by Aella Black
Break Out
Supernatural Prison Trilogy
Aella Black
Contents
Preface
1. Phoebe
2. Xander
3. Phoebe
4. Xander
5. Phoebe
6. Xander
7. Phoebe
8. Xander
9. Phoebe
10. Xander
11. Phoebe
12. Xander
13. Phoebe
14. Xander
15. Phoebe
16. Xander
17. Phoebe
18. Xander
19. Phoebe
20. Xander
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Aella Black
Published by Grape Ape Publishing.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover designed by Paradise Cover Design
For the only One who can truly come back to life
“Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.”
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
1
Phoebe
Dad’s hand is slick and hot in mine as he pulls me down a dark, twisting hallway. My breath echoes loudly in my ears. “Where are we going?”
“We’re getting away from your mother.”
Mom. Her face, all sharp angles and cold calculations, rears up in my memory.
Before I have a chance to consider my feelings toward her, Dad shoves open a door. A bright light nearly blinds me.
Blinking hard, I look around. We are standing in the kitchen of our old house—the one we lived in before my mother left. I frown as I take in the austere décor. It looks like our house, but…
Something isn’t right. “We don’t live here anymore.”
Dad pushes me toward the stairs. “Hurry to your room! Before she gets here!”
Heart hammering, I rush up the steps, yank open the door of my old bedroom, and dive inside. I land on a cold cement floor.
When I hear the distinct sound of a lock engage behind me, I whip around to find I’m not in my room. And I’m trapped. Again.
No!
I crawl over to the familiar metal bars. “Let me out of here!”
To my surprise, they disappear. I feel like I’m losing my mind, but I don’t have a minute to waste. I race out of my cell and instinctively turn toward the rec area. As soon as I enter the room, I screech to a halt.
My mother stands in front of me, a cruel smile twisting her lips. I watch in horror as scarlet bleeds through the high-neck blouse she’s wearing. There’s an expression on her face I saw often as a child.
Disappointment.
Then her eyes roll backward, and she collapses on the ground.
“Mom!”
I attempt to run to her, but my movements are sluggish. Like I’m trying to move through molasses. Worse, hands grab at my clothing in an attempt to pull me back.
“Phoebe, run!”
Dad.
I whirl around and watch as guards drag my father toward the door. Why didn’t I see him before? How did he even get in here?
It doesn’t matter. I can’t lose him again. “No!” I shout.
More molasses movements. Before I can get to him, a guard draws a glimmering dagger. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he stabs my father right in the chest.
“Stop!” I cry out.
By the time I reach my father, the guard is gone. Dad is curled up on the ground, blood pooling in an ever-widening circle around him. I fall to my knees and shake him, but he’s unresponsive. “Dad! Wake up!”
“He won’t wake up, Phoebe.”
I look up to find Mr. Fletcher standing above me, calm as can be. He points to my mother, who lies prone several feet away. “Neither of them will. Why do you care, anyway? They both deceived you.”
Panic consumes me. “They’re my parents! I can fix this.”
Mr. Fletcher shakes his head. “The only preventative measure one can take is to live irregularly.” Then he leaves as quickly as he arrived.
Where have I heard that before? And what does it mean?
I want to scream at him. To drag him back and tell him he’s wrong.
Because he is. I can fix this. I have the ability to save both of my parents.
Looking back at my dad, I’m devastated to see blood now trickling out of the corners of his mouth. I know I’m losing him, but try as I might, not a single tear falls from my eyes.
A sob rips through me, followed by another and another, until I’ve practically made myself sick. Still, no tears.
In the midst of my despair, I hear footsteps approach. If they think I’m leaving—
“Phoenix.” I look up at a voice I recognize. One I haven’t heard in a while.
Oscar stands in front of me, frowning. Next to him is Titus. “You can’t save them. But you could have saved us.”
I jolted out of sleep, sweat beading on my forehead and trickling down my spine.
In the darkness, laughter echoed off the walls and through the bars, followed by the sound of metal upon metal. I couldn’t see but somehow knew the guards were clanging their guns against the bars, taunting us as they traveled down the hallway. And not only to disturb our sleep.
They wanted to remind us that they were there and we were here. As if we needed the reminder.
I pulled my knees to my chest as fragments of the nightmare flashed through my mind. How I missed the days when I woke from a bad dream, relieved that’s all it was.
Not anymore. If anything, reality was worse.
Mr. Fletcher has been the warden for a week now, and regardless of what happened in my nightmare, my mother was dead and my father was once again missing. At least this time I knew he hadn’t left by choice.
I flipped over on my side, acutely aware of every broken spring in the thin cot. The scratchy sheets rubbed against my neck and arms. My gaze wandered to Lucy, and I froze when I saw her bright eyes staring at me through the dark. The guards must have woken her up, too.
Lucy’s voice cut through the space between us. “Your mother deserved to die, you know.”
It was the first time my cellmate had spoken to me in weeks. I preferred the silent treatment.
And despite my current—and somewhat concerning—lack of feelings toward my mother, I was instantly on the defensive. “Does anyone deserve to die?”
“She did.”
I swallowed, unsure how to respond to that. The woman who’d brought me into this world had altered the DNA of her own daughter in the name of science. As warden of Lansing prison, she’d treated us like the experiments that we were. To be frank, she had put us all through hell. I kind of hated her for it, too.
And yet… she was still my mother. No matter how little love she showed me, I couldn’t escape that fact. Lucy certainly wasn’t going to let me.
“You don’t deny it?” she asked. “That’s right. I forgot. You don’t claim her.” The sarcastic edge to her voice could slice through a block of ice. I knew Lucy hadn’t trusted me since the moment she discovered my mother w
as the warden, but I had no idea she could be this spiteful. “What about your father?”
Dane told her. He must have. The only ones I’d told were my friends, but Dane had helped me find Dad during the riot.
“You know nothing about my family.” I spit out the sentence like venom. Why couldn’t I have had that superpower?
“I know enough,” Lucy said flippantly. Then she turned away and faced the wall.
I took slow, steady breaths, pointless since my mind and heart were racing. How did she know about Dad? More importantly, where was he?
He was all I had left. I didn’t have the first clue if he was still here, or if they’d taken him to a different location. Was he even alive?
Pressure built in my head. My breathing grew ragged. I didn’t know if it was the residual pain from the dream or the present pain of my reality, but I felt hot tears stream down my face. In my dream, I hadn’t been able to summon tears to save my parents. What good were healing tears if I couldn’t use them to protect those I loved?
And did I love my mother? Guilt choked me. I hadn’t shed one tear for her. Sure, I’d cried over Dad being taken from me—and even the guards beating up Xander. But none of those tears were for her. Despite her many faults, she’d saved my father and kept him safe from harm. It may have been the only good thing she’d ever done, but it was significant.
To me, at least.
The fact remained, if she were still here, Dad wouldn’t be in danger. And what could I do? Once again, I was trapped with no way to escape. Twice we’d tried and twice we’d failed, and that was before the added security and stringent schedule. Speaking of…
Glancing at the clock, I saw it was two in the morning. Four hours until we had to be up, and I was wide awake. Worst of it was, I needed all the sleep I could get.
Wiping the last of the tears from my eyes, I climbed out of bed and padded to the cell bars. Sitting on the cold cement, I curled my hands around the even colder metal. I imagined bending the bars enough to fit through, so I could go and search for my dad.
I wouldn’t know where to start to find my dad, but Mr. Fletcher would. As if my thoughts conjured him, the newly appointed warden appeared out of nowhere. If I wasn’t so startled at his unexpected arrival, I would have been impressed that he’d snuck up on me. That was difficult to do in these hallways, and especially in the middle of the night. How long had he been standing out there?
“Anqā.”
I locked eyes with him, thankful mine were no longer filled with tears. I refused to show weakness in front of this man. “Excuse me?”
“In Islamic mythology, that’s the name given to the phoenix.”
Did he think I cared? I had been nothing but respectful to him. Even treated his kids as if they were my own family. Like everything I did, look where it got me.
I was exhausted and wrung out. I was done.
“Am I supposed to be impressed with your vast knowledge of mythological creatures?” I asked.
He smirked, as if my sass amused him. I was not amused.
“Why aren’t you with your family? Last time I checked, it’s the middle of the night.”
His smile vanished. Good. If I was miserable, he should be too.
“You kids are my family now.”
What was it with these psychos? Did they just drop their families like bad habits when the oh-so-prestigious prison warden position opened up? It certainly appeared that way.
And yes, I was keenly aware that included my mother.
“No, Gina is your wife, and Zoe and Zane are your children. Remember them?” I asked. “And please don’t waste your breath telling me you’re doing this for them. I’ve heard that before, and it means nothing to me.”
“That’s a shame, because it should,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Your mother, though misguided in some respects, was a woman dedicated to the mission.”
I didn’t want to hear another word. Not about my mother. Not about the mission. I only cared about one thing.
“Where is my father?” I whisper-shouted. “What have you done with him?”
Mr. Fletcher pursed his lips together and took a step backward. No. I had questions, and he had answers.
I scrambled up from the floor, but he’d backed away even further. When he finally spoke, his words snaked down the length of my spine.
“A curious thing about the anqā, Phoebe, but it may interest you. According to legend, God created the bird to be fully perfect, but along the way it became a menace.” He paused and then lowered the boom. “Therefore, the phoenix had to be killed.”
It felt like he’d delivered a physical blow. Before I could recover, he was gone.
I stumbled back to my bed. No doubt Lucy heard every word of our conversation, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.
Was Mr. Fletcher saying he knew of a way to kill me? Was he implying that he would?
Oddly, I thought of the twins at that moment. Had he always been like this? I hoped, for their sakes, that wasn’t his idea of a bedtime story.
Because no way was I going back to sleep now.
2
Xander
The bells clanged at the same moment the fluorescent lights switched on. My eyes flew open, despite the ungodly hour.
Venom hissed, throwing his hands up to block the brightness like some pissed-off vampire. It was pretty comical, but I didn’t have the energy to laugh.
“Up and out!” a guard yelled, rattling the cell doors as he passed. I rolled out of bed, and my cellmate and I nearly collided as we stumbled around for our jumpsuits.
“Back off, dude,” Venom snapped.
I let the attitude slide because it was early, and arguing also took more energy than I had. Plus, it had been tough on all of us, but the changes affected the younger kids more than the rest.
Increased security, I understood. But we no longer had rec time, and according to the guards, it was gone for good. Instead, they forced us to do basically whatever the new warden and his minions wanted us to do. We were separated into “pods” each day, assigned to complete menial tasks like wiping down cell walls, scrubbing floors, and cleaning between bathroom tiles with toothbrushes.
The one bright spot was that we hadn’t had any sparring sessions since the new warden took over. I wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t approve, or the updated schedule didn’t allow for it. Whatever the reason, I’d take it.
Fletcher.
That’s what he told us to call him, anyway. I did, because it was still hard to believe the neighbor who lived on the same cul-de-sac when Phoebe and I were kids was now the warden of Lansing prison. And just when I thought nothing could surprise me.
Phoebe had told me she thought he was involved in the SCC, but I didn’t expect this. She still called him Mr. Fletcher, not because she had any respect for him but because she knew him as the father of the kids she used to babysit. I now knew him as the man making our lives miserable.
After getting dressed and doing my morning bathroom routine at lightning speed, I exited the bathroom just as the cell door unlocked. Venom was out the door before it had fully swung open.
I didn’t blame him. Word around the prison was that some kids had already suffered the consequences of what happened when arriving late to a required event.
My lips curved upward at my own ridiculous thought. A required event? As if anything we did was optional.
“Somethin’ funny, Chief?” a guard demanded, shoving me as I passed.
Biting back the dozen or so sarcastic responses that popped into my head, I kept moving. Then I spent the rest of the walk to the outdoor rec yard beating myself up for not saying or doing something.
I felt like a big, fat chicken. But really, was it weak to choose your battles? Because no chance I was going to come out a winner in this situation. It didn’t seem worth it.
“Let’s move!” a guard bellowed, even as we approached the doorway. Again, I gritted my teeth and did what he said.
Outside, there was a chill in the air, a perfect setting for the mood among the inmates. It did help clear the fog of sleep as we began the new routine of walking in completely useless circles around the grassy yard.
Back at Leavenworth, we’d had mandatory exercise every morning, but Phoebe’s mother had put an end to that. Though Fletcher reinstated it, anyone could see this wasn’t for the good of our health.
I looked up to where two dozen guards were posted at the top of the wall. On the ground, another dozen or so stood surrounding us. We weren’t allowed to talk or run or even stand close enough to talk to our friends. The sole purpose of this exercise was to march silently in circles under the overbearing eyes of the guards until breakfast.
It was a show of force and control, nothing more.
But not everyone could exercise without eating something. A kid who probably weighed eighty pounds soaking wet stumbled and fell fifteen feet in front of me.
“Get up, Toothpick!” a guard yelled, already on his way over.
I sighed, because I knew what was coming and it wasn’t going to go well for me.
Walking quickly to where the kid still sat hunched on the ground, I bent over to help him get back up. His face was pale and scared, and I positioned myself between him and the guard.
“Get back, Chief! You kids are supposed to stay separated.”
First of all, this guard was probably two years older than me, max. And second, we couldn’t be decent human beings and help one another? Forget that.
“I said, get moving!” the guard yelled.
I didn’t know if the boy physically couldn’t walk right now, or if he was just scared stiff. But he wasn’t budging.