New Elysium: Breakout

One Prison to Another Part 41

Dedicated to @AuthorJMColes for being on it! Plus we can't go too long without mentioning the president of the Lars fan club. 

Red shivered as the gloved hands patted him down. He was completely naked and yet they continued to invade every possible cavity they could find. It was too much like what had happened when he went into Helion 7 in the first place. He shook where he stood, doing his best to not lash out. Doing his best to remind himself that this was, in fact, the place where they were going to be free.

But they were doing their damndest to remind him of going to prison.

The water sprayed down the line of naked bodies as they pushed them down, guns pointed at them. Red was sore as he shuffled along. He'd just been cut, they'd all been sterilized to keep anyone from having a child in the prison. Some of them had struggled going in but in the end, it had happened. 

It made no sense to Red at the time. Why waste the energy? The males streamed out bodies wet as they were shoved along a hallway. Poked and prodded, their augments were recorded, some of the more dangerous ones were stripped, but it would have been bad form to kill them outright. The public had lost family members, Helion 7 was a model prison for their own protection.

 Brown clothes were shoved into their hands and they were processed into a slow death.

Red had taken a swing at the guards that day, and Dag had held him back. "Live to fight another day, Red, we'll get out of this," Dag had whispered.

"Fuck this," Red had snapped. He'd been doing something on the outside, in here, he was trapped.

"Red, please man," Dag had pleaded with him.  Red had stared at his friend finally seeing Dag. Dag, his friend who'd stuck by him, Dag who'd just lost his family, Dag who'd ended up in here with him because Red had tried fight off six scandroids at once. Dag, who he realized, was struggling just as much as he was. Red swallowed his anger and nodded. 

It had been the same day he'd first coined his mantra. "My only crime is that I'm flesh, circuit, and bone..."  

They'd been given a short seminar of their rooms, told which cells were theirs, the time of day they opened and shut and shoved them through a large metal door. 

If it hadn't been for Dag at his side, constantly pushing him through, Red wouldn't have made it this far...

The muscles in his arms were tensed and strained as he snapped back to the present. He'd been sprayed down with water upon removal of his clothes. No one said anything as the gloved hands roamed over him. He closed his eyes as he was scanned repeatedly. There was no Dag next to him to tell him to stay calm. He inhaled forcing himself to ignore what was happening.

 I did not escape one prison just to go into another.

He focused his attention outside the window and stared at the Aphelion as it loomed, larger than life just on the other side. The last time he'd left it, it had been at Lars's side, and his whole world had changed. How did it get here? 

He'd remembered every detail of the Aphelion, the Leviathan class vessel was a moving working city full of military people and their families.  It deployed smaller ships from its many bays, and Red briefly wondered if there were any inside. If there were, New Elysium had captured a weapon of mass proportions and Neo-Tokyo had every reason to fear an uprising.

He stared at the nose of the ship. It was from that room he'd spent many evenings having conversations with Lars, his second. He'd kept himself mostly separate from his crew. He knew all their names, but he didn't mingle too much. At the time he was more interested in exploration, not connections. Any time a colony sprang outward, he was thrilled to bring them supplies. Terraforming worlds was no easy task.  Finding worlds they could terraform on the outer spirals was a dream job.