The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [12]
Either Bastien had suffered a cardiac arrest or something had malfunctioned in the life-support equipment. She knew there was someone helping them out from the inside, though she didn’t know his identity. But their plan hinged on the helper’s ability to bypass a high-level program and insert a subroutine to slip in a few lines of code. Perhaps the rogue program had conflicted with other computer instructions. It was a miracle she was alive. She darted a glance to the center of the tank—the limbo of forgotten souls—and to the twin wires separated from the others. Their goal. Laurel shuddered, her mind torn with conflicting emotions. For more than eight years, Eliot Russo had floated under those wires, kept in the perfect form of bondage by a sadist. Eliot Russo, a man she’d never met but had learned to hate the moment she discovered his existence. A man probably insane after his ordeal. Yet, insane or not, he was proof of the system’s criminal abuse by the government. Laurel had sworn to expose the corruption in the Federal Bureau of Hibernation, but doing so by springing out the man she knew only as Eliot Russo was the ultimate paradox. Resentment burned her stomach.
There were more whines and clicks as the hydraulic arm moved to raise another sac of sinew and bone from hibernation. What if Raul was dead or unconscious? She might as well dive into the icy fluid and breathe deep—anything but hibernation for life. Thirty. Again, she leaned to peer into Bastien’s eyes and, grinding her teeth with rage, resumed the cardiac massage with renewed vigor.
The clicks stopped and the fluid rippled before Raul’s head surfaced. Underneath, the liquid boiled and lazy wavelets radiated from Raul’s torso. His enmeshed arms thrashed at the net, and a hand snaked through to reach for his goggles.
Laurel closed her eyes as a wave of relief washed over her. She paused and drew in a deep breath, looked once more at Raul’s writhing shape, then resumed the compressions.
Even before the wires supporting Raul had snapped free, he was already releasing the neck ring and tugging at his ear and nose plugs. When the hydraulic arm removed the mouth plug, Raul rolled on the floor as he tore out of the gelatinous mess, lurching heavily from side to side, then crawled toward her.
“Move,” he croaked. “Let’s get this mess off him.”
Good old Raul; no questions. In the short flight over the tank, he’d pressed through his horror and assessed the problem.
Raul pushed both hands under Bastien’s head and jerked the unconscious man to a sitting position to free the net so Laurel could slide it down.
“Take over chest compression. I’ll do the mouth-to-mouth,” Laurel said.
“How long has he been like this?” Raul started pounding away at a good rhythm.
Laurel had lost count of the maneuvers. “Six or seven minutes.” Keeping his airway free, she breathed hard into his mouth. It tasted of hibernation fluid—metallic with a hint of sweetness.
Still no reaction. Laurel blew into his lungs again. The window for successful bridging until defibrillation was ten to eighteen minutes. They were running out of time.
Raul compressed Bastien’s chest with vigor, eyes darting around.
“Don’t bother. I checked. No defibrillator,” Laurel said.
“Bastards!”
“It would be needless overkill. The machines hoist the meat straight up to revival labs above us. Why should they have emergency equipment around the tanks? This is a clean room, sterile. To handle emergency life support outside the tank, you’d need real people with real germs.”
“What about maintenance?”
“Automatic. Only a major breakdown would bring anybody here through the personnel corridors and service galleries.”
“Which way is the entrance?”
She cocked her head. “Behind