User: SusieMusie
Mood: Pissed off
Have you ever seen that movie Chicago? Erica = Roxie, and Sara = Velma. Both should be locked up ASAP. They’re both crazy and they deserve each other. They are a severe, SEVERE pain in my butt.
TWENTY-ONE
JACK’S CELL WAS BARE AND cramped, the floor too small for him to lie flat. Other than the miniature size, it seemed like the prisons he’d seen on TV: bare cement and cinder block, steel bars for a door, and fitted with its own steel toilet.
He’d been there for sixteen hours—the soldiers hadn’t taken his watch or even frisked him. Although two had escorted him down the narrow corridor to his cell, the men seemed almost afraid to touch him, let alone talk to him. He wasn’t a threat in any way—he felt weak and drained of energy, his head still ringing from the noise weapon outside, and his hearing was only now beginning to come back.
The others in the prison had been a blur as he was marched to his cell. They’d stood at the bars of their cells, calling to him, yelling at the soldiers, but he hadn’t been able to hear a word of it.
One way the prison was different from the ones he’d seen on TV: it wasn’t segregated. He’d seen both boys and girls in the cells he’d passed, and now he could hear their muffled voices: sometimes talking, often yelling, and occasionally crying. If there was any pattern it was that they were all teenagers. Jack was among the older ones, he guessed, but no one looked more than eighteen or nineteen. The most talkative, a guy named Eddie, claimed he was twenty-one, but Jack didn’t believe him.
Most of the conversation was about escape, but none of it made much sense to him. The soldiers were keeping them all drugged—some yellow powder that they mixed into the water—so his head felt cloudy, but Jack tried to sort out the details in his mind. Eddie talked about riots in Salt Lake and news reports of a rebellion. Others spoke of a girl who could burn white-hot and still be fine, or a boy who could hold his breath for days.
But even those conversations were scarce. No one said much at all, other than to curse at the soldiers when they brought in a new prisoner, or to complain about the food.
Jack hadn’t complained yet. He’d stayed completely quiet. From his cell, he could see only three others—the one directly across from him and the two on either side: numbers thirty-two, thirty-three, and thirty-four. They were all empty. And Jack didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
He wondered if he’d ever see Aubrey again. No one in the prison knew what lay before them, but all of them agreed that it couldn’t be good. They were being treated like hardened criminals, like violent killers. After treatment like this, no one was just going to let them go home.
Worse than the thought that he’d never see Aubrey again was knowing that she’d try to rescue him. Two days ago he would have considered Aubrey lost to him—a former friend who couldn’t be counted on for anything. But now she was different. She’d try to get him out, or, worse yet, reveal herself and try to get into the prison with him. He prayed she wouldn’t.
And Jack didn’t belong here. He wasn’t a Positive. He couldn’t do anything unusual. Something had gone wrong. Maybe there was someone else, someone like Aubrey, who switched the test results. Someone else was marked as a Negative and Jack was a Positive.
A familiar clank echoed down the hall as the main door was unlocked and opened. It felt too soon for food, but Jack obediently pushed his flimsy plastic bowl under the door for his evening ration.
Eddie, as usual, was the first to start talking.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got me a lawyer yet?” he said.
“Shut up, Eleven,” the soldier snapped back. They referred to everyone by their numbers, but Jack didn’t even know what his was. He figured that was a good thing. Stay out of the way and survive.
“Oh, good,” Eddie continued, “you’re bringing us more friends. What did this one do?”
Jack couldn’t hear a response from the soldier. Instead, he heard the voice of Josi, another prisoner who seemed to have a little more sense.
“What’s your name, kid?” she asked.
“His name is Thirty-One, I bet,” Eddie answered, laughing.
“What is it?” Josi asked again.
“Cesar,” another voice said. “Cesar Carbajal.”
“What do you do?” another one shouted.
“And what did they do to you?” Eddie added.
Cesar didn’t answer, but a moment later Jack could hear the screech of metal on concrete as a nearby door opened. He probably was thirty-one, like Eddie had said.
“Well, welcome to hell, Cesar Carbajal,” another teen said. “Let me tell you how this place works: you stay here, freezing at night and burning up in the day, and no one tells you anything. And then, at some point, you get hauled away.”
Eddie piped up. “Why don’t you tell Cesar where he gets taken, Private?”
“That’s Sergeant,” the soldier’s voice barked. “And shut up all of you or I’ll turn on the water.”
Jack looked up at the ceiling and the sprinkler head that was embedded in the cement. That was the punishment for talking back, and they gave it to everyone, no matter who had been harassing them.
“Bring it on,” Eddie shouted. “I need a shower.”
Several of the other prisoners yelled at Eddie to shut up.
The metal cell door closed with another squeal, and locked into place.
“We’re getting two more today,” the soldier bellowed. “If I hear so much as a word from any of you, I’m turning it on.”
A moment later the main door closed.
“Don’t do it to us again, Eddie,” Josi said. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“If they weren’t pumping me full of this yellow crap . . . ,” he answered.
“Then what?” she said, with an unhappy laugh. “You’d punch through the ceiling and fly away?”
He didn’t answer.
“What is it you do again?” she said, continuing to needle him. “You never say, but I bet it’s absolutely amazing.”
There was silence for a moment.
“What do you do, Carbajal?” another voice called out.
There was no answer.
“They drug you in here,” the voice said again. “Valium or Klonopin, or something. It makes you tired, and screws up your head. If you can do something to get us out of here, do it now.”
Josi jumped in before Carbajal had time to respond. “And if you can do it, it had better be awesome enough to get us
“I—” Carbajal began. “It’s stupid. It’s a dumb trick. I can count things. That’s it.”
“You count things?” someone asked. “Big deal.”
“I mean,” Carbajal said, sounding frustrated, “I can see anything for a couple seconds and tell you how many things are there. Like a bunch of ants, or people in a stadium.”
“Really?” Josi asked. “How fast? How big?”
“Pretty fast. And big, but not too big to look at. Like, I tried to count the stars but I couldn’t because I kept having to turn my head to see them all, and that messes it up.”
“That’s a solid Lam 2,” Eddie said.
Josi laughed. “You don’t even know what that means.”
“I told you,” Eddie answered. “I heard it from the guards. Lambda 2 means no military use.”
“And they explained this all to you?” Josi said.
