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I hear voices coming down the hall. Loud ones. Seems like someone else is being brought down to the cells. There’s a clatter and a clamor as the door at the end of the cell block bursts open. I can’t see what’s happening, but I can absolutely hear it. Very heavy boots make the floor flex and shake. The metal beneath our feet is narrow and grated, probably designed that way so it can be washed down with a hose. Now I think about it, this whole area is pretty well designed for having blood and other stuff blasted off it. The realization makes the entire place even more foreboding than it was before.
“In the cell. NOW!”
That’s the voice of the saurian guard we met down the hall. He’s a nimble-looking predatory type beast with great big golden eyes and small green scales. Gives me the vibe of a scuttler more than a hunter. His ancestors probably fed on insects. But he serves the alpha, so I guess he has rank over whatever poor bastard just got dragged in here.
“Easy, boy,” a deep voice replies. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. There’ll be a time you’re not wearing that uniform, and when that hour comes, you’re going to want to remember who you really are.”
That’s got to be the prisoner, though he doesn’t sound like a prisoner. Doesn’t sound stressed at all. Sounds like someone who just checked into a shitty hotel at some kind of cut-rate holiday park, someone who is too damn good for the place and everybody knows it.
“Please just get in the cell.” The scuttler’s voice comes again. He doesn’t sound nearly as confident this time. I guess his earlier bravado melted in the warning and veiled threat of the prisoner’s words. Sounds like someone just remembered he has to go off-duty eventually, and when he does, the criminal element will be waiting for him.
It’s quite interesting to hear this conversation. I’ve been wondering about the underbelly of Grave City. Perhaps the crew could be making some allies on the other side of the law. That would be useful.
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” the prisoner says.
There’s a scraping of metal as the door swings open and then closed again.
I hear a creaking of the prison bench bed as the new inhabitant takes a load off.
“I’m sorry,” the scuttler whispers. I wonder if the prisoner hears it. He doesn’t reply to it, and I’m guessing it’s too little, too late.
I’m curious about the newcomer, but I’m also not going to start a prison conversation. What I am going to do is my best to get the hell out of here. I don’t think Avel is on site anymore. I think he’s left me in the custody and care of the scuttling underling who just basically rolled over for his latest prisoner. That’s an insult on too many levels for my liking.
Inspecting the cell reveals an obvious jail breaking problem. It’s built for a saurian. And I’m about half the size of a saurian. That means the bars are set too wide to keep me in. I can’t believe nobody noticed that. Avel doesn’t strike me as stupid. I suppose anybody can make an oversight. I know I made plenty of them in my time on the Mare. But still. This is a real fuck up by any stretch of the imagination.
No point wasting any time. I have no business staying in confinement. I’m out of here. I start to squeeze through the bars, sidling sideways and pushing on through. As I start to move through, I realize that though I am dainty compared to a massive saurian, these are feeling a little tighter than I thought they would.
There’s a horrible moment in which the iron is compressing me on either side and it occurs to me that the reason he might have confidence in the bars is because I can’t actually get through them. What if I get found like this? How fucking embarrassing. The bars against my ass are particularly painful, compressing my punished flesh in a very unpleasant way. This isn’t good. This is the sort of bind that could possibly end very, very badly.
I won’t get suck here. I can’t go back into the cell, either. I’ve wriggled my bones into a position that doesn’t really work with retreat. Life has to be about going forward. Even if it kills you.
Following that line of thought, I exhale more than I thought I could exhale, squeezing out every bit of air in my body and I push as hard as I can, using the leverage of the bars to wriggle my way through to the other side.
“Thank fucking god,” I gasp as I pop through, free of the bars. I ache all over now. I’ve been squished and whipped and beaten and lectured and now, here I am. Standing outside a cell in a cell block. Which leaves me in a hall.
“Human.”
Someone hisses the word at me.
I turn to the saurian in the next cell. He’s a big, burly, gray creature with a massive neck flare and a horn in the middle of his forehead. His eyes are a mossy green, and he is dressed in what I can only describe as scraps of clothing intermingled with bandages. Whatever happened to him before he got here, it had to have been rough.
“Yes?”
“Let me out.” He lumbers forward, gripping the bars with hands that have cracked knuckles even through the scales, and dried blood both across the backs of them and under his long, claw-like nails.
This is not the sort of guy you want to be alone with overnight in a dark prison. This is the sort of guy that makes every gut instinct you ever had scream out at once. But I’m also very short on allies right now, so I don’t have the luxury of ignoring him.
“I don’t know how I’d do that. I don’t even know how I’m going to get out of here. There’s that big door over there. That looks heavy and very locked.”
“How did you get out?”
“I squeezed out.”
He nods briefly. “What’s your name, human?”
“Raine.”
“Raine,” he repeats it in deep, rumbling terms, as if committing it to memory. When he looks back at me, I see raw intellect behind his eyes. It would be easy to miss, given the way he looks like an incarnation of the worst kind of monster. “How did you get to this planet?”
