ever stop being surprised by them?
This courtyard was open to the prison inmates, who were held back by the twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Hundreds of prisoners crowded against the fence, watching eagerly. This was something kind of new, after all. They could see normal, everyday violence in the courtyard. The people mover had promised something different, and man, did it look like McCallum was going to deliver.
There was an operating table in the courtyard. It wasn’t padded or lined with sterile sheets. It was plain metal, beat-up, with fringes of rust around its edges like it’d decided to grow a beard. It was chained to the ground. It had iron loops welded on it.
This was looking… not good.
I did a fast 360, in seconds memorizing the courtyard layout, the one entrance/exit, the high walls, the slimy wet concrete floor. The ceiling was open, which wasn’t saying much, because this whole place still had the thick iron-mesh cover over it. So there’d be no sudden up-and-aways. It felt like a hundred years since the Flock had named that particular maneuver. Since then I’d used it probably a million and a half times. Could not use it now. My wings were still banded, but even if I could use them, I’d never be able to claw my way through that cover. Shit.
A door I hadn’t noticed before opened in the concrete-block wall. The sad-sack doctor who had helped me earlier entered, carrying a black bag. The green floodlight highlighting him did not improve his looks, turning his gray Ope skin into something even more sinister. When the door closed, it was almost impossible to see where it had been. I glanced into his eyes to see any intent to help me. Instead of sympathy, I saw… anticipation. He set his black bag down on the metal table.
The constant blare of the vidscreens around the prison yard changed to a horrible, ear-piercing crackling, and then of course McCallum came on, his wide, tan face filling the screen. Because we needed him to make this scene complete.
“Traitor!” he said with a sneer. For some reason his voice always made me think of oil. Any kind of oil. He just seemed—oily.
I was still in all kinds of pain, and all I wanted to do was kill some nameless prisoner and lie down on their cot because my cot was too far away. I didn’t even care who it was, at this point, just as long as it emptied up a bed nearby. Nice, I thought to myself, and you were just arguing for us to stop killing one another—what, half an hour ago?
When I didn’t respond to his accusations of being a traitor, McCallum yelled, “You’re unredeemable! Another piece of human trash!”
Well, 98 percent human, I thought. I brought one hand up and looked at my fingernails. They were broken and bloody from clawing at the metal arms.
“For far too long you’ve been flouting the rules here,” McCallum went on. The fat rolls around his eyes showed whiter than his tan cheeks. I noticed his lips were wet. Ew.
“We’ve given you shelter and food, and how have you repaid us? We’ve tried to rehabilitate you…”
Oh, they so had not. No one had once tried to rehabilitate me. All they did was let you loose in here with the other criminals, and probably took bets on who would last.
“For ten years!” McCallum finished.
My head whipped around, first to look at a single McCallum screen, then at the doctor.
“Wait—what?” I cried.
CHAPTER 36
“The time has come to show you you’re not special! You are not above the law! You’re just a prisoner like anyone else!” McCallum yelled.
“Okay, right, right,” I said, “but what did you just say? About time?”
McCallum started to say something else, but then someone off camera seemed to want his attention. He stopped and looked away, then looked straight into the camera, as if he were looking right at me. It was really disturbing, and my mind was reeling.
“I said we had been trying to rehabilitate you for ten years,” he said, all pompous wind and certainty.
“No,” I said, my eyes narrowing, filled with purple light. Out of nowhere, a tiny microphone hovered over me on a thin wire. “It has not been ten years!”
Apparently, I was now being transmitted to him directly, because he leaned closer to the camera and said, “Ten. Years. It’s a long time. A long time to be in prison. A long time to learn the rules.