BLACK INK SOCIETY {Sci-Fi Thriller} #Wattys2016

Part 12,1: The Prisoner's Dilemma

Lupin flinched as the door fell shut behind him. Self-lock mechanism. Once he was in, there was no way to get out on his own. He hoped Irene had managed to hijack the controls, otherwise - he was doomed.
He stepped carefully through the empty, dark corridor. Steel door to steel door, the cells lay in absolute silence. No sound came from the inside. And it made him very uncomfortable.

Lupin knew that at least one person had to be imprisoned here, and persons tended to produce sound - but the complete absence of it sent shivers down his spine. Maybe the cells are insulated, he thought. How would he know which one was Frye's?

He stopped.

No, that can't be.

He had made a mistake. How on earth could he have been so stupid? Lupin grabbed the first random doorknob. Nothing happened. He had forgotten to open the cell doors.

Had there been a switch in the control room? He honestly could not tell. Had he simply overlooked it or was it an entirely different mechanism? How could he have expected, in a prison, the cell doors of all doors to be open? Lupin ran a hand through his hair as his brain rapidly counted down the options. There weren't any.
And as he had not found any of the custom adjusted comlinks Irene had been talking about, there was no way for him to contact his associates. He was trapped.

The only thing that caught his eye was a grey locker at the end of the hallway. Lupin, in the blind hope of a moribund idiot, opened the doors; maybe expecting to find the keys to the cell doors, maybe to find a crowbar or something else to fend off the guards as soon as they returned.
What he found was clothes, baggy beige shirts and pants with numbers printed on them in blue, auto-fluorescent dye. Prisoner uniforms. He took a deep breath.

Looks like this time I am done for.

A noise almost made him jump out of his skin. A soft click, barely audible, directly behind him.

One of the cell doors had moved out of its frame. Just an inch, but enough to know it wasn't locked anymore. "Thank God," he spluttered.

"Don't thank God. Thank me."

The voice came from the speaker on the ceiling. It was Irene.

"What took you so long, for pity's sake?" hissed Lupin.

"I can't hear you. Listen to me. Change of plans. Get into one of these uniforms and enter the cell. Frye has to be in there. Hurry."

"Irene, what are you... you have control of video surveillance, right?"

"Again, I can't hear you."

Lupin pointed into the camera and imitated glasses.

"Don't worry," said Irene with a chuckle, "I won't look. Or if I did, that wouldn't be a problem. Just pull it over your own clothes, you cannot leave them here. They would identify you."

Lupin rolled his eyes and pulled out one of the uniforms, changed as fast as humanly possible and opened the cell door.

"Good luck," Irene added.

"Sod me," growled Lupin silently as he stepped into the shadows.

His eyes needed a second to adjust to the darkness, but Lupin spotted numbers dimly glowing in blue. After a moment he began to see the shapes of the corresponding prisoners. They sat on the floor, densely packed, the air stifled by the sweat of too many human beings in one room.
He could see their eyes, some widening with fear as he entered, some listless, half-closed, not even noticing his presence. 

Whatever happened to the prisoners in this place?

The fear mixed with confusion as they realised he wasn't a guard, but wearing a uniform exactly like theirs. Lupin cleared his throat.

"Les Frye?"

No one anwered.

"Mr. Frye, I'm here to get you out..."

"No talking!" A coarse voice hissed from the back of the room. "The guards can hear us!"

"The guards are gone. I am here to get you out. Where's Les Frye?" He looked around, but couldn't distinguish the chemist from the other figures in the cell. It had to be around twenty men and women, crammed into a 4 x 4 metre room.

The prisoners began to whisper.

"Are you telling the truth?"

Lupin nodded.

"This is a test, isn't it."

"No, it's not," he responded patiently. "Look at me. I'm not one of them. I'm here to get you out, but we need to hurry. Where is Frye?"

The voice from earlier again, hesitantly. "... He's here."

Lupin closed the cell door behind him and made his way to the back of the room, almost stumbling over arms and legs in the dark, and hearing a muffled curse here and there.

Frye was slumped down in the very corner, his head sunken on his chest, eyes closed. His grey hair was sticky with a dark substance, and weirdly circular bruises were spread all over his wrinkly skin.

"Mr. Frye?" Lupin was challenged to hide his shock. "Can you hear me?"

"They were hard on him," whispered the man next to him, in a heavy eastern European accent. "Who knows what he got snatched for. Wouldn't tell them a thing, but we could hear it every night, the whole drill. I'm surprised he's still alive." There was fear in his voice, a fear that was all too comprehensible for Lupin.

He leaned forward and gently touched Frye's shoulder. "Mr. Frye?"

Frye started up, his eyes gaped in horror. Lupin stumbled backwards and almost fell over the prisoner behind him. "You," whispered the chemist.

"Me," confirmed Lupin.

Frye stared at him like he was the manifestation of the devil on earth. And to be entirely honest, Lupin could not hold it against him.

"What the living hell have I done," the chemist carked eventually, "Who are you? Who are you people?"

"Believe it or not, but I'm here to..."

An ear-battering sound from the door shattered the silence. "Get down," Frye hissed and weakly pulled on Lupin's arm until he crouched down with the others. The cell door opened. Four guards, taser sticks at the ready, entered the room.

"Get up, you maggots," shouted one of them, "Now! Don't make me ask twice!"

The prisoners jumped on their feet, as good as they managed to, and hurried towards the door. Lupin was dragged along by the crowd. One of the guards pulled a hood over his head, and he bumped into the doorframe before another guard forcibly directed him into the corridor and up the stairs.

Great, he thought. I hope Irene has a plan.

A/N ~ I'm back!! Thank you for your patience, but I had a lot going on with my A-Levels. I shall try to finish the book in 2017! Thank you again, my lovely readers, for sticking with me!