Psion Gamma (9 page)

Intense pain blazed through the spot on Sammy’s hand. He gasped sharply, groaning through gritted teeth.

“It’s okay to scream. I know how badly this is going to hurt—curiosity got the best of me. Do you see this red tube?” he asked, holding it up for his prisoner to see.

Sammy opened his eyes and nodded quickly.

“Fire. It’s what you’re going through now. Do you see this one?” He held up an identical blue tube. “Ice. It makes it all go away, you see. You know how to get the ice, don’t you?”

Sammy closed his eyes tight so he would not answer Stripe’s question. He tried to push the pain out of his mind. He wanted to grab hold of anything that would take his mind off the blistering heat on his hand, but everything he thought of slipped away, leaving only pain. Blinding pain. He wanted to yell and scream and thrash unabashedly. But he wouldn’t allow himself to, even if he couldn’t stop tears from leaking out of his eyes.

Wait for your opportunity to escape. DO NOT SHOW WEAKNESS!
he ordered himself in a voice that sounded much like Byron’s.

Immeasurable time passed and eventually the pain subsided. Sammy could open his eyes now. Stripe had stopped spinning and was now watching him with his immaculate teeth bared and an unreadable look in his gray eyes.

“Impressive,” he said. Sammy wasn’t sure if Stripe was grinning or grimacing. “Not a peep. But remember two things when you go to your room tonight. Number one, that was a very very very tiny little drop on your hand. What if I rubbed it all up your arm? On your ears? On your lips? And number two, you’ve only met fire. I have other tubes. Enough to keep us busy for a long time.”

Stripe dragged out the word
long
as his eyes bored into Sammy’s, waiting to see if he would break.

“No one ever holds out. In the end, I always win. ALWAYS. Maybe that’s why I like the game so much.” He gave Sammy a slight touch on the shoulder. “Have a nice rest.”

After Stripe left, two different Aegis with guns took Sammy into the same room he’d glanced into minutes or hours (or maybe days?) earlier. They left him no opportunity to venture an attack. The young girl with dark hair in the corner was asleep. The men secured his neck to the wall with a chain and checked his arm and leg restraints. After they left, he either passed out or fell asleep.

His rest was fitful. It didn’t seem long before he woke to the sound of the girl being taken from the room in the same fashion that Sammy had been brought in. He watched them go, the girl crying as she was led away, probably to the same room with the black door. His mind raked over his situation for a long time, more than he could keep track of. But then he fell asleep once more. When he woke for the second time, the girl was crying again.

“Are you okay?” Sammy asked her.

Either the girl didn’t hear him or didn’t understand him.

“Hey,” Sammy called out a second time. “Are you all right?” he peered across the room at her. Her short hair didn’t hide her face well. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She clutched her left arm as if it were badly hurt, but he saw nothing wrong with it. Copious amounts of drool fell down her lips and onto her soiled shirt.

“Do you have a name?” he asked. “Can you help me or can I help you?”

When she failed to respond a third time, he stopped asking questions. He huddled against the wall, angling his head so he could watch her across the way. Somehow, he fell asleep in that position.

The next day, the cell door opened and a bowl of soupy oatmeal slid across the floor to him. Some of it sloshed over the sides as it came to rest near Sammy. Another bowl slid to the girl. He’d thought she was sleeping, but the moment the bowl came to rest, she picked it up, drained its contents, and sucked up whatever had spilled near her. Sammy picked up his own bowl and sampled the contents.

It tasted like worn socks blended into small bits. However, he was famished, so he finished it. The girl eyed the little puddle of sludge near his knees, but he wasn’t about to eat off the floor. Moments later, in walked Stripe.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

Sammy didn’t answer.

“Was it better than the gutter you came from?”

More Aegis came in. This time they were wearing their regular uniforms—the green and brown clothes with the pattern muddied in such a way that it hurt Sammy’s eyes to look at it too long.

“Are you ready to play?”

Sammy was led into the room with the black door. He felt the same fear he’d felt the day before. The guards secured him to the chair and left.

The scent of cinnamon was present again when Stripe got close to him. “Did you do your homework?” was the question.

When Sammy wouldn’t answer, the helmet came down. His breakfast came up within five minutes of swirling lights and flashes. When Sammy was good and dizzy again, Stripe spoke up.

“Are you ready to tell me your name so you can leave?”

When Sammy didn’t answer, the creams came out. This time, Stripe introduced Sammy to pressure. He smeared it across the back of Sammy’s hand and waited. Slowly the cream went to work, inducing the most bizarre sensation that someone was sitting on him. As the pressure built, Sammy’s hand began to ache, then worse. At its peak, his hand felt like it was being crushed under an immense weight. All the while, Stripe spoke to him in a calm voice about the history of his pain research and how humans had evolved an especially keen perception of pain.

“We are meant to perceive pain more than other animals. Pain defines us; molds us from infancy. Nothing makes a more indelible impression on our minds than pain.”

About ten minutes into the pressure cream, Sammy started to cry. He stared at his hand, knowing nothing was wrong with it, but unable to stop imagining a giant boulder squashing it. He tried to imagine all the different things that could cause such agony: anvils in cartoons, furniture falling over, an elephant stepping on him—anything to keep his mind off the pain.

A voice in his head begged him to tell Stripe his name, but the voice wasn’t strong enough and Sammy pushed it away. Somewhere far from his consciousness, time ticked away until Stripe called it a day.

As the Aegis led Sammy out of the room, Stripe spoke to him. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Remember that. It can all go away. Remembering that will be your homework today.”

In his cell, as Sammy cradled his hand, which still throbbed horribly, he thought about what Stripe had done to him. His gut told him that Stripe hadn’t expected him to break.
Maybe he’s just testing me
. The idea that Stripe had even worse tools on hand that he hadn’t used yet kept Sammy up late that night.

He waited with dread for Stripe to come back for him the next morning, but Stripe never came. The girl across the room slept most of the time, but Sammy didn’t think he would get her to talk to him, anyway. He passed the time in silence, thinking about how he was going to escape. He thought back to the Grinder and how he’d managed to break out of it.

Anyone on the receiving end of the Juvenile Delinquent Education Facility in Johannesburg called it the Grinder. The education given there was two-fold: learn your books and learn to never come back. Six hours a day spent in class. Six hours a day of manual labor.

As the son of a territorial prosecutor, Sammy knew the theory behind facilities like the Grinder: make prisons miserable, show the prisoners a better way while they serve time, and allow them a chance to reform. According to his dad, the system worked.

Sammy never thought he’d actually experience the Grinder for himself. When he ran away from his foster home, stealing food inevitably followed. He knew it was only a matter of time before he was caught, but he didn’t care. After seeing his first foster father, Calven, die of a stroke, he wouldn’t be transferred to another foster family. He couldn’t do it.

Within several days’ time, security at a grocery store caught him trying to leave with a cart of over a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of food. The police arrested him and put him in a cell. Appearing before Judge Hill, a good friend of his father, had been the most embarrassing moment of his life. However, the judge was sympathetic to Sammy’s unique situation and gave Sammy the territory’s minimum sentence for theft: nine months.

Bitter, frustrated, and lonely, Sammy arrived at the Grinder and immediately sought out others who shared his hatred of just about everything in life. It didn’t take long to find them. Seven boys, all between the ages of twelve and fifteen, formed strong bonds of friendship. They hated the building, they hated the guards, they hated the work, they hated the crappy food, the phony counselors, the uncomfortable cots, and they hated most of the other kids there, too.

After serving five months of his sentence, Sammy’s uncanny ability to think deeply showed itself. It happened late one night while he lay on his cot listening to the night sounds of the forest that bordered the Grinder. The idea to break out settled over his mind. He could not and did not resist the idea. Lying there, he saw the way out. He just needed time to work out the details and get everyone on board.

The Grinder was a single building, large and rectangular, with only one floor. The front third of the building served as the administrative area. It held the main reception area, offices for the directors, the warden, security, and several counselors.

The middle area of the Grinder was the factory and the gathering room. In the gathering room they ate meals, attended group sharing sessions, and played indoor games on Friday nights. They also had several smaller classrooms. Whenever he got bored during classes, Sammy looked out the barred windows and watched other boys work the farm to grow their food. Beyond the farm’s high fence stood a beautiful green forest.

The last area of the Grinder, closest to the forest, was the quarters, or “cells” as Sammy referred to them. All of the cells had tungsten-plated bars on the windows and opened only from the outside.

Security was tight. Cameras left no room for privacy. When a fight broke out, security was on it in seconds. If one of the rougher kids threatened a counselor, security was on it in seconds. Even someone loitering around the halls got pestered by security. All security wore the same stupid uniform: a blue shirt with a sewn-on yellow badge and khaki pants. The kids in the Grinder called the members of security “Blues.”

Crop and livestock from the farm provided their food. The factory and kitchen turned raw food products into edible meals. With one hundred and nine boys in the Grinder, the manpower to make it work was in place. The boys did all the cleaning as well. Two teams of eight were assigned each night to mop, sweep, scrub, collect garbage and dirty linens, or any other oddities that needed doing. Assignments for night shifts came about once a week.

From the very start of planning his escape, Sammy knew it would happen while on cleaning duty. Since Sammy and his friends were all on cleaning duty together, they could meet in the gathering room, go through the factory, and exit out the factory’s emergency doors in the back. From there, they’d have to sprint across the grounds, climb the fence, and disappear into the forest.

He saw two obstacles in this plan. First, the door between the factory and the gathering area was locked. Sammy’s friend Watch, their best thief, was given the task of jimmying it. He learned to pick it while Chuckles and Honk kept lookout.

The second problem was more difficult to solve. They needed more time to get through the factory. Sammy reckoned that the moment they picked the lock, the Blues would know. He and his friends would have to make a beeline for the emergency door. But security had their own door into the factory, and it was much closer to the emergency exit, making it very likely the Blues would cut off their escape.

Breakfast held the answer.

“Brains, eat,” Chuckles ordered as he folded a large slice of French toast into his mouth. “You need food or you’re going to waste away and die. And if you die, then we’re stuck in here, forced to become rehabilitated citizens. You know, boring people. And I don’t want to be boring.”

Sammy ran the calculations through his head again and cursed out loud. “I can’t stop thinking about it! How are we going to find more time?”