Redstone Ch. 18, Pt. 2

Notes: Wow. One more post after this, I think? Maybe two, for a double-part epilogue, but we're almost done. Holy cow. And look what a mess I'm leaving things. I guess I'll have to come back and clean up soon!

Title: Redstone Chapter 18, Part 2.

*** 

By the time Tamara found out what Wyl had done, she’d already sent the encrypted data from the Warden’s computer on to Sir. In the chaos of the prison riot, every alarm echoing through the halls of Redstone and people distracted and afraid, she had run to her quarters, built her communicator and transmitted everything she had, every tiny terabyte of data, until she had confirmation that it had gone through to Sir. She thoroughly destroyed the hardcopy, then sat on her bed and just…waited. Waited and worried. Wyl had been so intent, and ZeeBee had been so fast, and then there was just…

Waiting. Wondering. Tamara tried to contact Wyl via Morse code once but got no reply. She didn’t bother trying again. He’d get in touch with her when he was ready. Demarcos was safely out of the way for now, although Tamara knew she owed him a major explanation. She’d already asked about giving him more to go on, and had been given authorization. Now she just had to find a time for them to be alone and out from under the probably hyper-watchful eye of Warden Harrison.

Then the announcement came over the prison comm system, and all of Tamara’s preconceptions went straight to hell.

“Attention all personnel: there has been a breach of security in Redstone Penitentiary. I repeat, there has been a prolonged breach of security in Redstone Penitentiary. A minimum of four suspected fugitives have been identified, in addition to two faculty members who may or may not have collaborated with them. You are confined to quarters for the immediate future as repairs are made and a door-to-door search is conducted. Any lack of cooperation may be met with lethal force.”

Oh, no. No, he hadn’t…he couldn’t. Could he? Wyl had been terribly distressed when ZeeBee had taken off, leaving the infirmary directly after. Had he done something? Had ZeeBee? What had happened to Robbie?

Tamara couldn’t risk reassembling her illicit communicator, not when someone might charge into her room at any point and start asking her questions. But she could fall back on her primary job, which she needed to do anyway. Mind made up, Tamara steeled herself, then called up President Alexander’s personal number.

She got his assistant’s voice, but not his image. Well, it was better than being shunted to Alexander’s holobox. “Remian, put me through to the president.”

“He’s busy and you’re off your schedule, Carson.” Remian’s voice was rather terse. “It can wait—”

“It can’t wait!” Tamara insisted, pushing a little more anxiety into her voice. “There was a riot, and a prison break, and nobody is telling me anything but I’m worried about what could have happened here.”

Remian abruptly appeared in the device. His imperturbably flat forehead was creased with an unfamiliar wrinkle. “A prison break? At Redstone?”

“That’s what they said over the comm system.”

“Not just a riot? Because riots are only to be expected in a cesspit like that place.”

Aaand thanks for leaving me here so long, assholes. “No, they distinctly said a prison break! We’re on mandatory lockdown, no one is allowed to leave their rooms! It’s been this way for hours!” Less than two, but whatever, she was making a point.

Remian kept frowning. At this rate he might actually sprout some genuine lines in a century or two. “Let me get back to you on this.” He ended the holo call and Tamara sighed, but really, it was about what she’d expected.

What she hadn’t expected was the wait that happened next. For twenty hours, her calls, her comms and her banging on the door all went unanswered. She couldn’t raise the president or his secretary, she couldn’t risk putting her secret comm together again, and as tempting as it was, she couldn’t break out the Morse to check on Demarcos either, since he had no way of answering even if he heard. That left catching up on her sleep, cleaning up and packing all of her things as distractions, all of which she got done in half that amount of time. For the rest of it, she fretted until she couldn’t bear it anymore, and then settled herself into a lotus and tried to meditate.

Meditation was something that Sir had insisted all the operatives who trained through the Academy spend some time studying. He said it was for its proven stress-relieving functions; Tamara thought it was because it gave Sir an excuse to get away from his day job for a while and spend some time meditating himself, as he liked to lead the sessions. It had been hard for Tamara, far harder than the engineering classes, but eventually she’d learned enough to pass muster. It helped that he modified things for her, and taught her a system that was less reliant on silence and let her use a mantra instead.

Her mantra today? “Fucker.” It might not be the most calming word choice, but it satisfied on a visceral level.

Eventually, after even meditation lost its novelty value, a knock finally came on the door. Tamara leapt to her feet and opened it.

A man she’d never seen before stood in the hall, in a uniform similar to one of Redstone’s guards, only in blue and grey instead of black. “Miss Carson?”

“Yes?” she said cautiously.

“It’s time for your debriefing.”

“Finally,” she said with a sigh, the very picture of a put-upon bureaucrat who just wanted to get off this rock and get back to civilization. “So I need to bring anything with me?”

“Just be sure there’s a way to identify yourself.”

“I’m in the log,” Tamara confirmed as she started to shut her door.

“Um…that may not suffice.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Because the computer system running Redstone has been infected with a virus. So far it’s only damaged the internal and external camera systems, but it has led to some confusion when it comes to reconciling people with profiles, since the cameras can’t check for a match.”

“Ah.” Tamara nodded calmly, her mind racing at lightspeed. “I’ll just bring along my badge, then. And my personal ID.”

“Thank you.”

Wyl, what did you do?

That was far from the last confusing thing to happen to her that afternoon, either. Instead of being taken to Warden Harrison’s domain, Tamara was led to the tiny prison port, where a makeshift office had been set up along one wall. Along the other wall sat a long row of Redstone employees, everyone from guards to medics to a few lone repairmen, all of them collared with isolation fields over their heads. Tamara glanced at them but didn’t let her gaze linger; it only took a moment to verify that Robbie and Wyl weren’t among them.

Tamara was directed to sit down in front of a stocky, red-haired woman with what seemed like a naturally grim expression. “I’m Commander Grace Graves,” she said without ceremony as soon as her man had backed up. “Warden of Caravan Penitentiary, currently Acting-Warden of Redstone.”

“I’m Tamara Carson, President Alexander’s liaison here.”

Warden Graves’ eyes narrowed. “Overseeing his brother’s incarceration.”

“As best I could,” Tamara allowed.

“Yes. Warden Harrison didn’t make things easy. Don’t bother to look for him,” she added as Tamara twitched. “He’s currently in solitary confinement, and will be until I get to the bottom of the mess he’s made of things here.”

“Ma’am?”

“It’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.” Warden Graves’ voice was as hard as diamond. “Now. We’re going to go over the log of your activities since your appointment here, and you’re going to correct any discrepancies between what the computer recorded and your own recollection of your time here. You’re also going to answer any questions about your conduct that I choose to ask. Clear?”

“Is that legal?”

Warden Graves smiled coolly. “This prison is currently under system-designated martial law thanks to so many cockups I can’t even fit them all into my implant. According to President Alexander’s own rules, that means I have full autonomy to act in the best interest of this facility and its vulnerable populations. So yes, your cooperation is both legal and required by circumstance. Any prevarication can and will be met with suspicion of collaboration, and subsequent isolation until a lawyer can be brought to you. Clear?”

Amazing. Tamara had finally met a scarier version of Sir. “Translucent.”

“Good.” The warden proceeded to detail every time Tamara had opened or shut her door in the week—had it truly been just over two standard weeks? Was that even possible?—that she’d been here, asking Tamara to explain her actions. She’d replied calmly, and for the most part it was very simple. The questions didn’t get complicated until the very end.

“You briefly shared a room with a man named Wyl Sinclair just before the riot alarm went off. What did you speak about?”

“Not much.” That was regrettably true. “He seemed very concerned about someone called Robbie. There was a bot, I think he’d done something to customize it…it rolled off at top speed, and that was when he got concerned.”

Warden Graves pursed her lips. “And did you see this man or his bot again?”

“No, he left shortly after that…is he okay?”

“I have no idea, as he isn’t here anymore.”

It all crystallized in Tamara’s mind. Oh, Wyl. “And Kyle Alexander?” Tamara pressed daringly. “My employer hasn’t been able to tell me if he’s still incarcerated here or not.”

Warden Graves looked at her in silence for a moment, her folded hands tightening minutely. Finally she shrugged. “I suppose you need to hear this, and it might as well be from me. No, Kyle Alexander is no longer in Redstone. The circumstances of his removal are completely opaque. There are two ships missing from this bay, and one of them belonged to Wyl Sinclair’s husband, who’s also missing. The other was broken into. We’re looking for them, but Redstone’s tracking systems are completely offline.”

Two ships…who had the other one? “Who else escaped?” Tamara asked. Please be Magpie, please be Magpie…

“I have no more information for you at this time, Miss Carson, and no more need for you. The embargo on arrivals and departures will be lifted soon, so I suggest you ask your patron for a lift out of here.” Warden Graves looked back down at the small screen in front of her, and Tamara took her dismissal and left. At least this time she wasn’t escorted.

Demarcos was waiting for her outside her door. “You talked to Graves?” She nodded. “Kyle is gone.”

“I know.”

“Tell me you know where he is.” The strain in Demarcos’ voice hurt Tamara’s heart. “Tell me he’s still alive.”

It was time to read him in. Tamara led the way into her room, locked the door behind her and sat down on the edge of her bed, pulling her disassembled communicator to her. “I think he’s alive,” she told Demarcos.

“Where is he, then? What happened to him, what’s going on?”

“Before I can answer any of that, you need to talk to someone. And before I can let you do that, I have to know you’re not going to…” Betray me. “Talk about this to anyone else. Because what you’re about to hear could be construed as high treason, and I don’t want to bring you into that unless you’re prepared for the consequences.”

“Do you always talk in fucking riddles?” Demarcos asked bitterly before shaking his head. “Fine. I don’t care what’s behind it, I want to know what’s happening to Kyle. And you can trust me, you know you can. Have I failed to cover for you yet?”

“No,” Tamara admitted, her fingers automatically seating parts and turning pieces until they fit together. “You haven’t. Don’t start now.” She pushed the linkage that should connect her to Admiral Liang.

“What are you…” Demarcos went silent as the communicator lit up.

“Hummingbird, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Sir,” she said. “But I’m not alone. Kyle’s lawyer is here with me. Have you been apprised of the situation at Redstone?”

“Peacock contacted me about it.”

“Ah.” If anyone knew what was going on, it was Garrett. “Then, maybe you wouldn’t mind filling us in? Both of us?” she emphasized.

“Are you confident, Hummingbird?”

Tamara glanced at Demarcos. He looked right back at her, and Tamara took a deep breath and hoped she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

“I’m confident, Sir.”

 

Redstone Ch. 16 Pt 2

Notes: What a morning. Seriously. I'm not entirely sure I'm going to make my afternoon clients, given how the roads are right now, and the fact that I'm driving in a spare. Because REASONS, because karma, because flat tires on snowy days, joy joy joy. I want to punch something, but my hands are too cold.

Anyway. Our last Tamara segment: from here we move on to Robbie, who...oh, baby. What have I done to you?

Title: Redstone Chapter 16, Part 2

*** 

One of the enduring fads on Pandora was an incessant fascination with all things Old Earth. Naturals were, in some ways, the most Old Earth of any people alive in the universe today. They, like pre-Regen Earthlings, had to heal the old-fashioned way, with time and care. They got sick, they got broken, they fought through pain and physical and mental hardship in a way that few people on Regen had to concern themselves with. There were the occasional Regen-ready individuals whose body chemistry was so turbulent it led them to physical harm, but they were rare.

That fad facilitated the creation of the Library, a building in Pandora City dedicated to Old Earth memorabilia and mementos. It had media in it that was inaccessible with an implant; you had to actually hold the books in your hand to read them, or play the various types of discs in ancient machines. There were traditional clothes from over a hundred Old Earth countries, and games and dolls and shows of all sorts.

A popular fascination during the early twenty-first century in some Old Earth countries had revolved around creatures called zombies. Tamara tried, but she couldn’t quite divorce herself from being ginger and quiet as she stepped around fallen bodies in the halls. If she imagined herself holding a katana while she did it, that was her own business.

ZeeBee trailed along just behind her, silent except for the whirr of his wheels. She got to the admin halls without difficulty, and wound her way to Warden Harrison’s office as quickly as she could. His door was locked. Oh, of course it was.

Tamara pressed the disc, which she’d stuck to the end of her index finger, to the pad outside the Warden’s office as she checked the time with her implant. Twenty-six more minutes. She should be able to finish this well within the half hour time limit.

The pad suddenly glowed, and the door to the office slid open. Tamara stepped inside and made a face. There was something about the Warden, some faint undertone to his scent that made her think of desiccation. Maybe he kept his clothes vacuum sealed, maybe he forbid the cleaning bots from entering his rooms. Whatever it was, it made her nose itch. She did her best to ignore it as she hastened to the desk in front of her. Warden Harrison was slumped over it, obscuring the control panel on the desk.

“ZeeBee, can you move him?”

“Yes.” She waited, but nothing happened.

“Oh.” Darn these literal bots. “ZeeBee, move the Warden out of the way.”

“Affirmative.” The bot slid his arms underneath the man and laid him out on the floor just to the side of the desk. Tamara took his place, wincing at the smear of drool that hit her fingers as she touched the surface of the pad.

“Nasty.” Nevertheless, she pressed her index finger down hard and waited for the program to access Harrison’s personal files.

There were a lot of them. Tamara narrowed her eyes as she stared at the flashing screen. Wyl seemed to have chosen to take way more information than they could possibly use rather than banking on getting too specific and finding nothing, and so everything was being copied and stored on the tiny chip, and from there to several of their personal devices. It was the best way to be sure they got what they needed, but it also took more time than Tamara really liked, especially since she still had to wipe the footage. ZeeBee would help with that, though.

Twenty minutes left. Seventeen…the program indicated it was finished before its tiny icon, a laughing flame, vanished with a virtual poof. Tamara found her way to the camera feeds, then stood up and turned to ZeeBee. “Okay.” She held her arms out from her sides. “Scan me.”

Using a completely current image of her was the only way to be sure they were actually getting her out of the visual feeds. Tamara had been prepared to use a saved image from her implant, but since Wyl had come through with the bot, she didn’t have to. She turned and ZeeBee scanned, a brief flash of green light indicating it was done, and then he stuck the very tip of one of his probes against the panel. Tamara watched as the program winnowed through the footage of her, everything from the moment before the gas was deployed to now, and deleted it. She was erased from the next thirteen minutes of future footage as well, which was a problem she’d solve by taking off her jacket to change her physical profile, just in case the time ran out faster than they’d intended. ZeeBee cleared itself as well, and Tamara grinned as she removed the tiny chip and stuck it beneath her collar.

“Perfect. Let’s get back to the infirmary.” She headed for the office door. The bot didn’t follow.

“ZeeBee?” It didn’t respond, just stared at the camera feed for a long moment. All of a sudden the alarm in the top of its head started going off, startling Tamara so badly she almost fell.

“Baby protocol discontinued! Alpha protocol engaged!” ZeeBee turned and shot past her down the hall, zipping around bodies like it was a sport. Tamara watched it go in complete astonishment, which turned to horror when she heard Warden Harrison groan. Oh, fuck. Fuck. The gas was wearing off early, and ZeeBee was waking people up with his noise. Tamara ran down the admin hall as fast as she could, tracing her path back to the infirmary. She had to get there before Doctor Kleinman woke up, she had to—shit, she had to make sure Wyl was all right, what else could the alpha protocol be?

Tamara was breathing hard again by the time she got back to the infirmary, but while people were stirring, no one was entirely awake yet. She pulled off her jacket, lay down on the floor close to where she’d been with ZeeBee and then, for good measure, smacked her head against the wall hard enough to make herself see stars. That hadn’t been in the original plan, but she needed to make sure no suspicions came her way. It helped that the doctor was so vehemently anti-natural, but it paid to be certain. Dizzy and worried, she calmed her breathing as best she could and waited.

“What in the name of…oh, good grief!” She heard the doctor push himself up off the floor. Demarcos followed with a grunt a moment later, and then cold fingers pressed against the pulse point in her throat. Tamara whimpered.

“Just what I need, another—” They’d never find out what derogatory thing he needed, because at that moment another alarm went off, this one rippling through the walls. Tamara recognized it. It was the alarm that sounded when there was a riot in the prison. “I don’t have time to deal with her; put her back in her room! I’ll return presently!” Doctor Kleinman rushed off, and a moment later a much warmer set of hands found their way under her head.

“Hey,” Demarcos murmured. “Tamara. You okay? Tamara, talk to me, damn it.”

“Mm fine,” she whispered, even though she wasn’t. “Take me to the general infirmary, not the private room.”

“Tamara—”

“I need to see if someone is there. Please.” She wasn’t too proud to beg. She’d have kept at it until he agreed out of sheer exhaustion, but Demarcos just rolled his eyes.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You’re more cryptic than the president himself, you know that?”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Tamara said, but she smiled a little bit regardless. “Thank you.”

“You owe me so many explanations.” He sounded angry, but he was gentle as he assisted her to her feet and put one of her arms over his shoulders. It was a bit of a stretch but she didn’t say anything, just let him lead her like a docile little child into the larger treatment room in the infirmary, where the Regen beds were kept.

She actually went a bit limp with relief when she saw Wyl lying there, one hand rubbing his throat, the other looking around curiously. He smiled politely when he saw the two of them, giving no indication he’d ever seen either of them before. “Hi there. What the hell happened, huh?”

Fortunately, Demarcos set Tamara down right next to Wyl, where she could make a bit of conversation about what really interested her. “Where’s ZeeBee?” she asked, almost soundlessly.

A slightly panicked look came into Wyl’s eyes. “ZeeBee was supposed to find you! Didn’t…what about…”

“ZeeBee did find me. It was very helpful, but...it ran off at the end! Something about alpha protocol, I thought that meant ZeeBee would be back here with you.”

Wyl frowned. “Alpha protocol comes into play in case of imminent physical damage for the primaries, that’s me and Robbie. But I’m fine, and Robbie should be…” Wyl didn’t just panic this time, he went completely white. “Oh, fuck. Robbie’s on duty. He’d on fucking duty and now there’s a riot, what if he was in the Pit when the gas went off? When did ZeeBee leave?”

“Right after we finished with the visual feeds.”

“ZeeBee must have seen something happening to Robbie.” Wyl got up like he was going to march off into the penitentiary himself, but Tamara jerked him back onto the bed. Demarcos watched the two of them like they were both crazy.

“Running around busting doors down to go after Robbie will only draw attention,” she whispered. “If ZeeBee saw something, it’ll hand it. Besides, Magpie is in there. He can help Robbie.”

“How?” Wyl demanded. “How can he possibly handle anything without blowing his cover? Robbie us a guard; no prisoner stands up for guards. He’s going to be killed.”

“You don’t know that,” she insisted. We don’t know anything, she thought, a bit helplessly. At this point, all she could do was keep Wyl from ruining the game.

Robbie would have to look after himself.

Redstone Ch. 16 Pt. 1

Notes: One more segment with Tamara after this, and then I segue to Robbie, who is really going to get the short end of the stick. Fortunately he's a badass and can handle that. Happy Tuesday, darlins!

Title: Redstone Chapter 16, Part 1.

*** 

Tamara had always had good hearing. Even for a regular person, her ears would have been good, far better than her eyes, which had taken three surgeries to correct to their less-than-perfect state now. She had also had a great deal of experience in her youth at pretending to be asleep when she was in hospitals, mostly to avoid dealing with her father and the look she knew would be on his face when she woke up. She could even modulate her heart rate, which was a useful trick when she wanted to listen in on a conversation. Especially such a heated one.

“Absolutely outrageous.” She had heard that voice before—not often, but more than once.

The next person to speak spurred a much more immediate sense of recognition. “Keep your voice down.”

“It’s my infirmary, Mr. Gyllenny, and I’ll raise my voice however and whenever I choose to! What sort of idiot goes gallivanting about the universe with all of these disabilities? Honestly, a natural? You might as well plop a baby down in the middle of an ocean and expect them to know how to swim. Their terrible immune systems must make traveling with them an utter nightmare, not to mention their absolute inability to respond to more than the most basic of therapeutic techniques!” The doctor sounded like he was on the verge of despair. “I have too many idiots with major wounds being brought in to deal with something as ridiculous as an allergic reaction right now!”

“But she’s going to be all right?” Demarcos pressed. He sounded genuinely concerned. It was rather nice, actually.

“She’ll be fine. Regen couldn’t do anything for her but the proper antihistamine injection did the trick. She should wake up momentarily. I expect she’ll come up with all sorts of excuses to stay here,” he added derisively. “Naturals are fragile creatures. If you’re staying, then you keep her calm and under control. Any sign of hysterics and I’ll render her unconscious and have her delivered back to her room immediately.”

“Did they not teach you any sort of compassion in your medical training?”

Dr. Kleinman snorted. “You think compassion is what anyone in this hellhole deserves? They deserve to lose power and freeze to death, as far as I’m concerned. My job is to keep the people who end up here alive, not to coddle them, Mr. Gyllenny. If it bothers you so much, I suggest you avoid ending up a patient.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Demarcos said. Tamara heard the door swoosh open, and the doctor briefly cursing at some damn robot, these things are always malfunctioning before it closed again.

“Well,” she croaked, not quite feeling like opening her eyes yet. Her face still felt a little swollen, and her lips were numb. She could breathe without assistance, though. That was good. “He’s a fucking prince, huh?”

“Holy shit.” It came out more like a sigh than a curse, and when Tamara finally looked up she saw Demarcos staring down at her, a combination of relief and anger written all over his face. “What in the lowest ten was that?” he demanded. “You poisoned yourself?”

Tamara winced. “Keep your voice down.” She made as though it hurt her ears, but in actuality she wasn’t pleased that he was trying to give the game away while they were being surveilled. Not that she wasn’t going to do her best to get rid of this footage, but it didn’t pay to get sloppy. “And those were a new brand of crackers; I’d never tried them before.” Obviously.

“Right, right.” Demarcos subsided a little, sitting down on the edge of her bed. It didn’t automatically compensate for his weight like it should have—apparently the leveling system embedded in it had gone to hell and no one had bothered to fix it—and she rolled into the side of his hip. He felt warm even through her jumpsuit. “So what now, Carson?”

“Well, first…” She glanced around, then suddenly put two and two together. “Shit! Open the door!”

Demarcos frowned. “There’s a bot out there acing weird, are you sure you—”

“Open the door! I’m feeling…” She cast about for a reason that a casual observer would accept. “Severely claustrophobic! Open the door, now!” Demarcos rolled his eyes and obeyed, and the bot immediately rolled into the room.

“Close it,” Tamara hissed just as the robot swept her up into its arms and cradled her against its metallic chest. The green eyestrip glowed brightly as it rocked her back and forth and said, “There there. There there. There there.”

The door opened a moment later, and Dr. Kleinman bustled in angrily. “This thing is all wrong! It doesn’t respond to standard commands in a timely fashion. Put her down.” The bot paused in its rocking, and then gently laid Tamara back down on the bed.

“I’ll have this thing deactivated and torn apart,” he muttered. “And you’re awake. Good. Get back to your quarters, and—”

“I feel nauseous.” It was the first excuse she could come up with, but Tamara knew she needed to check her clothes, now, and she couldn’t afford to leave the infirmary to do it. “I can’t go yet.”

“You’re fine, and I have other people to tend to and need this space.”

There was more excuse coming, but Tamara had already heard enough. One of the most useful, and least appealing, parts of her training under Admiral Liang was building in a neuro-sensory feedback loop that would provoke illness. It wasn’t fun, but throwing up backed people off like nobody’s business. Shuffling her feet together, Tamara pressed the ball of her right foot hard into the instep of her left, while simultaneously squeezing the fleshy section of her right hand between thumb and forefinger.

The sudden rush of sickness made her double over, retching as the scant contents of her stomach hit the floor. At least her throat didn’t swell up, although from the look of disgust on the doctor’s face she wasn’t entirely sure he would have helped her if it had.

“It’ll pass,” she assured him, eyes watering and nose streaming. “I just need a few more minutes, I think.”

“Take an hour,” Dr. Kleinman muttered, and he turned and left without another word. ZeeBee didn’t follow him, just stood there placidly.

“What the hell?” Demarcos said quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I need to be in the bathroom.” She held out her arm like she just couldn’t make it all of five feet without his help. Wisely, he took it and escorted her over to the tiny toilet, where Tamara knew they only passively surveilled, in case of an emergency.

As soon as the door was closed, she turned her back to him. “Look for a disc on my clothes, something small, probably transparent,” she instructed as she pulled a fresh water line out of the wall and stuck it in her mouth. She swished viciously, and let the current carry the dirty water back into the piping, then swished again. “Fuck, that’s nasty.”

“You’re telling me.” Demarcos’ hands were a little tentative, but he swept his fingers methodically over her back and arms, working his way down her body. Tamara did her best not to blush as he lightened his touch over her rear, then started on her thighs. “Ah. Here.”

She turned and saw the delicate lens sitting on the end of his pinky finger. “Perfect. Now I just need access to a care portal.”

“Planning on writing up the record of your own illness?” he asked, doing his best not to sound as flustered as he looked.

“Not exactly. Look, you’ve been…very helpful, but it’s best you let me manage things from here. I promise to do my best,” she added when he looked reluctant. “I’m invested in getting Kyle out of here, I swear.”

“I shouldn’t believe you, but I don’t think I really have a choice.” His teeth were gritted as he said it.

“No, I guess not,” Tamara agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

She was both surprised and incredibly relieved to see ZeeBee still in the room, apparently just finishing cleaning up her mess. The bot straightened and glowed at her. “Baby,” it said.

“Oh thank you, Wyl,” she murmured. She hadn’t been sure that Wyl would make it so ZeeBee would stay with her, but apparently the baby protocol he’d described was still in place.

“I will take good care of you.”

“What is going on here?” Demarcos asked.

“I know you will,” Tamara said, ignoring her human companion. “I need to access a care portal.”

“The closest is 2.4 meters away, in the main hall.”

“Is there anyone in the main hall right now?”

“Dr. Kleinman is approximately 4 meters away.”

Tamara whirled on Demarcos. “I need you to distract him. Just long enough for me to access the care portal and release the gas.” She was already removing her elaborate collar and folding it into the portable fumigant mask it doubled as. From a camera’s distance it would be hard to tell what she was doing, but she kept her hands low anyway.

“You’re releasing the gas on this place?”

“It’s the only way I can get access to the right office. Please,” she added when he looked like he wanted to fight about it.

“You do realize how many laws you’re breaking, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you get that they could put you away here and you’d never see starlight again, for however long you managed to survive?”

Tamara shivered but held her ground. “Yes. I know.”

Demarcos sighed. “Then I guess I can’t scare you into changing your mind. Give me a minute to work on him.”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

“Tell me that when you get out of this thing alive,” he replied, then opened the door and raised his voice. “Hey! Haven’t you heard of liability before? I’ve never seen so many violations of—” The door shut on his impending argument, and Tamara took a moment to shut her eyes and lean into ZeeBee, still feeling a little sick, and shaking with nerves.

A metal hand found her shoulder and patted. “There there. There there. There there.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. They stood in silence for another minute before she asked, “Is there anyone in the main hall now?”

“No.”

“Good. Escort me to the care portal and then support me in front of it.” She made a show of stumbling a bit as she moved into the hall, walked a little ways and then sagged against the wall. ZeeBee trundled up right behind her and propped her up, and Tamara transferred the chip from her finger to the sensor of the care portal.

It was a clever design, just enough to bypass the routines that required passwords but not enough to treat her as anything other than an employee. Tamara had already researched and trained up on this particular care system, and so she knew just where to go to find the emergency security protocols. She might as well have been Dr. Kleinman herself, the way the chip hacked through the safeties and accepted her assurance that, yes, there was indeed a riot going on and yes, gassing was necessary. And oh yeah—suspend Redstone’s inter-zone filtration system for the duration of the active gassing.

The hall lights went from plain white to flashing red and orange. That was all the warning anyone got before the gas began to flow. Tamara brought her mask to her face and buried her head against ZeeBee’s chest, and prayed that the seal held.

“What’s happening?” Dr. Kleinman exclaimed as he ran out of his office, Demarcos hot on his heels. “What is this? I didn’t give orders for this!” He just barely made eye contact with Tamara before he wilted to the ground. Demarcos lasted a few seconds longer, but then he followed suit.

Two minutes later the lights went back to normal, but nothing else did. Tamara removed her mask and took a shaky breath, and was relieved not to collapse herself. So far, so good.

“There there.” ZeeBee patted her again, and Tamara laughed shakily. “There there. There there.”

Redstone Ch. 15 Pt. 2

Notes: So, better late than never! More Redstone, this time with Tamara in the lead. She'll be showing up next week too, and after that I start fucking with Robbie. Yeah, spoiler, life is going to get complicated and Robbie will be at the center of it. Poor darlin.

Title: Redstone Chapter 15, Part 2

 

 ***

 

Going now. Ten-fifteen minutes.

Tamara felt her breath catch in her throat, but forced herself to reply. Understood. Good luck.

She closed her eyes and forced air through her lungs, pushing past the stuttering, adrenalized fear response that had taken what seemed like forever to break herself of. She was not going to break down right now, damn it. She was going to do her job like the professional she was, and she was going to do it well. And someday, someday when she was old and looked more like her father’s peer instead of his daughter, she was going to tell him this story, about how she was an integral part of a daring escape, about how they saved someone who was going to help save the Federation as they knew it. And then he would see her for a real person, a person who could achieve things and live a full life even if it was a short one, and they would finally be equals.

But first she was going to dismantle her Morse device, because if everything went to hell it wasn’t going to help her to have that lying around. Tamara disconnected the parts with brisk competence, reassembled the pieces into the innocuous communicator they’d once been, then stood up and went for her secret stash of perishable death: a very thoroughly wrapped package of snack crackers that had been imbued with peanut powder.

Peanuts. Tamara had an allergy to peanuts, of all things. So quaint, so much something that just didn’t happen to people anymore. A lot of modern doctors hadn’t even heard of allergies, as Regen usually inoculated people against local sources of irritation while they were still in their mother’s womb. For those who traveled to other planets allergies occasionally popped up, but again, Regen worked wonders. And then there were the naturals, for whom the most innocuous thing could become a fast-acting pestilence for one.

Tamara had first learned about her peanut allergy when she was three years old, visiting an aunt who owned a farm on Rhysis. Being a farmer was actually a quite elevated position on a lot of worlds, and her aunt had been very proud of her crop of peanuts—“one of the only naturally-grown sources for them in the galaxy,” she’d said. And so, inevitably, Tamara had eaten one along with her cousins, and less than a minute later her throat had closed up and she’d stopped breathing.

It had been the first of many family outings she’d ruined. It helped, in a way, to know that her weakness was now going to be the very thing that made her infiltration possible. It wasn’t perfect, but it did take the sting out of what she was about to do. Not literally, though. Literally, it was going to sting like a son of a bitch.

Tamara tucked the package of crackers into her pocket, then headed out of her room. She needed to be in a public place for this. She checked her watch—five minutes had passed. Now was as good a time as any for her to get started. She walked into the common room, opened the package and popped a cracker into her hand. It lay there, brown and crispy and smelling just like she remembered. Peanuts. Fuck. She’d better get a damn note in her file that said willing to go above and beyond the call of duty once this was over. She raised the cracker to her lips—

And a large, hard hand closed around her wrist before Tamara could actually eat the cracker. The hold startled her into dropping it, and she turned toward the source of her surprise angrily. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Demarcos said, his body language relaxed but his voice intent. The casual layer of prison surveillance wouldn’t pick up anything amiss as long as they kept looking relaxed. “What happens in ten to fifteen minutes, Miss Carson?”

It felt like her blood stopped moving for a moment. “I beg your pardon?” she asked through numb lips.

“I believe I heard a message that mentioned that timeframe. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to miss anything.”

“How did you hear that?”

“Good ears,” he said flatly. “What’s going on? And don’t try to play me; I have had it up to here with being lied to. If this is some kind of plot against my client—”

“Do you really want to get into this here?” Tamara asked lowly. “Where anyone could walk in on us?” God, she was so stupid. She should have protected herself better. She should have been paying closer attention to her surroundings instead of letting herself get distracted with reminiscing. If she got locked up at the end of this, she would deserve it for being a fool.

“We could go to my rooms and you could explain yourself there.”

“That—no.” Because damn it, she needed to be in a public place for this to work. “No, I can’t do that.”

“What, you think I’m going to hurt you?” Demarcos laughed hollowly. “I think it’s rich that of all the bad guys you could have picked out, you’ve decided to put the role on me.”

Tamara took a deep breath to settle her jangling nerves. “Sit with me.”

“I’d rather—”

“Let go of my goddamn wrist and sit down with me on that lounge over there,” Tamara hissed, “before you ruin everything for Kyle.”

Demarcos’ eyes narrowed, but after a second he did as she said. They walked over to the lounge together and sat, and Tamara did her best to put a friendly expression on her face while keeping her voice as low as possible. “Listen to me, and listen good. I am not your enemy.”

“You haven’t done anything to make me think of you as a friend,” Demarcos countered softly.

“I’m not what I seem.”

“I’m not even sure what you seem to be.” He sounded unduly agitated by that. “You’re a spineless official on a charity loan to the biggest name in Federation politics, but you’re also sending secret messages via Morse, which is about as antiquated as it gets, to someone else in the prison who, what, is planning some sort of breakout?”

“You got all of that from being an eavesdropper?”

“It’s not eavesdropping when I’m listening in Morse, which I didn’t think anyone off my planet knew anymore.”

“Clearly you never got schooled at the Academy.”

“I had better things to do with my time than learn to be a killer,” he said. “You keep blinking.”

“I’m checking the time.” Her implant had started a countdown timer in the corner of her vision, and Tamara could read it better when she blinked. “Shit. Look, you have no reason to trust me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But I’m asking you to, because I am planning to get some people out of here, and one of them is your client. But I can’t do that if I don’t get to the infirmary in the next five minutes.” Shit, time was passing by too quickly.

“Why would you—”

“Ask yourself why a natural would choose to align herself with President Alexander, even out of desperation, when he’s lobbying to have the planet that was given to people like me excised from the Federation,” Tamara said. “Ask yourself why I would support a man who is willing to let the fallout of his brother’s murder—and that’s what will happen if we don’t act now—come down squarely on me in his stead. Ask yourself who in the hell I could possibly be talking with in Morse code. If it was someone official, why would I bother?”

“You could be here for someone else,” Demarcos said, but some of the suspicion had gone out of his voice.

“And I am, but that person was only here originally to be Kyle’s fallback plan. He’s making sure that Kyle stays alive while the rest of us work on getting him out.”

“Breaking him out of prison won’t make the charges against him go away.”

“Breaking him out of prison before publicizing the heinous crimes his brother perpetrated against him as a child is the only way to keep him alive, though.”

Demarcos’ eyes narrowed. “What crimes?”

“I’ll tell you when this is over. For now, though, please, trust me. Or at least trust the man who’s paying for you, because he knows all about this.” It was a risk, bringing Garrett into things, but surprisingly that seemed to relax Demarcos even further.

“That twisty son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Fine. What do you need?”

“I need to eat something.”

“The cracker?” He glanced over, but a cleaning bot had already swiped it off the floor. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay, I have more.” Tamara popped another one onto her palm. “Just…don’t interfere, all right?”

“Interfere in what?”

“In what happens next.” She bit into the cracker before anything else could go wrong, chewed and swallowed quickly. The back of her throat tingled. “Oh, yay, it’s working.”

“What’s working?”

Tamara would have tried to answer him, but she started to cough instead. And once she started, she couldn’t make herself stop.

“What…” Demarcos’ hand smacked her on the back, but there was nothing to come up. It was biochemistry blocking her airway now, and Tamara would have smirked if she hadn’t been freaking out because she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe and the itching was spreading and the lights were fading already, and she couldn’t…she was going to…

Unconsciousness had never felt so welcome.

Redstone Ch. 13, Pt 1

Notes: More Redstone again! It's funny how plot can suddenly occur to you right when you need it. I've got the next arc put together, so no more diversions for a while (I'm sorry!). Still, I hope you enjoy where this gets taken. Busy day, busy week, busy life right now, but at least I've got this story and you fabulous people. :)

Title: Redstone Chapter 13, Part 1.

*** 

It was the kind of day where Tamara felt like she started things off with bad news and bounced to worse. It began with getting word that she was going to need to finagle a way to break into Harrison’s office and steal information that was undoubtedly heavily encrypted, not to mention dealing with all the other security measures in place, before moving on to a call with the president himself.

“They aren’t allowing me very much access,” Tamara said ruefully, trying to turn President Alexander’s situation to potentially benefit her new mission. “I haven’t had verification of his status for over twenty-four hours, which I know was in your original instructions to the staff. Warden Harrison assures me that the system goes down every now and then and there’s nothing he can do to speed it up, but—”

“It’s better that you don’t insist.” Raymond Alexander’s dark eyes were utterly motionless, gazing out of the holoscreen like tiny, sentient black holes. “The Warden knows how to run his facility. Once the monitoring system is active again, you can reinitiate updates.”

“But the Senate’s special council said that twenty-four hour updates were the absolute minimum that we should be documenting, and I don’t want a lapse in protocol to come back and hurt you if it’s investigated.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Tamara.” President Alexander smiled. “I’m sure I’ll survive any investigation, under the circumstances. Just do your best.” He cut the communication and Tamara gave in to the urge to bare her teeth at the screen. Of fucking course he would survive any investigation, because he’d pin the blame for the lapse in oversight squarely on her. Poor little natural, they’re really practically children, it was so kind of him to give her a chance but really he should have known better than to pass that sort of responsibility on to someone so obviously damaged.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” Tamara muttered. She did some mental math and evaluated the bits and pieces she had on hand that might enable her to do the sort of breaking and entering that she now needed to do. Her stocks came up abysmally low. Not enough stored energy to zap a control panel, not enough hardware to manually get through the system, not enough shielding to block herself from oversight. Not, no, nope, nuh-uh. “Well, shit.”

Admiral Liang had been the one to pass the assignment to her, but Tamara knew the originator of the idea had been Garrett. It was risky, sending out multiple high-energy transmissions per day, but she needed more information, and fast. She put a new number into her cadged-together transmitter and sent it out into space. “Answer,” she muttered as she chewed on a fingernail. It was a habit she’d never quite been able to kick, and one that made her father perennially roll his eyes at her. “Answer…c’mon now…”

“Talk to me, Hummingbird.”

Tamara sighed in relief. There was no fighting some instincts, it seemed, including flashing back to her teenage years and Garrett being the only person she could stand while she was trying to come to grips with her new life on Pandora. Just hearing his voice made her shoulders relax a bit. “You know, you’re asking a hell of a lot here.”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could do it.”

“Oh really?” Tamara being happy to talk to Garrett didn’t preclude her bitching him out. “And how am I supposed to do it given my current resources, which don’t include anywhere near the amount of hardware I need to get into a closed system inside a closed room in a part of the building that I’m only ever allowed into with an escort? An escort, by the way, that there’s absolutely no chance of me being able to take out. I am not that kind of fighter and I don’t want to give anyone here any ideas about throwing me into the Pit alongside the rest of those poor fuckers.”

“You can’t repurpose pieces from a bot to help you handle the mechanics?”

“I don’t have access to bots, they’re not allowed in the guest suites,” Tamara snapped. “And even if I did, I’m not Wyl! I’ve got the basics of mechanical repurposing down, but I’m not an expert. Why can’t Wyl do the break-in?”

“Because he’s isolated away from that part of the prison and is being watched more carefully.”

“Yeah, well, without his help I’m not sure what I’m going to be able to do here. Especially not fast.”

There was a moment’s pause. “You can get in touch with Wyl though, right?”

“As long as he’s equipped to detect the code as well as transmit it, yes.” Tamara had been force-fed Morse during her stay at the Academy, and was relieved that she hadn’t had to learn on the fly to be part of this operation.

“If you can get in touch with him and let him know what you need, then he can build it.”

“Great.” Except for the obvious problem left over. “And I then pick it up how? He can’t come to me, and I’m not allowed to go to him. I’m not even allowed into the medical facilities without a dozen people surrounding me.”

“You’re going to have to find a way to connect, Hummingbird. And quickly.” Another pause, a quick shuffle and then— “I have to go, I’ve got a committee meeting in two minutes. Talk to Wyl.”

The transmission ended. Tamara took a moment to lean over and bang her head into her pillow to muffle a brief scream of frustration. “Make it happen,” she muttered snidely as she took apart the comm unit and reconfigured it to send out a Morse signal. “Figure out a miracle already, get your shit together, do the impossible. Fuck you, I’ll figure it out and then I’ll rub it in your face, mister. In your stupid, pretty face.”

The light on the new communicator flicked on. Tamara put it down on the floor, made sure things were set to receive as well, then tapped her first message.

Hello from a little bird.

She wasn’t directly connected to the structure of the prison, so she wasn’t entirely sure her message would get through. It should, and it should still be the sort of thing that, if picked up by Redstone’s communications grid, was dismissed as extraneous noise, but she didn’t want to count on it. The shorter her transmissions, the better.

Less than a minute later, she got a message back. Of course she did, Wyl was on top of things. Tamara nodded along as she translated. Hello little bird. How’s the nest?

Secure so far. Too secure, maybe. Need to see other nest, no equipment, no way in.

There was a long pause. Big nest?

Ahh, no. Tamara was brave where it counted, but she wasn’t Robbie. There was no way she was going into the black heart of Redstone unless she was forced there. Small, but important. Help?

Could. Maybe. Me/R in? Prob no. Eyes, ears, hands on us. Frowny face.

Oh for fuck’s sake, he’d Morse-coded an emoticon. It was so…twenty-first century of him. Tamara smiled despite herself.

Me in. Work on way, but need equip for B&E. Help?

Maybe. Call again tomorrow. Same time.

Well, it was better than Tamara had thought they’d do right off the bat. Good. Thanks.

Owe me so much espresso. Real beans not fake.

A kilo of real coffee beans could cost as much as a top of the line communication unit these days. Tamara would charge it to Garrett. Only the best.

Good. No more messages came in the nest minute, and Tamara took the communicator apart once again.

Well. Now she just had to figure out how to find a way to meet with Wyl in person and get whatever he managed to make for her, then how to sneak herself into the Warden’s office and tap into his personal computer system. All without being seen. Because of course she did. No problem. None whatsoever.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she whispered as she got off her bed and headed for the shower. She felt strung out and sweaty now; hot water wouldn’t wash away her worries, but at least it would take care of the smell.

***

The funny thing about habits learned in early childhood, as far as Demarcos was concerned, was that you never really outgrew them. The Towers of Bayt were enormous, Frankenstein creations birthed from the skeletons of the colony ships. Because of the vital ship structures colonists had been able to access as they built, the bones of the buildings, those massive, awkward edifices, were made not of durable plasticene meta-materials that resisted impact and vibration and had a dozen other safety features built in. They were metal: old, hard metal that itself had been recycled out of the ruins of Kuala Lumpur’s greatest skyscrapers. On a planet where keeping up your technology was hard, especially in the beginning thanks to the dust storms, communication between different sections of the buildings happened along those metal bones. They were beaten out in a variant of Morse code, in fact.

Demarcos kept his communicator wide open when he was alone in his quarters, monitoring as many frequencies as he possibly could inside Redstone. He didn’t expect to get access to the internal coms between Redstone workers, but occasional bits and pieces of code from the medical unit came in unshielded. It was the one part of the prison that had to be able to connect with everyone who worked there apart from Harrison’s comm, and so had the broadest reach.

He hadn’t been looking for anything other than that. The faint lines of fuzz that floated across his screen were, at first, taken as spatial interference. Nothing important, nothing vital. Except…

Demarcos blinked and looked at the lines again. Was that a…dash? Not an actual dash, but appearing in a rhythm that seemed familiar. And then a dot, a dot, and another…what the fuck?

He launched himself away from his desk and hunched over the comm unit, tracking the interference and trying to make sense of it. Was that a…it was a word.

Good.

The fuzz vanished after that, no more to be seen even though he held his breath waiting for it. Demarcos finally exhaled, but he didn’t relax. That was genuine code, ancient code, which meant that someone here was passing notes that they didn’t want the powers that be to know about. Demarcos wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew one thing.

He was going to find out.

Redstone Ch. 9, Pt. 2

Notes: On we go! A nice, on-time post is exactly what I need to set my back on my mental tracks after a kind of fucked up weekend, so enjoy some faux-legalese and a smidgeon of literal worldbuilding :)

Title: Redstone Chapter 9, Part 2.

 

***

Demarcos Gyllenny grew up on a Central System planet. On the Central System planet, honestly: Bayt, the biggest and most populated planet in Federation space. It might not house the Federation’s capital, or even any of its major centers of industry or government service, like Olympus. Bayt’s major commodity was, simply put, people. It was one of the first planets colonized after the exodus from the home system, and it was a poor one for colonization. The soil was toxic, and dust storms rolled across the tumultuous landscape on a regular basis. The sky was eternally yellow, lit by two different suns, and the water had to be drilled for so deeply and put through so many cleansing systems that by the time you drank it, it didn’t even taste like water any more.

Bayt was colonized due to a firefight between two different colony ships. The shameful battle between Surina and Santa Maria was actually fought over Bayt’s sister planet, the much smaller and far more hospitable Aya. Computer readouts indicated that the most desirable landmass—there were several that were well-equipped for human colonists—wouldn’t support the numbers on both ships. Surina was closer but Santa Maria had bigger engines, and after a drawn-out conflict during which the irate captains used most of their life pods as makeshift torpedoes, the ships lost control and hit each other. Thousands of lives were lost in the mid-space collision, and those who remained were drawn inexorably into Bayt’s gravitational pull. Both ships fell to the surface, and almost a million more people died when they did.

The thing about early colony ships, though, was that they were both enormous—literally, floating continents—and designed with a certain practical ruthlessness in mind. Once a planet was descended to, there was no coming back. The ships weren’t equipped to return to space, and so the people who were left on board, of which there were almost ten million, had to make the best of a bad situation. There was no other choice.

Gradually, the colonists built up, scavenging the ships for the pieces needed to make the first enormous skyscrapers. They built them so tall they would rise above the sandstorms, away from the poisonous ground, and thanks to a surprise surplus in resources due to the unexpected deaths of close to ten percent of the colonists before landing, the first Baytians became an incredibly fertile group. The population grew in leaps and bounds, and by the time contact was reestablished with the larger universe, the people of Bayt had established themselves as both birth-prolific and generally interested in leaving Bayt.

Demarcos was born on a low level in Tower Three. The higher your level, the more money you had: if you could afford to pipe your water up thousands of feet, you could afford to have windows that actually opened, because the dust didn’t rise high enough to bother you. Demarcos didn’t have those advantages as a child. He was the tenth of twelve children to his mothers, and one of only two boys. He still remembered the day that Mama Jill didn’t come home: she had worked as a miner, sifting poison out of the ground and sending the cleaned earth to the greenhouses for use in food production. Her suit had malfunctioned, and she had inhaled a concentrated amount of Bayt dust and died almost instantly. Her body was never returned; bodies were just fuel to be tilled back into the soil, used to feed more bodies.

Mama Opal got a death settlement from the government that was enough to move them up five levels, into a zone where there was more than just vocational training for children, there was actual schooling. Demarcos had still been young enough to take advantage of it, and he’d absorbed reading, writing and math like a sponge. By the time he was fifteen he was living on level Seventy-Two, in a boarding school. By the time he was twenty he’d earned a scholarship that paid for his passage to Liberty, where he worked nights and studied days to become a lawyer.

Demarcos understood injustice. He’d lived it, lived a life shaped by foolish men’s prideful mistakes. He’d been born near the ground, so low he might as well have been buried there for all the social mobility he’d been raised to expect. His mother’s death had been awful, but also a blessing in disguise. He couldn’t remember what Mama Jill had looked like anymore, but he did remember that her suffering had paid for his elevation off-world. The least he could do was return the favor. He’d paid to move the rest of his family up to level Thirty-Seven, and hoped to do more when he could. Demarcos took care of his own, and never counted on anyone to help him for selfless reasons. It had gained him a ferocious reputation as someone who didn’t make deals, was no good for backdoor meetings, and couldn’t be counted on to fold in order to save face. Demarcos fought every case like he would die for it.

This was the first case he’d taken on where he actually wondered if he would, in fact, die of a heart attack before it could be resolved.

“Your bots didn’t find him.”

Warden Harrison scowled at him. “I believe I just said that.”

“But you didn’t bother to tell me what it means,” Demarcos snapped. “If you’re content to sit there and let me think the worst, then be prepared for me to ask some stupid questions in the search for an answer. What does it mean that they didn’t find him?” Please don’t say dead, please don’t say dead… Demarcos had an entire team back on Liberty currently dedicated to searching for and documenting cases of malfeasance and abuse in Redstone, but he didn’t want to add Kyle Alexander to the list of victims. Shit, the kid had had it hard enough, and now he might be…he might be…

“It most likely means that he simply wasn’t issued an intake number,” Harrison said with cold calm. “One bot did return a blank notation.”

“Why doesn’t Mr. Alexander have an intake number?” Tamara Carson asked. She was the president’s resident flunky, and Demarcos had honestly expected her to be way more of a pain in the ass than she was actually being. It was strange, having the support of someone on the very definition of the other side. Not that he wouldn’t mind trying to sway her to his side, to be honest; she was sharp in a way he respected, and had dealt with plenty of her own shit growing up as a natural in a Regen universe. Now, however, was not the time to be thinking of her.

“We didn’t have a chance to issue one to him before his introduction into the general population.”

“Before he was stolen out of his Regen tank and shoved into the Pit by a yet-unidentified guard,” Demarcos corrected, just as cold as Harrison. Fuck that son of a bitch, he wanted professional? Demarcos would professionally get his ass canned by the end of this.

“If you’re looking for further justification, I have nothing new to offer you,” Harrison said. “Internal investigations are proceeding into the unauthorized extraction from the clinic, but I’d think you’d be more interested in what’s happening to your client now than resurrecting the past.”

“That happened less than twenty standard hours ago, it’s hardly the past,” Demarcos argued, but he knew that flying this flag wouldn’t get him anywhere with the warden. “What happens next, then?”

“We have to confirm that the blank is indeed Kyle Alexander, and then a guard will remove him from the common area and complete his intake properly.”

Well, that sounded fucking ridiculous. “How will you ensure his safety while he’s waiting around for a guard to pull him out of there?”

“It isn’t our responsibility to ensure anything other than his presence, Mr. Gyllenny.”

If a person like Warden Harrison had been in charge of the lower levels of a Tower on Bayt, there would have been no one left alive in under a year. “You have a constitutionally-mandated duty to tend to the needs of your subordinates under adverse conditions.”

Harrison folded his hands complacently. “Prisoners don’t qualify as subordinates. At best, they’re low-value human capitol. At worst, they’re enemies of the state. Recent laws passed by the Federation Senate spell out new provisions in maximum security prisoner care that necessitate some hard decisions, but the welfare of my guards comes before the welfare of any of the prisoners in Redstone. Is it a hard system? Yes, I acknowledge that it is. But I reiterate: every person in this prison has been convicted of murder at a bare minimum, including your client. His upcoming trial focuses not on his guilt, but on his culpability for the murder. I certainly hope that he lasts until then, but if you were so concerned, you should have fought harder to get him into a lower-security facility where prisoner comforts are given more weight.”

If he ground his teeth any harder, Demarcos was going to lose them. “Continued survival isn’t a comfort, it’s a basic expectation of—”

“Excuse me,” Tamara interrupted quietly. For the most part she seemed about as forceful as a puff of air, but there were occasions when she’d speak and Demarcos found himself shutting up, even though he didn’t intend to. “But what’s the procedure for getting him an intake number?”

Harrison pivoted smoothly to address her. “He’ll be brought into the guard’s room just outside the prison entrance, his retinas will be scanned and entered into the system, and we’ll do a DNA match as well. Then he’ll be associated with a number, and returned to the general population.”

“Who does the actual scanning?”

“Our guards.”

“Unacceptable,” Demarcos said instantly. “At least one of your guards has proven to harbor ill intent toward my client, to the extent of attempted murder—”

“That is an unwarranted assumption—”

“And given that your internal investigation hasn’t turned up the guard in question yet, the idea that you would let a potentially murderous individual have access to my client yet again, an individual who is your subordinate even if his or her identity isn’t known, calls into question your judgement.”

Harrison frowned. “The entire process will be observed. There’s no way that—”

Demarcos couldn’t keep his mouth from twisting incredulously. “One of your guards broke my client out of the Regen tank in your clinic. That was observed too, and nothing has been done. Don’t tell me my concerns are unfounded.”

Harrison’s lips thinned. “Fine. Fortunately, Redstone has a new transfer from Caravan who just arrived a few hours ago. There’s no way this individual could be the one who supposedly endangered your client,” and here Demarcos had to take a deep breath just to keep himself from screaming, “so I’ll instruct my chief to have him to the intake. Is that acceptable to you?”

It was the only concession Demarcos was going to get at this point, and he knew it. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Tamara didn’t say anything, just kept her hands folded demurely in her lap, but there was something about the way her eyes shone, about the way the lines at the edges of them had relaxed, that made Demarcos wonder. Did she know something he didn’t? What was her game? She said she didn’t have any real loyalty to President Alexander, that she was his charity case and nothing more, but she had made it a point to be involved in all of these conversations, and in none of them had she come down on the side of Harrison and his guards.

He’d have to get her alone and talk to her later.

“I’m glad we’re agreed,” Harrison continued. “As soon as Kyle Alexander appears on vid, I’ll have the guards retrieve him. If he doesn’t show up in the next four hours, I’ll gas the prison and have my people search it manually.” He smiled thinly. “You’ll be welcome to observe if it goes that far.”

“I’ll take you up on it, if it comes to that.” Demarcos hoped it wouldn’t, but if that was what it took to ensure Kyle was still alive, well…

Harrison clearly didn’t mind paying the price in potential anarchy among his prisoners.