I led us down a corridor adjacent to the one we’d been heading down. We had to fight against a flood of prisoners moving in the opposite direction but we never had to engage in open combat.
All these months, I had been working on the guards in an attempt to bribe them into letting me outside. I tried subtlety, I tried manipulating third parties, tried bribing them directly. Each time, I failed.
And the bribery case almost got me sent to the isolation cells where the real criminals were kept. I managed to convince them I was joking and got off the hook.
The guards were incorruptible—quite a revelation at the time. I had never met a being I couldn’t corrupt before. It was almost like these guys were machines.
I worked with some of the other prisoners with certain skills that might allow me to get outside the walls. I only gave them enough information to carry out their part of my plan.
Unfortunately, they always twigged what I was attempting.
“So, this is for an escape, right?” they would say.
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I would deny their insinuation but it never worked. They refused to do the work unless they were part of my team. “That’s my price,” they said. “Take it or leave it.”
I agreed to their terms and before I knew it, I had an entire escape team working on my plan. The part that always got their attention was my announcement of a shuttlecraft waiting outside the prison for me that my gang dropped off the moment I got slammed in here.
I was supposed to creep out, reach it, blast off, and I would be free and clear. I knew exactly where the shuttlecraft was and never shared the location with anyone.
The only difficulty was in getting out of the prison. Now the riot kicked off and made my original plan irrelevant.
Now it was onto Plan B.
“Okay, we’re here,” I said to Agatha.
I placed my back to the wall that looked out on an open stretch of space with a huge pair of doors on the opposite wall.
“What is this?” Agatha said.
“The entrance hangar.”
“But what are we doing here?”
“We’re getting out of here.”
“Where?”
“Through the door.”
Agatha peered around the corner at the huge door again.
“That door?” she said incredulously.
“That’s right.”
“But… It’s the main entrance to the prison!”
“Is that why it’s so big?” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“There will be a ton of guards arriving here any minute! How are we supposed to slip past them?”
“Will you chill out? Everything will be fine.”
She was already getting under my skin. Did I really want to have her on this trip? There was no telling how long it might take to reach the shuttlecraft.
It was because this was the very last place they expected an inmate to escape from that I felt confident it would work.
I raised the device I’d made and ran an eye over it. I fiddled with some of the cylinders on the side.
By the light of the Creator, I hoped this worked.
If it didn’t, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my days in solitary, and there was no worse fate than that, perhaps anywhere in the galaxy.
The orange lights on either side of the giant door flashed. A moment later, they slid open. Half a dozen large shuttlecraft drifted inside and sat down in perfect rows inside the hangar.
The doors remained open.
The shuttlecraft hatch doors opened and hundreds of guards marched from each craft.
Wow. The warden really wasn’t messing around. He’d sent far more than I expected. Either the riots were worse than I thought or the warden was angry the prisoners had rioted.
If he wanted sedate prisoners, he never should have included the strongest and most powerful fighters in the galaxy.
The orange lights flashed once more and the doors began to slide shut.
The guards were still exiting the shuttlecraft. There were so many it was taking some time to unload them all.
We stood to one side of the huge shuttlecraft. If we hurried, we might slip past them without them noticing us.
“We can’t go now!” Agatha squeaked in my ear. “They’ll see us!”
“Not if we hurry.”
I had one chance to make it work, and this was it. If I didn’t go now, I would have no chance of getting out of here. I would have to turn and run back to my cell and dream about being free.
But the attempt would come at a terrible cost if I failed and got caught.
I would be sent to the bowels of the prison and never emerge again. I would never get to spend time with Agatha and she would be forced to service the other prisoners—and that was if she was lucky!
“If they catch you,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “Tell them I forced you to come with me. There’s no need for you to be punished if you can avoid it.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then cast an eye at me, and shut it.
I took a deep breath and watched as the doors continued to slowly close. I could make out the lines of electricity than ran the width and height of the doorway.
I adjusted my device slightly, taking care to peer at the security system to set the cylinders as accurately as possible.
This was it.
The last of the guards exited the shuttlecraft, carrying their shock rifles in their arms. If just one spotted us, if just one managed to successfully hit us…
It would all be over.
The doors were almost shut.
If I was going to do this, it had to be now.
For the second time since the riot kicked off, I hesitated.
I could return to my room right now and enjoy Agatha until the guards got the prison under control and came for her.
Did I really want to risk that?
It was tougher than I thought it would be.
But I had to give it a try.
Time with Agatha was one day. Through that door, the rest of my
