The Farm, elapsed time : unknown.
After an hour of staring at one another, Smudge stood up, went to the door and knocked for one of the guards to enter. It was the black man in fatigues.
"Give him the grand tour, Michaels," Smudge said to the guard. "He's a guest, so no falling down stairs, all right?"
The guard led Libra through a cold, sterile corridor lit by striplights, all painted concrete with a plain white linoleum floor.
"Linoleum's easy to remove, if there are bloodstains," said Michaels, as he approached the door at the end. He scanned his palmprint on a panel on the left. The double doors parted almost silently.
Around the corner, cutting across the hallway, was a wide circular corridor with polished steel walls, lit by more striplights. Just past the door, the hallway opened out into a wedge shape, spreading out into a large, open public area dotted with little round tables and comfy chairs.
The walls of the public area were decorated in a dark tan; light came from spots mounted in the ceiling, and there was a light yellow carpet underfoot.
The place was empty: but the ashtrays and discarded cups of coffee indicated recent usage. Libra looked at Michaels.
"Let's go," Michaels said. "We've got to do the full tour." He turned right, went into the corridor. Libra followed.
The corridor stretched ahead, light reflecting off the steel walls. It curved gently right, and eventually Libra noticed doorways on either side. These doorways were painted thesame tan colour as the wedge room they'd only just left.
Cell doors.
"Electronically controlled," Michaels said. "Magnetically sealed."
"Monitored?" asked Libra. Michaels nodded. "I'd better keep my hands above the covers tonight, then," Libra replied.
Michaels' poker face didn't change.
They moved past the rows of doors, following the curvature of the circular corridor until they reached another large wedge - shaped chamber, on what Libra assumed was the opposite side, diametrically opposed to the first wedge he'd seen. The primary colour here was blue. However, the furniture and lighting were otherwise the same.
"There's just two sectors," the guard said. "Blue Sector and Red Sector."
"It looks tan to me."
"We call it Red Sector," said the guard. "We originally painted the walls red, but then fights started breaking out so we changed the colour to tan. But the name stuck."
"Fair enough," Libra replied. "Now what?"
"Now," the guard said, "we hit the other corridor and finish the tour."
The second corridor was almost physically identical to the first. Only the colours of the doors were any different: blue to match the second wedge shaped room.
Finally, the corridor came around back to the tan room, and the corridor back to the interrogation cells, which were set in a circular chamber in what Libra presumed was the centre of the complex; its axis.
There was a large column in the centre of the chamber; Michaels led Libra around it, so that he could see what was opposite the interrogation cells.
The infirmary, and the morgue.
Just opposite the morgue was a steel double door, with a palmprint.
"The way out?" Libra asked.
"Not for you," Michaels replied. He pointed to the open morgue bay. "That's your exit there - through the incinerator, when we've done cutting you up."
"You sound like you enjoy that," Libra said. "Do they let you watch?"
Michaels' poker face didn't flinch.
"Christ, you're good," Libra conceded. "I could've done with you on my unit."
"This way," Michaels said, gesturing. "You're in Red Sector tonight. We observe curfew. We've sent the other residents to their cells early tonight so we could give you the tour. Tomorrow, you get to meet the others."
"The others?"
Michaels turned to face Libra. "You don't think you're the first one like you we've managed to capture, do you?"
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001