Imprisoned Read online

  “Yes, I’m finding that out,” Ari said dryly. “But don’t worry, Jak—no one here knows I’m a girl.” Not yet, anyway, she amended to herself, thinking of her look/touch’s dying power source.

  “How can that be? How could you hide your, uh, femaleness?” he demanded.

  “I cooked up something in my lab to take care of that,” Ari assured him, although she wasn’t about to show him what the look/touch did. She was keeping it powered down as much as possible to conserve the power source and besides, she wasn’t about to open her jumpsuit in front of her brother.

  “You did, did you? My clever little rook.” He grinned at her. “But you still shouldn’t have come!”

  “I had to,” Ari protested. “I couldn’t leave you here in this awful place! What did you do to get yourself thrown in the hole, though? Your chart says you assaulted another inmate.”

  “You’re Goddess-damned right I assaulted him,” Jak growled. “Fucking Tapper tried to put me on his ‘list’ like he does all the young males who come in here. But I wasn’t fucking having it.” He frowned at Ari. “Speaking of which, you make a much prettier boy than me, little rook. How have you managed to stay off his list? You have—haven’t you?”

  He looked so anxious and upset that Ari hastened to reassure him.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Jak—Tapper can’t touch me. I have…protection.”

  “Protection?” His frown deepened. “What kind of protection, Ari?”

  “I…um…” For some reason she was reluctant to tell him. “Lathe—I mean Medic—has, uh, taken me under his wing.”

  “Medic? You mean the Kill-All?” Her older brother’s eyes widened incredulously. “I’ve been in the hole for over six months but even I’ve heard of him. You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding, Ari!”

  “No, I’m not,” she said stiffly. “And don’t look at me that way, Jak. Lathe is a good guy and his fangs aren’t always deadly. He can also cure with his bite—not that he wants anyone else to know that,” she added quickly. “In fact, he cured me of an orbital fracture Tapper gave me when he punched me. He—”

  “Wait a minute!” her brother interrupted, his face through the bars looking angry and agitated. “Tapper punched you and the Kill-All bit you but you’re trying to tell me you’re ‘perfectly fine?’ I’ve heard what happens to men when Medic bites them!”

  “Well it didn’t happen to me, all right?” she flared, crossing her arms over her chest protectively and trying to block out the thought of exactly what had happened when Lathe bit her. The rush of pleasure…the instant orgasm so overwhelming it was like nothing she’d ever felt before…

  “I don’t buy that, Ari!” her brother’s angry voice cut through her guilty memories. “This is all wrong, having you here at BleakHall. What the hell have you been doing? “

  “Whatever I had to in order to survive, all right?” she snapped. “Don’t worry about me, Jak—you’re the one who’s locked in the hole! I was so upset when I couldn’t find you and when Wheezer told me you were down here—”

  “Wheezer?” Jak frowned. “So you know him too?”

  “He was my first boss when I came here—I was in the Laundry,” Ari told him. “Then I repaired the main clothes press and now I’m a fix-it—look.” She stood back and pointed at the broad leather tool belt that circled her hips proudly. “And supposedly I’m here to fix some faulty wiring down here—though I don’t see much to fix,” she added, looking around at the bare semi-circular room.

  “It’s probably the wiring that controls the locks to our cells,” Jak said. “It broke some time ago—started cycling open and closed without warning so the cells were locked one minute and unlocked the next. They couldn’t have that so now the damn Horvath’s have us locked in with old-fashioned padlocks. See?”

  He nodded down at the metal handle on the door of his cell. Sure enough, Ari could see a thick, heavy-duty, high-density metal lock swinging just under the latching mechanism.

  “Oh, right,” she murmured, examining it for a moment. For all its durability it was a simple lock. If only she had the key or some other way to open it!

  But what good would that do? she asked herself. How would it help to get Jak out of the hole when I don’t have any way to get the two of us out of BleakHall?

  She had no answers so she contented herself with examining the electronic locking mechanism just above the hanging padlock.

  “That’s not where the problem is,” Jak said. His own mechanical abilities were almost as good as Ari’s own so she listened to him when he spoke.

  “All right then—where?” she asked.

  “The box on the wall—it controls everything down here.” Jak pointed to a flat gray cover which hung on the black metal wall opposite his cell. “The lights in the lasher tunnel, the locks to our cells, the belt that brings and takes out meal trays… That’s been broken for a while—I’m getting pretty damn hungry down here, little rook—I don’t mind telling you. Wish I had some food.” He made a face. “Not that you can call the protein slop they serve here ‘food’ but anything starts looking good after two days of enforced starvation.”

  “Oh Jak, that’s terrible! I’ll get right to work on it,” Ari promised. She went over to the gray cover and pried it open with some difficulty since the hinges were rusted—then stared at the nest of wires inside in consternation.

  “Gods,” Jak muttered—he was also staring at the contents of the long, flat wall-mounted electrical box. “What a rat’s nest.”

  “Yes, it’s not pretty,” Ari admitted. “Which means I’d better get to work.”

  It took most of the rest of the afternoon but she managed to isolate which wires controlled which functions and at least fix the meal tray belt. She knew when she did because she heard a grinding sound coming from within the occupied cells and then Jak made a noise of disgust.

  “What? What is it?” she called to him since his face had disappeared from the barred window.

  “Two days worth of old food coming down the belt system—that’s what it is and it smells a hell of a lot worse now than when it was fresh—if that’s even possible,” her brother called back. “Don’t worry though—I can just send it back through the delivery system to the garbage chute.” He paused for a moment. “Mid Meal from today still looks salvageable though. Gods, never thought I’d be hungry enough to eat this protein mush cold but it’s better than nothing—thanks little rook.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ari felt her heart lift and she was twice as glad she’d gotten the courage to come down through the tunnel to get to Jak. No matter what else happened, she had been able to save her big brother from the fate of slow starvation—that alone was worth coming to BleakHall even though she still had no idea how she was going to get the two of them out.

  She started to fix the other wiring problems…and then stopped.

  “Jak?” she said, turning back to her brother’s cell. “Now that the food tray belt is fixed, I think I’m going to leave the other two issues for another time.”

  “Oh yeah?” He came back to the window, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why is that?”

  “Because this way I can have an excuse to come down and see you again,” Ari explained. “Also, I don’t want to turn on the lights in the tunnel and wake up all the lashers when I have no place to run,” she added dryly.

  “Oh, lights don’t bother those big bastards,” Jak assured her. “They’d sleep through the midday sun—if any sunlight ever reached down here.” His voice held a note of bitterness in it. “It’s all about temperature with them. Gods, it gets so fucking cold here at night when the air starts to blow from the vents in the tunnels! Then it gets fucking burning up in the morning when they blow in the hot air to make them go back to sleep.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jak.” Ari shut the gray cover and turned back to her brother. “I wish so much that I could get you out of there.”

  “There’s no way out of the hole othe