Lost Causes
an excerpt

Lost Causes
Bad Ronald

“War is an ugly thing… but not the ugliest of things.”
-John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The vault hallway bristled and teemed with rows of surveillance cameras, each one patterned to compensate for lethal blind spots. Peering closely at their layout, War Commander Oswald W. Taggart, veteran of both Moon Wars, quickly found an uncomfortable number of tactics he could use to slip through their mechanical gaze. He made a mental note to later talk with the wardens of security about it. The pristine floor, polished to the point where he could see his own grim visage reflected back at him, conveyed his brow furrowed with lines of hesitation and doubt.

The hallway made way to a huge bulletproof glass frame window, displaying the dilapidation of Earth below. The horrifying image of the desolate planet burned bitterly into Taggart’s eyes. He visibly paused to stare at the cities with their once proudly standing buildings reduced to sprawling nations of eternally smoldering, burning rubble. He followed the pillars and cloudy columns of smoke billowing into the scorched sky without end. Aircars, superfreeways, streets and people- anything manmade was completely and utterly destroyed. Those damned invaders wanted nothing of mankind left standing. Nothing.

Taggart tore his eyes away from the miserable reality of humanity, swiveling his head around to lock gazes with several soldiers in task force suits lounging on office desks and supplies in front of a gigantic vault door. They moved fluidly out of the way to let him enter the code into the key lock. A miniature cam unfurled from the keypad, scanned his retinas, then spooled back inside.

He watched the vault door recede into the steel wall, clanking as it turned sluggishly on its axis. The vault door popped, compressed air rushing out of its seams, and rolled open out of view- terrific grinding, screeching noises following in its wake to reveal a high-voltage electric field. Taggart turned to the soldiers and nodded. Each security measures were located in different desks. Much safer that way. One of them pressed a switch. The field, brimming and sparking with blue lighting, immediately shorted out, the smoke-coughing generators clanking off, receding inside their fizzling bases. Only standard steel jailhouse bars remained, the entire room framed by a mesh cage.

Taggart steeled himself before unlocking the door to swing it open. He stood stock-still against the fetid stench of Prisoner 4509. Taggart’s eyes took in the sight of 4509’s metal restraints, steel cog-shaped cuffs that held the prisoner in sitting crucifix position, the very same restraints that held Taggart long ago, when he himself was declared war criminal. So many years lost in that cell. And for what?

He looked away before the past could catch up to him, grounding himself in the present, with a true criminal- this maniacal mass-murdering bomber who glared at Taggart from under his eyebrows. He scanned 4509 with a disgusted gaze, looked over the prisoner’s filthy mop of hair, his grimy face, his mottled orange jumpsuit. Taggart locked eyes with Caine Know, one of the most dangerous criminals on Earth; the one Dossier 4509 designated as Lost Cause.

Caine Know grinned up at him with a shit-eating smile, his chipped teeth yellow and full of grit. Taggart’s stomach roiled at the sight.

With a headshake of dismay, he recalled the reason why he had come. Staring this piece of mongrel shit right in the eye, Taggart muttered under his breath, “God help us all. Because I’m dead sure you won’t.”

______________

“You ugly thing. Ugly, filthy thing.”

Those words again. Her eyelids slitted open, cracking audibly from crust. She blinked repeatedly to clear it- an act in futility. The same as every other day. Or was it night? She couldn’t tell in this dark cell with no windows. She didn’t care. Day or night, her dreams remained the same. Visions of her desperate plight, sounds of her struggling, sobbing for mercy, for at least a shred of her dignity intact- her defeated moans to go along with her shredded hope.

Hands, big hands sliding, rubbing over her, plunging and grasping and punching and shoving, roaring laughter in response to her shameful, horrified pleas.

A lifetime ago, this would’ve bothered her. A lifetime ago, the recurring dreams would’ve jolted her awake to reduce her into a pathetic, sobbing wreck. These days, the dreams were merely an annoyance. Nothing to worry about. If any, the dreams served as a grim reminder of how young and stupid she’d been back then to trust anyone. She even agreed with them, knowing she was forever broken, wholly unclean, never to be returned to her innocent, naïve self.

And maybe it was better that way.

Even as young as she was, she should’ve known it was coming. She should’ve expected it. The dreams centered her own rigid vow to herself- she’d never let her guard down ever again. It was selfish, but she geared all her trust into looking out for number one for the rest of her life.

Sitting in her cell, she tentatively tried exercising, to at least wiggle her fingers. No dice, they didn’t move. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move her fingers or her arms in the confines of her mechanical straightjacket going on maybe two years now. Or was it three? Maybe longer. Her arms were surely atrophied by now; she’d probably need a year or so to get them working again, if she was ever released. Which she doubted. Her sentence had declared her a Lost Cause- too dangerous to even risk introducing back into society, even on heavy-duty parole. No breaks for her.

In the deep silence of the cell, the giant steel door began to move. She looked up at the groaning door, squinting against the blinding lights filtering into the darkness. Ah, there they were. Time was impossible to tell in this place, so she depended on the rounds sanitary and food officers made for her daily food and waste-extracting assistance, with the usual never-ending humiliating treatment. Having to depend on other people for such things never ceased to bring her blood to a boil. She always kept an eagle eye on them when they did so, if they tried anything other than their assigned duties, she would fight back as best as she could. It never came to that point.

A person stood in the middle of the entrance, his features shrouded by the light behind him, giving him the appearance of a ghostly silhouette striding towards her. The light in her cell turned on, each bulb flickering before illuminating the room in full. She recognized the aging chiseled features, regardless of the wrinkles crisscrossing old scars, lining his sad, tired blue eyes. Painful memories shot through her mind, the pain of innocence gone long past, what could have been, and what wasn’t.

“Prisoner 2187… Ingrid.” he said, his voice deep as a brass drum, a droll tone to it

Ingrid III looked at him behind a curtain of frayed black bangs. She neglected using her voice for what seemed like forever, so the grating; hardened, wheezy quality of it as she spoke surprised her.

“What do you want, Oswald?” she demanded.

A haze of regret crossed over Taggart’s expression as he replied, “Must it be like this? It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Ever since…”

His gaze flickered. Ingrid’s gaze blazed indignant.

She coughed once, hacked twice, and said, “Save it, Oswald. I don’t need your pity.”

In the blink of an eye, the sadness left his face, replaced by stone-cold resolve. He motioned with his hand, snapping his fingers in the air. Ingrid blinked in surprise as soldiers, clad in black, streamed into the room, marching in time, their tazer-batons swinging by their side. She remained silent, watching them in fascination. One of the soldiers moved to put his hand on her shoulder. Her fascination turned into dread, then boiled into a blinding torrent of rage.

The soldier clutched a handle on her straightjacket, yanking her off her feet. Another moved in, his expression deceptively kind and gentle. But his hands… her eyes were fixed on his hands, only his hands, and the closer they got, the redder her vision became. She fought back as best as she could. She bit. She swore. She kicked and raved against the soldiers as they pinned her down, bucking her feet into someone’s knees, head-butting another before receiving a shock to her calves, numbing her legs to submission. She fell, her jacket clanking to the floor, feeling like a tin man, and the rest of the soldiers dog-piled her, holding her down. They roughly pulled her to her feet, facing Taggart. Scowling, she spat at him, missing by a mile. Taggart stared back with the same set expression on his face, watching calmly as they grabbed her legs, set them apart, setting her down on her bunk.

“Don’t call me Oswald anymore, Ingrid. Those days are gone. You will address me as Commander Taggart.”

Even with all that energy she used to fight back, she still couldn’t move her fingers or feel her arms. They propped her up between two soldiers, the rest forming a protective circle around them, dragging her out of the room. Taggart walked in front of her, calm and serene, as if this was just an everyday occurrence.

Ingrid never let her guard down.