She walked a long corridor set inside a skywalk to an adjacent building with the designation 'Ward Ocho' above the entrance.

Tasìa's nose crinkled on the sight of this oddly placed English word. The entangled language usage in almost all of the signs and intercom announcements were a constant reminder that the governing body, called the Salvage, was a foreign institution imposed upon them.

The Spore Isolation Unit was strangely quiet the moment the sliding door closed behind Tasìa. She entered a double atrium where natural light spread out to every niche between oddly-angled interior buttress supports and columns ascending well above her up three stories high into a pair of onion-shaped domes made of glass.

It was quiet, until the Shrill of the Banshees filled the air. Then the other inmates, following their call, howled like a pack of hounds.

The metastasizing of the Cull Spores was a terrible and unpredictable thing to happen to a human. In Greater Quadra, it could happen to anyone as everyone carried the nano-spores.

Tasìa approached cautiously. Odd and inexplicable things occurred to those of whom the infection became manifest.

She walked close by a cell where the inmate inside did not join the fray of howling. That alone perked Tasìa's interest.

A surreal grin spread across the woman's face as she stood. With the exception of the flesh around her lips, she stayed still as if frozen.

The tiny girlish chin could not possibly contain the smile as large mouthed and broad as her's appeared to protrude out. But somehow the geography of the woman's face did so as if propped by an unseen dimension.

Her lips flowed in and out in vibrant quiver. Then she opened her eyes and upon seeing Tasìa staring at her, the woman joined the maddening howl.

Tasìa hurried her step, but jerked her body back when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Whoa," Felicité giggled in a chortled snort, "easy now, before you pee yourself. Have you never been in Spore Isolation before?"

"Several times, but only to deliver carts. Usually, the guards are all over the place over here."

Felicité assessed the few that remained.

"The howling takes place four times a day," she said, "and it happens at regular intervals. The guards who are not assigned as duty officers time their breaks for the howling."

Tasìa watched yet another inmate standing perfectly still while her hair, long, thick coarse strands, curled and whipped like medusian serpents framing an appearance of religious ecstasy about her face.

Manifest, the cull spores did odd things to humans. Before she was told she had cancer, like everyone else, spore manifestation was her greatest fear. Also, like everyone else in the Quadra, she often felt it shifting through her defenses at night when she dreamed.

Felicité watched her with a studied smirk.

"Come. Come. Walk with me," the Argentinian blonde commanded.

Tasìa followed the long strides as best as she could with a rapid shuffle. They entered the maintenance corridor and headed for the equipment room.

"Those intercoms back at the dorm," Felicité began, "you can hear the slightest feedback rising above the static when someone is actively listening. What you can't hear are the passive receptors. They are always on. Always searching for keywords."

They found the step-on power vac. A vacuum sweeper one rode while standing and steering. Given the advanced state of robotics, Tasìa was surprised the first time she saw one.

Since then, she had learned that robotic devices were avoided in correctional institutions. Manual labor kept inmates busy. Busy inmates tended to stay out of trouble.

"It takes a bit of muscle to operate," Felicité began, "and I am sorely lacking. You stand here and steer, and I will pitch it left and right, from the front."

Tasìa hopped her little frame on board and grabbed the guide bars.

"That matter you mentioned to me last night," she said.

"The little spiel I had planned for you is getting there. Turn us around. We're going to hit all the sprawling corridors before we do the atrium floor."

"All right."

"Tasìa, I don't have all the answers. But I know where to steer you."

Felicité interrupted her own words with a snort.

"I see what you did there," Tasìa commented.

She leaned her body back to put more weight on the guide bar as she arced the wheels.

Felicité continued.

"You may very well be aware that I possess certain talents that even locked up here are still in demand. Hence, why it is that I can acquire premium vodka even here.

"The first step I took when they assigned me into the dorm a year ago was to build a schematic assessment of the full dorm area. That is how I found the passive receivers. Have you ever been to the second floor here, Tasìa?"

"I have delivered carts up there by way of the service elevator."

"Ever noticed that you can see a tower through the onion domes on the southwest corner?"

Tasìa nodded.

"It caught my eye."

Felicité's supreme self-confidence did not waiver in the least even as she struggled to guide the power vac.

"That is where the passive receivers map back to. I infiltrated two of their cameras over there in that tower. The setup is luxurious, Tasìa, and the staff, they have the look of high-level spooks about them.

"The true overlords of the IMCQ are there, and I need your help to get me over there where I can indulge the kind of penetration my clientele demand of me."

"You mentioned friends. Friends who have an interest in me."

The Argentinian stopped and squatted by a column.

"Yes. The ones that told me to keep an eye out for you."

"What else did they tell you? Why would they be so interested in me?"

Felicité suspired forcefully for a moment. Guiding the power vac was obviously more work than what she was used to and not very much to her liking.

"Other than your obvious skill set," Felicité answered. "There is indeed something they know about your - how should I put it? Peculiar situation. Help me and I will help you."

Tasìa crossed her arms along the guide bar. She scrunched her brows together as if she was giving the proposal cautious consideration.

"I am not a neophyte in our art by a long shot. So, it is like that?"

Felicité grimaced and she shrugged with her arms flailed out.

"I would not be pulling this hustle bullshit maneuver on you, Tasìa; I would just go ahead and tell you everything I know, except that my contact in the administration is about to get himself shitcanned. I need to keep my operation going.

"My people tell me you are my best bet to get some necessary things done. I've studied you for a good while now, and I believe them."

Tasìa looked around. Hard to believe she had seen no guards on patrol. From where she now stood, Tasìa spotted two guards sitting down at terminals in the office station on the South end of the central atrium. In spite of the two inmate workers loitering in one spot for several minutes already, the guards paid them no attention.

"Don't worry about those clowns in the fishbowl, Tasìa. They are not the real enemy. They don't even register on the radar and neither do they want to. Apathy gets them through to the next day and that much closer to collecting their pensions.

"These puppet masters up in the tower, they are the ones that we have to have cause for concern."

"If we get caught, Felicité, in an unauthorized area we could catch anything up to an escape charge. They'll bury us under the IMCQ. Down there. Amongst the rest of the Disappeared."

"Can that be any worse than having to endure your weekly chemo?"

Tasìa considered what the Argentinian blonde just told her. Why would the chemo treatment stop if she went skulking around unauthorized places? Even uncaught, what would change?

In a whisper she said, "you are planning an escape!"

"Eventually, we will have to. For now, our best chance is to keep my operation going. Partners?"

Tasìa hopped off the power vac, bent down and shook Felicité's hand. The terrorist, other inmates whispered. An anarchist, Tasìa reminded herself. The blonde was perhaps her best chance at achieving a real life again.

"Partners," she agreed, as she shook Felicité's hand.