10.

Marten opened his eyes in terror. Then he squinted against the bright light…. This wasn’t the cylinder. Ah, he’d been having a nightmare.

He tried to sit up, and winced painfully. Back, shoulders and sides, every muscle protested the slightest twitch. If he lay perfectly still and didn’t breathe too deeply he’d be okay.

Then he wondered where everyone was. He’d have to sit up to find out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that badly.

Finally, with a moan, he lifted his torso and swung his feet off the bench. He sat there panting, and groaning. A muscle in his side quivered and cramped. He shot to his feet, yelling, and clutched his side, all his muscles complaining at the movement. He paced until the cramp eased away.

Where was everybody? He might have shrugged, but that would have hurt.

Oh, to finally be out of the dreadful cylinder. A ripple of fear, like electricity, shivered through him. He didn’t ever want to go back. They’d have to kill him first.

Frowning, Marten faced the door. The last thing he remembered was someone calling the major. Was this some sort of test, a means to make him talk? He decided no, that was too sophisticated for these brutes. He shuffled to the door, waited and dared touch it. It didn’t shock him, which he’d half suspected it might.

“Did they steal your balls, Marten?” he whispered.

A hideous smile stretched his lips in lieu of an answer. He twisted the doorknob, his heart pounding. He stared into an empty corridor. Lines of puzzlement creased his forehead. He opened the door wider. The corridor went about twenty paces before coming to a T-junction. He listened, but heard no one.

Okay. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he moved down the corridor. The lights glowed overhead, and somewhere a generator hummed. He came to the junction, and he knew that to the right was the auditorium. Left were the cells. The only way he wanted to go back to the auditorium was with a machine gun in his hands. So he went left.  Where was everybody?

This didn’t make sense.

He laughed bitterly.

Why did it have to make sense? An opportunity should be taken, not analyzed to death.

He crossed a line painted in the middle of the corridor. On one side, the corridor was white. The other side was green. Cells doors lined the green walls. He peered through a tiny glass window in the first door. Empty. He moved to the next. That cell was also empty. He tried the knob. Locked. So he kept moving, increasing his pace. The truth came to him that it frightened him to be alone. He shook his head. It had never frightened him down in Level Sixty.

Marten passed another painted line as he headed for the guard areas. The corridor color changed from green to blue. At the next door he came to, he opened it and went through. The air was damp and hotter than in the hall. He paused. To his left were the showers, the slick-suit dressing room and a hatch to the heat flats. To his right… he didn’t know what lay behind the door he’d always seen the guards enter.

So he tried it, and to his surprise, the door opened. Marten stared into a room with a wall of TV screens and a control panel. His heart thudded as he entered. Then he stopped, unbelieving. A grin transformed him as he picked a shock rod off a chair. He clicked it to its highest setting, feeling it hum in his hands. He barged through the next door. In the room was a lunch box. He tore it open and crammed a sandwich into his mouth. It tasted like egg and hurt his throat because he swallowed such big chunks. He didn’t care. He guzzled orange juice and gnawed on a chocolate bar. For a moment his gut hurt, then strength seemed to ooze into him.

Back in the control room, Marten tested switches. The TV screens flickered into life showing the heat flats. He peered more closely. People in slick-suits floated face down in the scum, with glaring sunlamps hanging three feet above them in the ceiling. Workers usually crawled through the algae, using a bar to break apart clumps and scrape hardened slime from the bottom. Five-hour stints were all a person could take before heat exhaustion set in. Marten cursed under his breath. None of those bodies so much as twitched. He saw that slime had crusted on some of them. That took at least three hours to form.

Marten pressed more switches, jumping views. There were more dead floaters. A lump stuck in his throat. Then he saw movement. He counted them, seven people at a lock—wait. It was this hatch and it looked like his old squad. One man slowly banged against the iron door.

Marten moved out of the room, down the corridor, through the showers and decontamination center. He hurried to the hatch, cranked the lever and spun the wheel. The hatch opened with a whomp.

A vile, swampy stench blew into the room and a blistering humidity caused him to sweat. He staggered from the entrance. Picking up an emergency hose, he waited. His old comrades dragged themselves into the room, flopping onto the plasteel floor. Scum clung tenaciously to them, making them look like swamp monsters.

Marten twisted the nozzle, hosing them with detergent. One of them closed the hatch with a clang. When they were clean, he helped them peel off their slick-suits and masks. They looked worse than he did, with hot, feverish skin, some with tiny blisters on their face, neck and torso. As they crawled to the showers, he sprinted to the control room, experimented until he found the right switch and turned on the water. He hurried back. They lay on their sides or stomachs, slurping water off the floor. Then they lay still, blissful in the drizzle.

Later, they crawled to the drying area. Stick was one of them. He struggled to his feet and tried to face Marten down.

“You want some?” wheezed the street fighter.

Marten wasn’t sure what he felt, whether the man’s bravado was admirable or laughable. The truth was it would be simplicity itself to beat Stick to death. Then the scarred street fighter, the former knifeboy, flexed his hands in classic karate style. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so easy.

“You lied about me,” said Marten

“Yeah?” said Stick, hunching his shoulders.

“They almost killed me for it.”

Stick glanced at the others.

One of them, Marten saw, tried to sit up. Then he noticed another working his way to his feet, a mean-faced, muscle-bound Asian. Marten stepped back so he could keep all three in view.

Stick frowned. “Wait,” he told them. “How come…” He tilted his head in puzzlement.

“How long were you in the heat flats?” Marten asked, giving the knifeboy time to orient himself.

Stick examined the tiny blisters on his arms. He seemed bemused. “Where’d they go?”

Marten shrugged.

“Ain’t anyone here?” asked a tall, stork-like man called Turbo, who leaned heavily against the wall.

“You’re incorrigibles, right?” Marten asked.

That deepened their scowls.

“You’re from the slums, right?”

“So?” said Turbo.

“You feel like eating more crap?” Marten asked, “Or maybe dealing it out for a change?”

Stick cracked his knuckles as he glanced at the other two, the only ones who showed interest in Marten’s words.

“What do you have in mind?” asked the muscle-bound Asian, a Korean.

Marten lowered the baton to a water slick. A spark jumped from the instrument, the electrical current making momentary tracings in the water.

“What about between you and me?” asked Stick.

Marten shrugged. “There is bigger game afoot.”

Stick grinned.

“Yeah?” said Turbo. “Count me in.”