“He went to check out a disturbance. One that’ll keep him busy for the night.” All I saw was a white blur, but from the sound of the voice, Blondie had come to my rescue. “Let’s get you to a bunk.”
The room spun and my gait was as weak as a foal’s, but we managed.
“Another couple of steps, you’re almost there,” she urged softly. Falling into the flimsy bed felt like heaven. I curled back into my tight ball of safety and squeezed my eyes closed. Living on the streets, I’d come close to being raped before, but never this close.
“He’s off duty for the next two days,” she whispered. “Your best bet is to get out of here and into the main yard by then.”
If I could have spoken, I would have told her I’d been trying to accomplish that, but my voice didn’t work. Instead, I lay there in a semi-comatose state until I fell asleep again, wishing with all my heart I was anywhere else but here.
20
“My name’s Winter.”
The blond was sitting across from my bunk when I woke up the next morning, waiting for me to open my eyes. For a second, I couldn’t speak, the horrors of last night washing through me like dirty water.
“I totally forgot Max was on night shift. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken your bunk,” she explained quietly. For a second, her eyes drifted to the door, then back to me, her intense stare turning somber. “It’s kind of like a hazing thing, kicking the new girl out of her bed. Except we never do it on the nights Max is on duty.
“I forgot,” she said again, as if asking forgiveness.
“It’s okay.”
Before, I had a long laundry list of tasks. Now I only had one. Get the hell out of this barrack before Max came back on shift. “How do I get transferred to gen pop? He… Max… told me if I wasn’t in my bed, that I’d be transferred. Obviously, that was a lie.”
Winter rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he tells every new girl that. But gen pop is worse than in here. You have another four weeks, then you go mainstream. I’ve got less than a week, and I’m already dreading it.”
“I don’t care,” I insisted, throwing my legs off the side of the bed and rolling my aching shoulders. “I can’t be here in two days.”
“In that case, we’ll arrange something. A fight should do it. Then you’ll be thrown in with the wolves.” She paused, looking me up and down doubtfully. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“Have to be. I can’t exactly funnel all of that electricity in his nightstick. If I could, this would be a different story.” Yeah, I’d reduce Max to cinders, then blow him into the wind. “How did he know electricity would work on me? If I was a Cronus, that wouldn’t have had an effect.”
“Max gets everyone’s records when they come in.” A slight wind lifted her hair. She was a Cronus, maybe a level one or two. Not powerful enough to protect herself with her magic, but enough she’d ended up in here. “With me, he used drugs. But I came to, halfway through. He knocked me out with a punch to the face.”
“We should kill him,” I said matter-of-factly, “before he touches another girl.”
Winter shrugged. “There would just be another guard like him. What’s the point?”
I mulled over this bitter truth during breakfast and lunch. Dinner, too, and then for the entire time it took me to fall asleep. If I took Gabriel’s nano tech off of my skin, my powers would come back. Then Max would get his.
Just imagining it, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
The next morning brought me no closer to solving the Max problem, but getting into gen pop seemed to be a done deal. Winter slid in beside me during breakfast, shoveling food in while explaining the plan. “So, Amber over there—the one with the red hair—volunteered to be your victim. You jump her, throw a couple of punches, scream a whole bunch, and the guards will come running. Then you’re out of here.”
“Where will the WWE match take place?”
A whisper of a smile curved her lips. “In here, of course.” She nodded to the guards along the walls. “They don’t care if you fight in the yard, but in here? They don’t want to clean up the blood.”
Her eyes skimmed the whole perimeter of the room before she went on. “It’ll happen just after lunch. Make sure you eat first, I’ve heard the food situation out there is not as reliable as the three squares we get here.”
“Got it. Thank you for last night. And for this.”
“You won’t be thanking me once you’re mainstreamed. But yeah, you’re welcome.”
She took her tray and trotted away. From across the room, the redhead offered a shallow nod. I nodded back. Good to go and pretty soon I’d be one step closer to finding Henry. Now that I was here, I wondered if he was even still alive. From what I’d seen so far, I highly doubted it.
Lunchtime came too quickly, and despite Winter’s warning, I couldn’t eat a bite. Fighting came naturally to me, but usually it was self-defense or instinctual. I’d never jumped anyone or started a fight before. Picking up my untouched tray, I headed for the trashcans.
Amber walked past me, her shoulder slamming into mine.
“Watch where you’re going, bitch.” Her threat echoed off the walls and most of the tables turned to watch. Several of the guards pushed off the walls, looking interested.
Taking that as my cue, I grabbed her, one hand on her shoulder, the other one in her hair, and I spun her, then threw her down. She sprang up like a cat and swung. She caught me right across the jaw, and I had to shake the stars out of my eyes.
“Hit me back,” she whispered. “Hard.”
I hesitated, then punched her in the mouth. Blood showered everything—me, the floor and closest table, and Amber. Boy, would the guards be pissed. I’d never seen so much blood in my life.
There was the pounding of boots, yelling, and then the sizzling contact of a nightstick between my shoulders. I was unconscious by the time I hit the floor.
“She’s coming around. Should be awake in a moment.”
I didn’t recognize the coolly impersonal voice, nor the bright white ceiling, nor the smell in the air. It was antiseptically sharp, stinging my nose.
Hospital. I must be in Devilton’s hospital.
While my mind sorted things out, I couldn’t get past the smell, which permeated everything, my eyes watering now. Lifting my arm, I heard a clank, then a sharp pain in my wrist. I was cuffed to the bed—both hands, I discovered—as I tried to move my other arm.
The smell choked me now, the pungency of it overwhelming my addled senses.
“The smell is the bio shield over your bed,” The cold, clinical voice told me. “Standard procedure in here. It interfaces with your abilities and absorbs them on contact. So if you feel the need to, say, send a flare of fire at us, it won’t make it past the shield.”
He was bluffing. All he had were Bennett’s reports naming me a Hyperion. I knew for a fact there were no official records, because I’d been unregistered my entire life. Plus, Gabriel’s nano tech should still be working, and they shouldn’t be able to detect any actual magic.
“Fighting is cause enough to be transferred into the general population,” another man insisted. “You know it as well as I do.”
“Maybe,” the doctor agreed. “Still, if she’s here, why can’t I get a read on her abilities? I could have her classified and sorted into the harvesting schedule. Her records say she’s a Hyperion, but the machines say different. Any chance a mistake was made?”
“No. They picked her up on an anonymous tip, and judging by her records, the Seattle PD had their eyes on her for months. I just got off the phone with the detective investigating her, he’s flying in personally to confirm her identity. Should be here tomorrow.”
“He’s just looking to collect the reward,” the doctor murmured, still looking me over with those cold, dead eyes. “But once we have an official ID, I can start running some tests.” I really didn’t like the sound of that, but it looked like I had bigger problems.
Fuck. Bennett was comin
g. Doc was right, probably to collect his bounty. A complication I didn’t need, and he’d alter whatever records he had to in order to make sure I remained locked up. Once he was involved, no switched identities would save me, even with Gabriel working his tech magic.
As far as sorting me into the harvesting schedule, that was a big hell no. Nobody was stealing my powers. “I shouldn’t be here,” I tugged feebly at my restraints. “I’m not an Elemental, I swear.”
Ignoring me the doctor went on, “Maybe the jolt knocked out her powers temporarily. It’s happened before.”
“Only on certain types, and if the batons are set on high. So maybe she’s one of those?”
“Could be,” the doctor mused, his face coming into focus. He looked me over like a slab of meat, and he was the butcher, trying to figure where to start cutting. “Unfortunately, I have a full schedule today. Which means I can’t waste any more of my time on you.” His face fell, as if he was losing a prize. “Send her to the east wing. See how she does. A few days in that environment might bring any latent abilities to the surface. If violence doesn’t make her magic return, then nothing will.”
“If she doesn’t survive?” The guard sure didn’t sound hopeful. Kind of hurt my feelings.
“Then we have plenty of others.”
Doctor Death punched a few buttons on a machine and walked off, while the guard unlocked the cuffs. I rubbed my wrist and surveyed the hospital. The doctor had a chart in his hand now, and was passing rows of beds, rows of machines I didn’t recognize, lots of tubes and wires hanging down over the blank screens. I wished I had a better working knowledge of medical tech, but I didn’t. Once I made it out of here, though, I’d describe the operation down to the last syringe, and my guess was, Gabriel would know exactly how this place worked.
And how to shut it down.
“You are in for a treat,” the guard told me as he pulled me from the bed. “East wing is beautiful this time of year.”
“Doesn’t it get old?” I asked him, trying to get my sea legs under me. “Telling the same jokes over and over again?”
“Nope. Not one bit. Because I always tell them to someone new.” He leered at me. “Not that I’ll ever see you again. Except in pieces.”
“Well, that’s not a positive attitude. Don’t they make you take classes here? Sensitivity training? Deprogramming for sexual predators?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Since I kept myself from rolling my eyes, I felt I deserved some kind of prize.
“Not really, but I’m sure your mouth will keep moving, right up until you dump me into the east wing.” Seriously, how bad could this place be? We were in the US of A, for Christ’s sake, certain rules applied.
As it turned out, I was right about the guard, wrong about the east wing.
21
The night I’d first glimpsed Devilton from that muddy bank, this section was where I’d been looking.
East wing was a bare patch of earth hemmed in by twenty-foot razor wire fences and banks of halogen lighting. Armed guards roamed the grounds, accompanied by huge dogs straining at their leashes. A few scraggly groups of inmates congregated along the fence line, their faded, threadbare uniforms in what I now recognized as the signature colors designating their magic. Yellow was Hyperion, white was Cronus, brown signified Prometheus, and blue were the Oceanus.
I was still in bright, sunny yellow. Clearly a first edition prisoner, and an easy target, as I watched curious heads swing my way. I didn’t give them the barest glance. My attention was focused on the fifty-foot DMZ zone guarded by the laser system, the beams playing over the foot-high grass.
It had grown up since I’d been here, and I hoped the rabbits were okay.
“Here you go, safe and sound, right where you belong.” Seriously, this guy was a walking cliché. “The fences are electrified, so touching them is like me giving you a jolt from my nightstick. You move too fast, you get tagged.” I followed his pointing finger to the tower, where two guards with rifles overlooked the yard. “Sometimes they aim to kill, sometimes they’ll just wing you. Never can tell what mood they’re in.”
“Got it.”
He pulled up something on his wrist cam, which shut him up, thankfully. This place was enormous. Row after row of barracks ran parallel to the fence, and past the first cluster, I glimpsed another yard, exactly like this one. No telling how far I’d have to go to find my barrack. Much less find Henry. I knew it would be hard. But now it looked impossible.
“Is this the highest security wing in Devilton?”
“First, we call it D-Town, and second… yeah.” He grinned. “A newbie like you will get eaten alive in this wing. Smart mouth like yours? My guess is you won’t see tomorrow morning.”
“Well, thank God for small favors. Then I won’t have to listen to your bullshit anymore.”
The guard walked off with a sour look on his face. Yeah, I have that effect on people.
Since I figured I had nothing to lose, I headed straight for the cluster of inmates I judged to be the least threatening. It was like trying to choose which poisonous snake you wanted to pick up first.
I gave the group near the fence a wide berth. They were clearly ex-military—buzz cuts, bulky build, and covered in tattoos—giving more credence to Dawson’s theory that uncooperative Darkwing soldiers ended up in here. They had that cold, detached look, like they could let you walk by or kill you, it just depended on the day.
There was a saying about prisons. They were meant to break you. Condition your thinking. Turn you against yourselves, while remaining obedient to your jailors. This was the kind of environment you came out of a different person. Either ruined and defeated—or strong and ruthless.
East wing inmates were the latter. They’d survived here for a long time, fought their way up the hierarchy. Besides the general threat of intimidation, the whole yard hummed with magic.
Everything I’d heard about Devilton and magic was a lie. With the suppression field glowing overhead, I suppose it made sense that was how the prison maintained control. Power ran free in this wing, some flexing their proverbial muscles by sending out spurts of fire or wind as I passed, trying to intimidate me. From the feel of it, these weren’t level-one Elementals. These were fourth-level and higher, perfectly willing to back their magic up with violence.
“Hey. I have a question for you,” I called out to the small group I’d chosen, watching them start to scatter.
“Looking for directions, little girl?” The thug nearest to me leered. “I’ll show you where to go.” He pointed to his crotch.
“Uh, yeah, I’ll pass on your generous offer.” Out of the five, two definitely had the snitch look about them. One was covered in nautical tats, and along with his threadbare blue uniform, I figured I’d found my guy. Water-based magic tended to be weaker on this continent, unless you traveled into southern Florida or Texas.
“My question concerns another inmate. His name is Henry Saxon.”
I found myself holding my breath as they looked at each other, then up at the guards, then back to me. “Newbies don’t get an audience with Henry. Got to be here at least a year,” the Oceanus with the tats informed me, while the others nodded in agreement. “Come back then, if you’re still alive.”
Jeez, why was everyone so down on my survival odds?
“Nevertheless, I have to see him.” I pulled out my big guns, sick and tired of being dicked around in this place. Fuck these Elementals and their bullshit prison hierarchy. I was about to trump them all. “Lincoln Amherst sent me. I’m here to check on Henry, for old time’s sake. I’m sure you understand.”
I waited patiently for them to process what that meant.
Which was a couple of things. One, if they did ever manage to get out of here, pissing off Lincoln meant they’d never do business with any criminal element on the west coast ever again. Second, if they did help me, they could call in a favor from Lincoln, and favors from Lincoln were like a stack o
f gold bars in your safe.
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Doesn’t matter what my name is, you’re doing this to curry favor with Lincoln. Would you care to point me toward Henry, or do I need to find him myself?”
“There’s a meeting in the back barracks, the one closest to the tree line.” The ogler brightened up. “Henry might be there. Want me to escort you? Make a pit stop on the way?”
“Nope, I’ve got this. But thanks, I’ll be sure to mention to Lincoln that you offered.”
The Oceanus in the blue uniform called behind me, “Tell him Eddie Weston helped you out. Do me good to name Lincoln Amherst as a friend.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell him. Thanks, Eddie.”
I hoofed it past rows of identical buildings, through another yard, and more buildings. I almost felt bad for pulling out Lincoln’s name, but after Max’s attack, I knew I needed the clout of Lincoln’s name. I had to get out of here—fast. As much as I liked to think I was a badass, Devilton was outside my realm of expertise, especially stripped of my magic. As if I’d summoned it, the ends of my fingers tingled, before I shut myself down.
I’d reached the end and had three possible buildings to choose from.
I hadn’t used the eeny, meeney, miney, moe method for years, but it worked pretty well here, leaving me with the building to my left. Reaching for the door, I stopped when I heard a shrill whistle. Over my shoulder, I saw Eddie gesturing wildly toward the building on the far right.
I course-corrected for the proper building, cursing my method of location and offering Eddie a brisk thank-you wave. He was going to be seriously pissed when he found out Lincoln was dead, and there’d be no calling in any favors.
It occurred to me that I didn’t know exactly what Henry looked like, except that he was older and had gray hair. According to Dawson, everyone here knew him, so I’d just have to rely on that.
Betrayed by Blood: The Shelton Family Legacy : 1 Page 14
