by R. M. Olson
Despite everything, Jez was mildly impressed. No wonder Ysbel had married this woman.
The whistle blew, and Jez jumped.
When she turned back around, Taya and the children were gone.
She stood in line to be counted, still stunned.
She’d found Tanya.
Who had threatened to kill her, of course, but still—
She managed to tap her wrist with its hidden com against her thigh. Pilot’s code. Ysbel should understand. If she didn’t, wasn’t much Jez could do. Not like she could call them at night in her cell.
Hey Ysbel, she tapped. Your wife is hot.
For a few moments, there was nothing. Then a voice hissed in her earpiece, so loud she almost winced.
“You found my wife, you stupid idiot? Where is she? Why didn’t you call me before? Is she alright? Are my babies with her?”
She thinks you’re dead. She wouldn’t listen.
“Wrist!” the guard snapped, and Jez managed to bump the com to off as she lifted her wrist to get scanned.
She glanced over at the line next to her, and groaned inwardly.
She’d almost forgotten Vlatka. The woman was watching her with a calculating expression on her face and loathing in her eyes.
Tonight wasn’t going to be a good night.
Jez was tingling with adrenalin as she waited in line, jiggling her foot against the ground. Once through the prisoner count, Vlatka stepped into the cell before Jez, and for half a second Jez contemplated making a break for it. But the guards were watching her, and something in their cold gaze told her that, although they had no intention of letting her run, they also had no intention of interfering in what was going to come next.
She took a deep breath and followed the woman into the cell. Vlatka turned to her with an unpleasant smile.
The door closed, the lock clicking into place.
If you were going to go down, may as well go down in style. Hardly mattered anymore, did it?
“How’s your head?” asked Jez, heart pounding in her ears, stupid grin on her face.
Vlatka grabbed her by the front of the shirt and hauled her forward, an expression of mingled fury and triumph on her face as she drew back her fist.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. She had to admit it. She’d howled and whimpered quite pitifully, and her cell-mate had seemed entirely convinced that when Jez went down and stayed down, it was because she couldn’t take anymore.
Amateur.
Still … she shifted experimentally from where she lay slumped in the corner, and bit back a genuine whimper.
Still, it could have been a hell of a lot better.
She cursed under her breath for a few minutes to relieve her feelings, and glared at the woman lying on the bottom cot.
After the beating, her cellmate had taken a ridiculously long time getting ready for bed. Probably still wasn’t asleep.
Jez swore again softly and settled herself gingerly back against the wall, trying to protect the worst of her bruises.
She’d been beat up a lot. She was good at being beat up. Because that was the thing—she couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut. When she was a scared 11-year-old, vibrating from adrenalin and the need to move, standing in front of her father, when she was a skinny 14-year-old in Lena’s office, her foot tapping nervously, fingers drumming, brain high on anger or nerves or whatever it was, when she faced down Antoni for the first time, and the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time—she couldn’t help it. There seemed to be something inside her that wouldn’t let her stop, even when she could see the edge, even when she knew that one more word would take her over it. She just kept on.
She glanced around her at the narrow cell walls, that seemed to have crept just a little closer to her every time she looked at therm.
Anyways, being beat up couldn’t be worse than this. Nothing could be worse than being locked up. She shivered, winced, swore softly, and dropped her head back against the wall, closing her eyes.
Give it another minute, and she was pretty sure the woman in the bottom cot would be asleep.
She took a deep breath, and then another, and then another.
It would be fine. She’d be fine. This would all be fine.
For a moment she remembered the haunted look in Tanya’s eyes when she’d mentioned Ysbel’s name, the desperation in Ysbel’s crackly voice over the com.
She swallowed hard.
She wondered, for a moment, how it would feel to be loved that much. To love someone that much. To be willing to walk back into prison for them. To never stop loving them, after five years or a lifetime.
Boring, probably. Honestly.
Still, there was something like a lump in her throat.
Finally, when the breathing from the bottom cot was slow and even, Jez pushed herself painfully to her feet.
Her idiot cellmate would be surprised when she saw Jez asleep in the top bunk, rather than semiconscious in the corner.
Jez grinned to herself and touched the scrap of cloth she’d folded into a bag in the laundry.
But not nearly as surprised as she’d be when she put her clean prison uniform on tomorrow and realized what Jez had smeared all over the inside of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LEV, SECTOR 1, Day 3
Lev glanced up from his admittedly uninspiring breakfast, and started in surprise.
He recognized, all too well, the swaggering gait and lanky form of the prisoner who was currently being shoved through the mess hall, escorted by three guards.
He swore softly to himself, a knot of worry rising in his throat, and jumped up, grabbing his bowl. He walked quickly in the direction of the sinks, at an angle that would intercept the small procession, while avoiding the small knots of prisoners who were glowering at each other from across the room.
A tense line of prisoners waiting to drop off their dishes before the whistle blew clogged the guards’ forward progress, and as one of them went forward to clear the way with her shock-stick, Lev stepped quickly up beside Jez. He looked her up and down quickly, and winced. The bruise the guard had given her was now a sort of dirty purple-green, one eye was swollen almost shut with a deep purple bruise that looked about a day or two old, and she had an angry new bruise in the shape of a fist across her cheekbone.
She grinned at him. “Hey genius-boy,” she said in a whisper that did nothing to hide the cocky tone in her voice.
“Jez!” he hissed. “What happened?”
She shrugged, and winced. “Getting transferred. My cellmate threatened to lead a revolt if they didn’t move me out.”
“Did she do this to you?” It was probably Jez’s fault, he knew that, but he couldn’t help the irrational anger rising in his chest.
“Yep. Except what the guard did the other day.”
He gritted his teeth.
“You should see her, though,” said Jez. “She’s still in the medics.”
“Prisoner! Get a move-on.”
“I have a few hours before I meet my new cellmate,” Jez whispered as the guard prodded her forward. “Call me on the com. I saw Tanya.”
Then she walked forward, and he stared after her, something cold settling in his chest.
He’d seen the desperation in her eyes, under her carefree expression.
Jez was losing it.
He wasn’t sure how many more beatings she could take, and if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t picture a scenario where she wouldn’t get beat up again, probably multiple times.
He walked slowly to the sink and dropped his bowl into it, then stepped back quickly as the woman beside him turned her glare on the man on his other side.
“Watch it,” the man behind him grunted, and he sighed and stepped smartly sideways.
Across from him, a scuffle broke out between two prisoners. A third and fourth prisoner joined in, and then another, then another. Guards waded into the mix, swinging their shock-sticks.
Le
v ran his hand over his face.
This was the third today. And it was only breakfast.
His disruption of the prison hierarchy had been—effective, perhaps. But possibly more than he’d anticipated.
This whole thing was going sideways, quickly. Jez was in trouble. They’d found Tanya, but she wouldn’t listen. They were split up, he didn’t have any more information than he’d had before, and Tae was still hitting walls every time he tried to hack the system. He’d apparently set off a full-fledged gang war. And to make matters worse, when he’d talked to Tae the night before, Tae had seen traces of someone poking around where he’d patched them in.
And they were only on day three.
Someone grabbed him by the arm, and before he had time to react, he was jerked backwards. He fell ungracefully to the floor and scrambled to his feet, biting back a curse.
A bench crashed down right where he’d been sitting, followed a moment later by a prisoner who probably outweighed him by fifty kilos, all of it pure muscle. He ducked instinctively as a fist whipped out over his head.
“Over here!”
He turned. A slight, middle-aged woman prisoner gestured at him frantically. When he reached her, she shoved him into the middle of the line waiting to drop off their food bowls.
“What—” he began.
“You’re going to get killed,” she hissed. “I don’t know what’s happened around here, but everyone who hasn’t picked a side is going to be killed. Stay out of the way, for the Lady’s sake.”
He stared at her for a moment. She looked slightly familiar, but he couldn’t place her.
“I—thank you.” He paused. “But—why do you care?”
She sighed, a mixture of exasperation and weariness. “The same reason I tried to keep you out of the way of your insane cellmate. You obviously don’t know how to take care of yourself.”
He gave a rueful smile. Possibly she was correct.
She looked away. “Besides, you—remind me of my nephew. Or at least, what I think he’d be like by now. I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Ah,” said Lev softly. He looked at her more closely. Her face was lined with worry and exhaustion.
Had he done that, with his gang-war?
It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. Get in, get Tanya, get out. That was the job.
Still, he couldn’t help himself. “How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Ten years,” said the woman, her voice very quiet. “I taught at a university on one of the outer-rim planets. But I read the wrong books, and I made the mistake of giving them to my students. And one of them turned me in.”
“I—” There was suddenly something hard and heavy in the pit of his stomach.
She must have seen it on his face, because she gave a slight, rueful smile. “It wasn’t him. The system made him, and if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have.”
“I’m—sorry,” he said softly. “What’s your name?”
“Ykaterin.”
He turned, and met her eyes. “Thank you, Ykaterin.”
He glanced out at the other prisoners as he dropped his dish in the sink.
How many more Ykaterins were out there, mixed in with the mafia and gangsters and thugs?
He had no chance to call Jez on the com during work, and none during lunch. It wasn’t until they shuffled out into the courtyard for their scant half-hour of evening air that he managed to wander into a corner by himself. He touched the com and whispered, “Jez?”
For a few moments there was no answer. Then his earpiece crackled and he heard her voice.
She’d clearly been crying.
“Jez!” Something like panic clutched at his chest. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said sullenly, and he heard her sniffle. “It’s fine. I just—I have a cold.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward and shook his head. “Jez. Listen. If you’re in trouble, I need to know about it.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “I just—I don’t like being locked up, OK?”
“Yeah.” The guilt that had wrapped itself around his chest since he’d agreed to come on this death-mission squeezed. “I’m … sorry.”
“Listen. I met Tanya. She didn’t believe me about Ysbel, and she told me to leave her alone. She didn’t even want to talk, just walked off.” She paused. “She threatened to kill me, actually. But at this point, she’d probably have to get in line.” A touch of her old snarkiness crept back into her voice.
He sighed. “Jez. That isn’t something to brag about. Listen. I’m trying to get us out of here. Tell me everything you can about Tanya.”
“Well, she’s hot,” said Jez in a jaunty voice. “And she could probably kill me if she wanted to. I mean, she doesn’t look like it, but she looks at you and you suddenly realize that if she wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I know why she and Ysbel got along.”
“This isn’t helpful,” he said through his teeth.
There was a long pause. “She’s been here a long time,” said Jez at last, her voice a little quieter. “I don’t know if they put her and the kids out with the other prisoners. It’s going to be hard to get to her. She’s protecting those kids, and I don’t think she’ll trust anyone but Ysbel. I—she wouldn’t believe me, that Ysbel was alive. But—I think she wanted to.”
There was another long pause.
“I’m sorry, Jez,” he said at last. The guilt coating his throat was so thick that it took him a moment to be able to speak. “We’ll get them out, OK? As soon as we can.”
“Yeah,” she said softly.
He wasn’t certain how much longer Jez would last in here. He wasn’t certain how much longer he could watch her going to pieces, knowing he’d been the one to drag her into this.
The whistle blew, and he jumped. “I have to go,” he whispered. “I—be careful, OK? Just—try not to get beat up again? I’ll get you out soon.”
“I know,” she whispered back, but there was something desperate in her voice. Like she wasn’t sure if she believed him.
He wasn’t sure if he believed himself.
At last the magnetic lock on the cell door clicked shut.
“Is Tanya alright?” asked Ysbel in a low voice the moment the guard had moved past the door. “How are my children? Did Jez tell you anything?”
He tried to keep his tone light. “She said your wife was hot.”
“Yes,” said Ysbel grimly. “She mentioned that yesterday. Please tell me something useful.”
He sighed. “She’s alright, and the children. But—she thinks you’re dead. She clearly doesn’t trust us, and she and the children may not be in with the rest of the prisoners. It’s going to be harder than we thought.”
Even if they found her again. But he didn’t say it. Ysbel knew it as well as he did.
“She’s in the other sector,” Ysbel said in a quiet voice. “I can’t even go talk to her, tell her.” She looked lost, somehow. He rubbed a hand over his face.
“Ysbel. We’ll figure this out. It will be alright.”
She nodded, but her face was haunted. “I will stop asking about her then, I suppose,” she said. “It will have to be Tae and Masha.”
He sighed again. “Look Ysbel. We’ll find something. We’ll all be thinking more clearly in the morning anyway.”
“Did she say anything else? Jez, I mean?”
He paused. “She said Tanya threatened to kill her.”
For the first time that evening, Ysbel cracked a reluctant smile. “Yes. That’s my Tanya.”
He splashed water on his face, stripped out of his filthy prison uniform and pulled on the uncomfortable prison pyjamas, and climbed into his bunk. “Goodnight, Ysbel,” he whispered.
“Goodnight,” she said, and the lower cot creaked as she sat down on it.
He waited until her breathing slowed and evened out, and then waited a few minutes more.
He was exhausted, and his eyes were aching to close, b
ut he couldn’t sleep, not yet.
Finally, he sat up cautiously on his bunk and tapped his com. “Tae?” he whispered. “You there?”
“Yes. Masha’s here too,” Tae whispered back.
“Any luck?”
He already knew the answer, but he had to ask the question.
“I have very little,” said Masha. “I’m getting some information on the warden and on what brought her here, which may ultimately prove useful, but unfortunately I’ve found nothing on Tanya. Except that she is one of the prisoners the warden personally keeps tabs on. Why, I don’t know, but I suspect influence from Prasvishoni.”
“I have nothing either,” said Tae, his voice tight with worry. “I’ve tried everything I can think of. Apparently the systems here are almost impossible to break through because they’re obsolete—they aren’t compatible with our tech or our patches. This stuff is so old that the code I write doesn’t even read. But we’re not going to get three prisoners out of here if I can’t hack into the systems.”
“Well, at least that gives me something to work with,” Lev said at last. “I’ll see what I can dig up on the older systems when we have library time. I’m not hoping to find specs or anything, but if I can figure out the basic elements it may make things easier.”
“Yeah,” said Tae wearily. “It’s not like we have a whole lot else to go on. Did Jez find Tanya yesterday? Is that what she was talking about?”
“Yes,” Lev replied. “I talked to Jez this evening. She did find Tanya, and Tanya wanted nothing to do with her. I don’t know if we’ll find her again, and if we do, I don’t know that she’ll come with us.” He paused. “They transferred Jez back to this sector this morning. I saw her walking through. She … didn’t look good.”
There was silence on the other side of the com. Lev glanced down at the bottom bunk.
Ysbel was asleep. He swallowed back the acid in his throat.
Masha, to her credit, had said nothing. But that was likely because she knew what he was going to say next.