Cellmates

CELLMATES



The girl slid out of the chute at high speed and slammed into the hard-packed dirt with a pained grunt.  She rolled a little before coming to a stop, but no sooner had she stopped moving than she scrambled to her feet and ran back toward the chute.

“You let me out of here you —“

“Stop!”  The girl froze in her tracks.  “The chute’s electrified when the top gate’s closed.  You’ll be fried if you touch it.”

The girl looked around, but couldn’t see the source of the odd male voice.

“Where are you?”  She challenged.  “Show yourself!”

A shadow detached itself from the wall and stepped into the pool of light at the center of the room.  The first thing to appear was the oddly proportioned legs with their too-small feet; then the muscular torso and arms covered with thick dark fur; and then finally the head, with its muzzle and high-set triangular ears.

Not a human head, a wolf’s head.

A lupusin’s head.

Up on the surface, the guards heard the girl’s scream and chuckled.

“What do you think?”  One asked the other.  “Bugs, or a skeleton?”

“I think you’re trying to change the subject.  Call or fold already.”

For a good ten seconds the girl screamed before she ran out of breath.  The lupusin just stood there with his ears pressed flat against his skull and his eyes squinted slightly.

“Are you quite finished?”  He said when she paused for breath.

“What are you doing here, monster?!”

“Well, let’s see, it’s a prison, so I suppose I must here on vacation.”

The girl backed away and pressed her back to the wall.  The lupusin snorted and returned to where he had been sitting against the other wall.  The girl stared at him.

“Aren’t you going to eat me?”

The lupusin cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Do you want to be eaten?”  The girl shook her head.  “Then I don’t see any reason to.  The fact is that no lupusin has ever eaten a human.”

“So you say, but my father fought in the war!  He and twenty others were captured and dragged to one of your camps where they were all killed and eaten!”

“If they were all killed, then how would you know what happened to them?”

The girl’s mouth opened, then closed.  The lupusin chuckled.

“I don’t know what happened to your father, girl, but our human POWs were treated very well, and then were all released when the peace treaty was signed five years ago.  But what about your lupusin POWs, hmm?  Do you know what happened to them?  They were tortured for information, killed, skinned, and then their hides were sold as luxury goods in your stores.  If humans had had there way, my kind would all be slaves to be worked to death and then skinned.”

The girl looked away.  She didn’t want to admit that the monster might be telling the truth, but she herself had seen noblewomen wearing lupusin skin coats and shawls, so she couldn’t deny that he might have a point. 

The silence dragged on for several minutes before the lupusin finally broke it.

“Why did they throw you in here anyway?”

The girl snorted.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to play with your food?”

“As a matter of fact she did, but since I’m not going to eat you, that’s beside the point.  Now, are you going to answer my question or are you going to keep spouting racist propaganda?”

The girl shifted uncomfortably, then sighed.

“I refused to sleep with the son of a nobleman.  He tried to force the issue, so I kicked him in the nuts.”

The lupusin snickered.

“Wish I could have seen his face.  By the way there’s a spider crawling on your foot.”

The girl squeaked and began frantically brushing at her shoe.

“OOOHHH, I HATE spiders!  Is there any way out of this blasted place?!”

“Maybe.”  The lupusin studied her for a second, then shook his head.  “No, never mind, you’re not strong enough.”

“Hey! Just ‘cause I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m a weakling!  If I was I wouldn’t be in here!  So if you know a way out of this place, then tell me!”

“I wasn’t referring to your physical strength, I meant your inner strength, because if you really want out of here, then you’re going to have to set aside your prejudices so we can work together.  Otherwise we’re both going to be stuck in here forever.”

The girl studied him for several seconds, then nodded.

“Alright, let’s do it.”

The lupusin jumped to his feet and held out a hand to help her up.  She reflexively started to brush it away, then reconsidered and took it.  He led her through a twisting maze of passages until she was thoroughly lost.  As they went, he explained the plan.

“This place was built during the war to house POWs.  There’s a passage at the back that leads directly to an abandoned base outside the city.  They used to use it to take prisoners for interrogation.  There’s a sonic fence blocking the passage, and motion sensitive auto cannons set beyond it.  I can’t get through the fence because it starts out painful and then gets stronger from there, but the frequency is too high for humans to hear, so you can walk right through it.”  He stopped at another passage and pointed her down it.  “Get through the fence, find the power box, and rip out the wires, careful you don’t zap yourself.  Then I can get us both through the guns.”

The girl nodded and took a deep breath, then started down the passage.  Part way down she noticed a slight buzzing sensation in the back of her skull that seemed to get a little stronger the further she went, but it never became strong enough to really bother her.  Turning the corner, she saw the control box set into the wall, and from there it only took her a moment to disable it.

The lupusin came around the corner a moment later, rubbing his ears.

“That’s a relief.  Come on, the next trap’s just ahead.”

“How do you know so much about this place, anyway?”

“I’m with the Underground.  We busted one of our people out of here a week ago.  We’d considered using this route, but decided it was too dangerous, so we dug a tunnel to get him out.  We got him out just fine, but I got trapped when the tunnel collapsed.  I was able to play hide and seek with the guards, but still wound up trapped here.  Oaky, here we are.”  The area of hallway he stopped at didn’t look any different, but when he kicked a stone down the passage concealed machine guns opened fire and blasted it to dust.

“They added this after the war, when they decided that this was a good place to toss people they wanted to disappear.  A human could never hope to run this gauntlet without some serious armor, but a lupusin just might be able to move faster than the guns can track.  The plan’s simple; I’m going to carry you through, and you’re going to hold on for dear life.”

“Won’t I slow you down?”

“Yeah, a little.  That’s why you’re going to ride against my chest, that way if I’m too slow, then my body will give you at least a little protection from the bullets.”

The girl stared at him.

“You’d do that . . . for a human?”

The lupusin smiled – which did look a little like a snarl, except that there was no malice in his eyes.

“What better way to convince you that I’m not a savage blood-thirsty monster.”  He picked her up with one hand and held her to his chest like a child.  “Hold on tight now.”  Bending at the waist, he placed his free hand on the ground like a runner at the blocks.  The girl squeezed her eyes shut.  “Here we go.”

The lupusin exploded into motion and the world became a blur of thunderous gunfire and rapid movement, but then, after the longest few seconds she had ever experienced, everything was suddenly quiet.

“Alright, we’re clear.”  The lupusin said as he set her down.

“Are you hurt?”

The lupusin twisted to examine his back and tail.

“Nothing that won’t grow back, though my tail has seen better days.  Come on, someone will come down sooner or later to see if there’s a mess that needs cleaned up.”  He led her further down the passage to a rusty steel door.  The lupusin gestured for her to stay put, and then got a good run at the door and slammed his shoulder into it.  He backed up and tried again, and then on the third hit the door buckled and fell out of the frame.

“Come on, I’ll take you to the Underground.  They’ll be able to hide you.”

After an hour of moving through sewers and dodging from shadow to shadow on old backstreets, they reached one of the Underground’s hidden camps in the old tunnels under the city.  The lupusin exchanged countersigns with the sentries, and then led the girl into the camp.  Several people, both humans and lupusins were going about camp business, and several of them waved and called out to the lupusin, who waved back and made a few jokes about his being trapped.  When they reached a tent near the center of the camp, the lupusin picked up the flap and stuck his head inside.  A male human voice said something, but the girl could make out what.

“Good to see you too baldy, hey, I got a girl here what ticked off a noble.  Think we can help her?”

The lupusin stepped back, and a middle-aged man stepped out of the tent.  The girl felt her jaw go slack and her heart skipped a beat.  It took a couple of seconds for her to get her breath back enough to speak.

“D-Daddy?!”