Page 17 of From the Noblest Motives
He probably slept, eventually, but it didn't feel like it when the morning chimes sounded.
"Ah, another glorious day in the White Circle of Hell," Shudder muttered as he heaved himself out of his blanket. "Doesn't get any more glorious, right, AI friend?"
Please restate the question.
"Never mind, my dear. Forget I said anything." Of course the AI ignored him since he hadn't asked a question. "I feel like you're not really doing your best to contribute to this relationship."
By the time he was ready for the day and waiting for his door to open, he'd scrubbed away some of his crabbiness. Today's historical module was all about the role of activism in civil rights. That would be interesting. He had more than a bit of personal interest in the topic.
When Shudder reached for his tray in the dining room, he caught a whiff of something off. The biscuits and gravy didn't look burned, but a definite char smell rolled out with them. He risked a warning by hesitating at the slot and contorting himself to see inside. A distinct orange glow shone at the far end, and the char smell increased. The glow flickered.
"Oh fuck!" Shudder dropped his tray back on the conveyor and turned toward the cubicles to shout, "Fire! Fire!"
Despite all the instructions and threats from a certain AI, several heads popped up over the cubicles. Thick, black smoke poured from the food slot, lending credence to Shudder's yelling, but he was certain he was still in trouble. Black-uniformed people with opaque face-shielded helmets poured into the dining hall, all heading in his direction.
I wonder how long I'll have to stay in the tiny box room for trying to save people's lives?
They never reached him. An ominous rumble shivered through the floor. Shudder had a moment to think how much it reminded him of when he called to the earth before he was flying through the air.
The room rushed by in bewildering silence. Explosion. Must have deafened him. Odd how calming the lack of sounds could be. His shoulder impacted something, possibly a wall. Several things fell across him—he grayed out before he could puzzle out what sorts of things—and he plummeted into a strange, frantic dream in which he knew he was dead and yet kept insisting to random strangers that he wasn't.
A steady crackle of flames wormed into Shudder's dreams until the scent of burning plastic brought him all the way back. Clearly, he wasn't dead, and even more clearly, the room was ablaze. If he wanted to keep being not dead, he needed to move. He tried straightening an arm first, and when that went well, felt around his head, where some flat metal plating had fallen. An experimental shove dislodged the debris, though his head throbbed and the wet trickle past his ear was probably blood.
Something heavier lay across his back and legs—uncomfortable and probably scraping some skin off, but not impossible to wriggle out from, once he got moving. Everything hurt, though everything also moved well enough without him screaming. That would do for now.
He sat up, once he'd crawled free of the debris and took stock. A huge hole gaped in the dining room's wall where the conveyor had once run, wires and severed cords sparking and flaring. Flames roared within that gaping hole, the intense heat causing Shudder to retreat and check to see whether his shoes were melting.
The individual cubicles closest to the conveyor had been knocked flat, and a hand or foot stuck out from the wreckage here and there. Shudder crawled to the nearest, keeping low under the building smoke, and lifted the cubicle panels off to find a blunt-nosed man underneath, unconscious but still breathing.
Help. There should be help coming, right? Oh, right, they were already here before the blast. There are actual humans guarding this underworld. Stygian? Is that the word?
Shudder shook his head, telling himself sternly to focus on the important things. He was up and moving, capable of pulling people out of the blast area toward the guards who had begun to evacuate the ambulatory prisoners and drag the unmoving from the room. They weren't being careful, but the flames didn't care about proper emergency response protocols and were spreading fast. Shudder couldn't blame the guards for not taking every medical precaution.
He gripped the other prisoner's shirt and dragged him in an awkward three-limbed crawl that kept his head lower than the smoke and got them moving into the clear space between collapsed cubicles. Going was slow, since Mr. Blunt-Nose was a solidly built man and heavier than he appeared. Shudder hoped to get a few more of the trapped prisoners to the guards, but he was running out of time.
And who starts evacuating the people farthest away from the fire, anyway? They should've rushed in and gotten everyone closest to the explosion first. But, yeah, inmates, so who cares, I guess.
The smoke seared the back of his throat—was it blacker than when he woke up? But a little coughing wasn't stopping him. He was Shudder Freaking McKenzie, and he held off an entire compound of security guards with earth surfing and a handgun.
For a little while, anyway.
"McKenzie!"
Smoke had roughened the rasping voice to gravel across glass, but Shudder had no trouble recognizing it as the one who had threatened him during his first mealtime. He turned, not wanting his back to someone who sounded so unhinged, and searched the smoke for movement, wishing he could throw up an earthwork barrier.
"Do you need help?" he asked cautiously, still scooting backward toward the exit. "Are you stu—"
The blow came from the side, a shocking tackle that slammed the breath from his lungs before he caught sight of his assailant. They slid a good twenty feet through the gray snowfall of ash littering the floor and smashed against a support column. Hard, bony hands closed around Shudder's throat.
"You were supposed to die, you conceited asshole," the man rasped. He might have been handsome once, but old burn scars trailed down the left side of his face, and new burns streaked black and red across his forehead. "Making me do this the fucking hard way."
Shudder scrabbled desperately, trying to get some purchase on the fingers closing off his windpipe, trying to jerk a knee up to smash into vulnerable parts. But he wasn't getting any purchase, and his vision grew spotty around the edges. Just as his sight tunneled, a telltalecrackle hiss cracklecame from somewhere beneath him.Uh-oh. I've heard that before, but where…
He heard the explosion this time, the boom and roar as he and his assailant were thrown into the air, then came down. Though down felt a good deal farther than up had. Strange things sometimes, explosions.
The second time Shudder came to, he was certain he'd woken up in hell. Fire burned somewhere above him—how far above, he wasn't sure. His head pounded, and trying to judge distance made him queasy. Rock poked his back. He uncurled a hand and found more rock to his right. He turned his head the other way and found his attacker sprawled on his other side.I think he's had better days. Actually, I think he's dead.
Unlikely that he would've survived with his head at that angle, though Shudder struggled to muster any sympathy. On the dead man's other side there were pipes, mostly whole. Water pipes, sewage, steam—he had no idea. Reaching out to the rocks around him, he estimated he was twelve, maybe fifteen feet below the floor of the dining room.
