S Morden - One Way

They wanted him for the skills he already possessed. Using machinery to build buildings. Frank told himself not to overthink it. See what the job was, work out a schedule, assign the team, get the work done. Pretty much what he’d done his entire adult life.

There was a knock on the window, right next to his head. He didn’t jump, just looked round to see a couple of men standing there, one in a suit, one in overalls.

“Have a nice life, Frank,” said Tosh. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” He got out and walked to the car in front.

He left the door open, and all the warm air stole out. Tosh was replaced in the driver’s seat by the suit, and the other man threw the side door open and joined Frank in the second row. The car in front pulled forward, and driving-suit twisted the wheel so they drove around it and on down the road, fully manual.

Frank looked sideways at the man sitting next to him. The cardboard box was between them, but suddenly that didn’t seem quite enough distance or quite enough of a barrier. He pushed with his feet so that his back was against the door. This man seemed to trigger all Frank’s fight—flight responses, and he didn’t understand why. He strove to remain calm, despite his skin itching like it was about to slough. The man continued to stare at him.

“Making you uncomfortable?” he finally said. His accent placed him to the south and east. Texas, maybe.

Frank was struggling with his comeback. The other cons had mostly left him alone: old guy, nothing to prove. When he had been threatened, he’d usually blown them off and walked away. In the back of a car, he could do neither.

He had to rethink, work out a strategy. He wasn’t used to that. “Is that what you want?”

The man blinked. Perhaps he couldn’t work out what that meant. He shifted his position, from ramrod straight to a just-as-threatening lean against the upholstery. “Get used to it. I’m here to make your life hell from now on.”

Frank swallowed. This guy was going for his ribs: in prison, he’d have had to respond somehow, let the other guy know he wasn’t going to be a pushover. But this wasn’t a fight he could settle with his fists and his feet.

Instead, he said: “Does that mean you’re my new cellie? You taking the top or the lower tray?”

The man was again confused by Frank’s reply. “I don’t think you quite get it, Kittridge. I’m in charge of you. Everything you say or do from now on, you say it in response to something I’ve said, you do it because I’ve ordered you to do it. I tell you when to get up and when to go to bed. I tell you when to start and when to stop. You understand me, Kittridge? I own you.”

“I thought the company owned me. And unless you own the company, maybe they own you too.”

The man clenched his fists and his jaw, working it as if he was chewing gum. “You giving me sass? You?”

Frank’s hands were cuffed, but if it came to a fight, he could still use them. The chain between them might even be useful as an improvised garrote.

He needed to calm that right down. That was prison Frank talking. He hadn’t always been prison Frank: he’d been someone else before, and he could go back to being that, if only he could remember how. The man was attempting to intimidate him, make him afraid, assert his authority, and the only entry in Frank’s ledger on the credit side was that they’d recruited him. They needed him. It had to mean he wasn’t going to get beaten, because who beats up an astronaut, right?

“Hey.” Frank raised his arms, bumped his wrists together with a clink. “You’re the boss.”

“And don’t you forget it.” The man unclenched his fists again, and continued to stare at Frank. “You want to go back to prison?”

Frank said nothing. It seemed like one of those questions that, whatever he answered, the response was already prepared, and designed to humiliate him.

The man leaned forward and straightened his finger like a gun at Frank’s head. “OK. Time for some truth, let you know what’ll happen if you crap out here, for any reason. Supermax. Pelican Bay. Security Housing Unit. You know what that is, don’t you, boy? For the rest of your sentence, you’ll never get to speak to another human being again. You’ll be buried. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for it to sink in. He wouldn’t be returning to his cell, to spend his life turning gray and desiccating like dust. He’d be in the SHU, the Hole, locked away out of sight and out of mind. The Hole sent men mad.

Frank stiffened in his seat. “That’s not the deal I signed.” He didn’t want to let his fury and terror slip out in his voice, but it did. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d been played and he was burning.

“That’s changed your tune, hasn’t it, Kittridge? That’s made you afraid of me. You remember that, now. When I tell you to jump, what do you say?”

His silence was all he had left. That and the Hole. The goddamn Hole.

“I asked you a question, Kittridge. When I ask you a question I require an answer, an instant answer, because I’m not asking twice.”

“How high?” said Frank, reluctantly, almost tearfully. Apparently, his decision to go to Mars, freely made, now left him on the precipice of a lifetime of solitary confinement. He wondered what would have happened if he’d turned Mark down in the first instance. Would he already be there, in a tiny, windowless cell, a ball of rage and regret knotting his insides?

He’d dodged that bullet. He had no way of knowing, no way of finding out, how many others they’d asked before him. Perhaps he was the last on the list. He might have been the first. Any feelings of being special, and somehow too valuable to kick to the curb, were gone.

His position was precarious. Yes, he’d remember that. And resent it. Always resent it.

His expression had slipped to briefly unmask his true horror. He tried to drag his impassivity back into place, but the damage had been done. The man had seen it all, and knew him now.

“Tell me you understand,” said the man.

Frank understood all too well. “Yeah. I got that.”

The man gave a giggle, and only belatedly tried to hide his smirk behind his hand. It was an act, nothing more, nothing less, even if the threat was real. Frank, who’d never really had much cause to hate anyone, even the man he’d shot, realized that he genuinely, viscerally hated this grinning malevolent idiot already.

“At least you won’t go forgetting.”

Frank was still churning inside. He’d never not be scared now, at least until he got on that rocket and was on his way to Mars. Then, and only then, would he be free of that particular threat.

He turned his head away, so he didn’t have to look at the man for a while. They drove around the side of the mountain peak. As the sun slipped westwards, the color leached away, and left a cold monochrome landscape.

The road went on, now turning southwards.

In the middle of precisely nowhere, a double fence barred their way. There were signs with dire warnings about dogs patrolling, of deadly force being used against trespassers, how secret the area was and how many violations an unauthorized person might clock up. But the fence was all that was needed, really. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet tall, topped with a coil of razor wire, and inside that, across a bare kill zone, another identical barrier. If anyone was looking for a hint, it was right there. This was where the world ended. Beyond was… there was nothing. No buildings, no people, just the single track.

They could do literally anything to Frank here, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The car rolled to a stop. “Out,” said the man.

He left the car without looking to see whether Frank would follow, presumably because he knew he would. Frank opened the door on his side, picked up his box, and stepped out. It was cool, rather than cold, but the air was dry and strangely thin and it tasted of salt and stone. The wind tugged at his shirt, swirling and directionless.