Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Twenty-Two: Misplaced Hope

Regan stood up and wiped the blood away from her eyes. She dropped the shard of metal table leg on the guard's body and pressed her hand to her side. Her breaths were deep, drawn out gasps that scraped against her broken ribs like a hacksaw. The guard's corpse lay spread eagled with a bloody mess where the neck was supposed to be. In her death throes, the guard had thrown out a hand to claw desperately at the floor, leaving scratches on the non-slip surface. Regan sniffed and wiped a droplet of blood from the end of her nose. 

She looked around. The dimly lit corridor she was in seemed to be some sort of holding deck. There were a series of heavy metal doors along one wall with yellow numbers stencilled on them. Each door was sealed with a heavy electronic lock. The guard's sword was lying a little way down the corridor. It was a cheap, standard issue katana; the kind that had a tendency to shatter when facing anything tougher than a butter knife. Regan picked it up and used the blade to cut a strip of material from the corpse's trousers. It was slow, difficult work with her broken fingers. Even the lightest touch caused waves of unbearable agony to course up her arm and make her vision swim, but eventually she managed to cut away a long strip of heavy material. 

She sat down next to the corpse and braced her back against the wall. Her mangled hand lay on the floor beside her like a smashed spider. Her broken fingers pointed out at obscene angles, and blood had begun to crust around the rough shard of bone that protruded through the skin of her middle finger. She looked up at the caged light above her head and sighed, then carefully placed the handle of the sword in her hand and gripped it with her three working fingers. She took some deep breaths to steady herself then picked up the strip of material and started to wind it around her hand, dragging her broken fingers in and crushing them against the handle of the sword. She clenched her teeth together and hissed as the material caught on the broken bones and dragged them in. 

Regan had to pause three times during the arduous process, as the pain became too much and she felt herself brushing against the dark edges of unconsciousness. Once her hand was loosly wrapped around the handle of the sword, she grabbed a stray end of cloth and pulled it tight, feeling the broken ends of bone in her hand grind together. She took a few moments to let her heart rate drop from from a whine to a rattling staccato and examined her handiwork. Her right hand was now firmly tied to the handle of the katana. Regan forced herself to her feet and gave the sword some experimental swings. It made soft swishing noises as it cut the air. 

She turned her attention back to the corpse of the guard and searched it roughly. There was a locker key, a wallet and a reminder note about being on time for shifts in the guard's pockets and a blood stained lanyard around her neck. Regan pulled the lanyard away with a jerk. It was attached to a white plastic keycard with a grainy head shot of the dead guard printed on one side. 

She looked at the doors running down the corridor with renewed interest. There was a small viewing hatch built into each of them at eye level. Regan opened the closest one curiously. She found herself peering into a dark, cramped cell. There was a lanky bald man in a frayed suit sitting on a small cot that took up most of the room. He winced as a shaft of light from the viewing hatch cut through the darkness and hit his eyes. A set of wicked barbed spines pushed through the dark skin of his face and forehead. They ran in a ridge over his scalp and down his back. Regan closed the viewing window and looked down the corridor. She estimated there were about twenty-five cells along its length. 

The electronic lock beeped once as Regan swiped the guard's plastic keycard through the slot. She heard the deep clunk of steel bolts retracting and pulled it open. The man on the bed held up a hand to shield his eyes as he was drenched in the sickly light from the corridor. 

Regan tossed the keycard and lanyard at him. They landed next to him on the bed. 

'This isn't a favour,' she said. 

There was a moment of confusion, but the man in the frayed suit moved quickly once he realised what was going on. Regan retreated to the corridor as he picked up the keycard with the determined expression of a drowning man thrown a rope and moved methodically down the row of cells, opening each one in turn. 

Regan didn't hear the words he said to each prisoner, but he kept gesturing at her as if she was some kind of living proof of a point he was trying to make. He must have been persuasive though, because, with more or less coaxing, the occupant of each cell eventually emerged unsteadily into the corridor. Regan stood apart and watched the group of people in the corridor slowly growing. 

It was when he reached the tenth or eleventh cell that the guard emerged. He appeared from the stairs at the far end of the corridor, which led down to the lower decks, walking casually, like a man who was mentally rehearsing all the things he wanted to say to a team mate who had accidentally turned off her radio. As he reached the top of the stairs, he caught sight of the man in the suit and the row of open cells. There was a moment of surprised silence as the men met each other's gaze and hesitated. Regan didn't. 

She appeared in front of the guard like a spectre. He reached for his weapon, but Regan had closed in on him and her blade was already moving. It made a noise unpleasantly like a zipper as it sliced through his body armour like wet paper and splattered his blood across the walls. There was a look of surprise on his face as his limp body fell backwards and rolled down the stairs. 

Regan turned around and realised that all of the released prisoners were watching her. Some of their faces were still frozen in shock, but more than a few were slipping into a watery expression of misplaced hope. 

'I don't know who you are,' said the man in the frayed suit. 'But I'm sticking with you.' 

Regan flicked the blood from her blade. 

'I don't take tourists.' 

'This ship looks huge,' said the man. 'We can't just swim to shore. We're all in this together. We need to find a way to get ourselves back to land and escape.' 

A few of the other prisoners nodded. The man in the suit looked at her expectantly. 

'Stop looking at me like you want an achievement sticker. You can do whatever the hell you want.' 

'We need your fighting skills,' said an emaciated woman with a wispy shock of grey hair. 'You're clearly the strongest person here.' 

'We stand the best chance of survival if we work as a team,' said the man in the suit.

There was a chorus of emphatic agreement from the other prisoners. Regan allowed it to go on as long as she could stand. She felt the anger rising in her like a tide.

'I don't care about you, and I don't care about survival,' she snarled suddenly. The fury in her tone caused the other prisoners to take an involuntary step back. 

'Let's be clear -- I'm not here to save you. I could watch every single one of you get splattered across the walls and not even bat an eyelid. I have one goal and one goal only: I'm going to turn this ship into a slaughterhouse.'