“Hey!” Ari started to go after him, but a man stepped in front of her and she ran directly into his protruding gut. “Oof!” She was knocked off her feet by the sudden impact and fell on her back, losing her breath.
“What’s this? Trying to get away already before you’re even processed?” a mocking male voice asked. “I thought you were that guard’s pet but it seems like he’s gone and left you all alone, sweet thing.”
Shading her eyes against the harsh overhead glows, Ari looked up…and up and up. The speaker was one of the prisoners she’d seen wandering around without restraints but he wasn’t alone and he wasn’t holding a tablet himself. He was flanked by two other males, both almost as big and beefy as he was, and one of them was holding the tablet.
“Who…who are you?” Ari had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she didn’t want to know the answer. The male towering over her was at least a foot and a half taller than her and probably triple her body weight. He was wearing a prison jumpsuit but it wasn’t orange and blue striped like the ones the men flanking him wore—distinctive green stripes ran parallel to the blue instead.
He had stripped down the top part of the jumpsuit, letting the arms dangle free behind him to reveal broad, beefy shoulders where all the hair that had apparently migrated from his bald head now grew. Coarse black tufts stuck out of his ears and nostrils too. A heavy gold ring with a red stone decorated the middle finger of his right hand.
But it wasn’t his jewelry or his body hair, repulsive though it was, that worried Ari. She was much more concerned about the sneer on his face. There was cruelty in his small, mud-colored eyes and in the set of his rubbery lips. He had slabs for cheeks and his monstrous, hairy gut overhung the unfastened jumpsuit obscenely as he looked down at her appraisingly.
“Who are you?” Ari asked again, trying to make her voice low and at least semi-masculine, since he seemed to be content to just stare.
“Get that, Tapper—he don’t even know who you are! Dumb shit,” sneered the man on his left.
“Course he don’t know Tapper. He’s new, ‘ent he?” the one on the right, holding the tablet said, elbowing the other one.
“Help him up, boys.” Tapper nodded at Ari, who was still sprawled on the floor in front of him, feeling as vulnerable as a bug pinned to a card.
At once, the two henchmen (because could they really be anything else?) each took one of her arms and hauled her upright so that she was facing Tapper.
She still had to look up to see him, not that it was a very pleasant view.
“Th-thank you, er…Mr. Tapper,” she said, hoping that maybe if she was polite and unassuming they would leave her alone. But her response only seemed to make Tapper more interested in her.
“Hmm, polite one, ‘ent he boys?” He looked at Ari speculatively. “Face as pretty as a girl’s—soft skin, too. He’s kinder skinny a’course but I think I like him.” He nodded decisively. “Yap, I like him. Put ‘im on the list.”
“What list?” Ari blurted as the male with the tablet looked at her, one dirty finger poised over the glowing surface.
“List of fresh meat Tapper wants to taste. Now what’s your name, pretty boy?” he asked casually, as though he was a waiter putting her name on a waiting list at a busy restaurant.
“What?” Ari took a step back. “I…I’m not telling you my name for that.”
“He won’t tell his name.” The man with the tablet looked upset. The whites of his eyes and his protruding teeth were both yellow, Ari noticed distractedly.
“Never mind.” Tapper shrugged his hairy shoulders. “Just put him down as ‘pretty boy.’ It’s his ass I’m interested in—not his name.”
“Tapper wants his ass, not his name! His ass not his name!” the other man chortled with glee. His long, crooked nose looked like it had been broken and badly set several times and his teeth were nothing but blackened stumps.
Ari stared at them in disbelief. Was this man actually saying what she thought he was saying? Was Tapper casually telling her he was planning to rape her as soon as she was processed into the prison?
“You heard him, pretty boy,” chortled the one on the left. “Tapper’s gonna taste you. And when he’s finished, maybe Gorn ‘n me will have a taste too.”
“Shut up, Fenrus—you’re scaring the lad,” growled the one with the tablet. “Don’t worry, laddie,” he said to her. “Tapper don’t share with the likes of us. You give ‘im a taste and he’ll most likely let you go.”
“Unless you get to be one of his favorites,” the one called Fenrus said. His lumpish face was filled with stupid, brutal glee. “Then maybe you’ll get to share his cell. He’s got a real nice cell, does Tapper.”
“He’s got a carpet,” Gorn added thoughtfully. “Nice and thick—nice as the one my old mistress had in her sitting room back on Yonnie Six.”
“A…a carpet?” This detail seemed apropos of nothing. Ari licked her dry lips, wondering what the two henchmen were talking about.
“You’ll get to see it soon enough,” Fenrus predicted. “You’ll be getting’ rug burns from it when Tapper kneels you down on it and takes your pretty little ass.”
“That’s enough, boys. You know I don’t share my cell.”
Tapper had been standing there with his slab-like arms crossed over his hairy, bare chest. Honestly, he had so much body hair he looked more like an animal than a man, Ari thought, feeling sick.
“Although I might make an exception for a pretty little boy whore like you.” He licked his thick lips and grinned knowingly at Ari.
“I’m not a whore!” She could scarcely force the words out. “I’ve never…I don’t do things like that!”
“Oh, a virgin, eh?” Unfortunately, this seemed to make Tapper more interested in her than ever. “I ‘ent had a true virgin in ages. Nothing I like better than ramming my shaft in a virgin hole.” His small eyes grew greedy and his voice was eager, like a man talking about eating his favorite dish. “So nice and tight…not all stretched out like the rest of the narrow-assed patsies around here.”
“He won’t be tight for long after you get after him, Tapper,” Fenrus chortled. “You’ll ream him proper!”
“The Horvaths’ll stretch him out for you a bit too,” Gorn added. “I hear Mukluk’s on search duty today. You know what them claws of his does to the newbies’ arses. Worse luck for them.”
“He’ll be tight enough to suit me—a virgin’s a virgin.” Tapper nodded decisively and pointed at Ari with one pudgy finger. “I’ll find you, boy—you’re on my list.”
“You can’t do that,” Ari protested, finding her voice at last. “You can’t just…do whatever you want to people.” Part of her brain knew it was stupid and dangerous to argue with the thuggish felon but she couldn’t help herself—she’d been raised in a society where people respected each other—where males and females were equal. She couldn’t just stand there and listen to Tapper talking about raping her as causally as he’d speak of sampling a new dish he wanted to try.
“Tapper can do what he likes, pretty boy,” Fenrus told her. “See these here green stripes on his suit?” He pointed to the stripes running through the big inmate’s jumpsuit. “That says ‘trustee’ that does. Means he can do what he likes.”
“Not with me he can’t!” Ari lifted her chin. She might be small but she was not helpless, she told herself. If Tapper tried something with her, she would use his massive weight against him to throw him to the dirty metal floor.
Or I’ll try anyway, she thought feeling a twinge of doubt as she looked at the huge man. She had thrown Jak many times when they were sparring, and even bigger opponents during competition, but that was while observing the strict Ton-kwa code of conduct. She very much doubted if Tapper would agree to abide by any such rules if they got into a fight.
She expected her defiance to make the huge inmate mad but Tapper only looked at her and clucked his tongue.
“You just made it to the top of the list, my pretty little virgin,” he
said. “I’ll have a taste of that sweet ass of yours the minute you’re processed, I will.”
“You heard him Gorn—the top of the list! The top of the list!” Fenrus chortled.
“Got it.” Gorn nodded and tapped at the tablet, apparently moving Ari up to the top slot.
“Come on, boys—there’s plenty more fresh meat to see to,” Tapper told them. “Let’s see if any of the rest of the newbies is worth puttin’ on the list.”
Then he swaggered off with the other two in tow, looking over the crowd of new prisoners like a man at a butcher’s shop looking for prime cuts of meat.
Ari watched them go, speechless with dread.
What am I going to do? Goddess of Mercy, what am I going to do? she thought, feeling sick to her stomach.
She wished for the hundredth time that she could have brought some kind of a weapon but she knew that all prisoners were carefully searched during processing—in fact, she was fully expecting she would have to strip which was one reason she’d worked so hard to make the tactile holo-field the look/touch projected accurate. It was also the main reason she’d hidden both the look/touch’s projection bead and the controls to the transport bubble in the metal of the prison ID tag she wore at her throat. Only there, surrounded by the metal of the tag, were the tiny devices hidden from the prying eyes of the X-ray scanner and the mobile Magnetic Resonance Imager.
Since there was no way to hide weapons of any kind on her body, she had been relying on her Ton-kwa skills to protect herself. Actually, she’d been hoping to avoid this kind of situation altogether, she thought unhappily. If the guard she’d hired had done his job and taken her straight to Jak, they would already be floating upwards towards the waiting life support craft which was orbiting over the prison.
Well, it can’t be helped now, she told herself, straightening her shoulders. I’ll just have to be sure I find Jak right away, the minute I get through processing. Then we’ll—
Just then a fight broke out in the ranks of men closest to the processing counter. There was a lot of shouting and shoving and Ari heard someone yell,
“Watch out! He’s got a knife!”
What? How did someone get a knife in here? she wondered. There was a pretty thorough search procedure at the first check point—where could the prisoner who had it have hidden it?
Keeping to the sidelines to avoid being drawn into the conflict, she sidled closer to the front of the immense holding area, watching to see what might happen. Two men were rolling on the scuffed metal floor and Ari saw the flash of silver in one of their hands. So someone did have a knife or something like one—interesting.
Suddenly a door opened in the high, black metal wall that housed the glassed-in processing counter and a male even bigger than Tapper came out. Ari watched him in awe as he stalked over to where the two men were rolling on the ground.
He was positively the biggest male she had ever seen, she thought. He had dark brown hair that glinted red in the harsh overhead glows and his jewel-toned eyes flashed fury.
Those eyes bothered Ari for some reason—she almost felt like she’d seen them before? But where? In a dream? Because if she’d met this huge man in real life, she was certain she would have remembered him.
Like Tapper, he was wearing a blue and green striped jumpsuit rather than a blue and orange striped one but that was where the resemblance ended. The giant was tall and broad but he didn’t have a gut like Tapper—his stomach was flat beneath the prison jumpsuit and he moved with the fluid grace of a big cat.
“Stop it!” he roared, his deep voice rolling and echoing in the vast metal chamber. “Gods damn you, stop it, I said! The guards don’t care if you kill each other but I do—so stop now or I’ll stop you.”
Sure enough, Ari saw, the Horvath guards weren’t doing anything to break up the conflict. They sat on their bench and guzzled their green slime, swiping at their slitted yellow eyeballs from time to time with their forked tongues. Apparently breaking up fights among the prisoners they were supposed to be guarding held no interest for them.
The fight went on but then the big male did something completely unexpected. He bared his teeth and Ari saw two double sets of long, curving fangs protruding from under his upper lip.
The sight was so surprising that she gasped and put a hand to her own mouth wondering what in the galaxy was going on.
Then, even more surprising, a murmur ran through the crowd and the fight abruptly ceased.
“Kill-All,” she heard some of the men around her muttering. “Watch out—he’s a Kill-All—the Kill-All’s here.”
Whatever it meant, the men who had been fighting apparently feared the tall male. They broke apart and the one with the knife dropped it obediently into the tall male’s hands. Ari couldn’t understand it—what could make hardened criminals become so suddenly docile?
“Aye, that’s right, he’d better give up the knife,” said a cracked, wheezy voice in her ear.
Ari turned, startled, and saw an ancient man—not much taller than she was—standing to her right. He was also wearing the trustee uniform of blue and green stripes and he was bald except for a few wispy gray tufts of hair over his large, pink ears. A pair of oculars that looked almost as old as he was were perched on his nose. One of their lenses was cracked but it didn’t appear to bother their wearer.
“What?” Ari asked, frowning. “Why should he give the knife up to him?” She nodded at the tall male with the fangs who now had the knife in one large hand.
“That’s Medic, that is,” the old man said, nodding sagely. “He’s a Kill-All.”
“A Kill-All? What does that mean?” Ari shook her head.
“T’aint you never heard of a Kill-All, girl? They’re marvelous rare—Kindred they are. One bite of them fangs contains enough poison to kill every last male in this room.” He nodded again and repeated, “Kill-All.”
“Oh…” Ari bit her own lip, looking at those impossibly long, sharp fangs. “No, I…I’ve never heard of that.”
“Best you know now afore you go in for processing,” the little old man said. “You don’t want to give no trouble to Medic. He’ll treat you straight and patch you up if the Horvaths get too rough, but he won’t stand no trouble—that he won’t.”
“I…I’ll remember that,” Ari said faintly, her eyes still fixed on the tall male’s mouth. His sensuous lips were closed now, hiding his fangs but the sight of them was burned into her memory and she knew she would dream of them later that night. Or maybe she had already dreamed of them—of the big Kindred? The thought was confusing and she pushed it away.
“Yes, you remember that. Remember, remember,” the old man crooned in a sing-song voice. “Anyway, enough of that.” He produced a tablet like the one Gorn had been carrying and poised one gnarled finger over it. “All right now, what’s your name, boy? Tell me true so I can put you in for processing. Need your clothes and shoe size too. Not that you can call these here things they give us to wear shoes.”
He held up one foot, covered in a thin rubber slipper and cackled with laughter.
“Oh, uh…” After her experience with Tapper, Ari wasn’t sure if she should give her name to anyone, even a seemingly harmless old man. But the old prisoner seemed to understand her concern.
“Come now, you can trust old Wheezer, that you can,” he said coaxingly. “I saw Tapper talkin’ to you afore and I heard you wouldn’t give Gorn your name. That’s all fine and well but I don’t have nothin’ to do with it—no I don’t. I’m just trying to do my job and get you processed like the rest of this lot.”
“All right,” Ari answered reluctantly. Honestly, she hadn’t been planning on being processed at all when she first came to BleakHall. She’d prepared for the worst—making certain the image her look/see produced was accurate in case she was strip-searched—but she’d been hoping to go straight to her brother and then float the two of them away to safety. Now it looked like she would be staying a while—at least long enough to be processed.
“Well then?” The old man frowned at her impatiently. “Tell me, boy—what’s your name?”
“Ari,” she said before she considered it. But then, why not give her real name? Her nickname, anyway. It would never do to call herself Lady Arianna but Ari worked well as a boy’s name, she thought.
“Good, good—now we’re getting somewhere,” Wheezer cackled, tapping out her name onto the ancient tablet he held.
“Do you need my last name too?” Ari asked, wondering if she ought to give her real last name as well or make one up. But Wheezer shook his head.
“No—just a peep at your ID tag should do.”
He leaned forward, squinting to see the number—which was a long string of numerals ending in 117. He tapped something into his tablet and frowned.
“Hmm…now that’s odd, so it is.”
“What’s odd?” Ari’s heart was suddenly beating in her throat. The prison ID tag had cost her a pretty penny, but mostly because she’d had to have the controls to her look/see and the transport bubble installed in it. She’d never given a thought as to whether the information on it would pass a test of authenticity. After all, actually getting processed into BleakHall’s system hadn’t been part of her plan.
“Well, seems to say here that we already have a prisoner with your same number, lad,” Wheezer said, confirming her fear that her ID tag wouldn’t withstand scrutiny. But then he shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “Oh well—must be he died this morning and they fed the number back into the system.” He tapped at the tablet some more and nodded. “There—you’re entered.”
“Oh…” Ari cleared her throat, feeling a cautious wave of relief that he had passed her through the system. “Does…does that happen much? People dying, I mean?”
“All the time since the damn Horvaths took over.” Wheezer gave the lizard guards a dark look. “They’re quick with the pain-prod, they are. And they like to poke most everyone, even us trustees which ‘ent fair, nohow.”
“I’ll try to keep away from them,” Ari said. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Oh, it ‘ent a warning, lad—you’ll not be able to keep clear of them, no matter what you do. No more than you can keep clear of Tapper once he’s got a taste for you.”
Imprisoned Page 3
