Prisoner of Glass (3 page)

She smelled smoke.
 

Far, far below in several cells across the inside of the hollow prison-sphere, there were small licks of fire.
 
Somebody trying to keep warm.
 
There must be other fires nearby, she reasoned, fires she could not see because of the curvature of the cell block.
 

She shivered: it only reminded her of how cold she was.
 

Nearer to her cell, she now noticed several cameras.
 
She was being watched.
 
The tiny cameras were everywhere: red lights steadily on, living electronic eyes.
 

What in the fuck
was
this?

“You’re quite a tall woman, aren’t you?” said a voice, coming from behind her.
 
She whirled.
 

A man sat on the other bed, dressed much like she was in drab olive burlap.
 
He was fortyish, and wore his ink black hair in a short, clipped cut.
 
He was smiling.
 

“Who are you?” she snapped.
 

“A prisoner, like you.”

“A … prisoner,” she swallowed the words.
 
They stuck in her mouth, saying them out load like that.

“Yes.”

Ok, Elspeth.
 
Calm down.
 
But she chewed copper panic.
 
Visions of
Locked Up Abroad
skirled through her mind.
 
But she wasn’t abroad, she reminded herself.
 
She had been at the airport, in Los Angeles.
 
In
America
.

But this place did not look like anything American.
 

“Is this Homeland Security?”

The man shrugged.
 
“Nobody knows.
 
It’s somebody’s government, that’s for sure.”

She was a prisoner, she breathed.
 
Imprisoned.
 
Locked up.
 

Why would anyone want her imprisoned?
 
She had done nothing wrong.
 
This was a mistake.
 
Someone had made a mistake …
 

Unless this had something to with her missing husband?

“Who’s in charge here?”

“They are,” the man said, nodding towards the black cylinder that hung suspended from the metal shaft that pierced stone moon like a rotational axis.
 
“The men in the Panopticon.
 
They have line of sight all around — they can see every cell from the center.
 
Like they need it with all the cameras.”
 
He snorted a laugh.

“And who are you?”

“Your cellmate.
 
My name is Titus.”
 
He held out a hand; she declined to shake it.
 
She went back to her bed and sat, facing him squarely.

“Well,
Titus
.
 
I want to know what the hell I’m doing here.”
 
She spat her words like they were laced with venom.

Titus smiled wanly.
 
“We’d all like to know that.”

Elspeth blinked.
 
He wasn’t getting it.
 
“Listen.
 
I was just at LAX.
 
There was plane crash on the runway.
 
There was a man —”
 
A strange man, in a suit, his face tattooed with hieroglyphs.
 
He’d said,
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
 
They always have been.
 
“I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen.
 
Then TSA took me away for questioning.
 
The next thing I know, I’m here.
 
I guess they think I was involved or something.”

Titus shook his head.
 
“No.
 
I don’t think so.
 
There are prisoners from all over the world here.”

“So what, it’s like Gitmo?”
 
Had she be rendered to a foreign location?
 
She’d read about things like that happening since 9/11.
 
“Is this the CIA?
 
The NSA?
 
Are they trying to say I’m an ‘enemy combatant’?”
 
Enemy combatants didn’t have Constitutional rights.

Titus laughed aloud at that.
 
“No.
 
It’s not the CIA.
 
At least, I don’t think so.”

“What do they —”
 
She stopped short, seeing her right hand for the first time.

Her pinky — the one that she’d lost in the accident — was there.
 
Or at least, something like it.
 

It looked like it was
growing back
.
 
It was about two-thirds done.
 

She gaped at her own hand.
 
She wiggled her new finger.
 
“That’s impossible.”
 
Severed fingers did not grow back!
 
She was a physician.
 
She knew.
 
Medical science had no way to regrow lost fingers or toes!
 
She touched it with her other hand, horrified that she could feel the contact with her new pinky.

“I’m hallucinating,” she said.
 

“I think they injected your hand with something,” Titus said.
 
“You were unconscious when they brought you in.”

“When was that?” she asked in a daze.

“Yesterday.
 
You’ve been out for almost twenty-four hours.”

“So this … this
grew in a day
?”

Titus nodded.
 

“Okay,” Elspeth said.
 
“Forget that.
 
I’m just going to ignore my impossible pinky for a moment.
 
Where is this place?
 
I mean, where is it located physically?”
 
She couldn’t bring herself to call it a ‘prison’.

Titus shook his head.
 
“Nobody knows.”

“So we don’t even know if we’re on United States soil right now?”

“No.”

“How long have
you
been here?”

“About two years,” Titus said.
 

“Are you American?”

“No.
 
I’m from Rome.”

“Italian,” Elspeth said.
 
She looked through the bars at the Panopticon.
 
“I need to think this through.
 
None of this makes sense.”
 
After a moment, she asked, “What were you doing when they brought you here?”

“I was asleep.
 
I went to bed, and I woke up here.”

“And do you ever see anyone who runs this place?
 
You know, like guards?”

“Oh, yes.
 
You’ll meet them soon enough, when they come out for the morning count.”

“And have you
asked them
why you are here?”

“Oh, yes.
 
Of course I have.
 
We
all
have.
 
It’s pointless though.
 
They never tell.
 
They say they’re under orders, but they won’t say whose orders or why.”

“Well.
 
They haven’t met
me
yet,” Elspeth said, her eyes crinkling.
 

THE LIGHTS in the interior of the globe-shaped prison came on with bang.
 
Instantly, a gaudy, sharp sizzle of illumination cast a contrast of deep shadows and starkly-lit objects and people.
 
The noise sent a flurry of parrots and parakeets flapping and chittering, screeching and howling, throughout the interior space of the great hollow bulb.

Elspeth was startled awake, and then startled again when she realized she’d actually been asleep.

Another bang, and the cell doors all sprang open in unison.
 

Out of the Panopticon came a flood of shouting men, barely managing to hold their own against the din of tropical birds.
 
Bridges extended from the center to the various levels of the prison, and these men now swarmed across, clubs drawn, seemingly eager for blood.
 
Elspeth noted that all of the prisoners were now stepping out their cells and standing there meekly.
   

She turned to ask Titus if she should step out as well, but he was nowhere to be found.
 

What the hell?

She marched out of her cell.
 
But she did not stand obediently and patiently.
 
Instead, she kept moving towards the horde of men heading her way.
 

She saw now that they were all covered in some sort of black body armor — it looked like riot gear or some sort of futuristic exoskeleton.
 
Even their faces were hidden and enclosed completely.

“Hey you!
 
I want to talk to you!” Elspeth yelled, taking some pleasure in the fact that she was considerably taller than the men and women she passed: all of whom stared at her like she was mad.
 
“My name is Elspeth Lune!
 
I demand to talk with Amnesty International and a lawyer right now!
 
You’re going to —”

She stopped short.
 
The TSA agent Danny Trenton, the same one from LAX, stood before her.
 
But he was not in uniform: instead, he wore the same drab clothes she did.
 
He was in the lineup for the count, just like every other prisoner here.
 
He stared up at her with sleepless eyes, his mind clearly soaked in terror.

She grabbed him and howled in his face.
 
“You!
 
What did you do?
 
Why I am here?”

But he only shook his head.
 
“I — I — I don’t know!
 
I was talking to you and — and then next thing I know, I was here!
 
I thought
you
did this to
me
!”

She drove her gaze into him.
 
But it was clear that Trenton was just as terrified as she was: he was not responsible for her incarceration.
 

She threw him away in disgust.
 
Elspeth was about to lay into him with an obscenity-laced tirade when she spotted a young girl of about ten standing calmly in front of a cell just two doors down.
 
The girl was Indian and wore her burlap garment as though it were a sari.
 
Her steel eyes bore into Elspeth’s soul.

Even children?
 
Kids were prisoners here as well?

When Elspeth turned towards the guards again, she caught a billy club squarely in the jaw.
 
Her skull thrummed in its flesh casing.
 
The prisoners roared with delight or horror, it was hard to tell which.
 
Despite the unbearable pain, she turned again.
 
She looked down at the guard that had hit her — and spat at him.
 
He wound up to hit her again, but she grabbed his wrist, stopping him.
 

Instantly, the other guards were on her like a pack of wolves.
 
Blows hit every part of her body, driving her to her knees.
 

I’m going to have very, very bad injuries
, she thought, oddly detached.
 
There would be broken bones at the very least.
 
Possibly internal bleeding.
 

A blow to her head knocked her out cold.

SHE AWOKE in a chair.
 
She had been restrained: metal clasps gripped her wrists and ankles.
 
She was in a small room — there was some smell she vaguely recognized as medical, though it seemed somehow odd, out of place.
 
Her head was clamped, keeping her from turning it even a molecule.
 
It pointed her gaze squarely a circular movie screen in front of her.
 
Presently, this screen was light silver — and empty.

However, she did not feel too badly.
 
This surprised her: a beating like the one she had taken ought to have left her wracked, bones broken, organs bleeding.
 

But oddly, she felt none of these things.
 

She found she could move her eyes enough to see objects in the room peripherally.
 
There was a black top hat, like a magician’s, resting on a table.
 
A magnifying glass and a compass sat atop a large stack of brown paper.
 
Out the other side of her vision, she saw a very large globe cupped by a dull brassy a stand on the floor, colored beige with cursive black writing, like the very old globes she’d seen in museums.
 
There were smudgy stains on it, and a small region with fierce, intense, tiny writing in bright red.
 
This mad scrawling was punctuated by a small tornado of red question marks.

All of these objects seemed from another age.
 
There was nothing digital or modern at all.

That smell!
 
She suddenly recognized it — it was ether: a medical implement from a long ago, more bloody and brutal age of medicine …
 

“Welcome back,” said a man’s voice nearby.
 
It was somewhere behind her, but near, intimate.
 
“You’re in the Panopticon.
 
That’s the thing at the center of … Sorry about the chair.
 
But we needed to talk to you.
 
You know … without you … losing control.”

“Who are you?”

“Our name is of no use to those who know us.”

“Fair enough.
 
What about those who
don’t
know you?”

“
Who
we are, is not as important as
what
we are.”