The application of Garotte's disguise was complete, and the results were nothing short of uncanny. Most of his features had barely changed at all, but taken as a whole, he had been rendered unrecognizable. Where once had been a fairly handsome man casually approaching middle age, now there was man at least fifteen years older with a much stronger jaw, a slightly sloping brow, and the beginnings of a double chin. The transformation was completed by a dye job to his hair that shifted it from blond to brown and introduced some gray into the mix, and drops that shifted his hazel eyes to a distinctive green hue. None of it looked the least bit unnatural, and anyone who hadn't witnessed the transformation would scarcely believe that Garotte and this newcomer were one and the same.
“Dr. Kenneth Cisco,” he said, clearing his throat and lowering the voice a few registers. “Dr. Kenneth Cisco.”
Dr. Kenneth Cisco, who had not existed at the beginning of the flight, was well on his way to being a skilled but somewhat unremarkable psychoanalyst on staff at the prestigious Westmooreland Psychiatric Treatment Facility. Garotte's skill and thoroughness in the realm of identity creation was at least a match for that of Ma, and through various well-practiced and carefully arranged means, he had been able to install a lengthy and detailed personal history in all relevant databases. He had been married and divorced, graduated with a 3.3 GPA from a notable but not exclusive college, and had a clean employment record stretching sixteen years and spanning three mental hospitals.
“Dr. Kenneth Cisco,” he repeated, now a bit gruffer and with an accent a touch more American. “I'm here to reevaluate one of your inmates. Dr. Kenneth Cisco. Kenny. Call me Kenny. Yeah, that sounds about right.”
He loaded his slidepad with the appropriate documentation, then set about adding the little details that made it Kenny's slidepad. The last step was the assembly of a gadget he'd brought along from deGrasse. First, a grip of some kind was removed from the bag. It was bulky and vaguely ornamental, with a brushed metal finish, bearing a mini-placard engraved with the words “For exceptional service.” It also had an inconspicuous pair of buttons recessed on the underside, a threaded hole, and a clear lens on one end. Giving it a shake produced a quiet rattle from within. He removed a pair of threaded pipes from the bag next, each metal with black enamel layered on top, and screwed them end-to-end onto the grip. Once assembled, it was a sturdy and elegant cane. The finishing touch was a non-skid foot for the end.
By the time they arrived at Millbrook Maximum Security Penitentiary, Silo's current residence, all was in readiness. It was on a floating hunk of rock called Manticore, a place specifically chosen for its environment. Planets tagged for human settlement were those as Earth-like as possible. Planets tagged for penitentiaries, on the other hand, widened that criteria a bit. The only real requirement was the ability to build a permanent structure. Beyond that, the less like Earth it was, the better. The reasoning was simple: they wanted the prisoners to stay inside the building, and the best way to achieve that was to make sure that they wanted to stay inside the building. A planet that had a surface survivability expectancy of less than thirty seconds was an excellent way to foster this attitude.
Manticore had no surface life, and no attempt had ever been made to terraform it. The average surface temperature of its most temperate zones was just below -30° Celsius, the soil had exceptionally high arsenic levels, the gravity was close to one and a half times that of Earth, and the atmosphere was almost entirely nitrogen. Without an environment suit, any escape attempt would last just a bit longer than a lungful of air. With a suit, it would last until the power supply, oxygen supply, or food supply ran out.
The only permitted access to the planet's surface was via the space station and its associated shuttles, which were not FTL-enabled--which meant that even if a prisoner stole a ship, and managed to give security the slip, it would be several decades before they reached anything with a breathable atmosphere. As for how the facility itself got a name like Millbrook, which sounded more like a country club than a super-max prison, one can only imagine a cruel sense of humor was involved.
“Hailing Millbrook, vessel code MAC-8787 requesting permission to dock,” Garotte--or rather, Kenny--said over the radio.
“State reason for unscheduled docking,” replied the landing coordinator.
“I'm afraid you're wrong there, son. Refresh your landing orders.”
“Stand by . . . apologies, MAC-8787. Last-minute schedule update just came in. Continue to dock nine and await security team.”
“Affirmative.”
Garotte clicked off the communication and set the ship to dock automatically.
“As I imagine you're aware, this is not a pet-friendly establishment,” Garotte stated, in character, “so it is probably best we get you out of sight before the security boys sign me in.”
He unhooked himself, unstrapped Ma, and grasped her by the nape of the neck. The AI did not struggle, merely keeping Garotte in her even, measuring gaze, as though logging this injustice for future reference. An overhead compartment was opened and she was stuffed unceremoniously inside. After clicking it shut, Garotte paused, then pulled her slidepad out of his pocket and opened the compartment a crack.
“To keep yourself busy,” he said, slipping it inside.
A few moments after he clicked it shut again, a muffled digital voice could be heard.
“You now occupy the foremost position on my S-List,” she said.
“You may update my intimidation accordingly. Now, hush up. Time to get to work.”
He opened the side door of the Armistice and drifted into the dimly-lit interior of the docking bay, closing the door behind him. After a few moments, a crew of three lightly-armed security officers opened the door to the bay. They were wearing jumpsuits, armed with stun rods, and equipped with hands-free radio sets on their heads.
“Welcome to Millbrook Super-Max, Dr. Cisco,” said the ranking security officer, a man with the minor paunch and graying crew cut of a retired member of law enforcement.
“Kenny,” Garotte said, extending a hand.
“I'd like to apologize again for any misunderstandings,” he said after a firm shake. “We don't get late authorizations like that very often. Any idea what that was about?”
“We've got a pilot program going. The bureaucrats haven't got themselves sorted out yet. No dedicated manpower, no dedicated budget, so they've just been sending anybody with a spare minute. I had a consultation on Tessera canceled, so they rushed the paperwork and rerouted me here.”
“Pencil-pushers,” the man replied with a shake of his head, illustrating that a catchy phrase tends to persist despite the fact that in this case it had been centuries since the pencil had been the preferred tool for the proliferation of the further antiquated notion of red tape. “It says here you'll need to conduct some interviews?”
“Psych evaluations,” Garotte said with a nod.
“You'll need to talk to Warden Menlo, then. And we'll need to give you the standard security screening.”
“Of course,” Garotte said, handing over the cane and slidepad, then grasping the hand grips to be patted down and swept with hand scanners.
The security lead inspected the cane, unscrewing its segments and looking through the pipes. Satisfied they were harmless, he rattled the handle.
“What is inside of this?” he asked.
“Mmm? Oh, sorry 'bout that. Press that first button on the underside there,” Garotte explained.
Doing so clicked open the top half of the grip, revealing a small compartment filled with pea-sized capsules which drifted out into the weightlessness of the docking bay.
“What are these?” asked the security lead, scooping them up with a deft swipe of his hand.
“Tranquilizers. Interviewing mentally disturbed inmates tends to do a number on your nerves. Sometimes I need something to take the edge off.”
“I'm afraid we can't allow outside medications.”
“That's fine. Haven't needed 'em lately. Those are probably a couple years past the sell-by date anyway. Go ahead and ditch 'em.”
He shoved the pills into a pocket of his jumpsuit and zipped it shut.
“And what does this other button do?”
“Flashlight,” Garotte said. “Give it a try.”
A tap of the button triggered an impressively powerful, moonlight-white beam of light.
“Handy,” the security lead said, handing it back. “Mind if I ask what you need the cane for?”
“Bad hip. Rock climbing--when I was young and stupid. I tell you, brother, we spend all of this time designing vehicles to get us to hard-to-reach places, then we go off and do damn fool things like rock climbing. I swear I don't know how we as a species make it out of our twenties. Regardless, usually I don't need it, but trust me when I say that one bad day is all it takes to convince you to start carrying it around, just in case. Since you folks have a little bit more gravity than you ought to, I figure today is gonna be one of those days.”
The security guard gave a nod.
“You're clean. They may take that away from you if you'll be interviewing inmates.”
“Naturally,” Garotte said, with a nod of his own.
The four men drifted out of the docking bay and down the claustrophobic corridor outside. A few twists and turns brought them to the waiting area for a shuttle, which looked like a slightly up-sized version of the Armistice. A few more handshakes and folksy colloquialisms were exchanged, and Garotte was loaded with one of the men onto the shuttle and taken to the surface. Gravity reared its ugly head, making his fit frame feel as though it was creeping toward the three hundred-pound range by the time they landed.
“Oof. I don't know how you boys do it,” Garotte proclaimed, as he tried to straighten himself out upon landing.
“You get used to it,” his escort replied, beeping open the doors and leading him into the arrival-processing area.
“If the good lord is with me, I won't be here long enough to have to,” he said, putting the cane to use and adopting a realistically stiff and unsteady walk.
Next came the gauntlet of checkpoints. He was walked through a sequence of increasingly sterile and bland hallways, past doors fortified with bars and fancy exotic plastics. Periodically, he would be stopped and asked some variation of the same three questions: “Who are you? Why are you here? Do you know the rules?” Regardless of his answer, his credentials would be crosschecked, he would be interrogated, and he would be briefed on security policies.
Finally, he found himself at the office of the warden, a man named Christopher Menlo. Like most of the other people who Garotte had been dealing with since he'd landed, Menlo had a very distinctive look about him. The extra gravity had prompted the development of a considerable amount of flat, hard muscle, which, on his already-formidable frame, produced an individual who seemed like he should be led out on chains while a smaller man beat a kettle drum. This appearance was in stark contrast to his disposition, which was extremely academic. He was dressed in a tweed suit with elbow patches, a vest underneath. His hair was close-cropped and thinning. The walls of the office were covered with diplomas and accreditation from assorted respectable institutions. On the desk were a few more pictures and a candy bowl filled with tiny mints. After reluctantly raising his arm to shake hands, and being rewarded with a handshake that refreshingly did not attempt to crush his hand to gravel, Garotte collapsed gratefully into a chair.
“Oh my lord, I do not do high-G very well. Honestly, you would think the boys in charge would at least do something about the gravity in the administrative areas,” he said.
“Some of the other prisons have compensators, but I'm glad we don't around here. If you've got a facility of inmates that have adapted to high-gravity, best that the administration is on even terms,” Menlo remarked. “Now, I realize that if my staff has done its diligence, this will be at least the sixth time you've had to answer these questions, but I'm afraid we can't be too careful.”
“Perfectly understood, Warden. This isn't my first trip through a super-max. Do you mind if I take a handful of those?” he asked, pointing to the mints. “The ship they hooked me up with is missing a few of the usual amenities, and my teeth haven't seen a brush in . . . well, in too long.”
“Please. I can't stand the things.”
Garotte scooped up a handful, tossed a few in his mouth, and dumped the rest into his shirt pocket.
“Full name?” Menlo asked.
“Dr. Kenneth Marcus Cisco. Kenny, if you like.”
“Says here you've got a degree from MacCree University?”
“I do.”
“That's where I did my criminal justice degree. Friedland still running things when you were there?”
“I didn't have him, they were still telling stories about him.”
“Yeah. Yeah, they would. About him, they would. Now, it says here you're looking to evaluate some of our inmates? Care to expand upon that?”
“I'd have to see your security clearance, if you don't mind. They didn't get me the full personnel briefing before they gave me word I'd be coming here.”
“Of course,” Menlo said, bringing up his credentials on a wall screen.
Garotte gazed at them for a moment and nodded.
“All right. The boys in the psych wing of R&D are looking for a test group for a new medication. Mood and behavior regulation. It is targeted at individuals with a very specific quirk in their psychological makeup. You've got an inmate that fits the profile exceedingly well.”
“Jessica Winters?”
“That's the girl.”
“And if your evaluation turns up what you're looking for, you'll be taking her with you?” Menlo said with a raised eyebrow, glancing over the certificates and permits that Garotte had managed to install during the journey.
“That's correct. We'd put her into suspended animation--or at least heavy sedation--and transfer to a testing facility.”
Menlo studied the briefing for a few moments more.
“Your credentials check out, but I must say that this sort of thing usually takes months to clear.”
“I suppose the science boys back at HQ have some pull with the right people. Either that or they've been working at it for months. They don't tell me that sort of thing. I'm just the man asking the questions.”
After a few more moments of consideration, Menlo made a decision.
“Here's the rules. You'll be in interview room A. That's high-security. Half-inch of transparent ceramic between you and the inmate. All communication will be done through intercom. It will be monitored and recorded. There will be two guards on either side of the glass at all times; two more in the adjoining hallways. If my boys say something, you do it--fast. If I say anything, you do it twice as fast.”
Garotte nodded.
“You need anything before we begin?”
“Just a word or two with you if you don't mind,” Garotte said, pulling out his slidepad. “What are your feelings about Miss Winters as an inmate?”
“In all honesty, I wish I had a hundred more just like her. Quiet, follows the rules. Keeps to herself. Only request was for an e-reader and periodic access to the fiction catalogs.”
“What subjects?”
“Heh. Paranormal romance, as I recall.”
“Really?” Garotte said with a smirk.
“Pretty much exclusively.”
“Well, good to know. Whenever you're ready, we'll start with her.”
The two men stood, Garotte with some reluctance, and made their way out into the hallway.
“Get me Inmate 38E-75, Jessica Winters. Interview room A,” Menlo barked before turning back to Garotte. “Just follow this gentleman.”
Garotte limped his way deeper into the complex while Menlo returned to his office. In the hall, a guard lingered with his partner. The older of the two, a droopy-faced man with a badly scarred right hand and a piece of his right ear missing, watched with narrowed eyes. His badge read Johnson.
“That guy's going to talk to Inmate Winters. That's what he said, right?” he said.
“Yeah. What of it?” said his partner Andrews, a younger and less dedicated member of the staff.
“Just wanted to be sure. Hey, you're on coms tonight, right?”
“Yeah, I was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago,” he grumbled.
“You want to switch shifts?”
“You kidding me? You are offering to sit in that freezing little shack for the next four hours?”
“I got nothing better to do.”
“Deal, sucker,” he said with a shake.
The pair separated, Johnson working his way to the radio room on the upper level of the complex. Since conduit ran from every antenna in the array to this tiny closet of a room, it tended to be a good thirty degrees colder than the rest of the facility, and emergency oxygen masks were kept on hand due to the elevated nitrogen levels in the air, a result of the lackluster pressure seals.
“You're relieved,” Johnson said to the woman currently manning the cramped, knob- and button-laden console, but it was hardly necessary. The woman at the controls was already on her feet, eager to get out of the veritable freezer.
She pulled off her headset, dropped it on the control panel, and marched out without so much as a nod. After donning the appropriate equipment and checking levels, Johnson carefully adjusted the security sweep interval and twisted one of the transmitters to an off-frequency, tapping out a quick coded message and attaching a few frames of security cam footage before restoring the previous settings. Due to the peculiarity of the frequency, most receivers filtered the short message out, interpreting it as crosstalk or static. One radio, however, received the message loud and clear. It belonged to a ship drifting at the outskirts of the system. The ship was a NXLRR-0025c, and no sooner had it received the message than ran it through a deep encryption algorithm and relayed it. The message bounced through various communication channels, sometimes randomly, and finally arrived at its destination.
#
“Commander! We've got a transmission from one of the surveillance squads!”
Commander Purcell looked up from her current task, which was the replacement of a leaking power cell in her sidearm, to the underling at her door.
“Put it on my display,” she said, pulling her datapad from the wall.
After a few moments, the surveillance footage of the disguised Garotte came up, with the message, “This man may be attempting to relocate person of interest #2. All credentials appear legitimate.” Purcell brought up the information she had been able to dig up on the prisoners her benefactor had indicated were of concern. None of the images matched the man in those transmitted by her field agent. She ran the frames through a matching algorithm that failed to find a match with a confidence of greater than forty percent.
“Our intelligence suggests that there have been no direct inquiries regarding any of the prisoners we are currently watching for at least three months, correct?” she asked the underling.
“Yes.”
“This isn't a coincidence, then.”
She considered her options. She could contact her benefactor, but getting a valid window would take time. There was a better source of knowledge at hand.
“Wake up Karter. Now,” Purcell ordered. “He is going to answer some questions.”
By the time she made her way to Karter's cell, there were already medical personnel readying an injection. He was motionless on the floor, still sedated from the last time, tubes in his arm keeping him hydrated and nourished without the risk of waking him up. The cell was unlocked, and two medics accompanied by three armed guards administered the injection and slowly backed away, as though they were dealing with a wild animal.
After a few seconds, Karter stirred, struggling to sit up.
“Ma?” he said groggily. “Get some beans and rice going. I'm going to . . .” he began, until his eyes opened and he slowly remembered his current predicament. “Oh. This is still happening.”
“Karter. I am going to ask you some questions. You will give me swift, direct, and honest answers.”
“No.”
“That was not a request, Karter.”
“I don't care. You sedated me. I don't like that. If we're going to be doing business together, you can start by not sedating me.”
“If you don't answer my questions, I will have my men put you under again.”
“Oh, god. Are we going to go through this again!? Are you stuck in a loop or something?” he raved, rubbing his eyes. “You can't intimidate me into doing what you want me to do by threatening to do something that will prevent me from doing what you want me to do. 'Either do what I say or I'll make sure you can't do what I say!' It makes you sound like an idiot! And, by the way, I really have to take a leak.”
“Are you going to answer my questions?”
“Are you going to sedate me again?”
“If you answer my questions to my satisfaction, then I will not have you sedated again.”
“There you go. That's positive reinforcement. I respond well to that. Write that down.”
“The war criminals you used to work with,” she growled. “Would they try to mount a rescue?”
“They are all locked up, so no.”
“One of them escaped recently. It is believed that he had help.”
“Which one escaped?”
“Phillip Winchester.”
“Heh. No, he didn't.”
“It is all over the news.”
“Oh, I don't doubt that he escaped, but he isn't Phillip Winchester. That's an alias. I can't believe that he made it all the way into a prison without them figuring that out. You're talking about the British guy.”
“What is his real name?”
“Hell if I know. I just called him the British guy. His name wasn't what I was interested in.”
“What were you interested in?”
“Well, he asked if I could create a concealable weapon that could propel a watermelon seed to lethal velocities. That was pretty interesting.”
“Would he mount a rescue attempt?”
“Not on his own, but he'd probably go along with the suggestion.”
“Is this him?” she asked, holding up the datapad with the transmitted image.
Karter squinted at it.
“It doesn't look like him, which means it probably is. That was one of his stunts.”
“He may be attempting to liberate a woman by the name of Jessica Winters.”
“Don't know that name, either. It was always codenames with that crew.”
Purcell brought up the file image she had of Winters.
“Oh, yeah. That's our heavy weapons guy.”
“This is a woman.”
“You handle ordinance like she does and you officially count as a guy in my book.”
“Would he attempt to free her?”
“If he wanted to blow some stuff up, then . . . yes, he would free her. And he wouldn't attempt to, he would do it. That limey bastard had thousands of back doors installed into hundreds of agencies even before he started working with me. You give him a data connection and a half an hour and he could convince you he was your own father for at least a little while.”
“You are certain that this man will free this woman, and that they would attempt to retrieve you?”
“If the two of them are in the same place at the same time, then chances are they're already halfway through some master plan.”
Purcell considered his words. “Thank you, Karter. You have been very helpful.”
With that she turned to her medics.
“Put him back under,” she said.
“Oh. Oh, so that's how it's going to be, is it?” Karter said in irritation.
“Yes, Dee. You have continually illustrated that you cannot be trusted. It is clear that the only way to work with you is to adopt the same behavior.”
“That's all well and good, but you do realize that you can't just keep me sedated.”
“I assure you. I can.”
“We'll see . . . and one of your guys is going to have to clean up, because there is no way I'm going to be able to hold--”
The guards restrained Karter long enough for the injector to be pushed to his neck and, after a brief struggle, he was unconscious again.
“Get a message to our surveillance team and the inside operative,” Purcell ordered Marx, who was shadowing her, as always. “If that man leaves the planet alone, destroy his ship as soon as it leaves sensor range. If he even appears to be leaving with Jennifer Winters, kill them both, by any means necessary, even if it means blowing our cover. In a few days, cover won't be a problem anymore.”
“Yes, Commander.”