Friday, September 7, 2007

Freedom's Price

The guard shifted nervously. There has been a few false alarms tonight, security systems from the lowest bidder going off at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a stray feather of a seagull; that one had happened three times last month. At least it was just the alarms tonight. Last time, it was the rooftop autoguns.

That had been one seriously fucked-up bird. Ouch.

Still, the constant scream of high-pitched sirens was getting on his nerves. Tonight was his one year anniversary of working at the Zigguraut. There was a certificate waiting in his locker and a nice strip steak waiting to be cooked at home. He didn't usually eat expensive food but the prison's Survivor bonus let him afford good beef and a bottle of table wine as well. Treats like that were rare but once in a while, it really made working around all these criminal scumbags worth the effort.

Of course, his superiors calling it a Survivor bonus drove home a terrible fact of life here at the Zig. There were a lot of dangerous posts in this jail; people got hurt all the time. Turnover in the guard pool was pretty high. More than a dozen job opening a months occurred here, most the hard way...

But that wasn't a problem for him. He had one of the easy jobs. All he had to do was stand in front of this cell door for six hours a night as part of the Zig's "Total Security" policy. Honestly, there wasn't any need for him to be here at all but the last thing he was going to to do was complain about such a sweet assignment. If the powers that be in Paragon City wanted to pay him to guard one of the ICs, why complain?

IC stood for Incapacitated Convict but around the guard pool, it meant Ice Cube. ICs were prisoners who were never allowed to regain consciousness. Usually they were mutants or other inwardly powered villains whose abilities were resistant to the drugs that kept the rest of the prisoner population dormant and weak. Vegetables with no ability to move, much less escape, they were about as threatening as a toddler with an unloaded Nerf gun.

Happy to be in one of the only roles in the Zig that didn't expose him to the depraved and the ultra-violent, he did his best each night to not fall asleep at his post. There was never any action, never any risk. He didn't even know who he was guarding and he didn't much care. Whoever this loss to humanity was, the Ice Cube kept him safe. He liked it that way.

His death was quick and painless. By the time he was aware of the blade in his skull, it had already penetrated through his brain and severed his spinal cord at the top vertebrae. There was very little blood; he just slumped to the ground like a forgotten marionette.

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From the shadows, his killer released its grip from the ceiling and turned to land on its feet. A set of wires extended from its outstretched hand and slipped into the complex lock on the cell door. Lights glimmered across the security panel, flashing red for several seconds before turning green. A metallic click resounded inside the door as the lock released.

The black-clad assassin slipped into the cell, closing the door behind it. Non-descript and apparently genderless, there was nothing to identify it in any way. Humanoid, embedded with metal plates and cybernetic devices and bearing a short blade mounted in the palm of its left hand, the silent wraith was as quick as it was deadly. Moments later, the thick ballistic glass window of the cell door was coated in dripping red.

The eerily agile killer stepped over the body of the prisoner's medical technician. Carefully stepping over the growing pool of the intern's leaking life, it made its way to the room's only important feature - the isolation bed.

Its hand blade began to hum, easily slicing through the metal alloy shackles holding down the bed's lone occupant. After the clasps and sheathes pinning the prisoner were left in ruins, the assassin completed its mission here by retracting its palm weapon and extending a thin crystal needle in its place. With the precision of a surgeon, it injected the sleeping figure through the softer skin of his exposed throat.

The stimulant delivered, the killer's task was done. It stepped back against the far wall of the cell and reached into the steel-silk wraps of its chest. Fingers danced across a control panel over its metal chest plate. Energy flickered over its robotic body, suffusing its limbs and wreathing its masked face. In a blinding flash, the slayer disappeared, consumed utterly and without a trace.

Minutes passed, blood cooled and the complex chemical worked its way through the prisoner's motionless body...

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Elsewhere in the Zig, a control screen blazed with a security alarm going off in the I.C. Ward. Two uniformed men stared at the monitor, shaking their heads.

"Another false red?"

"Probably. Should we check it?"

"Nah. Let the guard for that room do it."

"Good idea. Those bastards gets paid for nothing anyway."

"Yeah. I wish I had his job."

"No shit."

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