Lockdown

AFTERMATH

I WOKE WHERE I'D FALLEN, bowed up like a baby on the hard stone beneath my bed. Opening my eyes, I saw Donovan on the toilet, but there were no jokes this time. He looked at me like I was something nasty he'd just expelled, then turned his attention to the toilet paper.

I hauled myself onto my bunk, my aching limbs protesting about a night spent on the freezing floor. My head was full of the horrors I'd seen during the blood watch, but due to an endless series of nightmares afterward I wasn't sure which of the images were real and which imagined. The wheezers with their dirty coats and filthy needles and gas masks sewn into their faces seemed like something only possible in a twisted dream, but the memory of them was so sharp that I knew they'd really been out there.

With a painful churning in my gut I suddenly remembered Monty, strung up and stabbed with that filthy syringe. Where was he now? What were they doing to him? I put the questions to Donovan, but he simply fixed me with that look of fury again and I quickly shut up.

A couple of sirens later and we all drifted down to the yard. I had never seen so many dark, tired eyes and drawn faces, so many nervous twitches and tear-stained cheeks. That morning, for once, everybody in Furnace looked their age. All the hard stares and swaggers had been replaced by frightened expressions and anxious shuffles as the children huddled in groups for comfort.

Donovan still wasn't talking to me, so I scanned the crowd for Zee. He was standing in a group that included his cellmate and a few others, but it took me a while to recognize him. The cocky smile had gone and his face had drawn in on itself, as if he'd lost half his body weight overnight. He saw me looking and walked over, meeting me halfway across the yard. We both opened our mouths to speak, but neither of us seemed to remember how to have a normal conversation.

The duty roster materialized on-screen, putting me and Donovan back in the kitchen but sending Zee to the laundry. I waited for Monty's name to appear but it had been stripped from the records as if the boy had never existed.

Hard labor was hell that morning. Donovan acted like he couldn't stand the sight of me, posting himself in the canteen serving up mush and leaving the processing to me and another couple of inmates I'd never really spoken to before. I tried asking them questions about the wheezers as we stuffed crate after crate of leftovers into the industrial blender, but they just sent back one-word answers that meant nothing.

To make things worse, Kevin Arnold had been assigned to the trough room too, and several times throughout the morning I was ambushed by flying chunks of rancid meat and mushy vegetables and barbed comments. I remembered the way he'd pushed Monty across the cell last night, sending him to his terrifying fate without a shred of remorse. I wanted to stuff his mouth full of rotten food until he choked, but instead I turned my back on him and suffered his abuse. What else could I do?

Umpteen hours later, after washing the slop from my hair in the showers and donning a fresh uniform, I found myself standing alone in the yard. I didn't realize how much I had come to depend on Donovan. Without him by my side I felt completely lost, utterly vulnerable. I saw him make his way up the stairs to our cell without a backward glance but I didn't try to chase him. Instead I picked an empty table toward the back of the yard and cursed myself for not just curling up in bed last night and ignoring the blood watch like everybody else.

Holding my head in my hands, I didn't hear Zee slide onto the bench opposite me until he coughed gently.

"You look like battered crap," he said as I lifted my head.

"You're no oil painting yourself, mate," I replied, wondering if I still had the ability to smile.

"Where's Big D?" he went on. "You two are like Siamese twins, weird not seeing you joined at the hip."

"I'm not in his good books," I replied after a humorless snort. "After last night. I wouldn't stay in bed, had to see what was going on. He thinks I drew one of them to our cell."

"Seriously?" Zee asked, eyebrows practically leaping from his forehead. "You saw one up close?"

I nodded, trying not to recall the experience in too much detail.

"He'll be okay," Zee went on, cracking his knuckles. "He can be a moody lug, but I'm sure he'll come around."

"I hope so. If he doesn't then I'm a dead man. He's pretty much the only thing standing between me and the Skulls."

"Don't forget me," Zee said with a grin. He flexed his arms, but the satsuma-sized bumps beneath his uniform didn't exactly fill me with confidence. "Could take them all on single-handed with these muscles."

For a moment it looked like we might break free of the gravity of the situation, but it quickly pulled us back in.

"What the hell were they doing last night?" Zee asked, leaning across the table so that his low voice would reach me. "What are those things with the gas masks?" I shrugged and shook my head. "I mean, they look like Nazi storm troopers with those masks and coats. I've seen them on TV. My folks used to watch war documentaries all the time. But why would they be here? And why do they need help breathing? I mean, it's not like this place is full of Zyklon B."

"They're attached to their faces," I told him. "The masks. I saw it last night. The metal is sewn into their skin."

Zee looked like he was about to hurl.

"No way," was all he managed, but I could tell he believed me.

"Whatever they're doing, it's bad," I said. "Donovan told me they took prisoners to a fate worse than death."

"Maybe they're using us as human guinea pigs," Zee suggested. I laughed at the idea but he was serious. "During the Second World War the Nazis and the Japanese army used to perform all these sick experiments on innocent people, civilians and prisoners of war and stuff. They'd cut them up while they were still alive, infect them with all these diseases, biological weapons and gas, blow them up-"

"Come on," I interrupted, but he held up his hand.

"No, seriously. They used prisoners as test subjects. They'd just think of things they could do to them and then they'd do them. They claimed it was all about science, but they were just butchers. I saw this on TV too, but Dad made me go to bed halfway through because it was too gross."

"But we're not in a war, Zee. I mean, this is one of the most advanced countries in the Western world; you can't even call somebody a pensioner now without it being politically incorrect. They're not just going to let somebody open a prison where a bunch of sick freaks do experiments on kids."

"What about a prison where mutant dogs chew up the inmates?" he asked. I didn't have an answer. "Everything changed that summer, Alex, all those gangs on the rampage and all those people who died. People got scared of kids, that's why they got away with building a prison like this, that's why those freaks can take us and butcher us and nobody gives a crap. Did you see who they took, anyway?"

"Monty," I replied. "They took Monty. I didn't see the others."

Zee swore beneath his breath and stared out across the yard. I thought I saw his eyes filling up for a minute but then he wiped his hand across his face and was back to normal.

"Do you think anyone on the outside has any idea?" he asked.

"I don't think anyone on the outside cares. We did the crime, we're doing the time. In their eyes we're just as bad as the kids who went around killing everyone. What was it that blacksuit said? As far as the outside world is concerned, we're already dead."

Somebody in the yard shouted and I looked over to see two inmates pushing each other, faces red and angry. But it died out after a couple of shoves, one of the boys walking away with his hands held up in submission.

"I'm not going to just wait here until I get taken, Zee," I said. "I can't just lie down and let them come for me, let them jab me with their filthy needles and haul me off to some butcher shop."

"Alex, what choice do you have? Throw yourself off the eighth floor? That's about the only way out I can think of, and it isn't pretty."

"I'm just not ready to give up, that's all I'm saying. There's always a way."

"There's a mile of rock in every direction, and those dogs will chew you up if you even piss the wrong way."

I slammed my fist down on the table in frustration.

"Didn't you tell me on the first day that you were getting out of here no matter what?" I asked, ignoring his guilty shrug.

"That was back when I had a little hope," he muttered.

"Well, don't lose it just yet," I said, leaning over the table and once again thinking of mountains, of fresh air. "I'm telling you, there's a way out."

ALL GOOD PRISON breaks need a plan. I'd seen them in films so many times-learning the guard rotation, bribing somebody for blueprints of the sewer system, getting your girlfriend to smuggle in a file so you can get through the bars of your window. One good plan, perfectly executed, that's all it would take to get us out of here.

But I had nothing. There was no guard rotation here, the monsters in their pinstriped suits seemed to patrol when and where they liked. The sewer system just led farther down toward the abyss, dumping its filth in the center of the earth. And even if I'd had a girlfriend, which I didn't and probably never would, we weren't allowed personal visits or letters. Hell, we didn't even have windows. None of the things I'd seen on-screen were going to work in Furnace, but that shouldn't really have been a surprise. I mean, television isn't real life.

On the plus side, my short career as a criminal had programmed my mind to find escape routes wherever I could. From the second I arrived at a target house I'd be scoping out emergency exits just in case I was found out. Which door would offer the quickest getaway, which second-floor window was a leap away from a tree branch or drainpipe, which bush in the garden would offer the darkest, safest hiding place if everything went wrong.

Inside, my mind worked in the same way. I'd take a mental snapshot of the house I was in, the layout, the location of furniture, how many locks were on the door. That way, even if the lights went out I'd know where to run to avoid tripping or crashing into a wall. There's no greater shame for a burglar than cracking your shins on a coffee table or doing cartwheels over a footstool that you'd forgotten was there.

The times I'd almost been caught, and there had been a handful, I'd only escaped because my brain had programmed in its routes and guided me to safety without me having to think about it.

It was like being on autopilot-the adrenaline would kick in and I'd fly along the safest possible route until I was outside. I could almost see the thread of silver light leading me to safety, a trail that I had to follow or my life would be over, a trail that led from the unbearable confines of an unwelcoming house to the utter relief of fresh air.

When I'd first arrived in Furnace the escape artist in my mind had set to work right away, taking a snapshot of every room in the prison, poking and probing everything I knew about the place in search of the path of least resistance, the best possible way of escape. It had drawn a blank every time-except one. Just once I'd imagined that silver thread, one occasion when I'd sensed fresh air and freedom beyond Furnace's impenetrable walls.

Room Two.

Zee wouldn't stop talking as soon as I mentioned a way out. He practically leaped over the table, grabbing me by my collar, his eyes wide with desperation. I clamped a hand over his squawking mouth before the entire prison heard him, then we walked to the most isolated part of the yard we could find and I told him what I was thinking.

"You hear anything more about the cave-in?" I asked, speaking as quietly as I could. There was nobody nearby, but in a place like this you never knew if the walls had ears.

"Just that it happened a couple of months ago," he whispered back. "I heard some kid talking about it in the laundry. Roof came down, killed thirty guys and sent a load more through the vault door, to the infirmary. They haven't come back, though."

I nodded. Donovan had told me the same. It had been the worst disaster in Furnace, apparently, but the blacksuits just acted like it never happened. The room was sealed and anyone caught talking about it got a day in the hole.

"Didn't you notice the smell when we were standing outside the room the other day?" I went on. He shook his head, confused. "Not so much a smell, just a sensation. Something different, like a breath of fresh air."

"It smelled less like sweaty teenage boys, I guess," was all he could manage. "Why, is that your way out?"

I didn't say anything, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, Alex, think about it. For starters, we're who knows how far underground. Even the biggest cave-in in history won't have opened up a path to the surface. You'd need an earthquake measuring like a million on the Richter scale. It just isn't going to happen."

I opened my mouth to argue but it was no good, Zee was on a roll.

"Two: you think that if by some freak of nature and blessing of God a giant crack in the rock opened up to lead us to salvation, that the guards in here would let us hammer away with picks in the very next room? I mean, there isn't even a proper door on Room Two, just a few planks of wood. That's kind of like tempting fate if you run a prison, don't you think?"

I chewed my lip, my brow furrowed. Zee had caught me off guard. He was right, of course. What was I expecting? A miracle exit that nobody had spotted yet? But my mind kept circling back to the silver thread.

"I don't know what's in there, Zee," I replied, casting my eyes across the vast yard to the crack that led to the chipping rooms, guarded as always by an armed blacksuit. "I just know we need to find out."