by Smith, Bryan
The distorted voice spoke again. “The purpose of this call is simply to inform you of an imminent visit to the facility by a VIP.”
Ms. Wickman tried hard not to frown, but it wasn’t easy. In the year since she’d assumed her duties as warden, no one from within the organization’s power structure elite had visited the facility. To say this was a curious development was an understatement. She knew she had no reason to doubt the council’s confidence in her, but this news was slightly troubling. Why else would a VIP visit if not to look into suspected problems?
She kept her voice even as she replied, striving not to show her concern. “When will this visit take place?”
There was a brief silence.
Then the distorted voice spoke again, uttering a single syllable: “Soon.”
The screen went black and the wall panel slid automatically back into place. Ms. Wickman stared blankly at the wall for several long moments. She no longer found the prospect of a VIP visit slightly troubling. In the absence of any other information, it was, in fact, very troubling.
17.
The next three days passed without incident for Jessica Sloan. She settled into the routine of prison life and made no attempt to interact directly with anyone other than Spider. The hostile treatment she was subjected to during her first full day at Prison 13 abated, becoming virtually nonexistent by the middle of the next day.
She ascribed this to a variety of factors. A lot of the women were just scared of her. According to Spider, it was unheard of for a new arrival to just up and kill her cellmate right off the bat, especially when said cellmate was someone as widely feared as Laura Grier. Anyone who wasn’t at least a little wary of someone who’d do a thing like that was just plain stupid. Spider further speculated that Alice Kincaid had sent out word to back off until further notice.
This sounded like a reasonable assessment of the situation to Jessica, who was grateful for the respite. She had no fear of any single individual here, but not having to worry about being jumped by a gang of vicious bitches meant she was able to concentrate on more important matters, such as figuring a way out of here
To that end, however, she had not made much progress, having explored as much of D-Block as she could without breeching security checkpoints. Not wishing to do anything that might get her sent back to solitary, she hadn’t yet attempted to gain unauthorized access to the restricted parts of the prison. That might change if she wound up being here a long time and became desperate, but for now she was content to keep her eyes open for security vulnerabilities.
On the afternoon of her fourth day at Prison 13, Jessica and Spider were sitting on opposite sides of the little table in their cell. In the middle of the table was the homemade checkerboard that had belonged to Laura Grier. It was fashioned from a piece of cardboard with squares drawn on it. The game pieces were folded squares of paper.
Jessica pushed a piece forward and said, “Maybe I could get myself sent to the infirmary.”
Spider’s gaze had been riveted to the game board, but now she looked up at Jessica, her eyes wide with alarm. “Oh, fuck no, Jess. You don’t want that.”
Jessica glanced out at the section of second floor landing visible beyond the open cell door. There was the usual rumble of voices from across D-Block, but for the moment the area outside their cell was empty. Though she was less concerned for her immediate safety than she’d been a few days ago, Jessica knew she should never let her guard down entirely. Only those not interested in surviving prison life would do otherwise.
She looked at Spider. “Why not?”
Spider’s stringy brown bangs were hanging in her eyes as she leaned forward and said, “Because you don’t go to the infirmary to get better. Not here. Bitches who go to the infirmary never get seen again. You go there, it’s your fucking death warrant, Jess.”
Jessica frowned as Spider belatedly moved one of her own game pieces. She was thinking back to her arrival day. After delousing, she was taken to the infirmary for inoculations. She’d only been there a few minutes while a pretty dark-haired nurse administered the shots, but she’d seen nothing that had immediately struck her as out of the ordinary. Just three beds in the infirmary had been occupied at that time. Three shackled women. She hadn’t gotten a good look at any of them, but the shackles had not alarmed her. This was a prison. The women on the bed were prisoners. Thus the shackles.
Not a big deal.
Or so she’d thought.
“Okay, what happens in the infirmary?”
“The infirmary isn’t really an infirmary,” Spider said, shaking the hair out of her eyes. “It’s a torture dungeon masquerading as an infirmary.”
She went on to tell Jessica more about how inmates were frequently extracted from the prison population and sent to the infirmary for no apparent reason. As she’d already stated, these women were never seen alive again. Although no living inmates had witnessed the torture sessions firsthand, word of what went on had been passed down through various channels, primarily guards. Spider shared a few choice bits of gruesome prison lore about the infirmary. Some of it had no doubt been embellished through years of retelling but Jessica didn’t doubt it was all based in truth.
“Okay,” she said, moving another game piece. “No engineered trip to the infirmary for me, then.”
Spider sighed in relief. “Thank fuck. I never would have seen you again.”
“Would that upset you?”
Spider frowned. “Of course it would. You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a friend the whole time I’ve been here. And people are scared of you, which means they don’t fuck with me like they used to.”
“Because we’re together all the time,” Jessica said, eyeing the game board.
“Yeah. Exactly. And it’d suck to go back to being fair game for every mean-ass bitch in this joint.”
Jessica grunted. “I guess I can see that.”
“Why would you want to go to the infirmary, anyway?”
“Recon.”
“Recon?”
Jessica nodded, still eyeing the board. “For information. To get the lay of the land, a better sense of what’s possible and what isn’t, an idea of what else might be accessible from there. But thanks to you, I’ll be shifting my focus elsewhere.”
Spider said nothing to that. She put a thumb in her mouth and chewed the nail thoughtfully. Her gaze was on the table, but Jessica could tell she wasn’t really seeing the table or the game board. She was mulling over what Jessica had told her. From the deepening twist of her features, it was clear she found something about it unsettling.
Jessica waited, no longer interested in the game.
At last, Spider lifted her gaze from the table, glanced out at the empty landing, and spoke in a near-whisper when she looked at Jessica. “You’re thinking about escaping.”
“Of course I am.”
Frowning again, Spider went back to chewing on her thumbnail.
Jessica was waiting for her cellmate to say something else when she heard movement outside the cell. She glanced that way and saw several inmates standing just outside the open cell door. Dressed in identical fashion, Jessica recognized them as members of a Nazi gang. They wore ridiculous red booty shorts and white swastika T-shirts. Spider had pointed them out to her on the first day, indicating that they were to be avoided at all costs. They called themselves the Frauenschaft. A blonde woman standing at the forefront of the group was the apparent leader. She was staring very intently at Jessica.
Jessica grunted. “The fuck do you want?”
The blonde’s expression sharpened at her insolent tone. “We want you.”
“For what?”
“To join us.”
Jessica shook her head. “Hate to disappoint you, but I’m not a joiner. Not anymore, anyway.” In a gesture of deliberate dismissiveness, she refocused her attention on the game board. “Now fuck off out of here. I’m busy.”
She moved a g
ame piece.
Spider sucked in an alarmed breath. She was terrified of the Nazi bitches. Jessica could feel the fear rolling off her in waves. It would have been palpable even without her quickened breathing.
“You will look at me,” the blonde said, coming into the cell. The other gang members crowded in with her. “Do as you’re told or else.”
Jessica sighed, still looking at the game board. In truth, she’d lost track of whose turn it was or who was even winning. Not that it mattered anymore. “You don’t know me, so I can’t really blame you for not knowing this yet, but I don’t respond well to threats.”
The blonde came closer, knocked over the little table. She kicked it aside and stepped into the space between Jessica and her trembling cellmate. “Look at me.”
Jessica leaned slowly back in her chair and turned her gaze upward. “Congratulations. You have my attention. You may have cause to regret that.”
The blonde sneered and whipped a hand across Jessica’s face, snapping her head to the side. “You don’t scare me. You don’t scare any of us. Everyone else on D-Block, yes, but not us. Would you like to know why?”
Jessica turned her head back around and rubbed at her jaw, wincing at the sting. The bitch hit harder than she’d expected. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
The blonde’s expression turned smug. “Because we are the same as you. We are superior white women and devoted members of the National Socialist party.”
“Are you fucking shitting me?”
The blonde slapped her again. “You are a true Aryan. Blonde hair, blue eyes, superior genes. You belong with us. You will be with us. That’s how it is, whether you like it or not.”
Jessica again touched her sore jaw. “That’s not going to happen. And your whole Nazi shtick is stupid. You know that, right?”
The blonde raised her hand to deliver another blow, but as she brought it around, Jessica seized her by the wrist, stopping her cold. The blonde went from seething anger to a state of surging panic as she felt the incredible pressure Jessica was exerting on her wrist.
“Let go of me!”
The other gang members started to crowd in closer, some of them yelling threats, others brandishing shanks. Maintaining her grip on the blonde’s wrist, Jessica stood up and kicked aside her chair as she twisted the woman’s arm behind her back, making her yelp.
“All you scuzzy bitches better back out of here before I break this twat’s arm off and stuff it down her fucking throat.”
She gave the blonde’s wrist a harder twist.
The blonde cried out in pain. Her friends glanced nervously at one another until their leader recovered enough of her voice to yell at them: “Do it! Get out! Get the fuck out!”
There was a significant amount of grumbling, but the other women soon complied with the blonde’s order. Letting go of her, Jessica picked up her chair, set it down, and again seated herself in it. She looked at the scattered game pieces and shook her head as she said, “I guess we’ll have to start a new game.”
The blonde retreated a few steps, but she remained in the cell. She stood there with her back to her cohorts, glaring at Jessica as she rubbed her wrist. “Believe it or not, bitch, I give you props for that shit. Nobody else stands up to us. You’re no pushover. I like that. You’ll fit in real well with the Frauenschaft.”
Jessica looked at her, disbelief etched in the twist of her features. “How dense are you? I won’t be joining your weird little social club.”
The blonde grunted. “You’re wrong. You will be with us. It is destined, just like the resurrection of the true Reich.”
Jessica shrugged. “Whatever. Could you please go now?”
The blonde didn’t move. “Like I said, it is destined. I’m not even worried. But maybe we should teach you a lesson in respect before we go. A little reminder of how serious we are.”
“You don’t scare me, goldilocks. Haven’t you gotten that point yet?”
The blonde smiled. “I have, actually. And my name is Lina, by the way. Not goldilocks. Just so you know. Anyway, yeah, okay, you’re not worried about your own safety.” There was a pointed pause here as the woman shifted her gaze to Spider and allowed it to linger there a moment before she again focused on Jessica. “But your friend is another story. She looks scared shitless.”
Spider looked at Jessica, her eyes wider than ever with terror. She was shaking so hard she looked like she was about to fall out of her chair.
“That she does,” Jessica said, nodding.
Lina smirked. “Well, we may have to hurt her before we go. Teach you a lesson that way.”
Jessica stared into Spider’s pleading eyes for a moment, seeing the desperate hope for reassurance there. And why not? Jessica was her new protector, the buffer separating her from the myriad threats of prison life.
Jessica sighed, glancing at Lina. “Excuse me a moment.”
She lunged forward and seized Spider by the front of her uniform top. The little woman’s squeal of alarm as Jessica yanked her up out of her chair and dragged her toward the open cell door was like a dagger through her heart, but only for one fleeting moment. She had learned to squash out those little flickers of conscience years ago.
Shoving the Nazi bitches aside as she came out onto the landing, Jessica lifted the wailing and flailing woman up and tossed her over the railing. She’d turned away from the railing and was headed back into her cell even before she heard the body hit the floor below. The shouts of alarm from down there and ensuing commotion barely registered.
Back in her cell, she got up in Lina’s face and said, “There is nothing you can hold over me. Get out now or you’re next over the fucking rail.”
The gang’s leader looked shocked. To her credit, though, she recovered quickly and backed slowly out of the cell rather than hurrying.
She laughed softly. “This isn’t over. You know that, right?”
Jessica shrugged. “I guess I do. Now go away.”
Lina laughed again. “Be seeing you.”
Once they were finally gone, Jessica let out a heavy breath and stared at the floor. She was still staring at it several minutes later when she sensed the presence of someone else outside the cell door. Half-expecting to see guards who’d come to drag her back to solitary, she turned her head and instead saw Lucy Thorne.
The tall, busty redhead stared at her impassively as she said, “The boss sent me, thought you might be open to talking now. I figure you’re gonna say no, but I had to ask.”
Jessica thought about it a moment before saying, “You know what? I think I would like to talk to Alice now. Where does she want to meet?”
“In her cell, after lights out. I’ll take you there when the time comes.”
Jessica frowned. “After lights out? Aren’t we supposed to be in our cells for the night at that point?”
A hint of amusement tinged Lucy’s otherwise stony features. “A few of us here enjoy special privileges. And now so do you. For tonight, anyway.”
The redhead came into the cell and seated herself in the chair formerly occupied by Spider. She crossed her long legs and leaned back in the chair, folding her hands in her lap. Her fingernails were painted black. That interested Jessica. She hadn’t seen many painted nails in her first week at Prison 13. Nor, for that matter, had she noted much use of cosmetics of any kind. Lucy’s lips were coated in a blood-red shade of lipstick. More evidence of those special privileges, Jessica supposed.
This intrigued her, but at the moment she was more interested in something else. “Why in fuck are you still here?”
“Alice told me to stay with you and make sure those Nazi cunts don’t fuck with you again.”
“Not necessary. I can take care of myself.”
“I believe you,” Lucy said, shrugging. “I’m just doing what I was told. I guess you could make me leave, but I wish you wouldn’t.”
Jessica stared at the scattered game pieces on the floor a
long moment, thinking about it.
Then she looked at the redhead and said, “Want to play a game?”
18.
As she had so often over the last few days, Livia Collins was again brooding over her humiliation at the hands of the Frauenschaft. These dark, frustrating thoughts were interrupted when the new patient was brought in around lunchtime.
Two guards pushing a gurney banged in through the infirmary’s swinging doors. Strapped to the gurney was an inmate she recognized, a strange little thing known to the other inmates as “Spider”, real name Lenore. She’d suffered a broken leg and a broken arm in a fall from the second floor landing in D-Block.
One of the breaks, the left tibia just below the knee, was a compound fracture. Upon seeing the shard of bone sticking out through the skin, Livia’s first instinct was to stick something sharp in there and start twisting it around. Doing this would send shockwaves of agony ripping through the already traumatized woman’s body. She would scream and beg her to stop.
However, while Livia had no doubt these things would be as gratifying as they normally were, something—some strange tingle of vague intuition—made her decide not to torture the woman. At least not yet. She would leave the option open for later, but for now she chose to do something unusual. In this case, that meant providing the kind of treatment anyone with similar injuries would receive upon reporting to an ER in the outside world.
After sending the guards away, Livia administered anesthetic, set the compound fracture as best she could, and closed the wound. Next she encased the lower leg in a splint and went to work on the woman’s broken arm. Not being a compound fracture, it was easier to set and stabilize. Once these things were taken care of, she wheeled in an IV pole, hanging clear bags of fluid, morphine, and a strong antibiotic from the curled hooks at the top.
When she was finished doing all she could do for Spider, she stood at the woman’s bedside and stared at her unconscious form. It was a strange thing to have administered proper medical care to an inmate. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, other than puzzled that she’d done it at all. It’d been something in that strange twinge of intuition earlier, the odd sense that saving this woman might benefit her in ways that would become clear later.