Helix Strike by A.R. Knight

Author:A.R. Knight [Knight, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946554598
Publisher: A.R. Knight

TWENTY-ONE

One Way Off Dynas

The prisoner revolt on Cassius Five. That’s what Aurora could compare this to. Where Sever, at that time fielding a different crew except Aurora and Gregor, dropped in and intentionally allowed themselves to get captured. Once inside, they’d worked to inspire a total uprising that tore apart swaths of Cassius Five’s main city. The planet’s owners had decided they could do without extending DefenseCorp’s contract.

DefenseCorp had decided otherwise.

Of course, leading a whole bunch of disgruntled prisoners was one thing. Breaking out of a high-tech laboratory on a miserable planet with a whole bunch of devastatingly ill science experiments was something quite different.

Aurora and Sai, the latter barely hanging onto his consciousness, gathered all the infected they could find on the prison floor. That meant freeing them from cells, using stolen guard badges to open the glass doorways and convince, when they could, the occupants to come join them. Some were too weak to bother getting up from their cots, and Aurora had no time to play doctor, so she left them without a second look.

Once assembled, the bedraggled twenty of them went towards the elevators Aurora had used, only to find them locked. The call button wasn’t working, and swiping a guard’s badge only returned an error saying the rank wasn’t high enough to override.

“There’s another way,” one of the other infected, a woman wearing a Helix uniform and looking not quite devastated, said as they huddled around the elevator doors. “You have to have emergency exits, just in case. But they’re hidden on this floor, for obvious reasons.”

“Well, it’s our floor now, so tell us,” Aurora said.

Sai nodded, trying to agree, and would have fallen over if Aurora hadn’t caught him.

“It’s easier if I show you,” the woman said before leading them over to a slight indent in a wall in the far right corner, near the prisoner elevator and the remnants from the fight.

The gray steel section was cut out just large enough to resemble a double door, though a cursory glance wouldn’t have shown anything. No handle, no button, certainly no exit sign or other indicator. Aurora didn’t have to think too hard to guess why: in the event of a real emergency, the people who knew better could decide whether to save the prisoners or not. In a situation like this, where the prisoners were the emergency?

Leave them here. Let them rot.

“So how do we open it?” Aurora asked.

“Try the badge,” the woman said. “The scanner’s on the right side.”

Aurora slapped the ID card against the wall, feeling a little stupid as she did so. It was possible the woman was experiencing some fever delusion, that they were just wasting time. Of course, they didn’t exactly have any other leads, so why not.

Given Sai’s deteriorating condition, and the increasingly wild looks the other infected were giving each other, Aurora figured it wouldn’t be too long before everyone started chowing down on their friends.

Slapping the badge did nothing. No sound, no sign.

“You sure it’s this corner?” Aurora said.

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