Prisoner of Glass (12 page)

“Yes,” David said.
 
“I think all of our cells were originally apartments.
 
I think whole families lived there.
 
This whole place is an underground Mayan ruin.”

Elspeth whistled in amazement.
 
But she had to admit it made a kind of sense — the Prison was clearly not a modern facility.
 
It was not built from steel and glass, in the modern day and age.
 
It was stone.
 
Steel and other frameworks had simply been constructed atop what was already here.

“But who would want to live underground?
 
That’s just depressing.”

David shrugged and lowered his torch.
 
“Depressing to us, maybe.
 
But the Mayans might have found it comforting, to be out of the view of the sky.
 
The Mayans were scared of the heavens.
 
They thought the world was on the edge of extinction, that the gods that lived in the black hole at the center of the galaxy were going to wipe them out.
 
That is, unless the gods were appeased with massive numbers of human sacrifices.
 
You’ve heard the stories, I’m sure, of how the Spanish came and found the Mayans and their blood-soaked pyramids.
 
You know, where priests would tear the living, beating hearts out their human victims.”

“That’s cheery.”

“Yeah.
 
Well.
 
Anyway, they may have built this place to escape the end of the world.”

“Sort like a Noah’s Ark.”

“Yeah.
 
Something like that.
 
Anyway, look at the walls.”
 
David held the torch up.
 
“Definitely Mayan stonework and writing.”
 

“What’s this?”
 
Elspeth pointed to a large round wheel carved into the stone.

“Ah.
 
A Mayan calendar.”

“Calendar?
 
Don’t you mean a clock?”
 
It was round.

“No I mean a
calendar
.
 
The Mayans thought time was cyclical.
 
See, you and I think of time as always going forward — the past becomes the present, which becomes the future.
 
We’re always headed towards something new.
 
But the Mayans thought everything always came back to where it started — especially time.
 
It was a big circle.
 
That’s why their calendar is a circle.
 
The Mayans were crazy about time — measuring it in the most precise ways possible.
 
Did you know Mayan calendars have been found that are actually more accurate than anything that we even have today?”

Elspeth shook her head.
 
“Well, that’s all very interesting.
 
But what’s more interesting is whether this Mayan tunnel has an exit sign anywhere?”

David shook his head.
 
“Unfortunately, no.
 
We’ve been all the way around the circumference several times — there isn’t any door out.
 
And yes, we’ve checked for secret doors, everything.
 
This tunnel was just meant as a way to get around in the Mayan city.
 
We’re still stuck with the fact that the only way out is the North Pole.”
 

He didn’t need to remind her that the only way to the North Pole was through the Panopticon.
 

“I take it the guards are oblivious to this Mayan tunnel?”

David nodded.
 
“Seems so.
 
They never come down here.
 
Maybe they figure this place is so far underground that it’s solid rock in every direction.
 
Or maybe they know about it and figure it doesn’t matter — we can’t get out anyway.
 
They’re content to let us amuse ourselves.
 
But that’s not why I brought you here.”

No?
 
That caught her off guard.
 
David’s revelation that the Prison had once been an underground Mayan city had been pretty impressive for one night.
 
Abruptly, they came to a juncture where a rough-hewn tunnel had been burrowed through the rock, undoubtedly by prisoners.
 
They left the Mayan tunnel and after several turns, entered a small room.
 

David shone his torch on a table against the back wall.
 
“Here.
 
This is what I came to show you.”
 
The firelight licked the cold rock wall, illuminating a body.

But it wasn’t a body, Elspeth saw as she got closer to it.
 
Rather, it was a black armored suit, just like the ones the guards wore.
 
“Where did you get this?
 
Did you —?”

“No,” David said with a small laugh.
 
“Not that I wouldn’t.
 
But no, we didn’t kill anyone.
 
One of the guards had an injury that needed immediate attention, it couldn’t wait for him to get back to the Panopticon.
 
So they took him to the prisoner infirmary.
 
They took his suit off to treat him — and in all the confusion, we were able to steal it.

“Look.
 
Ah.
 
You’ve probably noticed that guy who wore this thing was rather tall — taller than any of us.
 
So.
 
If you were to … you know …”

“Wear the suit,” she finished warily.
 
“You want me to put this on and go inside the Panopticon.”

“Only for a short time,” David said.
 
“In and out.”

“David, how would I even do that?
 
They’d know is was —”

“Nobody’s ever been inside the Panopticon!
 
Well, not where the guards go, not deep inside, anyway!” David said.
 
“Look.
 
We’ve had the idea for a long time now, but we’ve never had someone tall enough to pull it off.
 
You’re the first.
 
You’d have to —”

Intuition snapped across her synapses.
 
“So this is why you were all so quick to accept me into your little Black Dove Order.
 
And that’s why you gave me that dinner the other night.
 
Goddamn you, David!”

His face fell.
 
“Look.
 
You have every right to be angry with me.
 
I know you do.
 
You’re right.
 
But —”

“No!” Elspeth exploded.
 
“You didn’t ‘bet’ on me!
 
You’re using me — for — for my height!
 
You didn’t choose me because I passed some test or seemed trustworthy!
 
In fact, it had nothing at all to do with who I am as a person.
 
It’s not even because I was a doctor.
 
At least that would have been better because then you would have respected something I’d done, something I’d accomplished.
 
No.
 
It was none of that.
 
It was because I’m tall
.
 
Am I right?”

David nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
Are you happy?
 
Yes it was.
 
Because we’re practical.
 
All of us.
 
We want to get out of here.
 
And the only way out is through the Panopticon.
 
And the only way into the Panopticon is with this suit, with someone tall enough to wear it.
 
That’s you.
 
You’re it.
 
You’re not our number one draft pick, you’re our
only
draft pick.
 
There’s never been a prisoner tall enough.
 
And there might not be again for years — or ever.
 
So it’s you.
 
Now.
 
Or nobody ever.

“We’re serious about escaping.
 
We’re hardcore.
 
So I’m going to ask you the same question your friend the Vizier asked you: are YOU serious?
 
Because this is what it will take.
 
And you’re the only one who can do it.”
 
He fell silent, seemingly out of words.

She stood there, stunned.
 
So that was it.
 
She was a surgical tool, nothing more.
 
Readjusting her understanding of their relationship, she understood that.
 
She was the
right
surgical tool, no, more than that, the only surgical tool possible.
 
David wasn’t her friend; he was an ally.
 
That was it.
 
She had been mistaken in feeling like he was a friend, but that had been
her
mistake.
 

This was a
prison
, not a summer camp.
 
You did what you had to do to survive.
 
So he had made a practical decision.
 

Are you serious?

She was.
 
Slowly, she nodded.
 
“Okay.
 
I’ll do it.”

Goddamn you, David.
 
If we ever get out of here, I’m going to rip your eyeballs out and play marbles with them.

EIGHT: INTO THE PANOPTICON

THE PLAN was simple.

After morning count, she’d return to her cell, put on the suit, and follow the other guards back into the Panopticon.
 
The Order of the Black Dove called it
Operation Flying Monkey
, as this had been how the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion had gotten into the Wicked Witch’s castle.
 

“You people have goofy names for everything,” Elspeth said to David with an eye-roll.

But it had worked.
 
She had the suit on in under five minutes.
 
She stepped out of her cell door — and James Card stood bolt upright at attention as she walked past, startled by the sudden presence of a guard on their floor he had not noticed before.

Satisfied that even Card himself did not recognize her, she grinned beneath her helmet.
 
Then, she stepped into line with the other guards and crossed the bridge.
 
The Panopticon opened to her, and she stepped inside, eager to discover its secrets …

The first room she entered was very different from the one she had been in during her first visit.
 
Instead of antique accoutrements, everything was polished black and chrome.
 
Several large cylindrical tanks lined the walls, mist spilling off the labyrinth of pipes that forked in and out of them.
 
Writing on their sides read:
 

BIOHAZARD: Medical Nanobot Units #34A-44D

Nanobots?
 
Her mind raced.
 
Is that what this whole prison was for?
 

Nanobot experimentation on live human subjects?
 
She’d read about such things in medical journals.
 
Nanobots were theoretical, tiny molecular machines — robots at the atomic level.
 
Doctors had written papers about using them to repair the body on a cellular level, even going so far as to construct entirely new organs from scratch.
 
Or limbs.

Or fingers.

Fingers!
 
She wiggled her regrown pinky involuntarily.

Yes, working nanobots would explain the miraculous reappearance of her severed digit.
 
Weaving carbon and oxygen, a small army of nanobots could stitch together a new finger literally our of thin air …

While she pondered this, Elspeth kept a close eye on her companion guards.
 
None of them seemed to be taking off their helmets.
 
The suits must offer some kind of protection against the nanobots, she reasoned.
 
True, the tiny engines could be beneficial, but that same power cut two ways: nanobots could also be extremely dangerous.
 
Why, entirely new classes of nanobot-based diseases could be dreamt up.
 
They could rip apart a body at the cellular level, like a form of super leprosy …

Ice flushed in her veins.

The Vizier.

Oh boy.
 
Of course.
 
That fit so perfectly.
 
Was that what happened to him?
 
Had a nanobot swarm sheared him apart by his molecules?
 
A ghastly cloud, infecting him like a virus … Yes, it would
look
like leprosy, producing lesions and rough white patches on the flesh, like scar tissue.
 
It would consume him, cover him.

Dear
God
.
 

Here it is, boys and girls!
 
Leprosy of the future!
 
New wave leprosy, brought to you by the magic of nanotechnology.

Elspeth tried to fight down the gibbering of her mind: was this the US government?
 
Or China?
 
Or …. Who else?
 

Enemy Combatants were the new lab rats.
 

Nanotech
.
 
Rich horrors filled her mind: flowers with teeth, or even teeth growing out of eyes; petals and leaves twisting in terror skyward, skittering out of the soil in which they were born.
 
Contrast this with luscious immortality: smooth baby flesh, forever.
 
Both were made possible by the same thing, by machines the size of atoms.
 
And why not?
 
Biology itself was basically nature’s own nanotech.