For the moment, Skrote reckoned, he was safe. He prayed there would be enough time,
Madden and the others were moving back along the main corridor, hurrying now, almost running. Skrote switched cameras in time to see them arrive at the steel door that gave access outside. That too, they discovered, was electronically sealed. So the way forward and the way back were barred. Which left only the emergency exits--and to reach those they had to pass the confinement cells.
The trap was closing.
It was only now that Madden raised stony eyes to the surveillance camera. Then with an abrupt gesture he led the way to the gate of Block 6. Fonkle tried it with his key and of course the gate slid open.
Skrote switched viewpoints and picked them up as they entered the smaller corridor lined with cell doors. He wondered why Block 6, and then he knew why. The control room was on the floor above and there was a stairway past the emergency exit leading up to it.
Madden was moving to the offensive.
There was a sound, behind him and Skrote swiveled, the automatic ready in his hand. The guard he had cut to pieces was lying like butchered meat, legs splayed, in a lake of blood. Had the last guard summoned reinforcements and were they grouping for an assault in the corridor? Skrote had been too busy with the other screens to notice. Perhaps he didn't have minutes, only seconds--
Snapping his attention back to the panel he closed the circuit on the Block 6 gate. Madden's range of options had narrowed down to one-- he had no choice now but to pass along the Block 6 corridor to reach the emergency exit, which like every other door in Section M was electronically controlled.
The bank of screens were little capsules of deformity. The guards would kill some of them, many of them perhaps, but they couldn't kill them all. Because he was going to release every single inmate in the entire complex. Soon there would be several hundred of them roaming freely through Section M. It occurred to Skrote that Madden and Rolsom ought to be grateful to him for providing this opportunity to see their handiwork at such close quarters.
Footsteps and muffled whispering in the corridor outside: They were preparing for the next, and final, assault.
Skrote ran the heel of his hand along the row of switches, and the next row, and the next, and the next until he had released the locking mechanism on every cell door in Section M. Madden and the others heard the mechanism operating. Skrote couldn't hear, but their expressions and frantic mouthings made that fact clear. The guards drew their weapons. They backed along the corridor, shoulder to shoulder, as the cell doors began to open.
First to reach the steel door at the end of the corridor, Madden banged on it impotently, his eyes slitted and black in an ashen face. Fonkle tried the key. The door was immovable. Madden yelled something and the guards clustered around, but instead of shooting the inmates as Skrote had expected, they started firing at the steel door, wasting ammunition, while behind them things were crawling from the cells and blocking the corridor.
Skrote now released the circuits on the internal barred gates, allowing the inmates from the other blocks to move freely within the complex. His work was done. The trap had been set and sprung. All that was left to do was watch and enjoy. . . .
Viewing it on the large screen was an eerie experience, like watching a horror movie with the sound turned off. Having at last realized the futility of shooting at two-inch-thick plate steel, the guards were killing inmates. They killed quite a lot of them. The pale green walls were spattered with red and the floor was a swamp. After less than a minute the ammunition ran out, having been mainly expended on the door.
The sound of firing and the general commotion had attracted the inmates in other parts of the complex, who now came lurching, stumbling, slithering, and dragging their deformed bodies through the open gate in Block 6. The corridor filled up. The packed deformity moved forward. Many of them had enough glimmerings of comprehension left to recognize the director, and the guards were familiar symbols of oppression.
They tore the five men apart. Hair was torn out at the roots and eye sockets gouged clean. Those inmates who were either limbless or lacked functioning arms and hands used their teeth. Engulfed, the five men disappeared from view, which disappointed Skrote, though he caught glimpses of bits and pieces of them, bloodily ragged and barely recognizable, which had been wrenched off and flung aside. Other parts, such as their genitalia, were ripped off by force, chewed and spat out. Noises filtered up to Skrote's ears from below, screams and grunts and howls: a muted sound track from the underworld.
