The screech of iron rollers carried down the corridor as a cell door slid open. Liz and the others jumped from their beds and pressed themselves up against the bars. Head hard against the cold steel, Liz strained for a glimpse of what was happening. The faces of their fellow inmates appeared behind the bars of the other cells.
At the very limits of her view, Liz could just make out a group of doctors talking quietly around the cell at the end of the corridor. Beside them, guards were shouting at the occupants. They carried steel batons now, instead of the familiar rifles of the past few days.
The guards disappeared into the cell. The raised voices of the prisoners echoed down to them, followed by the muffled thud of steel on flesh.
Retreating from the bars, Liz looked at the others. Sam and Chris stared back, their eyes wide, uncertainty written across their faces. Ashley only pursed her lips, her gaze roaming the cell.
Liz returned to the bars as a girl's cry echoed down the corridor. She watched the doctors gathering around a steel trolley. One was leaning over an open drawer on the side of the cart. Reaching inside, he drew out a packet of syringes. Vials of a clear liquid followed, which he handed out to the other doctors. Together, they turned and followed the guards into the cell. Another shriek echoed down the corridor, a boy's this time.
"What's going on?" Chris asked from behind her.
Liz glanced at the others. "It's some sort of injection. They've got syringes and a trolley loaded with God only knows what else."
As she finished speaking, a long, drawn-out scream erupted from the cell at the end of the corridor. Liz flinched, pressing her face hard against the bars. Distantly she remembered the faces of the two captives in that cell: a young girl with blonde hair, a boy with dreadlocks.
The girl's scream slowly faded, but before it ceased the boy's voice joined in, carrying the awful notes of agony to their little cell. Liz shuddered, fighting the urge to cover her ears. The shrieks rose and fell, twisting and cracking, almost inhuman in their anguish.
Turning, she saw the blood draining from the other's faces, felt her own cheeks grow cold with a terrible fear.
Finally the screams died away, leaving only silence.
The screech of trolley wheels on concrete followed as the doctors made their way to the next cell.
"What do we do?" Chris asked again.
"We fight," came Ashley's reply.
Liz turned and stared at the girl, her heart thudding hard in her chest. "What?" From down the corridor came the rattle of another cell opening. "What about the collars—?" She broke off as a cough tore at her throat.
Staggering past the others, she fumbled at the sink and turned the faucet. As she drank, Ashley continued: "Those batons, why do they need them?" Her voice was calm now. "They haven't needed them until now."
"It's like you said before," Sam mused. "They don't want us dead. They've been saving us for something. For this."
"Really?" Chris snapped. "Because I'm pretty sure they just killed those two."
"They're not using the collars," Liz croaked as she re-joined them. The realization had come as she pressed her mouth to the faucet, making the collar dig into her neck. "No guns or collars."
Sam grinned and cracked his knuckles. "In that case, I agree with Ashley."
Liz leaned against the pole of her bunk bed, drawing reassurance from its solidity. She looked at the others, her stomach fluttering. Sam looked more alive than she'd ever seen him, his eyes alight with a frightening rage. Chris stood beside him, tense and ready, one eye on the door to the cell.
And Ashley…just looked like Ashley—cool, calm, collected. She pushed past the boys as another scream rattled from the walls. As Liz and the others took up station near the door, Ashley crouched between the beds and lifted a piece of railing which lay wedged against the wall. Liz blinked, realizing it was the broken safety railing for her bed.
Ashley offered Sam the bar. Teeth flashing in a grin, he took it and held it up to the light. The three parts of the rail formed a distorted U-shape, with two short pieces of steel jutting from the longer center piece.
"Work at the joints, see if you can break them apart," Ashley said.
As Sam set to work trying to separate the bars, Ashley moved to the front of the cell and resumed her watch. Liz joined her, and together they followed their captors' slow progress through the prison.
"They're done with us," Chris whispered behind them.
Outside, the screams continued, at times fading, only to resume after the doctors entered the next cell.
"No," Ashley whispered. Her eyes took on a haunted look. "I think they're only just getting started."
"Here." Liz turned and Sam offered her one of the smaller bars. He grinned. "Just pretend they're city sluggers like me."
Liz smiled grimly. Silently, she reached out and squeezed his arm. He nodded and moved to Ashley and Chris, offering them the other two bars. Ashley took one, but Chris shook his head. His eyes did not leave the corridor, but he spoke from the side of his mouth.
"I'd prefer to keep my hands free, thanks."
Outside, the doctors had reached the cell directly across from them. Its only occupant stood at the bars, watching as the doctors drew to a halt outside. His eyes were bloodshot and tears streamed down his face.
"Please, I never did anything wrong." His voice was feeble, barely a whisper.
He retreated into his cell as the guards slid open the door. Before he could so much as raise his fists, they were on him, batons flashing in the fluorescent lights. A few seconds later they had him pinned to the bed. Without preamble, the doctors entered the cell. One pulled down the inmate's pants, while another prepared the needle. They gave him an injection into his buttocks, then the doctors and guards retreated from the cell, slamming the door closed behind them.
Liz flinched as the boy screamed and began to writhe. Then the guards stepped between them and the other cell, and there was no more time to consider their neighbor's plight.
Clenching her hand hard around her improvised weapon, Liz watched as the guards gathered near the door. The pain in her throat had strangely faded, leaving only a dull ache. Blood pounded in her ears as she tensed, readying herself.
"Stand back, drop those," one of the guards ordered, eyeing their makeshift batons.
When they didn't move, he turned to look at the doctors.
"What are you waiting for?" Doctor Radly's voice carried into the cell. "Get in there and take those off them. You know we can't use the collars. We can't have any interference with their nervous system."
The guard nodded and reached out to unlock the door. The others gathered behind him, seven in total, their batons held ready.
A strange calm settled over Liz as the door slid open, the terror of the past few days falling away. This was it. This was their only chance. If they failed, she knew in her heart they were lost.
As the first of the guards moved into the cell, movement flickered beside Liz. She turned in time to see Chris lunge forward. The guard grinned and raised his baton, but Chris was faster still. Leaping lightly from the concrete floor, he twisted in the air to avoid the guard's blow, and then drove his boot into the side of the man's head.
Liz gaped as the man's eyes rolled up in his skull and he collapsed to the ground.
Chris landed lightly in the doorway and retreated to re-join them.
"Six to go." He grinned, his smile infectious.
Shaking her head, Liz gripped the metal bar tighter and tried to hide her shock.
Outside, the remaining guards grabbed their fallen comrade by the feet and dragged his unconscious body out into the corridor. One of the doctors crouched beside him and placed a stethoscope to his chest. Radly glanced down at the man, then back at the guards. Each of them dwarfed even Sam's large frame, but still they stood, hesitating in the hallway.
"Well?" Radly snapped. "What are we paying you for? Get in there!"
The guards shared a glance, then approached together. Pushing the sliding door wide open, they entered as a group this time. They paused for a second in the entryway, hefting their batons, then rushed forward.
Liz tensed as a guard came at her, his baton flashing for her face. She ducked, and the hackles on her neck tingled as it whistled over her head. Then she lifted her own weapon and drove it into the man's midriff.
The blow caught him as he was moving forward, and his own weight drove the air from his lungs. Liz lifted her bar to strike him again, then threw herself to the side as another guard swung at her. The clang of steel rang out as the baton left a dent in the bunk bed behind her.
Recovering, she turned and found the first guard already straightening. The two of them bore down on her, forcing her away from the others.
Liz gripped her makeshift weapon tight, knowing she was hopelessly outmatched. Snarling, she threw herself forward anyway. They grinned, raised their batons. Then another guard staggered into them, sending them stumbling forward. Seeing her chance, Liz swung her pole into the face of the nearest guard.
There was a satisfying crunch as her baton struck home, and he dropped without a sound. She leapt for the gap he'd left, trying to re-join the others, but the second guard had already recovered. He stepped in to block her, his baton already in motion. The blow caught her in the stomach, knocking the breath from her lungs and sending her backwards into the wall.
Groaning, she tried to recover, but a fist caught her in the side of the face. Her feet crumpled beneath the force of the blow, and she slid sideways into the crook between the wall and the bunk. Tasting blood in her mouth, she tried to get her hands and knees beneath her, but a heavy boot crashed into her back, pinning her down.
Her ears ringing, Liz twisted, desperate for a glimpse of the others. But the fight was already over. In the narrow confines, the guards' weight and numbers had made short work of the four prisoners. Sam lay immobilized on his own bed, one arm twisted behind his back and a guard's knee pressed between his shoulder blades. Ashley was similarly restrained on the floor nearby, while Chris still stood, his arms held by a man on either side of him. The last guard was just getting to his feet, a nasty bruise on his forehead.
"About time," Radly's sarcastic voice came from somewhere out of view. "Would you like something easier next time? Maybe some toddlers?"
The guards were silent as the doctors filed in, carrying an assortment of vials and syringes. As the doctors prepared themselves, Radly looked around the room. His eyes settled on Liz. "Get her up."
Tears stung Liz's eyes as a rough hand grasped a handful of her hair and pulled. Screaming, she drove a fist into the man's side, but the blow hardly seemed to faze him. A sharp pain came from her scalp as he pulled again. Kicking and screaming, Liz was hauled to her feet.
"This one's feisty," the guard commented as he tossed her onto Ashley's bed.
Before Liz could free herself, a guard landed on her back. An awful helplessness welled in her as she tried and failed to shift his weight. Pain lanced from her scalp again as the guard yanked her head back, forcing her to look at them.
"Stay still," he growled in her ear.
"Please don't do this," Ashley pleaded from the floor.
The thud of a boot striking flesh silenced her desperate words. A low groan followed. Liz twisted again, trying to get a glimpse of her friend, but the white coat of a doctor moved to block her view. Doctor Radly stared down at her.
"Enough," Radly said, his tone brooking no argument.
Unlike Halt, Radly did not appear to take any joy in their pain. Rather, he didn't seem to care about their comfort one way or another. He moved around the cell with a cold efficiency, retrieving a stoppered vial from the hands of another doctor. Lifting a nasty-looking syringe, he eyed the thick needle for a second before driving it through the vial's rubber stopper. Then he drew back the plunger and the liquid disappeared into the syringe.
"Doctor Faulks," Radly said, addressing someone standing just outside of Liz's view, "this is the PERV-A strain?"
"Yes," a woman's reply came quickly. "We've already finished with the B strain. The rest are marked down for PERV-A."
Nodding, Radly turned back to Liz. "Hold her." Liz shuddered as the guard shifted, taking a firmer grip of her shoulders.
From the corner of her eye, she watched Radly approach, his gloved hands cradling the syringe. He disappeared from her line of vision. Seconds later, firm hands tugged at her pants, and a cold breeze blew across her backside. She tensed, pushing back against her assailant's relentless strength.
A sigh came from behind her. "This will go easier for you if you relax, Ms. Flores."
Hearing her last name sent a bolt of shock through Liz. For a second she hesitated, then bit off a string a profanity that would have made even her father blush.
Another sigh, then a cold cloth pressed against her butt-cheek. A shiver raced up her spine, more shock from the violation than from the cold. A low, guttural growl built in her throat, and the guard's knee pressed harder into the small of her back. She no longer cared. A desperate horror was growing within her, an awful fear, a need to break free.
She screamed again, writhing and bucking beneath the guard, straining to shift his weight.
A sudden pinch came from her naked backside, followed by a strange pressure that spread quickly across her cheek. It was gentle at first, a cold numbness that tingled as it went. But it warmed quickly, like a fire gathering heat, until her muscles were aflame from its touch. The tingling raced outwards, spreading to her legs and back.
Liz gasped, fighting the pain, desperate to fend it off. She gritted her teeth, tensing against its relentless spread. The pressure on her back vanished as the guard released her, but by then she barely noticed. Her attention was elsewhere, her focus fixed on the sensations rippling through her body.
Then, as though a switch had been flicked, the muscles down the length of her back locked in a sudden cramp. Pain unlike any Liz had experienced closed around her, walling her off from the world, trapping her in the fiery arms of its cage. Her eyes snapped open, but all she saw were stars, whirling across her vision, blinding in their brilliance. In the distance she heard a scream, a girl's voice tearing at the blackness of her mind, but she could do nothing to help her now.
Agony engulfed her body, her mind, her very soul.