Justin laughed mirthlessly. "Yes, detective. I’ve got them. Four so far. They're going to kill the only revenue stream they've got right now...Look, watch the screen," he pointed to the main feed, which mirrored the external feed, and said, "and tell the commentator what you think. That IS part of your contract. You’ve got a whole…” he looked down, perfunctorily, “seven deaths to talk about. All in the first half an hour. How decent is that?”
"He's not a straight pipe," Claudia broke in, "so objecting that this falls beyond the remit of the contract you signed, will not be broadcast, and will be a waste of time." She leaned in, her breasts pressing into his shoulders as she breathed in his ear, "And you're never going to stop the show, so why not enjoy it? One of those thugs down there beat your partner to within an inch of his life." Elliot looked up at her. It was the first hint that she’d given of the ‘extra’ prisoners, and he hadn’t signed off on. No cop would have. They wanted to get him themselves. Her smile irritated him, but he smoothed it down.
“Perkins huh? Who lobbied him?” It was Claudia’s smile that turned fixed. “I’m not stupid, as Justin has already pointed out. There was no random pull – you’d have gotten far less vicious competitors, and far more pedestrians. No money in that, is there?”
Claudia turned on him, incandescent rage causing her to suddenly clench her hand around the glass stirrer she was toying with like a dagger. Justin reached up to her and shot Elliot a look. He pulled his arm down.
“Look. We pay your wages. Don’t get too cocky, or we’ll object to YOUR work and any pay you’ll get may be mandated right on over to a victim’s fund. You can’t have US muzzled, detective. YOU are the one who…” She calmed slightly, but not before Elliot saw the glittering saliva at the corner of her mouth. Oh hell no, he thought. She can’t be a cultist. It’ll be something else. A side effect.
Justin saw him watching and pulled Claudia away, sending her to Cerys. “Go jack down for a bit,” he told her soothingly. We’ve more than justified this. Look at all the put downs we’ve had…”
As she walked away, Elliot jerked and growled, "It's not the job of the UCPS to put people down. No matter how much ..."
“Oh please. You’ve lost the contract to execute prisoners for now because of all of the bleeding heart liberals that have pointed out that if you don’t type EVERY nanovirus they’ve been exposed to, you could hurt them rather than kill them. It’s ‘inhumane’. We just gave you a chance to get rid of your worst recidivists and you know it.” Justin shot a look over the other side of the room, watching a shaking Claudia talk to Cerys and seemed to come to some decision, and snapped a finger. Cerys automatically looked over and he gestured.
“Let the Mk2 watching your third take over, stretch your legs and then you can give your opinions to the onscreen talent. I’ll talk to them about my prisoners, I’ve lost more from my bank anyway. Cerys will take you to the waiting room. Don’t wind up Claudie please. I have to deal with her even when you leave…” he added with a mirthless smile.
Claudie huh? Interesting. Justin seemed to be watching him, so Elliot nodded once, apologetically, then turned away, rising from his chair with mock stiffness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was a flurry of activity in the hall, and the two men involved charged into the middle of a bigger room, bulls ramming one another. One reached up and over, trying to grab the man in a bear hug, and the other ducked, going for his waist. Each nimbly side stepped, and looked at one another, before cautiously, warily moving back in again. One held something sharp and glinting in his hands, while the other reached for a chair, then tore it apart, almost as easily as bread.
Elliot frowned. No prison chair was designed to separate like that.
"That chair?" Elliot asked and Justin sighed.
"Some of the chairs were designed to be props for the survival experts to get into faked fights, especially if there was no other action,"
"And?"
"We may have had one of those conversations in front of some of the prisoners. Or they may have been given the wrong pack," Justin said it as if it wasn't his problem.
"Are you being serious?" Elliot asked. Grudgingly, Justin turned away from what he was doing and inclined his head.
"Look, we've made a couple of mistakes in this event, but we're tightening up practices..."
"Justin..."
"I can't do anything about it. If the chairs aren't quickmatter, I can't dissolve them. The prop chairs aren't quickmatter - it was too unreliable. You don't want it reforming if it flickered in someone's chest or neck,"
"Unlock my console now," he said. He’d come back from the break he’d been on under Cerys’ watchful eye and found his kill buttons locked.
"I can't," he said. This time there was no apology. Elliot glared at him. "Fine. I'll feed information to the onscreen talent anyway."
He tapped the screen, querying. The chair was marked 'prop, 101, prisoner mandate' and he pulled his file, again, double checking it. Prisoner mandate covered everything from weapons, to their rights in the cells, to the reasons they were here.
Elliot's frown deepened - the idea that a prisoner could identify a chair, from other chairs at the table that it could tear apart felt...almost choreographed. And while Justin's explanation was almost believable, he didn't like the idea of someone simply pulling a chair and suddenly, weapon. Something that he'd raised at some of the first meetings and was told not to worry about. If they had weapons, and things were weaponized, it was a critical problem.
Claudia was watching with a glint in his eyes that he could only describe as avaricious. She looked over and everyone was paused, watching the screens. There was a breathless pause, and one by one, people began to slip into the nearest lockdown cells. Elliot wondered briefly why - he looked over the cameras rapidly and saw that the halls had been locked down - and as soon as that happened, everyone seemed to know to go sit in the nearest room to them.
Elliot thought back to the briefing - and he'd remembered them saying that if they wanted to win by killing one another, that made perfectly acceptable viewing, but he couldn't remember the final permissions being signed off. And there was no way to check now.
And there was still the final question of the project being dubbed '(that reality show you love) with Blood'. He wasn't sure whether that press had done that or the PR department. What he did know was that it had pervaded the commentary on the project from the outset. And that was a problem.
He knew people were baying for blood and that they were just waiting for someone to slip and kill someone. And he knew that he had a lot to ask Morrigan, and that things were looking less and less controlled. They hadn’t even gotten to the first votes yet.
The chair had split into a bar of almost perfect crowbar length, while the other prisoner had a knife like protrusion, jutting from his fist like an iceberg of silver metal.
"Make it molten," Claudia ordered. Justin pulled out another keypad, and handed it to her. She typed in a clearance code, and all of the beds began to dissolve, including the metal piece in his hand. He yelped, holding up his hand and shaking it - trying to free himself of the metal suddenly adhering to his hand.
"I thought the beds weren't fleximatter?" Elliot said and Claudia laughed.
"Organics, and fleximatter, that's all you'll find in there," she told him. "We didn't want the prisoners thinking that they couldn't try some dirty trick or two, but that one was specifically banned - they were told not to make a weapon from the contents of cell one. Serves the stupid galoot right. Anyway, you were upset at the last one weaponizing it. We’ve just taught him a valuable lesson about trying it again." Sure enough, it was the one Elliot had dubbed ‘red death’. He was stalking into the room with the man with the hands covered in boiling, burning metal.
"So, what you're telling me is they get a fighting chance if they leave their cells, but if they don't, there's nothing anyone can do?"
Her smile was scornful, watching them fight as
if they were a TV show rather than right below her. Buffing her fingers on her jacket, she watched the screen bored, and said, "Cut to a forced commercial. Let's bank some of this footage."
The feed cut to commercial, while the men below them continued to fight. “We’ll trigger vote one, and make it a bit quiet with some of the other banked footage, inform onscreen please,” she continued, and Justin began to speak quietly into his headset.
"You can stop this," Elliot told her and she laughed harshly.
"Consultant Peters, WHY would I want to do that?" she demanded.
"Because, you said he was a prime candidate. You could stop this fight, split them up and make it a grudge match," Elliot said, thinking desperately. The fog falling over him was clearing now, and he could see she was glaring angrily.
"No. We want a kill, every fifteen minutes. While we're off air, Justin, announce that," she said, turning and crossing to the side of the room that was packaging footage for the fights.
Elliot stood up, running his hands into his hair exasperatedly, and she said, "Detective Peters, do you honestly think that just because you weren't told about all of this before joining us that it's not happening? I'll be blunt with you - we were genuinely hoping that you'd basically look at this and think that you'd been given the chance to look on while some of the animals," she looked down, her nose ruffling in distaste, as they ran through the maze, "killed themselves. I can't believe you're actually objecting to this," she added. Elliot frowned.
"Start the variance program," she ordered.
Elliot gasped. The 'variance' program opened up pits and other things in the walls, making the maze more dangerous. It wasn't supposed to be used until the first four hours had been completed.
"Well, if you want your prisoners to last longer, then we're going to have to," she said.
The man whose weapon had turned to molten fleximatter was on the floor, his head being stamped into the tiles below him. His card flashed red once...twice then pulled up on the screen with DEAD stamped all the way across it, and Claudia clapped excitedly again.
"Package that for the feed and give that man his bonus!" she shouted and ran from the room, pulling her phone from her pocket.
More prisoners were now piling in, while the survivalists were warily edging around. Elliot double-checked - no one could reach the survival experts. His attention turned back to the packaged feed and watched the prisoners brawling. There was a light flash, then another one a minute later, and everyone backed off, leaving the room, and racing towards the nearest exits.
"What's that about?"
"Weapon's release in another part of the prison. Random chance of picking the right corridor that takes them there," Justin said, then held his hand up briefly, "I've really got to pay attention to this bit, sorry - it's a case of opening and closing walls as prisoners go past, and ensuring they don't get into the maze elements of the survivalists maze"
"Why didn't you put the survivalists in a separate maze?" Elliot asked suddenly. "I mean, the footage could be overlaid,"
"Because some of the prisoners will briefly mix with them, and brawl with them, though, the survivalist is to come out on top, is why. Lots of money in it for the ones that play along, too much to turn down. And instant death if it looks like they’re winning. Again, kill switches. We can't superimpose *that* onto a feed, no matter how clever we are," he said with a soft smile. It was almost predatory, a catlike glee at having something to keep an eye on.
"But until then...well, we discovered that one of the prisoners has a nanite that interacts with his surroundings. He was a con-artist," he added.
Elliot nodded, flicking through his notes, "I know who you mean," he said.
"Well HE," Justin said absently, following one specific tag through the maze, "Might be able to jump into another area of the prison, if his nanites aren't dormant,"
Elliot snorted, choking on the coffee he was sipping, "What do you mean, not dormant?"
"Our vaccine functions sometimes dis-inhibit CORE programming. That WAS in your package, Detective. Two active nanite series 4 infections that can only jump to uninfected members of the public, and two questionable dormant. The Series 4's are all over the prison system anyway, so you're probably also immune," he added. "And CORE won't allow civilians, no matter whether it's necessary, to be vaccinated."
"You guys are just asking for a cluster-fuck aren't you?" Elliot said, shaking his head in wonder. Justin snorted.
"Lowly tech, dude. I'm as morally outraged as you. Mostly because I've got...tech at home I'd rather still be able to use on my return, and series 4/5/6 means I can't for three months."
"COREJACK?" Elliot said casually.
"No, but close. Our reporting system uses a 'civilian' version of one of your prototype CORE systems. No jack," he tilted his head, showing a discolored but otherwise blank neck, "but we interface with it via neural net. It's active rather than passive, which makes it much harder to navigate and use, but well worth it," he added with a soft, almost wistful smile. "But if I get 4, I'm banned for three months. It's why we don't send people into prisons to interview."
"I thought you said CORE stopped 411?"
"It did," Justin said, and then paused. He seemed to be considering something. Finally he continued, "we're doing our best to put together a complaint one that works with CORE, hence the idea that we use an active interface. We're doing the last hoops to get access to a sanctioned feed. Till then, I need to do stuff," he waved his hands, "like this. Gotta eat after all."
Elliot almost felt sorry for the man - after CORE began, slowly, cutting off all information about crimes and evidence gathering, and stopped sharing with the press, the local news teams found it hard to keep up. 411 had been a crime paper - its main reason for broadcast were the five core blogs that made up their readership's most favorite information. With them gone - with the police no longer sharing information 'off CORE', it was more difficult to keep afloat. Three blogs were automatically shut - the courts report, Murder 1 and Soho/Darkness. All three had relied on having the rights to the 'gory' stuff. And with the rights frozen, 411 just couldn't compete.
Deep down, Elliot knew all of this, but he also knew that it was none of his doing, and none of his business. CORE would go nationwide sooner rather than later, to laxer controls, and more press access. But for now, given the issues Darkness had with clones and the like, press access was the least of his worries.
They both watched quietly as a prisoner ran along one of the narrower corridors. Archeck, a petty thief turned murderer when his 'pretend' gun had turned out to be real, loaded, and his lucky shot caught an eight year old between the eyes, saw the green arrow flash that indicated there was something opening up ahead. The walls flashed deep green, as he slowed, reaching the corner. He ran around it, straight into the crowbar held by another prisoner. Clotheslined, he fell to the floor, dazed, before an arm snaked out and clotheslined him. Once on the floor, the bigger prisoner smacked him between the eyes repeatedly. Elliot had hit the kill switch three seconds before the third punch.
Elliot winced, and Justin turned back to him, "You've got to like the poetic justice in that," he said with a soft smile. "I'll push that money straight to the father, because we will be using that in one of the later feeds," he added, pinging something over to Claudia. There was a muffled yell from her office, and Cerys finally came out with some papers, signed by Claudia.
"Whatever you sent her made her grin like a Cheshire cat," she said softly. Elliot held both hands up, a gesture of dissent. Justin didn't answer her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elliot returned to nine prisoners lined up for the first vote, and Justin nudged him. He was standing next to him
"Who do you think will get voted off first?" he said, with a grin. Elliot blinked.
"Is voted off another euphemism?"
"Kinda," he said, the grin becoming more bloodthirsty. "It's the next two we release for a fight, really. This is the first vote."
"I understand that it's fixed - that you won't kill the participant?"
"Again, kinda. Depends if he needs to be subdued leaving the building again."
Elliot frowned. "I'm just curious, how can you be so callous about this?" The grin remained fixed.
"You might ask them the same question. I think the least horrible crime on this list is a double murder. The worst up in the double digits. Why would you care, exactly, if your charges are killed? Doesn't it save you housing them?"
Elliot schooled his face into a mask of neutrality. "We don't think like that," he said quietly. Justin guffawed laughter, his blue eyes shining delightedly.
"I've got several quotes that suggest otherwise," he said with that malicious grin. Then he sobered slightly, "It's a pity we can't get footage of euthanizing people," he added. "I think the license payers would be so much more interested in the show if they knew we were actually 'taking care' of the people."
"Oh please," Elliot sighed. "The average person —"
"Is MORE bloodthirsty," Justin interrupted. "Did you know, Detective Peters, that Darkness has the least educated population, overall? We get all of the people that can't find work anywhere else, that are struggling to make ends meet. And yet, our adult education program has the lowest uptake, not the highest." He paused and frowned, "I bet you see the adverts and the statistics and think, ‘oh, we don't need it, that's why it's underused,’ instead of ‘why does CORE use those figures to advertise more, not less?’. Couple that with low to no reading, given the Naire scares, and the idea that our tech has to be tied to core, the idea that people DO want privacy sometimes, and that nothing - and I mean nothing - is sacred any more, when it comes to privacy, and what does that leave you?" Elliot blinked, and Justin took his silence as agreement, "It leaves us with a population that knows more about instinct than it does about education - a society that relies on everything from the humble computer to drive - and trust me, again, those computers are anything but humble - to big brother watching you in the midst of the best and worst moments of your life, and everything in between. I’m fairly certain that we could package the feeds YOU get and people would lap it up."
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