“Thanks, doc,” I said, holding out my hand.
He refused to shake hands, instead backing away, like maybe freak DNA was catching. “All I’ve done is patch you up so you can fight another day—to the death,” he said. “Go. Go!”
“Okay. But thanks,” I said. “I won’t forget it.”
“You will.” The doctor sounded resigned, not angry. “They always do.”
There was nothing to say to that. When I left the Infirmary, I saw that my section was outside for our hour of sunlight and exercise. I needed some sun.
CHAPTER 23
I went outside, trying not to limp but of course limping. Every step felt like it was tearing the staples out of my side, and the wound had started leaking blood again. The doc had given me a paper packet of something to rub into it if it got infected, which I was positive it would. The packet said “Sulfa Powder, Veterinary Use Only.” But it was what I had, and given my wings, laughably appropriate.
Everyone turned to look when I came through the metal door. Our outdoor exercise space was about as big as our cafeteria—concrete paved and walled, with the iron-bar cage overhead. We couldn’t see shit, except whatever the sky was doing overhead. Not a place where you could appreciate the varied, wondrous beauty of the outdoors. I’d flown over forests, lakes, clear mountain streams…
“Good job on Kenton, hey,” a prisoner said to me. She was tall and had very white skin and a shaved head.
“What do you mean?”
“He died, didn’t he?” the woman said indifferently.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said. Now I would never know who had hired him to kill me. This was all so stupid. Maybe it was the new plasma talking, but I was just so sick of this whole asinine kill-or-be-killed policy.
“Well, he’s dead.” The prisoner spit a gob of something onto the cracked pavement. “You’ll get an extra ration tonight.”
Yes, of course. One of the unspoken features of Devil’s Hill was that murder wasn’t necessarily treated like a crime here… it was more like something you were rewarded for. Fewer prisoners meant more profits, right?
And extra rations? Was that something to get excited about? Oh, boy, more swill, I thought. I stepped away from the inmate in case she suddenly, you know, tried to kill me for extra food rations, and looked at my fellow prisoners.
“Listen, guys,” I said, raising my voice. “We have to stop this!” Cameras were no doubt recording us, and no doubt I’d be flogged or something, but I couldn’t stay silent. Not anymore. Someone had been hired to kill me, and had been only too happy to do it, knowing that he’d get his payout, plus a little extra from the prison system itself.
“Stop what?” One guy, whose skin used to be brown but had dope-faded to a kind of gray-beige, looked at me, puzzled. He rocked back and forth from one foot to another, his hand jittery. He’d need another hit soon and would do anything to get it—kill his cellmate? The person next to him in the pen? Me?
“Stop killing each other!” I shouted so everyone could hear me. “We’re not animals! We’ve got nothing against each other! Why do we have to keep fighting, killing each other for no reason? Just because they want us to?”
Another guy, short and dark, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “’Cause they give us extra rations if we kill somebody.”
Okay, his logic was sound, I’d give him that, but holy mother!
“Extra rations of the crap they call food?” I yelled. The prisoners were now gathered around me, many looking scared, glancing at the cameras. Some of them might agree with me, but that didn’t mean they were going to go against McCallum, not with all those eyes on them.
“We could take turns each giving one spoon of food to someone else. That person would have a huge meal, and we’d only be down one spoonful! Think about it! We don’t have to kill each other! We don’t have to be trained… dogs, doing stuff to make them happy! They get off on this shit, you know? What if we just said, No more?”
Some inmates were looking intrigued by this novel idea of no more killing, but others were shaking their heads, looking either scared or angry.
“I like killing people!” someone in the back shouted. “And they give me dope when I do!” There were many nods at this.
There was no chance of talking my way around that. Dope was a