Nemesis Games

He kicked the door. It was like punching a bulkhead with a bare fist. He moved over and tried the shattered window. It was only a little bit better. He tried three more times before a voice shouting from outside interrupted him. “Stop that immediately! We’re in lockdown!”

“Someone doesn’t know this isn’t a prison anymore,” Clarissa said. She sounded a little drunk. Might be a concussion to go with her broken hand.

“In here!” Amos shouted. “Hey! We’re stuck in here!”

“We are in lockdown, sir. You have to stay where you are until —”

“The wall’s cracked,” Amos shouted back. “It’s gonna collapse.” It might even have been true.

There was a long moment of quiet, and then a click from the doorway. The door scraped open a couple centimeters and jammed. The escort looked in. Dim emergency lighting from down the hall turned her into a grayscale outline. Even so, he could see the fear in her expression. There were other people behind her, but he couldn’t make them out.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but this facility is —”

Amos put his shoulder against the door, not pushing out, but not letting her close it again either.

“In lockdown. I got that,” he said. “Here’s the thing, though. We need to evacuate.”

“You can’t, sir, this is —”

“Not just us,” Amos said. “You too. You need to get out of here too. Unless you’re really looking to die at work, which I would find disappointing.”

The escort licked her lips. Her gaze cut to the right. He tried to think what would convince her the rest of the way, but the best he came up with was punching her in the jaw and hoping he could push his way out before anyone shot him. He was cocking back his arm when Clarissa put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve got people on the top, don’t you?” she said. “Friends? Family?”

The escort’s gaze lost focus, seeing something else. Someone else. Probably someone dead but not cool yet. “I can’t… I can’t think about that right now.”

“Penal regulations say that you have the responsibility to maintain the safety and health of prisoners in your custody,” Clarissa said. “You won’t get in trouble for leading an evacuation. You’ll be a hero.”

The escort was breathing heavily, like she was doing some kind of hard physical labor. Amos had seen people do that kind of thing when they were upset about something, but he didn’t really understand it. Clarissa moved him gently aside and leaned in toward the escort.

“You can’t be part of a relief effort up there if you’re buried alive down here,” the girl said, softly. Like she was apologizing for something. “There might be aftershocks. The walls might collapse. There’s no dishonor in evacuating.”

The escort swallowed.

Clarissa leaned in, almost whispering. “There’s a civilian in here.”

The escort said something under her breath that Amos didn’t quite catch, then turned to talk over her shoulder. “Help me get this goddamned door open, Sullivan. The structure’s compromised, and we’ve got a fucking civilian in here that we need to get to safety. Morris, if that bastard tries anything, take him down hard. You understand, asshole? One wrong move, and we’ll end you.”

Someone in the corridor laughed, and it sounded like a threat. Amos and Clarissa backed up. Two new hands took hold of the door and started hauling it back open.

“Keep the civilian safe? That’s what got to her?” Amos asked.

Clarissa shrugged. “It was the excuse she needed. Though you are a precious flower.”

“Well, sure. Just not used to anybody appreciating it.”

The door opened with a shriek, swinging into the corridor only halfway before it stuck fast. Probably permanently. In the hallway, the damage was clearer. A crack ran down the center, three or four centimeters lower on one side than the other. The air was thicker than it had been coming in; Amos felt the reflexive urge to check the air recyclers. Maybe that wasn’t even wrong. Being thirty-odd meters underground was a lot like being in vacuum. If things were busted enough, atmosphere was going to be a problem.

The other prisoner – Konecheck – knelt on the ground, a second guard – Morris – standing three paces behind him with a weapon pointed at the man’s back. If it was a gun, it wasn’t a design Amos recognized. The prisoner’s face was swollen all down the left side like he’d lost a boxing match with a very slow ref. The escort, two other guards, Peaches, and this fella.

Konecheck looked up from behind strands of long iron-gray hair and gave a one-millimeter nod. Amos felt a wave of something a lot like comfort pass through him – a looseness across his shoulders, a warmth in his gut. This was going to get ugly before it was over, but it was a scale of violence he understood.

“New plan,” the escort said. “We’re evacuating these prisoners and the civilian to the surface.”