Incarceration

Chapter Four

I wait for what seems like too short a time. I had just begun to breathe normally when the buzzer sounds. A square of light appears on the floor and steadily grows larger as doors swing open. Loud thuds greet my ears as the guards thunder through. Tough hands wrap tightly around my forearms and pull me to standing. I collapse against them, my legs too weak to support my own body.

"Damn, Harriet, first time in? Didn't know the Sim could break you." The guard to my left snickered and I smile slightly, despite myself. I recognize the voice. I have barely even started my sentence and I already miss my brother.

"Easy for you to say, Grayson. Maybe you should try it sometime." I cough the last word and am thrown into a fit of uncontrollable gasps and wheezes. My lungs are still stinging, deficient of air.

Grayson laughs and hits me hard on the back. I gag. He raises the visor on his helmet and makes a face at me before quickly lowering it again, not wanting anyone to see his breach in procedure. Seeing his face again, if only for a moment, makes me glad. Through his helmet, he begins to talk again, "All right, Harriet, let's go." He grows serious. "We're going to take you to your cell now."

"Okay," I say.

They begin walking, letting my feet drag against the floor as they haul me out of the game room. Two more guards stand at the entrance holding guns, their faces masked by white helmets and their bodies protected by white suits. I notice that as I pass, one moves his head slightly to follow me. I probably know him, too, although I can't be sure.

As soon as I pass the threshold out of the game room, another prisoner is carried around the corner to replace me, kicking and screaming. I don't recognize him. I thought I knew every prisoner here, but his face is unfamiliar to me.

His eyes are wild with pain and the cuts and bruises from the last time he was in the game are far from healing. Miraculously, he's able to fight free from his captors. Stumbling at first, he regains his balance and bolts, his arms flailing drastically like windmills trying to speed him up, his ragged hair whipping behind him.

I'm yanked sideways as the guards carrying me swiftly sidestep, allowing the other guards to run after the escapee. Run. Run as fast as you can and don't look back, I think. But soon the guards return, as I knew they would, triumphantly bearing the runaway. He is limp in their arms, his head bleeding, and his hands bound together behind his back. He appears utterly defeated. At least you went down fighting.

He's dragged carelessly to the game room entrance and thrown in. The doors seal him inside, and I shudder, remembering the ominous darkness before a game is about to start.

My guards slowly remove me from the wall and continue down the hall, eyes straight ahead and heads never moving. They continue walking as though nothing has happened.

I am carried to my cell and dumped at the foot of my bed. I press my face into the tiled floor and curl into a ball, unable to move any farther.

"See ya, Harriet," Grayson whispers to me. I hear him rustling around, and then something drops to the floor. "You're going to be okay. I persuaded them to let you into Honors."

Honors. I repeat the word in my head and smile. I have never felt so grateful for Grayson in my life.

Ranum Correctional Institute splits prisoners into three divisions based on crime, behavior, and threat. General Population is where most of the prisoners remain for the entirety of their sentence. It is so much bigger than the other two divisions that it had to be separated into three different pods. These prisoners normally get assigned games between tiers two and three.

T-1s, the most brutal games, are reserved for solitary prisoners—the most threatening and harmful of the lot. Honors is the smallest, most exclusive group of prisoners—and is highly despised by the other two because of their privileges. These are the prisoners who have displayed good behavior and only committed small crimes, or who were routinely beaten on in Gen Pop. The Honors Hall is a bit safer than the other two divisions and inmates there get a few more freedoms, as well.