Imprisoned Read online

  After a moment, Ari realized she had no choice but to do the same. But she could feel the eyes of every prisoner in the Mess Hall on her and Lathe as they moved.

  Though she felt safer from the rest of the inmates, she felt more uncertain than ever about the big Kindred.

  “That was quite a display you put on up there, Medic,” Xolox burbled, waving his tentacles as Lathe and Ari seated themselves at table 13.

  “It wasn’t by choice,” Lathe growled. The front of his neck was bleeding and his throat hurt from the sawing of the cut-cord—Hexer had been a strong little son-of-a-bitch, he would give the male that.

  But it wasn’t just his throat that hurt—his heart ached too. He had killed again. And worse, Hexer had been one of his patients—one that Lathe had worked closely with in the past.

  Fuck, how could he? I saved his arm after that accident with the link-saw in the work-house. And then he used the arm I saved to try to kill me.

  The huge muscular appendage had been nearly severed and Lathe had managed to reattach it—a feat he was well aware that not many physicians could have pulled off, especially considering the limited facilities BleakHall offered. He had monitored Hexer every day—even going to his cell to check on the little male and change his dressings. The day the bandages had come off, Hexer had given Lathe a hug and thanked him with tears in his eyes.

  And now this.

  I wonder what Tapper paid him to try it, Lathe wondered sourly. A full pack of nico-sticks? A 3-D porn mag—what? What is my life worth in this fucking hellhole?

  Whatever it was, it had been enough to overcome any feelings of friendship or gratitude the little man had towards Lathe. Enough to make him try to kill him.

  It was a damn good thing Ari shouted when he did, Lathe thought, stirring his blunt plasti-utensil idly through the re-structured protein mush which was what BleakHall served most mornings for First Meal. If he hadn’t warned me, I never would have gotten my hands up in time.

  But he hadn’t thought he needed to worry about having Hexer in line behind him. He’d even felt a measure of safety knowing that his old patient was at his back as they moved through the chow line.

  How stupid I was, Lathe thought angrily. Tapper probably picked Hexer on purpose, knowing I would trust him—knowing I would be off my guard.

  But the truth was, he couldn’t trust anybody anymore. This hellhole of a prison was filled with nothing but murderers and thugs—rapists and thieves and traitors. And liars, all of them liars.

  “I hate liars,” he muttered savagely, stirring his mush again.

  “What’s that you say, Medic?” Xolox burbled. Beside him, Gumper’s green face showed a slow kind of sympathy.

  “Hexer. You saved…his arm,” he said simply.

  “Yes.” Lathe looked away. “I did.”

  “And he betrayed you,” Xolox remarked mournfully. “Ah, there is no honor among thieves. Everywhere liars…betrayers…colluders…”

  Drumph, his orange skin sagging in the overhead lights, his straw-like hair pasted to his head, tapped on his toy com-link and shouted, “Liars! Sad! No Collusion—Sad!”

  “Oh!” Ari jumped, apparently startled by the sudden exclamation.

  “Don’t pay any attention to Drumph,” Lathe told the boy, making an effort to get over the black mood the assassination attempt had brought on. “He’s clinically insane—doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  “I see.” Ari edged a little further from Drumph’s hunched figure and picked at his protein mush. “Do…do you feel all right?” he asked Lathe.

  “Except for a sore throat, I’ll be fine.” He tried to keep his tone light but it wasn’t easy. “Hurry and eat. After First Meal all new prisoners get their job assignments—we don’t want to be late to the assignment line or who knows what you’ll get.”

  “All right.” But though the boy continued to pick at the yellow protein mush, he still seemed deeply troubled.

  “Hey, it’s all right,” Lathe told him, seeing the look of fear in those big dark eyes again. “No one else will try anything for a while. You’ll be safe now that everyone knows you’re under my protection.”

  “Thank you,” Ari murmured but his eyes darted away and wouldn’t meet Lathe’s. Was he really still so frightened?

  Suppose I’ll have to give him some time, Lathe told himself. Nearly getting murdered might be almost commonplace in BleakHall but it was still a traumatic experience—especially for someone as innocent as Ari. Sighing, he went back to his own mush.

  There was nothing else he could do.

  Sixteen

  “Number 117—prizon laundry,” the Horvath guard announced in his buzzing, guttural voice.

  “Laundry?” Lathe protested, from his spot behind Ari, who was standing in a long row of new prisoners, most of whom had already gotten their work assignments. “I specifically requested him in the Infirmary. There are over a thousand prisoners at BleakHall and only one of me—I need an assistant.”

  “Mukluk sayzz you’ll get an azziztant when you zztart treating all the prizonerz again,” the guard told him. “He heard your announzement that you would no longer treat The Rabzz.”

  “That’s a matter of self-defense,” Lathe protested. “I have to have something to hold over the other inmates’ heads or I’ll be dead by sundown.”

  “Neverthelezz, Mukluk’s word izz law. Take it up with him. Number 117—laundry,” the guard remarked imperturbably.

  Lathe gave a frustrated growl under his breath that made the short hairs at the back of Ari’s neck prickle. She kept thinking about those fangs right behind her—long and curving and filled with deadly poison. She didn’t think the big Kindred would bite her but she hadn’t even known him twenty-four solar hours yet. And any atrocity seemed horribly possible at BleakHall.

  “Fine, but I need to see Ari—number 117—in the Infirmary before he starts his shift. I need to X-ray that cheek of his,” Lathe said.

  The guard appeared to think about it for a moment, then nodded.

  “But not too long. A zzhort examinazion,” he said.

  “Fine. Come on, Ari,” Lathe growled, jerking his head.

  “Report to the Laundry when finizhed,” the guard said to her and then she had no choice but to follow Lathe out of the Mess Hall and through the double doors that led towards the Infirmary.

  “It’s worse than I thought—you have an orbital fracture.” Lathe couldn’t keep the grimness out of his voice as he studied the digital picture generated by the X-ray scanner. The machine was supposed to be used only for making certain new prisoners weren’t bringing in knives or blasters or any other metal weapons. But Lathe had learned to collimate its beam and adjust the intensity in order to take much smaller and more detailed radiographs for diagnostic purposes.

  And he wasn’t liking what he saw on the one he had taken of Ari one bit.

  “What does that mean?” Ari was sitting on the battered exam table, looking at him with that frightened uncertainty he’d had since the altercation in the Mess Hall.

  Right—altercation, sneered a little voice in Lathe’s head. Call it what it is, why don’t you, Lathe—an assassination attempt and a killing. A killing in self-defense but a killing nonetheless. The boy saw you kill Hexer and if you’d died, he would have been next. Of course he’s still a little spooked.

  Lathe hated to give Ari such bad news after what he’d so recently endured but as a doctor, there was nothing else he could do.

  “The bones in your eye socked are cracked,” he said, as gently as he could. “What’s more, it’s the bones at the floor of your orbit that are most affected. You have what we call a trapdoor fracture.”

  “Meaning what? That the bones could give way and my eye will fall down into my cheek?” the boy scoffed, apparently trying to make light of the situation. Using sarcasm to deflect fear was a normal reaction that Lathe had seen often as a physician. Unfortunately, a trapdoor orbital fracture was nothing to make light of.

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