by Samuel King
As they waited, the doors opened, admitting the tenth and final artificial, a member of the main floor security team. Doherty stopped him. "The others have the situation under control," he said. "I need ya ta organize the ladies here. Keep ‘em in some sort of order and take a count. We're lookin' for thirty-eight."
After the man acknowledged his order, Doherty led the internal extraction team through the doors, down the corridor and around to the left, into the assembly area. Joel was waiting for them there, along with Helen, Cynthia and the technician. The club manager cowered a few feet away.
"Line those units up right next to the arrays," Joel ordered, pointing. "Stack them up carefully. When we begin disconnecting these people we want to move fast."
The men set the first ten transport units down next to one of the three shelves of neural arrays. They laid the first six on the floor and started a second layer with the next four. After completing the task, they bolted from the room as one, preparing to retrieve the next ten units.
"Make sure the guys outside are getting the transport units down from the vans," Joel said to Doherty. "Then start moving the people in here."
Doherty took note of the impassive look on Joel's face and his reference to the women obliquely, as ‘people'. Having obviously detached himself from the situation, he seemed devoid of any emotion. Only time would tell if he could maintain that posture, especially after they brought the women in from the Special Entertainment section. Doherty shuddered at the prospect.
He followed the internal extraction team to the main entrance where they immediately took up the next ten transport units. As they re-entered the main floor, the five members of the external extraction team arrived with additional units. After sliding them around the security gate, they left wordlessly, returning to the vans for the next ten units.
Doherty exhaled sharply and addressed the enforcer. "Anything happening here, Pete?"
"Not much; it's been quiet. A couple of guys showed up a few minutes ago, but I didn't have any trouble with ‘em." He pulled his jacket aside, revealing the holstered pistol. "They went right to the main floor, just like they were told. No problem."
"Good. Maybe we'll get by without havin' ta grab too many more."
"That'd be good. Makes for an easy night for me."
"Just keep me posted," Doherty said. "Don't hesitate ta ask for help if ya need it."
"I'll be just fine, boss."
Doherty returned to the waiting women, marveling at the operation's precision. Can it really be this easy? An uneasy quiet had settled over the main floor. The customers had all been herded against the far wall, where Tom and eight members of his team held them—arms raised, fingers pointed. The women were lined up, more or less, at the double doors, where the final member of Tom's team counted them.
"I'm short one," he complained. "I keep coming up with thirty-seven."
"Shit!"
"I can try again."
"Wait," Doherty replied. Addressing the women, he said, "We need your help, ladies. There's s'posed to be thirty-eight of ya, but one's missin'. Anyone know where she might be?"
The women finally seemed to grasp what was happening and tried to help. Querying each other with soft, hesitant voices, they sought to determine the identity of their missing comrade. Only the three Lolitas refrained, the older two trying to comfort their crying "sister". He lowered his head briefly, biting his lip, reminded yet again of his friend, a decent man, who somehow hadn't seen.
The child stopped crying long enough to whisper something to ‘Old Lolita' who caressed her face before approaching him. "She thinks it's Flo," she said. "A customer took her into a booth when everything started."
"Which booth, Dear?" he asked the child, who pointed hesitantly after looking up at her older "sister". "Good girl," he said. Turning toward Tom's team and their captives, he called, "Hey, Tom?"
"Yo!"
"There's some people in one of those booths near the corner there," he said, pointing. Find ‘em and send the woman over here."
"What about the John?"
Looking at the terrified child, Doherty growled, "He ain't no fuckin' John. Kick his ass, then get ‘im over with the rest of ‘em."
"My pleasure," Tom said, with a broad smile. "I'll give him your compliments."
"You do that, fella. Then hit ‘im again."
Tom jogged toward the adjacent wall and began to check the booths near the corner. After peering into the third, he shouted then reached in and pulled out a naked, young woman. In spite of her obvious terror, her face was twisted into a pathetic smile.
"Get your clothes, Miss," the artificial said. "Then go over there with the others."
The young woman obeyed without hesitation, reaching back into the booth. She retrieved a tiny tube-like garment, clutched it to her breasts and surveyed the main floor, smiling absently all the while. "I don't understand," she said finally.
"Come over here, Flo," Doherty called to her, gesturing. "Everything's okay."
After Flo took her first, hesitant step toward the gathering on the other side of the room, Tom dragged a naked customer from the booth. "Why didn't you come out when you were told"?
"Nobody told me anything," the man replied. After looking about the room, he covered his genitals. "What's going on?"
"This." Tom raised his arm and sent the human tumbling onto the floor. He adjusted his aim and discharged a second pulse, as the man tried to crawl away. He cried out and lay still, trying to protect his head.
Smiling, Tom pointed once more. "And this one's for my boss," he said, before hitting the human with yet a third pulse that left him sobbing. "Now you get the hell over there with the others."
As Doherty watched, smiling, the customer slithered toward his fellow captives, groaning with every move. Small recompense, perhaps, but it helped, particularly when he considered the travail of the child Lolita and her "sisters" who had once been children too. With a lump in his throat, he called to his charges, "Alright ladies, time to go."
They left the main floor, following him through the double doors, down the corridor and into the assembly area. There, they gasped to see the manager, the man who once held the power of life and death over them, crying. As they stared at the spectacle open-mouthed, some of them began to cry as well. Helen and Cynthia moved amongst them, offering encouragement and an occasional embrace.
Joel studied the women for several seconds, before approaching the manager. "You will provide a master list of all captives in this facility to my associate," he said pointing to the technician. "You will also assist him in retrieving those in… Special Entertainment. He spat the words, and for just a moment, his eyes narrowed; his lips quivered. "You will give us your complete co-operation, or I will happily turn you over to Mr. O'Reilly here. Is that clear?"
Whimpering, the manager nodded as Doherty smiled and drew his pistol. Leading him to the technician seated at the control console, he said, "Not so tough, now, are we Big Man?"
The manager continued to cry as he opened a drawer in the console and removed a list matching array numbers with names. After handing it to Doherty, he addressed the technician, talking softly between sobs. As he spoke, the technician made entries into the control terminal, nodding occasionally.
Doherty handed the list to Joel, who examined it briefly before addressing the women. "Ladies, we're going to take your neural arrays out of this facility," he said, and waited for the clamor to subside, before continuing. "We have transport units designed specifically for this purpose. Once one is attached to your array, your consciousness will be suspended, just as if you were regenerating. When we reach our destination, you'll be attached to a new system and awoken."
As he finished speaking, the internal extraction team arrived with ten more transport units. They stacked them neatly then hurried out of the room, leaving the women even more agitated. While many seemed unaware their arrays were portable, all of them expressed fear of transport. They simply had no concept of "
somewhere else".
"You'll experience no passage of time," Joel assured them. "When your array is reactivated, it will seem as if you just left."
"And you'll be free," Helen added.
Their words seemed to fall on deaf ears, and both Cynthia and Helen were obliged to step up their comforting ministry. Unfortunately, their efforts went for naught, sabotaged by the arrival of the women from the ‘S'&'M' Special Entertainment section. They arrived en massed, twelve in all, "materializing" on the far side of the room.
Some were naked. All, bore the signs of "physical" abuse, their bodies bruised and striped from repeated whippings. The women, including Cynthia, began to cry. Helen merely inspected the newcomers, her face showing no trace of emotion.
"How many are left?" Joel asked the manager, the "muscles" in his face drawn taut.
"Five."
"In the dungeon?"
The manager lowered his head, nodding. When he raised it again, his expression was blank. "You'll have to check the array containment units to see how many of them are still alive."
As if in pain, Joel grabbed the sides of his head and shrieked, "What? You leave them there even after they're dead?"
"If their owners want," the manager answered, his voice flat and without emotion. "It's up to them." Staring at his captors, he added, "Terrible, isn't it?"
Joel started to respond but only closed his eyes and took a deep "breath". After several seconds, he asked, "How many customers are back there?"
The manager mumbled something to the technician, who pulled up a list on the monitor. After examining it, he announced, "Six in all, boss, including one in the dungeon."
Joel turned to Doherty and ordered, "Go round those bastards up. I want them standing right here in front of me. Take Helen with you." As an afterthought he asked the manager, "Is the corridor between here and Special Entertainment holo equipped?"
The manager shook his head. "Only after you pass through the security doors."
"Shit!" Joel thought for a moment before asking, "Are the security doors locked from the inside?"
"No."
"Good." Turning to Doherty, he said, "We'll send Helen into the area right after you leave, and she'll open the doors for you."
"What if those pricks get to her before I do?" Doherty asked.
"Don't worry about me, Jimmy," Helen said, wagging her index finger in his face. "I can take care of myself."
"I wasn't worried about you, darlin'. It's the poor customers." He paused and smiled at Cynthia. "We don't want to do anything to upset our resident peacemaker."
Cynthia scowled, turning her back to him.
"Be right back," Doherty said, laughing, but as soon as he started for the door, Joel called to him. "Yeah?"
"Try not to kill any of them."
"I'll try," he muttered. "I'll try real hard." Then he continued his trek, out of the assembly area and down the corridor, past the "SPECIAL ENTERTAINMENT AREA" sign. Arriving at the security doors beyond, he stopped and waited for Helen. Several seconds passed before the doors opened, and he joined her on the other side. Almost immediately they encountered a group of five customers gathered in the corridor, apparently confused by the sudden disappearance of the women.
"Hey, what the hell happened?" one of them asked, mistaking him for an employee. He leered at Helen.
Without answering, Doherty pistol whipped the man, before leveling his weapon at the others. "Don't move," he warned. "I'm just lookin' for an excuse, any at all, t'shoot every last one'a ya." When the four men left standing, flattened themselves against the wall, he said to Helen, "You watch these while I check out the other place." As if fearful of invoking the evil of the Dungeon, he refused to name it.
Stepping over the semi-conscious customer, he stopped when one of Helen's charges howled behind him. He turned to see a second man writhing on the floor. Helen stood over him, grim faced, her finger extended. Chuckling, he continued down the corridor but didn't get far before an unfamiliar sound accosted him. With every step it grew louder and, to his horror, identifiable. He tried to ignore it at first, then to convince himself it wasn't what it seemed, then finally, to block it out.
None of his efforts bore fruit, and the sound engulfed him all the way to the end of the corridor, where he froze. Staring at two large wooden doors, the doors of a medieval dungeon, in front of him, he was forced to concede the sound was none other than that of a tortured soul in agony. It seemed to swirl all around him, pervading all of his senses and extinguishing any chance of rational thought. He closed his eyes, trembling.
Willing himself forward, he pulled the heavy doors open and entered. The dungeon was surprisingly small and seemed to consist of a narrow, dirt covered passageway, lined on both sides by a half dozen cells. The place was dark, illuminated only by two large torches at the end of the passageway. The only other light, emanated from the individual cells which were also illuminated by torches, and as he walked past each of them, he moaned at the plight of the women within.
In three of the cells, they appeared to be lifeless, suspended in one form or another from the ceiling. In a fourth cell, a woman groveled on the floor, semi-conscious, but only in a fifth cell, the last cell on his left, would he find the source of the sound—the true nightmare. He immediately vomited.
Oblivious to his presence, a man, holding what appeared to be a scalpel, hovered over a woman secured to a table by her wrists and ankles. He made slow, careful incisions in her mid section as she writhed in agony. Her screams were constant, coming in a steady stream, regardless of the scalpel's location. She was obviously long past the point of discerning specific insults to her "body".
As the customer prepared for a new incision, Doherty charged into the cell and knocked him to the floor. He kicked him once in his mid section and then a second and third time, before bringing his foot down on the man's jaw. The woman screamed throughout, and as he dragged her tormentor out of the cell and down the passageway, Doherty screamed also.
Only after they had left the dungeon, did he realize the customer, a thin, graying, professional type, was screaming as well. He pulled the man to his feet and stared at him in the comparatively harsh light of the corridor.
He appeared to be well groomed and, beneath his blood spattered apron, well dressed. He might easily have passed for a surgeon, one pulled hastily from a critical operation in the E.R. Instead, he cowered against the wall, looking about wildly, like nothing so much as a trapped animal.
Doherty shoved him down the corridor, toward Helen and her prisoners who immediately shied away. Even they, apparently, considered him untouchable, and he mused briefly on the moral distinction between them. Perhaps the S&M people were only bound for purgatory, while the torturer was certainly headed straight to hell.
"What the hell, Jimmy?" Helen gasped.
"Please, darlin', don't ask."
He pointed to the prostrate men, yelling at the others, "Pick ‘em up, and start movin'."
Two of the customers helped the men to their feet, and they all started down the corridor toward the security doors. The "doctor" staggered after the first five, holding his jaw and moaning.
"Be quick," Helen said, as they reached the doors. "This place gives me the creeps." She cocked an ear, obviously trying to discern the nature of the muted screams coming from the far end of the corridor.
"It'll just be a minute. I promise."
Once Doherty and the prisoners were safely on the other side of the doors, the woman's screams ended. Sound proof.
He took note of the "doctor's" apron. White and pristine, it gave no indication of the grisly business he'd been party to only minutes earlier—evidence lost in the holo free corridor. His own blood, running from his mouth and over his chin, provided the only sign of violence.
That changed as soon as they re-entered the assembly area, where evidence of his crimes was visited upon him yet again. A collective gasp filled the room, and the other five customers attempted to distance them
selves from him yet again. The women, lining up by number, stared, then shrank from the gore covered torturer.
Cynthia cried out and ran up to him. "What did you do?" she demanded of Doherty.
He said nothing at first, responding only when she angrily repeated the question. "Goddamn it, Cynthia! Don't start."
Undeterred, she persisted until Joel placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "Leave it alone, Cynthia. Now's not the time." He studied Doherty for several seconds, before asking, "What did you find out there?"
"It's a fuckin' nightmare. Worse than anything you can imagine."
Joel flinched. "How many did you find alive?"
"Only two. The others were hung up from the ceiling like trophies."
The technician completed a series of entries into the console, resulting in the re-appearance of Helen. Then he swiveled around to face them. "Three," he corrected. "The system says three of them are still alive." He pointed to a group of neural arrays clustered together on one of the shelves. "Those are your dungeon people. You'll notice that three of the Sentient Interface modules are still showing green. Only two are in the red."
"I couldn't tell," Doherty replied, shaking his head. "They all looked dead to me."
"Bring them back here," Joel said to the technician, who made several entries before pressing a large red button on the monitor.
The three women "materialized", sprawled on the floor in the middle of the room. One remained unconscious, the second, still crawling as she had been when Doherty first found her. The third continued to scream, her suddenly freed arms and legs flailing about.
In the well-lit assembly area, the horror of her condition surpassed what he had seen in the dungeon. Naked, every inch of her body appeared to have been cut or sliced in some fashion. The incisions on her midsection were deeper than the others, and small bits of viscera protruded from them. Her eyes were wild, well beyond any comprehension.
The other women screamed and cried, their well ordered lines, formed for transport, dissolving into a chaotic jumble. Cynthia hid from the horror, covering her eyes. Helen stared at it, her mouth moving wordlessly. Only the manager seemed unmoved by the scene. Staring at the unfortunates on the floor, he said simply, "Terrible, isn't it?", his words nearly lost in the din.
