After some time, he’d lost track, Leon was let out of convalescence. He was not the same as he was when he was put in, nor had he been since he woken up in the first place; his hands would still sometimes shake involuntarily—an after effect of the electrical torture he had endured when he was initially taken prisoner. Pain would randomly shock his body for a moment, and then suddenly pass. His eyes were deepened into their sockets, and cheeks bony and gaunt. He felt as he thought he probably looked; a member of the living dead. After a few more days of observation in a separate cell, which he figured was for checking if he had any sort of communicable diseases, he was released into general population. The prison here, less than a formal penitentiary, was a work camp of some sort. It’s primary purpose was the refinement of various ores mined up by prisoners sent to the mines as a form of execution. Thankfully, although that is only said relatively, Leon had been placed on the refinement line on a loader. Days became weeks, time running together more and more. He looked at the weighed amount, made sure it was correct, and then released measured amounts to the line. He was almost certain that there were computers that could do this, but figured that the RMA did some sort of math and decided it was cheaper to use slaves instead of modernizing production. Either that, or they did it so they had somewhere to stick their prisoners.
One day that would have bled into another otherwise, Leon heard yelling; surprising given how the din of the line would normally drown out such things. The scream came from the man on the next loader down. His jacket had gotten caught in the belt, and was being pulled in with the wearer still in it, his hand already being chewed. Leon, without thinking, hit the emergency cancel on the loading line which produced an unholy blare. Guards on the catwalk above began to yell, although it was to not much effect. Leon then bolted over to the stuck man, and ripped them from their jacket. The machine-gnawed hand was a gruesome sight. This was when the guards finally trained their rifles on Leon, with other guards securing other loaders. They grab and drag Leon off the line, and over the officer who oversaw this section; he wasn’t as cruel outwardly as others, but more in the way that bureaucrats are: callous, cold.
“Mr. Leon, I would think after the way we
greeted you on arrival to our jolly camp would have given you the idea that we
don’t like prisoners who take things into their own hands.”
“Why did you stop the line?” The officer said with sharp, feigned politely.
“Sir, I did not want the rollers to get damaged and impact the next shift.”
The officer made an exaggerated, contemplative face, before then asking “Mr. Leon, are you rated as an industrial engineer?”
“… No, sir.” He replied after a seconds hesitation.
A padded wham of the officer kneeing Leon, “Then refrain from acting with such uninformed judgement in the future.” He motioned to the other guards “Send him back, and restart the line. I don’t want to be behind; my kid has a recital tonight, and I can’t stay late.”
The pain of the officer’s knee hardly registered at this point, and Leon just added it to his list of agonies. The line was restarted, and he watched for the remainder of his shift as little bits of hand could be seen in the gears. He would also occasionally look up, and see the section officer speaking with another officer, though Leon couldn’t tell where he worked.
The next morning, Leon went to the shift sign-in, and for the first time, it rejected his entry. Confused and somewhat alarmed, Leon looked around, the guard looking at him from inside the booth piping in over the comm: “It looks like you’re out of the job. System says you are posted in the maintenance bay.” He droned. Leon, still confused, barked back a shar acknowledgement, and left the queue. He could see the sign-in for the maintenance section, and somewhat cautiously went over to see; his credentials were valid, and he was granted entry. “Head to vehicle section C-3” an automated voice chimed above him.
The maintenance section still had the same dust that pervaded the entire complex, but was somehow indescribably cleaner in a way that Leon couldn’t articulate. There was dust, grime, and the ever-present smell of sweaty desperation, but it felt less oppressive than the loading line. Leon found Section C-3, and noticed that it immediately jumped count to C-5 as the next section. He would have laughed if he still had that ability.
“You Leon?” a burly, bearded man in an officer’s uniform asked.
Leon, snapped to attention, “Yessir”.
“Good” the officer replied back after a moment. “I’m Lieutenant Gannet, and you are now mine.” He said plainly and matter-of-factly. “You’ve been reassigned to me, and your new job is to work in this bay to service damaged mining carts. Your old section officer said you liked that sort of thing, and we had an opening after old Karver bit it.” Gannet looked Leon up and down, like one might a new mule for farmwork. “You’ll be taking your regular orders from our man Klink here. He’s a prisoner like you, but you just pretend that anything he says about work comes from me. If you give him any trouble, you’ll be giving me trouble, and I’ll send you right back to the line, or the mines depending on how’re we are all doing that day. Is that all understood?”
“Yessir.”
“Great, now get to work.”
Leon watched the lieutenant walk off,
staring at their work pad. He looked around, and finally noticed the other
three prisoners, one of which was a skinny, gaunt man with reddish-brown hair,
and round glasses.
“Are you Klink?” Leon asked, unsure of how to proceed.
“Yup.” Klink replied plainly. His voice had an unplaceable twang to it. An awkward moment passed with Leon not sure if he needed to speak. “We fix the broken carts, then send ‘em back. Doesn’t matter what’s wrong with ‘em, we just fix ‘em. If we need a part, we place a work order for that part. Don’t cause no trouble, and there won’t be no trouble. You hear?” The man rattled off, nearly unblinking in the entire delivery.
“Yessir” Leon replied back.
“No.” Klink said flatly. “Not ‘no sir’. Just Klink.”
“Alright, Klink.” Leon said, unsure if he should be happy about the informality. His entire speech during his stay nearly consisted of “yessirs” and “ no sirs”, that anything else almost felt like a foreign language.
Leon settled into his new role quickly. The maintenance sections were much more lax than the line was. There were still guards who would still absolutely shoot him, but the air was less tense. The prisoners carried out there work nearly autonomously, with the section officers walking between, but from the looks of it, they rarely interacted with their charges, with the exception of which ever prisoner they had selected to oversee the work done. More interesting to Leon, though, was that the maintenance bay was adjacent to the Suit Bays—where the RMA stored their Ritters. Their dark, angular armor, arcanite cell storages, and related equipment. He even spied something that he didn’t know what to make of at first; another kind of suit, a porcelain white, except for it’s left arm, which was incongruously large, and an olive drab color. He couldn’t make out much more detail, but he did think it bold to allow prisoners so close to such equipment. He guessed that the guards didn’t think that any prisoner would try it, or that they could pick off any that attempt entry.
After some time working, the meal horn sounded, and the prisoners shuffled off to their assigned messes. As Leon sat down, another immediately sat beside him; it was the woman he met in the convalescent hold.
“Hey time-traveler” She whispered in such a friendly way, that Leon didn’t know how to respond for a moment.
“Hey” he said after a moment.
“You adjusting alright?” She asked in an almost maternal way. They sat adjacent to each other, facing forward. Talking during meals was discouraged with some force, and regularity.
“This hotel sucks.” He said, surprising himself with the quip.
She had to hold back a chortle, “Yeah, I won’t recommend it.” A moment of pause, the din of the clinging of forks on trays, and chewing.
“There’s going to be an incident” she finally said.
Leon waited for a moment, trying to figure out what she just said.
“There’s going to be an incident, and you need to be ready.”
What do you—” She cut him off. “When the time comes, you go over to the suit bay, and grab whatever you can, and do what you have to.” She said, an edge beginning to form in her veiled maternal tone.
Leon simply asked “Why tell me?”
“We need all the help we can get, and you’re the closest.” She said. “That, and I have a good feeling about you. Be ready.”
The horn sounded again to mark the end of the period, and Leon wasn’t sure what to make of his new reality once again.
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