The Prisoner (6 page)

In the ten years since the hibernation stations had replaced obsolescent prisons, there had never been a breakout. Vlad Kosmerl, the head of security—a weird Slovak with a milky eye—would now have the opportunity of a lifetime to make a name for himself and prove his knowledge of the system by thwarting the breakout.
905
. He would grab it. His first order would be to power cameras and passive security mechanisms: gas, induction fields, high-voltage beams, concussion explosives, epilepsy-inducing lights, and scores of sophisticated toys designed to stun, maim, or kill.
906
. Then he would fire the alarms and arm the hair triggers of hundreds of heat and motion sensors. Moving—even breathing—would be suicidal. Once the alarm tripped, only the inmates immersed in their cold fluid would be safe.

907
. Lukas pumped his legs with more energy, vaguely aware of his dismal style, knees rising almost to his chest, arms moving like pistons, and huffing to rival Emil Zátopek, the long-distance runner they’d dubbed “the Czech Locomotive” over a century before. Although he’d tried to get in shape for his race through the corridors, training mornings and evenings for the past two months, Lukas was rapidly reaching the end of his endurance.
908
. His ribs
ached, and the staccato of his heartbeats fused into a continuous roar.

His lab coat ripped when one of his pockets caught on the edge of a water fountain outside the access to tank 909. He tore it open and shrugged his arms free without breaking stride. He careened around a bend in the corridor, smashing his shoulder into the wall. The tearing pain released fresh supplies of adrenaline into his bloodstream, and Lukas sprinted ahead. He glanced at the numbers overhead.
910
. Another three hundred feet to go.

When a man turned fifty, most of the decisive events of his life were behind him. It was often too late to start over. For most people, life was just a new comedy with old and tired actors. Only a few got a second chance, and Lukas Hurley wanted to be one. His legs pumped harder.

When he reached the access to tank 913, Lukas couldn’t focus his eyes. His breath came in ragged gasps, his lungs screaming for air like the first time he’d visited Cuzco in Peru, at more than 11,000-feet elevation. Lukas fumbled his card in the lock’s slot but missed. Through blurry eyes, he peered at his shaking hand. He was falling apart. After two more tries, the card slid into the slot and the door snapped open. Five minutes left.

Raul and Laurel jerked in unison when a loud snap sounded at their backs. Laurel swiveled her head and froze.
I know this guy!
She stared at the man slowly bending in two at the far end of the platform, his back against the closed door. Slight and with thinning red hair, he looked like …
Where have I seen this guy before?
The man seemed on the verge of collapse, hands cupped over his knees and heaving, his ragged breath whooshing like punctured bellows.

“Into the tank,” he wheezed.

Raul leaned sideways with measured movements and lifted the leg straddling Bastien’s body. When he could plant his feet on the floor, he rose to face the man. “What?”

Laurel turned her head to follow a shape moving behind Raul. The hydraulic arm maneuvered the jellylike net with Eliot Russo inside.

“We must get into the tank,” the man groaned. He neared with an unsteady gait, a hand digging into his left side. In his mid-fifties, with a large nose and sad bloodhound eyes, he—

“What’s your name?” Laurel asked.

The man panted, reached with his other hand to massage his shoulder, and winced. “Lukas.”

She frowned in disbelief.
Woody Allen!
With tan slacks, sneakers, and a white shirt, Lukas resembled the bygone genius, without eyeglasses. But Lukas probably wore implants.

You will have minutes to recover. Then help one another out of the mesh. Check for damage. Russo will rise last. Leave his net intact; it will give him a measure of protection during transport. Your contact inside the station will join you. You don’t need to know any more about him. Follow his instructions. He will guide you through the station’s secure spur to the sewers. Once in the sewers, follow your plan
.

“Look, mister—” But Raul stopped mid-sentence when Lukas darted a glance over his head. Propping a hand on the wall for support, Lukas fished a black matte card from his back pocket and inserted it in an almost undetectable slot a few feet away from where they stood.

His tone changed. “Get Russo over here. Don’t remove his protective net.”

Laurel turned on her heel and stepped toward the descending bundle, careful to avoid the fluid spills. The machine lowered Russo’s cocoon with its characteristic harshness and removed the flexible life-support tube. The bundle stirred. As she squatted and reached to remove Russo’s goggles, Lukas yelled, “Don’t!” in a curious high-pitched tone. “Drag him over here.”

She waited for Raul. On a silent prompt, they gripped Russo’s neck ring and dragged an emaciated, squirming body with surprising ease over the film of fluid oiling the textured floor. Laurel flinched after checking the wasted figure inside the net.
He’s all skin and bones!

“Three and a half minutes,” Lukas announced. His voice had recovered a little color. His hands moved inside a niche that had appeared on a seemingly featureless wall. He paused, reached inside his belt, and yanked hard. Then he dropped
three padded envelopes on the floor and returned to whatever he was doing inside the niche.

“One contains stabilizing pads. Stick one on your lower back. In another envelope, there are two ultrasonic syrettes. Push the one with the red cap into Russo’s neck. In the last, there are LAD lamps. Recover your discarded goggles and clip the lamps to the strip forming the nose bridge, then slip them over to dangle from your neck.”

It sounded as if Lukas was reading a manual. He must have memorized the precise words of the plan. Laurel stole a glance past Lukas’s hands. A screen. He must be keying instructions into a computer.

You will have a ten-minute window to leave the station. That’s how long it takes for the main computer to back up. The machinery and maintenance runs on a separate computer
.

whatever Lukas was doing had to do with equipment.

Raul recovered the crumpled envelopes and tore one open, tipping two thin cylinders like pencil stubs onto the floor. He picked up the one with a red cap and handed it to Laurel.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A muscle relaxant and a sedative. He could die if he reaches full arousal in his present state.”

“Like our friend?”

Lukas slammed at something inside the recess and a panel slid down, the hollow disappearing. “Yes, like your—Bastien. A common accident.”

Laurel put the syrette by her feet and had finished peeling the protective cover from a skin pad the size of a playing card when she froze. “Common? How common?”

“Common enough. About one in fifty of the regular inmates and most of the—illegals.”

A powerful whine fired and the floor trembled.

“Into the tank. We’re running out of time.”

Something moved. Laurel swiveled toward the tank. Its surface rippled and the level dropped. She’d always been comfortable with her body, but she suddenly felt vulnerable being naked before a stranger. She handed another pad to Raul, slapped hers at kidney height, and turned her butt toward
Lukas. After a short delay, she felt a cold hand patting over the pad to ensure good skin contact.

Laurel eyed Lukas as he turned to Raul and continued with the patting routine, then he leaned over Bastien to reach for his discarded goggles. Laurel pushed the syrette into Russo’s neck and flicked the release lever. The tube emptied with a hiss and the bundle stopped squirming.

“What’s the other syrette for?”

“A stronger dose of the same mix, in case he starts convulsing.”

Raul neared, grabbed Russo’s neck ring, and dragged him over to the tank’s edge.

The tank looked like a collage of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings composed by de Sade. The level in the nine-foot-deep tank was dropping fast. A sea of upturned faces with dark goggles and fluid up to their necks stared toward the ceiling like monstrous insect pupae dangling from green hoses. In the center of the fluid expanse, a dimple formed, sucked down by what must be a powerful eddy.

Her eyes fixed on the revolving expanse of fluid, Laurel understood, and her spirits sank even lower. It all made sense now. The drainpipes must link with the spur line for flushing the tanks during periodic maintenance.
We’re going down the drain!

Raul padded over with the other goggles, already clipping on a hazelnut-size LAD lamp: a new generation of light amplifying diodes.

Lukas glanced at his watch. “Two minutes.” He darted a glance around and jumped on the nearest inmate suspended in liquid up to his chest. He gripped onto the jelly net as his face contorted into a mask of shock. His jaw started chattering at once.

“Ju-ump!”

“What about him?” Raul nodded to Bastien.

Lukas’s eyes widened. “He’s dead.”

“Can he be resuscitated?”

“He’s dead!” Lukas insisted.

Raul’s voice sharpened. “Watch my lips, mister. Can your people revive him?”

Silence.

Laurel could read Raul’s expression, and she felt her stomach contract involuntarily.

“I don’t—know. Maybe. But he would be a vegetable. He’s been down too long.”

Raul wedged the spare syrette between his teeth, turned on his heel, and squatted by Bastien. Slowly, he ran a hand over the dome of Bastien’s head, like a mother caressing her newborn. Then, face set and his profile cast in stone, Raul gripped Bastien’s head and jerked his hands. The report of bones snapping echoed over the whine of motors.

Laurel’s shoulders sagged. Honor was an aesthetic idea for some. Not for Raul. They had been like brothers. Through a haze of tears, she saw Raul’s shadow near and felt the tips of his fingers brush her cheek. Then she heard a sharp intake of air and, instants later, a splash when Raul jumped into the tank.

“Pass—Russo—over.” Lukas’s voice sounded muffled.

Laurel followed the sound. A quivering Lukas, wisps of red hair plastered to his forehead, reached to remove the syrette from Raul’s mouth. He was pale. She squatted, threaded the fingers of one hand through the slippery mesh, and hauled Russo’s neck ring with the other.

Raul swung, one hand gripping the net of a young man—almost a child—then caught the cords cocooning Russo and pulled.

It all happened too fast. As Laurel squatted by Russo, her hand gripping the jelly cords, a powerful force dragged her forward. She lost her footing and plunged headlong into the tank, still holding on to Russo.

The shock astounded her. A forest of needles skewered her skin with icy cold. A hot pincer seared her neck and jerked her head upright. She screamed. Laurel thrashed in the liquid ice until she felt something solid beneath her feet. She planted her soles and bolted straight, one hand flying over her face to remove the viscous liquid slithering over it, while the other reached blindly for the nearest jelly mesh. She started to shake.

“Just a few seconds. It will wear off in a few seconds.” Lukas’s voice droned somewhere to her left.

Unable to keep her chattering jaw steady, she rubbed stinging eyes with her free hand. The fluid was level with her midriff. In the center of the tank, the liquid turned lazily around a wide depression. Around her, scores of nets held inmates, their skin pruned like alien larvae, some thin, their ribs protruding like so many grates, others padded with flabby skin like shar-pei dogs. The wretches jerked an arm or a leg here and there; necks twitched, their mouths stretched as they suckled the tits of a machine. Laurel’s stomach heaved, but she had nothing to throw up.

Raul and Lukas stood on the bottom of the tank, each holding on to one of the dangling inmates to offset the powerful pull of the rapidly draining fluid. Lukas kept Russo’s head above the liquid with a grip to his neck ring, and Laurel suddenly realized the burning sensation on her own neck came from Raul’s other hand.

The lights dimmed an instant, as if an automatic relay had rearmed after a power surge.

“The alarm,” Lukas announced.

“Now what?” Raul asked. He removed his hand from Laurel’s neck and grabbed Russo’s ring.

“Too much fluid yet. When the level drops down to six inches, we can go.”

Laurel lowered her head. The fluid was level with her knees. Raul had not asked Lukas how they would reach the sewers. He must have figured it out, like she had.

“How long?” Raul demanded.

“Thirty seconds, tops.”

The conflicting sensations were almost unbearable. Her body burned, but her legs and feet seemed encased in a block of ice.

“Feetfirst.” Lukas nodded to a manhole-size opening in the center of the tank. “It’s a tall drop, twenty feet vertical to a smooth bend, then fifty or sixty feet horizontally until we hit the secure spur line.”

“It’ll tear our skin off!” Laurel complained.

“No, it won’t. These conduits are smooth-walled, designed for special cleaning machines and kept spotless, without incrustations or excrescences. The secure spur line uses a more
aggressive cleaning procedure because it handles solids. These conduits,” he nodded to the drain on the floor, “are for fluids only.”

“Where’s the secure spur line?”

“Underneath us. It runs parallel to the city sewers, but it’s independent, clean, and secure. Computers control all exits.”

Laurel didn’t ask how they would reach the city sewers if all exits were secure.
Your contact knows how to get you out. Follow his instructions
.

From all four corners of the tank, strobe lights started to flash a slow cadence.

“They’ve armed the stunners,” Lukas said. “In thirty seconds, the condensers powering these lights will be on full charge. There are heat sensors overhead, and we’re warmer than anything else. As soon as we’re detected, these lamps will fire a sequence that will trigger epileptic fits. But don’t worry.”

“Why not?” Laurel asked.