Fight or Flight [SAMPLE]

Chapter 3: Counting Crimes

The sound of metal scraping against stone made Dhiren lift his head. His soft humming that had permeated the air stopped abruptly and his hands stilled against his knees. For the briefest of moments there was utter silence apart from the whine of the door. Barters between inmates froze mid-transaction. Games and conversations that filled the time in the block paused. The moment the door fell silent, the cells erupted back into a flurry of activity. Footsteps thundered along the walkways as the boom of heavy military boots came marching through the door.

“Count,” Dhiren whispered as an identical bark came from below.

Getting to his feet, he turned and held out his hand. She hesitated, but took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. The note was still clutched in her other hand, but it was too late to hide it. She tucked it into the waistband of her trousers under the ruse of straightening her shirt and followed him from her cell.

They hurried along the walkway, Dhiren’s hand leaving hers as they stepped onto the spiral staircase at the end of the cells. Grasping the handrail to steady her steps, other inmates bustling behind her, Georgianna let her gaze sweep over the inmates and guards collecting below.

Lyndbury Compound stood away from the city, built just after the Adveni’s arrival on Os-Veruh. Two inmate blocks were filled with prisoners and a third was for those who were destined to become dreta—slaves to Adveni owners. Georgianna had seen the conditions within the compound many times since she volunteered to enter as a medic, but nothing had prepared her for the way it had felt when the block door slammed closed on her as an inmate. The guards entered the block for count and when they forced the inmates out onto a yard for exercise, but cared little for the cruelty that went on between prisoners within the block walls once the doors had closed.

The guards had assumed their positions, spread evenly along the centre of the wide corridor between two rows of cells. One of the guards, a tall, wiry woman, was looking into the conspicuous space surrounding Hallun’s broken body. At the barred fronts of the cells, prisoners lined up, shoulder to shoulder, facing the guards and waiting for the parade to begin.

Count was completed twice a day, once just after sunrise, the other just after sunset. Every day after the morning count, five inmates would be taken out of the block to collect rations for the day. When they returned, the rations were handed over to the brothers to organise distribution. If an inmate had angered the brothers, it didn’t always mean a beating between counts, it could mean that they didn’t eat and suffered the slow decay of starvation instead.

Spotting Vajra and Ta-Dao in their usual position at the centre of the opposite line, Georgianna grasped Dhiren’s arm and steered him along the back of the line closest to them. She didn’t want to be anywhere near them, even though she knew her time was now running out. When he found a wide-enough gap, he slipped in to face forwards with the rest. She stepped in next to him, her shoulder against his arm, fingers brushing the backs of his knuckles.

There were two lines of guards, a dozen sentries, while a thirteenth carried out the count. Georgianna stared at the sand-mix concrete in front of her feet as the last inmates slid into line, some shoving shoulders in order to make room. It was the same parade every day, the names of inmates read out in alphabetical order, the shout of prisoners responding when their name was called, and the incriminating silence when a body lay in wait for collection.

The guard taking count that morning ambled slowly across the block, waiting to make sure that everyone was in place before he began. He was a shrewd-looking Adveni, with mouse-brown hair cropped close to his wide head. His uniform was too tight in places, bulges of flesh appearing at the neck and waist as he moved. Every inmate fell silent when he drew out a tsentyl, having decided that they were all present. He began reading down the list on a tsentyl in a monotonous tone.