How long had it been since the Feds had taken him? A few days? A week? Longer? Grayson couldn’t tell anymore. When he woke up, he was in a dark cell, alone, Amy was nowhere to be seen, and none of the guards would answer him when he screamed at them through the slot in the door they used to shove food and water into the room. He’d been through interrogation a few times, but he staunchly refused to talk, every time, even when they resorted to torture.
He felt the mag-shackles powering up. Someone was coming and it was useless to try and fight back, so he stepped over to the closest wall and laid his wrists against it, facing the door. The officer who had been in charge of interrogating him stepped inside once Grayson was restrained.
“You’ve refused to talk thus far” Adredza said to begin “My superiors are getting impatient, but you’ve withstood everything we’ve attempted. You are a surprisingly resilient human. So this is your last opportunity. Tell me what I want to know, or I will not be responsible for your fate.”
“An’ I told you…..” his voice was harsh and crackly from lack of use “Where’s Amy Rosseau? I’m not sayin’ a fuckin’ thing until you bring her to me, I need ta know she’s safe… because that’s how I’m gunna decide how painful yer death is when I get outta here.”
“Big words from a man without a friend in the ‘verse” Adredza said “I can see you’ve made your choice. In the morning you’ll be transferred into the custody of the Kyln. The Knoxx Freighter is en route to ferry you there. Make your peace with this fate, because no one will ever see you again.”
He left without a word, leaving Grayson in darkness once more.
In the morning, he was shuffled out of the cell and put in proper restraints as he was turned over to the black-armored crew of the Knoxx. He’d heard stories of the Kyln, a massive mobile prison ship. People said it was impenetrable, that no one who ever entered left alive. Those stories didn’t concern him in the least. What did, was the fact that Amy was nowhere to be seen as he was marched out of the holding facility.
Once he was on board the freighter, the restraints were removed and he was shoved into an open-concept holding cell with a handful of other prisoners. He felt a strange sense of calmness as he walked to a bench and sat down, head in his hands, looking defeated, but really, the gears in his head had just started spinning.
“Grayson?” a voice asked.
He didn’t recognise it at first, nor the woman it belonged to. It definitely wasn’t Amy, however. For one, the hair was the wrong color. This woman’s hair was a tawny brown, and braided. She stood up, revealing that she was taller and more muscular than Amy had ever been; that most women Grayson had ever told his name to, in fact. It wasn’t until he’d take a look at her still-dirty face that he’d recognise her sly features and crooked smile.
“T-Taleste?? That you lass?” he croaked out as the fog slowly cleared from his head “How…. how? We all thought ya were dead.”
The woman chuckled, then switched benches to sit opposite Grayson. “Well,” she started, “I was captured by a group of pirates who aren’t know for keeping prisoners, that’s true, but I convinced them to buck that trend, and that I’d be more...useful alive than dead. I then started living as a concubine, and obviously not-so-fun factors aside, it wasn’t a totally bad time. I learned to fight. I actually made some friends. And then a raid went badly and every whun else died rather than surrender to the authorities. As for me, I’ve kept alive this long because I know when to surrender to fight another day. What about you? How is that Revenant thing going?”
“I’m sorry that happened to you” Grayson said, his face finally catching the light to reveal the burn marks around his cyber-eye, the swelling and cuts around his other eye, and the dried blood of a scabbed-over cut on his cheek that was almost guaranteed to scar.
“We were out here on a job….. Didn’t go as planned.”
He paused to cough, his throat dried out, once he composed himself, he looked up thoughtfully.
“From what I remember of that night, yer sacrifice got us all out alive, an’ none of us even got a chance to thank ya for it. You came out alright on the other side, but I’m still sorry we couldn’t do anythin’ to help ya.”
He cast a glance around the room.
“If I know Stryker, he’ll be plottin’ somethn’ to try an’ save us. How long ya been here? Long enough to get a feel for the guard shifts, or get ta know the locals?”
Taleste smiled at the thanks, and dismissed the apology with a slight change in her body language. “We all had a job to do, and we all knew the risks. Even so, it’s nice t’be appreciated. And I haven’t been here that long, no. To be honest, this prison is inescapable. I might try to escape, but I’m not banking on it.”
“Oh, we’re gettin’ outta here. Ain’t nothin’ that’s inescapable… except this Kyln place they’re takin’ us, if the rumors are true……. Ya got anythin’ sharp on ya? Even a hairpin or a particularly sharp fingernail would do, just enough to break skin.”
Taleste stood up at stretched, then sat beside Grayson so they could have a quieter, more discreet conversation. “So you’re saying that we break out before we get there. That could work. I don’t have anything sharp, but there are still a lot of ways I can hurt someone without them. What are you thinking?”
“When they took me, they stuck an inhibitor chip in my neck, blocks my implant from workin’ right” he leaned forward and pried his shirt collar back a bit to show the slight bulge “We get that out, I ‘kin start figurin’ out a weak point, then we put tagether a plan.”
Taleste studied the bulge in his skin where the inhibitor chip was, then looked around to check if there were any guards, and how far away they were, then turned back to Grayson. “I have an idea, but it’s going to be very painful, it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to draw a lot of attention to us. Long story short, the only sharp things I have on me right now are my teeth.”
“Oh, aye… that’s not ideal, but… ok, do what ya gotta do.” He leaned forward and gritted his teeth, preparing himself for what needed to be done.
The ex-thief nodded, gave him a sympathetic look, then lunged forward and bit down hard on the outline of the inhibitor chip. Once she punctured the skin, she bit down harder to make the wound bigger, then, once she had the inhibitor in her teeth, ripped it out with a powerful pull-back of her neck, taking some skin with it.
“AH! Jaysus!” he exclaimed as under-his-breath as possible, inhaling sharply as he tried to keep the noise down. He blinked a few times, clearing the tears that had involuntarily formed and feeling the implant finally restarting. He started tugging at his shirt sleeve, trying to rip a strip off to cover the wound and stem any bleeding.
“That did it… great stuff Taleste. Now, ‘ere’s the rub….. Can’t get outta here, just the two of us. We’re gonna need a bit of help, from them” he nodded in the direction of the handful of other prisoners who shared their holding cell. “You’re definitely the better talker…. Right now especially, think you can rally us some troops?”
Taleste nodded, wiped away the blood from her mouth and chin, and turned to study the rest of the transport, or as much as she could see from here. She was looking out for any prisoner of interest. Any prisoner who looked like an easy mark, or perhaps a very difficult mark. Either way, she believed she’d know when she saw them.
They were sharing the holding cell with just 4 others- a Karthian wrapped up in a full-steel straight jacket and jaw harness. A human man sat near the restrained alien, dark-haired with a crew cut. He was exhibiting telltale signs of stardust withdrawal- red nose, darkened eyes, shaking hands. Not far away sat an Endo warrior, easily distinguishable by the near-white skin, shaved head and wide green eyes. The Endo were a cult-like tribe of humans who believed that the key to the next stage of evolution was injecting themselves with a cross-mixture of various alien DNA. This one in particular had a steel gauntlet encasing his left arm up to the elbow, probably restraining a cybernetic limb. Lastly, off at the back by herself, was a very normal-looking human woman, pale-skinned, ginger hair, tattoos peeking out of her short-sleeved prisoner shirt. She was eying up Grayson closely, carefully. Not like she knew him, more that she was simply wary of the newcomer to the holding cell.
-
Stryker stepped into the war room, his brow furrowed as he checked out the latest recon images on his datapad. It had been 3 days since Grayson and Amy had been taken, 3 days since he had cold-cocked Voss and jettisoned him and Treliving in their shuttle off to the far corner of the galaxy. The ‘rescue attempts’ had gone poorly, to say the least. The morning after the incident, Grayson had been taken to a max security Federation facility on the far side of the planet. They kept the place on high alert, so storming the beaches was suicide. Amy had been kept in the city center, the same holding facility the duo had initially been brought to. There hadn’t been any movement there at all. The team had actually just this morning, managed to get a bug onto an unsecured server, where they learned that Amy had already been transferred off-world and Grayson was due to be sent to the Kyln the next morning. Perfect timing as always.
SAL had approached the captain a day ago, with a rather startling confession. The reason he and Grayson were a ‘package deal’ despite seemingly hating each other. A few years back, they had both independently accepted a contract from a crime boss who operated out of the Corvais System. The job involved crossing an active war zone, and had gone poorly, so as punishment, the boss had proximity-based microbombs implanted in both of them.
SAL reassured Stryker that they still had time before he and Grayson needed to ‘check in’ to keep the bombs dormant, but the clock was ticking down. Just another day in the life.
“Alright gang” he said as he looked up at the assembled crew “I’m not gonna sugar coat this. We already lost some good people, and we’ve only got one shot to try and save the one who still has a chance. You all have your jobs, you all have access to the transport ship blueprints to review the plan. We strike as soon as they clear the system, best estimate is in about 6 hours. I want gunners at their positions and the boarding party ready to move in. Any questions at all, you send them my way. Until then, dismissed.”
Simple Unicycle
