“4104″ — Part 01

 

Richards looked up in horror.  “Forty-one oh four,” he said. “FORTY-ONE OH FOUR!”

The guards’ heads snapped up.  At the gallows, Peyton’s chin rose from his chest. His eyes bored into the computer kiosk. Richards dove for the switch, the red lever that would release the floor beneath the prisoner and send Peyton to his death. He slammed his palm down.

It was a simple log. It should have showed nothing. Reviewing the observers was standard procedure. Why had the computer flagged it?

Peyton’s eyes narrowed.  His massive shoulders flexed.  The manacles securing his wrists popped like a cheap rivet. The enormous man had time to fix Richards with a glare.  Then he fell, so slow, hanging and then falling through the square of empty space—

“Seal the gallery!” ordered Richards. “Blast doors. Give me the blast doors!”

Something wriggled at the edge of the empty square. Richards caught it, turned to it, paled.  Fingers. Peyton’s fingers. They were white with exertion.

The big man pulled himself up from the edge of the opening, landing heavily on prison-issue boots. He was flushed now. That was bad. The surgically implanted hormone sacs in his body would be shunting adrenaline, cortisol, and half a dozen other artificial compounds through his muscles. Pain-killers. Stimulants. A chemical cocktail designed to make a mortal man a wrecking machine. Small wonder it was a capital crime.

“Forty-one oh four,” said Peyton.  “That’s impossible.”

“It is impossible!” Richards lied. “We checked! We checked just as you asked!”

“We had a bargain,” said Peyton.  Around him, all four guards drew their batons and charged them. On the other side of the gallery, two men with assault rifles waited. Richards dared a look at the window. The blast shield was lowering slowly into place, darkening the mirrored surface inch by inch.

“I looked, I tell you,” said Richards. “The computer turned up a random datum at the last possible moment. It can’t mean—”

“But it does,” said Peyton.  “You were going to let me do it. Let me die quietly.”

“But that’s what you wanted!”

“It hurts,” said Peyton, flexing his outsized fingers.  “It hurts all the time.  But it doesn’t hurt so much that I would leave without—”

“NOW!” Richards ordered.

The guards struck.  Peyton shrugged off the first blow. He endured the second. He suffered the third.

He grabbed the fourth.

Electricity crackled up the length of his arm as he crushed the baton in his fist.  The discharge shocked the operator, dropping him to the floor.  The guard was dead before he got there; none of them were properly grounded. Peyton’s blackened hand was already curling into a fist when the second man got in his way.  The blow crushed vertebrae in the guard’s neck. He folded.

Fire leapt up the front of Peyton’s shirt. He ignored it, grabbed the other two guards, pulled them close. The fire kissed them and enveloped them. Peyton held them, burning, to the coals of his chest until they shrieked for mercy.  Then he snapped their necks and dropped them to the floor.

Peyton smoldered.  Richards was still clawing at the security compartment of his kiosk.  Peyton relieved him of the task. He grabbed Richards’ hand, crushed it, folded it beneath the man. The arm cracked and split. Peyton never blinked.

“We had a bargain,” whispered Richards.

“Which you broke, Warden,” said the prisoner.  He held Richards’ skull in his hands until it, too, cracked. The kiosk was harder to break. He broke it. The blast shield lifted.  He used Richards one more time, throwing the body through the gallery mirror. The safety glass shattered on the third try.

The body drew the bullets of the men inside. Peyton hurried after it. He smashed the first man with his knee, took the fallen rifle, and beat the second man with the gun. It did not take long. The plastic rifle broke, but not too soon.

There were six people in the gallery. Two of them screamed.  Peyton examined them all.

Too old. Too old. Nothing familiar. A reporter. A detective, unarmed.

And a little girl.

“I’m twelve,” she said. “I’m Annika.” She smiled.

Peyton smiled. He held out his hand. It was bloody. He took it back. He offered his arm.

She took that. He hugged her.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“Won’t they stop you?” said Annika.

“I won’t let them,” said Peyton.  “I only agreed to today because they said you were dead.”

“I’m not,” said Annika.

“No,” said Peyton.  “You’re not.”

“You smell funny,” said Annika. She wrinkled her nose.

“I do,” said Peyton. “A little.”

They left. On the computer kiosk above the broken body of Warden Richards, the screen still glowed.

“4104,” it said. “Next of Kin found (Dependent).”