by G R Matthews
The sounds outside dwindled away. Footsteps ceased and voices became muffled and quiet. The hum of machinery, the air circulators and dioxide scrubbers, the things that kept us alive, was all I could hear. It was time to move.
Sitting up, I slipped my soft soled shoes from my feet, folded them and jammed them between my belt and trousers. The spoon, my only weapon, deadly to trifles, soups and foul tasting dishwater, though it may be that it’d lose that last fight, I took into my right hand. A breath. I was ready. No plan whatsoever, but that’s never stopped me.
I wiped the accumulated sweat from my palms and knelt down next to the door lock. There was a gap, ever so small and narrow, between the frame and the door.
Taking a careful grip on the spoon and squinting in the dim light, I inserted the end of the thin handle into the gap. It was quiet. No scrape or chink of metal on metal. Sliding the spoon upwards, seeking the lock, sounded like a dolphin squealing in agony. The sound went on and on without release or end. At least that’s how it seemed to me.
A slight give in the spoon. Subtle. Gentle. An ever so small dip into the door. The lock into which I had stuffed the best half of a sticky bun. I pushed. Not too hard. Just easing the tip of the handle into the lock gap. The bolt hadn’t gone home properly, but the mechanism must’ve reported it working to the light on the outside.
Jiggling the spoon, I forced it through the sticky bun. Now it was a battle between spoon and lock. Which was stronger? Which would give first? Perhaps the spoon would bend or maybe the lock would snap open and an alarm would sound. Either way this was my only chance.
I took a deep breath. Held it. And wrenched the spoon.
Chapter 15
Fuck. Bugger. Bastarding bastard of bastards.
Swearing is a natural reaction to pain. Swearing silently when a loud noise will get you shot is like drinking the first beer after an exhausting day at work and then someone telling you it is non-alcoholic. How is that even a thing? Oxymorons are just morons with too much oxygen.
I had my hand jammed between my thighs and was waddling about the room like a drunken penguin escaping a particularly viscous seagull. I’ve seen the documentaries on the clips shows. Strange looking beasts. We get little info from the southern corporations, but I hoped the little buggers still survived on the ice, still dove into the ocean and hunted fish.
My door was open and no alarm was sounding. The spoon had done its job but in a final act of revenge had snapped when the door slid open and I’d bruised my knuckles on the frame. No blood, but a lot of pain.
Shaking my hand, as if that would cause the pain to spray from fingers like water, I peeked out of the cube. It was quiet. No footsteps were moving at pace, no clatter of weapons or shouts from the guards. Good. That saved me the trouble of getting shot.
The girls’ cube was two rows down and near the dining area. Slightly different to my own it would, I hoped, have the same door and lock. I doubted they had stuffed a sticky bun in the lock, but I didn’t need them too. I was outside and the locking control panel was outside. Bending down I picked up the traitorous spoon and shoved the rounded end into my pocket. The broken end I kept in my hand.
Keeping my back to the walls, nothing could sneak up behind me that way, I moved without a sound down the rows. Every sense was stretched to the limit. I hadn’t seen a guard yet, nor heard one, but they had to be there. At night, like most prisons, I’ve been in one or two, the amount of staff decreased and those on duty were tired.
The other guests were snoring, mumbling or grunting, in their sleep. I didn’t want to disturb them so I avoided banging on their doors, talking or bumping into the walls. I am a kind and generous soul sometimes.
At the intersection I paused and listened again. The sounds of the prisoners in restless sleep, I put it to the side. A hum from the machines was discounted. I sought the regular thump of footfall, the breath of someone walking or the muffled voice of a conversation. Nothing.
I padded on bare feet across the divide and towards the girls’ cube. I knew, at the far end, past the eating table, I refused to call it a dining table, were the steps leading up to the guard’s office. They looked down upon us, but so far they hadn’t seen me. I hoped being close to the walls and in the shadows of the dim light I would be hard to spot.
At the last corner I waited again. Poking just half my face around the corner, I studied the guard post. In the window, lights flickered. Not a bulb or strip of lighting, maybe a screen or a Pad. Someone was watching something. Might be cameras or a clips show. The latter was more likely as, given a camera covered each of our cubes, there was still no alarm. I couldn’t see anyone moving or looking out over the prison.
Indecision can be a killer, but so can making the wrong decision. Procrastination is a skill many develop and only a few of us ever hone to fine art. I had to put all those years of practice and dedication behind me. If all else fails, I’d been told during my training, walk with confidence, like you belong, like you’re in charge. And that’s all well and good when you are infiltrating a city which speaks your language. Here, I stood out by a good thirty centimetres of height, a decidedly paler skin and absolutely no command of the language. With those advantages firmly embedded in my mind I stepped out and across to the girl’s door.
It was locked. No surprise, but I had my spoon. Like a hitchhiker needs a towel, a man escaping prison needs a spoon. A last glance up at the window and I set to work. All these cheaper locks had a simple covering to the mechanism. There were screw heads in the four corners and if I’d had time I would have filed the broken end of the spoon down to make it fit. I didn’t, so I hadn’t. A simpler, more destructive method was called for. Taking one of my soft shoes and placing it over the edge of the panel in a meagre attempt at sound proofing, and protecting my hand, once hurt, twice as careful, I jammed the ripped end of the spoon’s handle into the join between panel and wall. It took some worming and scraping to get it set.
Stage two, now the spoon was in place, was to twist the spoon handle, prising the panel away from the wall. It wouldn’t come completely off, but the thin metal covering would bend and all I needed was a little gap. Just enough to push the spoon in deeper and stab at the heart of the mechanism. Trying to do this silently and without cursing was a struggle. The spoon was not an ideal tool and was hard to grasp. Sweat ran down my forehead as I fought with the spoon. I had to stop to wipe my sweaty palms down my trouser leg.
There were noises from inside the room. Someone moving around. I couldn’t hear voices, just the susurration of quiet feet over bare metal flooring. With no time to stop or waste, I returned to my task. With all my weight, I pulled down on the little stub of spoon that poked out from the panel. A sputter of sparks, a rainbow of lights on the panel and it went dark. The lock clicked.
The door to the two girl’s room was open and I stopped, hand halfway to the door. A man of middle years, opening the door to the room of a fifteen and a five year old girl in the middle of the night. Not just opening, but breaking in. And wearing no shoes. This did not look good. I knocked.
I waited and knocked again, with as little force as I could. No answer. No noise. Next I tried a whisper, more a breath. I barely heard it myself and this was getting pointless. A little louder, I said, “It’s me, Corin.”
There remained no answer so, despite the look of it, I pushed the door open and stepped in, out of the corridor. The cube was dark. Darker than the rows outside where small strips of dim light had served to illuminate the way. In here, only the ceiling lights, so far away and turned low, provided anything to see by.
“Chunhua,” I whispered. There were some shapes on the sleeping mat. My eyes were adjusting in slow increments to the lack of light. “Chunhua, it’s me, Corin. I’ve come to… ow!”
The explanation I’d been about to give was interrupted the impact of a hard fist into my ribs. I danced sideways and brought my left elbow down to cover my injury. The second punch caught me on my cheekbone. If I
hadn’t been ducking it would have struck my throat and I’d be gasping on the floor, unable to defend myself. With little room to move, I let the next strike come. It wasn’t that I had much of a choice. I felt it rather than saw it and leaned back, the fist slid off my chin with the barest of grazes. Now my attacker was off balance. So much of fighting is feeling and intuition. I threw my left elbow straight out, giving up its role in protecting my hurt ribs, and caught my attacker hard.
There was a stumble and clatter as they went down. I hadn’t heard the guard come in behind me, but I couldn’t let them go. I don’t like killing people, but sometimes you have no choice.
Chapter 16
My attacker was down and I raised my foot. A simple stomp to the head and it would be over. I could get the girls out of the room and try to find a way out of this warehouse prison. No point kidding myself that it would be easy, but if I didn’t get out they would take me to the ship and I’d be in the same predicament with fewer choices.
The girls had none. Hostages. Victims of kidnap and blackmail. What their fathers must be going through I didn’t have to imagine. When Tyler didn’t come home I went through hell and I’ve kept going ever since.
I dropped my foot and heard a whimper.
“Fuck.”
A twist, a shift of weight, a tensing of muscles and I managed to miss my target. I stumbled away, giving my eyes a chance to fully adjust to the gloom and my heart to stop thumping.
On the floor, Chunhua looked up at me. Her eyes were wide with pain and shock. She’d have a nasty bruise on her face and a wave of guilt crashed over me. I was the one who’d given it to her. Then I recalled my own ribs, the punch to the cheek and the near miss to my chin. This young lady knew how to look after herself. Still, hitting a girl was not something I’d ever feel comfortable with.
“Are you all right?” I whispered as I sank down next to her, rubbing my ribs. “You’ve a good punch on you.”
“What do you want with us?” she said. Fear still swelled in her eyes and her chin trembled as she spoke.
“I want to get you out of here,” I answered. “We don’t have much time. Sooner or later, the guards are going to spot I am missing from my cell and I may have damaged the lock to yours. They will notice.”
I looked around and up, seeking the camera that my cell came equipped with.
“Why?”
Her question surprised me a little. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to get us out of here?”
There were words. I knew them all, but the dam in my mind held them back. All I could say was, “Because it is the right thing to do.”
“Ko-Rin?” Lijuan’s quiet voice, full of sleep, wafted over to me.
“Yes,” I whispered back. No response came. She’d gone back to sleep.
“Chunhua, let me help you get Lijuan back to her father.” I held my hand out and she took it. Her skin was warm and soft, but her eyes were hard and cold. It was impossible not to compare her to Tyler. Chunhua was careful and streetwise where Tyler had been full of energy and innocent. How do two girls, the same age, turn out so differently? Chunhua was still alive, that spoke a lot for her upbringing, but the situation she found herself in said her parenting hadn’t been perfect either. “I can get us out of here, but then I’m stuck. I don’t speak the language and I look different. I need you to translate, to help me, and in return I’ll get you and Lijuan back to your homes.”
“There is no camera,” she said.
“What?” It was like giving an octopus a handshake. You reach for one hand, but a different one grabs it whilst a third taps you on the shoulder.
“This cell has no camera,” she said. “It was part of the arrangement Lijuan’s father and the Sio Sim Ong came to. They don’t think we can escape anyway and they’re right.”
“Well now we are about to prove them wrong,” I said. “Can you carry Lijuan?”
Chunhua nodded.
“Do you know how many guards are here at night?”
“More than one.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Let’s hope it is less than five,” I answered as she crept across the room and lifted Lijuan into her arms. “Take her to the airlock.”
“The airlock?”
“We’re taking the submarine that docked earlier. It has my suit on it, but more importantly it gets us out of the city and we have some transportation.” I moved to the door.
“Will we all fit in it? What if it is massive and has lots of crew on board?” She looked down at the still sleeping girl and back up to me.
“It won’t. It’ll be a worker sub. Probably the same one that carried me out to the wreck and back every day. That would make sense. They have my suit and to save a lot of to-ing and fro-ing they’d have come here in the sub they wanted to use.” I beckoned her to the door, my eyes fixed on the guard’s window above. “Go and wait by the door. Stay low and quiet.”
“Where are you going?” Chunhua said, stopping in her tracks.
“I’m going to make sure we can get out of the airlock without an alarm telling everyone here and in their headquarters that we’ve gone. Now, go,” I pushed her out of the door so she had no choice but to follow my plan. I followed five steps behind. At the end of the row, not far from the table, our paths diverged. She turned right and I went left, keeping to the small pools of shadow as much as I could.
No point checking on Chunhua’s progress. If either of us gave away our presence the escape was over. Ahead the stairs, metal grills attached to a frame and a thin, tubular banister, led upwards to the office. The only thing I knew for sure was the presence of a guard, at least one, at the top of these steps. What I was hoping for was firstly, just one guard to be present, and secondly, I could access the airlock controls and docking release. Without those the sub was going precisely nowhere. At least I had my spoon.
Under my weight the stairs creaked and groaned. On every step I expected a face to appear at the top and for me to be peering upwards into the barrel of a gun. I tried to place my feet with care, aiming for the sides of each step where it was held to the frame with strong bolts. With luck the noise would lessen and my chance of discovery would similarly fall. It wasn’t quite in vain. I was sure the groans quietened and the creaks vanished. That may have been wishful thinking, but I was willing to rely on anything at the moment.
At the top I found a balcony and a door. On my left was the wall of the warehouse. This was an outside wall. Double skinned and insulated, but even so I could feel the cold of the ocean beyond emanating from it. In a half-crouch, I padded over to the door and placed my ear against it, straining to pick out the sounds from beyond.
A clips show was playing, as I’d thought. Jaunty music, sing-song voices, and high pitched squeals. It could be an animation or something of a more adult nature. I wouldn’t know, and couldn’t let myself get distracted by it, until I got in there. I held my breath and tried to ignore the beat of my own heart. No footsteps or voices talking. Interesting. Not informative in anyway, but interesting.
Another decision. I was making far too many of these for own good at the moment. Try to open the door undetected and sneak into the office, not knowing its layout or who was within, or burst in and face the same challenge. I paused, closed my eyes and tried to think clearly. It didn’t work.
“Fuck it,” I murmured, stood, took hold of the door handle, shifted my weight forward and slammed the door open, rushing in behind it, fist raised.
Chapter 17
One guard, sat at his station watching his screen when I burst in.
The look on his face was priceless. Eyes wide, mouth open, shock. Surprise accomplished. The fact that his trousers were somewhere around his ankles and his hands were grasping something in his lap may have contributed to the surprise. I dodged left to avoid a chair and raced towards him as he scrambled to pull his clothes back into position.
It was a long office. Stations for five or six people. Screens and keyboards, chairs and a tab
le. At the far end, a sink and mini-kitchen. One of those microwaves that cooked food in thirty seconds and robbed it of any taste in the first five. There was a hob too, a single induction ring that they probably used to heat up the dishwater they served us.
Ten running steps felt like an eternity as he stood, one hand on his trousers, other reaching towards the keyboard. On the tenth I leaped, both arms outstretched. I couldn’t afford an alarm to be sounded and there was no point trying to fight past seven guards when I could just deal with this one. My shoulder took him at hip height and I wrapped my arms around him. We collapsed to the floor, sending the chair he’d been sat on skidding across the office.
He was small and strong, but I was wearing trousers correctly and that had to be an advantage in a fight. I tried to rise above him and punch downward, but he swept out an arm which carried my fist to the side and took me off balance. Pain exploded in my ribs, the right side this time so I had a matching set, and I let my body fall heavily onto his. I heard breath explode out of his lungs and compounded his pain by driving my elbow into his ribs. It wasn’t as hard as I wished, but it made a point.
An arm wrapped itself round my neck and tried to pull me forward, his other hand fell in hammer blows on my back. The angles weren’t right and he had no leverage, so while they hurt it was more annoying than crippling. I’ll take that any day.
Ignoring, for the moment, the arm restricting my head movement, I drove another elbow into his ribs. He grunted and cinched my head tighter. I wasn’t choking, but it was hard to move. In-between his ineffectual punches, I clawed a hand upwards to his face, fingers seeking his eyes. He responded by trying to bite them. Unwilling to lose a finger or pick up a disease I changed tack.
My right hand, the one that had been propping me up and resisting the pull around my neck, I traced down his flank. There are rules to a fight. At least, that’s what some people think. I have two rules. Both simple. Come out alive and do more damage to them than they do to me. I’ve not yet broken rule one, for which I am thankful, but rule two has had many an exception. Not this time.
