Solfleet above and beyon.., p.37
Solfleet: Above and Beyond, page 37
The light, such as it was, came up overhead. An officer would be delivering his breakfast in a couple of minutes. This was Monday morning—he kept track of the days by adjusting the number of toilet paper squares hanging off of the roll each day—so, assuming that the guard force did, in fact, stick to the pattern, that officer would be Jeanine McFall, the only female in the rotation. Officer McFall wasn’t a big woman and didn’t appear to be particular strong, based on what little of her that he had been able to see when he peeked out through the small window and the food slot, but neither did she ever come to his cell alone. One of the male officers always accompanied her, even though there was no way that he could get at her, even if he wanted to. That was all right, though. He didn’t want to. She wasn’t the one whom he intended to lure inside.
The food slot opened and a wide ray of much brighter light shone in from the corridor—it wasn’t sunlight, but it was significantly brighter than that which his cell light produced—but only for a moment before his breakfast tray blocked it out again as the officer slid it in through the slot and left it sitting there, halfway through the door. He lay still and quiet and waited. Sure enough, after only a few seconds, the window’s cover slid open and the officer barked at him, “Drop your cock and come get your tray, Mister Graves!”
That was Officer McFall all right. She made more rude comments referring to parts of his anatomy than all of the men on the guard force combined. So far, they were sticking to their pattern.
He got up off of his bunk, and as he padded over to the door like a good little inmate, he noted that McFall was continuing to stare at him through the window. “Like what you see, McFall?” he asked her, intentionally not covering himself up. Under normal circumstances, of course, he would have held one hand over his genitals and wouldn’t have been so rude to her, despite her comment, but these were anything but normal circumstances. The officers expected a certain kind of behavior from the inmates, especially those who were locked up in solitary, so he made a practice of living up to their expectations. Anything else might have made them uneasy and thus forced them to raise their level of situational awareness. He didn’t want that. He wanted them to remain well within their comfort zones so that they might drop their guard.
“I’ve seen bigger,” she replied, “and it’s Officer McFall to you, Inmate.”
Dylan looked her in the eye through the window as he grabbed hold of his tray and told her, “You probably have bigger, Officer McFall.” He’d meant it as an insult, but now that he’d said it out loud, it didn’t sound much like an insult to him. However, when McFall scowled at him and then slammed the window cover closed in his face, he felt satisfied that it had had the desired effect.
He took his tray back to his bunk and sat down. The food didn’t smell half bad, but he’d learned on day one that the aroma was deceiving. Wet scrambled eggs that were chunkier than they were fluffy, four strips of limp bacon that might have been warm when it left the kitchen, two slices of toasted white bread cut diagonally into four triangles, each topped with a pat of still hard butter, and a small glass of orange juice that was probably warmer than the bacon—not exactly the most appetizing breakfast that he’d ever eaten. But eat it, he did.
He shoveled it in and swallowed every bite as quickly as he could, enjoying the extra light that once more shone in through the open food slot as he chewed, actually tasting the food as little as possible. Then, when he’d finished, instead of returning his empty tray to the food slot in the door as he was supposed to, he set it down on the floor against the wall next to the head of his bunk and lay down to wait for Officer Luhrmann.
It wasn’t long before he heard Luhrmann’s footsteps echoing through the corridor—probably fifteen minutes exactly from the time that breakfast had been delivered. They paused briefly, and Dylan heard the sound of a tray being pulled from a food slot in one of the neighboring cells, followed by the sound of that slot being closed. The footsteps resumed briefly and then paused once more. Another tray, another slot being closed, and then the footsteps resumed once more.
His window opened and Luhrmann’s face filled the frame. “Where’s your tray, Mister Graves?” the officer asked him, glaring at him.
“I’m not done,” Dylan replied.
“Yes you are,” Luhrmann told him. “Time’s up and you’re laying down.”
“No, I’m not,” Dylan argued.
“I can see your empty tray sitting over there on the floor, Inmate,” Luhrmann said, his growing annoyance evident in his tone. “Get your ass up off your bunk and bring it over here.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care if you want to or not, Inmate!” Luhrmann barked. “Get off your ass and bring that tray over here!”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, no, Luhrmann,” Dylan repeated. “Are you deaf as well as stupid?”
“That’s Mister Luhrmann to you, Inmate, and this is your last chance! Bring me your tray, now!”
“Fuck you, Luhrmann.”
“Fuck me?” Luhrmann asked him. “Really? Do you really want the SART team to come down here and pay you a visit so early in the morning?”
That was the last thing that he wanted. The Military Police, Security Forces, the Marine Corps, SEALS training, SpecOps...none of that would matter. The prison’s Special Actions Response Team would be made up of half a dozen of the biggest and strongest men on the guard force. It would be six-on-one, and the six of them would be outfitted with body armor, riot helmets, and face screens. If Luhrmann called them in, they would bull-rush into his cell, take him down, and lock him in shackles.
Fortunately, he’d learned that Luhrmann was a very proud man.
“The SORT team?” he asked. “Really?” Then he pointed out, “I’m no bigger than you are, Luhrmann. I never took you for being that big a coward.”
“What did you just say to me?” Luhrmann barked, fuming.
“I said, you’re a coward, Luhrmann,” Dylan replied, intentionally provoking him. “You’re a pansy. A pussy. Hell, I’d be willing to bet McFall has bigger balls than you do. Your wife probably does, too.”
Luhrmann slammed the window cover shut and Dylan heard the series of beeps as the angry officer punched the access code into the panel outside the door. He jumped up off of his bunk and rushed over to the door, just as it began to open. He reached out, grabbed Luhrmann by the front of his shirt, pulled him into the cell, off balance, and then proceeded to beat him senseless before he could react, punching him and kicking him and throwing him back and forth against both of the side walls until he finally collapsed unconscious to the floor. He never even gave the poor officer a chance to hit him back.
Without wasting a single moment on regret—he could feel bad about what he’d done to Luhrmann later—Dylan stripped the man down to his briefs and then donned his uniform and duty belt. The shoes were a little tight across the front—Luhrmann’s feet were apparently a little narrower than his own—but he managed to slip them on anyway. Then he searched the pockets for the man’s identicard. He found it...and the key-chip to a car, presumably Luhrmann’s own. Excellent. That would make getting away easier...assuming, of course, that he made it out to the parking lot. He pulled out one of the officer’s two pairs of handcuffs and cuffed him to the bunk frame. That obviously wouldn’t stop him from dragging the bunk over to the door to call for help, once he woke up, but it would slow him down, at least a little bit.
Now all that he had to do was to find his way out of the prison.
There would be cameras everywhere, of course, so he was going to have to be careful not to look right at any of them. He could probably pass for Luhrmann to a casual observer, but if someone happened to take a close look at him, it would be all over. He was also going to have to be careful not to linger in any one spot for too long. Doing so would likely draw attention.
He retrieved his tray and then kept his head down slightly as he walked out of his cell, and then turned to close and secure the door behind him. If anyone was watching the monitors, hopefully they’d think that Luhrmann had just kicked poor Inmate Graves’ ass and then gotten his tray. Perhaps they’d even get a good hardy laugh out of it.
A small four-wheel cart with a couple of dirty breakfast trays stacked one atop the other on top of it was sitting a few feet away, off to the side of the corridor, against the wall. Dylan glanced around as he stepped over to the cart and then set his tray down on top of the short stack. There was no one else in the corridor. He wheeled the cart over to the next cell in the row and retrieved that tray. He added it to the stack and then proceeded to the next cell and collected that tray as well. He collected all of the remaining trays, hoping that those same monitor watchers might believe that they were watching Luhrmann finish his tray collection duties. Then, when he’d finished, he turned the cart around and wheeled it back toward the door at the end of the corridor.
There was a card reader beside that door, just as he had expected there would be, though he’d expected something a little more modern. It looked like pretty old technology—a small black box-like unit with a thin light bar running across the top. The light was glowing red at the moment, no doubt to indicate that the door was currently locked, but there didn’t appear to be a keypad or a palm or eye scanner with it. That was good, because if passage required a PIN or a palm or eye scan in addition to the identicard, he wasn’t going to get very far, and who knew what they might do to him in retaliation for what he’d done to Luhrmann.
A soon as he came to within about ten feet of that door, the light bar turned green. A clicking sound echoed through the enclosed corridor, and then the door slid open. Whether that was because the reader had read Luhrmann’s identicard from that distance or because whoever was monitoring his movements had opened the door for him, he had no idea. Nor did he care. The only thing that mattered was that the door had opened. He pushed the cart through and silently thanked God for the not-so-small favor.
He found himself standing at the bottom of a stairwell, which made perfect sense. Solitary confinement was almost always found in the basement, at least as far as he knew. After all, colorful old nicknames like ‘the dungeon,’ ‘the hole,’ and ‘the pit’ hadn’t come from nowhere. He looked up. There was a small landing halfway, where the stairs turned 180 degrees and then continued upward, which made seeing up to the next floor difficult, but as best as he could tell, the stairs only ascended one level to what was likely the facility’s ground floor. There was an elevator off to the left of the stairs, directly across from the door that he’d just come through, but it, too, probably only ascended one level. Luhrmann would have used it to bring the cart down and would have headed back up to the ground floor, where the kitchen was most likely located, the same way. Anyone watching would expect him to take that elevator. Unfortunately, he had no idea what its doors might open to up there. For all that he knew, he might find himself wheeling that cart into the middle of half a dozen guards. No, if he was going have any chance of escaping, then he needed to know what lay ahead of him every step of the way as much as possible. He had no other choice. He was going to have to use the stairs.
Hoping...even praying that no one was watching, he pushed the cart around behind the stairs and stashed it underneath, then walked back around and started heading quietly up the stairs.
He would have welcomed a chance to find and recover his belongings—his own clothes, his false identicard, his handcomp, and especially his recall device. No doubt, there was a storeroom somewhere in which all of the inmates’ personal property was kept, but he wouldn’t know where to start looking for it if he tried. It could easily take him the entire day to find it—even longer, considering the fact that he would have to avoid being caught while he searched—and he didn’t have that kind of time. He needed to break out of this prison and get as far away from it as possible, as quickly as possible. No. Sadly, he no longer had any chance of returning home to his own time. All that he could do now was to try to complete his mission and then make a life for himself somewhere—ride the wave of the timeline to see where it might carry him...and the rest of mankind...and all of the races of the Coalition.
He was trapped in the past for the rest of his life.
He reached the landing and peered around the corner. No sign of anyone, and no camera that he could see, though just because he couldn’t see any cameras, that didn’t mean that there weren’t any. He moved on and came to a door at the top of the stairs. There was a badge reader beside it that looked just like the one below, but unlike that one, the light bar on this one remained red, even though he was standing right in front of it.
Now what?
He pulled Luhrmann’s identicard out of his pocket and held it up close to the reader. Nothing happened. Then he touched his hand to the door and the light bar immediately turned green. There was a click, and the door slid open. Startled, he stepped back from the doorway and moved against the wall beside it before he could stop himself. Then he sighed...quietly. He could have kicked himself. If he was on camera, that little maneuver would have looked very suspicious.
So, the readers must have scanned for an authorized identicard automatically whenever someone touched a door. That didn’t explain why the door below had opened for him, but he didn’t care about that. It had. That was all that mattered. Besides, that door was behind him now. All that really mattered were those doors that were still ahead of him. Hopefully, they would all open in the same way that this one had.
He pocketed the identicard and then stepped through the doorway and found himself standing at one end of a dimly lit corridor. Roughly half of the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling weren’t working. Either that, or they hadn’t been turned on. The unpainted walls along the corridor’s length, about fifty feet or so, appeared to be made of solid plasticrete. There were no doors in either of them, no windows, nothing at all. They were completely smooth. There was another door at the far end of the corridor, however, so that was his next objective...obviously.
Being careful to continue keeping his head down—again, the fact that he couldn’t see any cameras didn’t mean that there weren’t any—he strolled toward that door as though he didn’t have a care in the world. As he drew closer, he saw another card reader—it looked like the same model—and that there was a long, narrow vertical window in the door, so he was careful not to touch the door when he reached it. Instead, he stood back, just a little bit, and peered out through that window as best he could to see what was waiting for him on the other side, keeping in mind that if he was, in fact, on camera, he couldn’t stay there too long, either, for risk of drawing attention to himself.
A rotunda—the apparently circular central hub of the facility, from which all of the individual cellblocks branched out like the spokes of a giant wagon wheel, with one large central control facility in the middle that had plastiglass walls all around that would allow for constant observation of the entire rotunda by the who-knew-how-many officers who manned it. Somewhere out there among those doors that led into the cellblocks was one door beyond which he would find his way out. The trick was going to be finding that door without appearing as though he’d had to look for it—should he go to his left or to his right?—and then reaching it and making his way out of the rotunda without being challenged. The only thing that he felt sure of at that moment was the very real fact that if he didn’t make good his escape this time, he would probably never get another chance to try.
He leaned in a little closer to the window to get a better look. The rotunda appeared to be octagonal rather than truly circular, with the door to the control center one segment to the left of directly ahead—at the 7:30 position, if he was at the 6:00 position. If, by chance, that door stood directly across from the rotunda exit door, then he wasn’t going to have to walk very far through the rotunda at all. He’d be in and out fairly quickly...assuming, of course, that he could actually get through that exit door. There was nothing within view to indicate that that was going to be the case, but neither was there anything to indicate that it wasn’t. All that he could see from his current vantage point were the control center and four of the other seven walls, and all four of those walls appeared to have heavy-duty doors that led into cellblocks. The control center blocked his view of the wall directly across from him, and he couldn’t see well enough through that narrow window to see the walls to his immediate left and right. Given the layout of the floor below, though, the elevator must have stood in the wall to the right.
So, four out of eight walls, plus the one behind which he was standing. That made five walls eliminated. The way out was either to his immediate left or right, or directly across the rotunda. The elevator probably stood to his immediate right, so he felt confident enough to eliminate that wall as well. That left him with two choices—directly across the rotunda, or to his immediate left. The control center door stood to the left, perhaps facing the exit.
He made his decision. He would go left. Even if he ended up having to walk all of the way around to the opposite side, going left would make just as much sense as going right.
Unless doing so violated some kind of standard procedure.
He’d been standing there for far too long. He had to move. He touched the door. The light bar turned green, the locking mechanism clicked, and the door slid aside. He drew a deep breath and exhaled, then lowered his head once more and stepped out into the rotunda, turned left, and started walking toward the door in the next wall. It looked just like the rest of them, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he’d made the wrong decision. It might still have been the right door, but if it did lead him into a cellblock, then he’d deal with that...somehow.
He could almost feel the eyes of the officers in the control center on him as he walked, but he was careful to both maintain his leisurely pace and not look over at them. If any one of them grew suspicious enough to take a closer look at him and then realized that he wasn’t who he was pretending to be, he was done. He would have liked to take a quick look across the rotunda, just long enough to get a look at that one last door, just to make sure that it wasn’t the way out, but he didn’t dare.
