Story code: ST-000435
Part 3: The Cost of Business
The steam in the shower corridor was thick, smelling of cheap lye soap and mildew. Marcus gripped the tape-wrapped handle of the steel shank. His knuckles were white. Ten feet away, behind the frosted glass, Alvarez was humming a low, tuneless melody over the hiss of the spray.
Marcus took a step forward. His dead right foot dragged across the damp tiles with a sickening squeak. The pain shooting up his leg was blinding, a shrieking agony that drowned out the sound of the water. He raised the sharpened bedspring. *Just one thrust. Proof he is not breathing. Then the needle.*
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture the clear vial of Humalog waiting in his breast pocket. Instead, he saw the neat columns of the corporate spreadsheets he used to falsify, the quiet, bloodless crimes that had put him in Sector Four. He was a thief of numbers. He was not a butcher.
His hand began to shake violently. The ketoacidosis was eating his muscles, turning his blood to acid, but this tremor came from something deeper. He looked at Alvarez’s blurred silhouette. The man was defenseless, simply washing his hair under the lukewarm spray.
Marcus’s breath hitched. He couldn’t do it. The cost of survival was a price he fundamentally could not pay.
He lowered his arm. The heavy steel shank slipped from his sweaty fingers, clattering sharply against the floor grate. The humming behind the frosted glass stopped instantly. Marcus didn’t wait to see Alvarez’s face. He turned and hobbled back into the blind corridor, leaving the weapon behind in a puddle of water.
His chest heaved, his lungs burning with every labored breath. The insulin in his pocket felt like a cruel joke now. He had the juice, but no needle, and now, no deal with Hector. He was going to die here, consumed by his own rotting cells.
Unless he went to the source.
*Closed for inventory audit per Regional Administrator.*
The corporate memo’s words echoed in his spinning head. Administrator Vance was in the facility right now. He was in the main administrative rotunda, leading the VIP investor tour that Officer Davies had been stressing over all week. Marcus remembered the schedule posted on the block bulletin board. Nineteen-fifteen hours: Rotunda reception.
Marcus leaned against the cinderblock wall, dragging himself forward. Every step was a brutal negotiation with gravity. Black spots swarmed in his peripheral vision. His right boot felt wet inside, a sickening squelch of bursting blisters and weeping tissue. The sweet, putrid stench of his own decay rose from his collar, mingling with the sharp acetone smell of his breath.
He navigated the empty halls of Sector Four, the guards temporarily reassigned to secure the perimeter for the investors. It took him twelve agonizing minutes to reach the heavy glass double doors of the administrative rotunda.
Through the glass, he saw them. A dozen men and women in tailored suits, sipping bottled water from a silver catering tray. The marble floor gleamed under the recessed lighting. And standing in the center, gesturing grandly with perfectly manicured hands, was Administrator Vance.
Marcus stared at the corporate climber who had authored the memo that was currently killing him. Vance’s charcoal suit was immaculate, his silver hair swept back perfectly, his Italian leather shoes polished to a mirror shine.
Marcus pushed his hand against the glass door. It was heavy, but the latch clicked open.
The sudden sound of the heavy hinges echoing through the quiet rotunda made several investors turn. Administrator Vance stopped mid-sentence. Officer Davies, stationed by the catering table, dropped his clipboard and reached for his radio.
“Hold on, Officer,” Vance said, holding up a calm, authoritative hand. He smiled at the investors, seamlessly pivoting the interruption into a demonstration of control. “It seems we have a stray from Sector Four. No need for alarm. Our inmates are perfectly disciplined. This is an excellent opportunity to observe the pacification protocols in real-time.”
Marcus didn’t care about the guards. He didn’t care about the heavy wooden batons on their belts. He locked his sunken, dark-circled eyes on Vance and dragged his dead leg forward.
*Squelch. Drag. Squelch. Drag.*
The stench hit the room before he was halfway across the marble. An investor in a beige pantsuit covered her mouth, taking a rapid step backward. The smell was overpowering-a thick, garbage-like rot that instantly erased the faint, pleasant scent of the rotunda’s expensive lavender air freshener.
“Inmate Vance,” the Administrator said, his voice dropping a register, losing a fraction of its smooth corporate polish as he recognized the face that shared his surname. “You are violating the perimeter. Return to your block immediately.”
“Tier three,” Marcus gasped, his voice a dry, rasping wheeze. “Non-essential therapeutic.”
“Davies, remove him,” Vance ordered, stepping back as Marcus closed the distance.
But Davies was hesitating, gagging slightly at the overwhelming smell radiating from Marcus’s uniform.
Marcus reached the mahogany display table right in front of the Administrator. He grabbed the polished wood to keep himself upright. With his left hand, he reached down to his right boot. The tight, sweat-soaked canvas was fused to his swollen skin. He didn’t bother untying the laces. He hooked his fingers into the frayed collar of the boot and pulled upward with the last ounce of his feral, desperate strength.
The canvas tore. The grey prison sock ripped away with it.
A collective gasp echoed through the rotunda. The woman in the beige suit turned away entirely, dry-heaving into her hands.
Marcus rolled his uniform pant leg up past his knee, exposing the dying flesh to the bright, unforgiving LED lights. The skin was a horrific landscape of necrotic black and bruised purple. Jagged webs of infected red streaked up his swollen calf. The tissue around his ankle was completely dead, split open in wet, weeping fissures of yellow pus and thick, dark blood.
“This is your cost-saving synergy,” Marcus whispered, leaning heavily toward the Administrator.
Vance stared at the rotting leg, his perfectly manicured hands trembling violently. The polished facade of the corporate overlord was cracking, replaced by raw, visceral disgust. He tried to take another step back, but his heel hit the solid base of a marble pillar.
Marcus shifted his weight. The agonizing movement squeezed the swollen, necrotic flesh of his calf.
A thick, dark droplet of coagulated blood and infected fluid gathered at the edge of the deepest fissure. Gravity pulled it down. It fell through the sterile, air-conditioned air and landed directly on the toe of Administrator Vance’s left shoe.
The drop splattered against the mirror-polished Italian leather, smearing the pristine surface with the vile, undeniable reality of his policy.
Vance looked down at his shoe.
The silence in the rotunda shattered. Vance let out a violent, high-pitched shriek. He kicked his leg out frantically, scrambling backward so hard he bounced off the marble pillar and collapsed onto the polished floor.
“Get it off!” Vance screamed, his voice cracking into hysterical, breathless terror. He clawed at his own pant leg, crab-walking backward away from Marcus, his eyes wide and completely unhinged. “Biohazard! Get him away from me! Oh god, get it off!”
Marcus stood silent, swaying on his one good leg, watching the architect of his death thrash and squeal on the marble floor like a trapped animal.