The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [16]
“Three and a half minutes,” Lukas announced. His voice had recovered a little color. His hands moved inside a niche that had appeared on a seemingly featureless wall. He paused, reached inside his belt, and yanked hard. Then he dropped three padded envelopes on the floor and returned to whatever he was doing inside the niche.
“One contains stabilizing pads. Stick one on your lower back. In another envelope, there are two ultrasonic syrettes. Push the one with the red cap into Russo’s neck. In the last, there are LAD lamps. Recover your discarded goggles and clip the lamps to the strip forming the nose bridge, then slip them over to dangle from your neck.”
It sounded as if Lukas was reading a manual. He must have memorized the precise words of the plan. Laurel stole a glance past Lukas’s hands. A screen. He must be keying instructions into a computer.
You will have a ten-minute window to leave the station. That’s how long it takes for the main computer to back up. The machinery and maintenance runs on a separate computer.
whatever Lukas was doing had to do with equipment.
Raul recovered the crumpled envelopes and tore one open, tipping two thin cylinders like pencil stubs onto the floor. He picked up the one with a red cap and handed it to Laurel.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A muscle relaxant and a sedative. He could die if he reaches full arousal in his present state.”
“Like our friend?”
Lukas slammed at something inside the recess and a panel slid down, the hollow disappearing. “Yes, like your—Bastien. A common accident.”
Laurel put the syrette by her feet and had finished peeling the protective cover from a skin pad the size of a playing card when she froze. “Common? How common?”
“Common enough. About one in fifty of the regular inmates and most of the—illegals.”
A powerful whine fired and the floor trembled.
“Into the tank. We’re running out of time.”
Something moved. Laurel swiveled toward the tank. Its surface rippled and the level dropped. She’d always been comfortable with her body, but she suddenly felt vulnerable being naked before a stranger. She handed another pad to Raul, slapped hers at kidney height, and turned her butt toward Lukas. After a short delay, she felt a cold hand patting over the pad to ensure good skin contact.
Laurel eyed Lukas as he turned to Raul and continued with the patting routine, then he leaned over Bastien to reach for his discarded goggles. Laurel pushed the syrette into Russo’s neck and flicked the release lever. The tube emptied with a hiss and the bundle stopped squirming.
“What’s the other syrette for?”
“A stronger dose of the same mix, in case he starts convulsing.”
Raul neared, grabbed Russo’s neck ring, and dragged him over to the tank’s edge.
The tank looked like a collage of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings composed by de Sade. The level in the nine-foot-deep tank was dropping fast. A sea of upturned faces with dark goggles and fluid up to their necks stared toward the ceiling like monstrous insect pupae dangling from green hoses. In the center of the fluid expanse, a dimple formed, sucked down by what must be a powerful eddy.
Her eyes fixed on the revolving expanse of fluid, Laurel understood, and her spirits sank even lower. It all made sense now. The drainpipes must link with the spur line for flushing the tanks during periodic maintenance. We’re going down the drain!
Raul padded over with the other goggles, already clipping on a hazelnut-size LAD lamp: a new generation of light amplifying diodes.
Lukas glanced at his watch. “Two minutes.” He darted a glance around and jumped on the nearest inmate suspended in liquid up to his chest. He gripped onto the jelly net as his face contorted into a mask of shock. His jaw started chattering at once.
“Ju-ump!”
“What about him?” Raul nodded to Bastien.
Lukas’s eyes widened. “He’s dead.”
“Can he be resuscitated?”
“He’s dead!” Lukas insisted.
Raul’s voice sharpened. “Watch