Liam

I CAN BARELY breathe. Seeing Skylar in here is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. My daughter. The woman. The blood on the floor. What had Skylar just witnessed? She was as pale as I had ever seen her, and there was a wound on her shoulder. It feels like someone has just hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer.

To think that she goes through things—terrible things—and I have no idea what those things are is enough to make me panic. My heart races and I almost feel like I need to chase after her, to hold her close and tell her it will be all right. But the guards would take me down in a second.

I don’t know what is planned for me now. At the time, my defense against the twins seemed like the right thing to do, but since I am responsible for the death of one of them, my fate could be that of the man in the cage. I might be the next person to be publicly executed. This meeting might just be Warden Black’s way of telling me because he wants to see the fear in my eyes when I find out that I will die.

I am fully prepared to use the cure as my final playing card. It may work. It may not. But all I can do is try.

“Sorting hasn’t been treating you well since you’ve been here,” Black says, pointing to my face. “You’ve got bruises all over you, you know.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Still, I haven’t found too many people stand up to the twins and live to tell the tale,” he says. “I don’t condone fighting in my prison, but I consider what you did to be self-defense.”

It’s the first time I’ve felt relief in a while, though it’s short-lived by another glance at the bloody floor.

“What’s wrong? Oh, that?” he says, following my eyes. He waves it off. “It’s nothing. Prisoner was making up stories. I don’t have time for them. Claims the girl that was in here was bitten by a greyskin.”

I am having to learn how to hide my horror more and more. Sky was bitten?

Rage. Longing. Sadness. They all find a place in my heart, but I can do nothing with them but stare ahead at the man who holds everyone’s life within these fences by a thread.

Black shakes his head. “She was in her cell for two days and she didn’t turn. Said she fell on one of those spears they use in disposal. I don’t know what to think, other than the prisoner that lied about her was wasting my time.” Black scratches the top of his head and leans back in his chair. “Do you want a drink?”

My eyes travel slowly from the desk to the man’s sunken eyes. “A drink?”

“Whiskey,” he says. “We don’t get a lot of it around the Containment Zone, but a few of us officials get some perks every now and again.” He points to a chair in front of the desk. The puddle of blood has oozed to the front left leg. “Have a seat.”

I pull the chair back slowly and sit on the cushioned surface, trying to keep my left foot drawn in so it doesn’t rest in the blood.

A woman was killed in here right in front of my daughter. My daughter has been bitten by a greyskin and was with someone I had never seen before. And now I’m about to have a drink with the man who stands between me and the outside world.

He pulls out two glasses and sets one of them in front of me. He then uncorks a bottle with his yellow teeth and pours half a glass each. He raises his glass in the air, waiting for me to do the same.

“A toast,” he says.

“What are we toasting?” I ask, reaching for the glass.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Surviving a month?” He lets out a wheezing laugh and I hold the glass in front of me, refusing to raise it up, but he doesn’t notice. He throws back the drink and pours another.

A take a small sip, fearing if I drink even half the glass, with my weight down and lack of nutrition, I would become slobbering drunk before I set it down.

Drinking with the man who is starving me leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Or maybe that’s just the whiskey.

“You and I are a lot alike,” he says. “I just happen to be sitting on this side of the desk, and you’re on that side of the desk.” He knocks back another drink and pours another glass. “We’re just trying to figure out this mess of a life, aren’t we? Where do we go from here? What’s after all this? You know?”

“I thought only death awaited prisoners here,” I say. Perhaps it’s too bold, I’m not sure.

His upper lip curls on one side as if I had just ruined his dinner by telling an unsavory joke. “That’s true,” he finally says. “But it wasn’t always true for you. I bet before you were caught, you thought about the future. Where you would go. What you would do. You wanted to know what was next for you outside the Containment Zone.” He leans forward, a sudden energy bursting from him. “Do prisoners still think that way after being here a long time? Is there still hope out there?” His index finger taps against the top of his desk

“Do you want me to speak honestly?” I ask.

“Your name is Liam, right?”

I nod.

“Liam, look at the blood on the floor.”

I look down and find that the blood has reached my shoe.

“Lying to me is a waste of my time. I obviously don’t like it when people waste my time. Honesty is…encouraged.”

“All right,” I say. “Yes, there is still hope out there.”

He leans forward and slides the bottle of whiskey out of his way.

“What kind of hope, though? Are there some on the brink of escape? Are there some who know something I don’t?”

“No one wants to die,” I say. “Especially in a place like this. Especially when some of us think we didn’t actually commit a crime—that our only crime was living within the Containment Zone when it was created.”

Black waves a finger at me. “Ah, don’t give me that, Liam. You were trying to escape the Containment Zone. That’s an illegal act.”

“Punishable by death, apparently.”

“No one is disputing that,” he says.

“And you think the punishment fits the crime?”

“It’s not for me to decide what is fitting and what is not,” Black says. “It’s my job to enforce the punishment.”

“Your opinion still matters, doesn’t it?”

Black doesn’t answer.

“So, what of the girl that was in here?” I continue. “Does a girl that age deserve to be in a place like this?”

“I’ve given it some thought,” he says. “She was caught trying to break into a home to steal food. So, she was picked up.” He shrugs.

“Everyone here knows what you’re doing,” I say. “They know that they will all die in the end, but some are holding out for something to happen from the outside. Perhaps a law is changed. Maybe the prison is no longer needed.”

“In which case, I exterminate the camp.” He says the words like this is a casual conversation between friends. Like we’re discussing the rules to a game.

“I suppose not everyone has thought of that scenario,” I say slowly. “I guess there is some hope that we will be set free instead of exterminated.”

“I don’t see that happening,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “We can’t risk prisoners here getting out into the real world beyond the Containment Zone. If people found out what we were doing here…” He shakes his head. “And Vulture Hill isn’t even as bad as some of the other prisons. We sort the greyskins. Concord makes them! Dark stuff.”

“Yes…dark…” It is unnerving how open Black is being with me. Knowing that he has just killed someone, what is to stop him from killing me? All he has to do is say a little more than he is comfortable allowing outside his office door and he will pull out his gun and shoot me between the eyes.

“Well, more to the point, I’ve never heard of someone taking care of themselves as you did against the twins. I’m impressed.”

“Thank you.”

“I need someone I can trust,” he says. “I need someone on the inside reporting to me. I need to know what the people of the prison are talking about. I need to know who’s planning an escape and who’s planning to kill someone. That kind of thing.”

“And you want me to be that person?”

“I think so. Are you trustworthy?”

“No one knows me. How would I be able to tell you anything if I don’t have conversations with anyone?”

“Your cellmate is Rusty,” he says. “Rusty has friends. Make his friends your friends.”

I’m not so sure that Rusty has any friends other than me. Sure, there are people he talks to, but I’m the only one he has confided in that I know of.

“But it’s not just about making friends and reporting them,” he says. “It’s about being among them. Getting the view of prisoners from every angle.”

“And how could I do that?”

“You become the janitor,” he says. “A new job. Away from sorting. Away from the greyskins. You mop. You clean. You question people. You find those tunnels underneath the prison.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but what am I supposed to get out of this? Are you assuring me that I won’t be killed?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

Is the man so dense that he can’t fathom me getting something out of the deal? Protection? A shorter sentence? Security? Assurances?

“I just want to know what the benefits of doing this would be,” I ask, trying to be as diplomatic as I can.

The pool of blood now surround the bottom of my shoe, soaking into the fabric.

“Well, for starters, you don’t have to work in sorting. I know it can be stressful. Other than that, you get to feed me information. You and I form a relationship. I don’t tend to kill people I like. I usually stick up for them.”

“Yet, in the end, we’re all dead.”

“In the end, we’re all dead, Liam. What’s the difference if you die in a year or two or if you die tomorrow? Are you hoping to accomplish something? Are you planning an escape?”

I want to pound the man for his idiocy. That, or his arrogance, I’m not sure.

“Of course not,” I say. “I just…”

“You don’t want to die.”

That’s not what I was going to say. “Yes.”

“Well, with this arrangement, we can delay your extermination for a long time. Provided you don’t start wasting my time.”

“Why me?” I ask. “What made you want me to do this? You could have chosen any number of people.”

“Well, for starters you’ve only been here a month. The longer someone stays here, the less likely I am to get reliable information. The best recruits for a job like this are fresh ones. Of course, I’ve got a few old ones in the camp.”

“More people are doing this?” I ask.

“More than you’d think,” he answers. “It’s a great benefit to me. But you rise above the rest. You know the kind of people we don’t need in here.”

“If you don’t want the twins here, why didn’t you just kill them?”

“They have always been an added element of fear,” he says. “They make people feel uncomfortable. When you’ve got enemies all around you, some wearing uniforms, others not, you’re a lot less likely to succeed in trying to escape. The more enemies we can create against each other in here, the better it is for me.”

I think about his words for a moment and let the offer hang in the air. On the one hand, my life within these bars will be easier so long as no one finds out what I’m doing. On the other hand, I will have to report to Warden Black all the time and be pressured to feed him information regularly, whether I have any or not.

“What kind of access would I have?” I ask. “I can’t just get information without being allowed to go all over the camp.”

“Well, that’s the idea,” he says. “I would grant you access to the entire camp. You clean what needs to be cleaned. You listen where you can. You’re more of a spy than a janitor.”

If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, that means I will have access to the women’s part of the prison, which also means I will be able to see Sky. I could drop her messages. We would be able to communicate. I would also be able to spot weaknesses within the camp, paving the way for our escape. Apart from a couple of downsides, Warden Black has just handed me my ticket out of here if I can play my cards right.

“If you don’t want to do it…”

“I’ll do it,” I say, cutting him off. “I think it could be dangerous, but I will do it. If anything it will get me out of sorting.”

He shrugs. “That’s what I thought. I’ll have everything arranged for you. Davis will instruct you tomorrow morning.”

He waves me off, and I stand to leave, my left shoe squishing in the blood on the ground.

“We have an important relationship forming,” he says. “You can either ruin it, or you can grow it. The more it grows, the longer you live, you see?”

“Yes,” I say.

He leans forward and pulls at a drawer in his desk. He produces a small pad of paper and a pencil then scoots it toward me. “If you violate my trust, I will end you. You think the execution of the man in the cage was bad? I’ll have you skinned alive in front of the camp and let the greyskins feast on your entrails.”

I don’t say anything. There is nothing to say to something like that. Particularly because I believe him wholeheartedly.

“Take notes,” he says. “If anyone asks you why you have paper and a pencil, you tell them you're keeping track of what you’ve cleaned.”

“If someone takes this from me I’m dead.”

He nods and smiles. “Best to keep it hidden away then.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Liam