Chapter 25
The guards prod me to my feet, then march me through the gate. Inside, the world is both smaller and more dangerous: narrow paths between the barracks, armed sentries every ten meters, and the constant, overlapping echoes of a hundred voices, none of which belong to me.
Someone behind me shoves, hard enough that I stumble and nearly eat concrete. My knees catch on reflex, but it still scrapes away a strip of skin. The guard laughs, a single, ugly bark, and waves his baton at the next checkpoint.
“Move, freak.”
I do, because at this point, resistance is just a way to break something more important than bones.
The first thing you notice about Penitentiary 07 is the noise.
It’s not just the shouts, though those hit like stones: “Eat shit!” “You Authority whore!” “Run, fucker, run!” There’s also a mechanical undertone—constant, grinding, like half the Zone’s obsolete turbines have been rerouted here just to chew up air and hope.
The fans on the perimeter wall howl with each rotation, and every time a door cycles, it’s accompanied by a pneumatic gasp that’s obscene in its satisfaction.
The guards don’t even pretend to care. They walk in tight columns, their boots tuned to a silent metronome.
Every fifth step, one slaps a baton against his thigh.
Some are just for show. Most aren’t. I watch as one guard peels off, wades into a scrum near the fence, and starts bashing heads with the bored expertise of a factory worker culling defective parts.
The bodies drop and rise, but the guard’s rhythm never falters.
They march me up a corridor lined in mesh.
Prisoners on both sides, some pressed to the wire like bugs on a filter, others collapsed on their bunks, eyes gone gray with resignation.
There are women here, more than I expected.
Some of them wear the Authority’s orange jumpsuit, the rest cobble together whatever rags survive the laundry schedule.
All are marked by something: a number scrawled in sharpie, a shorn scalp, a forearm tattoo that brags about past crimes or future intent.
I pass a cluster of raiders—the real kind, not Authority scarecrows. They watch me, eyes hungry, and there’s blood on one’s chin. His teeth are perfect, white and sharp. He smiles when he sees me looking, then flicks his tongue across the metal ring in his lip, slow as a snake.
The guards notice nothing, or everything. Hard to tell.
Past the intake line, the world opens into a yard.
It’s not a yard in any sense you’d recognize: no grass, no sky, just a strip of half-paved mud ringed by towers and automated turrets.
Prisoners wander the perimeter in pairs or trios, most keeping their heads down, a few already scheming their way up the food chain.
One group is pressed against the west wall, hands locked behind their heads. A guard paces behind, ticking off numbers as he passes, then lashes the last in line across the calves with a collapsible rod. The prisoner drops, screams, but the rest don’t so much as flinch. It’s a show, or a lesson.
There’s another section, cordoned off with mesh and a padlocked gate.
Civilians, by the look—soft hands, faces too clean, eyes full of questions they should’ve learned not to ask.
These are the ones who pissed off the Authority with too many letters, too many “requests for reconsideration.” They cluster together, trying to shrink into the background, but the guards patrol here more than anywhere else.
The real wildcards are the ones in the southeast block.
Their uniforms are tattered, many stripped down to bare skin, which is painted and carved with patterns that have nothing to do with Authority order.
They mutter to themselves, some in languages I don’t know, a few in numbers and colors.
One sits rocking in a puddle, humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as he bashes his head gently against the wall, leaving a perfect ring of blood. No one stops him.
The guards shove me through the checkpoint, then up a stairwell slick with rain and what I hope is only water. At the top, an officer with a face like a kicked-in pumpkin reads from a slate.
“Diana. Block D, room 17. Ten-minute orientation, then you’re on your own.”
He looks at me, and I see something like recognition flicker in his eyes. It dies quickly.
“You used to be Authority,” he says. It’s not a question.
I shrug. “I used to be a lot of things.”
He sneers. “You’re meat now.”
He hands me a bag—my bag, from the lab, stripped of anything useful except the clothes I arrived in and a half-melted bar of synth soap. He gestures to a second guard, who grabs my elbow and hauls me through a series of security doors.
As we walk, I study the building. The layout is a spiral, each block radiating out from a central hub like the vanes of a windmill.
Every door is double-reinforced, every camera blinkered and ugly.
The lights overhead strobe with a sickly blue, and the air inside tastes of ammonia, sweat, and panic.
The cells are identical: three by two meters, a single metal bunk, a combined toilet/sink, and a vent that hums at intervals.
The mattress is a thin pad, riddled with holes where previous residents tried to stash contraband or shiv the next shift’s unlucky guest. There are scratch marks on the wall, some vertical, some diagonal, a few that form words: “HELP.” “WHY.” “OUT.”
My new cellmate for the night is already there.
She’s stretched out on the bunk, staring at the ceiling, hands folded over her chest like a corpse.
When she sees me, she sits up, legs swinging down to the floor.
Her eyes are black, with the kind of intelligence that Authority hates most—sharp, adaptive, unwilling to die quiet.
She grins. “Fresh meat.”
I nod, drop the bag on the bunk. “I’m Diana.”
“Call me Stitch,” she says. “They do, anyway.”
I glance at her arms—laced with old, meticulous scars, each one a thread in a pattern I don’t recognize. Her fingers are restless, tapping out a sequence on her thigh.
I sit, keeping my back to the wall.
She studies me, then snorts. “You’ll last longer than most. You’ve got the look.”
“What look?”
She leans in. “The one that says you’re already dead, but nobody told you yet.”
I almost laugh.
From the corridor comes a scream, then a thud, then a silence that is somehow worse.
Stitch shrugs. “Give it a week, you’ll stop hearing it.”
The guard slams the door shut. The lock clicks, a solid finality.
For a while, neither of us says anything. The only sound is the drone of the vent, the faint, distant howling from the yard.
After a minute, Stitch reaches under the bunk and pulls out a crumpled, bloodstained sheet of paper. She smooths it, offers it to me. It’s a map, hand-drawn, showing escape routes, guard rotations, even the locations of every camera. Someone spent months on it.
“Found it in a dead girl’s shoe,” Stitch says. “Might help you last another week.”
I study the map, cataloguing every exit, every blind spot. My brain is already whirring, calculating odds.
“Thanks,” I say, tucking it into my sleeve.
She nods, satisfied.
In the dark, I hear the echo of Maven’s voice: “You’re the only one who can read the map.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if this is all by design.
The lights go out, plunging the cell into a blue-black void.
For the next hour, I don’t move. I listen to the patterns of violence and breath, the slow, inexorable pulse of Authority’s perfect machine.
I am meat, here.
But I’m not finished yet.
The next morning, the cell door opens with a shriek like an animal dying. Two guards stand in the hall, visors opaque, Authority insignias smeared with dried rain.
Behind them is Kang.
He doesn’t look at me, at first. Just signals with a jerk of the head.
“Move,” he says, voice flat. The guards peel away, giving us a two-meter cushion as I walk the corridor.
My wrists are cuffed again, this time with reinforced poly-carb bands that cut in deeper than the last set.
I flex my hands until the blood returns.
Kang leads the way, boots scraping against the worn-out concrete, always two steps ahead. His hair is shorter now, the Authority regulation cut, but a pale streak runs through the right side like a bad memory. His tattoo flashes green under the overheads, the color of broken promise.
At the turn, Petrov waits.
He stands with his back to the wall, hands folded behind him, as if he’s been here since last night. His uniform is crisp, but the lines in his face are deeper, the eyes more bloodshot than ever. He looks at me like I’m a half-dissected animal he’s about to discard.
“Doctor,” he says. “Or is it just prisoner now?”
I meet his gaze, refusing to blink. “Still a doctor. Even in here.”
Petrov grins, not kindly. “That will make you very popular with the block. We have a shortage of real talent in D wing.” He glances at Kang. “You did well to convince them not to execute her. I hope she makes your investment worthwhile.”
He steps in close. I expect the slap, but he just stares. His breath is stale, coffee and defeat.
“Don’t get clever,” he hisses. “You may have survived Protocol, but this place eats the clever alive. If you try to outsmart me again, I’ll have the guards drag you down to Secure and run the damn Protocol until your brain leaks out your ears. Do you understand?”
He says it slow, like he’s savoring each syllable. There’s a violence in the words that’s almost sexual.
I nod, just enough to get him out of my face.
He straightens, turns to Kang. “Escort her to D14, then report to Processing. I want your full assessment by noon.”
Kang’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t reply. He just grabs my arm, steers me down the corridor. Petrov watches, predator eyes drilling into the back of my skull.
We walk in silence. The cell block is half-awake—prisoners mumbling, someone vomiting into a trash can, another weeping softly behind a locked gate. The guards walk their laps, but the routine is looser in the morning. Maybe they think no one’s awake enough to start trouble.
Kang stops at a door, punches in the code. It hisses open, and he shoves me inside. The cell is the same as before: bunk, sink, toilet, vent, but the mattress here is thinner, the walls grayer with old sweat.
He follows me in, closes the door, and just stands there.
I wait. He says nothing.
Then I can’t hold it anymore.
“Are you proud of yourself?” I say, voice low, urgent. “You saved me from a bullet just to hand me over to Petrov’s fuckhouse?”
He doesn’t flinch. “It’s safer in here.”
I laugh, ugly and sharp. “Safer? I saw a girl get her face smashed in with a food tray. I watched a guard break a guy’s ribs for talking back. This place is a fucking slaughterhouse.”
He leans back against the wall, arms folded, face blank. But I see the tremor in his left hand, the way his thumb worries at the inside of his wrist.
I step closer, crowding him until we’re nose-to-nose. I can smell the antiseptic on his collar, the trace of blood from where he bit his lip.
“Make up your fucking mind,” I whisper. “Are you the big, bad captain, or are you something else?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.
I shove him, hard. “Pick a side, Kang. You can’t ride the fence anymore.”
He steps back, but not far. His eyes are bright, wild. For a moment, I think he’ll hit me. Instead, he grabs my shoulders, holds me there, breathing fast. There’s a kind of pain in his face that makes me want to bite him or hold him.
Then he lets go, steps away, and slams the door behind him.
I hear the lock engage, the hiss of the security seal.
I collapse onto the bunk, breathing hard, wrists burning where the cuffs bite. I stare at the ceiling, at the cracks that run like veins across the cheap plaster.
The vent hums. Someone screams, distant and muffled.
I trace the tally marks on the wall, counting off the days and weeks of prisoners who came before me.
I wonder how many of them survived.
I pull the map from my sleeve, spread it out on the thin blanket. I memorize every path, every blind spot, every loophole. I close my eyes and replay the walk from Intake, marking the routes, the guard stations, the open and closed doors.
I build the prison in my mind, brick by brick.
I will not be meat. Not for Petrov, not for Kang, not for fucking anyone.
The cell is cold. The blanket smells of bleach and old fear.
But I’m alive.
And I am not finished.
Not by a long shot.