Strange Ways

by Gray Williams

  ‘We made a mistake. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to offend.’

  The apology, the sheer meekness of them, only served to make Amanda angrier.

  Storming away, she headed off down the corridor. How had she not seen that coming? How had she not seen through them?

  She berated herself down the hallway, letting others leap out of her way. How had she let this happen to her? How had the world let it all happen? Hadn’t it taken enough? Hadn’t she let it take enough? Just over a day she’d spent here and she was already eager to burn it to the ground.

  Taking the first corner, mind on the stairs that the addicts had suggested, Amanda swore as she ran straight into another inmate. Her nose colliding painfully with his chest, she staggered back, a hand out for balance.

  ‘Shit. Sorry.’

  ‘Just who we’ve been looking for.’ There were two of them. Both men were tall, their arms muscled and beards unkempt. The sleeves were rolled back on their fleeces, broad forearms displaying a wealth of tattoos.

  The only real difference between them was their hair, one bald, while the other’s hung down to his shoulders in uncared-for strings. Hard men, the pair of them, the type she wouldn’t deal with unless she had a plan, or some back-up.

  ‘And I’ve only been here an hour,’ said Amanda, backing away, her mind still assessing. When a pair of men like this were looking for her, it was never good.

  ‘Did they even try to find someone who fits in?’ asked the bald man. ‘She doesn’t even have tattoos.’

  ‘Government thinks we’re idiots,’ replied the hairy man. ‘Stand still.’

  They’d slowly followed her as she’d retreated. Snatching out a hand, the hairy man grabbed at her, his hand easily encircling her wrist.

  Amanda struck, bringing her heel down on the man’s instep, but her plimsoll only rebounded off his sturdy boots. Pain shot up her leg from her heel to her knee.

  If the man even felt it, he showed no sign, tightening his hold and pulling her close. ‘We just want a word.’

  The look in the bald man’s eye told the lie to his partner’s words. He was tense, electricity running through his body, clenching his jaw, his fists.

  ‘Come on.’ Looking around to make sure no one was watching, they began to lead her down an empty corridor.

  ‘I’m happy here,’ said Amanda, pulling back.

  ‘Well we’re not.’ Hairy gave her a jerk so hard she felt her shoulder strain in its socket. ‘If the warden thinks we’re going to stand by while his spy does whatever she pleases, he’s about to learn a few things.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the other man, checking back behind them as they pulled her down the corridor. ‘Got a real strong message for him.’

  Chapter Eight

  Amanda knew just what kind of message they were talking about. Twisting in the hairy man’s grip, she tried to see past the pair’s bulk, back down the corridor in search of help. There was none. The blood addicts had gone into their cell, no guards, no other inmates.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ she pleaded. ‘I just got here—’

  ‘Quiet,’ Hairy gave her a warning shake.

  Her mind raced. These men knew the prison. There were always places, quiet spots the guards overlooked, where a prisoner had the seclusion to shoot up. Or get stabbed. She couldn’t let them take her there. She needed—

  ‘Hey!’ A tall man had appeared behind them, following with a determined stride, his expression stern. She recognised the bruise that marked his left cheek. He’d been staring at her from his cell when she’d first arrived. In the light, she could see that his eyes were surrounded by intricate tattoos that swirled and flowed to his temples.

  ‘Stay out of this, Duncan,’ said the man holding her.

  ‘I’ve found her,’ the tall man, Duncan, called back over his shoulder.

  Hairy’s grip slackened on her wrist as Duncan was joined by three women, their expressions a spectrum ranging from angry to apprehensive.

  ‘Come on,’ a black woman with cornrows reached out a hand towards Amanda. ‘Come with us. It’s OK.’

  ‘You don’t want to be with these men,’ said a second, white and petite. ‘Donnie, Hauser, leave her alone.’

  ‘No shit,’ said Amanda. Pulling her arm from Hauser’s grip, she stepped away back towards her saviours.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ the bald man, Donnie, growled. ‘Your leader goes missing and all of a sudden this woman shows up asking questions? She’s a spy. Plain and simple.’

  ‘Not to us,’ said the cornrowed woman.

  ‘We’re not like you,’ said Duncan. ‘We don’t just kill people because we suspect them.’

  ‘Then you might as well lie down for them,’ snarled Hauser, jabbing a finger. ‘You want any of this to change, you’ve got to get your hands dirty. When are you lot going to realise that?’

  ‘Never,’ said Donnie, answering for them. He folded his arms. ‘Warden takes Khurana and they still turn the other cheek. Fucking tragic.’

  ‘That’s our decision,’ said the petite woman. ‘We don’t know this woman and we’d rather talk to her instead of whatever you were planning.’

  ‘I’m with them,’ said Amanda, backing further in their direction.

  ‘Don’t you fucking move,’ Donnie ordered, but Amanda kept walking.

  ‘Seems to me,’ said Amanda, ‘that all I’ve got to do is shout and that’ll bring the guards crashing down on us. I don’t know this place that well, but I’m going to bet the outcome won’t be good for anyone.’

  ‘That evidence enough for you?’ Donnie waved a hand at her. He glanced nervously down the corridor.

  ‘Believe me, I’ll be in just as much trouble as you, but since the outcome will be the same for me if I stay with you… Maybe you’ll believe me when I’m standing next to you on the scaffold. Want to try it?’

  The people around her shuffled nervously, like she’d pulled a stick of dynamite from her jacket. Amanda tried to keep her breath steady and even, not wanting to betray her hammering heart.

  ‘Do it,’ said the black woman, coming to stand at her side. ‘I’ve got nothing better to do today.’

  ‘Janine…’ Duncan warned.

  ‘We’re not just going to let them take her. They’re always calling us cowards and saying they’d lay their lives down for the cause. I want to see them prove it.’

  Donnie and Hauser looked uncertain now, but Amanda knew the kind of men who couldn’t back down when she saw them. They’d call her bluff and then things would only get worse from there, unless she did something.

  ‘There a place to eat around here?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Janine.

  It took everything Amanda had to turn her back on the men, her entire body feeling like a coiled spring. But Donnie and Hauser left them alone, their gazes hard and fists useless as they watched her and her rescuers walk away.

  Finding the stairs the blood addicts had talked about, the group led her down, heading further underground.

  Clattering down the metal framework stairs, Amanda’s legs were aching like she’d won a marathon, her head beginning to throb anew. What was it with this place? Had she caught something in the cold isolation cell overnight?

  No one spoke, their nerves still winding down, the adrenalin working its way through them.

  The floor below looked much the same as the one that she had left – bare concrete corridors and fresh blue doors that seemed incongruous with the must and damp.

  She smelled the canteen before she saw it.

  It was a long room, filled with tables and benches. Shutters closed off the kitchen along one wall, masking the next meal being prepared. Here the smell of damp was overpowered by the familiar smell of prison kitchens everywhere – meat and vegetables being boiled to death.

  Despite the lack of food, there were still people at the benches, watched by a pair of guards. With no dedicated communal areas, this was where the prisoners
came to socialise, though even with the kitchens nearby it was no warmer.

  There was no sign of Zoe or Harry. She would have to find them soon; she was under orders, after all. Whether she liked it or not, working alongside Harry seemed to be something she couldn’t avoid. From the sound of things, they might be her best bet for tracking down Karina.

  The five of them took a table to one side of the canteen. Taking a seat with her back to the wall, Amanda took her first real opportunity to look them over.

  There were four of them, three women and a man.

  None of them had any visible scars, none had that feverish look in their eyes. They hunched over as they sat, the adrenalin wearing off, appearing as exhausted as Amanda felt.

  ‘What were you doing when they found you?’

  Now that their adversaries were gone, they no longer seemed like her allies. Their expressions were wary, looking her up and down, as she was them. It was the woman who had stepped forward earlier who had spoken, her eyebrows raised, expectant of an answer.

  ‘Just having a look around,’ Amanda said, carefully. ‘Getting used to things.’

  ‘Well, you won’t find a better bunch of guides than us,’ said the woman. ‘We’ve been here since the beginning.’

  The woman, who introduced herself as Janine, then introduced the rest. The man was Duncan, the other two were Chitra and Sarah. Each of them winced at the sound of their own names, none of them meeting her eye now that they were sat.

  Despite the chill, the man, Duncan, had his jacket unzipped, revealing more Abra tattoos across his chest. The fine stitchwork of tattoos around his eyes made his pale skin seem even paler.

  Janine was bright-eyed and ready with a smile, black like Amanda, her hair in cornrows. Chitra was quiet, willowy and picked at her nails, while petite Sarah was flushed pink with the chill, her dark hair unevenly cut, her eyes always darting around, on the alert for trouble.

  ‘Don’t be fooled,’ said Janine. ‘They may have helped get you away from that pair, but they think you’re a plant just the same.’ Janine waved a finger at her friends. ‘Sent to infiltrate us so we tell you where Karina is.’

  ‘She is,’ said Duncan. ‘You can tell just looking at her that she hasn’t been nulled.’

  The other two women nodded, eyeing Amanda up and down again.

  ‘How’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Your tattoos,’ said Janine. ‘First thing the guards do is score out your tattoos, make them useless.’ Rolling up a sleeve, she showed Amanda, pointing out the bolder ink among the more faded shapes and patterns that protected her from magical backlash like Amanda had suffered in solitary.

  ‘That’s simple then,’ said Amanda. ‘I don’t have any tattoos. Nothing to null.’

  Duncan scoffed. ‘Prove it.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to,’ said Janine. ‘You don’t have to. Jesus, Duncan, we’re hardly going to make her strip in the cafeteria.’

  ‘If you think I’m a plant then why help me?’

  ‘Because we’re good people and killing you would have made things worse for everyone here,’ said Janine. ‘Whoever you are.’

  ‘So you just wanted to scope me out? Because it seemed like you were looking for me.’

  ‘We like to keep apprised of the newcomers.’

  ‘And for the record, we don’t know where Karina is,’ said Duncan. ‘If we knew, believe me, we’d be right there with her.’

  ‘Right,’ said Amanda. ‘Well, I’m not a plant. Call it bad timing on my part. All I know is that someone attacked a guard and escaped.’ She’d decided to play ignorant to see what that would get her. If she left spaces, there were always people willing to fill them.

  ‘There was no guard,’ snapped Duncan, prompting the others to shush him. ‘There was no guard,’ he repeated more quietly. ‘She was the one who was attacked. You can take that back to your bosses. Mallory went after her last night. Everyone knows it. She defended herself.’

  ‘Mallory’s a prisoner?’

  Duncan scoffed again. ‘On paper maybe. But the way the guards act around him, Harry Church and his friends, you’d think they were part of the staff. They do whatever they want. When Mallory takes it in his head that he doesn’t like you, all you can do is hope that he loses interest because that’s the only way it will work out. When Karina defended herself last night, she knew that Mallory would get his revenge on her for resisting him. And the guards,’ he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, ‘would probably help him. She’s fleeing for her life.’

  ‘Managed to get out of here, though,’ said Amanda, looking around. ‘Impressive.’

  Duncan folded his arms, sitting back. ‘We don’t know how she did it. You can tell your bosses that too.’

  ‘Come on, Duncan,’ Janine implored.

  ‘Like I said,’ said Amanda. ‘I just got here. You’re the one who brought it up. I’m just happy having people to talk to.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’ asked Janine. ‘When you were up there? Going through processing? Did you hear anything?’

  ‘They’re tearing the island apart looking for her, if that’s what you mean. Running all over the place in those jeeps, sending out search parties, dogs. Seems like they’re pulling all the stops to get her back.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Duncan, his tone cold.

  Silence drew out between them, Duncan trying to squeeze the truth out of her with his stare alone.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Janine, trying to break the tension. She pointed towards the bundle on Amanda’s lap. ‘Someone will have those out from under you if you’re not careful.’

  ‘It’s really that bad?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘It’s no one’s fault really. They keep us going on so little, trying to keep us fighting among ourselves so we have no room in our heads to organise. There’s the restrictions too.’ Janine began to count off on her fingers. ‘No toothpaste, no make-up, no pens. They don’t allow anything that we could make a sigil with. They so much as catch you with pebbles in your pockets, you get punished.’

  ‘The worse we look, the better it looks back home,’ said Duncan, bitterly. ‘Something for the government to crow about, how awful all us Abras are crammed together. They don’t let any footage out, but we know they send reports. People like to hear what they think they already know. They don’t ask questions.’

  Amanda bristled at the ‘us Abras’ and something of it must have shown because suddenly the woman was asking her: ‘What’s it like out there? We get so little news here. What’s the real world like these days?’

  Amanda did her best, relating scraps of news and whatever else she remembered. She left out the part about how she had been in prison for most of the time that they had missed. There was something about them, the way that they spoke and the kind of questions they asked, that made her mentally label them ‘civilians’.

  They grabbed at everything she had to tell them, responding with frowns or smiles, picking over the morsels of information like they were starving. She did her best to feed them. They might deny that they knew where Karina was, but Amanda wasn’t sure that she believed that. Getting in with these people was her best chance at getting to Karina. It was making them trust her that was going to prove difficult.

  Duncan especially was unconvinced, scrutinising her, chewing over everything she said, looking for mistakes.

  She concentrated on the others, trying her best to be friendly, her mind working on how best to lever any information out of them in as short a time as possible.

  It was only as she was starting to get somewhere, making the women laugh at a joke, that Duncan straightened, staring towards the far door at the end of the room.

  The change of demeanour alerting the others, their conversation faltered as they turned their attention to what had distracted him.

  Prisoners were streaming in through the door and, though none of them moved any faster than a brisk pace, the word ‘fleeing’ could definitely be applied. They dispersed thems
elves throughout the room, sat at the tables or pressed their backs to the walls, one eye on the door.

  ‘She had help. I fucking know it.’ There were shouts coming from the corridor, a man in mid-rant. ‘And someone’s going to tell me right now before I start busting fucking skulls. No one gets to fucking sucker-punch me and get away with it.’

  There was another surge of prisoners into the room, like sheep before the wolf.

  ‘Sit down,’ Janine hissed, but Duncan ignored her, taking to his feet to see over their heads.

  Amanda, unable to help herself, did the same.

  The man who appeared was short, barely as tall as Amanda. His head was shaved and he was wiry, a body leaned down to everything hard – muscle and gristle and bone. He was only in a vest, prison trousers and boots, indifferent to the cold. His bare arms were a tangle of Abra tattoos that climbed up to his neck like creepers on a fence post.

  Anger rolled off him, the man trembling like something about to explode.

  In two steps, he was standing on the nearest table, glaring around at the now silent room. His eyes twitched from face to face, looking for the guilty party. His gaze was like a flame, melting away the prisoners around him, making them shrink and retreat. There was a bandage around his head, the bloodstain ringed in yellow, in need of changing.

  The addicts had been right. Amanda didn’t need to be told. This must be Mallory, the man who had attacked Karina and forced her to flee.

  His eyes finally came to rest on Duncan, the man’s unfortunate height presenting him as a target.

  The tables shivered as Mallory stormed his way across them, a finger pointed at Duncan to pin him in place.

  ‘Fucking you, wasn’t it?’

  The guards in the area did nothing, so motionless that Amanda began to wonder if they weren’t just uniforms propped up like exhibition pieces.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Duncan, retreating from the smaller man’s fury.

  ‘You did it. You absolutely fucking did it. Cold-cocked me like a fucking coward and helped her escape. Well, we’re fucking having it. Right fucking now.’