“Shivers, you’re up,” he called out in the room, and a back door opened, then two female guards entered. The first of the two who appeared was stout and stern-looking. “Shoes off.” She glanced down at my marble-colored flats.
“Uh, I’m going to need those. I have high arches,” I said. “Those are medically necessary.”
The second guard cocked an eyebrow, but otherwise remained neutral in her expression, and snapped on white gloves. “Stand with your hands on the wall, and arms and legs stretched out,” she ordered instead.
Neither of them seemed to want to listen to me. I did as I was ordered and closed my eyes as her hands, with solid pressure, started to pat me down. Her fingers tangled in my bleached-white hair, touching my scalp, to quickly descend to my décolletage, across and between my breasts, along my ribs, buttocks, and in between my thighs. It felt as if she’d touched every inch of me, and all I could do was stand there.
“Shivers, cavity search,” she said and backed up.
“That’s not necessary, surely,” I argued. The officer came up behind me and kicked my legs even further apart.
“May the elves be generous in caring for you,” one of the guards said and beat on the bus’s ceiling as if announcing good intentions.
It didn’t take long for me to be stripped from everything. Finished with processing, and given my new orange jumpsuit, I slipped my feet into the cheap tennis shoes. Now, shackled together, packed inside the Department of Correction and Modification’s white bus, we were hauled out of the city’s center toward the new facility that once housed the baseball field and its adjacent properties.
The bus was segregated into different compartments, with officers seated in the rear and upfront. There must have been some high-ranked prisoners here to garner so much firepower.
“I’ve heard that the best you can do when you get there is to find a family to join in their magical blocks,” my seatmate said. She’d been weary-eyed, her face forlorn and mouth ungenerous.
There must have been a mistake. I wasn’t magical at all. I shrugged. “I’m not going there to make friends.”
“Then don’t look this way when you get jumped. You’re either going to have to make your bed with these monsters watching over us or those monsters in there. At least inside those walls, they have enough power to keep us from the true pain—the games.”
“Monsters?” It didn’t take long for magic and otherness to be outlawed. Most remained oblivious to our plight. When the dark elves came, they knew to divide and conquer was the best avenue of success. Now, there weren’t many lively folks patrolling the streets. One was either a part of the rebel faction or aligned with them.
“When they came, the supernatural world remained mostly quiet—as if ordered to remain silent, to stay underground. And then they were gathered together, herded away. Some to the prisons and some on to the games.”
“Games?” I asked.
But before she could answer, a guard yelled, “Quiet,” chastising us.
I looked at my seatmate, and she raised her index finger, making the internationally known symbol for murder.
We were all burdened with our failures, misfortunes, and misfires.
But with the invasion, the city shrank back as the elves forcefully relocated everyone into the hilly and historic inner-city.
Rumors had circulated for months as to what happened at the Grave Warden Supernatural Prison. Supposedly, it was the place those who wielded magic went to die.
With two to a seat, I sat in the front of the full bus, next to a window, covered in wire mesh. The bumpy ride through the city was done mostly in silence. I watched the scenery drift by as the bus moved down the paved road. Each mile hitched up my anxiety. I twiddled my thumbs in hopes the motion would relieve my trepidation. Glancing across the aisle to my right, I watched as one prisoner rocked back and forth, while someone else two rows up lowly cried. In so much silence, whimpers could still be heard.
But there must have been a mistake.
I had no magical powers. There was nothing within me that could cause either magical damage or absorb magical blows or devastation.
We’d once been a bustling city of over two hundred thousand people spread out over sixty miles.
The gates for the militarized Inner-City Border parted, and the bus rolled through. I was distracted by the scenery. I’d not been this far from the city center. Before the invasion, the city had been vibrant, but out here, these parts were modern ruins, buildings encased with evidence of past battles. Curled barbed wire rested in this dead zone, as well as signs that cautioned about land mines.
We’d left the polished city behind, and now, out here, this part was war-torn like those pictures from the Second World War.
Buildings were abandoned, broken, and some were burned out. Jagged cinderblock walls crumbled. Vines crawled up that which remained as if nature sought to reclaim that once taken.
Peering out the bus’s front window, I spied the prison looming in the distance. This large, clean-lined massive building seemed out of place in the industrial landscape. A newer, massive compound took the place of the older buildings, of what was once the old bus station and its surrounding bus depots.
Apprehension was just my mind creating a fear of what might happen on the other side of those walls.
Large, armed guards walked the perimeter, while others were visible in the observation towers.
This place might not be too bad, I thought. Since it was new, that meant surely better treatment, upkeep, right?
We moved through several gates. The bus came to a grinding halt, and the guard jumped up like an old retired marine. “Stand up,” he ordered.
We
