The octagon box set, p.11
The Octagon Box Set, page 11
part #1 of The Octagon Series
The peeling away had begun.
Now conscious and slumped in the chair, both his feet and his hands were restrained, he knew. In front of him, four shapes came into focus: a smiling Magnus Krell and three Enforcers. There was no De Soto. The Enforcers had their weapons pointed directly at Kobe, a more powerful assault rifle variant of Kobe’s Coded Side Arm. They had lured him into the trap then shot him in the back with some form of shock weapon.
Krell held up the tracker implant between his thumb and forefinger. In the other hand, he held a PDA. De Soto’s PDA.
“I expected more from you, Officer Kobe,” he said, clicking his tongue in disappointment. “Don’t worry, the effects of the shock weapon will wear off.”
“Where is De Soto?” Kobe croaked, still groggy, the sour taste of bile on his lips.
With a slight gesture of Krell’s hand, two more Enforcers appeared, dragging something between them. They reached Kobe and let go of the lifeless body of De Soto at his feet. It collapsed in a heap, like a carcass, dead weight, lifeless.
“She put up one hell of a fight, mind you,” said Krell as he moved closer, shaking his head in mock pity. “Such a shame,” he continued, regarding the body of De Soto, “I could have had some fun with her.”
It began as the size of a pinprick, at the base of Kobe’s neck, then grew millimeter by millimeter as it clawed its way up the back of his skull, building in size and intensity. It reached his forehead, then split into two separate lines just below the skin’s surface. Then it travelled across each temple then down each side of his face, across the line of his jaw and then settled deep within his clenched teeth, forming a snarl of pure hatred at Magnus Krell.
“Good,” Krell said, “I like your anger, keep feeding it. You will need it.” Krell gestured to one of the Enforcers. They shouldered their rifle and unclipped their shock baton. It buzzed to life, glowing with intensity, and they approached Kobe.
“What are you going to do with me?” Kobe snarled at Krell, his eyes fixed on the advancing Enforcer, shock baton held out in front, now only inches from Kobe’s face. “You can’t kill me. People will know. They will find out.” He could feel the waves of electricity rippling and arcing close to his skin. The air crackling and distorting with the charge.
“Oh no. I’m not going to kill you,” Krell mused. “That would be too easy.”
Kobe turned his face away from the baton as it was brought closer, almost touching his face. He strained against his restraints, trying to lean away from the danger, but his hands and feet were clamped tight by another Enforcer from behind, holding the chair tightly in place.
“You want to know how the girl died, don’t you? The girl you found in the alleyway. I’m going to show you the path that she took. Where she came from,” Krell continued, leaning in closer to Kobe’s face, enjoying his fear. “I am going to grant you your wish, Officer Kobe,” Krell said.
Nearly all of Kobe’s vision was blinded by the searing light of the shock baton, so close to his face. But his eyes fixed on Krell’s face, distorted in the white glow, memorizing every feature, burning it into his memory, so he would never forget as he made a silent vow to kill him.
“I’m going to send you to hell,” Krell whispered.
Part II
Exile
Cadet Log Entry #43: June 2039
Subject: Jon Kobe, 18, Male.
Status: First Year Cadet – Law Enforcement Academy (LEA)
Precinct: 1- New Los Angeles
Competency: Offender Classification & Processing
They shouldn’t be scared. It’s the best thing for them. They will understand that once they have been reconditioned and return. I saw hundreds of them today at a transfer station, waiting for their turn to board the air transport. Most of them looked like offenders: their heads hung low, faces creased with meanness and contempt. Eyes that offered nothing but took everything. Real criminals who paid for their ticket through wreaking pain and suffering on the undeserving. They deserve to be waiting in line.
Then there were those who looked like they didn’t belong. I don’t know what their offence was but they just looked out of place. These were the families with children clinging to their parent’s legs, bewildered looks on their faces. Obviously it’s their parents who broke the law.
We were told that everyone returns from Exile a better person. Their offences are wiped and they won’t reoffend. Order in society is paramount, that’s why reconditioning is better than incarceration, and we simply don’t have the space to house every person who offends.
They just need to understand that it’s for their own good.
I’m drawn back to the face of the child again, her eyes rimmed red from crying, clinging to her mother’s skirt, a tattered bear of some sort held upside down by one leg in her tiny hand. Maybe the children are looked after on Exile whilst the parents undergo the reconditioning process. Yes, that makes sense. They will then all get reunited and return to the mainland as one happy family. Perhaps if they see what happens when their mother or father offends, then it will deter them from doing the same when they are adults.
Yet I still don’t understand why the children are there as well…
1
Kobe awoke with a start, his fists clenching the sheets on the bed. His eyes just narrow slits, blurred by tacky mucus, and rental fluid distorting his vision. He could feel cool air on his skin and the clean sterile smell of medical care and attention.
He was in a room, small and stark white, minimalistic. Tubes ran into both his arms, feeding him fluids. A bank of wide display panels curved to his left near his bed, monitoring his vitals, biometric data crawling across each screen like seismic activity forming multicolored peaks and troughs. A window to his right, thin blinds letting in muted light. The hum of cool ventilation, the pings of monitoring machines, secure and reassuring smells. He felt safe in this cocoon.
A figure loomed in his blurred vision. Just an outline, but not large, not menacing. “How are we today?” said a soft and caring voice. Gentle. Compassionate. Female.
His mouth was dry, like he had swallowed coarse gravel, and his lips were caked together.
Sensing this, the figure shifted and grew in size. He felt a plastic tube slip between his cracked lips, parting them, then a cool liquid being squeezed into his mouth, over his dry tongue and down his parched throat.
“Where am I?” His voice was a broken rasp, and he was shocked at how rough and fractured he sounded. There was a pause, then a warm touch on his forearm, a reassuring hand, a vague scent, fresh and floral. Small delicate fingers. A voice again. Definitely a woman’s voice.
“Welcome to Exile, Mr. Kobe.”
The ancient diesel cargo truck drove along the dirt road that meandered through the flat countryside with scattered forests in the distance. In the back, Kobe sat on one of the timber benches. With the canvas soft-top pulled back, he watched the sun arc through the clear morning sky. The air was cool and fragrant with earth and pine needles. There was some solace for spending the last few days recuperating in the infirmary from his injuries. His muscles still felt dulled from the electric shock weapon that was used on him. The nurse assured him that this would fade over time and the soreness would be gone. It was a common aftereffect of neuromuscular incapacitation, she explained. Little comfort to him. He vowed that if anyone tried that again on him, he would disarm them and use their own weapon on them himself.
The days crawled by slowly in the infirmary. Nurses came and went, checked his vitals, fed him, helped him to shower and to empty his bowels. A complete loss of modesty and total dependency was the prescription he had been given for his condition. It even surprised Kobe how much his genitals had shrunk during his recovery and imagined it was a fate suffered by most males when hospitalized.
Just the act of standing unassisted in the first few days was difficult. His legs felt like jelly and the dizzy spells were frequent. One nurse, the first nurse who tended to him, said he was lucky. The electric shock level he had endured should have killed him. It had left a burn mark on his back between his shoulder blades despite his body armor. Maybe the insulation of the body armor had helped. Kobe wasn’t sure if his standard issue body armor was designed to take a hit in the back from an Enforcer’s pulse rifle. No one expected such a thing to happen, so would they incorporate such safety measures into the design? After all, weren’t they on the same side?
Whilst helping him in the shower, all modesty gone, the nurse said she had never seen someone shot in the back before. This only added fuel to Kobe’s anger. He wanted to face his opponent, on fair ground on equal terms, not be shot by some gutless sneak who crept up behind him like a coward.
Despite his best efforts, Kobe could not glean any more information out of her, except that her name was Wren and he was on Exile, the offshore containment and reconditioning facility run by Octagon. He had been issued with his own personal Reconditioning Order, and how long he stayed here depended on him. To his disbelief, he was now classified as an “offender” in need of reconditioning. This infuriated Kobe even more. He shouldn’t be here, he had done nothing wrong.
The memory of De Soto’s limp, dead body, collapsed in front of him, discarded like a piece of meat was still fresh in his memory, haunting his sleepless nights in the infirmary. He found sleep nearly impossible and refused any oral medication to help.
Why had she needed to die? What had she seen? Questions churned over and over in Kobe’s head as he lay awake at night, looking out the small window in his room, the moonlight slit into prison bars across his face by the thin window blinds.
Whilst his body was injured, damaged and healing, his mind was not. It was working overtime, trying to piece together the last few days. The tortured body of the dead girl, what Winston had told him about the veneer of society, that the layers of harmony, prosperity and order were covering a bitter and ugly truth. The world, his world, seemed so far, so distant from where he found himself now. He had been in control, controlling others, keeping the order. Now he had no control. He was at the complete mercy of others and he hated that.
On the third day in the infirmary, a suit-wearing Octagon executive arrived to explain a few simple rules to Kobe, for his own benefit, of course. The company man named Preston said that he would get a full orientation once he was transferred to the main compound. Once again, a deliberate choice of words, the language used to strip your new life of all its resemblance to your past. Words like offender, facility, compound and transfer. Words designed to make you never forget your new position in life, your new label. Orange prisoner overalls, armed escorts, manacles. He had been marked, branded as a criminal.
Everything was designed to tear down your self-esteem, make you feel inferior, be compliant and subservient. Kobe knew the drill, he knew the law enforcement psychology. It was drummed into him at the Academy. The faster you could make a person feel like an offender, like a criminal, like they had done something wrong, the easier it was to control and manipulate them. Even if they were completely innocent, like how he felt right now.
The company man explained two simple rules. You run, you die. You disobey you die. That was it. Zero tolerance for breaking these two rules. Follow them and your time on Exile would be short. Disobey them and your time on Exile would be even shorter.
Kobe didn’t know exactly where the truck was going down the dirt road, except that it was to the “main compound,” whatever that was. He was flanked on each side by two huge Enforcers. Their ghost-white liquid body armor rippled and flexed as the truck bounced and pitched, rifles cradled in their hands and shock batons dangling from their hips.
Seeing the shock batons made Kobe even angrier. What had he done? He was a law enforcement officer now being shadowed between two Enforcers like a common criminal, his white infirmary gown now replaced by orange prisoner overalls, hands manacled in front. Over his shoulder was slung a rough canvas duffle bag that carried his basic kit: a few toiletries and one spare change of orange overalls.
Wonderful.
No need to chain his feet, Kobe thought. Where would he go? Where would he run to? He’d been told that the Exile facility was on an island, miles from the mainland, miles in fact from anywhere. Running was pointless.
You run, you die.
Even if he ran, Kobe guessed he would get about ten feet before they shot him. Maybe they would make an example of him, put on a show and just beat him to death with their batons this time. Stealing a quick sideways glance, Kobe noted that the two Enforcers carried enough firepower to wipe out a small army. He had practiced with rifles on the shooting range during basic weapons training. But he had never seen anything like the kind of rifle that the two Enforcers had pointed at him. Cerakote polymer frame of urban dark earth, compact short barrel, retractable butt stock, with some type of optical holographic laser sight mounted on the top rail. Obviously the Octagon labs had developed some advanced weapons not made available for law enforcement use.
In addition, these Enforcers were dressed differently compared to the Enforcers in Central City. They carried more equipment on them, and their full-face helmets were orange with iridescent visors, the Octagon insignia emblazoned on their chest plate and on each shoulder cuff. It was just a law enforcement habit, once again drilled into Kobe’s head at the Academy. Quickly assess your enemy, find their strengths, exploit their weaknesses. These people were now his enemies, not his allies. They had made that choice not him.
As the truck bounced and swerved along the road, dust billowing in its wake, Kobe was still contemplating the two rules in the back of his mind whilst the Enforcers sat stoically watching him. There was now only one rule that he needed to follow: stay alive.
The terrain was relatively flat and the dirt road cut a swath through unkempt grasslands. There were densely wooded areas in the distance, but apart from the squat, bricked infirmary building that was diminishing behind Kobe as they drove, there were no other apparent buildings or structures nearby. After thirty minutes, the dirt road began to incline as the truck labored up a small ridge, struggling in lower gear, the wheels slipping then biting into the dirt again. Once over the rise at the top, the land fell away and the vista opened up before Kobe into a stunning expanse of open glade, forest and a rugged coastline of jagged black rock. Kobe felt his spirits fall as he took in the view and the endless stretch of desolate ocean that surrounded the coast.
He was truly isolated on Exile.
Below, in the distance, he could see a crater-like indentation, a huge man-made clearing in the forest that was ringed with a tall fence and guard towers. As they continued down the slope on the other side towards the compound, Kobe could make out an assortment of demountable buildings, in neat rows that looked like barracks, within the fenced compound. There were various service buildings, and what looked like a large outdoor training square. Off to one side was a squat white building with a roof bristling with antennae and radar domes. Beside the white building was a cluster of satellite dishes, their huge concave pans tilted skyward, like giant sunflower heads, following the track of the sun.
But what had Kobe’s attention was that the entire compound was nestled under the shadow of a massive spire of conical rock that stretched up like a spike, piercing the skin of the earth. The base of the spire was covered with dense, wooded forest that gave way to steep slopes of grey-blue granite rock compacted into angular edges of stone that spiraled to a peak. Patches of snow dusted the peak that was wreathed in a layer of mist like the rings of Saturn. The pinnacle of rock looked as hard as iron, as cold and as unforgiving as glacial ice and as treacherous as volcanic rock.
As the fenced compound loomed closer, Kobe felt the first slithers of doubt in his gut. It did not look like a place of reconditioning or rehabilitation. It looked more like place of pain and suffering. A place you never returned from.
2
The truck came to a stop at the main gate to the compound and Kobe was prodded with a rifle butt to get out. He almost fell out the back of the truck, but regained his footing just as the two Enforcers jumped down and manhandled him upright. The huge main gate slid back and he was marched into the main compound area under the watchful stare of an armed Enforcer positioned high in one of the many guard towers that punctuated the twelve-foot-tall perimeter fence.
You run, you die.
Kobe noticed a sign that hung under the main gate arch. The large letters were roughly laser etched into checker-plate steel:
“From the time you arrive on Exile, endure Exile and eventually leave Exile, you will be a changed person.”
The words resonated in Kobe’s mind. He wondered what they meant and if he was about to find out.
They continued along a central road of grey broken concrete that ran through the center of the compound. They passed the barracks Kobe had seen from the truck. Squat, simple but functional, made of hewn timber and corrugated iron. He counted only four and they looked like they would only house a dozen or so people. Where did everyone else go? There were supposed to be thousands of people here, not just a few dozen. Maybe this was just one of many compounds all around the island.
On the other side of the road, Kobe saw a large concrete apron with landing markings painted in the middle, probably where an air-transport could land and take off. Behind this, in the distance, backing onto the forest, was a long man-made ridge, a wall of built-up soil that ran part of the length of one side, with a line of equally spaced turning silhouette targets. An outdoor firing range.
