I think the people in the Pilates cult probably call him Joseph now because they realize his name makes him sound about as trustworthy as a guy offering to fix all your financial problems in exchange for, “ey whoa, one small favuh.”
Marine hadn’t found much of use in the console. Even if she had, using anything large and obvious meant we were likely telling them exactly what the situation was. Turning the lights out en masse, for example. That would definitely lead someone to check why it happened and where the command came from when they saw it wasn’t a random occurrence. The best we could do was unlock all the doors down the hallways. This would let us duck in, maybe find some useful supplies. A gun or something. Clothes would be a good turn as well, with us both in checkered jumpsuits.
She started setting the doors. Each one had to be done in turn and I scanned the room. It really had nothing other than the console. Pretty sparse, but not bad. I mean, in general getting out of here would be a real pain. So long as they closed the doors properly. You just know those are going to get replaced after this. Maybe with something classy like sliding, bulletproof glass. Or they could just stop pretending and get open vats of acid.
Marine turned to me and whispered, “You ready?”
“More than ready.”
She moved into the hall first and I kept close behind her. We slid our way to the first door, walking briskly but as quietly as we could manage. The first door led to a storage room. Our clothes were there, which, logistically speaking, made sense. The backpack was there, but it had been emptied of the laptop and the holographic burner. Whatever else Marine might’ve brought along was gone along with the things I knew about.
I felt a little safer talking at a normal volume in the room. “You need to get back anything that was in the bag?”
Marine pulled her shirt on over the jumpsuit, then started undoing the zipper at the back. Disappointing. “No. All we need to do is get the hell out of here.”
“But the—”
“I know.” She said the words pointedly, turning her head toward me but looking at the ground to punctuate them. “We’re coming back. Just… not now. We need help.”
No argument on that point from me. I’d pulled off my jumpsuit and I was dressed before Marine somehow so I gave a quick scan of the room. Nothing of real use. A few cleaning supplies in the corner and a couple of boxes. I flipped the lid off of them and it was mostly really upsetting stuff. Wallets, a few of them with old photo IDs of people who decidedly were not still present in the jail. Cash cards were gone from all of them. Guards must not’ve been paid very good.
We poked our heads back out into the hallway and gave a look. Still empty, but I could definitely hear voices now. Only two of them. Fair chance one was our guard, maybe flirting with the evil receptionist. Though, that begged a question. Was being a receptionist for a clearly evil place enough to make you evil? Like, as receptionists go, her job isn’t distinct in any meaningful way from other receptionists. If she was a proper evil receptionist she’d, I don’t know, cackle maniacally after saying someone was not in their office when, really, they were. Or maybe she’d intentionally write down the wrong dates on a schedule or something. It’s a deep sort of philosophical position, I think. Is she evil just because she ignores the fact that she works for a place that forces things into my butt? Is her apathy in pursuit of a paycheck enough to consider her an evil person? What if she desperately wants to tell the police about all of the butt stuff they’re clearly up to down here, but they might kill her family? And, more importantly, what the fuck does she even do? I can’t imagine a possible future where I understand what, exactly, her role is down here.
There was nothing to be done about it. We’d have to move down the hall as far as we could to hear the voices a bit better. So we did. Passing four doors, only two left between us and the main reception area.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t you have work to do?” I could just make out a woman’s voice.
“Go. Door, door!” I whispered frantically, knowing they were about to end their conversation.
We ran into the nearest door and found a small lab type area. Unfortunately, there was a guy standing inside. All three of us froze as the door slid shut behind us with a solid metallic clunk.
“Who the hell are—
“Wooga booga booga!” I screamed the first thing I could think and ran toward him with my arms up.
“Ahhh!”
It did the trick. He was terrified putty in my hands. I clattered into him and we both fell to the ground. I stuffed the bottom of my shirt into his mouth and started slapping him as hard as I could. The whole scene was black because I had maybe closed my eyes because I was terrified and not accustomed to violence. I realized after an amount of time that the guy had put up no resistance to my attack and looked down to see his eyes rolled back in his head. Blood was seeping out onto the floor. I stood up and looked over at Marine. She couldn’t see the guy as he’d fallen behind a desk so I shot her a thumbs up, trying my best to seem cool about the whole thing.
We waited a moment. We’d need to come out behind the guard but before he’d made it back to the cells
