Fortified Dreams

by James, Hadena

  I moved back in, turning the handle backwards in my hands, allowing me to slash outwards in easy, fluid motions. The blade slipped across the large man’s clothing, easily separating the fabric. My hand moved and I sliced upwards along his leg, exposing the flesh to the air. Blood began to trickle from the wound. When he moved, the sides of the wound would peel away from themselves, causing it to gush blood. The blade flicked upwards again, slipping across his ribs. This time there was less flesh and the skin was already tight. It instantly began to pour blood down his shirt, soaking through the yellow material and turning it a strange shade of orangish-brown.

  He let go of my brother. Eric slowly lowered himself to the ground using the man’s shirt, pulling it tight around the neck of the monster as he did so. He snatched at me, his hand closing around air as I moved, ducking under it and moving closer to Caleb.

  The blade bit into bone as I moved it across his arm, forcing the point into the elbow. I pushed and twisted at the same time. His hand spasmed, releasing Caleb. Caleb grabbed the hand that had been holding him and jerked. The jerk allowed the knife blade to enter, dislocating the elbow and slicing through the connective tissues on the inside. I twisted again and pulled the blade out. Eric switched hands. The sound of the baton cutting through the air caused me to step back. The titanium weapon landed on the man’s hip. There was a loud cracking noise. The leg twitched, the wound in it opening, and then the leg twitched a second time. The yellow uniform began to turn the same orangish-brown at the hip. He attempted to step and the leg folded under him. He fell sideways, grunting and growling. His arms were unable to push him back up.

  We all stepped back.

  “Shattered hip, devastated elbow, several small lacerations, rib damage, connective tissue damage at the ribs, shoulder trauma, he isn’t getting back up on his own,” Caleb said.

  “Well, I’m not moving this one. Priest, I could manage, but this one, there is no way.”

  “If we leave him, he dies.” Caleb looked at me.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  “I can’t leave him,” Dominic said.

  “Damn it,” I muttered again. “Fine, which way do we intend to drag him? Do we take him to the women’s ward or back to the cafeteria?”

  “Women’s ward is closer,” Fiona said.

  “Great,” I sighed. This meant dragging him to the women’s ward and most likely, dragging him back to the cafeteria. I did not want to do either. I was willing to leave him to be scavenged. Of course, it would be an international nightmare. The entire thing was a debacle and we had not even gained control of the Fortress back yet. I could not even begin to imagine what was going to happen when it was discovered that the US Marshals were responsible. “Let’s get there, get the women sorted, and start working on a plan to take this place back.”

  “Do you have a plan for that?” Fiona asked.

  “I have the beginnings of one.” I frowned. It was not ideal, but anything was better than this.

  Seventeen

  It took all six of us to drag the body of the giant Von Geldberg down the hallway. It didn’t help that he was thrashing about and making guttural noises that were neither English nor German. Nor did it help that the closer we got to the women’s ward, the more bodies seemed to be on the floor. We’d made our way past six very dead killers, all with well-placed bullet holes in them. I didn’t know who the marksman was, but they deserved a medal.

  We finished rounding the corner and stood about twenty feet from a steel door with a window in it. The window had wire in it for reinforcement. There was a flap in the door. The flap was raised and gun barrel was sticking out a few inches.

  Fiona and I stopped, letting go of the irritated psychopath. His shoulders thudded to the floor a second before his head hit it. It made a loud thunking noise on the cement floor. I considered looking at him to see if it had knocked him out, but decided to keep my eyes forward and hope they didn’t shoot us.

  “You ladies doing all right in there?” I asked.

  “Why are you dragging him?” A woman shouted back.

  “Long story,” I answered. “No breaches? No leaks? Do you want to stay holed up in there or join the rest of the survival party in the cafeteria?”

  “Who are you?” The woman asked.

  “Sorry, US Marshal Aislinn Cain, US Marshal Fiona Stewart, we have a few more US Marshals, one FBI agent, and one serial killer with us, but the serial killer is my brother and you are safe from him,” I replied.

  “You brought Eric Clachan with you?”

  “I trust him before a lot of other people,” I answered. “May we come in? I do not want to have to fend off a serial killer while we discuss this.”

  There was a buzzing noise, and the door unlocked and opened. A woman in a yellow uniform and a US Marshal opened the door. Fiona and I grabbed the giant again at the shoulders and pulled him along. The door was sealed back behind us. There were about fifty women in the room, most of them armed. They were on every level, watching the doors. US Marshals and inmates were standing side by side in a show of solidarity. Survival required working together.

  “I’m Aislinn Cain, this is Fiona Stewart, Caleb Green with the VCU, Dominic Lazar, Demetrius Lazar, and Eric Clachan. We have come to check on you and invite you to the cafeteria to join the guys and federal officers that would like to get this uprising over with,” I said after we all dropped Von Geldberg.

  “What’s with him?” A woman asked. She was wearing a Marshals’ uniform. The nameplate said Parsons.

  “I was told not to kill anyone,” I answered. She gave me a look. I shrugged. “I know, they put us in prison with a bunch of serial killers and mass murderers and told us to take it back, but to do so without killing anyone. I’m just as amused as everyone else at the irony.”

  “You look like you’ve been blown up,” Parsons said.

  “I have. It has been a not so great day.” I gave a twisted half smile.

  “So the six of you are our rescue party?” Another Marshal asked; her voice filled with scorn.

  “No, you’re rescuing yourselves. We just came to tell you where we are assembling,” Caleb answered. Several of the women nodded at this. Caleb was slick as hell. I never would have thought of that.

  “What if we decline?” The Marshal asked.

  “That is your choice.” I looked at her. “But we could use the guns and manpower if we intend to restore some sort of order. I have no idea if you want that or not, but it has got to be better than gunning down killers who are trying to get into your bunks.”

  “Eventually, we’ll either kill them all or they’ll kill us,” a new woman stepped forward. She was gorgeous and the resemblance to Fiona was unmistakable.

  “Maybe,” I said, trying not to turn to look at Fiona. I wanted to see the look on her face and figure out what to do with her sister. I could shoot her if necessary and drag her back to the cafeteria, if it made Fiona happier. However, I had a feeling that I wanted her at her best.

  “Bella, don’t be ridiculous.” Fiona sighed. “You and I both know this is not ideal conditions for any of you. At least with us, you have more crazies and more manpower.” The tension was noticeable even by me and I was pretty blind to that kind of stuff. I was waiting for Fiona to shoot her and drag her back to the cafeteria, probably by her very long and beautiful hair. I had noticed that Fiona was a handsome woman in the past, but until I saw her sister, I had never realized just how lovely she was. Her masculine height and build was not a determent. Her sister was a little daintier, but the contrast was a wonderful opportunity for comparison. They both measured up. I was sure the other women in the area were suddenly feeling a little less secure about their own appearances.

  “Well, I want out of here.” A woman stood up who wore the inmate uniform and was not holding a weapon. Obviously, she was not into getting her hands dirty.

  “Manpower?” Bella Stewart looked at Fiona and for a moment, all the beauty was gone. A sneer flashed upon her f
ace, followed by a blankness that I knew all too well. There was a lot more to Fiona than I knew. Maybe psychopathology was not the only problem with her gene pool. I would have to figure it out gently.

  “Don’t start,” Fiona huffed. “Look, we came. I’m here. We can fight about everything wrong in the world later. For now, I’d like to know that you are safe and the only way to do that is to get you and the other women trapped in this tower back to the cafeteria where we have armed law enforcement agents and massive quantities of psychopaths. There is no way the men took the prison without help. I don’t know who’s helping, but I can’t figure that out until we have everyone together, protected, and working as a unit. It’s called teamwork.”

  “She’s why you can’t kill anyone, isn’t she?” Bella looked at me.

  “Not really. She is just in charge of reminding me not to do it,” I told her. “We have not been formally introduced. Aislinn Cain.” I stuck my hand out to the inmate that had chopped up her sister’s fiancé.

  “Isabella Stewart, my friends and family call me Bella.”

  “It is sort of a pleasure, but please stop antagonizing your sister. I need her, you need her, and we do not need her pissed off at you while we work our way back. Getting everyone out of here alive is going to be tricky. There are several of these types of killers running around on top of the regular male killers.” I pointed down at Von Geldberg as I spoke. “What I really need to know is who the marksman on this door is?”

  An inmate stepped forward. She was small, even by my standards. She was maybe five feet tall and a hundred pounds if she were fully clothed and dipped in lead.

  “Brandy Lockens,” she said.

  “Those are some well-placed head shots,” Caleb said.

  “I’ve had some practice,” she answered.

  “It shows. Think you can take point? I want someone up front with deadly accuracy,” I told her. “You will have Fiona Stewart, Dominic Lazar, and Caleb Green with you.”

  “I can do that,” Brandy said.

  “Excellent, Parsons, you any good with that?” I asked, nodding at her Glock.

  “Good enough,” she answered.

  “Works for me. You, Isabella Stewart, Eric, and I will bring up the rear. We need a few volunteers to drag Giganto here. We cannot just leave him to be picked upon by scavengers.” A handful of women stepped forward. We were making progress. No one seemed to be objecting. “Great, huddle in a large group, guns on the outside when possible. Try not to shoot each other if we run into a fracas. We will watch the rear and make sure no one sneaks up behind us. Once they figure out guns no longer guard these doors, they are going to pour into this section. I would like to delay them as long as possible, but I give it less than thirty seconds and it is going to take us more time than that to get back to the cafeteria. Especially since the security doors on this corridor are still operational.”

  “They’re the only ones,” Parsons said. “The others went down hours ago.”

  “Well,” I looked at her. That was good to know. I looked at Caleb. He looked at Dominic. Someone knew the master code for the women’s ward. Dominic was not the traitor. However, it might be one of the women in the group we were about to lead to the cafeteria. I hoped it was not going to be an issue, but a nagging voice in the pit of my stomach told me optimism was not my thing.

  Eighteen

  Getting out set off an alarm, because the door was held open for too long. It wanted to shut it and when it could not, it began to screech. A face appeared in one of the windows on the other side of the room. He fidgeted with the door handle and something else. Another alarm sounded.

  “Wrong code,” Parsons said to me when I looked at her about the second alarm. I nodded and pushed the group forward a little faster. “I changed them when all hell broke loose.”

  “Can you change the master code?” I asked.

  “No, only someone on the outside in a watch station can do it. I’m not even sure which watch station.”

  “Can they use the master codes?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t work like that. The master codes have to be entered from the inside into the lock itself. Once you unlock one floor, you unlock the other doors connected to that circuit, so the other five floors would have that door opened. The master code is meant to be used in case of fire or a natural disaster. We believe the Fortress could withstand an EF-5 tornado, but we have never had to test the theory. If we were in here and there was such a thing coming our way, we would use the master codes to get the inmates to the central area. The cafeteria has two floors below it. They can’t be accessed from anywhere but the cafeteria, but they do contain cells we can use in the event of such an emergency. It would suck, but it could be done.” She looked down the hall, back into the tower area. “Of course, the towers all have basements, but the cells haven’t been finished in them yet.”

  “Really? This place is still a work in progress?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Eric answered for Parsons. “The courtyard areas will be eventually filled in, basements will run the entire length of the main corridors and cell blocks. It was slapped together in a hurry and as they find need to make revisions, revisions are made. It was an experiment and has worked well enough, but when housing some of the smartest criminals in the world who have a taste for blood, sometimes they find flaws in the system.” Parsons nodded. The door on the opposite wall opened.

  I stood for a moment, watching a man run into the room. He had blood on his shirt. I was almost positive it wasn’t his. I recognized him. Last time I’d seen him; he had been having a hog roast for a neighborhood block party. Sadly, the hog had actually been a young woman that had gone missing while hitchhiking a few days earlier.

  Parsons aimed and fired. He crumpled up, folding like a piece of paper onto himself.

  “You get to claim that one,” I told her.

  “Of course,” she answered.

  “Good riddance.” Eric looked at him. “I hate cannibals.”

  “There are worse things in the world,” I told him.

  “Yeah, cop killers,” Eric looked very grim as he said the words. I wondered where his mind had just gone. Or maybe it was his memory. I didn’t know. There was a sound above me. It wasn’t an alarm exactly, just three steady beeps. I looked at the ceiling, expecting to see something.

  “Someone just entered the master code to the security doors on the tower,” Parsons told me.

  “Well, that is just peachy.” I glared at the room, waiting for it to fill up. It didn’t. In fact, despite the doors opening, no one came through. “Walk faster!” I shouted. That feeling in my gut grew stronger. A rear ambush didn’t seem to be the plan, which left a trap in front of us. We were going to walk right into it. The only question was where it would be. If they could get through the security doors in front of us, they could pin us down between two of them. That would be bad. They couldn’t wait for us to get all the way to the cafeteria, where we’d have backup. We really needed the tower to stay killer free. They couldn’t pin us down without someone behind us.

  The walls shook. Heat washed over me a moment after the sound. It bathed my face. Not enough to sear my flesh or even burn my hair but warm enough for me to know that they had just set off another bomb. Part of the floors in the upper part of the tower collapsed. Eric grabbed my arm. We both stayed on our feet despite the rumbling in the ground. Setting off a bomb was an effective way to block a retreat. I wished I had thought of it earlier. I might have looked for one. Considering where the damage was done, it had to be put inside the tower. I took a deep breath and helped Parsons to her feet. Isabella refused Eric’s outstretched hand. He hooked a finger over his shoulder.

  Several of the ladies had gone down, tripping over their own feet and the moving floor. We were packed together tightly enough that they were having trouble finding their footing to stand back up.

  “I hate bombers more than cannibals,” I told Eric. He gave me a small smile.

  I also hated not
having a good line of communication with Gabriel and Malachi. I hated moving like a herd of cattle down a corridor that may or may not be blown up. I hated traps. I hated plotting. I hated everything about the day. It was definitely going in the books as one of the worst days ever experienced by me. Which meant I was incredibly pissed off when Alejandro Gui stumbled through the wreckage of the door and into the corridor.

  “Thought you killed him?” I asked Eric.

  “I thought I did too,” Eric answered. “Do you want me to do it now?”

  “No,” I sighed. He looked rough. Eric might not have killed him, but he had come damn close. Dried blood coated his uniform shirt. It had dribbled down to stain his pants too. I sighed again. I was not supposed to kill anyone. I was not supposed to condone others killing people. However, I really hated Alejandro. I had hated him almost from the moment I had met him. Time had not lessened that hatred. If anything, time had only helped to feed my hatred of him.

  “You can’t kill him,” Eric said to me.

  “I do not intend to kill him,” I assured my brother, snatching my baton from him. I walked towards the man. He was a shell of himself. I could not have killed him even if I had not been told not to do it. He was almost pitiful. The only thing driving him forward was his own hatred for me. For a moment, I could see a reflection of myself in him. If I killed him now, it would be simply because I hated him. If I gave into such things, I would eventually find myself playing cards with Isabella Stewart and wearing a yellow uniform with Malachi being my only visitor. My mother would try to visit, but I would be like Eric and not want her to see me in such a condition. Her disappointment would be too much to bear. I drew back and whacked him on his knee. He fell to the ground, reaching for me. I hit his arm, breaking it. He curled up on himself, preparing for more blows.