Level Up- The Knockout

by Dan Sugralinov

  * * *

  HAGEN approached Roman once the morning routine (the roll call and so on) was over.

  “Sorry I hadn’t let you sleep properly,” he said. “In general, I’m ready to take part in the so-called ‘startup.’ Where do I begin?”

  “Excellent! First of all, you need to earn the trust of the prison top brass. You have no former criminal record. The bosses are on the lookout for folks like you. That’s prime material for snitches or the kind of guys who do their time and don’t go back to prison again.”

  Roman pointed to a tall gray-haired black man in a perfectly clean and ironed prison attire that fit him like a military uniform. The man was holding a clipboard and making marks on it.

  “He is known as the General. He’s responsible for hiring inmates for the furniture section. It’s the local Silicon Valley. Everybody dreams of working there.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You get paid twenty bucks a week, and that’s something to be reckoned with over here. Apart from that, it’s much easier for someone who works there to get news or packages from the outside. That’s where you’ll receive the necessary parts. You’ll also find all the tools you need there. Not quite the set of tools you need for a computer, but still better than having to use your fingernail as a screwdriver. There’s another nice bonus—they reduce your sentence when you work.”

  “But I’ve never made furniture before.”

  “In that case, it’s just the time for you to learn, comrade. You’ve already been recommended. If they kick you out, it’s...”

  “Yeah, I remember. A shiv, Mark Borkowski, and then, the morgue.”

  “That’s it, comrade. And do you know why it’s the morgue right after Borkowski? If someone with enough clout asks for it, Uncle Mark will send you to the coroner even if you survive the shiv.”

  Hagen chuckled confidently. “I’ve had enough intimidation. Why don’t you tell me about the wooden ring instead?”

  Roman shook his head. “That’s another way of leaving prison early. But I’d strongly advise against it, comrade.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because chances are you’ll end up at Borkowski’s, and then become a stiff instead of getting out of prison.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “A wooden ring is an MMA fight organized by the top brass among the inmates. But all I know is based on rumors.”

  “Weren’t you the one who’d boasted of knowing everything?”

  “There are things you’re best off not knowing. Why would you ask in the first place?”

  “The Latino told me he’d see me in the wooden ring yesterday.”

  “Damn,” said Roman. “Mike, I really advise you to focus on our hardware. We’re the ‘IT guys,’ right? Let’s stay that way. I realize you’re into boxing a bit. But the kind of fights they have here will really get you killed. There are no referees to stop the fight. All you get is a fake cause-of-death note from our favorite doctor if you snuff it. And if you do, I’ll be next in line for the morgue. I’d advise you to stay away from the ring and the fights.”

  Mike was beginning to get tired of the Russian’s patronizing attitude. He was about to tell Roman that he’d find out about the things he’d have to stay away from all by himself when the General approached them.

  The man looked at Hagen. “Michael Björnstad Hagen! Present?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  “General” marked something unhurriedly on his clipboard. “As of today, you’re on your one-week probationary period. If you work hard enough, you’ll be made a worker officially and receive wages. Any questions?”

  “Sir, no, sir!”

  “General” gestured Hagen to join a group of inmates nearby.

  “Good luck, comrade,” Roman said as he joined another group—the one in charge of taking care of the prison yard.

  Lorenzo “Brix” Reyes turned out to be a fellow furniture workshop worker. Once he saw Hagen, he grinned and made a gesture with his thumb across his neck.

  Hagen was about to pretend he hadn’t noticed, but his anger at bullies flared up again. Why would he allow anyone to intimidate him?

  “Hueles a mierda,” Lorenzo said, repeating the gesture.

  Hagen didn’t raise an eyebrow as he gave him the finger.

  Lorenzo switched to English immediately. “You’re a dead man, bitch. Dead. Know what I’m saying?”

  He went for Hagen but his friends held him back, trying to reason with him in English and Spanish:

  “Pipe down, hombre, they’ll throw you out if you keep on like that.”

  Lorenzo kept trying to break free. He didn’t shout but hissed loudly so that the guards wouldn’t hear him.

  “Pinche puto! You’re a dead man, you bastard. It may not be tomorrow, but expect it, shithead.”

  Hagen approached him boldly. “I’m done with that! Stop trying to intimidate me! The likes of you aren’t capable of it. It’s you who should be afraid of the likes of me.”

  “I don’t care who protects you. You’re a dead man to me already, pendejo.”

  “Stop calling up dead men to scare me. I can make you dead just as well. Come at me or shut up.”

  Lorenzo replied by roaring, squeezing free from his friends’ grip and trying to punch him. Hagen had been prepared and dodged the punch easily. He evaded the kick that followed just as easily.

  Hagen was aware that his chances to defeat Lorenzo were pretty weak. Unless he’d get some magic buff, he’d lose—and, judging by yesterday’s fight, magic buffs could never last long. And yet Hagen didn’t feel like just swallowing the insults and doing nothing.

  Guards mobbed Lorenzo and pressed him against the nearest wall.

  Then Jim appeared. He approached the Latino without so much as looking at Hagen once.

  “Didn’t I tell you to chill? Can’t wait for your turn to come? In that case, you can wait for it in the hole.”

  Lorenzo promptly shut up and hid his face, staring at the ground. However, his hatred was almost tangible. This didn’t bode well for Hagen.

  Without as much as looking at Hagen, Jim told the General to take the detail to work.

  Incidentally, the General had stayed nonchalant for the entire duration of the incident, as if unaware of Lorenzo throwing punches right next to him. He calmly entered a note into his list and ordered,

  “Follow me.”

  Hagen and the rest of the inmates walked out into the corridor, accompanied by guards. Mike walked on confidently, smiling to see the message.

  Psychological Attack has been enabled again.

  You have to use the ability more often to level it up.

  Hagen didn’t even need to ask Demetrious any questions to realize his mental condition had stabilized at last.

  Adrenalin would be just the thing to chase all the unpleasant thoughts out of his head.

  Chapter 22. The Wooden Ring

  Thanks to that crackpot Dr Ned, we have a delicious collection of Zommmmbieesssss!

  Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot

  THE FURNITURE SECTION felt like real freedom after an eternity of bars and stuffy cells. There was a partition wall with a barred window to his right. Armed guards were lined up against it. There was also a red line on the floor with large white letters on the wall saying,

  DO NOT CROSS THE LINE! LETHAL FORCE WILL BE USED!

  The inmates would stop at the line, and the corrections officer would hand a set of tools over to each of them through a window.

  Hagen appreciated the security measures involved—after all, they were giving screwdrivers, hammers, and saws to killers and former gangsters. The mind boggled at the thought of what they would do if they managed to smuggle any of that stuff into the prison block.

  General assigned the workers to their places. Some got themselves behind machines and started sawing large planks of wood. Others started hammering pieces of wood together to make chairs while yet others got on with polishing
the assembled items.

  The workshop reminded Mike of the place his uncle used to rent in Seattle where they installed home security systems. They would also have to make boxes or cabinets that would match the client’s interior design.

  General took Hagen to the far side of the workshop, booting it as though he was marching at a military parade. Mike really wanted to ask the man whether he might have been an actual general. However, he prudently decided to zip it.

  They reached the other side of the workshop. There were plastic boxes of different colors lined up against the wall. A row of assembled cabinets without handles or desks with open drawers and holes instead of locks stood opposite to them.

  “You’ve worked with computers, haven’t you?” General asked. “Now see if you can manage it here. Don’t screw up.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?”

  General made a sharp turn and marched back, disappearing behind a mountain of unfinished furniture.

  “We’ll be screwing on the hardware,” a quivering voice answered from somewhere.

  “Uh... Sir?” Hagen asked, looking around but seeing no one.

  “Can you use a screwdriver?”

  “I sure can.”

  “Are you color blind, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Do you have any problems telling colors apart?”

  “None at all.”

  “You’ll need the yellow box in the leftmost row, third from the top.”

  Hagen approached the wall of plastic boxes, found the yellow one and opened it. It turned out to be full of cabinet hinges.

  “The silver-colored ones go on the furniture made of light-colored wood. The dark-colored cabinets get golden-colored hinges.”

  “Sir, I...”

  “Get to it. We need to put all the hardware in place on the items they made yesterday before lunch. They’ll take them away after lunch and bring over a bunch of new ones.”

  Hagen took a couple of silver-colored and golden-colored hinges from the box. The screws had already been in place. There was a tool roll filled with screwdrivers on one of the desks. Hagen chose the appropriate one, then froze in indecision. He looked around him and asked the invisible man,

  “Sir? Where do I begin?”

  He noticed a movement under one of the desks. An old man wearing round glasses in a black frame crept out. He was short—and Hagen could actually call certain people short now.

  The man had a very kind face and a shock of white hair on his head. The glasses made him look like a very old Harry Potter. It was odd why someone radiating such niceness and positivity would be put have been put behind bars in the first place.

  He looked Hagen in the eye. “The name is Charlie Evans. I already know you’re Mike. There were certain orders concerning you but mind you, I know nothing at all. If they grab you, I’ll deny everything.”

  “Sir, I...”

  “Don’t interrupt me. Expect your first present when the guards switch shifts—that’ll be next Monday. It will be in one of the boxes. I’ve no idea which one exactly.”

  Hagen looked at the wall. “But there are just so many of them...”

  “That’s not my problem. By the end of your work day you should place a note specifying what you need in the yellow box. I don’t know what you need and I don’t want to know, so don’t tell me. The less I know, the fewer problems you’ll have if they catch you.”

  Hagen nodded hastily.

  “And now, let’s get to work, Mike. Watch what I’m doing closely. I won’t be giving another demonstration.”

  Charlie picked up a cabinet door that must have been twice his height, brought it to the cabinet and screwed on a hinge in what had seemed like a second. Then he climbed onto a stool and screwed on the other one. The old man also showed him how to install locks, drawer slides, corner braces, and other small cabinet hardware.

  “It’s your turn now,” he finally said.

  Hagen quickly learned to attach hinges and handles to cabinets. It turned out to be easier than working on electronic devices.

  Charlie nodded approvingly. “Well done. You’ll figure the rest out by yourself. Locks for furniture are kept in blue boxes. Handles for wardrobes are in lilac-colored ones. As I’ve said, it easy to figure it out. All the sizes are standard, so there should be no mistakes. Do some work, boy, and let an old man have some rest.”

  Charlie sat on one of the office chairs and produced a small book out of his pocket.

  * * *

  MIKE GOT IMMERSED in his job so deeply it quickly began to resemble a factory assembly line. Screwing in screws didn’t present any problems, so he kept on thinking about Roman’s “order”.

  It wouldn’t be hard to assemble a small computer. Moreover, the market was flooded with mini credit-card-sized devices that one wouldn’t need to assemble in the first place. The only reason he couldn’t order one of those were power and hard drive volume requirements.

  What did Roman intend to store there, and why? Why would he need a robust server like that?

  Hagen started to think of whether it might be possible to disassemble a laptop and smuggle it into the prison piecemeal. Then he decided the process would be too unpredictable. One never knew who the smuggler might be. What if they break anything?

  Hagen was inside a large wardrobe attaching latches to doors as he pondered this. Someone knocked from the outside.

  “It’s lunchtime,” Charlie said.

  “This soon?” Hagen stepped out of the wardrobe.

  Charlie beamed at him kindly. “Why would you think folks are desperate for jobs? It’s not that they love to work. But it makes the time pass quicker. Most of them were layabouts on the outside. But once they’re locked up, they’ll do any boring job just to avoid hanging out in the yard without a purpose.”

  Hagen and old Charlie sat down to their paper-bag lunch they’d received at breakfast. Hagen found a pencil on the workshop table and wrote down a list of necessary parts on the empty paper bag. He specified brands as well as names. Some of the components needed extra specifications so that someone unfamiliar with computers could buy the stuff as well. It was harder with no access to YouTube or the forums, but Hagen had always had a good memory for names and numbers.

  General walked in, armed with his usual clipboard. “Mr. Evans! Can you give me a report on this inmate’s performance?”

  “He’s a bright lad,” Charlie replied. “You can see he’d been no loafer on the outside, either. He managed to do everything in due time. Couldn’t have wished for a better helper.”

  General made a mark on his clipboard and walked off.

  The evening came just as quickly.

  Charlie wasn’t a chatterbox like Roman, but he would occasionally start telling stories, quite spontaneously. He mentioned his childhood in Louisiana, describing in great detail how he used to fish for carp in a pond near their farm. Then he’d start going on about how he used to work on a combine harvester, relishing in the sight of a field of wheat and the taste of freshly-baked bread. Then it would be about his friend with a Ford Mustang and how they used to race it on the highway next to their little town. Yet each of these innocent stories ended with a gory calamity. Someone would drown in the pond, their body to be found later, nibbled all over by the very same carp. The combine harvester would hack off the legs of some sleeping child, and the friend driving the Ford would run over some people and kill them.

  Hagen was petrified as he listened, unable to overcome the shock of the discrepancy between the old man’s kind appearance and his blood-curdling stories. By the end of their work day, he’d been happy to part ways with Evans. He’d been in so much of a hurry he nearly forgot to place his list in the yellow box.

  Once Hagen returned to the workshop exit, the inmates had already formed a queue in front of the window to hand back their tools.

  Hagen got approached by General and one of the guards. The latter searched Hagen thoroughly to make sure he hadn’t had an
y tools on him.

  The search scared Mike. How would he manage to smuggle out the parts? Roman hadn’t mentioned any of that. Mike sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have to use any body cavities.

  General brought him out of his reverie. The man was standing right in front of him, scrupulously making notes on his clipboard. Having caught Hagen’s eye, he nodded.

  “Don’t hurry. There’s still stuff for you to do here.”

  General ordered Mike to join a group of about ten other inmates and wait. Hagen couldn’t help noticing all of them were young and looked athletic.

  The queue before the window had moved on. Armed guards rounded up the rest of the inmates and marched them out of the workshop. The only ones left were General and the guard that had searched Hagen.

  “All right, guys, get to it. We have ten minutes,” General yelled, looking like a leader of an army on a battlefield.

  The inmates scattered across the workshop. Some started dragging large office desks toward the unoccupied center, while others got busy drawing an enormous octagon on the floor using taut string to make their chalk lines straight.

  One of the inmates gave Hagen a shove. “What are you doing standing there? Lend a hand!”

  “What are we doing?” Hagen grabbed a desk and helped to turn it to the side, placing it along one of the octagon’s chalk lines.

  “We’re making a fucking arena. You mean you don’t have a clue?”

  “I don’t.”

  “This is weird. If they let you stay, you’re in.”

  Having put the desk down, Hagen approached General. “Sir, what’s going on here, sir? What am I supposed to be doing?”

  General smiled wryly. “It would be better for you to think of what you shouldn’t have done.”

  “And that would be?”

  “You’d gotten cocky, so you’ve attracted attention. You like fighting, boy? You’ll have a chance to fight tonight. Our penitentiary institution has everything to offer to the likes of you.”

  Hagen gave a start. General quoted his words about “the likes of you” in an obvious and sarcastic manner. Then he gave Mike a light slap on the chest with his clipboard.