Son of Sedonia

21

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JOGUN STRAINED TO keep his neck muscles tight. He focused on the smearing red trail he left on the floor as the guard pulled him by the throat. Where? Each time he began to guess the thoughts jumbled into floating madness. The blood. Straight for a while. Then a left turn. Straight again. Then a right. Or was it left? Stopped. He heard a series of beeps then a hatch door opening behind him.

“This one’s totally gonzo, can I get a hand here?” Footsteps followed. Arms scooped him up under the shoulders. Their touch was plastic. Cold.

“You kidding me with that trail of shit running from here to the cells? It’s gotta be all crapped up with cosmic rads by the look of this a*shole, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna mop it up.”

“Relax, man. Jesus! Didn’t have a free hand for the mop on the way here, okay, I’ll clean it up in a second. Hey, Doc! Got a special case for you here!” Jogun felt himself lifted off the ground and dumped onto a hard slab. Metal by the way the cold surface stung his skin. The blurry image of a man in a heavy gray coat seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Long white gloves spattered with red reached for Jogun’s face. Grabbed his jaw, then shone a white hot light in his eyes.

“Special, you say? Doesn’t look like much. Textbook radiation sickness, decrepitude, gravitational atrophy. Should be in the ovens, not on my table.” The light withdrew. Jogun pinched his watering eyes shut.

“See his knuckles?” One of the guards asked. The gray-coated man said nothing. Just grabbed Jogun’s torn hands and turned them over. Like he was buying meat from the market.

“Did that himself,” said the Decom guard. “Beat ‘em bloody on the holding cell glass screamin’ something about killing us all.”

The faces started coming into focus, though only from the eyes up. They wore masks of powder blue fabric.

“Really?” said the one they called ‘Doc.’ “That is special. Pass me the scanner, would you?” Jogun heard some metal clinking before having his head wrenched to the left by Doc’s palm. A dragging sensation tugged at the skin on the back of his neck. Something beeped.

“Six years, two months, and thirteen days since he was Dosed. More than enough time for the conditioning to fully integrate and metabolize.”

“Huh?” said the Decom guard. The Doc sighed.

“Would even a little scientific literacy kill you people? The nanotech! Long enough in the human brain and it breaks down. Passes out of the body through the blood stream. BUT!” The Doc stabbed a syringe in the direction of the guards, “Whatever changes were made become part of the brain’s physical structure. For all intents and purposes: Permanent. Habits form neural physiology, gentlemen, and the life a Themis inmate...that’s all about habits.”

“So why’d he break his?” asked the Decom guard.

“The million dollar question! Why indeed? I imagine beating his monkey fists against the glass hurt more than just his hands. Probably set his whole brain on fire. So a few electrodes here and a bone saw there, and we might be able to shed a light on our friend here.”

“Whatever, Doc. Have a ball. Hit the comms if you need anything else.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Doc. The guards turned to leave. One of them hesitated. He turned around, reached for the mop and wheeled bucket, then rolled it out with him through the hatch. Muttered something as he left. The door hissed shut behind them.

Without the ambient sound of the open hall, ear-ringing silence stifled the infirmary. Broken only by little metallic clinks made by the Doc as he rifled through a drawer off to the side of the slab. The man paused.

“Now that is too quiet...” he said. Jogun watched as the Doc swept his gloved fingers through the air, pressing invisible buttons. Jogun flexed whatever muscles he could, trying to wake them up. Nothing more than twitches answered the effort, but he jerked when a flurry of crawling notes filled the room. Music.

“Bach. Cello Suite number 1. Perfection. Please don’t fight, you’ll give yourself an aneurism. Very painful for you and rather inconvenient for me. Now, where to start?” The Doc prodded the skin on Jogun’s neck and arm. “Ah! Let’s just see how ‘crapped up’ you really are. Blood and tissue samples, all ‘round.” The Doc lifted a syringe and took Jogun’s forearm in his plastic fingers. Veins bulged from the under-fed skin.

“Well that’s not going to be hard, at least. Now then,” said the Doc, “You may feel a little stick, here.”

A point of fire seared Jogun’s arm where the needle entered. He tensed.

“Well done, my boy! Now tissue...tissue, tissue, tissue. Funny word isn’t it? Any word that makes a grown man purse his lips like that...sorry, I digress.” The Doc took out what looked like a fat, white pistol. Tiny metal points glistened at the end of the barrel.

“We’ll take one from...the foot.” It felt like a starving rat took a chunk out of Jogun’s flesh.

“The...thigh.” Another chunk. Both wounds quickly started throbbing.

“The belly. The chest. The shoulder and the...neck. Now don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

Jogun trembled as he felt damp warmth weeping from each ragged hole. The Doc turned away. Jogun’s fingers all flexed in unison, slowly balling into a fist. His arm lifted. As sensation returned to him, he felt the cuts burn deeper and sharper. He willed his arm to the place where he’d heard the metal clinking. Fingers closed around something with a sharp tip. Jogun barely felt it cut him, but his hand jerked anyway, rattling the tray of tools.

“What are you up to over there?” said the Doc, “fumbling for a weapon, are we? Interesting, very interesting...well, come on then, let’s see what you can do with it.” The Doc made a window with his thumbs and forefingers, then started typing on an imaginary keyboard.

Frozen muscles started to tingle all over Jogun’s body as his mind screamed at them to obey. Gradually, they twitched. His stomach tightened, lifting his chest enough to slide two arms underneath. He rested, panting harder and harder. Then he swung his right leg over the slab. The left. With one final push he sat up, bloody blade gripped in hand.

“Very impressive! Some signs of shock and obvious blood-loss, but you’re fighting through both the conditioning and the sedative. Don’t know how you haven’t—” Jogun doubled over, falling to the floor. From hands and knees, he vomited grey liquid across the linoleum. “Ah, yes, there it is.”

The world spun for a moment. He shook his head, then picked a point to stare at. The Doc. One hand slid forward on the ground. Then the other. He crawled through smeared blood toward the man’s wide-eyed grin.

“That’s it, closer...closer...closer.......!”

Jogun arrived at the Doc’s shiny black shoes. Brought the blade forward.

“Go ahead! I stuck you, now you stick me.” The Doc even crouched. Jogun lifted the weapon. It seemed to weigh fifty kilos. The old familiar aching queasiness gripped his abdomen, begging him to put the knife down. His hand dropped limp to the floor and the Doc stood. Turned to type more invisible notes.

“Nano-conditioning versus primate. Nano always wi—”

“Sh-shut the f*ck up,” Jogun slung the blade around, hooked the back of the Doc’s foot, and yanked hard, slicing right through the tendon. Screaming followed as the Doc crumpled.

“You! You—aaaahhh! Goddammit!” The Doc tried to stand. Screamed again and fell. Jogun pushed himself up to a sitting position, then reached up for the counter next to him. He pulled his burning body up, faced the Doc, and limped toward him. The knife glistened red in the fluorescent light.

The Doc made a jagged ruddy trail as he scrambled back across the slick floor. He seemed to be aiming toward a wall panel. Jogun let him try.

“That’s it. Closer. Crawl for your life,” said Jogun. The Doc got to the base of the wall and stretched his arms toward the panel.

“Go ahead,” said Jogun. The Doc tried to get up on his good leg as he reached. Slipped on the blood-slick floor and landed hard on his bad leg. Screamed. Jogun crouched beside him, pointing the blade at his face.

“HELP! HEL—!”

“Shhhh,” Jogun brought the knife to within an inch of the man’s eye. “Good. You listen like that from now on, I promise I’ll let you go. You feel me?”

The Doc nodded, staring at the point.

“Is there an antidote to the Dose?” Jogun asked. The Doc paused, then shook his head.

“N-no. It’s permanent.”

“You’re lyin’, man.” With the tip of the blade, Jogun drew a sharp red line down the Doc’s face. “Try again.”

“Aaaah! Okay, yes, yes there is! But it only works on subjects who’ve been Dosed less than a month, why would you—”

Jogun drew another line.

“AAAH! In those tanks over there, hooked up to the tray!” the Doc howled. Jogun turned to look. Against the wall, a battery of four plastic containers sat elevated. Hoses connected them to several tools clipped to the tray. Jogun crossed to them. Picked a tank from the shelf and disconnected the tool. A long, thick needle with several buttons on the side. Jogun looked at it a second, then crossed back to the Doc.

“N-no! What are you doing?! I told you—AAH!” Jogun stabbed the needle into the Doc’s shoulder and pressed the largest button. A pneumatic hiss and a rush of liquid followed. Doc Yugi howled.

“Idiot! It won’t do anything to me; I haven’t been Dosed!”

“Just makin’ sure it ain’t lethal. Question Two: How do I open the hatch?”

“That button up there! The green one!” Doc pointed to the wall panel.

“Thanks,” said Jogun. As the Doc started to relax, Jogun slashed. The knife sliced the Doc’s throat from ear to collar bone. White-gloved hands locked over the wound. Blood spurted through the fingers.

“Y—! Y-y-you ssssaid—!”

“F*ck you,” Jogun grabbed the antidote tank, stood, and pressed the hatch button. The door slid open. Fast as he could, Jogun limped out into the hall. A fever sweat broke out on his brow. Where’d they take you, little brother? He thought he’d heard the word ‘hangar,’ but which one? His pace quickened past the glass cells.

“Hey! Hey wait!” called a muffled voice. Jogun paused. “P-please...port pin lock B, rear feed aperture, optimal approach vector—” A new face in one of the Decom cells. He looked to be younger than Matteo, and trembling from a recent Dose. Jogun’s hands gripped the needle tool and tank handle. Looked down the hall where they’d taken his brother. Looked back at the boy.

“Ah shit. Hang on, I got you kid,” Jogun punched the wall plate as he’d seen the guards do. The door opened with a heavy click, and the boy spilled out of it. Jogun sat him against the wall.

“This is gonna hurt,” he said. Before the boy could protest, the needle tool plunged into his thigh. The scream subsided quickly, replaced by a kind of deep silence. A twitch. Two. Then life flowed into the boy’s face as Jogun braced him.

“Listen. A man in a black suit, he came through here with a slum boy and two thugs—”

“Yeah...Yeah, I saw ‘em on my way in. Or, I think I did. Everything’s...”

“I know, I know. Can you walk?”

“I think so.” Helping one another, they stood. Struggled a few steps down the hallway, but didn’t get far. Pounding on the glass of a nearby cell stopped them. Then another cell. Then ten. Everywhere, muffled cries begged for help.