Schiff was just as talkative as I remembered from our brief acquaintance, but there was a weight dragging down his words, a hopeless depression I didn’t remember, even when I was taking him to the Marshals station in the Panicle to turn him in for the bounty.

  “How’d you get here, Mr. Masterson?” he asked me, glancing back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. “I mean, I know them other Marshals didn’t like you, but being in a place like this…”

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” I told him. “This is a mistake.”

  He snorted a laugh, sounding disappointed in my answer.

  “That’s what everyone here says, that it’s a mistake, that they’re innocent, that the judge hated them or the cops framed them.”

  “No, I ain’t innocent,” I corrected him. “I got arrested and I did what they say I did, but I shouldn’t be here yet, or any other prison, because I haven’t had a trial!”

  “How the hell did you wind up here if you haven’t had a trial?” That intrigued him enough that he stopped in his tracks and stared back at me.

  “Like I said, it’s a mistake.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth, but I didn’t feel like explaining the homicidal sentient AI to him right now. “I was at the pre-trial holding center and guard robots came and took me here. I have got to get word out somehow or no one will ever know where I am. Do you have communications privileges, Abel?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, sounding grudging about it. “I never got them taken away. Because I do what you said to do and keep my head down and my nose clean.”

  “Then how did you wind up here?” I blurted. It wasn’t exactly the most important thing I had to ask, but I wanted to know. “When I dropped you off at the Marshals station, you were slated to go back to Union Correctional. I mean, it’s not a walk in the park, but it’s a real reformery, not like this place.”

  “I do what you say now,” Schiff said, blowing out a breath. “I didn’t when I first went back to Union Correctional. I fell in with a group of other prisoners and they had this scheme to smuggle contraband in. Told me they’d look out for me if I did what they wanted. But another gang found out about it, and someone wound up dead. And I wound up here.” He shook his head. “I didn’t kill them, but I wouldn’t rat on the ones I knew did. I had fifteen years added to my sentence and they put me here as a punishment for not testifying against the others.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that, Abel,” I told him. “But I think we can help each other. I know people who have pull. They could get you transferred out of here, back to a real reformery.” I shrugged. “I don’t know if I can change the fifteen years, but I can make sure it’s someplace nicer than this. All you gotta do is get a message out for me, quick as possible.”

  Schiff said nothing, just walking alongside me through the narrow halls, our footsteps echoing hollow off the walls. Finally, he nodded.

  “Who do you want me to call?”

  “I’ll give you the address,” I said, “but it’s at the Naval base at the Panicle. There’s a Commander there in Naval Intelligence named Allie Miller. If you can tell her I’m here, that there’s been some kind of computer error and that she has to come get me out of here, I swear to you, I’ll get you out of this place, too.”

  “All right, Mr. Masterson,” he said. “I’ll try. But you better watch out till then. Venko is a dumbass blowhard, but those guys he runs with…they’re dangerous. And in here….” He shook his head. “No one’s got anything left to lose.”

  Chapter Five

  Easton stared at me when I walked back into the cell, and I knew he knew. I closed the door behind me and felt a rush of relief at the solid latch, at the knowledge it was locked from the inside. The guards could get in, of course, but not the other prisoners.

  “You’re a cop, huh?” he said.

  He didn’t sound angry or betrayed, just frankly curious, and I saw no reason to lie to him. I nodded as I sat on my bunk.

  “I was. Haven’t been one in a long time. I got fired for assaulting a senior Union Representative in his office. Lost my job, wife left me, took the kid. Nothing’s been the same since.” Well, I wasn’t going to lie to Easton, but I didn’t have to tell him the whole truth, either.

  He tilted his head toward me, as if considering what I’d told him.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “I mean, there was a time, I found out anyone was a cop for a day, I’d want to kill them just on general principles. But man, being in a place like this, it either makes you crazy or it makes you think. And being crazy is just too much work, you know?”

  “I found out the hard way.”

  “But yeah, I figure if you were a bad enough cop that you got fired, and for punching out a politician…well, you can’t be all bad, right?”

  “Thanks,” I told him. Then I sagged back against the wall. “But I guess this means everyone knows now, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he confirmed. “Just like everyone knows you beat the living shit out of Venko.” He chuckled. “I gotta admit, I wasn’t devastated about that or anything. The guy is a huge, raging asshole, one of the types who let Tuol Sleng drive him crazy and then tries to make life miserable for everyone around him. I don’t know why Tony and Dev put up with him.”

  “Those are the two big guys who were with him?” I assumed. “Tony and Dev?”

  “Yeah, they’re a couple of the shot-callers for the Corryat Cartel on the outside. Which means they got pull on the inside. Things are gonna be tough for you, I’m afraid.” He nodded toward a display on the wall. “You can skip lunch if you want without getting in any trouble. But dinner is mandatory and it’s in seven hours.”

  The march to dinner was uncomfortable. No one overlooked me this time and there was no watching the floor and playing unobtrusive. All eyes were on me, and the murmurs rippled through the crowd like an east wind hissing through the tall grass.

  “Pig.”

  “Gonna kill you, piggy.”

  “You’re gonna get yours, pig.”

  Yet no one actually attacked me in the hallways. Easton had told me they wouldn’t. The guards patrolled the halls before and during meals, he’d said, and they were just looking for an excuse to stun troublemakers and drag them off. And no one wanted to miss dinner because they got ice cream. Which, I suppose, was as much of a competent psychological conditioning tool as I’d seen in this place since I got here.

  I didn’t get in line for food until everyone else had already gone through, and when I got it, I jammed it down as fast as I could standing against a wall, watching everyone around me, waiting for the inevitable. Again, I wished I could have skipped the meal, but breakfast had been a long time ago, and the human body has needs. It would be harder to fight back without energy.

  They waited until after the ice cream, of course.

  It wasn’t Tony or Dev, and I wondered if maybe they’d decided to hold back because of what I’d done to Venko. I mean, they were big guys, but if they happened to lose, it would have cost them a lot of reputation in a place like this. But I didn’t think they’d sent this guy, because he was about as clumsy and worthless as Venko, and not as big.

  He was young, I thought, probably a newbie trying to make a name for himself. About my height, maybe a little thicker in the chest and shoulders. He’d eaten his ice cream right next to the machine, sneaking glances at me out of the corner of his eye and maybe believing I wouldn’t notice. He’d barely downed the last bite of the dessert when he snarled and charged at me.

  It was awkward and stupid and never had a chance of actually reaching me. I tossed what was left of my fruit juice in his face and stepped to the side, hoping maybe he’d slam his head into the wall and save me the chance of cutting my knuckles. He nearly did, squawking as he slid out of control, but he managed to turn and take the impact on his shoulder instead. The thump was solid and I thought it must have hurt, but he didn’t let the pain show if it did. He bounced off and came at me again, and this time, the crowd was cheering him on.

  “Kill the pig!” was a popular chant, though it did have competition from “fuck him up!” and “bash his face in!”

  I tried to keep an ear open to see which one was winning the informal audience poll, but the kid distracted me by trying something big and bold and stupid that I’m sure he’d seen in action thrillers, maybe even done himself on interactive Virtual Reality. But there’s a reason why flying kicks only work in the movies. I grabbed him by the back of his prison uniform as he flew by and smashed him shoulder-first into the floor. Same shoulder as he’d slammed into the wall and this time, it broke.

  He screamed and curled up into a ball, and as if it had been a signal, a dozen other inmates rushed me.

  That was when the guards arrived. I don’t know why they’d taken so long if they were watching everything all the time, but they made up for their bad timing by their violence of action. Sonic beams screamed out, the very air shimmering with their focused vibration, and every single one of the dozen men headed my way collapsed to the ground, out like someone had flipped their switches.

  One of the guard robots aimed its sonic weapon at me and I fell to my knees, hands on my head.

  “Do not move or you will be stunned,” the robot told me.

  “Way ahead of you, sport,” I assured it.

  I waited while the robots chivvied the other conscious prisoners back to their cells, then while they dragged the stunned ones off to wherever they were taking them. My knees were beginning to hurt and my shoulders were pretty tired by the time the robots got around to pulling my arms behind my back, putting restraints on my wrists and then pulling me to my feet.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as they marched me down the empty hallways. All the cell doors were shut, the prisoners locked down.

  “Solitary confinement,” one of them told me. The answer wasn’t unexpected. “The penalty for fighting is suspension of privileges for one month, and three days of isolation.”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted. “And what’s the penalty for letting some fool kid kill you?”

  “There is no penalty for dying,” the machine assured me.

  “Well, there should be. That way, fewer people would get killed.”

  Either the robot had no opinion on the subject or I was basically talking to myself, and I wasn’t sure which I considered more likely.

  The isolation cells were a long way from the cafeteria, past other facilities that I recognized as a laundry and a fabrication shop. I wondered what the prisoners were allowed to fabricate. Nothing metal or hard plastic, I was sure, but I didn’t know how many possibilities were left after that. I doubted I’d get the chance to find out. One way or another, I wasn’t going to be spending much time here.

  The cells had no windows, no markings, no illumination except a couple of chemical strip lights along the ceiling, just enough to see the rough details of the place. Just four walls, a bunk, a toilet and a water fountain. The guard released my restraints and shoved me inside.

  “What am I supposed to eat?” I asked. “Or are you gonna starve me for the three days?”

  “Your food will be delivered,” the machine responded. “You will eat in your cell.”

  Then the door shut and I was alone.

  And not entirely unhappy about it. Isolation meant, well…isolation. And if it was boring and tedious, so was trying to fight off an entire prison worth of cons trying to kill me. If I could be sure Schiff would make the call for me, my best bet would have been to keep finding rules to break to get myself kept in solitary the whole time. Unfortunately, I didn’t trust the little man as far as I could throw him. He’d helped me out, true, but he was also a con, and one who’d reoffended in jail and got himself thrown into Tuol Sleng.

  There was nothing else to do, so I fell asleep. And dreamed.

  I knew it was a dream immediately, in the sort of way you do when things are set up just a bit too neatly, when you feel as if you’re on a stage and actors are coming in and out. I’ve had dreams where it seems real, where the background is detailed, and maybe it isn’t anywhere I’d ever been before, but it had enough verisimilitude to make me believe I was really there, the sort of dreams I’d wake up from and wonder for a second if it had actually happened.

  This wasn’t one of those dreams. I knew that the second I saw Janie, and I knew in that moment that it was a nightmare. I was shocked to see her, but more shocked to realize I had let myself forget what she looked like. She was like a china doll, her skin porcelain, her hair and eyes dark and shining, and there was always a hint of disdain to the curl of her lip whenever she looked at me. It hadn’t been there when we’d first met, when we’d first been married, when we’d had Luke, but it had grown right alongside her discontent, and I hadn’t noticed either one.

  “My father was right,” she sneered. “He told me when we were married that you’d never amount to anything, but I was too stupid to believe him. I thought I loved you, thought you’d take care of me. But you were worthless. You couldn’t even hold onto your nowhere job in the Marshals. It wasn’t much, but it gave our family some measure of respect, and you even fucked that up.”

  She’d advanced on me with every word, winding up with her finger only a centimeter from my nose. She was dressed, I finally noticed, in the same white blouse and skirt she’d been wearing the day she’d told me it was over. I hadn’t believed it, had thought she was just upset. I figured she would calm down and realize everything would be okay, that we’d work it out. I’d gone out for a drink, trying to get my head straight, and when I’d come home, she and Luke were gone.

  But he was here now, looking up at me with his big, dark eyes, his mop of brown hair spilling out from beneath the cowboy hat I’d bought for him. It was him as he had been, his face dark and serious for such a little guy.

  “Is it true what the other kids are saying, Daddy?” he asked, staring up at me with expectation. “Are you really a loser who went nuts and attacked a man?”

  I didn’t speak to them, and not just because they weren’t real. It was something else, something I didn’t admit when I was awake, didn’t let myself think about. They weren’t just not real now, they’d never been real. This version of them was something I’d cooked up in my mind to shield myself from how it had actually been.

  And with that admission, they changed.

  Janie wasn’t a porcelain doll, wasn’t wearing designer styles and hair perfectly coifed from the latest salons. She was real, flawed and three-dimensional and alive, and flesh seemed to fill out the pasty white of the artificial face right before my eyes. The eyes were still dark, but living now, filled with real emotions, not just thoughtless scorn.

  “Why’d you do it, Grant?” she asked, and her voice broke with pain and disappointment. “I know you were angry, but we could have talked it through. Why did you shut me out?”

  “It was the job, Janie,” I protested, the words weak, a formula I spouted so I wouldn’t have to think of the real reason. “The job was always separate from us, from the family. That was what we agreed on.”

  “No, Grant,” she insisted, “that’s how you wanted it. I wanted you to share your life with me, but you shut me out, made me feel like I wasn’t as important to you as the people you worked with. You’d come back from your job and tell me everything was fine, spend an hour with me and Luke, then go to the bar and come back at midnight, half-drunk.” She was crying, the tears flowing freely, though I’d erased those memories from my mind, blocked them out, the times she’d cried. “And you wouldn’t talk to me.” Her voice broke and something tugged inside my chest, a guilt I’d suppressed along with everything else about my old life.

  This time, when Luke stared up at me, it wasn’t with the prurient interest of callous youth, it was with a hurt that went down into his little soul.

  “Can you play with me today, Daddy?” he asked, with the dull certainty of a child who knows the answer. “I know Mommy said it’s your day off and you’re tired, but it’s been a long time…”

  Pain doubled me over like I’d been kicked in the stomach, so visceral I nearly woke up, yet somehow, I stayed in the dream, perhaps because I wanted so badly not to be there anymore. I knelt down in front of him and took him by the shoulders, wanting to hold onto him but knowing I couldn’t, that he wasn’t even this age anymore. He was a teenager now, and he probably barely remembered me. It had been too long. But I wanted to tell him, wanted him to be this age again so I could tell him all the things I’d never had the chance to say before he left. Before they left.

  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed and I could feel tears on my face that I didn’t remember crying. “I’m sorry I wasted this time. I’m sorry we’ll never get it back. I love you, Luke, and I hope you found someone who’ll be a better father to you than I was. I wish I could do it again. I wish I could do it better.”

  And I knew I’d never get the chance. If I ever saw him again, it would be years from now, his childhood gone. I’d wasted my shot. My son was a stranger and as much as I wanted to blame it on my ex-wife, the brutal truth was, it was my fault.

  I was awake. It had happened abruptly, with no transition. One second, I was with Luke, the next I was opening my eyes to the dim light of the cell, with no clue how much time had passed.

  Yeah, that part sucked. I’d thought solitary confinement would be a good thing, but not knowing how much time had passed was going to be hard. I could have slept twenty minutes or eight hours and the only way I’d know when the sentence was up was when the robots came to let me out.

  The robots. The Oracle. Why had she shut me in here?

 

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