1. Chapter 1
Iarrived at Blackthorne Penitentiary hungover, late, and one bad decision away from losing my job.
Below it, the rusted, sprawling town of Ridgeport, Pennsylvania sloped down the hill toward the Catawissa River—where I was pretty sure a woman had drowned her three kids two years ago.
I cleaned her cell a few times, and for a murderer, the woman made the most stunningly intricate origami out of prison toiler paper.
Impressive, really.
Ridgeport revolved around Blackthorne Penitentiary.
Decades before, the structure had been a state asylum.
It served as a notorious dumping ground for those deemed insane or mentally ill.
When the state finally outlawed asylums, the local politicians repurposed its use and rebranded the nightmare into a high-tech, top-notch prison.
Crows circled overhead in lazy spirals, as they always did. The older guards liked to joke the birds knew where the bodies went.
My head throbbed with every step up from the concrete parking garage. Cheap white wine still coated my tongue, its cloying sweetness now rancid and sour. I remembered blacking out sometime the night before only to wake up with barely enough time to get dressed for my shift.
We were deep into fall, and October twelfth in the Pennsylvania mountains offered little mercy.
There was a chill in the area that never seemed to go away, day or night.
The air smelled of woodsmoke, wet asphalt, and the sharp, vinegar tang of rotting leaves decaying underfoot.
All along the ridge, the autumn foliage had turned a bleeding palette of rusted copper and bruised plum.
Some would marvel at the arrival of fall because we had reached record-breaking high heat waves this summer, probably from climate change, but according to my now incarcerated uncle's social media feed, that was just a bedtime story told to scare oil companies. Drill, baby, drill my ass.
Today, however, the oversaturated colors just made the ache behind my eyes worsen. A truly excellent combination for a woman responsible for cleaning blood and whatever else Blackthorne's prisoners left behind.
Past the employee parking structure, the main facility loomed behind layers of razor wire.
Tobias Mercer stood at the front security gate beneath the massive iron archway, clad in dark tactical blues, one hand resting on the heavy black baton clipped to his belt.
His eyes flicked over me, noting the tangled, messy bun, my wrinkled t-shirt and jeans, and the shadows beneath my eyes.
He sighed.
“Late again, Elara.”
No, shit.
I fumbled for the badge hanging beneath my collar, nearly dropping it when my fingers slipped. Tobias didn’t even look at it.
“I know who the hell you are,” he muttered. “Get inside to clock in before you're later than you already are.”
I shoved the badge back beneath my tunic and hurried toward the front entrance.
“Oh, and Elara.”
I stopped. Tobias’s expression had gone strangely flat.
“The warden is making rounds today.”
My shoulders slumped immediately. Of course he was, because apparently arriving half-dead to work inside the most infamous prison in Pennsylvania wasn’t enough punishment for bad decision of drinking the night before.
Tobias shifted his weight, gaze flicking briefly toward Blackthorne looming behind us.
“And they brought in a new prisoner last night, straight from Pittsburgh.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
It was a lie. Tobias Mercer knew everything that passed through those gates.
“The night shift wouldn’t stop talking about it,” he continued quietly. “Half the western wing was cleared, and extra guards were posted.”
The ache in my skull dulled beneath a flicker of unease.
“What does their rap sheet look like?”
“No idea. Whatever it was…” His jaw tightened. “It scared the staff bringing them in.”
I turned Tobias’s words over in my head, but my stomach rolled again so violently I nearly doubled over.
For one second, I thought I was going to throw up right there on the stone path leading into Blackthorne.
I pressed a hand against my mouth and pivoted away from the gates, breathing through my nose while the world tilted unpleasantly beneath my boots.
The morning air swept across the cliffs a moment later.
It carried the scent of rain, pine, and distant freshwater from Catawissa River far below.
I closed my eyes and let the fresh air wash over me. Slowly, the nausea loosened its claws.
Just another day at Blackthorne. Another hangover, another shift, and another prisoner.
After scanning my badge, the prison gates slid open, and I stepped inside. Down the hallway to my right, I quickly scanned my badge again to clock in, documenting I was 8 minutes late for my shift.
Again.
I continued toward the staff quarters, weaving around guards fastening armor, kitchen workers carrying crates, and cleaners dragging buckets.
I headed for the women’s dressing room tucked along the eastern corridor. There weren’t many of us—not because women weren’t allowed but because most people with sense didn’t choose to work here.
Blackthorne wasn’t a city jail. It wasn’t where drunkards, petty thieves, or men who lost fights ended up.
It was where the Pennsylvania buried its darkest problems. The prisoners were separated with men and women kept in different wings, different blocks, different levels—but the prison itself held them all beneath the same black stone.
The hierarchy of the prison was simple: the deeper you were buried, the greater your threat.
Up on the top two levels, above ground, sat the administrative offices and the minimum security housing—a dormitory-style setup for non-violent offenders.
These were the white-collar embezzlers, and the inmates so close to their release dates they wouldn't dare risk a single infraction, along with the occasional fool who thought a shoplifting run at Walmart was worth prison time.
It was a holding pen for the harmless. Out here, concrete walls and heavy perimeter fencing marked the boundary, but within the upper tiers, guards only drifted through occasionally.
Below the surface, the layout plunged underground across three distinct tiers.
The first level underground housed the medium security inmates—the heavy hitters who had managed to tame their tempers.
These were offenders serving major time for violent offenses or high-weight drug trafficking, but because they kept their heads down, they were rewarded with individual cell housing and coveted spots in the facility's work programs. They usually had too much to lose to cause trouble.
Unless provoked.
Beneath them lay the containment level: maximum security, buried under layers of concrete and reinforced steel.
This was where the prison kept the highly violent, the ones with a history of slipping handcuffs, and the inmates who had proven too bloodthirsty to coexist even with the population upstairs.
Down here, there were no work programs, no casual dorms, and no leniency.
Only isolation, heavy locks, and harsh fluorescent lighting.
At the very bottom—the fifth and lowest level of the entire complex—sat the generator, power grid, and water supply feeds.
Whoever Tobias’s mysterious prisoner was, they would end up somewhere above my station.
Under normal circumstances, I would have nothing to do with the offenders down there.
I’d only ever descended into those depths exactly five times in my years of working here, both times because of staffing shortages.
Strangely, the containment level was quieter than the middle floors.
There was no posturing or shouting—only the low hum of the ventilation and the weight of inmates who had nowhere left to go and who were either in for life, or waiting for death row.
The women’s dressing room sat as a narrow stone chamber lined with wooden benches, dented lockers, and a row of rusted mirrors.
A few women were already there changing into uniforms, trading quiet conversation I had neither the energy nor desire to join.
I slipped to my locker at the end of the room.
My clothes from last night felt wrinkled and stale. I peeled them off and tugged on my work uniform instead—plain gray tunic with dark trousers and heavy boots. Just practical cloth meant for whatever horrors Blackthorne decided to spill onto the floors that day.
I reached for the brush tucked inside my locker.
My hair had become a disaster sometime during the night.
Dark waves tangled around my shoulders in stubborn knots, wild and unruly from sleep and too much tossing in bed.
I dragged the brush through them with more force than patience before splitting the strands and weaving them into a tight braid that rested against my back.
Only then did I look up at the mirror and immediately wished I hadn’t, glancing over my pale skin, shadowed eyes, and unruly hair escaping the braid already. I looked tired.
Or like someone slowly disappearing.
Sighing, I dropped my gaze before the thought could linger. It was always better not to look too long. I shoved the brush back into the locker, slammed it shut, and turned toward the door.
Another day.
Another corridor.
Another mess to clean.
And somewhere behind Blackthorne’s walls, a new prisoner waited.
Three hours into my shift, I had just finished cleaning the cell of a dead prisoner when someone came looking for me. The prisoner was a repeat offender with a mean streak a mile wide who had been transferred in three weeks ago.
This morning she’d been found facedown in her cot with a sharpened piece of metal buried beneath her ribs. Someone had gotten to her during the night. Inside Blackthorne, this meant either security had failed, which was unlikely, or someone had looked the other way.
Neither possibility sat well.
The brass officially called it biohazard remediation, but to the guards on the floor, it was just bio-clean.
The first-response crew had already cleared the worst of it by the time I arrived, but rust-colored streaks still clung stubbornly to the cracks between the stones.
Blood always soaked easily into the raw grout, demanding more than a standard wash.
The sharp, chemical bite of the broad-spectrum disinfectant failed to completely mask the familiar metallic tang hanging in the air.
I gave the floor one final pass with the heavy-duty enzyme treatment, letting the foam eat away at the remaining microscopic biological waste.
Satisfied the stains wouldn't bleed through the next coat of sealer, I began peeling off my nitrile gloves and hazardous-waste shoe covers, tossing the soiled gear straight into the red bio-containment bin.
“Elara.”
I looked up to see one of the ranking supervisors standing in the doorway.
“The Warden wants to see you.”
My stomach dropped so hard I nearly tripped over myself.
Why?
Panic seized my lungs before I could stop it.
As I reluctantly followed the corridor toward the administrative wing, my fingers tightened around the worn wood of the broom handle until my knuckles ached.
Had I missed a shift? Broken protocol? Was this about this morning?
Or could this be about the new prisoner?
More importantly—was I about to lose my job?
I pictured my apartment immediately with its single room, its leaking ceiling, the window that refused to shut properly in winter, the stack of unpaid notices shoved into a drawer.
I lived paycheck to paycheck–sometimes meal to meal.
Blackthorne was miserable. The work was disgusting.
The hours were worse. But, it paid, and I needed the money.
I had worked these halls for years now, long enough to watch guards quit and to see cleaners come and go.
Long enough to know Blackthorne took pieces from people—pieces of themselves they'd never get back.
The Warden’s office sat at the end of the upper administrative corridor.
A guard waited outside–tall, with broad shoulders and a burly hand resting on the hilt of his taser.
His eyes flicked to my badge as I offered it with shaking fingers.
After a brief inspection, he stepped aside and knocked once against the dark oak door. A deep voice answered from within.
“Come in.”
My stomach twisted.
I was either getting fired, or something had gone terribly wrong.