The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [19]
Laurel darted a look to Raul.
Although they didn’t know how they would get to the sewers, Shepherd had insisted it was “need to know” information; they had rehearsed a technique to carry Russo several miles through the sewer network. First they’d trained in a dark abandoned warehouse and later across open ground at night, always naked and barefoot. “You will need well-calloused soles,” Shepherd had said. Raul and Bastien had carried a net between them with one hundred pounds of rocks for up to three hours. Laurel marched point with a flashlight. Shepherd would follow with another light. They had repeated the exercise daily for two months, combining their night races with hard exercise during the day. The key to their results rested on the men’s similar height and arm reach, added to their excellent physical conditioning and strength. She couldn’t pair with Raul; her shorter frame meant he would carry most of the weight and hamper their mobility. Lukas would be even worse.
As if reading her mind, Raul stood, loosened his muscles, leaned over Russo, and, with a quick movement like hefting a sack of potatoes, pulled the inert form up over his shoulder.
Laurel stood. “You can’t do that.”
“Wanna bet?”
Raul and his trick bets, always on the weirdest of subjects. Years before, their campus had suffered an invasion of locusts.
How fast you reckon a locust can fly?
I don’t know. Ten miles an hour?
Some can do sixty and more.
You’re out of your mind.
Wanna bet?
Raul had grabbed a few of the insects, dropped them inside a paper bag, affixed the bag under the windshield wiper of his car, and raced around the campus.
He won the bet, but it cost him a speeding ticket. Win some, lose some, he’d said.
“What would you bet?” Laurel thought Raul’s humor could be unnerving at times, as she began jogging down the secure sewer, her flashlight beam slashing the darkness ahead.
“I bet our lives,” he said. “Yours, mine, and Woody’s over there.”
chapter 8
18:14
From the vantage point of the platform that held the presidential table, Odelle Marino’s eyes followed a pencil-size cylinder in a depression on the ceiling—an ultradirectional microphone, now scanning the crowd, its circuits overridden by the swell of applause after her introduction by Vinson Duran, the president of Hypnos. The banquet was over, tables cleared, but the army of guests wouldn’t feel sated without her words. After a calculated pause, she pushed her chair back, gathered her notes, and stood.
“Thank you, Vinson.” The microphone swung in her direction and locked. “As director of the Department of Homeland Security, I’m honored to join you in celebrating the tenth anniversary of Hypnos’s inauguration of their first hibernation station.” Odelle’s gaze swept the crowd, a sea of known faces from all levels of power: the few who had it and the others who wanted it. “Today we celebrate a success story—our country’s decision to abandon an obsolete correctional system for a new, more humane arrangement.
“As you will remember, the world was up in arms against our choice. Our country and its leaders suffered an unprecedented tide of criticism from both the foreign press and our own.”
Odelle paused and reached for a cut crystal tumbler of water with a sliver of lime floating in it. She wet her lips, then locked eyes for the briefest of moments with Louis Hamilton from The Washington Post. The bastard had used the paper as his personal soapbox and harangued the do-gooder rabble into opposing the hibernation bill. Thanks to him, it had been touch and go.
“In the year 2049, we approved a bill to close down the prisons and incarcerate those already serving time and all newly convicted criminals not in cages, where they were treated—and learned to behave—like animals, but in hibernation. Truly a more humane solution.
“In that same year, Chairman Xu Wa closed China’s borders and launched the Second Communist People’s Republic. I hope you agree with me that Ms. Wa has made Chairman Mao seem like a moderate.”
She waited until the chuckles