Page 1 of Powerless
Prologue
JANDRO
THREE YEARS PRE-COLLAPSE
The coffee stopped kicking in six hours ago, but I choked down the bitter liquid anyway. It was the only thing that kept me going on this sixteen-hour shift. My fourth double-shift this week.
I winced at the sound of Sergeant Crodick's baton clanging on the inmates' metal doors. What an asshole. Guards, inmates, and even other supervisors hated that guy. Sure, this was the mental health building, where most inmates paced, rocked, scratched the walls, and talked to themselves at all hours of the night. But some of them were trying to sleep, too, goddamnit.
That smug asshole knocked his baton on every. Single. Cell door.
Whoever was awake became agitated, slamming their palms on the doors and yelling through the small plexiglass window. That alerted anyone who'd been sleeping, jolted awake by the initial clang and now disoriented by all the commotion.
Crodick chuckled as he returned back to the office. My grim expression apparently amused him even more.
"There ya go, rookie." He sat down in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk. "Get busy and settle the nut jobs down." With a lace of his fingers over his belly, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. It didn't even take a minute for him to start snoring.
"Asshole," I grumbled, tossing my paper coffee cup into the trash can.
So much for a relaxing rest of the shift. I had a sinking feeling he'd call me for overtime again tomorrow. The supervisors always begged and pleaded and harassed the new guards to stay. Turnover was high at these government facilities while pay and benefits were laughably nonexistent. Only the old-timers could sit back and collect a decent check. Their wages had been negotiated back when labor unions still had power. Nowadays the newcomers did all the dirty work for basically slave wages.
We all knew the world was going to hell in a handbasket, it was just a matter of when. The twenty-year veterans who still had some value in their retirement accounts were just waiting for the right moment to cash out. They watched the slimy politicians pandering for votes and threw their support behind the most outlandish claims and emptiest promises—usually something to protect the dwindling assets they spent a lifetime building.
My generation? Oh, we were fucked. And no one gave a shit.
My footsteps were heavy as I walked out onto the floor, pulling my baton from the loop in my belt. Some inmates went quiet at just the sight of me holding it.
A sigh deflated my chest, the baton heavy in my hand. This wasn't me. I got no pleasure out of yelling at people in cages, many of whom didn't even know what was going on. All I wanted to do was fix motorcycles and bring a girl home once in a while. I didn't get paid enough to find any joy in scaring people.
Crodick was already asleep, so why did it matter if the inmates kept yelling and hitting the doors? If I got fired for insubordination, good fucking riddance.
I walked the floor like a zombie, then ascended the stairs to the upper tier. I looked straight in front of me, but my eyes didn't focus on anything.Damn, my feet and back hurt like a bitch. At twenty-one years old, this job already had me aching like an old man. Fuck, I just wanted to go home.
Just like on the floor, the inmates on the upper tier went quiet at the sight of me. No yelling or baton-banging necessary. Some of them were probably spooked by when I first got hired and did some baton-swinging to prove myself. Now a whole two months later, I was so fucking over it.
One cell at the end didn't quiet down like the rest. I paused in front of the door to the sound of incoherent mumbling, followed by guttural, tortured screaming.
"Hey," I knocked my baton on the door twice. "Calm down in there and go to sleep."
I heard a series of thumping sounds, like a body being thrown against the walls, then whimpering and more screams.
"Hey!" I knocked harder on the door. "I said calm the fuck down and go to sleep!"
"I can't!"
The answer startled me. Not that it was unusual for inmates to talk to us, but amid all the mumbling and screaming, those two words sounded strangely coherent.
I pulled my flashlight from my belt, clicked it on and shined it through the square window.
A pale, skinny kid shielded his eyes from where he sat against the wall. He wore the white inmate-issued pants but had taken his shirt off, as many of the male inmates did to sleep.
"Jesus fuck," I swore, lowering the light from his face to his torso.
He was covered in scar tissue. Burns, cuts, scrapes and everything imaginable crisscrossed over his thin, malnourished body. It hardly looked like he had any unmarked skin at all.
When he lowered his hands from his eyes, I saw more scarring on one side of his face. A wicked slash cut through one eye, the iris of which looked almost completely white. His other eye was dark brown, almost black like the hair buzzed close to his scalp.
"You don't have to sleep, just quit fucking screaming," I told him, making sure to add a hard edge to my voice.
