“What happens when the power comes back on?” he asked.
Seffert walked along the row of cells, checking the doors. “Can’t rely on any of these systems working—oh, shit.”
Reeve turned at the sound of sliding metal. Seffert was at the end of the row now, backing away from something. “Whoa,” he said. “Okay.”
It took Reeve a couple of seconds to realize that the doors had opened, and by then it was too late. Ruskin burst out of the cell and thudded into Seffert, shoving him backward. He staggered and fell. Reeve thought Ruskin had just hit him, but then he saw the blood and the short length of rusty pipe jutting out of the base of Seffert’s throat. Everyone froze for a fraction of a second. Marcus and Merino broke first and ran for the two men, almost like they’d drilled for this.
“Somebody get a warder.” Marcus dropped his chunk of wood and knelt beside Seffert, trying to stop the blood. Merino shoved Ruskin back into the cell. “I said get a fucking warder. Check the other goddamn cells, too, in case they’re all going to go apeshit.”
The floor was now sheer chaos. Reeve made sure he had his blade in his hand as he ran to check the other cells with Leuchars and Edouain, but the guys in those were being sensible and just staying well back from the bars. They could hear what was going on: there were a couple of screams from Ruskin’s cell that stopped almost immediately, then grunting as if Merino was punching the shit out of him. Marcus was still bent over Seffert.
Shit, that was a mess. Seffert was making a gargling noise, eyes staring and looking down as if he was trying to focus on what was sticking out of him. There was nowhere near as much blood as Reeve expected, but there was a damn big chunk of pipe rammed right into his throat and it didn’t look like Marcus had a hope in hell of doing anything about it.
“Reeve, come on. Press here.” Marcus indicated a point on Seffert’s throat. Seffert was an asshole, a kidnapper, but somehow Marcus was treating him like a wounded Gear. “Hey, Reeve, buck up! Press it, or there’s going to be blood every-fucking-where.”
Reeve obeyed. It was pointless, though. “And what are you going to do if you take it out?”
Marcus peered into the wound and eased the pipe a fraction. Blood welled up. Seffert thrashed around weakly. “Ah, shit.” He knelt back on his heels, looked up at the gallery, and yelled loud enough to make Reeve flinch. “Warder? Officer Jarvi! We need a medic.”
Merino came out of Ruskin’s cell with the kitchen knife held down at his side. “Yeah, good luck with that. The phones are out and even if they had a radio, we’re on our own.”
Seffert was starting to have a fit or something. He shuddered uncontrollably, made a few wheezing, sucking sounds, and then stopped. Reeve was left with his fingers jammed into the neck of a guy who was just staring up at the ceiling. He knew what dead looked like. Marcus looked defeated. Whatever was going on in his head had little to do with the reality in front of him. His hands were covered in blood.
“That solves one problem,” Reeve said. “He’s gone.”
“Okay, we better start stacking the stiffs outside.” Merino seemed to take it in his stride. “Hey, you.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of Vance, who was standing guard outside Beresford’s cell as if a rapist was going to give him any trouble. “Get that damn cell cleared. The body and the shit. It’s bad enough in here as it is.”
“What about the nutters?”
“I’ll deal with them.” Merino inspected his knife with mild disgust. It was covered in blood. “The screws aren’t going to do a damn thing for us.”
Marcus must have been more distracted by his efforts to save Seffert than Reeve thought. He looked at Merino as if he’d just noticed him. “You knifed Ruskin.”
“Yeah, that’s the idea.” Merino didn’t back down when Marcus got that look in his eye, and Reeve had to admire that. “You got a problem with summary justice, Mr. War Hero? Maybe you should ask Seffert.”
Marcus looked down at the body, then did that slight roll of the head as if he was shaking it very slowly, unable to believe the state the world had come to.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “So what are you going to do about the rest of them?”
Merino looked past Marcus at something behind him. That was when Reeve realized things weren’t going quite as he’d expected, and Marcus turned a little too late.
“And what the hell do you—”
Leuchars, Vance, Van Lees, and a guy called Warrick—one of Merino’s casuals, but still a big, thick-set lad—jumped him. Marcus was fast, a big, aggressive target to take down, but he’d just dropped his guard for a second too long and that gave them the edge they needed. They grabbed him, one on each arm, one with a headlock, just as he was shifting his weight. Merino dived in too. Marcus hit the flagstones with a thud. Vance got a hefty kick in the balls trying to pin his legs, and it took all five of them to hold him face-down, but he wasn’t superhuman, and he wasn’t armed or prepared. He had a pretty foul mouth on him for landed gentry. Vance eventually got his wrists tied behind his back. It was just a takedown, no kicking or settling scores. Reeve didn’t have to decide whether to defend Marcus and get his own teeth kicked in.
Merino dusted himself off and squatted to look at Marcus. “Fenix, we’re not going to give you a smacking,” he said. “You’re an okay guy, even if you’re as mad as a fucking hatter. Just sit this out and don’t be such a frigging boy scout.”
“Sit what out, asshole?”
“Pest control,” Merino said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and nodded at Leuchars. “Go on, stick him in his pit. This isn’t going to take long. Then he can write a long and well-educated complaint to his buddy the Chairman.”
“You better think what you’re going to do when you frigging untie me,” Marcus snarled.
“It’s not your problem, soldier boy. Just look the other way for once.” Merino looked at Reeve. “Go on. You too. You’ll think it’s sloppy and amateur.”
“Are you doing what I think?” Reeve asked.
“How long’s this power going to be out?” Merino asked. “And how long do you want to wait for one of the loonies to come and get you? No nasty stuff, mind. Just putting ’em down, fast as we can. Only chance we’re going to get.”
Merino walked over to the secure cells, each of which now had a bunch of regular inmates like a picket line at the door. Leuchars, Vance, and Warrick managed to shove Marcus onto his bunk and slide the door shut with a belt around the locking mechanism before he rolled off onto the floor to get to his feet.
“It’s for your own good,” Reeve said. “Merino must respect you, buddy, or else he’d have cut your throat.”
Marcus stared at the lynch mob gathering around the psycho cells. He just didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that there were things a guy had to walk away from, things that just weren’t his problem.
“You’re not even frigging animals,” Marcus said, more to himself than anything. “Animals don’t do that.”
“Don’t start wanking on about human decency, for fuck’s sake.”
“So what have I been fighting for? What have my buddies died for?”
“Not to save some asshole who’d kill ’em as soon as look at ’em,” Reeve said. “That I know.”
Reeve stood in his way so he couldn’t see, but of course the whole damn building could hear. Leuchars slid back the first door and the guy inside—Tasman, serial rapist, serial strangler—was begging for his life. He was lucky he still had one, anyway. He’d have been shot these days. Right now, he probably wished he had been.
“You can’t do this,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt anybody.”
“That’s what they all say.” Merino hefted his knife. “Now, who’s first?”
THE SLAB: STAFF OFFICES, TWENTY MINUTES INTO POWER OUTAGE.
The phone was still dead, absolutely dead, the generator was out of fuel, and the radio hadn’t worked in years. It hadn’t needed to. Niko was stuck in a dead building, with two choices: to s
it it out until the power came back on, or to take the Slab’s elderly Packhorse and drive to the nearest location with power and phones.
He had no way of knowing where that might be until he started driving, of course.
And then the screaming and yelling started.
The acoustics of the Slab were weird at the best of times. Sound traveled along conduits and through gratings, sometimes making things in the next wing sound closer than those in the next room. But the dogs were barking again, and Parmenter burst into the office with Jerry.
“They’ve gone nuts down there, and I can’t let the dogs out. The gate system’s dead.”
Niko wondered whether to drain the Pack’s fuel tank and use it to run the gennie for a couple of hours while he got the situation under control. But it was a gamble. If this outage dragged on, he didn’t want to be stuck here without transport, and he damn well wasn’t going to drain his own bike. It was hard enough to get gas even with a government priority pass. He abandoned the phone and braced himself to appeal for a bit of common sense among a bunch of people who had absolutely nothing to lose and who knew he wouldn’t go down on the floor in person.
“If they wreck the place, it’s their problem, and anyway, what’s left to wreck?”
“The cell locks failed, and Ruskin attacked Seffert,” Parmenter said. “They’re killing the psych ward guys.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. How the hell can I put the lid on that?
Should I even try?
“You find a way to sort out the dog runs,” Niko said. “Go get Campbell and Ospen. There’s got to be a way to override that manually.”
Niko flipped to autopilot and took the rifle and a box of thirty rounds from the cupboard he called an armory. That meant he had two reloads left. The weapon was based on the old army-issue Lancer, a lighter and more basic version for police use, and as soon as he started jogging down the passage he knew that all he could do was target whoever was in range on the floor. He couldn’t put a man down with every shot, so he was going to run out of ammo long before he ran out of inmates.
Then what do I do if things get worse?
The Slab was less than half an hour into a power cut and the place had already boiled over into anarchy. The floor of the main wing looked like a bare-knuckle fight, with most of the inmates in a broad arc waiting and watching with their hands deep in their pockets, jackets buttoned to the neck against the cold. Niko leaned over the gantry to look for Merino, and then for Marcus Fenix, but there was no sign of Marcus and he could only hear Merino. He was barking orders: “Come on, come on, come on.” Then he emerged from a cell, and Niko realized he wasn’t giving orders but dragging Carew, the guy who’d machine-gunned the Tollen branch of QuikiMeal because the voices told him it was the only way. Merino had a knife. Just about every inmate did, but it was one of those things Niko had had to turn a blind eye to because he couldn’t run this place any other way.
He wasn’t a good shot. He hadn’t used a rifle for years. He remembered his drill, slid the safety catch off, and aimed. Carew was whimpering.
“Don’t, please, please …” Carew was trying to make eye contact with Merino. He didn’t seem to realize that it wouldn’t change a damn thing. “I won’t hurt anyone. I won’t. I swear.”
Niko couldn’t get a clear shot at all. He stared down the sights. “Come on, Merino, pack it in,” he called. “Let him go.”
There was a drain grating in the floor, one of the sluices that let water drain away when the floors were cleaned, not that the place was scrubbed out often. Merino shoved Carew down on his knees over it and wrangled him into position like a sheep-shearer. “Yeah? I told you not to dump these assholes on us.” He pulled Carew’s head back by the hair, ignoring the rifle completely. He must have seen it. The place was gloomy, not pitch black. “If you can’t do your goddamn job, then I’ll do it for you.”
It happened so fast that Niko couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d been a better shot. He didn’t squeeze the trigger anyway. Merino just drew the blade across Carew’s throat in a quick, short motion and let him slump over the drain. Carew would bleed out by the time Niko got down there, if he could get down there at all with the automatic locks jammed. All he could do was watch helplessly. It was suddenly very quiet, no jeering and no threats, just a kind of resignation that had spread across all the inmates until things seemed almost normal again.
But there was a guy on the floor bleeding out like a pig in a slaughterhouse. No, that wasn’t normal, not even for the Slab.
Merino looked up at Niko, shaking blood off the blade. “What did you expect me to do, stab ’em? Way too slow. You put down a dangerous dog, you do it as humanely as you can.”
“I should fucking well shoot you, Merino.”
“Yeah, go ahead. But you don’t know when the power’s coming back on, and what we’ll be able to do between now and then, do you?” He squatted to check on Carew. “Okay, we’re done. Let’s get the body moved and then we clean this place up, okay?” He turned his back on Niko and faced the inmates. “Go on. Move. Hey, Reeve? Has Fenix calmed down yet? Let him out when he has.”
Well, at least that answered one question. Marcus was in one piece and the Chairman’s office would be placated. Niko couldn’t imagine Marcus standing by and letting Merino get on with it. Niko wasn’t sure how he felt about it himself. Merino had certainly solved a few problems for him, and what was he going to do about it anyway? He could either shoot Merino, if he could get in a position to do it, or he could revoke parole or privileges, but as neither existed in the Slab the only option was to be grateful that Merino had a handle on the situation and to just fill in a report in due course.
God Almighty. Listen to me. I watch a guy get slaughtered—I mean literally slaughtered, abattoir style—and I’m going to fill out a form and hope the problem’s gone away.
“Whoa, steady! It’s not my goddamn fault, okay?” That was Reeve’s voice. Merino saw him back out onto the floor from the direction of Marcus’s cell, hands held out in a don’t-hit-me kind of way. “Look after number one. We’re none of us any use to anyone if we try to save the whole damn world. They were just sick fucks, okay? Kindest thing.”
Marcus stalked out, rubbing his wrists, shoulders set for a fight. “You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t get it. You think we’re any better?” Then he looked up. “Officer Jarvi? What the fuck do they pay you for?”
Nearly three years in the Slab hadn’t changed Marcus. He might have buried most of himself, but the core erupted occasionally like a volcano, the red-hot bit that was all duty and doing the right thing even though it was obvious to anyone that there wasn’t anything right left to do except stay alive. Maybe he’d understand that one day. Niko felt a little dirty at being bawled out over morality. Marcus had hit a nerve.
“What else do you expect me to do, Fenix?” he said. “You think I can do any more than you did?”
Marcus just stared back in silence for a few moments. “You don’t even know what’s caused the outage, do you?”
“No.”
“Then you better find out. Because there’s substation faults, and then there’s grub incursions.”
“I’m going to take a drive out. The phones are down.”
“Take a look from the roof first. You’ve got no idea what’s out there yet. Got any field glasses?”
“Somewhere.” Niko felt the need for some expert advice, but the inmates were now completely separate from the staff areas for the duration of the outage. If he grabbed a ladder and let Marcus climb up to the gallery, he’d have the rest of the prisoners up here too, and that was one extra problem he didn’t need. “It’d be handy if you’d take a look.”
Marcus gave him that yeah-very-funny stare. “How?”
“Can you get up to the windows via the yard? Then you
can get access to the roof.”
“If anyone could, then you’d know already.” Marcus paused, then nodded as if he’d decided to acce
pt the challenge. “Okay, might as well try.”
“I’ll open the window.”
“And keep the goddamn dogs under control.”
Niko went to collect the binoculars from the office, and by the time he opened the third story window overlooking the yard, he could hear branches breaking below. He leaned out and looked down. Marcus was shinning up the rusty iron drainpipe, making for the barred sash window on the floor above. Damn, that pipework wasn’t going to take his weight. The drain fed through a spiked collar at window height, designed to stop inmates from doing just what Marcus was doing now, but a smaller pipe ran at a slight horizontal slope above it. Marcus reached out to grab the vertical window bars and froze there for a moment.
“Now you’re stuck, yeah?” Jarvi said. “I’ll find a rope.”
“Wait.” Marcus repositioned his left hand. He gripped one of the cross-bars welded to the backs of the verticals, just a hand-width wide, and seemed to be taking a deep breath. “Nearly done.”
He hauled himself up with his right arm, a straight chinning movement, then swung his left leg up and jammed his boot into the small gap at sill level. Niko couldn’t see how he was going to get out of that. But he did: he took another deep breath and pushed off from his toe-hold in an explosive movement like a rock-climber, catching the bars with one hand. It was more of a leap than a climb. Now he was clinging to the grid and looking up for his next hand-hold. Niko held his breath. Marcus took his time getting the fingers of his left hand into a gap that Niko couldn’t even see, then looked up at him.
“When I say so,” Marcus growled, “you grab my damn arm, okay?”
Niko nodded. Easier said than done. He laid down his rifle, braced his knees against the inside wall, and prayed that he didn’t drop him.
“One, two …” Marcus pulled up with his left arm and reached for the windowsill with his right. “Come on, Jarvi, give me a hand.”
Niko got an overhand grip on Marcus’s arm and pulled. It was still a scramble to get him over the ledge, but once his shoulders were through the frame, he tipped forward and Niko grabbed the back of his belt. Marcus rolled onto the floor, got up, and dusted himself off without a word.