2


The warden’s office was nice. Threats about having me executed seemed abstract and distant compared to having to leave. I walked around the room until I found the liquor cabinet and opened it. Pulling out a bottle, I looked over my shoulder at Briggs. “You mind?” I asked.
He glared at me. “Stop fucking around. You went AWOL and killed seventeen people. There’s a reason you’re on death row. Frankly, talking to you makes me want to toss my lunch.” The commander’s eyes lingered on my prosthetic—a deadly tool when the nerve-ware wasn’t being disrupted by BMSP safety protocols.
I twisted the cork out, grinding my teeth and resisting the urge to turn the bottle into a weapon. He had to realize I could beat him to death before his QRF made it through the door. “They were gangsters and they murdered my father and a bunch of other people I grew up with. Bastards, every last one of them, and they deserved what I gave them.”
“Doesn’t matter what they did. That’s why we have a justice system. You had no right to go full vigilante. You did, however, have an obligation to stay with your unit and follow orders.”
“Briggs, my unit conducted counterinsurgencies, kidnappings, and assassinations. You’re gonna honestly stand there and tell me there’s a difference?” I raised my brow as we locked eyes. “Don’t be so naive.”
“You know there is,” he answered, overlooking my use of his name instead of his title. “Screwed up as the galaxy might be, and no matter how unfair you think it is, society operates on law and order. You killed—”
“I’ve killed a lot more than seventeen people and you know it. Some of them”—I spared him a glance—“I killed for you.”
He shrugged. “During a state of war, but those were never personal. Even if you ignore the law, that’s the difference.”
I drank from the bottle. The amber liquid burned all the way down.
He continued. “I didn’t come here to ask you. You’re doing this mission, one way or another.”
I looked at the bottle of allegedly expensive whiskey. “Someone needs to tell the warden he got robbed. This is horse piss.”
Briggs didn’t take the bait. I put the bottle down and faced him. “Did you read the part of my file where I don’t respond well to authority figures?”
“That’s why I never liked you. When you were in spec ops, the officers were always complaining about your shitty attitude.”
“I’m not doing your mission. Go get your little lost sheep yourself.”
He sighed, pausing a moment before finally shaking his head. “Wrong answer, Cain.”
* * *
As beatings went, the one I received after telling Commander Briggs off was one for the record books. There was a lot of profanity and cracks about his mother and certain animals. Maybe I taunted the guards a bit more than I should have, but I didn’t think it was a stretch to assume they enjoyed the company of wild boars. I mean, it certainly would have explained a few things.
Curling into a ball in the corner of my cell where I was sometimes allowed to take a less than private shower did nothing to stop the bleeding or slow the swelling. Something heavier than mist but less dense than actual water came down from the ceiling and rinsed a layer of the blood and grime from my face and body. It was cold, so I was confident it wasn’t urine this time.
Fucking guards.
I couldn’t blame this on Briggs, no matter what kind of unfair asshole he was. Spec ops doesn’t stoop to bullying. They’d have given me a chance to fight back. Code of honor and all that.
Regardless, I was a fucking mess right now and seriously wondered if a different answer would have saved me a beating. Hadn’t had one like this in months.
Boot marks decorated my body. I held up my left arm and examined it, the worst of my pain originating there. The tread impressions were nearly perfect. I could track a man across a planet from prints like that.
Breathe, Cain. Forget about it. Figure out what you need to do.
As I lay there, my mind swam with options while I tried to work out what to do next. I was damn sure about two things: I was sick of this place, and Commander Briggs wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Clearly.
Telling him to fornicate with a razor boar hadn’t been smart. All I got was a serious ass-beating, and I would still have to do what they wanted.
Well, maybe I didn’t have to, but they’d keep this up until I either agreed to it or died. One of those two options was preferable to the other. I just had to decide which.
What exactly had they lost on Dreadmax? Based on all of this, it sure didn’t seem like some no-name doctor.
What I should’ve done was rest until they sent me one of their poorly educated, underpaid medics. I’d probably get some decent pain meds and stitches.
The problem was time. Whatever Briggs had in store for me was going to happen soon. I needed to have his secrets figured out before then.
I’d heard of humanitarian missions to prisons. Some of my best conversations since arriving here had been with do-good volunteers. I wished I’d asked what kind of doctor this mysterious good Samaritan was supposed to be. For now, I assumed he was a medical doctor and that it was possible he went to the worst penitentiary in the galaxy to do good deeds.
Laughing hurt and I spent several minutes trying to stop. Everything Briggs said was half-truth. He wanted me to find someone, and that someone was important. What I needed to know was what Briggs planned to do with me when it was over.
Fuck it. Anyplace was better than here. I’d rather go on a mission to hell than spend one more night in this cell, which made me wonder why I’d refused.
I crawled to my bed and pulled the scratchy blanket over my battered form. Several revelations occurred at the moment I was slipping into unconsciousness. The doctor was probably actually a scientist who had been doing some illegal shit where no one thought it would matter.
Which basically made it a mission for someone in dark ops. Someone expendable. It might even be a mission for a Reaper.
* * *
“Inmate Cain, you are required to wake up. You’ve slept one minute and nineteen seconds past reveille. If you do not move from your bunk in five seconds, I will be forced to initiate a stimulus,” said the voice of CIM in my ear.
By stimulus, he meant one hell of a shock delivered into my spine. Not lethal or even debilitating but very unpleasant. I’d had worse, like the time a pissed-off guard stepped on my face.
“Please acknowledge, Inmate Cain.”
“Yeah, yeah. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the man.”
“Correct,” replied the CIM.
“What do you think, X?”
“Please refrain from attempting contact with your X-37 Reaper AI,” the CIM said.
Neither the CIM nor X-37 were true artificial intelligences. Their specs listed them as limited AIs. Within that broad designation, there was a world of variation. A CIM was like a more sophisticated ankle bracelet. X-37 was completely different. It helped me navigate strange worlds and murder people—a standard of usefulness the CIM could only dream of.
“Do you really want to risk contact?” X-37 said, his voice sounding distant and scratchy. As part of my cybernetic upgrades, he couldn’t be removed, only quarantined. But Reaper implants like X-37 rarely came without a downside. Interaction with X brought certain consequences.
“Please check the earbud, Inmate Cain. I’m losing connectivity with BMSP servers,” the CIM ordered.
The earbud was only an antenna. The actual hardware was wired someplace I’d never found.
I massaged the earbud. “What’s on the schedule, X? I’m tired of CIM. Make him shut the fuck up.”
X-37 made a quiet beep that indicated he was about to give me information. It was a weird glitch that I attributed to damage from an earlier mission.
“You are to remain in your cell for a visitor.”
“Details?”
“None available at this time.”
Another alert warned me I didn't have much time to shit and shower. I only wished I could shave, but that was something they did for me during medical checkups.
Thankfully, the military had taught me to be quick and efficient. As a result, I had some idle time before my visitor arrived.
“Are you daydreaming, Reaper Cain?” asked X-37.
“You got a problem with that?”
“Sometimes your heart rate increases. At other times, it decreases. It makes it difficult for me to anticipate your needs.” A pause. “I don’t have the capacity for imagination.”
“Not really my problem,” I muttered. “But thanks for interrupting.”
“Insincerity and sarcasm detected,” acknowledged the A.I.
* * *
There were things an inmate could do besides stare into space when there was nothing but time. I’d tried them all. When I was bored with dreams and old memories, I would perform physical and mental exercises or meditate. There wasn't time for the former at the moment, so I did some stretching and then sat cross-legged on my bed to calm myself.
“Your heart rate is forty-six beats per minute and your respiration steady,” noted X-37.
“I didn’t really need to know that, but thanks for the insight.”
“You’re welcome, Reaper Cain.”
The paint inside Ultramax IX was tan, I thought. Or maybe it was just dirty. Didn’t matter. I knew the look of every crack in the veneer. Underneath the paint was nothing but engineered concrete reinforced with steel—a simple design made to last.
This place was made to keep people like me locked away forever. A depressing thought, but there it was.
Good thing I was going on a field trip.
At the end of the hallway, far out of my view, one of the main doors opened. It had that sound of a heavy slab of metal slamming. Men were talking, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Footsteps.
Another door.
Warning klaxons ringing overhead.
The door to death row.
If I were paranoid, I’d have assumed my visitor was taking his or her—let's be hopeful here—sweet time to make me feel a little more uncomfortable. Add a little dramatic effect for whatever show they were about to give me.
That would make them stupid, though, because no one knew the waiting game better than an inmate on this block.
"Inmate Cain, your heart rate is accelerating. Are you anticipating a confrontation?" asked CIM.
"That's none of your business, but sure. Why not? Why would I think I might be beaten or interrogated or put in isolation? Like that’s ever happened," I mocked.
By the time I ended the conversation with my cybernetic monitor, I'd identified who was coming to see me. Made me proud, actually. It'd been a while since I'd identified a person by the sound of their footsteps.
Frederick Eugene Grady, one of my old spec op buddies, sent the guards back the way they’d come so we could have some privacy. He moved closer and talked to me through the bars.
"You can come in if you want," I said.
He laughed. "You never change, Hal. From what Briggs tells me, this is a waste of time anyway. I'm not sure why we bother to ask when we can just put a gun to your head."
I smirked. “You always were a smooth talker, Feg.”
“You know I hate that name.”
I shrugged. “Life’s hard, then you die in a maximum-security prison—as the victim of a scientific experiment. Or, best of all, fighting for the Union, who doesn’t give two—”
“You know you don’t have a choice,” he interrupted. “Take the mission or you’ll get lethal injections tomorrow—and they’ll be poorly administered. Sick bastards know how to make it pure torture. They saved you specifically for something like this. If you won’t cooperate, why bother with such a huge pain in the ass?” Grady asked.
“Fuck off, Feg.” I used his initials because he hated the nickname, which meant that was all we called him before dark ops recruited me from spec ops.
“Could you use my real name one time?”
“We’re done,” I said, firmly.
“Remember AIT? Those were good times,” he said. “Back when we were soldiers for the Union with nothing but bad pay to complain about.”
The room was too hot and I was tired of working out in the corner and staring at the ceiling after lights out. Talking to myself. Imagining life outside this cell. Dreaming of a chance to go on a mission.
“What’s it gonna be, Hal?”
“I don’t work for the Union anymore.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said with a huff, exasperation filling his voice.
“It is.”
* * *
Sitting on death row was one thing. Getting served notice was another. My seventeen-month-old appeal was thrust onto the fast-track—reviewed and denied about five seconds after I refused the suicide mission. Briggs woke a judge up with a secure gal-net link and put a rush on circumvention of every constitutionally guaranteed protection of my due process.
“Union prosecutors followed every law to the letter. But they know people and how to get things done,” Briggs said, leaning against the back wall like neither of us were killers and I wasn’t about to get tortured to death.
“How long, Doctor?” he asked.
“Not long now. I’m drawing up anti-anxiety meds to calm the patient before we begin.” The doctor looked like a mad scientist. He only worked about three days a year and didn’t shave or brush his teeth during his enforced sabbatical—or so it seemed.
“Inmate,” Briggs corrected.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Halek Cain is an inmate condemned to death, not a patient,” explained Briggs.
“Of course.”
“Tell me I’m wrong, Hal,” Briggs said.
I ignored him. Other things occupied my thoughts—restraints that were too tight, the exact layout of the rooms and hallways between my cell and the execution chamber, shitty food.
It was unfair as hell but no surprise. My last meal—steak and potatoes—had tasted bland and I was pretty sure most of the guards had spit in it.
Or worse.
There wasn’t a way to escape this. Once, about halfway here, I thought that if I could get past the cafeteria into the maintenance locker room…
“Hey, I’ve been thinking,” I said, suddenly.
The death doctor stopped with one hand on the lethal injection switch. Briggs glared at me. The audience behind the one-way glass probably put down their wine glasses.
“I’ll do it. Send me to Dreadmax. I’ll find your stupid scientist.”
Briggs almost looked disappointed, but I knew him well enough to understand he was pissed I forced him to take this all the way to the end of the line before giving in.
“Doctor,” Briggs said.
“Sir?”
“Get out.”
“I really can’t do that,” said the doc, shaking his head. “There are procedures. Concerns for the welfare of anyone about to be pardoned or otherwise take a plea bargain.”
“If you don’t get out, I’ll snap your neck,” Briggs replied in an emotionless tone.
That did the trick. The doctor scurried to the door. “Leaving now. Just don’t pull out any of the intravenous tubes unless you have the training to do so.”
“Out,” repeated Briggs.
Moments later, I was alone with the spec ops commander.
He crossed his arms. “No more games. If you take this deal, I expect your professional best until we’re done.”
“As long as you don’t ask me to kill anyone. This is a hostage rescue all the way.”
“It’s going to get rough. You may have to fight.”
“That’s different. I’ll do what it takes to keep myself alive, but I’m not doing political assassinations or cleansing,” I said.
“Fine,” he agreed with a reluctant, albeit relieved tone. “Be a killer with a conscience. Whatever flies your ship, but finish the mission and do what we need. That’s all anyone cares about.”
“I’ll get it done,” I told him.
“Excellent,” he said. “Then I guess I should say welcome to the team, you stubborn bastard.”