The desk clerk snapped back to reality quickly enough... -- Starbase Rugby: The Brig

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Date Posted: 14:26:04 08/20/01 Mon
Author: Walter
Subject: The desk clerk snapped back to reality quickly enough...
In reply to: Walter 's message, ""Hmmm? Oh! Oh, y-you're welcome! Sir?"" on 12:29:40 07/28/01 Sat

..when he heard Sal call out from down the corridor. Logging out from his personal database he ran down the hall without thinking.

Sal sounded hysterical, a tone Walter was not used to hearing in his coworker's voice. The echoes in the brig were always weird. But now the combination of the mundane and the agitated was truly unsettling. The hum of air conditioners trying to kick in. The soft and distant vibrations of a fan far in the ventilation system. Sal calling out.

Walter rounded the corner and froze. Sal knelt in a pool of blood holding...he couldn't even tell. The security guard on the floor almost looked as if he were praying, except for the blood. The blood was everywhere. On the floor, on the clothes, and that hollow gasping...no sound where there should be...

Walter stepped back and felt his shoes pull stickily off the floor. The blood seemed to spread out so far from the body and the hum...all around. The silent scream. Walter's expression was blank with sensory overload.

"You going to stare or you going to get a hovercart Walter? I checked the cells man...the dirge has gone bloody AWOL! He did this!

"J-joskur?"

Walter was aghast. The very prisoner whom El'Jarrun had visited--did he know when he left? Was that why he was shaking? A murderer loose in the halls, a possibly planned escape, and Walter had unwittingly been at the middle of it. For all his daydreaming and fantasies, Walter was no hero. Impressing cute records assistants in imagined scenarios was one thing; facing an escaped prisoner was his worst nightmare come true.

The humming all around. Was that his hand, shaking?

Damn there's a lot of blood.

"I...I'll g-get the cart" he stammered, even as Dupont radioed the other on-duty guards to seal the exits and check all corridors leading to the brig. Walter was shaking; sooner or later the log would be checked and they would see the visitor he had signed in. As he and Sal raced to the medlabs, he could only imagine the impact this could have on his job...let alone his life.

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