Red Cells

TEN: SEVERED

“Just like it told me,” Stake said. “It’s sentient. It can communicate intelligently.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve communicated with it yourself, haven’t you? What have you two talked about, warden? Did you tell it how I’m ‘stirring things up’?” Stake smiled grimly. “Is that why it came to my cell to target me, specifically?”

“I’ve wasted enough time talking with you about this as it is,” Cirvik said. He switched his attention to the guard. “Flaquita, do you trust me?”

”Ah, yes sir, of course, but… I got to tell you, I really don’t know what you two are going on about.”

“Right now you just need to trust me and realize that Stake here is a dangerous man, who has exacerbated an already dangerous situation…”

Stake cut in, “Flaquita, you better trust me on this. Cirvik is in over his head with something he’s trying to keep from the authorities. If you back him up, he’ll just drag you down with him.”

Cirvik stood up from behind his desk abruptly, and thrust out a handgun he had surreptitiously removed from a desk drawer. “He’s going to attack me, Flaquita – shoot him!”

“Sir, hold it, hold on a second!” Flaquita cried, putting a hand on the grip of his own pistol.

“Stop him!” Stake shouted. He had begun dodging behind the guard the moment he saw Cirvik tense himself to bolt up from his seat.

Flaquita hesitated, alarmed enough to pull his sidearm from its holster but still too intimidated to raise it against the warden. Cirvik, however, didn’t hesitate any longer in using his own weapon. His pistol was a throwback, a Decimator .220 revolver, but its cylinder was loaded with plasma capsules. Green plasma, the most corrosive. He fired off three shots in rapid succession, the unsilenced handgun booming in the confined room.

The snub-nosed gun was inaccurate and Cirvik was nervous. The first capsule missed Flaquita and hit the wall behind him. The second struck him in the helmet. As Flaquita finally brought up his own gun and squeezed off a single energy bolt, the third capsule burst against the knuckles of his hand closed around the pistol’s grip.

Cirvik was slammed back against the rear wall of his office, the short length of red beam having punched through one eye socket. With the tendrils there crisped black and shriveled, the warden slid lifelessly down the wall, out of sight behind his desk.

Stake eased Flaquita to the floor, at the same time struggling to get his helmet off before the glowing plasma could eat all the way through it. Flaquita was screaming in fear at the prospect, and in agony as the fingers of his right hand were melted down to nubs. He had dropped his pistol to the carpet. They both knew that if the plasma continued to spread, the guard might lose his entire arm or worse before it spent itself.

When Stake had got the man’s helmet off and seen that Flaquita’s face was still intact, he spun, dashed to the far wall where Cirvik had slid down, and swung the sizzling helmet against the glass sheet covering the framed Tikkihotto axe. The glass shattered. He dropped the helmet, pulled the colorful e-ikko off its brackets, and before rushing back to Flaquita’s side stooped to retrieve the warden’s fallen revolver. Unlike the guards’ guns with the safety feature that prevented them from being fired by anyone but their owner, Stake could make use of this.

As he crouched beside the writhing, shrieking guard, he said, “Sorry I hid behind you… I didn’t think he’d go that far.” It was obvious to Stake – and he hoped to Flaquita, also – that when Stake had proved an elusive target, Cirvik had made the quick decision to kill Flaquita first, to eliminate a witness to Stake’s accusations and to frame Stake before killing him, too.

Stake knelt on Flaquita’s arm, pinning it to the floor. The plasma had already eaten away most of the palm. As Stake raised the tomahawk above the man’s wrist, he asked, “You ready for this?”

“Do it!” Flaquita cried.

When the two men stepped out into the corridor, Flaquita’s good arm draped over Stake’s shoulders, Stake saw a robot guard standing there facing them, blocking their passage. He had no doubt it was the same guard Cirvik had dismissed from his office earlier.

Hoping for the best, Stake stopped and said, “Hey, help me get this guy to the infirmary!”

The guard started walking toward them with jerky but rapid steps. Stake saw its red-lit eyes flickering. Its arms came up, fingers spread, reminding him of the bony digits of the nightmare figure that had come for him in his cell.

Stake dropped the bloody tomahawk he was still carrying, drew the Decimator from his waistband, and extended it toward the oncoming machine. He fired two of his three remaining projectiles at the robot’s head. It was struck in its blank face and between those guttering eyes. The capsules burst, releasing their phosphorescent contents.

The robot kept coming, wearing a luminous caul, but after only a couple more steps it veered off to one side and crashed to the floor, its limbs thrashing in a wild seizure. As the plasma ate deeper into the robot’s head, the seizure abruptly ceased and the machine went still.

At that moment, something arose like a wisp of white smoke from a growing hole in the automaton’s metal skull. The white shape swam upwards, wiggling its eel-like tail. Stake drew in his breath, bracing himself for another attack. Just one shot left, and would plasma even work against this thing?

The animal continued upwards, however, toward a small air vent in the ceiling, and wriggled its flat body through the grate. Whether it would travel to another part of the prison through the ventilation system, or at some point of egress work its way outside to rejoin its brethren, Stake couldn’t know, but when the creature was gone he dropped his gaze to the windows lining the corridor.

Along both sides of the tunnel, interstitial life-forms had drawn close enough to touch the curved windows, peering in at the two men inscrutably.

“Come on,” Stake said to prompt the moaning, half-delirious Flaquita into movement again.

As they stumbled along – Stake trying not to look nervously to left or right, and Flaquita holding his hastily bandaged arm against his chest – the guard groaned, “You’re my witness, man, you hear me? I killed him in self defense.”

“I’ll be your witness if you’ll be my witness.”

“We’d better both stay alive, then.”

“I’m working on it.”

Stake wondered if the creatures could simply pass through the solid material of the windows if they so chose, or if they had to find their way into the prison through other means. Were they refraining from attacking the two men right now, or just incapable of it?

Whatever the case, the men reached the far end of the tunnel safely, and Stake felt relief when the door slid shut behind him. That is, until two guards turned a corner ahead and came running toward him, guns already drawn. Flaquita’s helmet with its communication mic was ruined, but before they’d left the office, in a clear-headed moment, Flaquita had used his wrist comp to call for assistance.

“You!” one of the guards bellowed. “Freeze!”

Stake dropped the revolver and slid it toward the approaching guards with his foot. “Hurry up,” he said. “We need to get him to the infirmary.”

“Set him down!” the guard ordered, still training his gun on Stake. Stake realized this man was Hurley.

“Take it easy,” Flaquita told Hurley. “Just help him get me to the fucking doctor.”

“Yeah,” Stake said, “I need to go with you. I have some questions for the doctor.”