Hell and Gone

“Come on, mate!”

So Hardie limped over to the doorway, and saw a dirty, torn suit neatly folded on the tile floor. His old warden outfit.

“Put these on,” Victor said.

“Where’s Whiskey?”

“Look, you want to get out of here or not?”

Hardie dressed himself quickly. The feel of the suit on his wet skin was unpleasant, but it was better than the smock. Anything was better than the smock. All he had were the trousers and jacket, no underwear, no shirt, no belt, no socks, no shoes. But it felt like a suit of armor compared to that smock. He’d hated the smock so much he didn’t even want to think the word smock ever again.

“This way.”

They moved through Whiskey’s room and then through the control booth Hardie could never see from his cage. So where were Yankee and X-Ray? And Whiskey, for that matter? Was she still waiting outside the shower door? Hardie must have slowed down because Victor was tugging on his arm, urging him forward.

“Come on.”

“What is this about?”

Victor paused long enough to whisper, “You were right. It took me a while to piece everything together, but you were right, mate, and if we’re going to do anything about it, we need to move now.”

Victor hated this next part. It really made him feel like the world’s king supreme dick. But it was a necessary part of keeping this facility running smoothly. You needed conflict, for the good of the guards, for the good of the prisoners. If you didn’t let the pressure out in small, controlled doses, the whole facility was likely to explode. And shaking up the status quo helped reveal the actual traitors, the escape plots in the making.

The Prisonmaster had carefully explained this when he named Victor the “secret warden” a little over a year ago, not long after Victor had proven himself worthy. New “wardens” may be sent to the facility, the Prisonmaster said, but Victor was still the man in charge, the one he depended upon to keep the most dangerous people on earth contained.

Victor craved the validation, the responsibility. He loved being special.

Which eased his conscience a little.

Thing was—

and Victor had no idea about this—

the Prisonmaster had told the other guards the exact same thing.

Victor and Hardie walked into the elevator vestibule, which was dim and quiet. Victor took Hardie’s arm and led him toward a corner.

“Over here.”

“I’m guessing you have some kind of escape plan that won’t kill everyone down here?”

“Oh, yeah, I do.”

Victor’s plan was this: guide Hardie to the dark corner of the vestibule. There, Victor would pick up Hardie’s electrified walking cane—confiscated when they threw him in his cell—and jam it against Hardie’s heart and press the button. After Hardie did the sixty-cycle spin, Victor would sound the sirens and flash the lights, and soon everyone would realize there had been yet another escape attempt.

The other three guards would scramble down here and find their former “warden” holding his electrified cane and wearing his old suit jacket and trousers. Hardie would have to explain himself. Hardie would be interrogated. After all, how did he manage to escape from his cell? Where did he find his old suit? How did he recover his old weapon? Answers would have to be given. Brutal yet necessary interrogations of the prisoners would begin. Guards would be questioned, too—clearly, Hardie had a collaborator. Suspicion, naturally, would fall on Victor. Hardie himself would testify to that fact.

“But don’t worry about that, Victor,” the Prisonmaster explained. “This just puts you in the unique position of being able to uncover the real traitor.”

Which was the whole point: find the traitor among them.

“Help me, Victor. Help keep this facility safe,” the Prisonmaster had said.

“You know,” Hardie said, “Prisoner Three told me something very interesting about you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Victor asked. “What’s that?”

Hardie gritted his teeth and jackhammered his right fist into Victor’s lower back, dead bang between his kidneys, giving the punch everything he had, his entire body weight focused on that single target.

Victor yelped, twisted slightly, dropped to his knees.

“That you’re a nance,” Hardie said. “Whatever the hell that means.”

What Cameron had actually said was that his former partner Ashley (now “Victor”) had once suffered a serious lower-back injury, and that in subsequent adventures, he’d added further insult to that injury.

“That’s the cunt’s Achilles heel. Punch him hard enough in the small of the back and he’ll fold like a fuckin’ deck chair. All I want is one shot at his back. Just one, for old times’ sake.”

Well, Hardie was simply passing the sentiment along.

Hardie knew he didn’t have much strength or time. He had to incapacitate his old buddy Victor/Ashley here quick and clean.

He was considering a chop to the throat and a few more punches to the kidneys when he saw it, over in the corner.

His cane.

That little black beauty with the curved handle and the fifty thousand volts of sheer electric hell inside.

Hardie shuffled over to it, unsheathed the end—oh, how he wished he’d realized what this puppy did when he first arrived—then came back and gave his old buddy Victor enough shocks to make him reconsider consciousness. Then after picking Victor’s pockets clean of cell keys and the Smith & Wesson tactical pen, military and police edition, Hardie felt armed and crazy enough to try it.

An honest-to-God jailbreak.

He quickly made his way back down to the main floor, an excitement in his blood he hadn’t felt in years.

23

Bide your time. That’s what prison teaches you, if nothing else. Bide your time and everything becomes clear and you can act accordingly.

—Terence Stamp, The Limey

HARDIE SPRANG EVE first—her cell was the closest to the elevator vestibule. She had been in one of her otherworldly Zen moments. After he unlocked her mask, Eve rubbed her eyes and asked what the hell was going on—where he got the old suit and weapons. Hardie said he’d explain later, then offered her a choice of weapons: the pen or the cane. Not surprisingly, she went with the pen. Very gallant of her, Hardie thought. The old man still needed his cane.

“You know, this is probably a trap,” Eve said. “They’re going to catch us and then torture the living shit out of us.”

“Probably. You want me to lock you back up?”

Eve smiled. “Duh.”

Cameron was next. Hardie unlocked his face mask and clapped him on the shoulder.

“That shot to his spine?” Hardie said. “It worked. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Cameron. “Tell me, did he cry like a little bitch?”

Next they went around the corner and freed Archie, who was stark naked and seemingly unconcerned about it. Hardie found it a bit difficult to take seriously a man whose balls were swinging around like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, but so be it. Eve, who seemed immune to the posthypnotic sway of genitals, asked if he was up for this. Archie merely nodded. Good enough for Hardie.

Finally they came to the cell of Horsehead. The man was still curled up in a fetal position, never having fully recovered from his beating and electrocution of some time ago. The same thing that Hardie would have endured.