Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Incarceration

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He hadn't been wrong when he said things could only get worse, Sitting there in the back of the, technically unlicensed police vehicle Krill watched from between the bars as the city passed below them. Neon lights roared past in streaks of light as they were ushered through Noctopolis's complicated system of airways, marked by hundreds of glowing orange traffic buies. Commander Vir lay awkwardly on one shoulder muzzled and silent.

Krill was left alone to assume the worst without any words of encouragement from his usually upbeat human friend. Noctopolis was a lawless backwater, they both knew that, so what was to come was sure to be the worst of what mild anarchy had to offer. They knew from reports that humanity, while always on the verge of anarchy, refused the idea on principal, so someone somewhere had set up a policing system, now, who that was, and how they were being paid off remained a mystery.

The vehicle was pulled right and angled downwards giving Krill a view through the plexiglass separator and out the front windshield. What he saw, he didn't like. The structure was a behemoth of steel, concrete, and iron surrounded on all sides by miles and miles of electrified chain linked topped in cruelly twisting barbed wire. A network of floating cameras spanned the sky over the building intermittently bathing the ground in a horrifically bright spotlight. When mechanical methods weren't enough, men in dark uniforms paced the perimeter with vicious black dogs cradling human lethality in mat black contraptions fueled by gunpowder thousands of years of death engineering.

He glanced over at the Commander, but the look on the man's face.... Well it was.... Not encouraging. His eyes had gone wide, and not the good kind of wide, the very very bad kind. The human was scared.

As they sat there, he began frantically kicking at the seat in front of him.

The officer in the driver's seat turned his head sideways, "KNOCK IT OFF!"

The commander didn't let up kicking harder. The second officer turned around, "You don't want to know what happens if you keep resisting. We can tell he prisoners inside whatever we want about you."

The commander paused eyes unsure before jerking his head. The guard finally sighed, pressing a button on a small device allowing the volume on the commander's speech, "Where the hell are you taking us...."

The man turned back to the front and snorted, "Don't you know . I thought the Turma Supermax Corrections Facility was famous."

"First of all isn't Turma just the word for prison in Russian, and second of all, famous for being a deathtrap, like the gulag, Alcatraz, San Quenton, Hell? You haven't proven that I've done anything wrong, we should be going to jail, not prison, maybe to court, but this, this is insane."

The guards didn't even look at them, "Surprisingly educated little bugger aren't you.This isn't earth kid, this is Noctopolis, and the UN doesn't decide what goes on here, at least not yet. And since we don't have a jail, guess you'll have to spend some time in the hole."

Krill watched the man go pale, not just a little, but grey pale, corpse pale, and if the human was scared.... He was scared.

Krill leaned closer to the human as the vehicle dropped low onto the entrance road stopping before the scanning equipment. "What is going on?"

The commander leaned over whispering, "Remember that time we ended up in a rundi prison."

"Yeah?"

"Well think like that but.... Like a thousand times worse."

Krill wondered how hard it would be to fling himself out the window. The human leaned closer, "This facility is famous because of it's practically medieval incarceration practices, we haven't used systems like this in over a thousand years. Men kept in sells out can almost spread your arms to touch both sides in, no privacy, no protection. To survive the aliens and the humans have formed gangs on the inside. When you get in you HAVE to join a gang, or you die. Since the prison was started there have been ten major riots hundreds of deaths. You'll get shanked, beaten to death, or worse if you don't comply to gang rule. You have to pay them do jobs and you WILL be inducted weather you like it or not." Krill felt his body going cold, "Horrible food terrible conditions rampant drug use that the guards don't care about... This facility is.... It's human sociality gone wrong, the Stanford prison experiment in practice.... It's every monster under the bed and every deep dark secret we try to hide from ourselves. This is... humanity uncensored."
"Way to sugar coat it." Krill squeaked