"What happens next?" he asked.
Kale went to the bars, cupped both hands around his mouth. "Hey!" he shouted. "Is there anybody out there?" His voice was surprisingly loud, ringing through the emptiness. "Hello! We're alive in here! Hey!" He took in a deep breath. "We're alive in here! We're…"
There was a loud clank, and the cell doors up and down the corridor all began to rattle open at once. Kale turned and glanced back at his brother.
"Somebody heard us."
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter," Kale said. "Right now we have to…" He stopped.
Trig watched him. "What is it?"
Kale held up one hand, inclining his head to listen. Whether or not Trig actually heard a noise from the cell next to theirs, he couldn't be sure-his imagination, always active, was now working overtime to pluck something of substance from the void. "Stay there," Kale whispered, leaning out of the cell and looking around. Then he gestured Trig forward.
They went out together, Trig just half a pace behind Kale, and then he remembered-
"Wait!"
It was too late. The figure in the next cell burst out at him, scrambling forward with a snarling howl of rage. Trig saw Aur Myss fall on top of his older brother and drive him into the opposite wall, limbs flailing, hands slashing, already going for Kale's eyes.
Kale collapsed, caught completely off-guard, and for an instant Myss's body covered his entirely, his entire torso struggling spastically for air. The Delphanian seemed to be laboring equally hard to rip Kale's face apart and draw in another breath.
He's sick. The thought flashed through Trig's mind almost taster than he could recognize it. Now's your chance. Maybe your only one.
Hardly thinking, he swung down and grabbed Myss's throat from the back, laced his fingers over the doughy wads of flesh surrounding his neck, and squeezed. Please, please, let me do this.
But the attack brought a surge of strength through the Delphanian's body. Twisting around, Myss slashed free, the ragged up-and-down fissure of his mouth constricting into a grin. "Boy, you've overstepped your boundaries for the last time."
He grabbed Trig's face, clamping it between scaly hands, the pressure excruciating. Trig could feel blackness swarming in, eclipsing all reason. He wanted to scream but he couldn't open his mouth.
Suddenly the hands fell slack.
Trig's vision cleared, and he saw Myss still staring at him. But shock had taken the place of rage. Through the thing's open mouth, a glint of steel shone like a sharp metallic tongue. Then Myss toppled forward, and Trig saw the handle of the blade that his brother had shoved through the back of the Delphanian's skull.
"He came at me with it," Kale said shakily.
Trig found he couldn't speak.
"Come on, let's go."
They walked quickly down the long hallway toward the main exit, passing cell after cell of dead bodies. Kale said nothing. As much as Trig wanted to talk about what his brother had done-to thank him, to say something about it, to at least acknowledge the fact that it had happened-he didn't know where to start. So he, too, remained silent.
Up at the end of the corridor, Trig saw another figure hunched in the control booth, this one wearing an orange isolation suit.
"Wembly," Kale said.
The guard was hunched forward next to the release switch for the cells, the control he'd engaged to open up the wing. Kale reached into the booth and touched his shoulder.
"Hey, Wembly, thanks for.»
Wembly's corpse slouched forward and sideways out of the booth, his forehead striking the floor with a hollow thud. His sagging lips hung open, encrusted with dried blood and mucus, and his upturned eyes were vacant. Staring at him, Trig thought he saw a tremor, one last spasm passing through the shoulders and gut, but that, too, was probably just his imagination.
"He let us out. Probably the last thing he did."
"It was," a voice said.
They looked around to see Wembly's BLX unit standing in the corner of the booth. The droid stood awkwardly with its arms at its sides, looking utterly lost without its master.
"Come on," Trig said. "You can come with us."
The BLX seemed to consider the offer, but only for a moment. "No, thank you. I belong here. When we're rescued. " He allowed the thought to trail off, perhaps unable to convince itself of that eventuality.
"You're sure?"
"Forget it," Kale said. "Let's get out of here."
Trig cleared his throat. "Where are we going?"
"There's got to be an escape pod somewhere up above-maybe on the administrative level."
"You don't think somebody already took it? The warden, or the guards?"
Kale faced him, gripped Trig's shoulders in his hands, and held on firmly, even a little painfully. "We need a plan, and right now that's as good as any. So unless you've got a better idea, you can help me find a way up there."
Trig bit his lip. Nodded. Made himself say, "Okay."
It took a long time to find the turbolifts up from Main Detention. Most of the bodies they ran across were like the inmates on his level, corpses in bunks, corpses on floors, corpses curled up in corners, arms already stiffening around their folded knees as if somehow balling themselves up could stave off the eventuality of death. There were suicides-one inmate had hung himself from the bars, another had wrapped a bag around his head. Dead guards and stormtroopers lay on the floor, while puzzled-looking maintenance droids hovered over them, trying to make sense of the mass carnage, picking them up and putting them down again. Kale collected blasters from two of the bodies, but Trig could tell just by the way he carried them that he wasn't entirely comfortable with the weapons, although he tried to act casual about it.
They saw other things as well.
Outside one cell, a dead guard lay with his back against the bars. Trig saw that he'd been tied by the wrists and around the neck by the two dead inmates inside the cell. The inmates had since died of the disease, but that hadn't been what killed the guard. The cons had somehow lured him close enough to bind him there and then tortured him to death, stabbing, slashing, and mutilating him with the crude, sharpened instruments that were still clutched in their dead hands.
They saw an inmate, an alien species that Trig didn't recognize, comprising two conjoined bodies, one twice the size of the other. The smaller body had already died and fallen limp, while the larger one cradled it weakly like its own child, weeping and trying to breathe. It didn't even look up at them as they walked by.
They saw a maintenance droid carrying on a cheerful, one-sided conversation with a dead stormtrooper.
They saw two Imperial guards slumped dead over a dejarik holo-chess table while the figures on the table lumbered aimlessly around the board awaiting instruction.
Finally they found a turbolift and waited for the hatchway to slide open. There was a pair of dead guards inside, both of them armed, slouched in opposite corners, their torsos torn apart and scorched by blaster bolts, as if, in the final throes of delirium, they'd turned against each other. Kale hoisted them by their biohazard suits and dragged them out of the lift, and Trig was glad his brother didn't ask him to help. Looking at the bodies was one thing but touching them, lifting them up. hoisting their deadweight. that wasn't something he felt prepared for.
What if one of their cold dead hands was to reach up and grab hold of him?
Would he even be able to scream?
There was a clicking sound behind them, and Trig glanced back over his shoulder. He thought about Myss in the cell next to theirs, the cell that had been empty when he'd looked. Myss must have run out immediately after Wembly had sprung open the doors for them. Did that mean Myss was immune, too? Trig wondered if he was following them. Just because he didn't see anything didn't mean it wasn't there.