The building thrums with agitated energy, workers rushing down hallways, in and out of offices seemingly at random. In the commotion no one notices a space witch stalking the halls. Normally this would be a good thing, but I’ve got a whole building to explore and little time to do it.
I snake my thoughts out and grab someone at random. He yells in surprise as I drag him toward me, but he falls silent when we’re face-to-face. He’s a skinny, long-haired admin drone with the MEPHISTO insignia tattooed beneath his left eye.
“Where are the prison staff?”
“They’re on the twelfth floor,” he shrieks.
* * *
I take the stairs, and my calves are burning when I reach the twelfth floor lobby. The Homan staff must all still be working despite the chaos outside, because it’s quiet down here—serene, if you ignore the noise from the omnipresent siren.
A security desk sits abandoned beside a reinforced entry marked with twelve in Roman numerals. I twist the blast door open slowly, metal creaking as I wrench it away, then drop it to the floor as quietly as I can. I walk through, taking in the space before me. I’m on a walkway about ten meters off the floor, overlooking a crowded pit lined with holo-rigs. They’re clumped together in groups of four with thin access corridors between. Dozens of staff are illuminated by the soft green glow coming from their holo-consoles. I can’t see their faces, hidden inside the shiny black rings of the apparatus, but I see their shoulders, watch their hands moving smoothly across the controls.
I’m finally here, in the detached heart of the prison, and it’s so fucking mundane. All the pain of Homan Sphere originates in a dull room filled with the low hum of electronics and the artificial smell of filtered air. On Homan these people are abusers, torturers, and murderers, but down here? They’re just boring fucking assholes, with a job, maybe a family, and either no conscience or a convenient series of lies they tell themselves to get through the day. I didn’t want to think that evil could be so boring, so normal, but here it is, laid out in front of me.
They think just because the prisoners are a couple of hundred kilometers away, their hands are clean. They think just because these people are criminals they can treat them like they’re less than human.
“Silence that alarm.” Rathnam. His voice amplified over the blare of the sirens, just as digitized as I remember.
Hearing him speak, my heart beats faster, and my body must go tense, because Ocho climbs out of my hood and onto my shoulder. Her eyes are wide open, with her pupils in slits sharp as her claws.
Ocho lets out a low growl. “Soon, little face,” I whisper.
I can’t see Rathnam past the mass of cables hanging from the ceiling, so I creep farther along the platform. I get him in sight just as the alarm goes quiet. It keeps wailing in the distance, filling the rest of the building, but in here the only sound is Rathnam’s yelling.
“You will remain at your posts and carry out your assigned tasks. Whatever is happening outside is none of our concern.”
Don’t be so sure, doc.
“But what about our families?” a voice asks.
Rathnam continues ranting at his staff, but I tune it out.
“Think we should kill him?” I ask Ocho.
She lets out a long mraow. I smirk, but my mouth goes flat when she leaps from my shoulder. She clears the walkway’s safety rail then extends her glide membrane.
“What are you—” I hiss, but stop before anyone hears. I move toward the stairs at the far end of the walkway, keeping an eye on Ocho as I go. She glides clean through the air, around the tangle of cables, and lands on the ring of a holo-rig. “Fuck,” I say, under my breath, watching her jump from one rig to the next, tracking the sound of Rathnam’s voice.
I sneak ahead as fast as I can without letting my footfalls clang on the metal platform. I hit the stairs right as I hear Ocho yelling and hissing. I rush down around the tight U of the stairwell to reach the ground floor.
“Whose animal is this?” Rathnam’s voice booms, still amplified. He’s on a raised platform, holding Ocho by the scruff of her neck. She keeps hissing, clawing at the air, trying to add to the bloody scratches she already put across his face. Good girl.
At first, only some of the staff raise their holo-rigs to see what’s happening, but more of them lift the bulky equipment from their heads as a murmur ripples through the clusters: “It’s her.”
“She’s mine,” I say. Rathnam sees me now, and his mouth falls open.
One of the workers gets up from her seat and moves to intercept me as I stalk the aisle toward Rathnam. I toss her aside, high enough that she hits the upper catwalk with a clang and then tumbles to the ground, setting off a chorus of cries from the room.
Rathnam drops Ocho, and she meets me at the base of his platform. As I mount the steps, she climbs up to my shoulder and stands rigid, ready to keep fighting.
“Why are you here?” he asks. “You’ve been freed.”
“Freedom’s a funny thing,” I say. “It’s hard to enjoy when the people who hurt you are still out there.”
He says something, but I can’t understand it through his blubbering. Not so fierce and commanding now, are you, doc?
“Where’s Stockton?”
“I’m here,” a voice responds, defiant. I can’t see his eyes in the shadow of his cap’s visor, but I recognize the set of his jaw, twisted off-center in contemplation or anger.
I reach out and wrap my mind around Stockton’s head; when I clench my fist his skull disappears with a sharp crack. Blood squirts into the air then falls, splashing Stockton’s coworkers. And you thought you could keep the blood off your hands.
There are a few seconds of stunned silence before the screaming starts. Some bolt for the stairs, others stay at their consoles, too shocked or scared to move.
“What are you going to do,” Rathnam says, “kill everyone here?” He says it quietly, but his mic picks it up and relays it to the whole room, amplifying chaos.
Seeing the staff panicked, screaming and crying—evil rendered impotent—I should probably feel sorry for them. But even if most of them never touched me, they’re all someone else’s abuser—someone’s Stockton, someone’s Rathnam.
“You know what? That sounds like a great idea.” I ball my hands as I bring them up beside my head, then make a guttural sound as I punch out. I carve through each row of staff, tearing apart guards and doctors, blood and body parts flung into the air. Lights flicker and equipment sparks, and the curtain of cables hangs loose from the ceiling, disconnected, swaying above the carnage.
Ocho jumps from my shoulder as I turn to face Rathnam—face pale as he surveys the display of gore. “You should have listened, doc: you should have left him out of it.”
Rathnam holds my gaze for a moment, then keels over and vomits on the floor, spattering his expensive-looking brogues with congealed yellowish muck. He collapses, his knees landing in the puddle of sick. “What was I meant to do? He was my prisoner.”
“Prisoners don’t deserve to be treated like people?”
He shakes his head, but he isn’t arguing, he’s giving up.
“I won’t let you die on your knees, doc.”
He sobs when I lift him but stays silent for the rest. I carry him over to the dangling cables and wrap one around his neck. I let him fall, and he chokes as he kicks and struggles, his death throes booming from the speakers hidden in the ceiling.
I sit down at his command console. I find the turret controls and disable the weapons, then send Squid a burst to let them know. Next I find the controls for the powershields and switch all of them off. I hit a panel and bring the ring of the holo-rig down around my head. It takes me a few goes to trigger the mass broadcast, then suddenly my full field of vision splits into hundreds of tiny windows—each one showing a different envoy’s POV.
“Listen up,” I say, watching the images of all the prisoners turn to face the envoys I’m riding. “You’re free to go. Head to the docks, there’s a ship waiting.”
I loop the message then start evacuation procedures, selecting the option to have the envoys remove collars as they shuffle prisoners toward the dock. When I get up from the console, Rathnam has stopped fighting, but his body still sways.
I make a kiss sound and Ocho rushes to me, the fur of her paws soaked in blood.
She runs up my cloak and deposits herself on my shoulder. “You are disgusting,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She just starts cleaning herself as I head for the exit.