Chapter Twenty Four

The Crowning Jewel That Hacks Stuff Off

When Irid tapped at Conrad’s door, it was lights out for the prisoners and it was time to go.

The warden opened the door and informed them, “Your ship is in orbit. They sent down an Octavian pod to collect.”

Sardius shrugged. “It’s probably the same one I took to Don Leo’s ship when I surrendered myself, so yeah, we haven’t given it back.”

“You’re keeping it?” Irid asked with a smirk.

“They haven’t asked for it back, so I’m not giving it back. I’ve used it like half a dozen times and no one has seemed to care. It’s very handy and the Adamis don’t really have better tech on that front, so yeah, I’m keeping it until someone gets snarly with me. What’s it to you?”

Jenna sat huddled on the computer chair with Conrad in her arms and waited for Sardius to work his magic on Irid.

Stretching, Sardius came out of the cell and changed the subject. “Where’s the pod? Is it underground in the docking bay where we arrived?”

Irid nodded. “Something’s off. What’s going on?”

Sardius extended his hand and gave Irid Jenna’s enormous earpiece.

“What’s this?” she said, looking at the unusually valuable piece. “This is worth millions. Why are you handing it to me?” Then the reason clicked in her head and she suddenly looked intensely bored. “You can’t bribe me to let you take Conrad with you. I would get punished by my superiors.”

Sardius laughed. “What would they do to you? Throw you in jail?”

Irid rolled her eyes.

“You’re mistaken,” Sardius said, clearing his throat and sounding a thousand times more professional. “That’s not a bribe.”

“Really? Then what is it?”

“It’s compensation for all the damage we’ll do to the prison if you don’t let us leave quietly,” he explained, still keeping a friendly look on his face.

Sardius was so adorable when he gave someone an ultimatum. He didn’t even say the words, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way’ because as far as he was concerned, either way was the easy way.

Irid put her hands in the air. “Sardius, what are you playing at? You know I’m a huge fan. Back in the day, I even did a supply run for you, at great personal risk, but this jail cannot be compromised.”

“Just tell them Conrad died from radiation poisoning. It’s basically the truth,” Sardius hissed back quietly to help her keep their conversation confidential.

“You’re asking for too much. You know you’re asking too much. They’ll want a body,” the prison warden stressed.

“You want spare body parts? No problem,” Sardius said with a winning smile. “All you have to do is send people you don’t like to stop Jenna on her way out. Then when they get their arms and feet hacked off, we can pile those severed limbs all together, send them to the crematorium, and boom, you’ll have enough ashes to give your superiors in lieu of Conrad’s body.”

“Wait,” Irid said, trying to put her foot down and then hesitating. “Okay… One sec. First thing, are you saying that you will not be fighting anyone personally, but you’ll have Jenna fight them?”

Sardius gave her a weird look with one eye half closed in disgust. “Oh, I’ll just walk behind her. Why do you think I’ve been trying to keep you away from her?”

“Because she’s so dignified a dignitary that she needs her space when she visits a prison?” Irid asked hopefully.

“Not even close. I’ve been trying to help you keep your nose,” he said gently.

Irid lolled her head back in frustration. Negotiating with Sardius was considerably less enjoyable in reality than it was in one’s fantasies. “Okay, let’s say I am willing to let this slide for whatever reason. Do you even know what Conrad is in jail for?”

Sardius made a talking hand out of his fingers as if what she was saying was blah, blah, blah. “Are you saying that little yarn ball, Conrad, did something worse than what I did?”

Irid dropped her hands in defeat. “No. You’re the biggest criminal in the solar system.”

Sardius laughed. “They’ve changed the word ‘criminal’ for the word ‘hero’, but okay, you’ve got my attention. What did he do?”

Irid leaned forward and whispered it in Sardius’ ear. Jenna couldn’t hear the explanation from where she waited for them to finish their conversation, but Conrad was tightening in her arms like a tiny boa constrictor. Their talk was making him tense up.

Jenna patted his head to reassure him.

“You have some weird ideas about me,” he mumbled.

When Irid finished and pulled away, Sardius made a face. “Huh… I wondered who did that.” He turned to Conrad and gave him a thumbs up.

Conrad refrained from squirming but looked at Sardius dead-eyed.

“What did you do?” Jenna whispered to him.

“Nothing,” Conrad answered haughtily.

Jenna breathed steadily. “You should tell me. I’ll take it better out of your mouth than anyone else’s.”

He looked up at her with his enormous burnt-orange eyes. “I committed genocide.”

Jenna gawked. She had never heard of anyone who had personally committed genocide. “I’m gonna need more information.”

“I’m not sorry,” Conrad said defiantly, folding his arms over Jenna’s while his feet dangled over the floor. “I’d do it again.”

Sardius turned around with a grin. “He designed a virus that specifically fed off only one animal and intentionally killed out an entire species of lice.”

Jenna laughed. “What’s bad about that?”

“Those lice were providing sustenance to other animals in the biosphere,” Irid elaborated. “It disrupted the food chain.”

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Unavoidably, Jenna put a hand to her head and started scratching. Just the idea of lice made her itchy. “Sorry, I’m still struggling to see the downside. Maybe I need more information,” she suggested.

“There was a famine for birds and bugs for a whole year before the ecosystem adjusted. A lot of animals and insects died needlessly,” Irid went on.

“But everything is fine now?” Jenna asked.

“Yes, but a person who knows how to take out an entire species and has no problem doing so for personal reasons is dangerous. I’ll have a lot to answer for if he goes missing.” Irid’s hands were on her hips and her face was set to an uncompromising scowl.

Conrad grimaced and added his two cents, “You guys could never understand how I felt with those things crawling in my hair. Your hair is different. Getting them out of your hair was annoying for you, but it was doable. They had been in my hair for years! If I hadn’t done what I did, they’d still be there. The radiation is killing me, but I have a better life in this prison than I had when I was free and infested with lice.”

“Fine,” Jenna said to Irid. “Don’t help us, but I’m still going to carry him out of here and if you don’t want to lose a hand I seriously recommend that you just let us walk on through.”

By the time Jenna had come out of the jail cell, Irid had a gun pointed at Jenna. Unconcerned by the gun, she had her arms under Conrad’s armpits and his legs hung loose.

“Irid, don’t shoot that!” Conrad interjected as Sardius jumped behind Jenna which was a move that shocked the warden. Shouldn’t he have jumped in front of her to protect her?

“Look,” Conrad continued. “Jenna has a very dangerous force field surrounding her right now and if you shoot at her the ammunition will ricochet. Don’t shoot.”

The warden put the barrel of her gun level with Conrad’s eyes, but he didn’t flinch. Their eyes met. He looked worried… but so did Irid.

“Get out of the way,” Jenna said uncompromisingly. “And you’re going to want to give me a little more room than that.

Irid shot one careful shot, aimed at Conrad’s head. When it bounced off a space several feet from where he was and made a shattering amount of noise through the prison block, Irid put her gun back in her holster and hurried ahead of them down the hall.

Sardius took Jenna’s elbow in his hand. “We’re going to need to hurry. There are plenty of places she could lock us up and trap us in this prison,” he warned.

Jenna picked up the pace and ran along the prison corridor. The first door was locked. Sardius broke open his boot and pulled out a pair of pliers. Then he pulled the bolts of the door free.

“She must think I’m a moron,” Sardius complained as he pulled the door out of its frame.

That was when the real trouble started.

Sardius had been speaking to Irid in the corridor of the prison for some time, but after the ricochet that woke everyone up, the prisoners were awake and after hearing his voice (a man’s voice in an all-women’s prison), doors started opening.

“Honey, I don’t mean to alarm you, but the timbre of your smooth baritone is drawing attention to us in a prison where prisoners are locking themselves in instead of being locked in.”

Sardius pulled Jenna through the door by her elbow and hurried her toward the door at the end of the prison corridor with a whole new line of cell doors on either side. “I’m sorry. Is this not going the way you expected? You wanted this. I’m just going to stay close to you and let the terror reign.”

Jenna realized what he was saying as she hurried along after him with Conrad’s ankles thwapping against her legs. “Are you saying I’m about to be part of the second prison riot within a year in the Xypher Zone?”

“Undoubtedly,” he said, slowing in front of the door.

Jenna looked behind her.

The prisoners from the first corridor had gathered at the door. They were pointing at Sardius saying things like, “Does that look like a man to you?”

“It sounds like a man to me,” another called.

She should have been able to defuse the situation with her wondrous skills as a diplomat. So while it was true that Jenna was a diplomat, she had never taken a single class on the subject, nor had she been part of any diplomatic talks.

Except she wasn’t really a diplomat. That was her job, but she had never really done it.

Sardius was working on the second door. It was another similar door that just needed to have the bolts in the hinges popped out, but that didn’t mean that his work was instantaneous.

“Hey, Baby!” one of the women in the hallway called to Sardius. “You can take the hinge out of my door anytime!”

“Can they not see me?” Jenna balked.

“You don’t want them to notice you,” he said as he popped the hinge out and opened the second door.

That was when things got worse. There were prisoners on the other side of the door and they were so close that one of them almost lost a hand without even seeing what was on the other side of the door. The noise had got their attention and it was safe to say that the whole prison was alive with prisoners who would not have wanted to let Sardius leave.

It wasn’t the first time Jenna screamed. Lots of people let out little screams when they’re surprised or when they’re hurt. Jenna did not scream like that. She screamed like there was Hipposyphis nearby who needed to hear her. She wailed like a banshee and when everyone had properly covered their ears (and Jenna had run out of breath), she stopped.

Noisily, she cleared her throat and said in a voice clear as a bell, “Anyone who gets too close to me will lose their finger, their foot, or whatever body part comes too close.”

“That is the weirdest threat I have ever heard,” one of the women from the second hallway snarled, stepping closer to Jenna. Her hair was short and shaved and her eyes were like pinpricks in her face instead of like pinpricks in the curtain of night. There were no stars in them. She must have been a prisoner for a long time as the bones in her eyebrows were starting to show.

“Call a doctor now,” Jenna said without humor.

“You’re lying. Plus, you’re stupid if you think you can threaten us like that and you’re being really weird about it. You’re scared of us, but we’re not animals. What are you doing here in a ball gown if you’re not a prisoner?” she said, inching her way closer.

Jenna huffed. “You think this is a ball gown? This is little better than a tea dress, definitely not for evening wear, but I’ve had it on for so long my skin is starting to grow around it.”

The woman looked at Jenna like she was insane, which of course she was.

Jenna huffed again. “To answer your question, I have come because I haven’t been yarn shopping in ages and when I saw this cute orange ball of yarn, I decided to buy it from your warden.”

“Buy it?” The prisoner’s pinprick eyes narrowed even further.

“She took payment,” Jenna said with her nose in the air.

“No… I mean it? That is a Stickman. It is not a yarn ball.”

Jenna sighed and cuddled Conrad closer even though he squirmed. “All the same, I plan to take him away and knit him up into something really special.” Then she turned and shouted down the third hallway that had filled with spectators and shouted, “All of you are between me and my knitting needles. If you interfere with me, I’m not kidding, you’ll lose a limb. This is this hallway’s last warning.”

The pinprick prisoner leaned closer, but not too close, and directed her question to Conrad. “Do you want to go with her?”

Conrad pinched a bit of the green satin of Jenna’s dress in his fingers and wiped his bloody nose on it. “Yeah,” he said in his unusually low voice.

Jenna turned to go through the door and… someone in the third hallway lost a finger. There was blood spray for a second. There was screaming. There was running. Then some idiot straight up approached Jenna without putting any of her body forward first and Jenna’s force field skinned her knees and her knuckles. Bone chunks went flying.

Sardius covered his mouth.

Amid the screams and cacophony, Jenna turned and snapped at him, “Is this funny to you?”

He shook his head. “I’m just trying to stop any bits and pieces from going in my mouth by covering it.”

“Why would that happen?” Jenna barked. “The reason they’re getting broken apart is that nothing is allowed in my space. Nothing.”

That was when the pinprick girl came around Jenna, giving her as much space as possible, and shouted, “This princess needs her space.”

Everyone listened to her faster than they had listened to Jenna.

Pinprick girl went on, “Everyone, get back in your rooms and let her pass.”

So the prisoners watched Jenna, Sardius, and Conrad cross the halls from the safety of their own rooms until they arrived at the last door. It was strange to see their gazes at Sardius from between bars and between breaks in brick walls. Most of the prisoners hadn’t seen a man in years, so Sardius was a feast for their eyes, even if they couldn’t touch him. Others were interested in Jenna’s dress or in Jenna herself. No one was interested in Conrad, but he was so limp that he very much resembled a ragdoll by the time they arrived at the locked part of the prison that concealed the way down to the hangar.