The guards shackled Hagen again, placing his bundle of clothes under his arm, and took him away.
“Hey, Blueeyes, I have a proposal for you. Are you really in so much of a hurry to leave the prison? Why don’t you stay here until the end of your sentence? I’ll make you my new pet. Hey, I’m only joking, don’t give me that ugly look. Haul your ass back to your cell.”
Hagen followed Jim, the roaring of a landing jet still loud in his ears. The guard must have seen the fight in the wooden ring for the first time. All the way back, he kept complaining, shaking his head and lamenting the sinful nature of mankind.
“Even the best of us aren’t impervious to Satan’s influence.”
Blinky Palermo ranked among the best? Hagen thought to himself. Old Jimmy sure has some serious issues in his choice of idols.
“So, what’s up, comrade? Who’s the winner?” Roman was still awake, just like many other inmates during a lockdown. There was nothing to do with all that extra energy. People stayed bored day and night.
“Blinky ‘Cloudy Eye’ Palermo,” Hagen replied wearily. “He’s defeated us all by having made us his... What’s the word you’ve been using? Ah, yes, shestiorkas.”
As soon as Hagen’s head hit the pillow, he fell into a deep sleep.
The alarm sounded an hour later. This time it was finally accompanied by the sound of cell doors opening. The lockdown was over at last.
The inmates couldn’t wait to leave their cells, as happy as kids finally seeing the storm clouds blown away and pouring out into the yard to play. Everyone associated the end of the lockdown with Hagen’s victory, so he was greeted by humorous shouts of encouragement to the effect of “here comes our liberator.”
Hagen felt drowsy, barely managing to stay upright. He couldn’t even eat with his usual speed. Yet he was beginning to feel triumphant. Obviously, he didn’t expect to leave the prison as soon as he’d defeated his opponent in the wooden ring. And he even had his doubts about Blinky Palermo staying true to his word.
The day after his victory looked like it would be as dreary as any other day. The inmates were lined up and herded into groups. Hagen’s group was escorted to the workshop
General was walking right next to him, saying,
“They say that yesterday’s victory put another half a million in our warden’s pocket. Some say he’d been training Constrictor deliberately, all the while looking for a fighter capable of defeating him. Everybody’s gotten used to him being the champion over the last three years, and, whammo, there you go.”
“Yeah, here I go...” Hagen yawned.
“Blinky is still bubbling with joy. But don’t you worry. He’ll let you go, I promise.”
Hagen felt pity as he looked at General’s dignified face. How could he make any promises? As if he could influence anything. Even his lists meant nothing to those who’d made him keep them. That must have been why poor General would hold on to that silly clipboard with such zeal: it gave him some idea of his own worth.
However, Mike didn’t mention any of that.
“Thanks, General,” he replied. “If you promise it, I’m sure it’ll turn out that way.”
General nodded. “Always happy to help.”
Charlie Evans had already been at the workshop.
“Ah, it’s you, young man. How was the night? The tools are in the same place as usual,” the old man plopped down into his armchair and produced one of St. Ian’s brochures. “We need to attach all the hardware until lunchtime.”
Hagen grabbed the tools with one hand. Then he took Charlie by the scruff of his neck with the other and pulled him up to his feet. “You do it, then.”
“Come again? But... Young man, you sure have the nerve...”
Hagen gave Charlie a shake. “Do you refuse to work?”
The old man looked into Hagen’s eyes, sleepy and angry, and then started nodding fiercely. “I agree, I agree. Why don’t I do it, after all?”
“Perfect, then. And see that you don’t make any noise. Or I’m liable to wake up in a foul mood.”
Hagen fell down onto the sofa while Charlie went on to attach locks to desk drawers, recounting the story of how some children in Louisiana had never listened to their elders and betters, and went for a walk along a railway line one night. All of them lost their legs up to their knees. One of the boys, who’d been particularly naughty, even had his head torn off.
However, Hagen didn’t hear any of that moralizing tale. He’d already fallen asleep.
Chapter 26. Creatures of Meat and Bone
Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
System Shock 2
THE BUREAUCRATIC GEARS were grinding slowly but surely. Robert Salk the attorney—whose black eye had long gone and whose respect for Uncle Peter still stayed intact—kept working as hard as he could. Hagen met him a few times, signing papers and getting reassurances.
“They’ll transfer you to a minimum-security prison shortly.”
However, Blinky Palermo’s prison no longer felt like a particularly restrictive institution to Hagen. It was force of habit. Gangster kingpins treated him indifferently, if not respectfully. And indifference was preferable to anyone’s interest in a place like this.
Hagen kept on reading and training; the workshop duties were shared evenly. Charlie Evans no longer played boss, realizing that if Hagen would lose his temper, there’d be no one else to do the work but the old man.
Mike had a weird dream one night. He found himself in a spacious white room, bound hand and foot, with three non-human entities standing in front of him. They discussed something between themselves; then Hagen had to run through some labyrinth full of traps and monsters, trying to survive. He didn’t understand how the whole thing ended, even though he tried to, impressed by the dream’s vividness.
But it had evaporated from his memory by midday and he forgot he’d had been dreaming in the first place.
In the meantime, there were just two or three days left until his official transfer to another prison.
“Finally! The weird comrade who believes he can stop time will no longer be my cellmate,” Roman said in a gruff but good-natured manner. “Just think about it, duh! Stopping time! Whoever would need such a thing in the slammer? Speeding up time—now that could be useful. You know, everyone running around the way they do in Charlie Chaplin movies.”
“Right,” Hagen replied. “You’ll finally have a perfectly normal cellmate. Someone like Trevor. I’m sure the two of you will have a blast reading porn mags together.”
Roman was joking, of course. He and Hagen had become friends and gotten used to each other.
Thus, things were going peachy until one night their luck changed drastically.
It was past midnight when the lights went on in their cell. Hagen got up from his bunk with a start. Boots were stomping all across their floor. Roman had already been trying to flush his smartphone down the toilet but its screen still glowed treacherously.
“Bilyat!” Roman said.
Hagen had already been aware that “bilyát” was one of those inexplicable Russian swear words that could express extreme amazement as well as utter terror.
The latter must have been the case here—Roman had been sleepy, so he forgot that the prison administration would always shut off the water supply before a surprise inspection to prevent inmates from destroying evidence.
Roman pulled the phone out of the bowl. “I’m an idiot, too. Flushing a phone—what a bright idea, duh.”
The cell door had been open for a while, and now a bunch of guards broke in. They grabbed Roman and forced the phone from him. Hagen got his arms twisted behind his back. Both were marched out into the corridor and ordered to stand with their faces against the wall.
“Why didn’t Jim warn us?” Hagen whispered.
“Who knows? It makes no difference now. We’re in the soup b
ig time, comrade. Just make sure you deny everything as we agreed. I’m the sole culprit.”
Mike shrugged. The whole enterprise had been Roman’s idea in the first place. Mike didn’t even own a smartphone.
The inspection continued. Mike and Roman were handcuffed and shackled, then taken to the nearby facility. Once they got there, they were separated.
Mike had to walk further down the corridor. Then he was pushed into the interrogation room.
Billy Palermo had already been sitting at the desk enveloped in a cloud of smoke from his cigar, while one of the guards stood nearby, holding the warden’s glass of whiskey.
“Blueeyes, Blueeyes... I’ve been so good to you, and that’s the thanks I get? Or did you decide to stay an inmate in my prison, after all?”
Hagen tried to keep calm and gave the same answer they’d already agreed upon with Roman. “Sir, with all due respect, sir, I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”
“You know where you can stick your respect?” Blinky exhaled a cloud of smoke, looking like a particularly irate dragon. “You think I need the respect of any of you, asshole? None of you have any rights here. I can make any damn one of you disappear and face no consequences. You are just pathetic creatures of meat and bone,” Blinky sounded as if he’d been made of something other than meat and bone.
Hagen had no idea how to reply to this. “Sorry, sir.”
“Can you read?”
“Sir?”
“Answer the goddamn question!”
The guard that had stood behind hit Hagen’s legs with a truncheon, making him fall to his knees.
“I can.”
“See what’s written on my badge?” Blinky detached his badge from his jacket and rammed it into Hagen’s nose.
There would be no way of reading anything on it, but Mike had already known the right answer.
“Yes, sir. It says ‘Warden’.”
“That’s right. I’m the head honcho here. Not you, nor your Russian asshole of a friend, nor those gangster bastards Fino and Ford. You’re all scum to me. And if you think you can outwit me, you’re sure in for a surprise. No one can get one up on Blinky Palermo. On the contrary, all your asses are mine now.”
Blinky Palermo proceeded to tell him that the server had been discovered by accident. Some moron had connected to the hidden wireless network to play GTA V online on the console. A guard who had known the game’s interface well enough instantly paid attention to the online mode. He didn’t do anything about the player, but reported the incident to the higher-ups. They soon discovered the access point and the server itself.
Palermo had initially planned to destroy it at once, but then came up with a better idea. He had let the gangsters use the Internet, waiting for them to get complacent in their confidence that no one could have an inkling of their activities. Then the warden contacted the FBI specialists that had once tracked down and arrested the notorious hacker Roman Kamenev. They set up an operation to intercept and decipher the server’s traffic. They only needed to wait and collect information from the gangsters’ messages, which had been becoming more and more direct.
Sureños Familia and Pirus Brothers decided to forget any beef they may have had between them and pull off a large-scale deal. Ford’s gang dealt in drugs for the most part while Fino’s specialized in weapons. They decided to help each other out and swap a large batch of heroin for a large batch of weapons.
The operation was due to happen today. Both gangsters felt really smug about having been able to arrange such an operation without leaving the prison walls.
Blinky Palermo took a puff on his cigar. “Right now the Feds are arresting everyone on location. And we’re mopping things up this end. It’s been a flawless operation, and I’ll get a letter of commendation from the FBI for it.”
“I congratulate you, sir. Honest.”
“Congratulate yourself now. Both Ford and Fino will do ten years of extra time now. Wanna know something? They believe that you ‘IT guys’ funneled their private exchanges to the cops. Heh, do you appreciate the irony? They really think you dipshits are snitches. I’d say your days are numbered.”
Hagen felt his head swimming. That was a near-mortal blow.
On the other hand... Blinky didn’t have anything on Hagen. So he didn’t have a right to keep him imprisoned. His transfer to another prison in just two days was official.
Palermo realized what thoughts must have been going through Hagen’s mind.
“Yeah, hope all you want. You’ll get a transfer soon, for sure, but it’s open season on your ass starting now. Believe me, I can make sure it doesn’t happen. But I can just as well... turn a blind eye, you know.”
Hagen realized there was no choice but still tried to keep a poker face. He didn’t want to give the warden any extra reasons to relish his smugness.
Blinky Palermo took a sip of whiskey followed by a drag from his cigar, and sat down on the edge of his desk. “But you know me to be a just man, Blueeyes... Hey, answer, you little shit!”
“Yes, sir, everyone knows and appreciates that.”
“So there. This is why I’ll give you a chance to kill Fino and Ford yourself.”
Hagen stared the warden in his only eye, realizing full well what Blinky was implying.
Palermo gave the guard a signal, and Hagen was dragged up to his feet.
“Let’s get this over with right now,” the warden said.
* * *
THE WORKSHOP was empty this time.
The desks for the wooden ring were put in place by the corrections officers and not the inmates. Blinky Palermo and a couple of his cronies were the only audience.
Hagen was brought into the ring and unshackled. He switched to his familiar warm-up routine wondering whom he’d have to fight first, Ford or Fino.
He heard handcuffs and shackles rattle in the dark, and then Ford entered the ring—followed by Fino.
“Get ready to die, snitch,” Ford promised, flexing his ebony muscles.
“Get ready to die twice, you rat,” Fino spat out, punching the air.
Hagen looked at Blinky Palermo in alarm.
The warden smiled in a self-satisfied manner. “Didn’t I say I’d give you a chance to take care of them? I’m a man of my word.”
“But there’s two of them!”
“Pipe down, Blueeyes, didn’t I tell you I was a just man? There’s two of you, too.”
Roman Kamenev was pushed into the ring from another corner. He squinted as if unable to understand what he was doing there. It was the Russian’s first time in the wooden ring.
Hagen got a feeling of impending doom as he appraised his opponents’ stats.
Blake “Ford” Ali
Age: 29
Level: 24
HP: 45,000
Battles/victories: 302/280
Weight: 242 lbs
Height: 6’ 4”
Current status: Pirus Brothers gang kingpin
Felipe “Fino” Peña
Age: 33
Level: 27
HP: 50,000
Battles/victories: 370/352
Weight: 222 lbs
Height: 6’ 1”
Current status: Sureños Familia gang kingpin
He could probably have taken them out one by one. But two of them at once... And Roman at Level 6 was no asset whatsoever.
The Russian opined differently, though. He stood next to Hagen and raised his fists.
“Let’s show these assholes, comrade! Would you realize they think we’ve ratted them out to the cops. Braindead lamers!”
“No excuses,” Fino replied. “Who else could have snitched?”
“Fuck you,” Roman replied. “If you’re too stupid to understand, there’s no reason to explain that I wouldn’t have compromised my own project. I’ve lost an assload of money, too. More than the two of you put together.”
Blinky Palermo couldn’t wait any further. “Shut the fuck up, all of you! What do you think this
is, Congress? Hey, whoever’s closest, help them get started.”
A few of the guards started to wave their truncheons to push the fighters closer to the center of the ring.
Fino and Ford didn’t concert their efforts, confident of victory. Dammit, even Hagen was confident of their victory. Only Roman kept throwing tantrums—he must have lost a substantial amount of cryptocurrency.
“Yeah, bring it on! I’ll show you kuskinu mat[5]!”
Fino had been standing closer to Roman. He swung his fist. “Zip it, you.”
The punch was quick and hard—even Hagen wouldn’t have managed to block it. Roman staggered back, crashing into the desks.
“You’ve gotten lucky this time, asshole,” he wheezed. “Just let me get up... You’ll see...”
The gangster was about to finish Roman off, but Hagen pushed him away.
Fino was right in front of Hagen while Ford stood a little to his left. Both started attacking him. Whenever he’d manage to block one of Fino’s punches, Ford’s leg would get him—the man was good at kicking.
Damage received: 6,000 (Kick)
Damage received: 4,300 (Punch)
Damage received...
He’d get taken out in less than a minute like that.
However, Hagen fought back too. Ford would leave himself wide open whenever he’d attempt to land a kick. He was overconfident and unaware of it. During one such moment, Hagen punched him right in the liver.
Damage dealt: 35,200 (Punch)
One well-aimed punch, and Ford was out, doubled over in the corner of the ring. However, Fino took advantage of Hagen’s attention being elsewhere, making his move.
Damage received: 8,000 (Punch)
You’ve been knocked down!
Warning! You have less that 40% HP left!
Not a goddamn knockdown again! Well, at least it wasn't a knockout. Or perhaps a knockout would be a better outcome so that he wouldn't have to stay conscious through the end of this humiliation.
Hagen crashed into the desks right next to Roman.
Level Up- The Knockout Page 40
