Death Sentence

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  I kept running, rising, up past the fifth level, then the sixth, then the seventh. The nectar was like nitro, turning my heart and lungs and muscles into an engine that didn’t once protest, not even when I’d climbed to the twelfth level and run halfway down the landing. The air up here was stale, never used, the yard below as small as a playground. There was no sign of the inmates, but the other berserker was still down there, its gunmetal body more like a beetle than ever as it squirmed and thrashed in a growing puddle of dark blood.

  There was a snarl from the stairwell, the bolts almost ripping from the walls as the fat freak pulled itself onto the landing. Keeping all four limbs on the floor it crashed towards me, its gaping maw even darker than the blood-red shadows draped over the higher levels.

  I searched the closest cell, not even a bunk to use as a weapon. Then I looked at the door, the steel bars, remembered the way the blacksuits used to bend them like they were rubber. I gripped the top of one and pulled hard, the metal squealing in protest. The berserker saw what I was doing and increased its speed, a tornado of pink muscle blasting right for me.

  The door screeched but it was a cry of surrender, the metal bending down and out. I tugged, flexing the bar back and forth until it snapped loose from the frame. I held the two-metre length of solid steel like a baseball bat, standing my ground as the berserker hurtled down the platform.

  When it was within reach I swung, aiming right for its head. The creature was quick, lifting a hand to protect itself, but the momentum of the bar was too great, the crack of a breaking bone reverberating out across the prison. It roared, spraying me with hot spittle, then lunged forward with its mouth open. I fell back, its jaws snapping shut around the bar and biting off the tip as though it was candy. Its other hand slammed down, hooked barbs ripping into my side.

  Even with the nectar the pain flared, my vision turning white. I ignored it, ramming the bar into the back of its throat like I was skewering a fish. The berserker retreated, choking on blood, and I pulled the bar out, thrusting it forward again into its nest of black eyes.

  It panicked, swaying clumsily away and swiping its good arm blindly in front of it. Using the bar as a crutch, I hauled myself to my feet, then swung my makeshift club at its head. It hit with enough power to bend the metal, but the berserker still wouldn’t go down. Instead it flailed wildly, stamping its legs as it struggled to get away.

  Something popped from the wall, the stone cracking and the platform lurching. I dropped the bar, grabbing the handrail and watching my weapon spiral gracefully down to the yard twelve storeys below. The berserker staggered, broke through the railing, then managed to grab the landing with a barbed fist, trying to haul itself back up.

  Another bolt gave up under the pressure, tearing loose from the rock. Then the platform was falling, taking me and the berserker with it. My stomach flipped, my guts almost blasting from the top of my head as I watched two levels fly past, then five, then seven, all the time falling faster and faster.

  The platforms were close enough to reach but I was plummeting too fast, my arm almost ripped from my shoulder as I tried to grab a landing. The jarring impact must have slowed me, though, as I spun once and reached out again, somehow managing to hook my elbow round a railing. My body slammed into the metal, almost pulling another set of bolts from the wall. But it held.

  Looking down I saw the loose platform strike the yard only two or three levels below, the berserker imitating it a millisecond later. It was as if it had C4 packed into its legs, the flesh exploding into a river of black blood which hissed angrily as it sprinkled over the fire. I let go of the railing, dropping to the floor, feeling like every joint in my body had been dislocated or broken.

  Both berserkers were down, but I could almost see the nectar inside them repairing their broken bodies. The beetle-black freak was still trying to pull the pickaxe from its head, too busy to even know I was there. The other one was already starting to push itself back up. I could see its bones moving beneath the skin, resetting themselves, and knew it was only a matter of time before it was back in the fight.

  ‘Alex!’ I heard a voice, half-recognised the boy who was sprinting from the trough room struggling to hold something. Aside from me he was the only living person in the entire yard. ‘Use this!’

  I ran to meet him, hearing the sound of shearing flesh behind me as the berserker finally managed to wrench the blade from its twisted skull. The kid’s eyes widened as he looked past my shoulder, stumbling to a halt. He must have seen something demonic in my eyes too, as he threw the object to the floor before I reached him, legging it back towards the canteen. The cylinder rolled in a half-circle, packed tight with the same gas that had wrought so much damage earlier.

  I snatched it up, turning to see the tall berserker bound towards me on its two long legs. Half of its head had been torn away, but the one silver eye which remained stared at me with unrestrained fury. Its claws caught the firelight like shards of obsidian, raised and ready to strike.

  I never gave it the chance.

  Grabbing the canister by its narrow valve, I ran at the berserker, waiting until the last possible moment to swing. The heavy cylinder caught the creature on the good side of its head, causing an eruption of dark matter from the pickaxe wound. Its legs turned to string and the beast flopped to the ground, twitching.

  I didn’t stop, momentum carrying me towards the other freak. It only had stumps of legs to stand on, but it showed no sign of weakness – its arms tensing and its barbs bristling as it watched me approach. Somehow it managed to pounce, its dripping maw growing impossibly large, ready to swallow me whole.

  I rammed the canister down its throat with everything I had. The creature choked, retching as it tried to disgorge the metal tank. Ignoring the barbs, I tackled the beast, lifting it off the ground and charging towards the fire. I couldn’t see where I was going but I could feel the heat singeing my skin. I waited until the last possible moment before hurling the berserker at the flames.

  The flailing creature vanished into the pyre, its screams soon becoming a pitiful whimper. I staggered back, holding my hands up to protect my face from the sheer intensity of the blaze. I had retreated only a few steps before the canister exploded, the shock wave blasting across the prison in a tsunami of heat and blood and tattered flesh.

  I peered through the smoke, waiting for the other berserker to attack. But it was retreating towards the elevator. It curled its body through the doors, looking back once with a sliver of pure silver hatred, then vanished through the hole in the ceiling.

  Like frightened rabbits in their burrows, inmates began to emerge from the rooms around the yard. One – the same kid who had given me the canister – ran right towards me, but the nectar in my blood was still raging and I stopped him dead with a guttural snarl. He watched me, they all watched me, with wide eyes and open mouths.

  I could feel the warden’s poison urging me to attack, calling on me to finish the job that the berserkers had started. I was a Soldier of Furnace too, after all. It was my duty to obey the warden, to obey the nectar. And it would be so easy, the figures before me nothing but insects in the face of my wrath. The thought brought down that crimson cloud again and I was charging forward before I even knew it.

  Then the voice began to speak, a whisper from the deepest recesses of my brain – You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them. You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them – the mantra barely audible but repeated again and again and again until it filled my head.

  I clamped my hands over my ears and howled to try and mute the voice, but it didn’t give up, cutting through the nectar, cutting through my anger, cutting through the darkness.

  You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them. You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them.

  The two sides of my mind were waging a war just as ferocious as the one that I had been fighting seconds ago, the conflict threatening to tear my soul in half. I was Alex Sawyer and yet at the same time I wasn’t, I could never be
that kid again. I wasn’t him, and I wasn’t a blacksuit. I wasn’t human, and I wasn’t strong enough to be anything else either. I was nothing. I was nothing.

  I ran for the stairs, heading for the upper levels, for the only thing that would end the madness in my head once and for all.

  THE ONLY WAY OUT

  I barely even looked where I was walking, focusing just enough to stop myself tripping up the stairs. Behind me, from the yard, I could hear people calling out a name, my name, telling me to wait, but I wasn’t listening. The pain in my head was too much to bear, the nectar and the voice like artillery shells pounding seven shades out of each other in the battlefield of my brain.

  I knew now how to escape it, how to escape Furnace. A few seconds of free fall, then oblivion, freedom. If I didn’t end it here then there was no telling what I would become, what I would do.

  I don’t know what made me stop. I reached the top of a set of stairs and peered along the landing, the view the same as every other level in Furnace but somehow different. I glanced down into the yard, now swarming with bodies in white overalls, and realised I was six floors up. Something made me let go of the banister, walk down the platform, until I came to a halt outside a cell.

  There was nothing inside but a set of bunks and a toilet, and with the war still raging in my head I entered and sat on the lower mattress, the frame bending under my weight. My eyes roved around the tiny room, seeing the fingernail marks on the wall, smelling the residue of gas that seeped up through the sheet, peering out of the bars at a view which was somehow so familiar.

  This had been my cell, so long ago that it seemed like a different life.

  The nectar did its best to blot out the memories, coating them in coiled tendrils of smoke. But being here gave the voice strength, and each time it spoke – You are Alex Sawyer. You are one of them – the warden’s poison seemed to ease its grip a little more.

  I saw a face drop down from the mattress above, blossoming into a smile so big that it seemed to fill the cell with light.

  You still here? said Donovan, the hallucination flickering like film from a damaged projector. The nectar surged up my throat, carrying with it another animal growl, but it possessed none of the strength it had before. I closed my eyes, Donovan’s smile imprinted on my retinas like the sun. Past its glow I could still see the cell, filled with boys – D, Zee, Toby and me – laughing as we smuggled our gas-filled gloves beneath the mattress, as we planned our escape, as we talked about our plans for the outside.

  I haven’t forgotten about that burger, said Donovan’s voice. You better eat that thing for me, kid.

  ‘I will,’ I said, my words chasing the last of the poison from my system. ‘I promise.’

  I opened my eyes. Donovan’s face had dissipated into thin air, but there were two boys standing nervously in the doorway of the cell, drenched in red light. Zee took a step forward but Simon held him back, his wary eyes never leaving mine. I smiled at them, doing my best not to make it a blacksuit’s grimace.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I won’t bite.’

  This time both boys burst in, Simon sitting on the mattress next to me and gently poking the gaping wounds in my side, already sealed with clotted blood. Zee stood by the wall, wiping a tear from his eye. He opened his mouth, but it was like a million different things were trying to come out at once, the tangled words more sobs than sentence. He stopped, took a deep breath, tried again.

  ‘You okay?’ he waited for me to nod, then,‘Man, that was awesome, you totally owned those things.’

  ‘When you made that fat one explode,’ said Simon. ‘Hell, that was just genius.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for the gas,’ I said to Zee.

  ‘Any time,’ he replied. ‘I thought you were gonna kill me, though. Your eyes, they looked just like a blacksuit’s. You looked seriously pissed.’

  ‘It was the nectar,’ I explained. ‘Simon injected me with another dose. It was the only thing we could do.’

  Zee started to say something but he was cut off by a chorus of shouts from the yard below. I eased myself off the bed, walking out of the cell to the railing, praying that the berserker hadn’t reappeared. The inmates were gathered around the elevator doors, their cries more of excitement than of fear.

  ‘We should go see what they’re doing,’ said Zee, walking towards the stairs.

  ‘I thought you were going to jump,’ Simon said before I could follow. ‘How did you fight the nectar? What brought you back?’

  I looked into the cell, at the top bunk. It was empty, the sheets stripped, but I could still see Donovan there, legs dangling over the side, watching us go with a sad smile.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, turning away before the lump in my throat dissolved into tears. ‘We’re not out yet.’

  I thought it would take a while to fight through the crowd, but as soon as the prisoners saw me in their midst they backed off without question, parting like the Red Sea all the way to the elevator doors. I assumed it was fear which sent them skittering away, then I saw that most were smiling, their eyes awe-filled, some even murmuring their thanks in quiet tones.

  From outside, the elevator looked like a write-off, the doors gone, the floor dented, a gaping hole in the ceiling. The berserkers had punched through one corner of the cabin like it was aluminium foil. They had ripped the machine gun from its mount, bending it into the barely recognisable hunk of metal that now lay forgotten against the rear wall.

  Through the splintered gap I saw the elevator shaft stretching upwards to infinity, no sign of life other than the handful of inmates who stood on the roof. Bodie was one of them, and when he saw me enter he stuck his head down through the hole.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Looks like Furnace’s pets have given us a clear route to freedom.’

  ‘No way,’ said Zee, following me in. ‘You kidding me?’

  Simon pushed past us, using his bigger arm to haul himself up through the hole. Bodie made way for him, ushering for us to follow. I grabbed the broken ceiling, doing my best to forget about my aches and pains as I hefted my weight onto the roof. It was as black as solitary up here, but my eyes picked out every detail in silver light – the metal scaffold that held the counterweights, the power cords, and the massive steel traction cables which connected the elevator to the surface.

  ‘Don’t forget about little old me,’ yelled Zee, his voice tinny. I ducked back in, offered him my hand, surprised at how little effort it took to pull him up. He snatched a startled breath as he found his balance. ‘Jesus it’s cold in here.’

  It was, and we all knew why. Dropping down the shaft from a mile above our heads was a current of cool, fresh air. We stood in silence for a minute or so, all of us breathing it in and grinning as though we could see up past the rock, past the Black Fort, to the rain-drenched world outside.

  ‘Man, that feels good,’ said Bodie. ‘Think we can all climb it?’

  ‘We might not need to,’ said Simon. He was standing over the reinforced bolts which connected the cables to the car. From what I could see everything looked intact, the berserkers having broken through close to the edge of the roof. Not that I knew the first thing about elevators. ‘Don’t see no damage.’

  Before anyone could answer we heard a thump from way over our heads, panic driving us back through the hole so rapidly that we almost crushed each other. We peered up from the relative safety of the cabin, the source of the noise invisible.

  ‘Like I said,’ repeated Simon, his pulse so hard that I could hear it in his voice. ‘Those cables look like they’re all intact. Elevator might still run.’

  ‘Yeah, but the doors are screwed,’ said Bodie. ‘You think this thing will go without ’em?’

  ‘Not to mention the controls are up top,’ Zee added. ‘Someone’s gotta get up there first.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  Both Simon and I had spoken the same words at exactly the same time. We laughed at each other, the sound filtering through the
hole and echoing up the lift shaft like it was making a break for freedom without us.

  ‘The hell you will,’ said Zee. ‘You think you get to be the heroes again ’cos you’ve got the muscles? I can climb just as well as you.’

  ‘With those twigs you call arms?’ Simon replied. ‘You can’t even see where you’re going. You’d make it five metres, maybe ten.’

  ‘First round of fries up top says I beat you,’ he said. ‘Not that I’ve got any money on me.’

  This time we all giggled, the oxygen blasting down the shaft like a drug, making us giddy. We didn’t care about the tang of dust and oil, or the reek of the berserker which had pulled itself back up to the surface. All we could smell was freedom.

  ‘We all go,’ I said, turning to Bodie. ‘When we get to the top –’

  ‘If,’ interrupted Simon.

  ‘When we get to the top, we’ll pull up the elevator. Make sure you clear the wreckage from around the doors, and fill it with as many kids as you can. With any luck we can bring everyone up in a few trips.’

  ‘No doubt,’ he said, nodding. ‘We don’t hear from you in a few hours, then we’ll send up another group.’

  ‘How you gonna know when a few hours is over?’ asked Simon. Bodie shrugged.

  ‘Just be safe,’ he said. ‘And don’t get so carried away by escape that you forget to press the call button, you hear me? We all counting on you down here.’

  I nodded, and moved to climb back through the hole before turning instead to stare out of the elevator doors. The sea of faces gathered outside reminded me of the day I’d arrived here, the first time I’d stepped from these very doors into the yard. The memory rushed back, bitter-sweet – the fear and the anger, then the hope when I saw Donovan’s smile. He’d been the only reason I didn’t jump on my first day, and the only reason I didn’t jump on my last. He’d once told me that he wasn’t my guardian angel, but he was, and once again I found myself missing him like a part of myself.