking Stake to solitary for now until we can ship him out with the rest of Red Block. I’ll be right back. You got things covered okay?”