He opened his eyes, but that didn’t stop the guard from poking him again.
“I’m awake,” Cooper said. “I’ve been a light sleeper since I was repeatedly stabbed.”
“Yeah,” the guard said. “That makes sense. We were all trying to figure out how to describe that to people. What do you like better, ‘all stuck up like a pincushion’ or ‘like Caesar on the Ides of March’? You know, because that’s when Julius Caesar got ganged up on and stabbed by all those senators.”
“The second one’s a little long,” Cooper said.
The guard considered this piece of constructive criticism for a moment while Cooper struggled to sit up.
He’d never had to deal with this kind of slow, painful healing before. He guessed he should be grateful he was going through it now, because the usual speed of shifter healing would have attracted way too much attention. It would be disturbingly easy to be funneled from a federal penitentiary to some covert medical research facility.
But it was hard to be thankful that each stab wound had its own distinctive, nagging pain: half-toothache and half-burn. He was stiff and sore; even breathing hurt.
He guessed most of his reserves of strength had been spent saving his life. Now he was stuck with a nearly human rate of healing.
Or my griffin is gone for good. Maybe that eye-flash used up the last of its strength.
He reached for it again, trying hard to think about the wide open sky, and found nothing but black emptiness.
He shut his eyes again, trying to peer down into that darkness—
—only to have the guard shake him by the shoulders.
“Watch it, Dawes. You’re not going back to sleep again. You think I came in here and woke you up just to give you a get well card? You’re moving to the pen at Bergen.”
Stridmont to Bergen, damn, that’s a hell of a drive. I’d hate to be stuck with that one.
Oh, right. He wasn’t the driver, not this time. He was the cargo.
Not that it mattered: the guard had to be confused about the date.
“They can’t move me today. The doctor said—”
The guard shook him again. He didn’t do it as roughly as he probably could have, but he didn’t do it gently either.
“This isn’t a democracy.” He enunciated each word clearly, like Cooper might miss the point. “You’ve got stitches, so you’re not going to bleed out before you get to Bergen. And your ride’s here. Your stuff is already packed up.” He kicked a cardboard box, barely half full of his few belongings from his cell. “Anything’s missing, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Nothing was missing. He just didn’t have a lot.
He struggled upright and got dressed, trading the flimsy infirmary gown for the worn khaki jumpsuit with his inmate number. They’d gotten him a new coat—just as khaki and just as obviously numbered, but thicker and with a strip of woolly stuff around the collar. It wasn’t much, but it would keep the worst of the chills off for any time he had to be outside.
He stood still and let the guard snap on the leg shackles.
He hated those. He had learned the hard way not to say anything about it, though. There was no real reason for the guards to believe that he wouldn’t try to cause trouble; they had to protect themselves.
He wasn’t a person to them, and he hadn’t been since he’d arrived. He was an inmate. They didn’t like him, didn’t respect him, and didn’t want to get to know him. The good guards were the ones who still had a baseline level of decency in terms of how they’d treat him; the bad guards were both a lot more numerous and a lot more varied in how they could make his life hell. Some of them were consistently sadistic, bullying everyone within their reach. Others were volatile and unpredictable, nice one minute and brutal the next. Still others chose specific targets and vented all their frustrations on an unlucky few.
Cooper had been lucky enough to avoid being singled out by the last set of bad guards, but he’d had run-ins with every other kind.
And even the good ones didn’t like anyone kicking up a fuss about the restraints.
He tried to still think about it from the point of view of the Marshal who would be transporting him. The only prisoner he’d ever let out of the ankle cuffs for the