“Did you not see that baby?” Connor said. “Or have you gone completely blind?”
“So what?” Kevin said. “That was leverage!”
“Is that who we’ve become now? That we’re going to put others’ lives in jeopardy because of one life related to us?”
“You think other people care?”
“That’s up to them and quite frankly not my business.”
“How’re you going to get Lane back now?”
“Well, Dominic wasn’t the only person there that day who saw what happened.”
“So?”
“Arianna,” Connor said. “We haven’t asked her yet. There’s still hope.”
“As long as she doesn’t come up with a baby in a crib.”
“Hey,” Connor said. “Don’t say that…that’s just…great now I’m thinking about Lane’s…oh god please tell me there’s no baby.”
“Why do you think she’d testify?”
“Dominic says she loves him,” Connor said, feeding the navigator the new address.
“Well then,” Kevin said, taking a turn. “Let’s find out how much.”
*
Kevin insisted on checking the rooms.
“What’s he doing?” Arianna asked.
“Checking for babies I think,” Connor said.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Connor said. “I actually came here to ask you a favor.”
“All clear,” Kevin said, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans.
“Seriously, what’s he talking about?”
“As I was saying,” Connor said. “You know what’s going on with Lane, right?”
“Yes,” Arianna said. Connor could tell that she was struggling with it. “I heard on the news that they sent him to Black Walls.”
“You know what Black Walls is, right?”
“I know,” Arianna said. “My sister who is in fifth grade knows. What’s your point?”
“I’m going to get him out,” Connor said. “I have a plan, but I need your help.”
“My help? What can I do?”
“You can testify in court against that cop,” Connor said. “You can help save him.”
“No lawyer in their right mind is going to take that case.”
“This journalist approached me,” Connor explained. “She said she can get Lane released and acquitted if we help make the case strong. If we go on record telling the world what really happened, we can win. Elections are in three months and the Zyre will want to prove how concerned they are for their people, and how they want what’s best for them.”
“You’re asking me to give television interviews and appear in court?” Arianna said. “Are people just going to take my word for it and let Lane go?”
“That’s for the court to decide,” Connor said. “It’s all about who gets the sympathy votes, Arianna. The Zyres are going to have to change their tactic if we do it right.”
Arianna thought about it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I can be a part of this. You’re going to have to find someone else to testify.”
“There is no one!” Connor snapped and then lowered his voice. “Dominic has a baby, and his girlfriend just died, I can’t possibly put him through this. There’s just you.”
“I’m extremely sorry.”
Disappointed, Connor walked up to the front door, hoping to get away from the frustration of this day. “I was under the impression that you loved him,” he said as a last resort and he knew it was a cheap shot, but he couldn’t help himself. He would have done anything to get a response.
“I do love him!” Arianna said, and Connor wondered if that was the response he was looking for.
“Then how will you sleep at night, knowing there’s something you can do for him but you won’t do it?” he said this and waited, but when Arianna just stood there silent and said nothing, he started to leave. He had barely made it out of the front door when Arianna came after him and caught his hand. Her gaze fixed on Connor’s face. “Will you really bring him back?”
Tears were starting to form in her eyes.
“I’ll do everything I can to try,” he said, not wanting to give her false hopes.
“Okay then,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do anything. Just please, bring him back!”
Connor put one arm around her and she caught on to him as if she was dying to let it out. Her tears were soaking Connor’s shirt. He kissed the top of her head and gave her a slight squeeze. That little moment had brought them together like nothing else ever had before, not even Lane himself. It surprised Connor a little, seeing the unhappiness in her voice and the eagerness to get him back. Finally, she broke off but she didn’t go back inside. She gave Connor her number, told him he could contact her anytime. Then she stood there watching him get into the car. “I’ll call you with the details,” Connor said. “Soon as I get them.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she said.
*
Kevin looked like he was praying and when he saw Connor approaching the car he stopped.“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?”
“Did she agree to it or not?”
“She did,” Connor said. “She said she’s going to testify Kevin! You know what that means, right?”
“It means there’s a chance we can get Lane back.”
“I’ll go home and call Chang,” Connor said. “Can’t wait to hear what she has to say.”
“Con?”
“Yeah?”
“You realize that all this does is increase Lane’s chances of coming back, right?”
“Are we stating the obvious now?”
“I want to make sure you’re not getting your hopes up.”
“Of course not.”
*
He was waiting for Chang to call back but instead of Chang, someone else called. He couldn’t help picking up the phone.
“Connor?”
“Mekha? How are you?”
“I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t pick up my calls,” Mekha said. “You don’t call me back. What am I supposed to think? If you don’t want to talk to me just tell me that, you don’t think I can take it?”
“Mekha,” Connor said. “I’m sorry. With everything that’s been going on, I just didn’t have time.”
“You didn’t have time for me,” Mekha said. “In other words, I don’t fit in anywhere in your life.”
“You do know what I’m going through right now, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Mekha said. “But you haven’t lost touch with Kevin because of it, have you? So why me? Why do I get thrown out?”
“I can’t do this right now.”
“When?” Mekha said. “When can you do this then?”
“You know what on second thought,” Connor said. “You’re right. I have plenty on my plate at the moment, I don’t want you adding to it.”
“Thank you for being honest,” Mekha said and dropped the call. The silence on the other end was threatening to drive Connor nuts and he tried not to let his thoughts stay there too long.
He had plenty to do besides crying after some girl.
He was going to wait patiently for Sydney’s call.
CHAPTER 10
THE STHAKO
Black Walls Detention Camp,
Delta-Bay, Zyron Region-Two
The weather was getting colder every day and with that the room temperatures were getting just as worse. It was close to six and the room was already chilly, and they only gave you one lousy blanket. If you needed more, you had to do ‘favors’ for the guards. What those favors were, Lane had no intention of finding out.
“Has anyone ever broken out of this place?” Lane asked.
Martinez dropped the paper he was writing in and looked up. “No,” he said. “But not for lack of trying.”
“So they tried and failed?”
“Miserably,” Martinez said. “Some of t
hem ended up in solitary for months or even worse, ended up with Vel in the Sthako.”
“Have you tried?”
“No,” he said. “But a friend of mine did. Why are you so concerned with that all of a sudden? You’re not thinking of doing something stupid are you?”
“You know they’re very predictable over here,” Lane said. “The routines are set, the guards their shifts, the labs, everything is so synchronized.”
“So?”
“They must make schedules in advance, right?”
“So?”
“So if you know the schedules you can get away with doing a lot of things.”
“What exactly are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to escape, Martinez.”
Martinez got up from his bed, went straight to the cell-door and checked outside. When he was certain there was no one listening, he came back towards Lane and smacked his head. “Don’t you even think about that, you hear me?” he said. “I don’t ever want to hear you talk about it.”
“But I—”
“I said no.”
“I was only—”
“Drop it, kid or it won’t be a smack next time.”
An alarm rang, alerting everyone to mealtime and the gates buzzed open. “Come on,” Martinez said. “Get some food inside you. It might help get the stupid thoughts out of your system.”
“You didn’t even hear what I had to say,” Lane complained, getting up and going to stand by the door.
“That’s because I want to see you alive.”
“Why so you can see them torture me?”
Martinez glared at him. “The friend I told you about,” he said. “Vel beat him to death, right in front of us in the courtyard.”
Vel was a thick-bodied, nasty warden who was always picking up fights with inmates. Even the guards were afraid of him.
“The way he was screaming, I’ve never seen someone in that kind of pain before,” Martinez continued. “Then Vel had us dig his grave. I dragged him into it myself, put dirt on him.”
“I’m sorry.”
The guard shouted an instruction, first in the native language and then in Zyronian. They were supposed to stand outside their cells. Martinez went first, Lane went after him and they formed a line with the remaining inmates on the floor. The guard started blasting some more orders and the line started moving towards the stairs so they could go down to the lunch room.
Martinez turned towards Lane to say the next words in a low voice. “Promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut,” he said. “I don’t think I can handle digging another grave.”
*
The man serving lunch dropped the usual odd globs of food on Lane’s tray and he did it with a consistent glare as though Lane was a personal enemy. Lane tried to ignore it, tried to keep his head down. All he had to do was to silently follow Martinez to the empty table so they could eat their meal in peace. That kind of thing, it should have been uneventful. But when a man came to stand in his way before Lane made it to the table, Lane knew it was the first sign of trouble. His name was Foley and he gave everyone a hard time because of his hefty physique and his resourcefulness despite the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere. By the time Martinez noticed, it was too late. Foley had already produced a shank from the folds of his shirt. “Keep that thing down, Newbie,” he said, waving the sharp end of the makeshift weapon at Lane.
The first thing Lane did was look at Martinez. Martinez wouldn’t back away from a fight, but he wouldn’t pick one either, and Lane knew he needed to do the same. There was no sense making it worse than it already was, the tray of food wasn’t worth it, so he placed it carefully down on a nearby table, where four of Foley’s friends were sitting, hoping that would be the end of it.
Foley grinned. “Good little boy, aren’t you?” he said, bringing the shank dangerously close to Lane’s face. “I’d like some good little boys on my side, think your partner likes to share?”
Lane gritted his teeth. But if Martinez hadn’t said anything, he wasn’t going to either. He walked past Foley in an attempt to get this over with, but instead of letting him through Foley stuck the sharp end of the shank in his side and Lane felt the piercing pain, faltered a few steps back and when he placed a hand where Foley had stabbed him it came off bloody. His ears started to fog, but he could vaguely hear Martinez yelling. Lane steadied himself against a table and saw Martinez fighting with Foley empty-handed, and that’s when Lane saw the man on that table. He was someone Lane had seen around the cell block, the same guy Lane had seen carrying the janitor’s equipment the first time he had come back from the labs and thrown up in the hallway. Now, the man showed him a switchblade. The fog inside Lane’s head had cleared just a little and he could hear Foley and his gang beating Martinez up, and his blood was boiling to a point where he couldn’t care anymore. He took the switchblade from the man and walked up behind Foley, stuck the sharp end into Foley’s back and Foley screamed, fell to his knees on the ground and kept screaming. His men let go of Martinez, who fell to the floor, and Lane stabbed the four of them blindly, not even caring where the blade landed. Foley was still on the ground, but the four of them were still charging at him, and Lane felt like this would never end, but finally the guards decided to make their entrance and took over.
*
All the time the guards were hauling him off, Lane’s eyes were on Martinez, who was still unconscious. Lane wished he would wake up and talk to him once, just show him everything was alright before they put him away in solitary.
*
Solitary was like a new form of torture.
They didn’t give him any food for two days, and at the end of two days someone brought a gross-looking meal that Lane had no choice but to swallow down with the water. Other than that, it was just sitting there and listening to the tortured screams coming from the nearby ‘big room.’ Everyone called it ‘Sthako’ the Entrance to Hell. The majority of the prisoners were from Delta Bay and so were the prison guards, and their language was new to Lane. Still, a few words like this stuck to his memory.
When there were only the screams, Lane wasn’t sure who it was, but then the man they were torturing started pleading with them, and that’s when Lane realized it was Foley. Any other day, Lane would have hated Foley, like everyone else, but after listening to him scream and being beaten up like an animal for more than two days, even Lane formed a soft spot. He almost forgave the man for stabbing him. Foley couldn’t be blamed for what this place had turned him into.
The things the man may have had to do in order to survive ten years in here, Lane couldn’t judge Foley for that. Lane had barely been here six months and there were times he thought for sure he was going to go crazy. The only reason Lane hadn’t gone nuts was because he still hung on to a bit of hope even though he hated himself for it. It wasn’t realistic. It was the worst thing he could do to himself. It would have been better if instead he tried to conform himself to this place and get used to the way things worked around here.
Like Foley or Martinez or the hundreds of others in this place, he needed to give up on the hope of getting out. Martinez kept telling him he had to do it in order to get tough, and not get beaten up over here. But to Lane giving up on hope would be the equivalent of giving up on life and he didn’t know how to do it. He raised his shirt to check on the stab wound and lifted the surgical tape just a little. Everything looked fine. The doze of antibiotics must have done the trick. He replaced the tape and suddenly, he realized Foley wasn’t screaming anymore. He waited to see if it was just temporary, but when after a long time there was no sign that Foley was going to start screaming again, Lane finally relaxed. He felt a weight being lifted off his chest.
Maybe now he could get some sleep.
*
Someone was forcing him to wake up, shaking him. It was the guards and Lane went quietly with them, trying to keep his eyes open.
*
They took him to the big room, the Sthako.
“I asked you a question,” Vel said. “Did you enjoy it or not?”
“I’m sorry,” Lane said, at a loss for words. He had heard about Vel and what he did to people in this room. He had no intention of finding out for himself if those stories were true. “He came at me with a knife,” he said, wanting to pacify the guard. “He stabbed my friend, they were going to kill me!”
“So you decided it was your job to help your friend?”
“I’m sorry okay! I won’t do it again.”
“Where did you get the blade?”
“What?”
Vel took out the same switchblade that Lane had acquired from that man in the lunch room. “You used this to stab Foley and his friends,” he said. “I want to know where you got it.”
Lane knew there was no way he was going to get someone in trouble, especially someone who had tried to help him. “I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember where you got the knife?”
Before he could say anything the switchblade came open in Vel’s hand. “Tell you what,” he said, and plunged the knife into Lane’s hand, cracking the bone and going past it to get stuck in the material of the chair. “We’ll just leave this here until your memory comes back.”
*
It was hell, just waiting, knowing that there was worse still left to come, and knowing that there was no way Vel was going to let him leave without making an impression. Lane had done the horrible deed, he had messed with the harmony of the prison, he was going to get the worst possible punishment for it. His stabbed hand was a big giant blob of pain and swollen to the point where Lane thought the skin would burst. As he sat there, waiting for Vel to come back, surrounded by the stench of a man’s insides, he wondered what he had done to deserve this. He wasn’t a bad person. What kind of god would punish him this way? Make him this defenseless and give all the power to these guards?
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