It went on all night long. The victims, I knew, would all be non-Clan. Hence, fair game. Some of them would be young – men and women in their early twenties. (Younger prisoners had their own juvenile wing.) And it was part of Clan culture that in prison the powerful should always abuse, sexually and in other ways, the less powerful. It was considered a form of redemption, believe it or not – a way for Clannites to reassert their lost authority. It was a credo that disgusted me, and which I had always failed to comprehend. But there was nothing I could do about it.
I’d covertly marked my door with a finger-scratched “V” as the DR had paused before ushering me in to the cell. V for “vangelista.” It meant I was exempt from assault. My icon of protection.
So I stayed in my cell. I listened to the screams and groans which filled half that long night. I did not sleep. It brought back memories. But they were memories that I did not wish to endure, so I forced my mind to be blank.
I can do that, you see. I can make my mind entirely blank.
Remember this was not, none of it, my fault. Nor was it my responsibility.
So I blanked it out.
I slept for about two hours, which was all I needed. At five a.m. the prisoners returned to their cells and the doors were closed. At seven a.m. the doors opened again and we all filed out and queued for the elevators.
The view on the way down was disorientating. The cell blocks formed a vast tower at the centre of the prison, with the elevators on the outside. Beyond the circle I could see the Spokes which were the work and recreation areas. Beyond them, I could see the wilderness of Giger’s Moon, grey and wasted behind the impermeable hardglass walls of the biodome.
I shared an elevator with nineteen other inmates, one of whom was a seven-foot giant. He stood very close to me, and leered down. “You missed a good night last night, vangelista,” he said, grinning.
I ignored him.
“Maybe tonight?” he offered.
I ignored him. The lift stopped. The DR stepped out.
I elbow-struck the giant in his ribs, breaking several. “Speak,” I said quietly, “when you are spoken to.”
The other inmates shuffled around us to conceal the brawl from the DR’s view.
The giant grinned at me. His teeth were large and ugly. “You aren’t allowed to do that, vangelista,” he said. He was in pain, obviously, but you’d never have known it from his tone of voice. “I have the protection of the Clan.”
I stared at him, scarily.
After fifteen seconds, he flinched.
I walked away. That round went to me.
I went to breakfast. It was synthesised mulch. The dining area had clearly once been a recreational area for dubbers. Because in the old days, the prisoners here weren’t given food, they were just injected with nutrients. I could see the outlines where a swimming pool had been filled in. White lines demarcated a former baseball pitch. They’d been a sporty lot, those old devils who once had run the Giger Dungeon.
Teresa Shalco joined me at my table.
“Just to outline the rules,” she said cheerfully, as she sat down.
“Fuck you.”
“Whatever your status elsewhere,” she continued softly, “you have to earn it here. Capisci?”
She beamed nicely at me.
“Non capisco.”
Shalco continued to smile, but she didn’t mean it.
“First and final warning,” she whispered.
The following night the same thing happened. The footsteps, the doors opening, the howls of pain and regret.
At one point, I went out on to the landing and tried to differentiate between the howls of pain. To locate the worst and most terrible howl. When I had done so, which took a long while, I walked down the corridor and entered the offending cell.
“No more,” I explained.
There were three of them engaged in the atrocity. They stared at me in astonishment. Appalled at my effrontery. Shocked at my stupidity.
Then they came at me.
I smashed heads. I broke bones.
Then I dragged the unconscious bodies out and dumped them in the corridor. And returned to the cell to see how the abused prisoner was bearing up after his ordeal.
He was bearing up, in my view, remarkably well. The prisoner was lean and young, and he grinned at me with open relief. “Thank you,” the prisoner said. “That was well – fuck. Thank Christ it’s over.”
I shrugged.
“They’ll make you pay for what you just did, you do know that?” the prisoner added, sorrowfully I felt. He was young, but he clearly knew the way of the world. Later, I learned his name: Tomas.11 But I never actually got to know him.
“Whatever,” I said.
I went back to my cell. I waited.
No one came for me. They were waiting for permission.
The following night, they had their permission.
I sat on my bunk in my cell and waited. I heard the footsteps outside the door. I heard the murmur of voices, cursingly vowing to “split my arse” and “rip my tongue out of my mouth” and other such grisly pledges. And I heard the handle turn.
But it did not open. The door had been locked by Dekon, acting under my instructions. Thus over-riding the earlier “unlock” signal sent by the corrupt dubber who allowed this nightly anarchy.12
I can do that, you see. I’ll explain how later.
Banging and shouting followed, and continued for some time. But the bastards couldn’t get in. And eventually they lost interest. My lynch mob dispersed and they returned to their cells.
I hugged myself with delight – I love such moments of elegant victory – and then I slept.
Teresa Shalco joined me at breakfast.
“Who the fuck are you?” she marvelled.
I shrugged.
“You know that,” I said calmly. “You’ve spoken to my people on Ariadne?”
Ariadne was the planet where the real Danielle Arditti had served the Clan.
“They say you’re dead.”
“I don’t feel dead.”
“They say you’re a bitch.”
“They got that right.”
“You’re in the Clan, okay?” Shalco told me patiently. “So you have to accept my authority. If you have a beef with your fellow prisoners, come to me. But don’t take the law into your own hands. Nothing happens without my permission, that’s the way of our Family, am I right, vangelista?”
“It’s too loud. The stuff they get up to. I can’t sleep.”
She sighed, as a mother might sigh when her child has been a scamp. Shalco had a warm and comforting presence. It was tempting to yield to the allure of her maternal loveliness. But I reminded myself she was a Boss. Hence, evil and dangerous scum.
“There’s only one way out of the dining hall,” Shalco warned me. “You have to pass through a womb to get from here to the rec hall. And you have to go to the rec hall, because the DRs won’t let you stay in here. Oh, and by the way, the cameras will be turned off.”
“I guessed something like that might occur,” I conceded.
“Your best bet is to stay here,” Shalco said, kindly. “Let the DRs come for you. If you refuse to obey an order they’ll detain you. You’ll go into solitary. Best place for you.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Hey, you’re a nice kid,” said Shalco. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
I finished my coffee. It was, frankly, awful. “I’ll be going,” I said.
I got up. All eyes were on me.
I walked down the metal staircase and handed in my tray.
All eyes were on me.
I walked towards the exit door that was the only way out of the dining area.
All eyes were on me.
I entered the womb. A womb, by the way, is a rounded corridor of a kind you only ever see in prisons, with sealable hardglass gatewalls at each end. When the gatewall at one end closed, the gatewall at the other end would open. Like an airlock.
There were six of them in the womb with me. They weren’t even attempting to conceal their evil intent. They just stood in the centre of this grey cage, ominously, waiting for me.
Seven Foot Giant was one of them. He carried a knife the size of a scimitar. I guessed it had been built in the workshop, out of stolen hardmetal.
His companion, who I mentally dubbed Big Ugly Motherfucker, was shorter, but just as broad, with a leering expression and bad skin.
And then there was Big Black Bald Guy, a black man with a shiny bald head and a body-built physique. He wore a vest so I could admire his bulging arms and his tattoos of women with breasts like moons.
And there were also two female Noirs who stood like shadows, dressed all in black to complement their jet black eyes, effortlessly graceful. They were clearly ninja-trained, and were eerily focused.
And finally Three Eyes, another giant, six-and-a-half foot high, with three eyes. That meant he was from Golgotha, there’s a fad for it there.13
Three Eyes carried a baseball bat with spikes.
I glanced behind me. The rear gatewall was now sealed. No going back. Shalco had already warned me the cameras would be out of action. There was a window in the middle of the corridor, and through it I could see a DR store cupboard. But those DRs were all switched off. So, it was just me and them. One against six. I’ve had worse odds.
Though not often, and I didn’t always win.
“Kiss my finger,” I told the six mollyfockers, calmly and quite politely.
“I scorn your authority, bitch,” said Seven Foot Giant, which was the gravest of insults for someone of my (alleged) Clan rank.
“Does your penis,” I asked, still using my calm and polite voice, “look really odd? I mean, disproportionately small, compared to the rest of your lumbering frame?”
“I scorn your authority,” he repeated.
“And how do you cope with doors? I mean, do you have to like stoop?”
“I scorn your authority, and call upon you to defend it,” he said for the third time, clearly struggling to keep himself in check. But these proprieties have to be observed.
“I defend my authority,” I said, and that was the cue for the fighting to begin.
Ten minutes later I walked out of the womb into Spoke A.
My shoulder was stiff, from throwing a really awkward punch. My ribs hurt. My hands hurt. And I had the mother of all headaches. But, of course, I acted as if nothing untoward had occurred. I walked into the Spoke A rec room and picked up a magazine and started to read it. It was a geek mag, full of racy images of ion drives and rocket engines, with a little section on how to solar surf, and a centrepage spread about building up abs without rejuve.14
Half an hour later a platoon of DRs arrived to arrest me for my breach of prison discipline. They stomped me through the Spokes, manacled and collared, their blank silver faces conveying all the contempt and rage that their human handlers could muster.
In the scuffle which had preceded this moment, I had managed to cripple and kill all six of Shalco’s crew. Seven Foot Giant now had a broken skull and no eyes, and was admitted to the prison hospital with no heartbeat either.15 Oh, and his scimitar was broken. I had kept a shard of it as a memento. The other five were battered, broken, and also dead.16
None of them were true-dead, however – I was too skilful for that. And there was no camera footage of the fight of course. But dozens of prisoners had watched the combat through the hardglass doors, and clearly one or more of them had been coerced into stoolpigeoning.
And so now I was due to endure a month in solitary confinement, as my punishment for fighting other prisoners without sanction, and with excessive force.
I was looking forward to it.
You see, these days I get twitchy and restless when there are too many other people around me. I prefer wide open spaces; or failing that, small cramped spaces, and my own company. I’m sorry, that’s just the way I am. These days.
Besides, I needed to recuperate. My hands were badly bruised, though the knuckles were unbroken. My skull however was fractured. And at some point during the fracas I’d been stabbed in the liver. But my healing factor had already kicked in. In a few weeks I would be, as my father used to say, much to my irritation, “as right as rain.”
You know, that phrase used to drive me mad!
One time, when I was a kid I mean, I burst into tears in front of my father when he was putting me to bed. And my father had looked at me in horror. Until, much to his relief, he realised he had the solution to my problems. An aphorism! “Go to sleep,” he had told me, with a big smile on his face, “and in the morning, you’ll be as right as rain.”
Hey! I don’t know why I just told that story. Not very relevant, huh?17 Move on, Artemis, tell the tale.
So, long story short: I was feeling pretty good about myself after the fight in the prison womb. My reflexes hadn’t let me down. My fighting skills were still second to none. Only the thin red line on my throat betrayed how close I’d come to being decapitated and thus experiencing true-death in those first muddled lightning-swift moments of the mêlée.
Picture it:
There I am, licking my lips anxiously, fear in my eyes, as I walk towards Seven Foot Giant and his ugly pals. They read my seemingly fearful body language and they relax, just slightly. Enough to give me my edge.
Seven Foot Giant lunges first, trying to impale me with his sword. So I duck down low, come up with a punch to the ribs. His sword’s backswing catches my throat a nick and I see a spurt of blood – yeah, that was the worst moment. But I give his body a tug and momentum propels him onward and the sword takes a slice from the skull of Big Black Bald Guy.
More blood spurts, but not mine this time. Seven Foot Giant is wheezing, the broken ribs have punctured his lung and I’m behind him and I leap up and catch his head in my hands and twist to one side. Broken vertebra, and I’ve managed to gouge his eyes out too. He falls like a building being demolished and I push off his body and fly up in the air and kick Three Eyes with both my heels on his chin. The impact rocks me, but it rocks him even worse. That’s Big Black Bald Guy down, Seven Foot Giant down, and Three Eyes dazed and confused. Big Ugly Motherfucker, however, is biding his time. He will be trouble, I predict.
Then the Noirs come at me. They are elegant and achieve perfection in their every graceful movement. By contrast, I am a savage pit bull hound at bay. Elbows and heels and head butts, those are my weapons of choice. I keep it close, their finesse doesn’t get a look in. I break their skulls because I know their sinuous bodies will constantly evade me. But grab a head with both hands and butt it and you can’t miss.
The head butts hurt me like hell – that’s when I broke my own skull – and it sure ain’t kata. But the Noirs are down and weeping now.
Then Big Ugly Motherfucker makes his move, and he is fast, very fast indeed. His punch misses my head by a fraction, and I know that if his fist had connected my skull would have exploded. But it didn’t, and it doesn’t, for I am even quicker than he is. And I keep moving and snap back, and deliver a punch to his balls and an elbow strike to his head. This slows him down considerably. Then I punch him in the chest and his heart stops and he dies.
As he falls, his ugly face is consumed with disbelief. Here is a man, I guess, who has never lost a fight before.
Three Eyes is still in the fight though, as is Seven Foot Giant, despite his terrible injuries and his blindness. But that’s to the good, ’cause he’s just lumbering around now, getting in the way of the unconcussed fighters. I fall on the floor and weave like a snake and flip Three Eyes and Seven Foot Giant off their legs then savagely strike and kill them when they’re down.
The Noirs are als
o back in the fight but slower now. And I get faster and my form becomes perfect. I am a karate-ka with open hands and a mind empty of confusion now. This bit would look beautiful if you could see fast enough to follow the different moves. Knife hand, claw thrust, side kick, roundhouse kick, kick-while-leaping, somersault, body twist, the whole repertoire. Savage strike to the face of the assailant in front, duck and weave and backheel to the rear to smash the head of the mollyfocker behind. Then repeat. And repeat, and repeat. And then, like shadows struck by sunlight, the Noirs are no more.
Ten minutes five seconds, and the fight is over. At the end of the combat, I am still standing and they are all clinically dead, but kept brain-alive by the oxygen capsules in their brains. There are stars in front of my eyes, and my heart is pounding so fast I fear I will stroke out.
Then I press the button for the gatewall to open and I stroll, as I’ve already said, through.
My trial was brief. I wasn’t allowed a lawyer. The holo of Prison Governor Ferguson appeared, heard the charges, and passed the sentence. One month’s solitary to cool me down, plus twenty years additional moral rehabilitation therapy. (Yeah, that last bit really did scare me.)
As they dragged me to the Solo Cells, I howled in triumph: “VICTORY!” So the whole prison block would know what happened.
But then my troubles really began.
I had thought, you see, that it was all going to be plain sailing once I was in solitary. I would take my supposed punishment, actually a holiday for someone like me, then re-emerge refreshed and ready for Phase 2 of my plan.
I didn’t think I would actually be punished by the prison authorities. It didn’t, for pity’s sake, even occur to me that such a thing might happen.
Because those days were gone! Or so I had been told. And so it was declared on all the news portals, and in the prison documentation. The days of beatings, sensory deprivation, brainthrashing, and cruelty beyond belief. The days of the Corporation regime, when Giger was a dungeon, not a prison.
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