The Gaming Outpost

I sat in a jail cell in an Earth-like, modern-day world charged with attempted murder, which any hour now might be changed to murder in the first degree. And then they would hang me.

And unlike my world, they do not allow the defendant to waive his right to a speedy trial. Three months maximum, and I was set for the noose is the way I figured it.

And I reflected despairingly, that while I did not exactly deserve it for guilt, I did for stupidity.

I’d seen a mass murderer about to kill another person in front of a dozen witnesses, so I tried to kill the murderer. Instead, as shown by my recent visitor, the actual mass murderer, the man I knifed and shot was a doppleganger of the villain, and seemingly quite innocent.

And now the villain had just told me he planned to take his doppleganger’s place in this reality. Killing an alternate of yourself, I can hardly imagine, but Dr. Chase Arronnette the verser (not the doppleganger) specialized in the unimaginable horrors that spewed from his demented mind.

I had to break out of prison since no one would believe me. I paced up and down the small cell, trying to think. Problem was, Arronnette no doubt planned on me doing just that. He was smart.

It was like in chess where you are forced to take an unfavorable move. Tails he won, heads I lose.

I flexed my hands, and titanium fingernails popped out from under my god-given fingernails. Then I started to chisel at the front plate of the cell lock.

It was wielded on. And worse, I had to be quiet. The incredibly tedious process was interrupted for lunch and exercise. Spit and dirt covered up my indentions.

The food was suitably disgusting, and the exercise yard was filled with the brutal scum of the Earth. Fortunately, they had nothing on the pirates I’d sailed with a few years back for stupid brutality.

I merely stalked over to the weight bench, took off my shirt to show off my scars, and started benching enough weights to impress the locals.

They kinda sneered at my amount, until I kept up doing a steady repetition. You can lift weights for bodybuilding and looking pretty by doing few reps, and high weights, or for strength training by doing lower weights and a lot of reps.

Besides, a verser usually needs endurance more than maximum one push strength. So I try to balance those two.

However, I checked in on my Lekostian Star Empire cyberware which the people in this time could not detect even with an MRI, or a CAT scan. A mental command, and it clicked on.

I started adding weigths as the other lifters stood about studying me. As I passed five hundred,they started to laugh. At seven hundred, the stopped. At nine hundred, they and most of the rest of the yard just stared. I stopped at a thousand.

And then I did ten reps. I’m glad for cyberware.

After that, I had no problems whatsoever from any of the inmates. In fact, they called me “Mr. Tad” since saying Tadeusz was hard for many of them.

In fact, they volunteered to make a distraction if I was breaking out.

It took another two hours, but the face plate came off, and I saw the lock and its alarm. The lock was easy, and the alarm a bit tricky since I lacked proper supplies, but it got done.

A guard came by pretty quick, and rattled my door. So, I had caused a bobble in the warning system.

After he left, I unlocked the door, and waited.

Eventually a guard came in at the end of the corridor, and two inmates down at the other end started fighting and yelling.

So the guard ran past me, and I stepped out behind him, and nerve striked him into unconsciousness.

Then I took the guard’s key card. The other prisoners wanted to escape as well, but that I could not allow. They were criminals.

“Sorry, guys, but no go.” A rising storm of protest got silenced to mutters by my one-handed tossing the guard to my shoulder. It reminded them of the weights.

“When I get out, I’ll reward you. My word on it. But I’m not a criminal, and you guys are. So sayonara.”

I left to a chorus of mockery, but it seemed like they took my attitude seriously.

Getting through two doors was easy. Now I was in the hallway just short of the regular prison. Problem was, a video monitor covered the hall.

They had it poorly positioned since it did not cover the door, or the first few feet of the hallway.

Probably a contractor got lazy, and did not want to extend some wiring.

I stripped the guard, and got into his uniform. And then walked out into the main prison.

A great cavernous chamber with four stories of prison cells, and two guards on the far side of the room, and my goal lay past the guards. A door with another door. Both steel barred, and as I gratefully noted without video cameras.

Maybe in this world, video cameras were expensive and bulky. Or maybe the prison was having contractor difficulties.

I sauntered across the room, and the prisoners noted that they had not seen me before which prompted cries of “Baaaaa” and the like which got the guards to notice me instead of noticing the suit.

Still I got within fifteen feet of one and twenty of the other before they began to reach for their weapons. I pulled my nightstick and flung it straight into the gut of the one furthest from me. And then sprinting and leaping to nail the other one. Then the other guard got finished by a sleeper hold as he gasped on the floor, out of breath.

The doors were a simple matter after that, and I dragged the two guards out of there since I did not want people tossing things on them from four stories up.

The general prisoners yelled and screamed, and an intercom blared. I had to move fast.

I ran down the hall, and as I passed a crowd of guards going to suppress the noise, I had my cap’s beak down, and I said that I had to go report to the Superintendent.

It worked. Phew.

Got to the front door, and a guard behind a glass window wanted me to sign out. Then he realized he did not recognize me.

So I knifed the bullet-proof glass with a fingertip strike taught me by Master Wau, and my cyberware, and my fingertip titanium claws, and I wrapped my hand in my cap to protect it from glass.

The poor inch-thick glass of the front door had no chance. I dove through my hole, and rolled to my feet a free man, except for a fifteen feet tall chain link fence. It did not even have razor wire on top, just barbed wire.

I scaled it, and started to snip the barbed wire, and then thought better of it since I no doubt had a guard behind me reaching for his pistol or shotgun.

A quick handstand rotate over the top and with a ripping and a scratching my weight tore me free of the barbs.

Ow.

My zig-zag run was aided by the two bullets sent my way.

A mad dash through a dollar store and out the back netted me a blaring alarm, and a new set of clothes. I used behind a dumpster a block over as my changing station, and then as police sirens blared nearby, I went for the roofs.

I figured I had a few minutes before the helicopter arrived, and I needed maximum distance in that time.

Plus, I had an advantage. With my cyberware’s strength and my martial arts training, I could leap alleys that no one else could.

Two and a half minutes later, I climbed down the side of a two story building using my claws yet again, and into an alley with a manhole cover.

And I fled into the sewers. I headed downhill, and eventually after a mile came to the river wich was blocked by a rusted grate which got removed rapidly.

And then a dive into the local river took me toward the edge of town.

I slipped out near a park just outside of the medium sized town I had been in. And I saw happily that it was a camping grounds.

So I snuck around looking for a lazy dad who had not unpacked the suitcases yet.

This prison break thing was turning me into a regular criminal.

A bit of fiddling with the lock, and presto, the door opened. A quick turning off of the car light, and then I waited to see if anyone noticed.

None did.

I ‘borrowed’ another set of clothes. Blue jeans, and a terry cloth pullover shirt, and a pair of penny loafers. My victim had decent taste, and good sense in clothing.

A bit of twine slice off served me a belt, and the shirt hung over that to disguise it.

I memorized the all alphabetical license plate “number”. It was a random jumble, I think. Different worlds do things, well, differently.

Looking fairly respectable, I checked and found a woman’s makeup case which I also borrowed.

I left a note.

“Sorry, I’ll try to pay you back.”

And with a radio newly liberated in hand, I set out for town again.

The radio, when I dared turn it on, confirmed my fears.

“This is a public service announcement. Please be on the lookout for a criminal named ‘Tadeusz’. Last seen, wearing…, and height…Armed and extremely dangerous. Do not approach.
Police have discovered his apartment, and found several bodies dismembered due to a suspicious and public-spirited citizen.”

Rage gripped me. ‘Public-spirited citizen!?!’ Arronnette, I’d kill you for this, and for those poor people you murdered. Such was my fury that I did not notice until too late, that my radio,my source of news was in chunks in my hands.

I threw it away into a ditch violently, and stalked onward determined to find an ending for the Merry Mauler. And quite willing for it to be painful.

Tadeusz