“Watch this,” Victor said, a mischievous little smile on his bearded face.
He stabbed a button. There was a static pop and then—
SQWEEEEEEEEEEEEE
—a hideous siren filled the room, the sound from coming from a speaker directly above the cells. Even inside this control room it was loud enough to burst eardrums. Out there, Hardie thought, it must be unbearable.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“I SAID, DID YOU SEE THAT?”
Hardie shook his head; Victor killed the siren.
“She didn’t even twitch,” Victor said. “It’s like she zones out of this place entirely. Sometimes we think she’s playing dead—and of course, one of us has to go in there to check on her. Creepy, isn’t it?”
Hardie watched the woman, who was utterly still. Not even a strand of her raven-black hair moved; everything was perfectly arranged, and she was somehow at peace with her surroundings.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Victor said. “She’s been trying to screw her way out of this place for months now. When her mask is off she gives you these eyes—and for a minute, you’ll be thinking, wow, maybe I should just forget this job and go for it, right? Give her a go, who’s to know? Well, let me tell ya, brother—I hear that’s how we lost one of your predecessors. It wasn’t pretty.”
“What’s she in for?”
“What?”
Hardie asked, “What did she do?”
“What does it matter?”
He wondered what her face looked like under the mask. Strangely, he found himself picturing his ex, Kendra, under the mask. His curiosity was soon satisfied as Whiskey and Yankee ordered her through the same drill as the others. Back against the bars, head kept still while they unlocked the mask. She slipped it off and turned around to face the guards.
Prisoner Two was absolutely gorgeous.
Prisoner Two was not in her cell.
Instead, she was sitting in a beautiful, lush suburban garden on the warmest day of spring.
Back in college, her philosophy professor had invited the entire class—seventeen freshmen—to his own backyard for a Friday afternoon barbecue. The professor and his wife lived in a beautiful little California oasis, complete with a koi pond and perfectly manicured hedges and stone gardens. At one point the entire class had gathered in the professor’s living room for dessert, but the woman now known as Prisoner Two had lingered in the yard for a short time. Not more than a few moments, nowhere as long as a minute. But enough time to permanently record the scene in her memory; she traveled back there now and relished every detail. The smell of the grass. The harsh, smoky scent of charcoal as it hung in the air. The late-spring sun on her forearms. The memory of a shy smile from a boy in her class, and the warm feeling in her stomach. The knowledge that the weekend was ahead of her, and she could do whatever she wanted. She was eighteen years old and healthy and people told her she was beautiful and had yet to experience all the good things that could happen to her.
Barking commands jarred her back to cold reality.
They were here to photograph her again.
She took a deep breath and held it, trying to clear her mind. It was time for her little game. She both looked forward to it and dreaded it. The mechanics were simple—a matter of conjuring the right memory. But the aftereffect was painful.
When they removed her mask, Prisoner Two broke out into the world’s silliest grin, like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Boys had always told her she had a beautiful smile.
And the trick to smiling like she meant it was traveling back in time two decades, back to when she was a teenager and truly didn’t have a care in the world, and she’d sit out in the backyard sipping screwdrivers while listening to her drunk friends crack crude jokes. She transported herself back there and smiled, almost feeling the slight chlorine burn in her nose and the warmth on her face and the sweet orange juice and bracing Absolut in her mouth…
“The hell is she doing?” Hardie asked.
“Absolutely mental, isn’t she?” Victor said. “I’m telling you. Keep your distance from that one. We call her Fatale, for obvious reasons.”
The smile didn’t last long. Whiskey unclipped something from her belt and sprayed something into Prisoner Two’s face that made her recoil.
The mace.
Yeah, that was the painful part of her little game. It sealed her eyes instantly and went to work on the pores of her skin, burning little trails that felt like they bored all the way to her skull. She choked down a scream; she wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. They snapped her photo like that, her face a rictus of pain. That didn’t matter, though.
Her mask was off. And it would stay off for a while. A half victory.
The other half would come later.
Just as there was on the other side, there was an empty cell between the two prisoners. While Two curled up into a ball, hands on her face, Whiskey and Yankee moved down to the last prisoner.
“And there’s Prisoner Three. An absolute nightmare.”
The figure in the cell was a fearsome-looking bruiser type, even with the mask on. Tattoos of black bones ran up his arms and legs, as if he were the Visible Man from biology class. He had biceps enough to easily snap a neck. Thighs, too, for that matter. The inked-up monster was sitting on the floor of his cell, arms crossed, feet flat on the floor, and his knees locked together.
“Christ,” Hardie muttered. “What’s he in for?”
“Haven’t you been listening? They don’t tell us. Doesn’t matter. This one’s been trouble from the beginning. We usually have to shock him into submission just to get him to do something simple, like take a dump.”
“Shock him?”
“The metal floors of the cells are electrified, and we carry these bad boys,” Victor said, tapping the baton strapped to his belt.
“Doesn’t this guy have a cute nickname or anything?”
Victor made a sour face. “The word cute doesn’t even apply.”
Outside, Yankee and Whiskey prepared their routine. “Prisoner Three. Back against the bars.” Prisoner Three didn’t stir.
“Come on,” Yankee said. “Let’s not do this again. It always ends the same way. You know this.”
No response.
“Oh, so wanker’s being stubborn again, is he?” Victor muttered. “Showing off for the new warden. Well, he wants to play it this way, fine.”
Victor stabbed a blue button. Static popped. “Guards, stand clear.” His voice boomed throughout the facility. Yankee and Whiskey nodded and took three giant steps backward, as if playing a schoolyard game. Victor stabbed the next button in the row—a big red one.
ZZZZZZZZZZAT.
First you heard the shrieks, followed by the jerky movements of their bodies. Hardie could almost could smell the ozone and singed flesh. Prisoner Two had lost her Zen and was screaming in pain. Same with Prisoner Three. They seemed to want to do anything, anything at all, to avoid contact with the floor—which clearly was the source of the electrical shocks. Prisoner Three was shouting something—“All right! All right!”—but it was hard to tell over the screaming of the other prisoners.
“Goddamn it, that’s enough,” Hardie said.
“No, it’s not.”
Hardie balanced his weight on the cane and lunged out for Victor’s hand. He whipped it up and away before contact could be made.
“Don’t ever do that,” Victor said. “Ever. All due respect, you don’t know how to handle these monsters. Show of mercy like that will get your shit twisted up down here.”