Chapter 6 -- The Good Fight
Faith was silent, searching for words. After several seconds, she found one.
"WHAT?" she screamed.
"Faith, I'm so sorry," Sarah said.
"Why the HELL is there a Watcher working at Fuller?" Faith demanded. "You people tried to kill me!"
"The Council thought you were a threat to humanity. However, when you turned yourself in to the authorities, the leaders of the Council reconsidered their decision. They sent me to evaluate you, to see if you could be rehabilitated."
"Then I hope they're ready to be disappointed," Faith said coldly, "because the second I get out of these handcuffs, I'm gonna to kill you."
"How is that going, by the way?" Sarah asked with perfect calm.
"What?"
"Getting out of the handcuffs."
Faith gritted her teeth and tried to pull her wrists apart, but they wouldn't budge; instead, the edges of the steel cuffs bit painfully into her skin. She struggled, flipping over on her back, on her side, into all manner of positions, thrashing like a newly-caught swordfish on the deck of a boat.
Finally, Faith slumped back to the floor, exhausted. "Fuck," she breathed. "I'm still weak from the damn tranquilizer."
The chamber door opened, and the large man who had carried Sarah and Faith into the room picked Faith up and carried her out again. As he turned to take Faith back down the hall, Faith saw that the door to the cell across from the sound-attenuating chamber was open. There were two figures in the small cell. One was a short, blonde woman in blue surgical scrubs who was fitting a hypodermic needle onto a syringe. The other figure stood against the back wall, clamped to it by its arms and legs, much as Dr. Reynolds was. But there the resemblance to Sarah, or any other human being, ended. This creature was less than five feet tall but had a broad, ape-like build -- sloping back, barrel chest, and long, bent legs. The fingers of the beast's overlong arms were tipped with roughly triangular, two-inch claws.
The large man took Faith into the laboratory room and dropped her butt-first onto a chair.
"What the hell are you people doing down here?" Faith demanded.
"I can answer that," a man's voice said from the doorway. Faith turned her head and saw the tall, broad-shouldered form of Andrew Teague.
"Faith," he continued, "I'm sorry. I had planned to introduce all of this to you gradually. Unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds dragged you down here and forced me to rush things."
"The only one who's been dragging me is your bondage-loving assistant," Faith said, indicating her handcuffs and the chain around her ankles.
"Again, I'm sorry. Mr. Santiago is our pharmacist. Not long ago, he was convicted of mishandling some controlled substances and was sent to one of the state's men's facilities. I managed to get him sent here to work off his sentence."
"Why do you need a pharmacist?" Faith said, looking more confused by the second.
The warden sighed. "Faith," he said, "our plan, having you and Sonya run your own gang, is a good one. It's starting to work -- the gangs and the dealers are losing their grip on the prison community. But I knew we couldn't get this project off the ground without some kind of an edge; otherwise, the other gangs would have crushed the two of you before you could even begin. Fortunately, I had some connections who told me about Dr. Pugacheva."
"Who?" Faith said.
"I'll introduce you," Teague replied. "Doctor, you want to come in here for a minute?" In a few moments, the short blonde woman entered.
"Faith, this is Dr. Elena Pugacheva. She used to be one of the Soviet Union's best molecular biologists. Until her country fell apart, that is, and left the good doctor unemployed."
Faith turned to Pugacheva. "Hey," Faith said. "Interesting setup you got here. Though I'm kinda wondering what you were doing with that demon."
The blonde woman raised an eyebrow. Faith guessed she was surprised that Faith knew about demons. Then Pugacheva turned to the warden, who gave her a 'go ahead' nod.
"I was part of a special projects group dedicated to the study of... unrecognized life forms," Pugacheva said.
"Wicked," Faith said. "A demon doc."
"I'm sure your own government has similar programs," the doctor went on. "In any case, my particular task was to examine the neurochemistry of these life forms to find substances which could be used for our benefit. I focused on emotional regulatory systems; my superiors wanted chemicals that could, for example, cause a foreign leader to become enraged during a speech, or to panic in the midst of a military conflict.
"I found that some demons' emotions are regulated through hormones secreted into the bloodstream. But just as I was beginning to have some success in isolating some of these hormones, the project was shut down for budgetary reasons. After 1990, there were no more funds available for 'long-term initiatives,'" Pugacheva said bitterly. "So I came to the United States to seek support for my work."
Faith didn't quite get all of that, but she nodded anyway.
"Luckily," Teague broke in, "the doctor and I found each other and realized that we could solve each other's problems. I gave her space to work in and some money from the prison budget, and she came up with ways to control our more difficult prisoners."
The doctor spoke up again. "I found two types of demons that produced hormones capable of eliciting emotional responses from humans. Vorpic demon blood, for example, contains chemicals which I have labeled Vorpic-11 and Vorpic-24, by the order in which they elude from a filtering gel. In humans, Vorpic-11 produces deep depression; Vorpic-24 causes overwhelming fear. Unfortunately, Vorpic-24 has proven to be severely hepatotoxic in human subjects."
"Huh?" Faith said.
"It ruins your liver," Teague translated.
"Ulyaro-6, extracted from the Ulyaro demon," Pugacheva continued, "causes uncontrollable rage."
"Like the woman in the cafeteria," Faith said. "It made her super-strong, too."
"Yes. However, each compound works best on persons already prone to the emotional state in question. We had to access Dr. Reynolds' files to find the best match between subject and drug."
Teague added, "With the help of Mr. Santiago, we were able to disguise the hormones as medications that the various target prisoners were already taking -- everything from allergy pills to AZT -- or to hide it in toothpaste. As a result, we got some of the gang leaders and drug dealers out of the picture, and Dr. Pugacheva got to test her new drugs on human subjects. And, since they haven't been chemically identified, the hormones don't show up on standard drug tests."
"Cool," Faith said. "Can you catch a buzz from any of this stuff?" Teague looked at her disapprovingly. "Kidding," Faith said.
"Faith," Teague said, "there are a lot of prisoners here who could become decent, productive members of society if they get the chance. But there are also some who are never going to be rehabilitated -- the hardcore criminals, the ones who end up leading the gangs and bringing in the drugs. We can't reach them; the best we can do is take away their power or remove them from Fuller completely."
"Pull the weeds, let the flowers grow," Faith said.
"Exactly," Teague responded. "You know how it is. Sometimes, to make things better, you have to make hard decisions."
A feeling of horrible recogntion came over Faith.
"Sacrifices," she added dully.
"Yes," Teague said. "I knew you would understand."
Faith paused for a moment.
"Here's what I understand," she said. "I understand that, for the second time in my life, I've found a leader, a real strong guy who respects me and treats me decent."
Teague smiled.
"And I understand that that's not enough."
The smile faded.
"I might not be the sharpest pencil in the box," Faith said, "but I've figured this much out: Being good to one person doesn't make you good. You can't just pick your chosen few and say to hell with everybody else, whether you're the warden, or the mayor, or me."
The warden began to look upset. "Now look-"
"Oh," Faith interrupted, "and the other thing I understand?"
"Yes?" the warden said.
"If you sit around and yak long enough, midazolam wears off."
With a loud shout, Faith pulled as hard as she could at the cuffs behind her back. The links between them broke, and Faith's hands swung around in front of her just as she threw herself forward on her bound legs. Both of her fists caught Teague in the sides of his head, knocking him out.
Pugacheva tried to run past Faith, but Faith grabbed the scientist's ankle just as she reached the door. Faith dragged the woman back and grabbed her arm in a painfully tight grip.
"Now," Faith said, breathing hard, "unlock my legs."
With her free hand, Dr. Pugacheva took a key from the shirt pocket of her surgical scrubs and unlocked the chains around Faith's ankles. Faith stood up, dragging the scientist with her.
"OK, now you're gonna unlock Dr. Reynolds," Faith ordered.
"I...I must do that from here," Pugacheva said. "The restraints in all the subject rooms are operated from the console." Pugacheva indicated a desk with a built-in keyboard and four small monitors, each of which showed the interior of a different room. The three solitary confinement cells each contained a demon -- two of the short, apelike type Faith had seen earlier, and another one, taller, with chitinous body armor like an insect's. The fourth screen showed Dr. Reynolds inside the sound-attenuating chamber.
"Do it," Faith said. "Oh, and if you hit a button other than those four marked 'release', I'll knock eighty IQ points out of your head."
"All right," Pugacheva responded.
With the heel of her hand, she slapped all four buttons at once.
Faith shouted some obscenity at Pugacheva, but it was drowned out by the snarls and roars of the three suddenly-liberated demons. The video monitors on the console showed the monsters fleeing their cells; the 'release' buttons had unlocked the doors as well as the restraints.
For a moment, Faith hesitated. It was a moment too long. Hearing movement behind her, she turned to see the tall, armor-skinned demon swinging a hard-knuckled fist at her head. Faith caught the blow on her jaw.
Only the skills trained into her by long practice saved her. She rolled with the punch and used the momentum to spin her body around and snap a reverse crescent kick to the demon's head. Faith winced a bit as the edge of her foot struck the creature's armored cranium. Nonetheless, she followed up by placing the ball of her other foot against the monster's midsection and shoving hard. The demon flew back through the doorway; the left half of its body hit the frame of the door opposite that of the control room.
Faith was about to run out and attack the creature again when something slammed against the length of her back, knocking her to her knees. She turned her head and saw Dr. Pugacheva standing over her, holding a chair. Faith spun on the floor and whipped her legs out, sweeping the blonde scientist off her feet. Before the woman could even begin to get up, Faith grabbed her by the hair and thumped her head against the thinly-carpeted floor. Pugacheva was out.
Faith sprung back to her feet and turned towards the dorway. The tall, armored demon was gone. Its friends had departed, too. The main door at the end of the hallway stood open. At the opposite end of the hallway, Santiago's body lay on the floor, a pool of blood expanding around it. Judging by the two sets of inhuman, bloody footprints leading away from the corpse, Faith figured the two Ulyaro demons had gotten him.
Sarah Reynolds stepped out of the sound-attenuating chamber, looking wild-eyed. "Where did they go?" she shouted. Then she looked at her watch. "Good Lord," she said, "it's dinner time. All of the prisoners will be in the cafeteria. If the demons get past the guard stations upstairs, they could kill hundreds."
Faith turned and ran for the door.
"Wait!" Reynolds cried. "You won't be able to-"
But Faith was already gone.
-----
George Taylor, the guard on duty at Station 2 at the entrance to Fuller's main block, was wondering if there might be any chance of his not dying of boredom before the end of his shift. He hated working the entry station; he'd rather be walking around among the inmates, instead of doing nothing but buzzing people in and out all the blessed day.
His radio squawed for a moment. "All stations, we-" And that was it.
Taylor had just enough time to pick up his radio and say, "Say again?" before a dark, inhuman-looking figure appeared at the Plexiglas window of the guard station door. Impossibly, a fist smashed through the bulletproof glass and opened the door from the inside.
On every radio in the prison, the last words heard from Station 2 were, "Holy shi-!"
-----
The Vorpic demon flicked its multi-faceted eyes this way and that over the guard station controls. It could smell the sweat, heat and pheromones from many bodies beyond the doors -- a feast waiting to be torn apart and gobbled down in big, bloody chunks by the Vorpic and its Ulyaro allies, who even now scratched and banged at the door like starving wolves. All that was needed was to open the way.
The Vorpic was not, perhaps, the most intelligent breed of demon. But it knew a big, black button must be important for something. It's armored fingers force the button down.
The doors swung open, and the two Ulyaro demons ran through. The Vorpic followed, excited and hungry.
-----
Faith followed the bloody footprints that led down the basement corridor to the stairs. By the time she reached the ground floor, the footprints had faded to nothing, but the demons had begun leaving another sort of trail -- one of dead bodies. Three guards and an unlucky visitor were dead at the central guard station, and Faith could hear screams from somewhere up ahead. That meant the demons had entered the central prison block and had an unobstructed path to the cafeteria.
Faith blew past Guard Station Two at a speed that an Olympic sprinter would consider impressive. Rounding the corner into the wide corridor that connected the main cell block to the cafeteria, Faith saw the three demons ahead of her. The tall Vorpic demon was passing the two Ulyaros, which loped along on four limbs like the gorillas they resembled.
With a yell, Faith threw herself at the hindmost Ulyaro demon and tackled it by its crooked legs. The beast turned over just in time for Faith to punch it in the face. The demon was completely unfazed and slashed at Faith with its triangular claws; Faith hurled herself backwards just in time to avoid having her face ripped off.
Now on her feet, Faith slammed a side kick into the Ulyaro's chest. It felt like kicking a hundred-pound blob of hard rubber. The monster flew back into the corridor wall, but the impact didn't seem to hurt it.
Faith ran up and leaped into a flying kick. The monster ducked and raked her jumping leg, shredding her pants and leaving deep scratches in her calf. Faith landed awkwardly, but managed to backfist the Ulyaro when it came at her. The creature's head snapped to the side. Nonetheless, the beast immediately countered by grabbing Faith's arm and flinging her into the wall. Faith took the impact on her back, protecting her head.
It's like a big superball with arms, Faith thought. Hitting it doesn't do any good; it just bounces back.
The monster slashed at Faith again. This time, Faith grabbed its wrist and twisted. Nothing broke; it was as if the creature's arm, though solid, had no bones at all. Faith tried to pull the Ulyaro in front of her to put a choke hold on it, but it kicked wildly at her knee, ruining her balance and her grip. Faith let go and backed away quickly.
Slayer and demon circled each other in the corridor. Faith couldn't help but wonder what the other two demons were doing.
-----
Sonya sat at dinner, feeling both proud and worried -- proud because her and Faith's gang now had enough members to fill two tables in the cafeteria, and worried because Faith was supposed to be there with them. She had not come back from her appointment with Dr. Reynolds. What was up with that? Reynolds was a busy lady, not the type to go overtime with anybody.
Sonya's musings were disrupted by a commotion near the main cafeteria doors. There was yelling and movement, as if a fight had broken out. But something was wrong; prisoners were running AWAY from the fight, which wasn't normal. They usually either jumped in or, at least, gathered around to watch. And the yelling sounded less like shouts than like screams.
Then, as prisoners ran for dear life from the doorway, Sonya caught sight of two figures, one tall and slender, the other short and squat. They scarcely looked like people at all.
And then there was no more time to think about that, because one of the fleeing prisoners began to run in Sonya's direction with the shorter creature in pursuit. The woman passed Sonya, shrieking; Sonya instinctively let go with a roundhouse kick to the monster's head as it tried to follow. The creature fell on its back and slid several feet along the floor before springing back to a standing position and turning on Sonya. It leaped and slashed with its long claws; Sonya reflexively held up her arm to block. The long nails cut deeply into Sonya's forearm.
The demon threw itself on Sonya and knocked her down, then drew back its absurdly long arm, preparing to rip out her throat. Sonya weakly held up her good arm in defense and squeezed her eyes shut.
There was a sound like a baseball bat hitting a sack full of sand. Sonya opened her eyes to see that one of the guards in the cafeteria had whacked the monster in the back of the head with a nightstick. The demon immediately recovered and attacked with inhuman speed; its claws ripped open the guard's chest and stomach. The guard was still screaming when the beast began to gorge on the viscera within.
That was enough for Sonya. She passed out.
-----
Faith wiped her brow with her sleeve. It came away bloody; her demon opponent had scratched her forehead, and she was bleeding into her eyes.
She was also beginning to believe that she couldn't stop this thing. She could knock it down, knock it away, twist it like a pretzel, but it just kept coming. She'd managed to jab it in the eye once, which seemed to hurt it a bit, but that only seemed to make it more furious.
The beast leaped at her again; Faith stopped it in the air with a front kick and sent it tumbling back. She was thinking of making a run for it, trying to lure it back to the solitary confinement wing. Maybe she could trap it there. Maybe not.
"Faith!"
Faith turned to see Sarah Reynolds throw two hatchet-like axes at her. Not end-over-end, however; the two weapons stood straight up, pirouetting gently like twin ballet dancers. Faith caught them easily.
The Ulyaro demon was on its feet and rushed her again. Faith didn't hesitate; she swung one axe and then the other down in wide diagonal cuts. The first cut took the demon's hand off at the wrist; the second sliced open its neck. Purplish blood flooded over the floor as the demon fell over and rapidly bled to death.
Reynolds had obviously been running hard. She barely had enough strength to wave Faith towards the cafeteria. Clutching her weapons, Faith took off.
-----
Kelly Palastri, a member of Faith and Sonya's gang, had been a nursing student before an ugly incident with an ex-boyfriend and a baseball bat earned her a stay at Fuller. So she knew what to do when she saw Sonya on the cafeteria floor, bleeding profusely from her radial artery. Kelly grabbed a pile of paper napkins off her table and applied pressure to the wound while shouting for someone to help her. Gloria was at her side within seconds; Kelly instructed her to take off her shirt and tie the sleeve firmly around Sonya's upper arm to restrict the flow of blood.
She only hoped that the monster, which had chased some prisoners into the kitchen, wouldn't come back to finish the job.
-----
Faith burst into the cafeteria and saw the devastation. There were dead, wounded, and terrified inmates and guards everywhere. Faith looked towards the two tables which her gang had claimed and saw Sonya on the floor, with Kelly and Gloria kneeling over her. Faith ran to them.
"Where-?" she started.
Kelly and Gloria looked up at their axe-wielding leader with surprise. "That way!" Gloria shouted, pointing to the kitchen doors.
Faith looked down at Sonya, then up at Kelly. "You got her?" she asked.
"I got her," Kelly responded rapidly. "Go!"
Faith went.
-----
The second Ulyaro was a lot easier to kill than the first. It had cornered several inmates in the kitchen, and seemed to be trying to decide which one to eat first. Faith made the decision moot by throwing one of her axes sidearm, neatly cutting the demon's spinal cord at its midpoint. The demon fell over, helpless; Faith finished it with a stroke to the neck from her second axe.
Faith looked at the prisoners she had just rescued. "Where's the Vorpic?" she said. "The tall one?"
The prisoners only stared, wide-eyed. Then one of them screamed.
A long, hard body fell on Faith from above. The creature had been hanging from the pipes, awaiting the right moment for an ambush.
The Vorpic was light, but strong. Though Faith tried to throw it off, it clung to her, trying to crush her in a bear hug around her arms and ribs. Faith snapped her head back to butt the monster, but even its face was armored; all Faith gained was a headache. And she was starting to run low on air. Her remaining axe hung uselessly from her hand, which was pinned to her side.
With all her remaining strength, Faith leaped up in the air and rotated backwards, so that she landed on the Vorpic like a professional wrestler. The monster's hold loosened; Faith tore herself from its grasp and flipped onto her feet, raising her axe. The Vorpic scuttled backwards along the floor, but not fast enough to prevent Faith from driving the head of her axe into the gap in the armor around its knee.
The monster let loose with a metallic-sounding squeal and kicked Faith in the head with its good leg. Faith fell back into the body of the dead Ulyaro and pulled her other axe from its spine. As the Vorpic got to its feet, Faith ran at the demon, feinted to the right with the axe, then swept the demon's bad leg with her left foot. The Vorpic fell onto its stomach and never saw the final axe blow that separated its head from its body.
Faith took several seconds to get her breath, then began to shuffle back towards the cafeteria.
Several doors burst open at once. Guards with shotguns and riot gear shouted for everyone to get on the floor, then realized that most of the prisoners were already sitting or lying down. The guards had expected a prison riot; instead, they found a bunch of frightened, bloodied inmates who were all too willing to go quietly to their cells.
Faith casually tossed her axes behind one of the big kitchen ovens. Some of her girls worked the breakfast shift; she could ask one of them to retrieve the axes later.
END CHAPTER 6
Faith was silent, searching for words. After several seconds, she found one.
"WHAT?" she screamed.
"Faith, I'm so sorry," Sarah said.
"Why the HELL is there a Watcher working at Fuller?" Faith demanded. "You people tried to kill me!"
"The Council thought you were a threat to humanity. However, when you turned yourself in to the authorities, the leaders of the Council reconsidered their decision. They sent me to evaluate you, to see if you could be rehabilitated."
"Then I hope they're ready to be disappointed," Faith said coldly, "because the second I get out of these handcuffs, I'm gonna to kill you."
"How is that going, by the way?" Sarah asked with perfect calm.
"What?"
"Getting out of the handcuffs."
Faith gritted her teeth and tried to pull her wrists apart, but they wouldn't budge; instead, the edges of the steel cuffs bit painfully into her skin. She struggled, flipping over on her back, on her side, into all manner of positions, thrashing like a newly-caught swordfish on the deck of a boat.
Finally, Faith slumped back to the floor, exhausted. "Fuck," she breathed. "I'm still weak from the damn tranquilizer."
The chamber door opened, and the large man who had carried Sarah and Faith into the room picked Faith up and carried her out again. As he turned to take Faith back down the hall, Faith saw that the door to the cell across from the sound-attenuating chamber was open. There were two figures in the small cell. One was a short, blonde woman in blue surgical scrubs who was fitting a hypodermic needle onto a syringe. The other figure stood against the back wall, clamped to it by its arms and legs, much as Dr. Reynolds was. But there the resemblance to Sarah, or any other human being, ended. This creature was less than five feet tall but had a broad, ape-like build -- sloping back, barrel chest, and long, bent legs. The fingers of the beast's overlong arms were tipped with roughly triangular, two-inch claws.
The large man took Faith into the laboratory room and dropped her butt-first onto a chair.
"What the hell are you people doing down here?" Faith demanded.
"I can answer that," a man's voice said from the doorway. Faith turned her head and saw the tall, broad-shouldered form of Andrew Teague.
"Faith," he continued, "I'm sorry. I had planned to introduce all of this to you gradually. Unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds dragged you down here and forced me to rush things."
"The only one who's been dragging me is your bondage-loving assistant," Faith said, indicating her handcuffs and the chain around her ankles.
"Again, I'm sorry. Mr. Santiago is our pharmacist. Not long ago, he was convicted of mishandling some controlled substances and was sent to one of the state's men's facilities. I managed to get him sent here to work off his sentence."
"Why do you need a pharmacist?" Faith said, looking more confused by the second.
The warden sighed. "Faith," he said, "our plan, having you and Sonya run your own gang, is a good one. It's starting to work -- the gangs and the dealers are losing their grip on the prison community. But I knew we couldn't get this project off the ground without some kind of an edge; otherwise, the other gangs would have crushed the two of you before you could even begin. Fortunately, I had some connections who told me about Dr. Pugacheva."
"Who?" Faith said.
"I'll introduce you," Teague replied. "Doctor, you want to come in here for a minute?" In a few moments, the short blonde woman entered.
"Faith, this is Dr. Elena Pugacheva. She used to be one of the Soviet Union's best molecular biologists. Until her country fell apart, that is, and left the good doctor unemployed."
Faith turned to Pugacheva. "Hey," Faith said. "Interesting setup you got here. Though I'm kinda wondering what you were doing with that demon."
The blonde woman raised an eyebrow. Faith guessed she was surprised that Faith knew about demons. Then Pugacheva turned to the warden, who gave her a 'go ahead' nod.
"I was part of a special projects group dedicated to the study of... unrecognized life forms," Pugacheva said.
"Wicked," Faith said. "A demon doc."
"I'm sure your own government has similar programs," the doctor went on. "In any case, my particular task was to examine the neurochemistry of these life forms to find substances which could be used for our benefit. I focused on emotional regulatory systems; my superiors wanted chemicals that could, for example, cause a foreign leader to become enraged during a speech, or to panic in the midst of a military conflict.
"I found that some demons' emotions are regulated through hormones secreted into the bloodstream. But just as I was beginning to have some success in isolating some of these hormones, the project was shut down for budgetary reasons. After 1990, there were no more funds available for 'long-term initiatives,'" Pugacheva said bitterly. "So I came to the United States to seek support for my work."
Faith didn't quite get all of that, but she nodded anyway.
"Luckily," Teague broke in, "the doctor and I found each other and realized that we could solve each other's problems. I gave her space to work in and some money from the prison budget, and she came up with ways to control our more difficult prisoners."
The doctor spoke up again. "I found two types of demons that produced hormones capable of eliciting emotional responses from humans. Vorpic demon blood, for example, contains chemicals which I have labeled Vorpic-11 and Vorpic-24, by the order in which they elude from a filtering gel. In humans, Vorpic-11 produces deep depression; Vorpic-24 causes overwhelming fear. Unfortunately, Vorpic-24 has proven to be severely hepatotoxic in human subjects."
"Huh?" Faith said.
"It ruins your liver," Teague translated.
"Ulyaro-6, extracted from the Ulyaro demon," Pugacheva continued, "causes uncontrollable rage."
"Like the woman in the cafeteria," Faith said. "It made her super-strong, too."
"Yes. However, each compound works best on persons already prone to the emotional state in question. We had to access Dr. Reynolds' files to find the best match between subject and drug."
Teague added, "With the help of Mr. Santiago, we were able to disguise the hormones as medications that the various target prisoners were already taking -- everything from allergy pills to AZT -- or to hide it in toothpaste. As a result, we got some of the gang leaders and drug dealers out of the picture, and Dr. Pugacheva got to test her new drugs on human subjects. And, since they haven't been chemically identified, the hormones don't show up on standard drug tests."
"Cool," Faith said. "Can you catch a buzz from any of this stuff?" Teague looked at her disapprovingly. "Kidding," Faith said.
"Faith," Teague said, "there are a lot of prisoners here who could become decent, productive members of society if they get the chance. But there are also some who are never going to be rehabilitated -- the hardcore criminals, the ones who end up leading the gangs and bringing in the drugs. We can't reach them; the best we can do is take away their power or remove them from Fuller completely."
"Pull the weeds, let the flowers grow," Faith said.
"Exactly," Teague responded. "You know how it is. Sometimes, to make things better, you have to make hard decisions."
A feeling of horrible recogntion came over Faith.
"Sacrifices," she added dully.
"Yes," Teague said. "I knew you would understand."
Faith paused for a moment.
"Here's what I understand," she said. "I understand that, for the second time in my life, I've found a leader, a real strong guy who respects me and treats me decent."
Teague smiled.
"And I understand that that's not enough."
The smile faded.
"I might not be the sharpest pencil in the box," Faith said, "but I've figured this much out: Being good to one person doesn't make you good. You can't just pick your chosen few and say to hell with everybody else, whether you're the warden, or the mayor, or me."
The warden began to look upset. "Now look-"
"Oh," Faith interrupted, "and the other thing I understand?"
"Yes?" the warden said.
"If you sit around and yak long enough, midazolam wears off."
With a loud shout, Faith pulled as hard as she could at the cuffs behind her back. The links between them broke, and Faith's hands swung around in front of her just as she threw herself forward on her bound legs. Both of her fists caught Teague in the sides of his head, knocking him out.
Pugacheva tried to run past Faith, but Faith grabbed the scientist's ankle just as she reached the door. Faith dragged the woman back and grabbed her arm in a painfully tight grip.
"Now," Faith said, breathing hard, "unlock my legs."
With her free hand, Dr. Pugacheva took a key from the shirt pocket of her surgical scrubs and unlocked the chains around Faith's ankles. Faith stood up, dragging the scientist with her.
"OK, now you're gonna unlock Dr. Reynolds," Faith ordered.
"I...I must do that from here," Pugacheva said. "The restraints in all the subject rooms are operated from the console." Pugacheva indicated a desk with a built-in keyboard and four small monitors, each of which showed the interior of a different room. The three solitary confinement cells each contained a demon -- two of the short, apelike type Faith had seen earlier, and another one, taller, with chitinous body armor like an insect's. The fourth screen showed Dr. Reynolds inside the sound-attenuating chamber.
"Do it," Faith said. "Oh, and if you hit a button other than those four marked 'release', I'll knock eighty IQ points out of your head."
"All right," Pugacheva responded.
With the heel of her hand, she slapped all four buttons at once.
Faith shouted some obscenity at Pugacheva, but it was drowned out by the snarls and roars of the three suddenly-liberated demons. The video monitors on the console showed the monsters fleeing their cells; the 'release' buttons had unlocked the doors as well as the restraints.
For a moment, Faith hesitated. It was a moment too long. Hearing movement behind her, she turned to see the tall, armor-skinned demon swinging a hard-knuckled fist at her head. Faith caught the blow on her jaw.
Only the skills trained into her by long practice saved her. She rolled with the punch and used the momentum to spin her body around and snap a reverse crescent kick to the demon's head. Faith winced a bit as the edge of her foot struck the creature's armored cranium. Nonetheless, she followed up by placing the ball of her other foot against the monster's midsection and shoving hard. The demon flew back through the doorway; the left half of its body hit the frame of the door opposite that of the control room.
Faith was about to run out and attack the creature again when something slammed against the length of her back, knocking her to her knees. She turned her head and saw Dr. Pugacheva standing over her, holding a chair. Faith spun on the floor and whipped her legs out, sweeping the blonde scientist off her feet. Before the woman could even begin to get up, Faith grabbed her by the hair and thumped her head against the thinly-carpeted floor. Pugacheva was out.
Faith sprung back to her feet and turned towards the dorway. The tall, armored demon was gone. Its friends had departed, too. The main door at the end of the hallway stood open. At the opposite end of the hallway, Santiago's body lay on the floor, a pool of blood expanding around it. Judging by the two sets of inhuman, bloody footprints leading away from the corpse, Faith figured the two Ulyaro demons had gotten him.
Sarah Reynolds stepped out of the sound-attenuating chamber, looking wild-eyed. "Where did they go?" she shouted. Then she looked at her watch. "Good Lord," she said, "it's dinner time. All of the prisoners will be in the cafeteria. If the demons get past the guard stations upstairs, they could kill hundreds."
Faith turned and ran for the door.
"Wait!" Reynolds cried. "You won't be able to-"
But Faith was already gone.
-----
George Taylor, the guard on duty at Station 2 at the entrance to Fuller's main block, was wondering if there might be any chance of his not dying of boredom before the end of his shift. He hated working the entry station; he'd rather be walking around among the inmates, instead of doing nothing but buzzing people in and out all the blessed day.
His radio squawed for a moment. "All stations, we-" And that was it.
Taylor had just enough time to pick up his radio and say, "Say again?" before a dark, inhuman-looking figure appeared at the Plexiglas window of the guard station door. Impossibly, a fist smashed through the bulletproof glass and opened the door from the inside.
On every radio in the prison, the last words heard from Station 2 were, "Holy shi-!"
-----
The Vorpic demon flicked its multi-faceted eyes this way and that over the guard station controls. It could smell the sweat, heat and pheromones from many bodies beyond the doors -- a feast waiting to be torn apart and gobbled down in big, bloody chunks by the Vorpic and its Ulyaro allies, who even now scratched and banged at the door like starving wolves. All that was needed was to open the way.
The Vorpic was not, perhaps, the most intelligent breed of demon. But it knew a big, black button must be important for something. It's armored fingers force the button down.
The doors swung open, and the two Ulyaro demons ran through. The Vorpic followed, excited and hungry.
-----
Faith followed the bloody footprints that led down the basement corridor to the stairs. By the time she reached the ground floor, the footprints had faded to nothing, but the demons had begun leaving another sort of trail -- one of dead bodies. Three guards and an unlucky visitor were dead at the central guard station, and Faith could hear screams from somewhere up ahead. That meant the demons had entered the central prison block and had an unobstructed path to the cafeteria.
Faith blew past Guard Station Two at a speed that an Olympic sprinter would consider impressive. Rounding the corner into the wide corridor that connected the main cell block to the cafeteria, Faith saw the three demons ahead of her. The tall Vorpic demon was passing the two Ulyaros, which loped along on four limbs like the gorillas they resembled.
With a yell, Faith threw herself at the hindmost Ulyaro demon and tackled it by its crooked legs. The beast turned over just in time for Faith to punch it in the face. The demon was completely unfazed and slashed at Faith with its triangular claws; Faith hurled herself backwards just in time to avoid having her face ripped off.
Now on her feet, Faith slammed a side kick into the Ulyaro's chest. It felt like kicking a hundred-pound blob of hard rubber. The monster flew back into the corridor wall, but the impact didn't seem to hurt it.
Faith ran up and leaped into a flying kick. The monster ducked and raked her jumping leg, shredding her pants and leaving deep scratches in her calf. Faith landed awkwardly, but managed to backfist the Ulyaro when it came at her. The creature's head snapped to the side. Nonetheless, the beast immediately countered by grabbing Faith's arm and flinging her into the wall. Faith took the impact on her back, protecting her head.
It's like a big superball with arms, Faith thought. Hitting it doesn't do any good; it just bounces back.
The monster slashed at Faith again. This time, Faith grabbed its wrist and twisted. Nothing broke; it was as if the creature's arm, though solid, had no bones at all. Faith tried to pull the Ulyaro in front of her to put a choke hold on it, but it kicked wildly at her knee, ruining her balance and her grip. Faith let go and backed away quickly.
Slayer and demon circled each other in the corridor. Faith couldn't help but wonder what the other two demons were doing.
-----
Sonya sat at dinner, feeling both proud and worried -- proud because her and Faith's gang now had enough members to fill two tables in the cafeteria, and worried because Faith was supposed to be there with them. She had not come back from her appointment with Dr. Reynolds. What was up with that? Reynolds was a busy lady, not the type to go overtime with anybody.
Sonya's musings were disrupted by a commotion near the main cafeteria doors. There was yelling and movement, as if a fight had broken out. But something was wrong; prisoners were running AWAY from the fight, which wasn't normal. They usually either jumped in or, at least, gathered around to watch. And the yelling sounded less like shouts than like screams.
Then, as prisoners ran for dear life from the doorway, Sonya caught sight of two figures, one tall and slender, the other short and squat. They scarcely looked like people at all.
And then there was no more time to think about that, because one of the fleeing prisoners began to run in Sonya's direction with the shorter creature in pursuit. The woman passed Sonya, shrieking; Sonya instinctively let go with a roundhouse kick to the monster's head as it tried to follow. The creature fell on its back and slid several feet along the floor before springing back to a standing position and turning on Sonya. It leaped and slashed with its long claws; Sonya reflexively held up her arm to block. The long nails cut deeply into Sonya's forearm.
The demon threw itself on Sonya and knocked her down, then drew back its absurdly long arm, preparing to rip out her throat. Sonya weakly held up her good arm in defense and squeezed her eyes shut.
There was a sound like a baseball bat hitting a sack full of sand. Sonya opened her eyes to see that one of the guards in the cafeteria had whacked the monster in the back of the head with a nightstick. The demon immediately recovered and attacked with inhuman speed; its claws ripped open the guard's chest and stomach. The guard was still screaming when the beast began to gorge on the viscera within.
That was enough for Sonya. She passed out.
-----
Faith wiped her brow with her sleeve. It came away bloody; her demon opponent had scratched her forehead, and she was bleeding into her eyes.
She was also beginning to believe that she couldn't stop this thing. She could knock it down, knock it away, twist it like a pretzel, but it just kept coming. She'd managed to jab it in the eye once, which seemed to hurt it a bit, but that only seemed to make it more furious.
The beast leaped at her again; Faith stopped it in the air with a front kick and sent it tumbling back. She was thinking of making a run for it, trying to lure it back to the solitary confinement wing. Maybe she could trap it there. Maybe not.
"Faith!"
Faith turned to see Sarah Reynolds throw two hatchet-like axes at her. Not end-over-end, however; the two weapons stood straight up, pirouetting gently like twin ballet dancers. Faith caught them easily.
The Ulyaro demon was on its feet and rushed her again. Faith didn't hesitate; she swung one axe and then the other down in wide diagonal cuts. The first cut took the demon's hand off at the wrist; the second sliced open its neck. Purplish blood flooded over the floor as the demon fell over and rapidly bled to death.
Reynolds had obviously been running hard. She barely had enough strength to wave Faith towards the cafeteria. Clutching her weapons, Faith took off.
-----
Kelly Palastri, a member of Faith and Sonya's gang, had been a nursing student before an ugly incident with an ex-boyfriend and a baseball bat earned her a stay at Fuller. So she knew what to do when she saw Sonya on the cafeteria floor, bleeding profusely from her radial artery. Kelly grabbed a pile of paper napkins off her table and applied pressure to the wound while shouting for someone to help her. Gloria was at her side within seconds; Kelly instructed her to take off her shirt and tie the sleeve firmly around Sonya's upper arm to restrict the flow of blood.
She only hoped that the monster, which had chased some prisoners into the kitchen, wouldn't come back to finish the job.
-----
Faith burst into the cafeteria and saw the devastation. There were dead, wounded, and terrified inmates and guards everywhere. Faith looked towards the two tables which her gang had claimed and saw Sonya on the floor, with Kelly and Gloria kneeling over her. Faith ran to them.
"Where-?" she started.
Kelly and Gloria looked up at their axe-wielding leader with surprise. "That way!" Gloria shouted, pointing to the kitchen doors.
Faith looked down at Sonya, then up at Kelly. "You got her?" she asked.
"I got her," Kelly responded rapidly. "Go!"
Faith went.
-----
The second Ulyaro was a lot easier to kill than the first. It had cornered several inmates in the kitchen, and seemed to be trying to decide which one to eat first. Faith made the decision moot by throwing one of her axes sidearm, neatly cutting the demon's spinal cord at its midpoint. The demon fell over, helpless; Faith finished it with a stroke to the neck from her second axe.
Faith looked at the prisoners she had just rescued. "Where's the Vorpic?" she said. "The tall one?"
The prisoners only stared, wide-eyed. Then one of them screamed.
A long, hard body fell on Faith from above. The creature had been hanging from the pipes, awaiting the right moment for an ambush.
The Vorpic was light, but strong. Though Faith tried to throw it off, it clung to her, trying to crush her in a bear hug around her arms and ribs. Faith snapped her head back to butt the monster, but even its face was armored; all Faith gained was a headache. And she was starting to run low on air. Her remaining axe hung uselessly from her hand, which was pinned to her side.
With all her remaining strength, Faith leaped up in the air and rotated backwards, so that she landed on the Vorpic like a professional wrestler. The monster's hold loosened; Faith tore herself from its grasp and flipped onto her feet, raising her axe. The Vorpic scuttled backwards along the floor, but not fast enough to prevent Faith from driving the head of her axe into the gap in the armor around its knee.
The monster let loose with a metallic-sounding squeal and kicked Faith in the head with its good leg. Faith fell back into the body of the dead Ulyaro and pulled her other axe from its spine. As the Vorpic got to its feet, Faith ran at the demon, feinted to the right with the axe, then swept the demon's bad leg with her left foot. The Vorpic fell onto its stomach and never saw the final axe blow that separated its head from its body.
Faith took several seconds to get her breath, then began to shuffle back towards the cafeteria.
Several doors burst open at once. Guards with shotguns and riot gear shouted for everyone to get on the floor, then realized that most of the prisoners were already sitting or lying down. The guards had expected a prison riot; instead, they found a bunch of frightened, bloodied inmates who were all too willing to go quietly to their cells.
Faith casually tossed her axes behind one of the big kitchen ovens. Some of her girls worked the breakfast shift; she could ask one of them to retrieve the axes later.
END CHAPTER 6
