The empowered the comple.., p.120
The Empowered [The Complete Series], page 120
part #1 of The Empowered [The Complete Series] Series
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“I’m telling you you aren’t alone.”
Right, now Tricksie was my new best friend. I didn’t buy that for a second.
Tricksie pointed at the withered vines. “Why don’t you just let them die? You wouldn’t have to waste your time, and you’d have a little extra water to drink yourself.”
I didn’t answer.
She leaned against the fence. “I heard about your grandmother. That’s rough.”
I didn’t want Tricksie mocking my problems. I shrugged, trying not to show how I felt. “It happens.”
“I mean it,” she said. She looked like she meant it, but in here you could never count on anyone being straight with you. You never knew if another inmate really meant the concern they claimed to have for your “situation.”
“Okay. How did you learn?” I asked. Maybe she was on the one behind the note, but taunting you to your face was normally her style, not hiding notes for you to find.
She glanced over at the guards walking the perimeter. “I found out.”
“Found out?” I asked. “Just like that.”
“The grapevine,” she said.
Figures. I shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Don’t you want to know more? I could find out for you.”
“No thanks.” Her bullshit concern was a joke. I wasn’t buying.
Her face took on a mean look. “I’m offering, and you tell me to fuck off?”
I stood, feet apart, arms loose at my side. I didn’t want to fight, but I wasn’t about to let her buffalo me. “Yeah, I’m telling you to fuck off.”
She spat. “Stupid cow,” she said. “Sit and stew, not knowing whether your grandmother is alive or dead.” Tricksie’s look would have made a C.O. reach for her stunner, but I glared right back. She turned and stomped off. I was fine with sharing my anger. It would serve her right if her afternoon was ruined.
The next day I learned I’d received fifty infraction points, extending my blackout status for another six weeks. Now I had to wait four-and-a-half months for news from the outside. Fitz was the C.O. who brought the news, a leering smile on her face when she told me. “Shouldn’t read messages in a bottle,” she said and chuckled.
But the warden had told me she was going to overlook the bottle.
After I finished my work shift, sewing shirts, I went to exercise with Lenore. Today it was pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, and hanging crunches until my abs wanted to burst. I told her about the infractions.
“This is why you don’t go to the warden. Ever.”
I wanted Lenore’s sympathy, but she only doled out matter-of-fact observation.
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
Her face darkened. “Y’all listen, and listen but good. You have a decision to make about being inside. About which way you want to go.”
“Which is?” I was out of patience.
Lenore didn’t flinch from my glare. She never did. After a long moment she snorted. “Figure it out yourself.”
The day after, I was sweating over my tomatoes when Tricksie showed up again. I had been giving more water to the three dying the fastest. It hadn’t seemed to help, and now the other three were looking browner. I’d been tight with the natural pesticide, and the aphids had diminished in number, but hadn’t gone away completely. Water. Fertilizer. Patience. I didn’t have enough of anything. Didn’t matter. I still wasn’t quitting on them.
Tricksie leaned against the fence. “Hey, Mat, I’m sorry about the other day. Really. I was out of line.” She came around the fence and knelt beside me. If she didn’t have gardening privileges, she could get in trouble. Guess that was up to her.
“Your plants are doing worse.”
“No shit.” I gave her a hard look. Normally she had given it back to me double, and we’d be close to a nasty fight. Not that there was any other kind in here. But she surprised me by not glaring back.
“Listen, things can be different.” Her voice was quiet.
“How?” My heart beat fast.
“I have a way out,” she whispered.
My heart beat a rapid tattoo. This was bullshit, but she said it with such un-Tricksie-like honesty, like she was finally showing me the real person underneath the bully.
I narrowed my eyes. “A way out. You mean escape from Special Corrections?”
“I knew you’d be interested.” She leaned even closer. “We’ve got some outside help lined up.”
A breakout. Word was it been eleven years since the last attempt, and that was in the men’s wing. It ended badly for the inmates that tried to escape. “That will bring the Heroes Council down like God’s own hammer.”
She snorted “What’s God have to do with this, Mathilda? Escaping is up to us.”
“Why ask me?”
She laughed. “Because Warden’s goons wouldn’t think I’d go to you.”
That was for sure. Everyone knew we hated each other. This whole conversation was freaking weird.
I brushed withered tomato leaves with the natural pesticide Lenore had given me. “Someone breaks out of here, they’ll be hunted for life.”
“We’ll break the whole prison out. They can’t hunt all of us down.”
“We leave like this, we will be on the run forever,” I said. Why trust me? I could go straight to the warden and rat Tricksie out. I’d get some favors for that.
She shook her head. Her close-cropped pink hair shone in the sunlight. “We could change things.”
I drew a sharp breath. This didn’t make sense.
She gestured at the towering prison walls. “You don’t like being here anymore than me. Like I said, we know your grandma is sick, and there’s no one to help your sisters. Get out and you can get money to give to them.”
The sweat trickling into my mouth tasted sour. “It’s not that easy.” How did Tricksie know about my sisters?
She pointed at one of the plants. This one was even scrawnier than the other with only a few tomatoes. “If you had your powers back, restoring that plant would be a snap.”
I shrugged. “I could control plants, Tricksie. Not move mountains or fly.” Everyone inside seemed to know about my power, because I hadn’t kept my mouth shut. But I hadn’t told her about my family. Only Leonore, and Leonore wouldn’t tell the likes of Tricksie.
“There’s a lot you could do with plants, Vine.”
I froze. My old name, the one I had when I was in the Renegades. How did she know I’d been called that? Tanya had given me that name, and now she was dead. They were all dead. And nicknames were stupid.
“I’m Mat,” I said, the reflex kicking in without a thought. “Mathilda Brandt.”
Tricksie leaned in closer, until her nose practically touched mine. “You were Vine. You could be again.”
She smelled fresh, not sweaty, with a faint hint of vanilla. We weren’t allowed any perfume inside. How did she rate perfume? No inmate wore perfume. Ever. What was she doing wearing perfume?
“Just call me Mat,” I said.
She ignored that. “There’s some very expensive and rare pharmies that come from certain hard-to-grow plants.” She grinned. “For instance, you could make a fortune from creating the nightshade tulip.” That wasn’t how the Tricksie I knew would put it. It was someone else’s words, and Tricksie was using them to sound reasonable, and smart.
The nightshade tulip wasn’t just illegal. Trafficking in the waking dream drug was a minimum twenty-year ticket, on top of whatever else the court gave you.
I finished watering the plants while Tricksie watched me.
“Well?” she said when I put the can down.
A big flock of starlings darted above the force dome, probably picking off gnats confused by flying too close to the electromagnetic barrier.
“No,” I said.
Tricksie’s face darkened suddenly, like a gathering storm cloud. She balled her fists. “I thought you wanted to help your grandmother.”
“I do.” I didn’t blink. “But there’s nothing I can do.”
She leaned in close.
I itched to shover her away, but didn’t.
A nasty edge came into her voice. “You think about this hard. Real hard. We’ll talk again.”
I could go to the warden. Squeal. The warden would like that. I’d become her pigeon. I’d be a puppet. Dancing to whatever she wanted me to. I wanted to keep my freedom, even if that freedom was just choosing not to do cowardly bullshit-stoolie stuff like Tricksie and Fulbright wanted me to.
“I don’t have to think about this. The answer is no.” I lifted my chin and looked down at her. “Find another patsy for your scheme.”
She blinked. “Really? You just going to blow this off?
I smiled coldly. “Yeah. I am.”
She stared at me. “You going to squeal?”
“No. I’m keeping my mouth shut. Just leave me the hell alone.”
Her face hardened. “You’d better,” she said and stalked off. I watched her leave the garden and cross the yard, striding through the middle of a volleyball game. She disappeared inside.
I found Lenore in the library, just before lights out. She was reading Great Expectations and knitting. It must have taken her years to earn that pair of big plastic children’s knitting needles, the only kind an inmate could have inside here. I told her what had happened in the yard.
“Tricksie set me up. She must be working for the warden.”
Lenore looked up from the page. “You are learning to think.”
“But why do this?”
She closed the book. “It was a test.”
“It was?”
“Everyone gets tested in here, in some way. You’ve hit the two-year mark—that’s a good time to test you.”
“But why?”
“Because they want to see if an inmate is going to try and escape. And because they want to see if an Empowered prisoner is going to crack. And they want to see if you can be turned informer.”
“Tricksie was way too freaking nice to me, acting like she actually cared.”
Lenore cocked her eyebrow. “Was that all that tipped you off?”
“She wore perfume. No one wears perfume here.”
“Not unless they were given it.” Lenore’s eyes weighed me.
“A gift from the warden.” I rubbed my face.
It had been at act. Fulbright must like setting traps for inmates like me.
Lenore opened the book and went back to reading.
The warden.
“Fulbright’s not going to go easy on me,” I said. I wrapped my arms around myself and took a deep, sharp breath. But what did I expect?
Lenore glanced up. “Don’t look so grim. You passed.”
“I still don’t know about Ruth.”
Lenore shook her head. “No, you don’t. You don’t even know if she’s actually sick.”
I blinked at her words. No, I didn’t.
“Like I told you before, you get to decide what to do.”
The warden also had told me I had a choice. They were both right.
I hugged Lenore then, held her close until she hugged me back and patted my shoulder.
“You’ll make the right choice,” she said.
I nodded. I decided then and there. I wasn’t going to be the warden’s informant, and I wasn’t going to rat Tricksie out, either. I hoped it was the right decision. But whatever. It was my decision.
If I could have cried, my tears would have watered the curling leaves, but you never wept in prison, not if you knew what was good for you. Instead, I stopped watering three to save the others. The ones I sacrificed withered way until they were dried tangles of tough, ropy vines. My bones burned when I passed the dead plants but I didn’t pull up the withered stalks. I had made the choice. I’d deal with the consequences.
Inside, I didn’t have any power over plants, no Empowered abilities. But I had power over who I was.
The three plants I kept watering didn’t flourish, but new leaves grew, the vines became green again, and the stunted, little tomatoes turned cherry red.
Like me, they survive.
THE END
Afterword
Renegade sprang from the question in my own mind about how Mat reacted when she became empowered and how that led to her ending up in Special Corrections. She discovered her first found family, with sadly tragic consequences. Challenging the established order is never an easy task, as she discovered. But, it set her on the path that eventually ran to the events of Hero.
Like all my stories and novels, I hoped you enjoyed it.
Happy reading!
Dale
About the Author
Dale Ivan Smith writes fantasy and science fiction (and mystery). He’s written The Empowered series, as well as the urban fantasy Gremlin Night, and too many short stories to count.
You can find him at these places:
www.daleivansmith.com
dale@daleivansmith.com
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed the Empowered series. I’d love to hear what you thought of Mathilda’s story. Feel free to email me: dale@daleivansmith.com
Please visit my website to find out more about my writing, and keep up-to-date on my fiction projects.
Once again, Happy reading!
About the Author
Dale Ivan Smith is both a life-long reader of science fiction/fantasy/suspense and of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. He got in trouble in grade-school for sneaking off to the school library during math class, and so naturally wound up working for the public library.
Smith, Dale Ivan, The Empowered [The Complete Series]
