Authors: Felicia Jedlicka
Danato raised his chin, looking down his nose at her. “Do you know why I let you come here?” he asked.
“Let?” Cori nearly choked on her own saliva. She opened her mouth to barrage him with the many errors in that statement, but he continued.
“Yes,
let
. Don’t think for one second that just anyone can pass over that drawbridge.” She rolled her eyes back and turned back to the sink. “Look at me!” She jumped, feeling the impact of his voice through her spine. His gruff voice still commanded more respect than she could deny. She slipped a fork out of the sink and turned back to him. She crossed her arms effectively hiding the flatware, as well as giving her a comforting barrier between them.
“This place is the most highly guarded secret in the world, and you have just become one of the privileged few to safeguard it. I brought you here, because you are strong, quick-witted—”
“You don't even know me,” Cori defended. “I'm just somebody who got shoved in a car...blindfolded, duck taped, raped, and sold to a stranger!” Cori ground out the words.
Danato paused taking in her words before speaking. “Yes, all of those things happened to you, and you are still standing. You are bucking my authority—which is something of a novelty for me. And you are still...” Danato grabbed her wrist and dragged it away from the crook of her elbow. He forced the hidden fork from her hand and held it up to her. “...fighting.” He tossed the fork in the sink behind her and she waited to see what her punishment would be.
“We have a long road ahead, but just do me a favor and remember that Ethan isn't to blame for you being here. Keep your anger and bitterness directed at me until you accept the responsibility of this place.” Danato stepped away from her and headed to the door.
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Cori murmured.
“Listen, Missy,” Danato paused at the door and looked back at her. “I’m going to remind you once more about keeping the house tidy. I hope you hear me. If not… well, you just have a nice day. We’ll be back in time for supper. I’ll leave that up to you, if you can manage it.”
“Clean the house, fix supper; I think I can handle that, master.” She raised her folded arms and blinked her eyes for effect even though years without a television probably left him clueless about the origin of her joke.
He left without another word. As soon as the door latched shut, she went upstairs to sleep, leaving a third layer of dirty dishes in the sink.
Ethan and Danato made their way on a thin stone path to the entrance of the prison. The entrance was one small door against the towering concrete slabs that made up the outer walls of the prison. Though the short distance only took them a couple of minutes, Ethan was reminded that they were, in fact, in an arctic tundra.
Though he hadn’t really thought about trying to escape from this place, he realized that
running away
wasn’t an option. He would have a red face and frostbitten fingers just from this one-minute commute.
Inside the entrance there was a niche with a series of lockers to place their coats. Beyond that, the main foyer was just a big empty room with a white waxed floor. Though it was spacious enough to hold an elephant or two, its only purpose seemed to be directing one in four different directions. Straight from the lockers up a short set of steps was a hall with a green label sign that read
Main Offices
. The other options were two hallways that branched the same direction away from the foyer. Each had signs hanging from the tall ceilings. One hallway led to the
Docks
and the other led to the
Cafeteria
and
Gym
. Left of the hallways in the main room was a set of elevators and a door that read
Stairs
.
Ethan wasn’t sure what he had expected: dark concrete, wet from dripping pipes, fluorescent lights flickering from above, and the faint sound of screaming creeping in from beyond thick metal doors. Instead, it was well lit and clean, sterile even.
He looked over at Danato, who was patiently waiting for him to observe his surroundings. “We’ll head to my office first.” Danato took the lead to the short staircase. Despite the man’s limp, he hefted himself up the stairs with ease.
Ethan followed him while lagging back a little. He wasn’t sure if it was intentional or instinctual, but they were walking down a long hallway with no discernible exits. They did pass by several open doors, but they led to darkened vacant office spaces.
At some point, no closer to the end of the hallway than they were from the beginning of it, Danato turned into a room. The door to the room was wood, with a clear window in it that bore bold black letters: WARDEN. Unlike the other offices, this also had a plexi-glass window looking onto the hallway.
That was apparently the only perk about the room, because it smelled of old coffee and stale cigars. It was furnished with a heavy metal desk, three chairs—a swivel one for the desk and two vinyl cushioned ones facing it—two rusty file cabinets—one short, one tall—and a water cooler that looked like it hadn’t been drunk from in years. Even the chairs looked like they had been auctioned off from a business foreclosure in 1979.
“Is this it?” Ethan didn’t mean to sound pretentious, but it
was
a disappointment.
“Yes, this is where I sign endless papers that have nothing to do with what we do here.” Danato sat down at his desk and pulled out a pencil and paper from the middle drawer.
“What do you do here?” Ethan asked.
“This facility holds nearly 300 chronic, intrinsic offenders,” Danato started without any prefacing.
“These… inmates are here because they are either dangerous or onerous on human resources. They are not all at fault for what they do. For some the behavior is innate. It cannot be changed or rehabilitated. Do you understand that?”
He shrugged and nodded, not sure whether to answer for his comprehension of Danato’s lecture or the English language in general. He sat down in one of the chairs facing the desk and leaned in so he would at least look studious.
“We do not rehabilitate prisoners, because they cannot change their behaviors,” Danato clarified a little further. “If there was even the slightest chance they could be, they wouldn’t be here, understood?”
Ethan nodded.
“I’m going to take you on a tour today, to familiarize you with the basic layout of the prison. I certainly don’t expect you to remember everything today, but keep in mind, when I tell you to walk a certain way, talk a certain way, it is important. In this place, details can mean the difference between life and death.”
“What will I be doing here?” he asked.
“First and foremost, you will be put on a diet regimen and an exercise program. Your primary duties for the time being will be researching and studying the inmates. Those files behind you hold detailed descriptions of each inmate. You must be able to identify all the inmates, know their strengths, and know their weaknesses. As well as feeding schedules, medications etcetera. On top of that, I have an entire library of books on the specific genres of inmates that you may encounter here.”
“How long will that take?”
“It took me nearly two years, but I wasn’t pressed to do it any faster,” Danato said.
“What happens after that?”
“You’ll work as a guard. I’ll bump you to different levels of the prison as you become comfortable with each group. The floors are divided by categories of offenders. We are on the main floor which contains offices, supplies, the docks, cafeteria, kitchen, and the gym.” Danato drew a haphazard building diagram and designated the main floor. “Below us is the basement and sub-basement. The sub-basement contains the incinerators, the furnaces, the electrical work, and the basement contains the
photophobes
, as we call them.”
A question was just beginning to form on Ethan’s lips, but Danato placed up a finger to stop him. “The level above us,” he continued, “houses the animals, along with the infirmary which provides the complex and varying sustenance needs for each animal, as well as medical care for the animals and the staff.” Ethan’s rutted brow did nothing to slow Danato’s description. “Above that are the part-timers, then the transmorphs, followed by the seducers, then the sorcerers, and finally the elementals.” Danato scribbled each label on his diagram with unintelligible script. “We do have roof access by stairs. I always have a number of guards watching our perimeter, just in case.”
Ethan waited for him to elaborate on the
just in case
part of his sentence, but no other information was offered. As it was, the vague information he had been given was conjuring more questions than he could possibly choose between.
“Understand?” Danato asked, shoving the scribbled diagram to him for reference.
Not in the least.
Ethan gave an absent-minded nod despite his confusion. “This prison…” He let the sentence hang in the air while he tried to phrase the end just right. “It doesn’t hold any humans, does it?” He waved to the paper.
“No.” Danato offered nothing more, but he continued to watch him, probably to gauge his reaction.
He wasn’t sure if it was the abundance of information being thrown at him, the weight of responsibility being placed on him, or the overall upheaval of his definition of normal, but he was feeling sick to his stomach. The man sitting across from him hadn’t just purchased him for slave labor. He had recruited him to learn, grow, and serve as an asset to his staff.
Even though refusal was clearly not an option, he wanted to tell Danato he had made a huge mistake. His only talent besides being a punching bag, and stealing, was running away from responsibility. He had always assumed that he would end up in a prison, but as an inmate, not a guard. How could Danato have chosen him?
There was a tap on the window of the door. He turned back to see the short man with the red hair and beard that had driven the stagecoach for them. Danato waved him in. “We didn’t get a chance for introductions the other day,” Danato said. “Belus, this is Ethan. Ethan, Belus. Belus is my right-hand man. He keeps me informed of what’s going on in the prison at all times. Without him, I’d be lost.”
Ethan stood to greet him. Belus could have stood eye to eye with most ten-year-olds, but Ethan loomed over him by a foot. Which put Danato over a foot and half taller than him. Ethan wondered if that created any problems. If anything, it made the partnership interesting.
Belus put out his hand and Ethan shook it. The dwarf had small hands, just as he expected, but they were coarse and strong. “Good to meet you, boy.” He turned to Danato. “I hope your first order of business is to beef him up.”
Ethan pulled his hand away. He wasn’t sure how to take the almost insult.
“Yes, it is,” Danato said as if it was written and highlighted on his to do list already, right along with
buy milk
.
Danato stood from his desk chair and moved around to the door. “Today I’m going to show Ethan around. I’m expecting a call from my other purchase. We’re calling her Missy for now. She’s reluctant to offer any personal information.” Belus gave a grunt and rolled his eyes. “If you’re still here when she calls, would you explain to her that she’s going to either have to start doing as I ask, or deal with the issues that arise from her insubordination on her own.”
“Yup, will do; not much of a housekeeper?” Belus asked as he took up Danato’s chair behind the desk.
“Not yet,” Danato said with a tinge of a grin before ushering Ethan out the door.
The basement reminded Ethan of a dog kennel. If that dog kennel were in the dungeon of a castle. Out of the elevator, they had the option of the first long corridor perpendicular to them, or they could have gone left which would have offered access to several more aisles of cells.
The passages were lit with migraine-inducing yellow fluorescents. The incessant hum they gave off was soon drowned out by the sounds of the inmates reacting to their presence. The pitched screams reminded Ethan of the creature outside his window that first night.
“This is the basement,” Danato yelled over the noise. “It holds our photophobes.” Danato air quoted the word. “Our night dwellers and light-sensitive inmates are down here.”
Danato moved forward into the first passageway and Ethan followed directly behind him as he was instructed. The centerline between the adjacent cells held a narrow trench to drain off excess… fluids. Despite the precaution, the area smelled clean, perhaps a little musty, but not overpoweringly so.
The creatures pushing their arms through the bars of their confinements all looked pale, but not one looked like the other. Some were hairy, some were bald, some had fangs and claws, and some looked almost human.
“Night dwellers?” Ethan drew in closer to Danato’s back so he could hear him.
Danato glanced back, apparently interpreting his proximity as distress. “Just stay to the middle between the cells and you’ll be fine. They will try to scare you. Don’t jump back, or you’ll be too close to the other side.”