Unstable Prototypes (27 page)

"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.

"Alright. 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 eReader 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 shack 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
40%.

"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. He is going to answer
some questions," Purcell ordered.

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, his 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 limy 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."

Garotte was seated in a room somewhat
reminiscent of the standard interrogation room made famous by so
many police dramas. There was cheap LED lighting arranged into
faux-florescent ceiling fixtures, because at some point it had been
decided that the long, dangling bars of light were ideal for
government buildings. The room was divided into two matching halves
by a wall. The upper half of the wall was thick, high-durability
glass. The bottom was the same sturdy metallic sheeting that made
up the rest of the prison's structure. A counter top ran the length
of the wall just below the glass, and in the center of the window
was a small speaker grill, giving the overall effect that he was
visiting some sort of deluxe teller window at a very luxurious
bank. A pair of men were in the room with him, dressed like police
officers in riot gear, complete with high impact vest and face
shield. He pulled the single metal chair up to the counter, took a
seat, and turned to one of the guards.

"Do you need to take this?" he asked, holding
out the cane.

"Shouldn't be necessary. The glass will be
sufficient to prevent the inmate from attempting to utilize it," he
replied.

"Good to hear it," Garotte said with a
nod.

The door on the other side of the glass was
opened, and in was led the prisoner, hefty looking restraints
holding her wrists behind her back. Jessica Winters was far from
the first person one would picture when envisioning an inmate of a
super-max facility. She was a short-ish woman drifting into her
mid-thirties. Her face was round and dimpled, with a button nose
and thin arching eyebrows over her green eyes. The rest of her body
was a match, with round, soft curves despite a lengthy stay on the
high gravity world. There were a few more pounds on her than the
media indicated was appropriate for models and actresses, but she
wore them well and enjoyed a natural fullness to her form that was
no less attractive. She was dressed in a dark blue prison-issue
jumpsuit that wasn't quite designed with someone as generously
proportioned as her in mind, leaving the fabric around the chest
and hips straining just a bit to contain her figure. Her blonde
hair was cut short, but there was still enough of it to see that it
was naturally curly. All things considered, it was difficult to
picture her breaking military law. Baking cookies after soccer
games and inspiring the wrong sorts of thoughts in the neighborhood
boys, maybe, but not the sort of things that gets one placed in
super-max.