He told X-Ray, in German:
“You can trust Yankee for the time being, but keep an eye on him. You’re the only one I know I can trust. I’m counting on you.”
“But you need not fear,” the Prisonmaster told both of them. “Because in the end, after the rebellion is quashed, there will be extra prisoners in the cells, and new wardens will surely be sent down to live among you—good men and women who will help you restore order at long last.”
The Prisonmaster knew the power of hope, and, more important, how to exploit it. He’d been doing it for decades now.
Archie pushed Cameron’s twitching body aside and went in, swinging his fists as though they were studded metal balls attached to leather bands. Cameron’s keys went clattering to the cement floor.
Hardie thought: Someone pick up the keys.
Over near the door Archie traded chops and kicks with his archnemesis, X-Ray. Hardie dove past them, through the doorway and straight into the fray, aiming for those keys. An elbow slammed into his chest right away. Then another fist whipped across Hardie’s face. Somebody kicked the keys. They shot across the floor through the open doorway and into the corner room—where food and clothes were delivered. Without those keys, they were fucked. Might as well kneel down and take their beatings just to get them over with.
Scrambling across the floor, his right leg screaming at him, threatening to cease all movement, Hardie crawled through the doorway, then reached out and wrapped his right hand around the keys. A second later a boot came down on that hand, trapping and crushing it at the same time.
Instinctively, Hardie tried to yank his hand free. It wouldn’t move. The pain was unreal. Hardie thought he could feel veins bursting within the flesh sac of the thing that used to be his right hand, which was being crushed by the rubber sole of a boot from above and the sharp keys from below.
Hardie balled up his left hand into a fist and struck out, at crotch level, with all his strength. His fist struck its target. The boot released his hand. The boot turned out to belong to Whiskey.
And although she did not possess the pair of testicles that Hardie had imagined, the punch had its intended effect. Whiskey dropped to her knees, clutching at her private parts.
Yep, I’ve still got it, Hardie thought. Hitting women like a pro.
Hardie checked his hand. It still could open, but his palm was cut and punctured with key marks. There was a blur of motion to his left. Hardie looked up at the exact moment a fist smashed into the side of his head. Whiskey. She threw another punch, a sloppy but powerful left jab, muttered something profane in her own language, and followed up with a right hook that slammed Hardie back into the wall.
He also dropped the keys, and Whiskey swept them aside with a kick of her boot.
She looked like she was about to use the heel of her hand to drive a piece of his nose cartilage up into his brain when she stopped. Something crackled in her ear.
At that moment the Prisonmaster was shouting:
“Go to the break room and bar the door shut. Now! It’s your only chance!”
* * *
And Hardie could hear it.
Meanwhile the two able-bodied prisoners, Archie and Eve, battled Yankee and X-Ray back into the delivery room. X-Ray tried to use his wristband mace blast, but Archie slapped his arm away and gave him a brutal head butt to his nose. Blood gushed out and clung to the wispy blond hairs hanging down from Archie’s forehead. “For my brother, you cunt.” X-Ray staggered backward. Through the pain, though, he heard the voice of the Prisonmaster, speaking perfect German:
“Lock them in the delivery room and get back to the control room. Now! It’s your only chance!”
X-Ray grimaced and raced forward, smashing into Archie’s midsection and flinging him to the side. Out of the corner of his eye, Hardie could see that Yankee was doing the same thing with Eve, smashing his way past her body, except that he was scrambling in the other direction, toward the control room.
The realization hit Hardie and Eve at the same time: the guards were splitting up…to seal them in the delivery room.
If they were trapped in a single room, it was game over.
Hardie scuttled across the floor like a crab escaping a boiling pot of water. He scooped up his cane and threw it to Eve—who caught it and wedged it between the door and the frame just as Yankee and Whiskey were pulling it shut. The guards on the other side tried, but no amount of strength was sufficient to snap that cane in half. Meanwhile Archie held it in place, so they couldn’t kick it loose.
For the moment they were at a grunting, sweating impasse.
Eve, breathing heavily, lips bleeding, said, “Okay.”
Hardie said, “Wait—what’s okay?”
“We can’t go back to the way it was. We’ll never get this chance again. Got to end this thing now.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“I’m talking about winning the fucking war, the whole thing, once and for all, change everything forever.”
“Spit it out already,” Archie said.
“Send one of us up and out through the elevator.”
Hardie just stared at her. Do what?
“And trigger the death mechanism?” Archie asked.
“Hear me out,” Eve continued. “One of us gets out. Escapes the facility. Finds someone on the outside. Tells the truth about this place.”
“Killing everyone else,” Hardie said.
“But one of us gets out,” Eve added, “and the survivor has to bring the truth to the world. Hardie here knows someone who will listen. Don’t you, Charlie?”
“What?” Hardie asked. “No. No way. Bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Are you really prepared to kill everyone down here?” Hardie asked.
“For the greater good? Absolutely. If we don’t make this strike now, we’re all fucked. Things will get worse. This will go on and on and on…and nobody will know. Nobody will fucking know what went on down here! And I can’t have that.”
“No, she may be right,” Archie said. “The question is, of course…who goes?”
“Hardie goes,” Eve said.
Hardie blinked. “What? No. Unh-unh. This is insane.”
“You have a wife and a son waiting for you. Besides, I have my success rate to think about. I don’t complete my job if you die.”
“There’s another way,” Hardie said. “There’s always another way.” He wanted to quote Batman and his thing about prisons always containing their escape, but he decided it would take too long.
“No, there’s not, Charlie. You haven’t been here long enough to realize that. We all have. There is no way. They designed this thing perfectly—only one exit no one would ever dare take. Well, fuck that. One of us should take it. And I think that someone should be you. Put us all out of our misery and blow the lid off this place. Don’t forget everything I’ve told you about the people who run this pl—”
“No,” Hardie said sternly. “No. There’s no way I’m killing all of you.”
“You don’t understand—”
“No, Eve, you don’t understand. Why do you think I’m even here? Because I let my partner and his whole family die. And you want me to do it again? To all of you?”
Archie, in all his naked glory, nodded his head. “He’s right, you know.”
They turned to look at him.
“I should go,” he said.
“What?” Eve asked. “No. Fuck you—I don’t even know you. Hardie goes.”
Archie shook his head. “Mr. Hardie, you seem like a fine man and all, but the trick is going to be getting past these two guards and making it to the elevator while the rest of us are on defense—as you call it in American football. You were walking with a cane until very recently. What if you stumble? What if you can’t make it? As I see it, we only have one shot at this. The strongest and fastest should go. There is no time for false modesty here—I am the strongest and fastest.”