Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  "You need to stop building these houses."

  CHAPTER 17: THE PRISONER

  "Please, sir. Please. Please! Tell me. Tell me about my son."

  His voice was broken, and he knew the guard would ignore him, but he still had to try.

  The man in the cell to the right of him was bawling like a baby.

  "I'm innocent! I'm innocent! You have the wrong man! It's all a conspiracy! I was framed! Framed, I tell you! Framed! I'm a good Southern Robotics man! I worked for the company for twenty years!"

  The woman to his left sobbed and sobbed.

  "Please! Food! Food! Please! I need food!"

  "Water! Water! Please! Water!"

  "Clean my cell! It smells so bad! Please! Just clean my cell!"

  The prisoners' desperate cries echoed endlessly against the smooth white walls of their prison.

  They were given water only once a day and fed only one day in three. The chorus of desperate pleas had done nothing to change the ironclad schedule. Matthew could feel his ribs poking sharply against his skin.

  There were no toilets. They pissed and shit on the floor, although they were fed so little hardly anything ever came out. It still smelled horrible. Matthew's nose permanently burned. The cells hadn't been cleaned a single time.

  Matthew didn't care about food or water or a clean cell. He'd known this would happen.

  He just wanted news about his son.

  He just wanted to know if Luke had been told what happened. Luke's mother had left them years ago. She'd simply disappeared when he was at work, vanishing without even leaving a note. Things had been going poorly, but Matthew resented the fact that she hadn't left a note. Sometimes, Luke still asked if Matthew was going to leave him too.

  Of course he hadn't, at least not on purpose.

  He'd never leave.

  He had to let Luke know where he was.

  All he wanted to do was to pass on a note.

  "Your dad loves you very much. He's in jail right now. He'll see you again as soon as he gets out."

  Matthew was so damn tired, but when the guard walked past, he raised his voice with the rest of them, forcing the words past his cracked and bleeding lips.

  He ignored the smothering knowledge that Waters would try and keep them here forever for stealing his precious Paragons.

  The words were his only hope.

  He put everything he had into speaking them.

  "Please, sir. Please. Just a note to my son. Nothing else. I just want you to deliver a note to my son."

  The tall man walked silently past him, hardly making noise despite his ridiculous height. Every man in Southern Robotics's private Security Force was over six and a half feet tall. That was sort of strange - it should have been the colony's men instead of Southern Robotics's. Stock was probably wiping Waters's ass again.

  "Please! Please! Just a note! Please! Don't you have kids! You have to help me!"

  He begged until his voice cracked, but there was no response.

  There never was.

  The night of the quakes, the tall men had boasted endlessly about how clever they were to stake out the hospitals.

  But the silence began the next day.

  The guards stopped speaking. They started acting with a discipline Matthew had never seen before. Everyone on the assembly-line knew the guards were vicious hotheads. But just the other day, a guard simply turned and walked away when a prisoner spat in his face. He didn't even bother wiping it off. He just let it drop down onto his armor.

  Matthew took his water and drank hungrily. He had to be ready to shout when the guards returned tomorrow. Surely one of them would listen. Perhaps one of them was a father himself.

  The clink of a key suddenly echoed through the hall.

  The screaming grew louder.

  "Me! Me! Free me too!"

  "I'm innocent! Please! Please!"

  Matthew didn't say anything.

  They were bringing a new person in.

  It was the same thing every time they opened the cells.

  It was always to bring a new person in. Nobody had been released.

  It would be a very long time before any of them got out. The Governor cared about his Paragons more than anything else.

  "Please! Please!"

  "Free me! I didn't do anything! Please! Please let me go!"

  "A trial! I demand a trial!"

  Now they were getting annoying.

  Even if the guards were letting someone go, their pleas wouldn't change a thing. What the hell did they expect to happen? Did they really think the guard was just going to change his mind?

  The woman they dragged was screeching like a banshee.

  "Ghouls! Ghouls! I won't let you silence me! You're all a bunch of ghouls! You took my nephew! You turned him into a monster! I know you did! You evil fucks! Give him back! Give him back to me! Kidnappers! Southern Robotics is full of kidnappers and ghouls! Brainwashing! It was brainwashing!"

  The guards did not respond. The woman was dangling upside down in the air. One man had her by the arms. The other grabbed her legs.

  She was obviously a homeless person; she wore nothing but rags. Her long hair was dirty and stringy, and her skin was an unhealthy shade of gray. She was very old, with wrinkles and lines all over her face and bright blue veins that jutted prominently out of her arms and neck.

  The man to his right started shouting.

  "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, you homeless conspiracy theorist! Shut up!"

  Matthew wanted to go over and shut him up, but there were iron bars and solid white walls between them.

  "The conspiracy theorist can have my cell! I'm a loyal Southern Robotics man! I worked for the company for twenty years!"

  Matthew closed his eyes and tried tuning out his neighbor. He tried to concentrate on what the woman was saying.

  Every time they brought someone, it was a valuable opportunity to figure out what the hell was going on outside.

  "You reapers! Get your hands off of me you reapers! First you took my house! Then you took my nephew! All you want is to destroy the colony and take everything we own! Unhand me you fucking reapers! Give me back my nephew! You made him a silent one! Make him alright again!"

  "Shut up! Shut up and show some respect! Shut up with your conspiracy theories! Why would Southern Robotics need to take your house? The company can buy anything it wants!"

  Matthew took a deep breath.

  Taking houses?

  Capturing people?

  Brainwashing?

  His neighbor was right. It sounded ludicrous.

  But Matthew knew what he'd seen when he flew back to Block 8. All the assholes were fine, and nobody else was.

  "They've been experimenting on people! Even worse than the silent ones! There was a man with skin that cracked like glass!"

  The guards locked the door and filed out the room. Their steps were perfectly matched, two synchronized thuds that landed one after the other.

  "You're next! You're next! Don't think that your job makes you safe. He'll eat us all!"

  They left the room, completely ignoring her shouts.

  Other people had already tried the same thing.

  "They'll lock you up here next!"

  "Don't think you're safe just because you're a guard!"

  "Help us! Help us, and we'll help you later! They'll come for us all!"

  None of their desperate pleas and bargains had any effect.

  The man to his right should have known better than to dismiss the woman's words as a conspiracy theory.

  He was so fucking dense it hurt.

  The colony had just suffered a tremendous quake that had coincidentally destroyed only the parts of Plenty that Stock and Waters didn't give a shit about.

  Security Force members had waited outside hospitals to capture people trying to help their families.

  They were locked inside a cage with hardly any food and water. They were stewing in their own shit and hadn't heard a single word abou
t a trial.

  How could anyone possibly dismiss conspiracy theories when they were all living inside of one?

  ____

  The woman continued her screaming well after the guards left. She went on and on about the silent ones and Southern Robotics brainwashing. She claimed that after the company's experiments, her nephew returned to her Block and started tearing houses down with his bare hands.

  Matthew didn't know what to make of her ramblings.

  They sounded insane, but nothing could be crazier than the quake. Nothing could be crazier than Block 12.

  If Southern Robotics was willing to experiment with the whole colony, what stopped them from experimenting on individuals?

  She stopped by the third day.

  Matthew couldn't see her, but he could imagine her lying limply on the floor of her cell. It'd been the same with all of them. They realized that nobody cared and nobody was listening. They grew tired and hungry.

  The door opened.

  It was the third day.

  It was time to eat.

  The prisoners all screamed at once.

  "Save me! Save me!"

  "A trial! All I want is a trial!"

  "I confess! Let me go! I confess! Just kill me, I confess!"

  Matthew listened carefully for what the old lady would say, but it was the same as before. Her voice creaked as she spoke. She warned the guards to be careful. She told them that Southern Robotics could turn them into silent ones at any moment.

  The guards ignored her, dropping off her tray without a word. Whoever the silent ones were, they couldn't possibly be quieter than the tall armored men.

  The woman to Matthew's left started cursing the guards out at the top of her voice.

  "Fuck you! Eat shit and die! You can't do this to me! You can't do this! Let me out you assholes! Let me out!"

  There was no response. They moved on, and the tray clattered outside Matthew's cell.

  His words caught in his throat.

  Maybe he didn't want them to know where Luke was.

  Maybe it'd be best for his son to stay hidden.

  He was so hungry he immediately jammed the piece of bread into his mouth. He tried his best to force it down as quickly as possible. The taste and stench remained disgusting no matter how much they'd starved him.

  The bread came apart as soon as it touched his lips. The bitter taste wrangled his tongue. He gritted his teeth together, forcing himself to chew. The strands were tough and literally stringy. It felt like he was chewing on a shit-stained piece of rope. Matthew had never tasted anything so foul before. The food generator must have been deliberately tampered with, further punishment for damaging the Governor's precious Paragons.

  The door closed.

  The guards left.

  The hallway was empty.

  And then a lock began to jiggle.

  ____

  Just as before, the sound echoed along the stark white walls. Matthew crept up to the front of his cell and stared from side to side.

  The prison was so expansive that he couldn't see all the cells, but there wasn't a single guard.

  He couldn't believe his ears.

  Had the guards dropped a key?

  And then the pleas began.

  "Me! Me! Let me go! Save me!"

  "Craig! Craig! I was always a good neighbor!"

  "No! Don't let me behind! Save me too! Save me too!"

  The cell door clattered as it opened.

  The key clattered against a second lock and then a third.

  The entire cell block began to shout when they realized what was happening.

  "Me! Me! Let me go! Me!"

  "Please! Free me! Me!"

  "Me first! I'm innocent! I'm actually innocent!"

  They needed to shut the hell up.

  Didn't they realize the more noise they made, the more likely it was someone would find out?

  What if the guards doubled back?

  More cell doors opened. Footsteps thundered down the hall.

  "Thank you! Thank you!"

  "Me too! Don't forget about me!"

  Whoever got the key should have just left by himself. If the guards came back, he and everyone else caught out of their cells would die. He should just keep his damn head down. He needed to run.

  But Matthew understood.

  They were all starving.

  They were all sleeping in shit.

  They all knew, deep down, that they might never leave.

  Leaving someone behind was as good as killing them.

  Waters hated heroes. Whenever someone did something extraordinary, like rescuing a kid from a burning building or stopping an accident at the Southern Robotics assembly-line, the Governor always had to host an event. He'd smile wide for the crowd, but the old man seethed and raged as soon as he was done.

  "What the hell do they think they are doing, playing like their some damn hero? Who are they trying to impress?"

  "Oh wow, another hero! Saved someone from a Paragon crash! Get real. They only did it because they knew their lives would get better from the attention."

  Matthew used to believe the same thing. After all, it was all he'd heard. It was only the night of the quakes that he finally understood. No good person could keep their head down.

  They kept moving down the hall, their numbers swelling with every opened cell. They were coming closer and closer.

  They let go of the woman two cells down from him to the right. She thanked and thanked them, sobbing with every word.

  "Me too! Me too! Please! Let me go!"

  The man to his right was screaming so loudly Matthew thought his eardrums would burst.

  Matthew stuck his head out of his cell. He whispered urgently.

  "Stop! Stop screaming! They're going to hear us! They'll know –"

  The door opened.

  The guards spoke together all at once and in exactly the same tone. Their voices were flat and hollow. The strange noise echoed hauntingly against the walls.

  "Escape!"

  "Escape!"

  "Escape!"

  The prisoners turned and screamed.

  The raggedy homeless woman shrieked in horror.

  "Silent ones! They're silent ones! Southern Robotics brainwashed their own people!"

  The armored men surged forward with inhuman speed.

  Their feet pounded the ground so hard the metal cracked and shattered.

  The escaped prisoners never stood a chance.

  The guards at the back fought desperately to get into the front, battling so hard that they knocked their allies clean off their feet.

  The guards trampled all over each other, crying out all at once in the exact same tone.

  "Escape! Escape! Escape!"

  A brutal crunch echoed against the walls.

  The fight took place out of sight from Matthew's cell.

  He was glad for that.

  The screams were enough.

  "His head!"

  "Holy shit! His head!"

  The white armor rung faintly as some of the prisoners tried fighting back, but it was useless.

  The screaming and wailing went on and on, punctuated only by the sound of shattered necks and crushed bones. After each brutal crunch, the shouting grew softer as another voice vanished.

  "Please! Please!"

  "I surrender! I surrender!"

  "They talked me into it!"

  Nothing the escaped prisoners said was of any use.

  They all died screaming.

  The homeless lady wailed and wailed.

  "Silent ones! Silent ones!"

  Within moments, there were no more fleeing footsteps, no more frantic screams.

  All that was left were pitiful moans and the feeble sound of fingers scrabbling against the smooth white floor.

  The guards continued swept through the hall, clashing with each other in their mindless fanaticism to exterminate the few survivors. There was a scuffle right outside Matthew's cell.

  One of
the guards tried leaping over a second.

  For a moment, he scrabbled against the other man's helmet. Then a foot jerked back, and the guard's head was kicked so hard that it spun backward. Blood gushed from the seam where his helmet joined the collar of his neck armor. When the massive corpse hit the ground, Matthew could have sworn the colony floor shook on impact.

  The other guard charged forwards, ignoring the man he'd just killed.

  "Escape! Escape! Escape!"

  Crack.

  Crack.

  Crack.

  The few whimpering survivors were snuffed out.

  The surviving prisoners, the lucky ones who hadn't been freed yet, screamed and wailed.

  The homeless woman screamed loudest of all.

  "Southern Robotics! It was Southern Robotics!"

  The door opened.

  "Marvelous! Marvelous!"

  Irl Stock Jr. walked into the room.

  Matthew had never seen the spoiled jackass so happy.

  His smile stretched from ear to ear. His eyes bulged out of their sockets.

  He had his usual stupid haircut. Matthew knew the guy who cut Stock's hair. The fucking dumbass did the same thing every time he came in. He slammed an ugly ass Eternium bust down on the counter and demanded his barber replicate the same cut on him.

  Who the hell wanted it to look like their face was a fucking square?

  The woman began to scream.

  "You! You! Give me back my nephew!"

  Matthew immediately understood what was happening. It was the same sort of realization he had while flying through the ruined neighborhoods.

  The seeming prison escape was just another Southern Robotics experiment. He'd only been lucky they hadn't let him out yet.

  The homeless lady was right. They'd done something to the guards. Brainwashing, and probably steroids. Something horrible had happened to them.

  Another man walked into the room, a fat guy with a beard. He was wearing a white Southern Robotics uniform, but Matthew didn't recognize him.

  "The contracts don't heighten their senses or physical abilities. It narrows focus and removes their inhibitions -"

  Stock cut him off.

  "Yeah yeah. Boring!"

  He giggled.

  "I don't care how it works, just that it happens."

  When Stock saw the dead guard, he kicked at the twisted neck.

  "What the hell happened here?"