by R. M. Olson
“Watch what you’re doing with that,” someone snapped from beside her.
She took a deep breath and turned slowly, and came face to face with a large man with the angry, arrogant expression of someone who was accustomed to being obeyed.
“What did you say?” she asked, without raising her voice or changing her expression.
“I—” he paused, the look on his face turning to one of slight uncertainty. She felt a grim satisfaction.
“I said, be careful with that. You got me wet.” He sounded more sullen than threatening now.
Good. Lev had mentioned the other prisoners seemed intimidated by her. As they probably should be.
She gave a slight sigh.
He’d suggested she perhaps act a little more soft. Easier to get information that way, he’d said. And, if they were going to get Tanya back, Lev said he needed everything they had on how the prison worked.
“Believe me, I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“I … hurt me? Do you know who I am? You couldn’t hurt me.” His voice grew more strident, and he looked even more uneasy.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said, trying to keep her patience. “Of course.” Apparently, she didn’t have much practice with non-threatening. To be fair, none of the Ungovernable crew seemed to fit that description once you got to know them. Still—
“Well then. Stay out of my way.” The man’s words were probably supposed to be a threat, but they came out as more of a plea.
She bit back an irritated sigh. “I have no intention of getting in your way, you idiot.”
He didn’t look convinced.
She shoved the wet rag forward on the rough pre-fab tiles. Well. She had questions, and he’d answer them one way or another.
The man had begun mopping as well, and seemed to be trying to move surreptitiously away from her. She caught him with her glare, and he stopped, swallowing hard.
“I have some questions,” she said in a reasonable tone. “I was hoping you would help me.”
“Questions? I’m not answering your questions.” His voice was harsh, but he blinked rapidly and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“I’m looking for a woman. Her name is Tanya. She’s about this tall, brown hair, accent like mine. She would be with two children, an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. Do you know these people?”
The man swallowed, hard.
“Do you know these people?” Ysbel asked again, letting her voice go completely flat.
The man winced, then visibly braced himself. “I—”
She stopped mopping and turned to face him.
“I—” his voice choked a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”
He was shrinking into his uniform, as if the drab beige fabric would protect him from her question.
Lev’s suggestion was probably a good one, under certain circumstances. But right now, she needed this answer, and Lev’s suggestion could go hang.
She let all the expression drop from her face. The man in front of her visibly paled.
“If you are lying to me,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “I must tell you. I will find you, and I will take the head from off your body with my bare hands. Do you understand me?”
The man nodded frantically.
“Do you know what I’m in here for?”
The man shook his head.
“Maybe it’s time you think about it,” she said. “Now. I will ask you one more time. Do you know these people? And remember what I said. And I am not a woman who breaks her word.”
“I—I don’t know them. I swear it,” the man said, sweat beading on his forehead. “I was only transferred in here about six standard months ago, and there are almost two thousand of us here. I know the people in my cell block, because I go to work detail with them and we get counted together. But other than them, I don’t know. There are thousands of prisoners. But I’ll look for them, if you want. I’ll keep my eyes open. I—”
She studied him as he stammered and spluttered, and finally she held up a hand.
“No. I believe you.”
He let out a long sigh of relief, his body sagging visibly.
“But,” she continued, “I have more questions. I need to know everything you know about this prison system.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“Tell me everything you know.”
“I—”
“Think hard.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I know. The warden runs a tight ship. Prisoners can’t bribe her, but that doesn’t mean she’s not crooked. This place is a cesspool. There’s a payback system, but it all goes back through Prasvishoni. Warden jumps whenever someone back in Prasvishoni says jump. The guards though, some of them you can bribe, if you have something they like.”
“That is good to know,” she said. “What about inside the prison?”
He glanced around rapidly. “The main gangs here are the Blood Riots and Rims. I’m in the Rims. There’s a pecking order, but yesterday something happened. I don’t know what. But you best keep your head down. Something’s coming down.”
She kept looking at him. He squirmed slightly.
“No escape from this place, if that’s what you’re thinking. Guards all have weapons, but they’re keyed in to their personal biometrics. So even if you grabbed them, you couldn’t use them. The wall cannons are the other big weapons, but I’ve never seen them used. I know they’re old. They were supposedly brought in when this prison was built fifty years ago from another prison that had been torn down. I guess there’s something funny about their wiring. I don’t know what.”
She considered him for a moment.
“Alright. Thank you.” She paused. “If you find Tanya, please tell me. But please be careful. She has children, and I don’t want to frighten them.”
He stared at her, seemingly uncertain whether or not to laugh.
“So, what you will do is this—if you see them, or hear about them, you will come and find me at once. But if you do happen to bump into them, you will leave them alone. And the reason you will do that is that me ripping off your head with my bare hands is the kindest thing that I would consider doing to you. What I would do to you if you bothered Tanya or the children would not be a kind thing. Not at all. Am I making myself clear?”
The man nodded again, his face fixed in a rictus grin. She fixed him with her stare for a long moment.
“Thank you,” she said at last. “That’s all I needed. And I don’t think I need to mention that if you speak with anyone about our conversation—”
He shook his head frantically, then grabbed up his rag, scrubbing vigorously at the tiles and leaving a long slug-trail of moisture in the quickest possible line from her to as far away from her as possible.
She watched him go, a frown on her face. She’d known from the beginning she couldn’t expect a miracle. It would take time.
But she wanted a miracle. She wanted it so badly it hurt.
That night, when the cell door clicked shut behind her, she dropped onto her cot and put her face in her hands.
It hurt, missing them, like something vital inside of her had been torn away and she was slowly bleeding out. When she’d thought they were dead, she’d become numb to the pain, because what was pain when you were hardly alive? But now, along with the hope, the pain was back, so fierce and intense it almost brought tears to her eyes.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand it.
“Ysbel,” said Lev after a moment. “I thought we’d agreed that you were going to try to be non-threatening.”
She blinked hard, and looked up. “I did.”
He leaned over the bed, raising an eyebrow at her. “Did you? Because what I heard from the other prisoners is that unless someone was actively trying to kill themselves, they should stay as far away from you as possible, because apparently you’re a gang boss who’s in here for wiping out the entire opposing gang with an ion gun, and half a po
lice force as well. On the bright side, there were a number of prisoners who heard that I was your cellmate and felt so bad that they spent most of the day trying to conceal me from you so that, presumably, I’d live to at least get my fresh air this evening. I think they despaired of my chances of making to tomorrow.”
Ysbel gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, I did what you suggested. I was very, very unthreatening. I just asked some questions.”
There was a long pause. Lev shook his head.
“I—see. And that’s all you did?”
“Then I threatened to tear his head off his body with my bare hands.”
Another long pause.
“And did that work?” Lev’s voice held a grudging amusement.
“Yes.” She paused. “It also made me feel better.”
Lev leaned back on the bed, and she found she was smiling to herself.
He was an idiot, that boy. A genius, and also an idiot. But … she glanced up at his long legs dangling over the edge of the bed.
He’d seen her drop her head in her hands. She was suddenly certain of it. And she was also suddenly certain that he’d made her smile on purpose.
“Ysbel,” said Lev at last. He was laying on his cot, she could tell by the location of his voice.
“What?”
“I’m going to ask you to tell me everything you learned in just a minute, as I assume it was probably fairly thorough, and then we’ll call Tae and Masha and see what they have. Masha’s apparently been able to get in with a couple of the guards, which should be helpful. We can’t talk to Jez, because she has a roommate, but maybe she contacted one of the others.”
There was a concern in his tone when he mentioned Jez, which, although likely justified, was a little more than she’d expect between friends.
She smiled slightly and shook her head.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said. “Jez is very smart.” She paused. “Well, maybe smart isn’t the right word. But she’s very good at getting out of trouble.” She paused again. “Alright, maybe not as good at getting out of it as getting into it. But—”
Lev’s voice was muffled. “Ysbel. I know you’re trying to help. But this really isn’t helping.”
They were silent for a moment. At last he said, “Ysbel? Tell me about Tanya.”
There was something in his voice, something she couldn’t quite place. Kindness? Guilt?
It didn’t matter.
She needed to talk about Tanya. She needed to say her name, needed someone to know her, even just a little.
“I grew up next door to her,” she said at last. “We played in the back fields together all the time. My father was a weapons designer, I know you know that, and my mother worked with explosives. But her family were only farmers, and because Tanya’s family were farmers, I wanted to be a farmer. I think I was in love with her before I even knew what being in love meant.
We got older, and we had our schooling and our work, and I worked with my father in his shop, and my mother in her lab. And she was working in the fields, because there were six children in her family but still not enough to keep the crops growing. But we saw each other whenever we could. Even after my father died, we still managed to sneak off sometimes. And then, you know, she got accepted to a school in Prasvishoni. And she cried and cried, but I told her she had to go, this was a good opportunity. And finally she left, and I thought maybe my heart had been broken.”
She was silent for a moment, lost in the memories. She could still feel the cool of the moonlight on her skin, the breeze blowing through her hair, the tears glowing in Tanya’s eyes like jewels.
The feeling that someone had broken a hole in her chest and taken out her heart and torn it in two.
“I worked in the shop with my mother. She was sick, of course. She’d worked with the explosive components all her life, and when she was young she’d never been taught to be careful. She knew it was going to kill her one day, but after my father died, I don’t think she cared all that much. But I couldn’t leave her, so I stayed. And then she died, and I buried her. But I didn’t go to Prasvishoni. Because Tanya was at university, and she was doing great things, I was sure of it, and I didn’t want to stand in her way. And then, one day, she knocked at my door. She’d decided she didn’t want what the university offered her anymore. She told me she loved me. And that was all she wanted.”
She hadn’t spoken so many words in years. It felt strange, like something inside of her had broken and the words had pushed themselves out of their own accord. She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight, something burning behind her eyes.
It had been too much. She shouldn’t have. She’d trained herself over the past five years not to think, not to hope, not to want. But this—somehow the words had cut her open on their way out.
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Thank you,” said Lev quietly, from the bunk above her. And he didn’t say anything when she dropped her head into her hands and cried silently, her whole body shaking with it, eyes burning and chest aching.
And maybe, after everything, that was the thing she was most grateful for.
CHAPTER TEN
JEZ, SECTOR 2, Day 2
Jez surveyed the piles and piles of laundry surrounding them in the claustrophobic, windowless, much too hot room. This was probably the only place in this damn prison that was damp, so of course there was mold creeping up the walls and along the edges of the large metal tubs. Her breath was coming a little too quickly.
She’d seen Tae in the courtyard that morning, which meant the others were still here, which meant they were still going to get out.
Screw this laundry crap. She had to find Tanya.
It was fine, though. She’d be fine. She took a deep breath. “Well, so what do we do?”
The woman standing next to her gave her a strange look, and Jez shrugged. “My bracelet glitched out yesterday. New shift.”
The woman looked suddenly wary. “You’re that lunatic that got on the bad side of Vlatka, and mouthed off to Zhurov yesterday morning.”
“Zhurov?” Jez asked. She remembered mouthing off to quite a few people yesterday morning.
“The guard,” said the woman, lowering her voice. “You’re either new or crazy. He killed a prisoner last cycle, beat him to death, for calling him weak.”
Jez raised her eyebrows, forcing herself to grin. “Must not have had much imagination. I called him a brush pig in a uniform, and said his mom must have been blind because that’s the only way she’d have slept with someone as ugly as his dad.”
The woman’s eyes went wide, and she took a step backwards. “You said that to him? He’s going to kill you. Believe me. He’ll hunt you down. You’d best learn how things are done here. Zhurov’s connected back in Prasvishoni. You got pull there, like Vlatka, like Zhurov, you can get away with anything. And if you don’t—” she drew a quick finger across her throat.
Jez tried to ignore the unease coiling in her chest.
He might actually kill her. That was the thing, she’d seen his face. He might have killed her right there in the courtyard, if Lev hadn’t stepped in.
She remembered the sick look on his face when the guard had hit her, and for a moment, there was a tightness in her throat.
Damn soft-boy. She could take care of herself, and besides, the very last thing in the entire system she needed right now was to start going soft herself. Especially over a damn scholar.
Anyways, the guard wouldn’t need to kill her. She’d either get out, or she’d die from being locked up.
Or, she’d die from her cellmate. That option was looking increasingly likely as well.
By the time they let her out for her evening half-hour in the courtyard, her shoulders ached from shoving the paddle-stick into the bins, and her hands were raw with blisters.
She’d done plenty of hard work before this. But something about how the scalding water slipped into the gloves and made her grip slide on the handle of t
he paddles seemed designed to tear skin off her palms.
The sky was painted a brilliant orange by the setting sun, and even with the image distorted by the force-field, the sight pulled at her with a longing that was almost pain. She had to swallow hard against it.
Find Tanya. They’d find Tanya and get out. Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe today.
Soon.
And then her eyes caught on someone, on the far edge of the courtyard, through a link fence.
A woman. A slender woman, with pale skin and brown hair.
For a moment, Jez couldn’t breathe.
It couldn’t be.
It had to be.
She looked closer.
Beside the women—yes! Two children, their heads barely visible in the press.
She felt suddenly lightheaded.
They’d won. They could leave. She could get back in the sky and clean the sour flavour of this planet out of her mouth forever.
She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking, and she felt cold, despite the residual heat of the desert afternoon.
She wandered over casually.
The woman and the children were alone in a small, fenced-off courtyard adjacent to the main yard. The children were racing each other around the small space, and the woman stood watching them.
“Hey there,” Jez said in a low voice when she was close enough. “Tanya.”
The woman glanced over at her through the fence, frowning. “Who are you?” she whispered, her accent the same heavy outer-rim burr of Ysbel’s. “And how do you know my name?”
Jez gave a tight grin, her heart pounding. She’d been right.
“Well,” she drawled, “I know your wife.”
Tanya’s face went suddenly pale. “Ysbel?” She whispered after a moment.
Jez shrugged. “Do you have any other wives?”
The woman looked as if Jez had hit her, her face a sickly white. “My wife is dead.”
“Pretty sure she isn’t. I mean, unless it’s her ghost that keeps threatening to blow me up if I don’t stop talking. Look, she wants—“
“I don’t know who you are, or why you are lying to me,” Tanya said in a low voice. “But believe me, I will find out.” She turned, and looked directly into Jez’s eyes. “And if I find that you are here to hurt me, or to hurt my children, I will kill you. I promise you that.”
