Chapter 1
“Get back in your cell, convict,” ordered the guard while jerking his thumb.
I didn’t know the man’s name, only that he was an ugly jackass who—at two-forty—outweighed me by twenty pounds. I liked to think I was lean and mean, just the type of death row inmate guards should respect.
But they didn’t. Because they were assholes.
I hated assholes. And bullies. And guards. And anyone associated with the Union. My mood always sucked after a bad night with the restraint on my cybernetic left arm. No one wanted me running around with the ultimate shank.
Death row was seriously cramping my style. Living with electric disruption of my hardware was a tingly slice of hell.
The constant pulsing of the sub-dermal disruptor felt like a continual drip of lactic acid into my shoulder and upper back. One of my eyes was artificial, loaded with upgrades that had made me really good at my former job. Whenever I tried to use these features now, a computerized monitor would flood my bloodstream with nausea-inducing meds.
Super unpleasant. And because the Union restraint specialists were sadists, the effect always lasted an hour beyond the offense that triggered the pukefest.
Worse than anything they could do to me were the nightmares associated with why I had the prosthetic.
If my jackbooted babysitters understood what I was, they’d ask for a transfer—maybe sue the warden for putting them in mortal danger and causing all the stress that came with guarding the devil.
“The buzzer hasn’t sounded,” I said, aware this wasn’t what the man wanted to hear from me.
It was pretty damn clear he didn’t know what to do now. Clenching one fist on his stun baton didn’t intimidate me, and he knew it. His taunts were lame, and I had stopped giving a fuck a long time ago. So he stood there stinking like cheap tobacco smoke, trying to slow his beating heart.
I resented him for his poor taste in cigars as much as anything else.
A vein pulsed in his neck. His eyes were too wide. He sweated like a whore in church.
“It’s about to go off,” he said, then looked over his shoulder toward the control station where the riot team waited, even though there weren’t enough people in this wing of the Bluesphere Maximum Security Prison—Ultramax IX—to stage an uprising.
It was mostly just me.
“But it hasn’t gone off,” I countered.
“Why do you argue every time? Makes me look like a punk.”
“And there’s your answer,” I said.
“You better check yourself,” he told me. “Ever felt a stun baton across the bridge of your nose?”
“Not today, I haven’t,” I answered.
He sputtered nonsense, clearly out of insults.
The klaxon alarm overhead that I’d come to dread more than the bad food, shitty plumbing, and lack of Starbrand Cigars, blared with eardrum-damaging force.
I smiled sarcastically. “Happy?”
“Get back in your cell! Do it now!” he commanded.
“You’re glad it’s time, be honest,” I said, goading the beefy man as I retreated into the small vacation home they kept telling me was a five-by-five cell with locked doors. “You don’t really want a shot at the title. You’re all talk, no walk.”
He was relatively new at BMSP—Ultramax IX. Been there about a month. If he’d been one of the regular guards, we’d have more of a history. All we’d done so far was call each other names.
He pushed out his chest. “One of these days I’m gonna educate you.”
“Zero fucks given,” I said, staring him down. “Go back to your circle jerk.”
The bars slammed shut. Why were there bars instead of stainless steel blast doors? Because the Union was cheap.
Never mind that Union spec ops—dark ops specifically—had made me who I was… right before they fucked me.
Their mistake. No one in the Reaper Corps had the foresight to offer a decent retirement option. Now I was too dangerous to release and too valuable to kill.
I hoped.
Not like BMSP death row was a vacation paradise. Probably better than being dead, but not by much. What was an honest killer like me gonna do?
I knew all about the guard’s dialect, and could guess right where he’d grown up, give or take.
I was from the same sort of neighborhood. After I left, I learned that the local gangs had made my mother a widow, so I slipped off post for a few weeks to put the worst of them down. From there, presto—death row for one unmanageable liability to the Union.
Kiss my ass. Train me as a killer specializing in infiltration and assassination and what did they think I would do?
Please.
The guard stared at me like he expected something to happen.
“What?” I asked, cocking my brow.
“You know what. Plug in or I’ll get ten of my friends and do it for you,” he said, trying his best to look intimidating.
“You’d need them.” I was bored with this guy, so I picked up the earbud and put it in. It was actually just an antenna for nerve-ware. The ultra-soft construction wasn’t for my comfort. The security experts of Ultramax IX were worried I’d find a way to weaponize a bead of silicon.
Like I’d do that.
“Happy?” I asked, ignoring the brief struggle between my Computerized Inmate Monitor, or CIM, and X-37, the Reaper nerve-ware the warden’s doctors couldn’t remove even if they had known about it.
“Ecstatic,” he said, glaring. “Now go play with yourself. I’ll be at Gisela’s to see some girls.”
“What’s your name, guard?” I asked.
He wrinkled his lips at the question. “UPG 1592.”
“Your parents must’ve hated you,” I said.
“That’s my badge number: Union Prison Guard 1592,” he said, very seriously.
I stared until he realized I was mocking him. “I pieced that together, but thanks, 1592.”
Snorting profanity, he turned his back on me and dragged his stun club along the bars of other prisoner cells while walking back to the control booth.
“You think I could take him, X?” I asked out loud.
“I am not here to stroke your ego,” said X. The CIM inputs created sound via vibrations of my inner ear, a technique that could be used for compliance through pain. I had X-37 turn that feature off while convincing the CIM it was still shocking the shit out of me.
“What about him and the riot squad?” I asked, climbing into my bunk.
“My advice, Reaper Cain—don’t push your luck,” said X.
I leaned back and smiled, going straight into a structured daydream designed to keep me sane. The smell of tobacco smoke filled my nostrils as my fingers twisted an imaginary Starbrand cigar. Staring at the ceiling, I reminded myself who I was and why this place would never beat me.
My name is Halek Cain, formerly a Reaper in the Union dark ops. So what if I was on death row? Absolutely nothing would break my mind, least of all the guards or the inmates. I would find a way to beat them all, and I’d do it with a smile on my face.
The bastards should have killed me.
* * *
“Inmate Cain, it is thirty-nine seconds past reveille.” The CIM’s cheap, slightly digitized voice was my constant companion, almost as annoying as the electric disruption of my cybernetics. The implant had one job—monitor my every move and mood. Behavior modification was something the warden added against senate approval.
I didn’t blame the man. He was smart. Not ruthless enough to have me killed, but he did his best to be a prick.
The Reaper nerve-ware allowed the crude tech to do its thing, preferring to lurk in the digital shadows until needed, like I normally did during long infiltration missions.
Sometimes, I think X antagonizes the CIM, urging it to give me a hard time or generally make my life difficult. Maybe I’m anthropomorphizing both of the limited AIs. But maybe not. Stranger things have happened.
“Inmate Cain, it is now forty-nine seconds past reveille. Get out of bed and perform the required daily hygiene outlined in regulation 0450-a-1,” said the CIM.
“What’s in it for me?” I asked.
“Proper hygiene is good for your body, Inmate Cain. More importantly, rules are rules. Time to get up. I must harass you until you sit up, wash your face, brush your teeth, and have a bowel…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m up,” I groaned.
“You have a meeting with Warden James Esquire III at 0830 hours. Regulations require you to groom and present yourself at the bars at precisely 0815, Union Standard Time,” continued the CIM in its tinny inflection.
“What’s in it for me?” I asked again.
“Repetitive questions will only delay your routine,” the CIM said.
The damn thing was learning.
I brushed my teeth with paste from an edgeless wall dispenser using my finger. Toothbrushes were far too dangerous for someone like me to possess. Everything I needed oozed from holes in the wall—toothpaste, body soap, food, and water. Twice a day, I got to put some of these gifts down a hole that opened at precisely 0755 and 1755 hours.
“You wanna answer, X, since I’m working so hard to make myself presentable?” I asked. “What’s the warden so fired up about that CIM can’t talk about it?”
“You will be offered a chance to leave Ultramax IX for forty-nine standard hours plus transit time,” replied X-37.
I froze with one toothpaste-y finger still in my mouth. “Wha—”
“The warden will explain what you must do.” This was CIM again. The rhythm of its digitized speech distinguished it from my more refined Reaper nerve-ware.
Shaking my head, I finished my morning rituals. “He already explained the only thing I had to do in here is die.”
* * *
Commander Briggs leaned against the warden’s desk with his arms and ankles crossed.
If the disrespectful posture bothered the warden, I couldn’t tell. This man had spent most of his adult life in special operations. He’d gone to the Naval Academy on a netball scholarship and was slightly taller than me. None of the guys I’d served with during my time in spec ops had been burdened with beach muscles or pumped up with steroids and bro-split workouts the way the warden seemed to be.
Guys like this were strong as hell and could run and fight all day with no need for relief, or drag a sled full of gear across a harsh, alien landscape.
Commander Briggs was no different. He had most of the same scars as me, but nothing obvious unless you knew where to look—slash marks on his hands, a burn behind his left ear mostly covered by his short hair, and something in his eyes that was every bit as real as the physical damage a life at war had caused him.
Scars could be informative when you understood what they cost, what they really meant. Shrapnel gifted me with a vertical groove through my left eyebrow that continued down my cheek. My sergeant had told me to keep my visor down, but I was never very good at taking advice.
Oops.
I knew better than to mess with anyone from spec ops. I’d been there done that before getting plucked for dark ops, where my training not only got harder but weirder. Long story.
Not many people made it through Reaper training. Fewer stayed in the field half as long as I did. There weren’t many of us left.
“Warden,” Briggs said without looking at the man whose office he had invaded.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Get out.”
James Esquire III, Warden of Bluesphere Maximum Security Prison, left without a word. The wood-paneled door clunked shut and sealed in a way that made it very clear it wasn’t made from wood.
“Kind of gloomy in here,” I said, stalling while I looked around and took stock of what was in the room. I suspected there was at least one recording device and perhaps a quick reaction force waiting behind a hidden door. “Mind if we turn on some lights?”
Briggs punched a button on the desk, illuminating the room. “You’re quick. I bet you know everything about this room from that one glance. And I’m guessing you already have at least part of an escape plan formed based on that information.”
“It’s not my escape you should be worried about, but what I’d do before I attempted it.”
“Like kill me?” he asked, nonchalantly.
Shrugging, I selected a leather couch and flopped down. Stretched out, I felt almost human—determined to forget about my tiny cell for as long as possible. “I don’t really know you, so don’t piss your pants. Besides, the warden’s as much a prisoner here as I am. No one can get out of this office without permission. There’s a door behind that stuffed gazelle. Did you replace his security team with your own quick reaction force?”
“What makes you think that’s where the door is? Just looks like some tasteless taxidermy and a wall to me.”
“The gazelle is cheap. The warden’s not gonna want his goons knocking over the tiger or the bear. And you can see where it’s been moved. Wear marks on the floor.” I waved a hand at the grooves dismissively. “Probably actually attached to the sliding door. What are we doing here, Commander?”
Briggs took a short tour of the room, popping his knuckles then rolling his neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was looking forward to a fight.
“You’re on death row. I never liked you when you were with spec ops and didn’t hear good things about your career after that. So let’s not pretend we’re going to be buddies. I’m here to offer you special treatment in return for certain services you might render the Union.”
“Great. I’ve always wanted to go on another suicide mission,” I replied sarcastically.
He ignored that. “I’ve read all of your mission debriefs and can tell you this will probably be a walk in the park for you.”
“You act like I’m going to do it. Don’t make assumptions. Life is easy here. Maybe someday I’ll be executed, but how is that different than dying out there with you?”
Briggs laughed. “You’re not gonna work with me. I’ll watch your every move, sure. You’ll take orders from me. But the last place you will be is with me on the battlefield. I don’t trust anybody who’s been in dark ops more than a week, and Reapers are freaks.”
“And yet here we are,” I said, spreading my hands wide.
Briggs stood near the couch at a slight angle that gave him the advantage if I abandoned my extremely comfortable slouch to attack him. He looked bigger and more pissed off than when I first saw him by the desk.
“Let me shuck it down to the cob for you. I have a mission that you’re going on—like it or not. In return, you get special treatment. All you have to do is recover one VIP from a tough spot.”
“Tell me again what you mean by special treatment.”
“I won’t have you executed tomorrow.”
“Oh! Tomorrow. You know what, that might be a relief. Let’s do it. I want to see if you have the authority to quash my appeal that’s been in limbo for two years.”
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