by Glen Frost
Besides, this was Herbert Williams, the so-called "California Chopper." He had been given the lurid moniker because of his penchant for roofying the young gay men he lured back to his farmhouse, cutting off their penises when they were too weak to fight back, and then stuffing the hacked-off appendages down their throats. It was usually impossible for the coroner to tell whether it was asphyxiation or blood loss that had killed the men first, but one thing was for sure: There were twenty-seven grieving families because of what this piece of shit had done. The fact that he liked to fuck the corpses while they were still warm before disposing of them in the woods at the back of his property only made matters worse.
Catching the look of barely concealed revulsion plastered across the guard's face, Williams shrugged and let his arm fall back down to his side. If the inmate was offended at McCrudden's refusal to shake hands, he gave no sign of it. Mark guessed that when you had twenty-seven consecutive life sentences stacked up against you, it was a whole lot easier not to sweat the small stuff.
"Herb here is one of the nicer ones," Nate went on, speaking as though the inmate wasn't even there. "That ain't to say safe, you understand. There ain't any safe ones at all; if they were safe, they wouldn't be in the god-damned ADX in the first place."
McCrudden looked around. The cell was small indeed, measuring roughly twelve feet long and seven feet wide. It was sparsely furnished with a pull-down toilet, recessed sink, and a shower cubicle. A small table and stool were made of concrete, as was the bed. He knew all of that from orientation, but it was one thing to be taught it in a classroom and another thing entirely to see it made solid. The room was so god-damned cramped, it was a wonder the poor bastard incarcerated in here didn't go stark raving mad...
Of course, a high percentage of the inmates were mad to start off with, and security trumped comfort every time when it came to prison design. The warden had told all eight of her new hires on day one of orientation that the inmates of ADX Utah were pretty much beyond any hope of rehabilitation. "If we can make them just a little less violent during their time here, and prevent them from harming anybody else, then we consider that a success," she had said, standing at a wooden lectern in the front of the classroom. "But as for 'fixing' these precious little darlings, well -- that is quite out of the question. They are broken beyond all repair before ever reaching our humble little facility."
He found that very easy to believe. Almost every inmate in this particular Supermax was criminally insane and homicidally violent, even the pathetic-looking specimen sitting on the bed in front of him right now. The man appeared pitifully eager to please, and Mark found that he had to make a conscious effort to remember just how many lives he was responsible for ending…and how brutally his victims had died.
Herbert Williams must have been on the 'nice' list rather than the 'naughty,' because a small LCD TV was mounted on one wall of the cell. That was a reward for good behavior, and could be taken away at the warden's discretion for any infraction whatsoever, whether real or imagined. A History Channel show about the Battle of the Atlantic was running at the moment with the sound turned way down.
"This here's Herb's only view of the world for twenty-three hours a day." Nate was standing in front of a vertical slit set into the far wall. The windows in every cell were just four inches wide. They weren't barred, simply because there was no need. The hardened Plexiglass was strong enough to withstand any frenzied battering that the inmate might inflict upon it, and in the extremely unlikely event that it should break, they were hardly going to escape through such a painfully thin opening.
They were right, McCrudden told himself, the place really is a damned fortress.
"Seen enough?"
He nodded.
"You seen one cell, you've seen 'em all." Nate stepped outside and locked the door behind them both. "Bye, Herb."
"Goodbye Mr. Saunders!" came the muffled, obsequious voice from behind the steel door. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. McCrudden!"
"Uh, yeah...'bye, Herb."
Nate chuckled, shaking his head at the rookie's politeness. "Soon as we're gone, he'll have his pecker out and be jerking off while he thinks about you, Mark. He likes the fresh blood, if'n you know what I mean..."
McCrudden returned a weak laugh, struggling to conceal his revulsion at the thought of a gay serial killer whacking off while thinking about him. His upper lip curled in disgust.
"Look on the bright side," the senior guard went on, obviously on a roll now, "It ain't as though he's able to buy you any drinks in here, so you don't have to worry about him cutting your damned johnson off!"
Fucking jackass, Mark thought but was careful not to say. He had only met Nate three hours ago, and already his very limited appeal was starting to wear a little thin. He sighed, letting his mind wander as they patrolled the long hallways, occasionally stopping to look through the viewing slots of a cell whenever it took the senior man's fancy to do so. Nate was his assigned training preceptor for the next two weeks, so he had better get used to it. There was nothing to be done but grin and bear it. He had learned very early on in his time as a rookie corrections officer that getting on the wrong side of a training officer could mean the death of a career; in fact, he'd seen it happen to more than one rookie, who'd been rated as 'unsatisfactory' by a pissed-off trainer and booted to some backwater shithole for the rest of their time in the service.
Well he'd be damned if he'd let that happen to him. Mama McCrudden hadn't raised any idiots, that was for sure.
The turned a corner and headed toward the stairwell. Even in his state of distraction, Mark still noticed the steel door set into the wall all by its lonesome without a neighboring room alongside it. He halted and stared at it. It took him a moment to figure out why it had struck him as being a little odd. Finally it came to him.
"There's no viewing slit," he said, "and no identification number on the door. What's the deal with that, Nate?"
For the first time all day, the burly man looked a little uncomfortable. "It's, uh...it's kind of a secret."
That got his attention. "What kind of a secret?"
"One we usually keep until you've been here for a little while."
"Oh come on, Nate." Mark put on his most ingratiating smile, his curiosity getting the better of him. "I can keep a secret. You know you can trust me."
Saunders said nothing for a moment, simply looked the rookie up and down as though sizing him up. Finally he said, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I can."
Fiddling with his keys, Nate unlocked the door and slid it aside along the recessed wall runners. Unlike Herb's cell, however, all this achieved was to present them with a second door, one which had a small grey plastic box mounted to it at waist height.
Nate pressed the tip of an index finger against a glass plate some two inches square on the top of the box, holding it there for three or four seconds. An LED flashed green, and there was the metallic sound of a latch unlocking with a click. This time, the door slid aside without human intervention.
"Come on," the senior guard gestured, beckoning for Mark to follow. The room beyond the doorway was twice as large a regular cell, and with good reason; it seemed that every spare inch of space around the perimeter was filled with medical equipment of some sort, beeping and hissing as it went about its business...which was presumably keeping the person laying in the hospital bed alive.
"Who is she?" Mark breathed, taking in the sight of an attractive woman with jet black hair laying on her back beneath pristine white sheets. Fuck, even asleep and without any makeup she was beautiful. She was hooked up to various wires and cables, including two intravenous drips of some kind which hung from thin metal poles that dangled from the ceiling.
"Prisoner Zero."
McCrudden did a double-take. There wasn't the faintest hint of either irony or bullshit in the big man's tone of voice. All inmates had a number, without exception. What the hell kind of identifier was 'Prisoner Zero?'
"I don't get it."
> "Me either." Saunders let out a long sigh. "Don't know much about her, to tell you the truth. They brought her in six, maybe seven months back. Super secret. We all had to get a higher level of biometric coding for security access." He held up his pointer finger to emphasize the point.
"I thought there weren't any female inmates at this Supermax?" The warden was female and so were several of the guards, but as for the inmates, all of them were male.
"There ain't supposed to be. That's why all the secrecy, I suppose."
"Huh." Mark pondered this for a moment. "But you've got no idea who she is?"
"None."
The woman's face was peaceful — in fact, she looked so relaxed that she had to have been sedated, McCrudden reckoned. A breathing tube was sticking out from between her lips, connected to a length of corrugated blue tubing that ran backward to a machine that appeared to be breathing for her every five or six seconds. A second transparent tube, much thinner than the first, snaked its way into her right nostril, where a piece of folded-back surgical tape seemed to be holding it in place.
"I wonder who she is..."
Saunders grunted. "Well, one thing's for sure: she must have done some pretty bad shit to have ended up the only female prisoner at Utah ADX..."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anya stood under the shower head with both the heat and the water pressure set to maximum. She sluiced the blood from her naked body, watching idly as it pooled around her bare feet and ran down the drain in a continuous swirl.
As she worked the final remnants of her six opponents’ bodily fluids out of her hair, her mind cast itself back to the start of her time here at The Agency's secret training facility, located somewhere in the humid marshland of Kentucky. She had been brought there by helicopter, in order to keep her presence away from prying eyes.
That had been roughly five months ago, but it felt more like five years to Anya. When she had accepted the government's offer to work as a special operative for The Agency, a clandestine organization that policed threats of a supernatural nature (among many other roles, most of which she still had no idea about) Anya hadn't really had any idea of what that job might actually entail. She had been surprised to find that the first six months of it were to be spent in training.
"You have extraordinary abilities, Anya, of that there can be no doubt." Agency Training Director Gina Hubbard was a relatively short African-American woman, somewhere around five-four in height, but she had the sort of lean and wiry frame that spoke of regular exercise and a sensible diet. Their first meeting had taken place in a small conference room. Gina's shoulder-length black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, secured with a hair tie at the nape of her neck; she wore a grey pant suit, with a jacket cut specifically to hide the shoulder holster she wore on a twenty-four/seven basis. "But you lack direction; finesse; discipline. Fortunately, that's something we can teach you. And we will."
Gina had smiled, which helped to take some of the sting out of her words. She extended a hand, which Anya shook awkwardly. The Director frowned, a shiver running through her body.
"Cold. Almost freezing, in fact. Has your skin felt this way since...since you..."
"Since I clawed my way back out of my grave? Yes." Anya wasn't remotely uncomfortable talking about it. She seemed to have left any sense of embarrassment she might ever have possessed back there in the cold earth. "It does not bother me. Some people find that it makes them feel...uncomfortable to be touching me."
"I can see how it might." Hubbard ran her eyes up and down Anya's sinuous frame; not in a lascivious way, but more in the manner of a trainer assessing a prize fighter. She was holding a sheaf of paper. Seeing Anya looking curiously at it, she explained, "This is Agent Padilla's report on you. Juan is an outstanding operative and a superb judge of character. His decision to bring you aboard rather than to terminate your existence speaks volumes in and of itself, Anya, and that's not even taking into account the fact that he speaks highly of your personal character."
"He is a good man," Anya affirmed. "He was kind to me, and to the other girls who nobody else seemed to care about."
"That sounds like Juan, sure enough. But I do have to warn you: Nobody, no matter how powerful they are, simply walks into a position at The Agency. Your unique status qualifies you to work for us, there's no question about that, but there is one hell of a lot of preparation required before we can send you out into the field."
"That seems reasonable."
"Glad to hear it. There are no short cuts. We only hire the best, and there's a lot of attrition in our training program. Ninety percent of the candidates wash out." She looked Anya over a second time before adding, "Then again, most of them are just flesh and blood people. You seem to have a lot of advantages over the rest of us."
"It cannot be helped." Anya shrugged, refusing to allow the other woman to guilt her in any way. "You may also rest assured that I paid a very high price to become like this. I did not ask to be murdered in cold blood, Ms. Hubbard."
"You've got a point." Gina sighed. "Forgive me if I came across as being a little callous just there. That wasn't my intent. Juan told you exactly what it is that we do here at The Agency?"
"Yes. You protect the public from monsters."
"That's true as far as it goes. Some of those monsters wear a human face, Anya. We've assisted law enforcement with taking down gangs, drug dealers, and more than a few terrorist cells. But yes, our primary responsibility is to protect the American public from supernatural threats. That's primarily what we would use you for: You'd be the tip of the spear. That requires not just a streak of ruthlessness a mile long, but also a level of combat training that only the world's top special forces operators possess. That doesn't come overnight, and it certainly doesn't come easily. Are you willing to put in the time and the effort?"
"If you are willing to keep the promise made by Agent Padilla, then yes, I am," Anya countered. After all, if she was going to whore herself out to the United States government instead of to johns on the street in Denver, then she'd damned well better get what she wanted out of the deal.
Gina scanned the top sheet of paper briefly. "Ah yes, I remember reading something about that in here. You have a daughter, don't you, Miss Kurlyenko? I believe that her name is..."
"Darya. She is seven."
"Right, here it is. I see it now. Juan says that she lives with family in St. Petersburg?"
Anya nodded. "With my parents. When I came to this country, certain...promises were made. Promises that were not kept." Her eyes flashed angrily. "I was working to provide enough money to bring Darya here to America with me, to start a new life here. One with opportunities and safety."
"I have two children myself." Gina's tone was sympathetic. "There's no way I could blame a mother for wanting to keep her child safe. But that does leave us with a couple of problems."
"Problems?" Anya frowned.
"Yes. Firstly, your own status as an undocumented immigrant. Basically, an illegal. In the past, that wouldn't have been a problem at all. Under this president, however, things aren't quite that simple. You're familiar with his war on illegal immigration?"
"I have seen it on TV."
"Politics are politics." The older woman rolled her eyes. "But it's going to make it a little more challenging to get you naturalized as a US citizen. Challenging, but not impossible."
"And the second problem?"
"Your daughter. Similar circumstances, but she's not even in this country yet. That means we'd probably have to smuggle her in ourselves."
"This is something you cannot do?"
Gina shook her head. "I didn't say that. There's not a lot that The Agency can't do. Another option, by the way, would be to make you a citizen first and then use a lawyer to start the process of bringing her over here legally. But either way, whichever method we choose will take time, and it will also take a little good faith on your part. You're going to have to give us the benefit of the doubt and trust us. Can you do tha
t?"
The undead woman was silent for a moment, lost in thought. Finally she said, "What guarantees do I have?"
"My word."
"I do not mean to sound rude, but...what about something a little more concrete? No offense."
The Training Director chuckled. "None taken. Uncle Sam isn't exactly the most trusted institution around these days, after all. I can't offer you anything more tangible than my word, I'm afraid. But I will promise you this: If you play fair by us, then The Agency will pull out all the stops to help give you and your daughter the life you want here in the United States."
Anya thought about it for a moment. In the end, what choice did she actually have? What realistic alternatives were there? Go on the run, and spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for the federal authorities to catch up with her? There was no way that she would ever get her precious Darya into the country then.
Perhaps she could go in the opposite direction: What about paying to smuggle herself back to St. Petersburg? At least she would be with her daughter once more, and able to spend time with her and her parents. The problem was, Anya had left there for a very good reason in the first place. America was the land of opportunity, and she knew with total certainty that it was the best place in the world to raise her daughter if she was given the chance to do so.
She made up her mind right there and then, extending a hand to Gina for a second time in order to seal the deal. "It appears that I have no better option, Ms. Hubbard. I can only hope that you keep your word."
Gina flashed her a grin that displayed two rows of perfectly even pearly-white teeth. "You don't need to worry about that, Anya. Welcome to the team — on a probationary basis, of course."
Well, Anya had thought privately, you didn't get to the top of the ladder in an organization like this without being smart...smart enough to know that double-crossing an undead killing machine with supernatural strength wasn't a very bright idea.
