Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  “Really? Given these walls, you’re going to need a mile of rehabilitation. You couldn’t have scored high with this kind of outburst.” The lighter toned guard shook his head while scanning the damage.

  I couldn’t tell much difference between the two beyond a slight difference in skin color. One was brown from more than a tan, the other a slightly tanned white. Both wore a suit that blocked almost all their features.

  “I have anger management issues,” I admitted.

  “Hah. I’ll bet.” The gruff darker one shook for a moment.

  His friend nodded and said in a surprisingly friendly tone, “Need a psyche, they’ll help you get on track.”

  It didn’t matter how many times I thought about it. Their attitude toward inmates was out of place.

  I raised an eyebrow and played along. “Oh?” I said.

  “If you work at it. I’ve seen people come in here all wound wrong. There have been a few who’ve really tried, talk to a shrink, attend the sessions, really work at it. Even a wolf can get back on track, sometimes easier than humans or vampires. It’s good, too, you stay straight out there, means less shit for us to worry about.”

  “Or they don’t,” came my bitter response.

  They shuffled uneasily for a moment. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of us dying in here. I couldn’t say for sure what made them pause their friendly advice.

  “How many strikes they got on you?” the darker one asked.

  “One and a half,” I replied.

  “Half?” The whiter guard smirked. “Ain’t a thing. Guess they can’t push you over until a sentence comes down.”

  “Now, Marshall, you shouldn’t be revealing trade secrets like that,” a bored voice said.

  Warden Bennett had arrived, and now I knew the whiter man was named Marshall. Unless Marshall was his title.

  “Warden Bennett, sir. I was just trying to help,” the man who might be Marshall responded with a jerk.

  “Caretakers. You’re dismissed.”

  Warden Bennett stepped into the room and glanced around. His face twitched in surprise that was rapidly reined in. Neither of the guards remained in sight. They’d left me bound tight so security wasn’t an issue. The Warden hit like any other vampire so he wasn’t exactly defenseless.

  I offered a conversation starter. “He was chatty.”

  “Marshall had a brother who stayed with us briefly. He righted himself after a lot of work.” The Warden took a single deep slow breath. “It is possible to redeem the wrongs that earn people their stay, and make no mistake, correcting people’s ability to interact with society is what Atlas is all about.”

  That was a load of shit, so I called him on it. “Or sending them to the other side to die.”

  “Society has no place for those who can’t function within its bounds.”

  I repeated Western Sector’s motto like a puppet, “Everything for the Peace.” This place was their correctional institute. It made sense their ideals would encompass its actions.

  “Indeed, Mr. Fields.”

  My head shook slowly.

  “Why are you here, Warden? I assumed you’d get me booted to the other side as quickly as possible.”

  “Were things so simple, perhaps. The state of this room could be considered a strike were I inclined.” Warden Bennett walked over to one of the walls and inspected the scorch marks.

  “However, as Marshall said, until you’ve been given an official sentence, it’s unwelcome to put your life at risk in any severe fashion.”

  “Then what?”

  “What relation do you have to Western Sector?”

  The question caught me so off guard it was impossible to hide the surprise from my expression.

  “I’ll save you the how. Every inmate to Atlas has a check run. Your case warranted further investigation. I found it carefully filed away through layers of tape, which only served to intrigue me.”

  I leaned back and rested my head against the wall and suppressed a sigh.

  “By all normal processes you would have been bundled up and shipped to Atlas years ago, but there’s no record on file of any attempts. Then nothing for years, and the last finger on your sheet belonged to Daniel Crumfield.”

  I didn’t even know what to say. The truth was out, but Warden Bennett didn’t seem like the type to ask questions when he was missing puzzle pieces.

  Vampires. Hell. Decades of time to learn skills, to read faces, hear heartbeats stutter at any attempted lie. Even asking the right questions would speed my pulse enough to reveal something.

  Warden Bennett flipped through his sheets of papers. I wanted to rip them out of his hands and see exactly what was written, but small typed print put me to sleep.

  “I wondered exactly what was going on, and this earthquake only serves to alarm me more.”

  “Get to it, Warden.”

  “Assume anything we talk about will be kept in the strictest confidence, and I only ask to ensure you are not a threat to my facility. I’ve invested too much time and effort into making this run smoothly.”

  “Still waiting for a question,” I said.

  “I believe Jay Fields is a cover, and you’re assuming the identity of a man who died years ago. Are you undercover?”

  My heart jumped. Dead? No. But Warden Bennett had given me an out even if he hadn’t intended it. Hell, maybe someone really was looking out for me. Had Daniel been clever enough to stamp the file just in case? His mind was a maze of plans.

  “Are you asking if I’m on a sojourn?” I threw out the word in desperation. I’d heard Daniel’s fiancée utter it to a pack inspector. The term was a code word to imply Western Sector agents were undercover as someone else.

  “Are you?”

  Gods above, I had a chance. I had leverage. The man himself had wandered right into my cell, isolation he placed me into, then just gave me a solution. My heart hammered. This would be dicey.

  I stood and let our height and bulk differences do the work for me. Warden Bennett with his albino features seemed even more pale than normal. He stood in the wreck of my room with his clipboard. My hands and feet were bound, but he was still worried about something.

  Hell. He was taking carefully shallow breaths, which was a sign of stress for any vampire. They tasted the air for signs of danger.

  “I shouldn’t answer that.” My response was deliberately vague.

  Both eyes rolled down his features, looking, truly looking. I sized him up like a fighter in the ring, or a debtor who was trying to hide things. He was prey, my prey, in my cell. Angry pleasure thrummed across the back of my mind.

  “Very well. Let’s be purely hypothetical.” His voice held steady. The man was pressing forward at least.

  Warden Bennett leaned out of the room and glanced side to side. I assumed he’d be calling for help or making sure we were truly alone.

  He turned back to me and posed a real question. “If, perhaps, someone were to come to Atlas on a sojourn, what would their aim be?”

  “Not you.” Technically the truth. I wanted nothing to do with the Warden or this place.

  I’d seen vampires nervous, and Warden Bennett was almost sweating bullets despite my answer.

  “And my facility?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then they’d be here for a person. Someone who is a threat. Unless...” His eyebrows creased and for the first time since we’d met I saw the clipboard discarded. It clattered to the floor as he went utterly still.

  Warden Bennett blurred into motion toward me. I stepped back and my arms clinked in their bindings. He blinked twice, glaring at me and breathing sharply, then flittered back across the room. Strangely, I could feel where he was moving.

  “Is this about my Guardianship?” He was agitated, both eyes spiraling and a vague tint of red crept across his pale skin. “That was the earthquake wasn’t it. It’s waking up. But that’s impossible, we’ve adhered to all the...”

  He stopped moving again. I waited on
my side of the cell to avoid startling the vampire. The last thing I needed was a Warden of Atlas Island upset with me as he panicked about some secret getting out of control.

  I didn’t know for sure, what the pale man meant, but he clearly felt unnerved.

  “Something’s wrong. But how could they predict that something, no, that wouldn’t be beyond them. They knew, they knew and sent you here to see. No—” He snapped up the fallen clipboard and flipped through the papers as if it held answers to what his mind was going through. It didn’t. I mean, hopefully there weren’t secrets stored on a clipboard, of all things. “Very well. My brothers and I know our duties. We will resolve things. You’ll see. Then you can report we’ve cared well for all our charges.”

  What delusion had crossed his anachronistic mind? He said duties, like there was an entire list on his job description besides ‘Let people at Atlas kill each other.’ It also involved the other Wardens. There were two brothers I’d never seen. They must be busy elsewhere with this guardianship task. I guessed they were taking care of something more than inmates and facility.

  “Best get going then, Warden Bennett.” I grinned and tilted my head slightly.

  “Guards!” Bennett backed out the door and slammed it shut, leaving me smiling in the midst of my torn room.

  Without a clue I’d managed to shift the tables of power. Now I was a ticking time bomb watching over him for some sort of performance improvement. I was a threat or a safety precaution against his charge going out of control.

  By the time guards unchained my arms and legs I’d started to worry. That hadn’t been the look of a sane vampire or one thinking calmly about a problem. He’d been afraid, not of me, but of those he suspected sent me forth. What the hell had I just pushed the Warden into?

  Word came down an hour later that my solitary stay had been extended but I’d be allowed supervised visitation rights. They’d successfully separated me in order to track my movements.

  At least they gave me clean sheets and replaced the shined metal with an unbent version. Atlas could be accommodating.

  Tal had been trying to get my attention for a few minutes. Each call in my direction made him more irritated.

  “Boy.”

  In the memories replaying, childish me had a strange object in my hands. Wooden blocks that slid together. I could feel the edges inside and out, but taking it apart wasn’t clear.

  “I’m talking to you, boy.” Tal stood directly over me. I shuddered and scooted out of his shadow to the nearest wall. He sighed and shook but the feelings were distant. “This is foolish. We need a name for you.”

  Days ago they’d asked me what I should be called, but my mouth didn’t form the words right. Saying the sound didn’t come with the right rumbles of earth and a single low note. Human mouths couldn’t produce the word.

  “Okay,” I agreed. We had covered the subject once, and I didn’t really care as long as they didn’t try to touch me again.

  “What do you want to be called?”

  “Boy seems fine,” Roy suggested. Most of the time he was quiet and worked hard. He said less than I did, which was nothing like Daniel the chatterbox.

  I could almost separate my mind into the present and past. Watching these events from decades ago came with a certain amount of disconnect. But I knew Roy and I were never very sociable, even as children.

  “It’s not right to be without a name,” Tal grumbled.

  “You won’t use it until he’s proven to be a man.” Bitterness had barely been covered up by Roy’s dispassionate tone.

  “Having a name and being recognized by it are different things. Until I was a Champion people just called me the challenger.” They seemed more concerned with jostling each other than me. I stood against the wall, fussing with the puzzle. My stomach would be rumbling soon but the problem helped distract me.

  Tal went on, “In the army no one ever addressed me by anything other than rank.”

  The father and son seemed oblivious to the others’ feelings. I could see the older man explaining his views on respect. The younger male was desperately trying not to roll his eyes while skipping a jump rope.

  All this passed through my mind while fingers struggled with the wooden blocks. I finally put too much pressure on the wrong spot and a piece snapped off. Seconds later I’d crunched the whole delicate puzzle to bits and felt my lip quiver. It wasn’t fair.

  “Boy seems fine,” Roy said again. “He doesn’t respond to anything but food anyway.” I’d bent over to pick up my broken puzzle when Roy said the magic word.

  “Food? Hamburger? Other meat?” I perked up.

  Roy’s head shook. “See? He’s bottomless. Call him Pit.”

  “So are you. Boys. I swear a girl would have been easier,” Tal said with an annoyed frown. “Maybe Crumfield will have an idea.”

  “You don’t even use his name right, why does it matter?”

  “All sorts of things require a name. Sooner or later we’ll have to send him to school.” Tal sounded like he was chewing on his inner lip. “It’s been a week since he’s broken anything. He’s learning control.”

  “That’s not control,” Roy said.

  I gave Roy a sidelong glance only to see him staring at me from a few feet away. He studied me like I did the busted puzzle. A quick glance his direction picked out key features. Father and son both had protruding lower jaws where bottom teeth stuck out at an uncommon slant. Both had slightly yellow skin which no one else mentioned.

  I’d seen all sorts of skin colors since landing in this world. One man had been a bright red and afraid to be touched. Another, a deep black and without hair on his head. Two smaller children had tiny eyes and wide smiles in light yellow skin.

  No one cared about color difference. There were other differences that made some nervous. One man, white skinned, was treated with wariness by everyone but Tal. He moved quickly but in a sloppy manner, yet still managed a straight line. As if he couldn’t make himself turn when moving fast.

  A flicker of motion headed my way. It sent me scooting farther from Tal. He gave me another glance and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t watching them back. They were nice enough but having people close by was uncomfortable.

  They had food, though, and that was a far cry better than where I’d been. Even if Tal had declared all my belongings to be trash and refused to bring most of it home.

  I got to keep a few marbles that had been scattered and lost in one office. They were hidden between mattresses in my new room upstairs.

  Tal pointed at me. “Say that name, the one you tried to do before.”

  I attempted once more but nothing sensible came out. It felt like trying to speak with duct tape over my mouth. There was so much missing. It might be easier once I’d grown up. I could hear the edge of a memory, or a rumble that came from my father.

  The replay of my childish past shook for a moment. Even then, my dad’s voice had been in the back of my head. Present, hard to pick out, and belonging to a figure I’d never seen before. It bothered me now, as an adult, to be so close and so far from the man who’d sired me.

  “Jaor?” Tal asked.

  “That’s not right.” I shook my head and kept at the puzzle. The pieces could go back together if I moved carefully. They had material in one of the drawers which helped put frail wood constructs back into one piece.

  “How about we pretend to shorten it to just the first letter. Jay,” Roy offered. He frowned in annoyance.

  I shrugged.

  “Jay works for me,” Tal agreed.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You are a strange boy,” the older man said. Roy paused for a moment and switched from the rope to something else.

  “Okay,” I agreed. Their opinions didn’t matter as long as food kept arriving regularly. I’d suffer nearly anything to avoid that gnawing hunger which had plagued my first few weeks.

  “Roy, you’re still working with him, right?” the older man asked.

&
nbsp; “We’re on the kindergarten books.”

  We had been. Reading hurt my head. Letters were tiny and squiggly creations made by demons. I knew then, at a young age, that there were demons. My father had told me.

  Tal nodded, then ordered, “Good, keep tutoring him. He’s still too ignorant.”

  The last word set me off. “What’s that?” I paused in my attempt to reassemble the broken puzzle and stared at Tal Forge.

  He sighed and answered with, “It means you don’t know a lot of things.”

  Now I was mad. “I know a lot.” Failing to understand wasn’t my fault. Nothing here made sense or felt familiar. Nothing lined up against the thoughts rolling around my head.

  “Oh yeah? Like what?” Roy challenged me.

  Tal stood back and looked between the two of us.

  “I know your feet are wrong when you do the swoosh swoosh smash at night.” I felt proud of my first answer.

  They both looked confused. I was probably being ignorant by not explaining it right, but that was hardly my fault. Then Tal’s face grew worried and he stepped into my line of sight, not getting closer, but definitely focused. His face bordered between worry and upset.

  “Have you been sneaking downstairs at night?” he asked.

  “No.” I stayed in my room the whole night. Blankets piled around me, pillows and other objects pulled into the corner like a fort. Inside my safe spot, I studied the marbles I’d gathered.

  Tal stepped closer. I stepped back. He asked, “How do you know his foot is wrong?”

  “I feel it,” I said with all the sheepishness a young child could muster. Saying I felt things would be crazy, but no one else seemed to pick up vibrations quite like I did.

  Roy had stopped all his exercises as an angry expression fell across his face. The jaw grew firm and his eyes narrowed. “Likely story,” he said.

  I nodded. “You only step twice.”

  “So?” Roy questioned.

  “That’s not how it should go.”

  Roy started to say something but was cut off by a sharp look and half growl from Tal. “Explain yourself, boy.” He’d already forgotten the name decided upon.

  I couldn’t say it right, but showing them was easy enough. “You should step like this.”