Escape from the Santa Maria Part 1 Revision 1

[zombie_dog]

(This is the first revision to Escape from the Santa Maria. The most substantive difference is in dialogue; at the urging of my small but knowledgeable reader-base, I have changed L's voice to be a bit more appropriate to her personality. I've also made some minor edits to take the narrative out of the "writing this in a van at 1 a.m." writing style)

I woke to paralyzing pain and unbearable nausea. My body ached like I had been beaten; my empty stomach heaved at the prospect of moving. Keeping as still as I could manage, I opened my eyes. I was greeted by the sight of a dingy stone wall. Its poor condition quickly informed me that it was actual concrete and not a plastic substitute; the floor seemed to be made of actual concrete as well. A sickening rolling sensation indicated that I was probably on some kind of sea vessel, probably a large one. My vision swam for a few moments and I took a few deep breaths. In a few moments, I might be able to move. In the meantime, I would be doing no such thing.

My 'sitting still' preference was suddenly violated as a hand grasped my shoulder and rolled me onto my back. My vision went white as the movement filled my head with fire. My stomach roiled. I tried in vain to fight back, but small hands (a woman's?) pushed mine away and pressed a sticky patch to my forehead. A cool sensation spread outward from the patch; I recognized the relieving sensation of arnicin coursing through my veins. After a few moments, the pain and sickness had subsided enough that I could open my eyes again.

I couldn't see who had medicated me. I lay still for a few moments, feeling the arnicin do its work.

"Are you awake?" a female voice asked me. It was an oddly soothing sound.

I attempted a reply, but my voice was a feeble croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Yes," I said.

"Mmm," the voice said. "Please get up once you can."

I waited for a few moments, then struggled up through a curtain of pain. The room was, it seemed, a cell; the door was an iron slab with a barred window just like the kind you see in pre-Snowfall movies.

I looked over to my cellmate. The first thing I noticed was her legs; as the only part of her visible, they were unavoidable. It didn't hurt that they were very attractive legs-- well-toned and a color like cream coffee, tracing their way up from a pair of black walking boots to a green miniskirt. A gray hooded sweatshirt completely covered the stranger's upper body, including her face. The hood on the shirt was up and she had her back to me. Once she realized that I had sat up, she turned toward me slightly.

"Your name, please?" she asked.

"I'm," I began, then stopped. I was imprisoned in an unfamiliar place. Giving my full name might not be prudent. "Uh, Q."

"All right, 'Q'," the girl said. "I'm 'L'."

I frowned. She continued.

"Were you on a flight before you got here?" she asked.

"...yes," I replied.

"Were you headed to the Orleans Installation?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm a Kekkai engineer. You were going there too?"

"Yes," she replied with a nod. "I'm a licensed bartender, and they need more for the retreat concert."

"Okay," I said. "Do you know why we're here?"

"Mmm," she said, folding her arms. I tried to catch a glimpse of her face and managed to see a bit of smudged mascara. "No. It feels like we've been 'ported, possibly directly off the jet."

"Why us?" I asked.

"I don't know," the girl replied.

With a grinding noise, the cell door swung open. A swarthy man in a stained white shirt and brown leather apron stood in the doorway. The shotgun in his hands inspired an immediate plummeting sensation in my gut. He aimed the gun at us, then gestured with it at the girl.

"'ey, missy," he grunted. "Come wiv me."

My cellmate stuck her hands in the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt and walked to the cell door. The man kept the shotgun trained on her as she walked past him; he then reached out and pulled the door shut. There were loud clacking noises as he locked the door behind him, leaving me by myself.

I sighed and surveyed the situation. The pain and nausea of my waking had subsided to a dull annoyance, so I now found my mind quite a bit clearer. I was still wearing my work shirt and slacks; naturally, my pistol and its holster had been removed. I turned my attention to my prison. The cell was completely barren of any furnishing, without even a place to sit. The light came from a pair of small, barred windows set higher than I could reach.

Within a few minutes, I had observed all I could of the simple area. I sat down and waited.

After about fifteen minutes, the cell door opened again and the girl was shoved through it. I managed to get a look at her face as she stumbled in; her face was stunningly pretty, though the makeup she had been wearing was smeared and had run. She must have been crying. Even now, her face was locked in a grim expression.

The jailer who had first visited us appeared behind the doorway and waved the shotgun at me. "Now you, boy."

I reluctantly moved toward him.

I walked through the door. The man shut and locked it behind me, then jammed the shotgun's muzzle into my back. "On ye go."

The man led me through a long hallway of cells. I looked through the barred window of each, trying to see who else was imprisoned. What I saw was not encouraging. While several cells contained nothing at all, I spotted a body in one, partially decomposed and crawling with flies. Another cell had a figure that I could have assumed was still alive, were I more optimistic, but even I know that most people do not sleep face down.

The jailer walked me out of the hallway and into a small room with a plastic table and a few chairs. Sitting on the opposite side of the table was a man in a business suit, an incongruous match to the dungeon-like appearance of the surroundings. He was handsome in a severe sort of way, with iron-gray hair and deeply tan skin.

"Take a seat, young man," the man said. My psyche quailed; his tone was not friendly. I sat in the chair across from him. The man with the shotgun leaned against the door that led back to the prisons.

"I hope you're a little more cooperative than your cellmate," the man in the suit said. "We're probably going to have to torture her, and I don't think that Boris has the energy to torture you too."

"Sure I do," the shotgun-toting jailer said with a grin.

The man in the suit shrugged. "Are you willing to cooperate with us?"

I nodded.

"Good. Your name?"

I hesitated. "Q," I said.

The man in the suit made an exasperated noise and slapped the table. I cringed. "We've got a plane full of fucking letters," the man snapped. He threw his hands in the air. "You know? I don't give a fuck. You're dead meat anyway, so I don't need your name."

The man leaned across the table. I shrank back involuntarily. "My name is Hadrian Black," he hissed at me. "Does that ring any bells?"

"You're the terrorist--"

He cut me off with a look and held up a finger. "Mr. 'Q', I am a businessman. I do business. I recover lost things and return them for a finder's fee. Those lost things happen to be people."

I bit back my reply.

"Some people may refer to that as 'hostage-taking', but if they have such a problem with it they will have to do a better job of stopping me. In a way, that's why you're here. We don't normally bother with small fry like you, but our etherscan indicated that you are a magic engineer."

"Uh," I said. "Kind of."

"You'd better hope that 'kind of' is good enough, Mr. Q," Black said. "We are going to kill you once your job is over. Your performance will determine how quickly you die."

I must have blanched, because Black looked at my expression and guffawed. "We'll give you time to say prayers and shit," he said. "Don't worry."

Black stood up and gestured to the shotgun-wielding thug, Boris. "Bring him," he said.

Boris and Black pushed me through the door and down a dingy metal stairway. A metal door opened up to a cramped room full of jury-rigged technology. Scuffed plastic components stood next to old-fashioned metal instruments, there were cables connected to every socket converter that I could think of. I even saw what appeared to be a pre-Snowfall edison cable nailed to the ceiling.

Hadrian Black walked to a badly scratched and burned plastic box in the corner of the room. It was obscured by a pair of metal pipes.

"Mr. Q, this is our Grabber," Black said. "It is how we find our lost items. It has been acting up lately. We had a very profitable target whom we attempted to grab with this, and when he arrived, his heart had been stopped dead. Now, I like to have a certain ruthless reputation, but killing profit is little more than impractical. This time, we seem to have missed our target completely. But we got you."

He stepped aside and gestured. "We want you to take a look at it. Fix it."

"Well," I said, "See, the thing is, I'm a Kekkai Engineer--" I stammered, but stopped dead when Hadrian Black fixed his eyes on me and raised his eyebrows.

"Mr. Q, if you are not useful to us," Black said, "You have wasted my time. If you are wasting my time, terrible things will happen to you before you expire."

I clenched my jaw, trying to hold back tears, and walked up to the corner with the 'Grabber'. I reached my arm through the space between the metal pipes and opened the door to the Grabber's compartment. The inside of the compartment was in terrible shape; the ether prism in the center of the holding field was floating distinctly off-kilter, displaced to a odd angle from a heavy layer of caked magicite that had grown on the side of the crystal. Several of the I/O cables from the reading panels were damaged or fused, and I could plainly see a few webs that almost certainly belonged to a mana leech spider. I had never in my life seen such a poorly-kept artifact device.

On the bright side, even I might have been able to fix it.

"I'm going to need some tools for this," I said, apprehensive.

"And they are...?" Black asked.

"A magic-reflective knife and pair of tongs, a pair of protective gloves and a soldering iron," I said. "And a can of compressed air and a bottle of magicite solvent would be good too."

"I'll see what we've got," Black said, "But you'll make do with what I can come up with. In the meantime, Boris will show you back to your cell. If you're lucky, maybe miss 'L' will give you one last interface before you bite it."

Boris led me back to the cell, keeping the shotgun jammed into my back.

As we neared the cell's metal door, I could hear a moaning noise from inside it. Boris evidently did too, as his face registered troubled confusion. He unlocked the door and opened it; in the cell, the girl who called herself L was curled up near the wall, her back to us. She rocked back and forth, moaning.

"What?" Boris said, walking into the room and putting his shotgun on his shoulder. "What, bitch?"

He placed his foot on L's shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Her eye caught mine and she winked. I took the cue-- I clasped both of my hands together and raised them above my head. I ran up to Boris and brought my hands down as hard as I could on the back of his skull. My fingers exploded in pain as I landed the blow; Boris staggered and cursed, but did not fall. He turned toward me, grasping at his shotgun. L lashed out with one foot and caught Boris in the knee with her boot. He dropped to the floor. I balled up a fist and hit him in the face, which hurt my hand even more than the overhand punch had. Boris reeled and stumbled to my side. With the easy flexibility of a dancer, L lifted her leg high in the air and brought her booted heel down against the side of Boris's head, slamming it against the concrete floor. He stopped moving immediately. L scrambled to her feet, raised her boot and stomped on Boris's face several times, leaving it a bloody mess. I drew back in horror.

"Iyesu, stop! Stop!" I shouted.

L drew back and folded her arms tightly in front of her. There were fresh tears on her face. "He said he was going to rape me," she said quietly.

"Still," I said.

"Take his shotgun," she said.

"What?" I asked. "Me? Why don't you take it?" I asked.

She shrugged. I sighed and took the shotgun. It felt very heavy.

"I'm not even sure how to use this," I said.

"Neither am I," L said. "But we need to get going. If somebody gets in our way, point the shotgun at them and pull the trigger."

My face must have registered my dread at the idea of shooting someone, because L sighed, exasperated.

"They said they were going to kill us, Q," she said. "No matter what. We are stuck on a boat with terrorists. Either they are going to have to die or we are."

"I know," I said, uncomfortable.

"I am no more eager to kill anyone than you are," she said, "But my desire for survival takes precedence. Come on. We really need to go." She reached down to Boris's prone form and unlatched a carabiner from his belt. It had a number of keys attached to it on a ring. She stuffed the carabiner into the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt.

L led me out of the room, both of us on the lookout for more guards.

"What are we going to do?" I murmured under my breath.

"I ... think we have to kill them all," L said. "Or at least lock them up."

I didn't respond.

We were nearly to the end of the hallway when we heard a rough voice call, "Boris?"

L and I flattened against the wall.

"Yer takin' a long time," the voice called. "You said you wasn't going to fuck the girl yet."

A man in black clothing and a bandanna rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks, directly in front of us. L and I froze; I held the shotgun uselessly in front of me.

The man's right hand twitched toward the pistol at his hip.

"Shoot him!" L said. I tried to comply but my muscles were locked tight.

The man grabbed the gun at his side and drew it. In response, L's hand flashed out of her hoodie pocket, a small pistol clutched in it. She put it to the man's face point blank and pulled the trigger. His head exploded messily, spraying gore across the wall behind him. His body slumped to the ground, the remains of his head useless and lolling on his neck. L stood statue-still in place, her arm still extended. I could see the pistol, which was engraved with the word 'Manticore', trembling in her grip.

"I..." I stammered.

L slowly withdrew her arm and slipped the pistol back into her hoodie pocket. She said to me in a hollow voice, "You need to do your part, Q."

I gave a jerky nod.

L swallowed hard, and I saw a tear trace a fresh line of mascara down her face. "I am not ... Q, this is not what I do. I am a ... I'm a bartender. I have never killed before."

"Me neither," I said, then nodded at her pocket. "That's a custom pistol."

"It is an heirloom," L said hurriedly, then wiped her face with one sleeve, leaving a black smear along it. "We have to keep moving. Would you please take point? I am asking you nicely, Q. I'm sorry for being curt with you but I am not feeling well right now."

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "I'm sorry. I'll shoot the next guy."

"Thank you," L said in a quavering tone. She put her head down and was quiet for a moment.

I hesitantly stepped forward and started to put my arms around her. She jerked away and made a choked noise. I pulled away quickly and moved through the door into the interrogation room. I repeated to myself, Shoot the next guy you see. Shoot the next guy you see. Shoot the next guy you see.

Iyesu. I'm really going to shoot the next guy I see.

I seriously hope there isn't a next guy, I thought, knowing that the wish was a futile one.