Singularity

by Joe Hart

  Andrews sat at his desk and sipped almost half the glass of whiskey down in a gulp. Sullivan tried his own drink and felt the liquor trace a burning path down his throat into his stomach. It tasted like bright honey.

  “I guess I don’t follow you, sir,” Sullivan said after a minute of silence. Andrews looked up and seemed to notice Sullivan again.

  “Each man is a measurement of what he does. I try to run this facility as well as I can, treat the inmates with dignity, befriend my officers, and what do I get? Betrayal and fucking rain.” The warden motioned toward the high windows. “I’ve failed this place and the people within, is what I’m saying, Sullivan.”

  “Sir, the circumstances aren’t exactly normal here. So—” Sullivan paused, watching a grimace of pain arc across the other man’s features. Andrews leaned forward and set his glass down. Some of the whiskey slopped onto the desktop and pooled in puddles. “Are you okay?” Sullivan asked, beginning to rise to his feet.

  The warden put up a hand, shook his head, and gradually opened his eyes. “Sorry, I’m …” The older man’s hands fumbled in a drawer. Soon, they reappeared holding several pill bottles, which he dropped onto the desk. One bottle rolled through the spilt whiskey.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Sullivan asked again. The warden’s posture was stiff and his hands clawed at the bottles with urgency.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Shit, I didn’t want to do this in front of anyone,” Andrews finally said. His fingers found purchase on one of the lids and he poured out two white pills from inside the bottle. Without bothering to screw the top back on, he did the same with the other three containers. Sullivan watched as the older man cupped the handful of tablets and tossed them back into his mouth. A shaking hand brought the whiskey close, and after a quick swallow, Andrews sat back in the chair, his thin chest expanding and contracting.

  “I’m sorry.” The warden’s voice was weak, but Sullivan could still hear him over the whisper of the rain. “Don’t be alarmed, I take them with booze sometimes. I think it makes ’em work faster.”

  “What’s wrong, sir?” Sullivan asked. He still felt as if he should call for help, but the older man looked to be calming. No shit, Sullivan thought. He just washed down half a dozen pills with some Jameson. He should be calm.

  Andrews rubbed his face and finally opened his eyes. “Bone cancer. I have maybe five months left. The pills are experimental, but they’re not doing shit. I can feel it.”

  Sullivan felt his stomach drop. “God, I’m sorry.”

  The warden nodded. “Me too. Didn’t want to believe it when they told me last year. ‘You’ve got fourteen, maybe fifteen months.’ the doctor said. It’s only been ten and I feel like dying. I can take the weakness and the nausea that comes and goes. It’s the pain that kicks my feet out from under me. It shoots up out of nowhere and only one of these”—he motioned to the white bottles before him—“is an actual painkiller.”

  Sullivan swallowed a mouthful from the glass and felt warmth spread outward from his stomach, mellowing the pain in his shoulder and legs. “I don’t blame you,” Sullivan said. He watched the warden’s eyes level with his and then blink, registering him again.

  “For what?” Andrews asked.

  “For mixing the booze in with them. My mother died of cancer and I think she would have liked a drink at the end.”

  Andrews nodded and stared down at the pills. Sullivan sipped from the glass again and relished the numbing sensation that made his vision fuzzy at the edges. Strong stuff, he thought as he watched Andrews fasten the caps back onto their respective bottles.

  “Sometimes I feel like just chucking them in the garbage. I just want to be done with it. Let it take me and go down the road since my ride seems to be here. Sometimes I think all this”—Andrews motioned to the bottles again as he tossed them into the desk drawer—“is just spitting in the face of whatever awaits us.”

  Andrews turned and studied the rain that speckled the windows and ran down out of sight as more fell to take its place. “You married, Sullivan?”

  Sullivan felt his gut clench and the room swim in vertigo. Like falling, his mind said, and he felt the press of nausea within his stomach. “No,” he heard himself say. He set the empty glass down and rubbed his hand across the bleariness of his vision in an attempt to clear it. “I was, but not anymore.”

  Andrews studied him from the confines of his chair and took the last of his drink in one hand. He watched the whiskey glow in the light before finishing it off with a practiced toss of his head. He hissed and set the glass down on the desk. “Me too. I’m not anymore either. Maddy was the most careful driver I ever met, and she was killed in a car crash. Ironic, isn’t it? Wasn’t even her fault. She was sitting at a stop sign, waiting her turn, and a kid who was texting, of all things, never touched his brakes. The teenager was fine, but he took my Maddy from me that afternoon. Almost seven years ago this fall.”

  Andrews’s watery eyes found Sullivan’s and held them. “That’s why sometimes I feel like this is all for naught. Everything I’ve done and accomplished has been wasted. Everything I’ve worked for is falling down around me. I’m alone, Sullivan. Alone and forgotten.”

  “Sir, we need to focus on what’s happening now,” Sullivan said, sitting up and trying to clear his vision of the whiskey. “I’m very sorry about everything, but my friend is missing, and he needs our help.”

  Andrews’s head dropped lower and lower until his chin rested on his breastbone. He stayed that way for some time, and then looked up at Sullivan and nodded. “You’re right, son. I didn’t mean to lay anything on you. I apologize. I’m not sure what card to play next. If what you say is accurate, then one of my own is responsible.”

  “For the time being, let me poke around a little, don’t let on that anything is off. We can’t spook whoever’s behind this.”

  Andrews nodded. “Let me know about anything out of the ordinary. I have a few people here I’d trust with my life, but I won’t breath a word until you say so. The only problem is, we’ll need to start organizing our evacuation very soon if this rain doesn’t stop.” Andrews twisted in his chair again and looked at the windows, then brought his gaze back to Sullivan. “Do you think it’s letting up at all?”

  Sullivan shifted his eyes up to the windows for a moment before meeting the older man’s pleading gaze. Pity welled up from inside him like blood from a cut, and he did his best to smile. “I think so.”

  ==

  Sullivan shut the warden’s door behind him and stared at the officer behind the main desk in the lobby. The man’s eyes hovered just above the countertop, and then dropped back to the paperwork before him.

  Sullivan walked to the door that led toward the guards’ barracks and swiped his key against the reader. The door clicked and he slipped through. The hallway was barren and quiet. He paused, waiting for any sounds ahead. There were none. When he reached the top of the second floor, he realized where his body was leading him. The fatigue, paired with the soreness of his injuries, was pushing him toward bed without his consent. The whiskey had faded a little, its former power just a pleasant humming in his skull. Every instinct in his being cursed him as he opened the door to his and Barry’s room. He wanted nothing more than to search the entire complex for Barry, but his muscles would have none of it. He knew that if he pushed himself now, he’d only end up a puddle on the floor in a few hours.

  As he pushed the door shut behind him, he became aware that someone was in the room.

  He smelled cigarettes and something else—peppermint? The hair on the back of his neck stiffened and his hand yanked the H&K from its holster. He spun and scanned the room with the barrel. His and Barry’s beds were exactly as they had been. He crouched and peered beneath them. Without waiting, Sullivan lunged forward and kicked open the door of the small bathroom. He knew as soon as he did it that no one stood in the small space. After doing a thorough once-over of the room, he holstered the pistol and examined the small table
between the beds. The drawer was open a quarter inch. Sullivan pulled it out the rest of the way, shutting it again after confirming it held nothing but a layer of dust.

  After locking the dead bolt in the door, he returned to his bed and sat on the lower bunk. He sniffed the air, pulling in the scents again. He could barely register them now. Someone had been there only a few minutes before he came in. Maybe they’d even heard him ascending the stairs and ducked out just before he came into view.

  He looked up at the window and realized he hadn’t completely lied to Andrews. The rain looked to be letting up some, with only the occasional drop splattering against the glass. He glanced around the room one last time, waiting for one of the things he’d seen in the last twelve hours to come rushing out from the wall itself, as if the prison’s flesh was alive with whatever malevolence resided here.

  Sullivan felt himself lean toward the bed and his head settle into the pillow, as exhaustion pulled him completely under.

  ==

  A pounding rebounded inside of his head as he awoke. For a moment, as he came to in the dark, he thought it was only the whiskey wreaking havoc with his senses, because he could feel his pulse thudding in the back of his skull. Then it came again, and he sat up, too quickly, his eyesight flashing with lightheadedness.

  “Agent Shale? I thought maybe you’d like dinner. Warden Andrews sent me up with a plate.” The voice from the corridor was a female’s, and Sullivan thought he recognized it from the guard who’d checked them in the day before.

  He rose from the bed, steadying himself for a moment before walking to the door. He wished in vain for a fisheye that he could peer out of, and instead, drew his weapon again. “Coming,” he said more groggily than he felt. He drew the dead bolt back and felt the door bite into his wounded shoulder as it was kicked open from the other side. Must’ve had the knob already turned, he thought, as he fell onto his back and watched his handgun clatter out of sight beneath the bed.

  Three guards rushed into the room. The first two were men he recognized from the group that came to investigate the lower hall that morning. The female guard from the day before was behind them, her sidearm drawn and pointing directly at his face.

  “Grab him!” she yelled, and the two men in front of her dove at Sullivan.

  He caught the first guard with an upward kick below the jaw. He heard the man’s teeth clack together and a cry of pain as he stumbled sideways toward the bed. The other guard fell on top of Sullivan and rained two quick punches down, which rocked his head off the floor.

  “Fucker broke my teeth!” the first guard cried, swinging a graceless kick into Sullivan’s ribs. The wind flew from him, and he felt a blow from the man on top of him connect with his ear.

  “Alive!” the female guard yelled, and Sullivan took the opportunity to breath. His lungs worked without catching on any broken ribs, although they felt tight enough to snap any second. Hands encircled his biceps on both sides and hauled him to his feet.

  “Piece of shit!” the first guard said, as he spit a piece of what Sullivan could only assume was his tooth at the side of his face.

  “Cuff him.”

  “Got it.”

  Sullivan tried to resist, but both men forced his arms behind his back, and he felt the bite of cold steel against his wrists. He flexed his forearms as the guard behind him closed the cuffs tight, and was thankful when he felt the flexibility of a chain between the shackles.

  “Walk,” the guard that punched him said from behind, shoving him toward the open door.

  “You guys could have just brought me dinner instead of taking me to it. Way easier, you know,” Sullivan said.

  The woman’s pistol whipped across the side of his face, and leveled once more in his eyes as he opened them. Both men pushed him again, and he nearly fell as he stumbled into the hallway.

  Only a few lights glowed outside the room, leaving the hallway dappled in shadows. Sullivan’s heart rate accelerated as he felt the two male guards grab his biceps again and steer him toward the stairs.

  “Where are you taking me?” Sullivan asked, working his jaw where the female guard had hit him.

  “Somewhere special,” the man on his left responded.

  “The same place you took Agent Stevens?” Sullivan heard similar sniggers on either side of him, and anger began to override the fear he’d felt in the room. He heard the sound he was waiting for—the soft dragging of steel sliding into plastic—and knew that the woman had holstered her handgun. He tested the give in the handcuffs and pulled the chain tight across his lower back, calculating how much he’d have to stretch. “Jesus, you guys opened up the stitches in my shoulder. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Who gives a fuck? Dave, do you care?” the guard on his right asked.

  “Nope, how ’bout you, Shelly?” the man on his left said.

  “Both of you shut up and hold on to him, it looks like he’s passing out.”

  The head of the stairs neared and Sullivan mentally braced himself for what was to come. Before they could force him down the first step, he halted and leaned forward as if he were going to vomit. The grips on each of his arms tightened and both men moved out from behind him, closer to his sides. He breathed out once, and then in.

  With a short lunging motion, Sullivan kicked the guard on the right in the knee, and felt the joint give. The man flailed and screamed as he lost his balance and tipped into the stairway. Without putting his foot down, Sullivan kicked back, hoping that Shelly was right where her voice had come from a moment ago. She was. He felt the heel of his foot sink into her generous stomach and heard air launch out of her lungs in a startled cry. The guard on his left finally reacted with a haymaker, which Sullivan partially blocked with his shoulder. He returned with a knee to the man’s crotch, which doubled him over in agony. Sullivan threw himself into the guard and both men tumbled into the open space above the stairway.

  The edges of the stairs sent flashes of pain throughout Sullivan’s body as he and the guard bounced and rolled down them. The landing came up quickly and stopped their progress. He felt himself land on top of the guard he’d kicked in the knee. Immediately, Sullivan launched his hips into the air and tucked himself toward his legs. He pulled the handcuffs down and felt them slip beneath his buttocks, and then past his feet as he tightened himself into the fetal position.

  Movement at the far end of the landing drew his attention and he scrambled to his feet as the guard he’d kneed stood shakily and pulled his handgun. Sullivan stepped forward and caught the man’s wrist of his gun hand. In a twisting movement he wound the handcuff’s chain tight around the small bones in the guard’s hand and pulled straight up. He heard the man’s wrist snap and pop, as ligaments and tendons shredded and broke. The gun fell to the floor and Sullivan drove his head forward, smashing the guard’s nose flat and cutting off a scream.

  A brush of air pushed at the back of his neck and chips of cement from the wall pelted his face. It was only then that he registered the sound of the shot. Shelly had recovered enough to point her pistol and fire at him, as he ducked down the second set of steps, snatching the dropped handgun as he fled.

  Another shot sank into the stairs as he leapt to the main floor. Sullivan spun and slid to one knee, pointing the guard’s weapon back the way he’d come. The seconds ticked by and sweat ran freely down the back of his scalp. He imagined he heard the pounding steps of reinforcements responding to the sound of the shots, but then the edge of Shelly’s arm appeared at the top of the stairs, and Sullivan focused, drew a bead on the exposed flesh, and fired.

  Shelly screamed and disappeared from sight. Sullivan got to his feet and ran low up the stairs, easing around the corner, gun-first. Shelly lay propped against the guard who’d fallen down the stairs initially. Sullivan glanced at him and noticed the odd angle of the guard’s head and the dead stare in his eyes. Shelly’s breathing came in ragged gasps, and Sullivan searched the floor until he spotted her weapon lying a few feet away fr
om her open palm. Blood ran steadily from a hole just above her collarbone and stained the blue of her uniform black. He stepped forward and kept the sights of the handgun between the woman’s staring eyes.

  “Where’s my friend?” Sullivan asked. His voice came out in a growl, his words garbled by adrenaline and rage.

  Shelly breathed and blinked through tears streaming down her wide face. “You’ll never find him. It’s too late.”

  Sullivan moved closer, shoving gun into her upturned face. “It better not be. I’ll bring this whole fucking place down if he’s gone.”

  The guard’s soft laughter shocked him and he lowered the muzzle a few inches. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her belly shook. When she looked at him again, only cold indifference resided in her eyes. “You’ll see. Everyone will see. She’s here and nothing can stop her.”

  Tendrils erupted from her mouth as she lunged for her handgun. Sullivan felt his finger twitch on the trigger and most of Shelly’s head sprayed the dead guard and wall behind her as she slumped to her side.

  He stepped back and tried to steady his shaking arms as he watched the twisting appendages slither back and forth across the hard floor. Gradually they receded back into what was left of the corpse’s head.

  Keeping his eyes on the dead body before him, he searched the unconscious guard’s duty belt. At last his fingers found a small key, and he forced it awkwardly with one hand into the opposite handcuff.

  A door opened somewhere above him and his head snapped up, stomach tightening into a hot ball. The handcuff sprang open, and as he turned and hurried down the stairs, Sullivan heard voices murmur above him, along with the scuff of shoes moving closer.