Page 6 of Factory Thief

The ACLU and even the United Nations have fought for an end to Sandpiper Cove’s draconian solitary confinement policies. All to no avail. I gave up hope for change about six months into my stay.

Without a watch, much less a cell phone, it can be hard to tell what time of day it is in solitary. Or night. All I know is it’s sometime after midnight when the guards appear outside my cell.

“Good, he’s awake,” says Buchanan, a total dick of a bull who once broke my nose because I didn’t move to the back of my cell quickly enough.

“What’s going on?” I ask, moving back fearfully. If someone snitched on me—not that I’ve done anything—I could be subject to a very uncomfortable search procedure which involved rubber gloves and cold, cold hands.

“It’s your lucky night. You get some unscheduled yard time.”

“Yard time, what a load of bullshit. Why?”

“Your next-door neighbor did something to his toilet, and it’s leaking inside the wall. We have to move a crew in to stop the leak or it’s going to flood the basement, and they need access to your wall to do it.”

I sigh. “How long is this going to take? I was just about to fall asleep.”

Buchanan shrugs his massive shoulders. I can only look at him with one eye at a time because of how the holes in my cell have been spaced.

“How the hell should I know? I kick ass for a living, I ain’t no construction guy. Just get your sorry butt into the exercise yard and plan on staying there a while.”

I sigh. “Can I at least bring my mattress?”

“Fuck no.” A dissonant buzz rattles my nerves and my eardrums, and the second door in my cell slides open, the one that leads to my ‘exercise yard.’ “Get in there. Don’t make me ask twice.”

I sullenly walk through the door. It slams shut behind me. Without any source of light, my private exercise yard is nearly pitch black. Looks like a moonless night, with only a tiny sliver of light illuminating the top left corner.

I sink down to my bottom and huddle. It’s a cold night. Inside my cell, I hear men talking and then the loud grinding of a concrete saw. Not that I’d be able to sleep on the cold concrete floor anyway, but that racket doesn’t help.

I sit there, feeling miserable as the men work next door. Something—I think it’s an insect at first—tickles my scalp. I scratch in annoyance and go back to my sulking.

The sensation comes again. I stare up into the ceiling, and something gets in my eye. What the hell?

Then I hear it. Just for a split second after the loud machinery in the next room pauses for a moment. A subtle sawing noise, almost a whisper.

I stare up at the ceiling and can just make out a black shape laying atop the bars, working on them with a handheld saw. What’s the blade made of, diamond? Must be. Whoever it is, they’re cutting their way into my cell every time the noise starts up next door.

Something must have happened. Something bad enough for Xtera to finally decided to shut me up for good. They’ve sent an assassin.

“Hey!” I bang on the door to my cell. “Hey! Somebody’s on the roof!”

“Shut the fuck up,” comes the reply. “Don’t make me get Buchanan in here.”

“Fine, go ahead, get him,” I say. At this point, I’m more afraid of the assassin on the roof than of the brutal guard.

“Ignore him and let’s get this done. I’m hungry.”

The concrete saw spins up again. The assassin on the roof starts his own sawing again.

I smash myself into the far corner and watch with mounting fear as the black shape cuts through the bars and drops down the ten feet to the floor, trailing a rope behind him.

I’m not going down without a fight. I charge at the dark shape and tackle it. The sounds of the saw covers up the sound of our melee as we struggle in the darkness.

My hand brushes across the assassin’s torso. It squishes, and a barely audible shriek comes out of the assassin’s mouth.

This dark garbed figure who has come to kill me is a woman.

VICTORIA

Islam my forehead into the bridge of Jack’s nose when he grabs my tit. He stumbles back, cursing as the loud concrete saw next door grinds away, hiding our battle.

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