The Callisto Protocol

CH/\PTER 06: Outbreak

"Attention: all security personnel report to the main cell block. This is NOT a drill."

Jacob was thrust unceremoniously back into the cruel and cold land of consciousness.

He returned to a world of pain and unfocused uncertainty. Everything hurt. Somewhere, an alarm was cycling, loud and strident. It seemed to amplify the intensity of his pain, his whole body thrumming in a merciless cycle of agony.

"Please, remain calm. There is nothing to fear..."

The voice was familiar, and had the faint resonance of a speaker. Jacob opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a heavily scratched and pitted metal surface some three feet above him. Light was shifting to his left.

Something was wrong, deeply wrong, but for a moment he was blanking on what.

He knew he needed to act. Jacob rolled over and sat up, careful of the metal plate above him. He was in a cell. Directly ahead of him was a shifting, distorted hologram of a familiar man. Finely dressed, bald, smug.

A cold smile touched the hologram's face.

"I repeat, my friends, there is absolutely nothing to fear..."

"Warden," Jacob muttered.

The word came out as a croak. The world seemed to be coming at him at a million miles per hour. He could smell smoke. He heard someone screaming. Several someones. The sound of conflict, the age old, primal noise of two men beating on each other with their bare fists. Someone was coughing raggedly.

Everything didn't so much slide into place as get jammed painfully and at odd angles into his head.

He remembered everything in a tumble of uncertain images.

The cargo bay. The Outer Way. The crash.

The bots. The asshole, Ferron. Or whatever his name had been. Being taken.

The ride and the lights and the processing.

The device they'd soldered to the back of his neck.

Jacob winced as he felt a stab of cold pain at the back of his neck. He reached up slowly, afraid of what he'd find there, and gingerly probed. A wave of sick fear and rage swept through him as he touched something flat and metal and warm. It was stuck firmly to his flesh. He gave it a gentle, experimental tug as best he could manage and immediately felt a fresh pulse of agony rip through him.

"Fuck you," he growled, gritting his teeth.

The light vanished, the holographic flicking out of existence, and he was left alone with his thoughts and his new reality.

He'd been imprisoned, but...

Jacob got uncertainly to his feet, pushing away at the pain that enveloped him. Something was burning beyond the bars of his cell. Lights flashed. Chaos seemed to be running rampant out there. He looked around his cell. He was alone.

He had to get out of here.

Jacob looked at the door and hesitated. It looked like it had been left ajar, barely a quarter inch of space between its edge and the wall. Was it? Was he actually just...free to walk out of his cell? He hurried over and grasped the grating, then gave it a tug.

The door moved. He gasped despite himself and shoved it the rest of the way. It clanked open. In a fit of desperation and paranoia, he stepped past it, suddenly convinced it was going to slam shut and lock him in there. He stepped out onto the walkway beyond and found himself abruptly immersed in a horrifying reality of smoke and blood and terror.