Ethan put his glasses back on.
The world sharpened again, though split down the middle. “I’m thinking,” he said quietly. “About what, you little creep? Your mother?”
“About tattoos.” Ethan raised his head and looked at Corkscrew. Behind the lenses, his pale gray eyes were empty.
“You’ve got a spider crawling up your forearm. Supposed to mean you steal and you’ll keep stealing. But the web is crooked.
Cheap ink, too. Homemade. You didn’t get that in prison.
You got it in somebody’s basement so you’d look tougher than you are.” Corkscrew froze. His mouth dropped open, showing bad teeth.
“What are you talking about, four-eyes? I’ve done three bids—” “Two,” Ethan corrected. “And both for assault.
No real rackets. You’re just a street punk they parked in here to scare white-collar guys.” The cell went silent.
Heavy, padded silence. Silent Mike stopped pretending to sleep and turned his head. Big Val slowly set down his puzzle book.
He got off the bunk and walked over. His shadow swallowed Ethan whole. “So you’re smart,” he said. “Got some nerve, too. Most guys like you cry first and wet themselves second. You decided to skip ahead?”
“I’m just analyzing visual data.” Ethan tugged at the collar of his stretched sweater. His voice still shook, but the words came out in clean logical lines.
“You want me afraid. But fear is inefficient. It interferes with memory.”
Val grunted. He was almost curious now. Usually men like this folded at the sight of his arms.
This one acted like an alien. Or an idiot. “Fine. Analyze me.”
Val spread his arms, showing off a torso covered like a mural. “Go ahead, professor. Tell me who I am.”
Tigers snarled across his chest, snakes curled over his ribs, church domes climbed toward his collarbones. It was impressive enough. To civilians.
Ethan squinted. His eyes moved over the broad chest and thick shoulders, then settled on the left forearm, where a large, detailed wolf howled at the moon. “The wolf,” Ethan said.
“Classic prison theater. But the geometry’s off.” He kept going as if Val hadn’t spoken.
“The wolf is packed too densely. The skin around it is different.
Glossy. Scar tissue. You had something covered up, Val. Recently, too. Maybe two years ago.”
The smile slid off Val’s face. “So what? Got tired of the old one. Wanted a new one.
What’s that to you?” “I’m just curious what was there before.” Ethan spoke softly, almost to himself.
“Usually people cover a tattoo when the old one becomes dangerous. If you trace the wolf’s outline away, what’s left is a shield and the hilt of a sword.” Val’s eyes narrowed. “Shield and sword,” Ethan went on mercilessly.
“Law enforcement. Corrections, maybe. Maybe tactical. You’re not a real convict legend, Val. You’re a former cop.
One of the red team. You got thrown in with inmates and had to bury the badge under wolves and tigers to stay alive.” Corkscrew dropped the spoon.
The aluminum clanged on the floor. Silent Mike sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bunk. That was a low blow. Everyone in a pressure cell knew they worked for the administration, knew they were dirty.
But to call the boss a former cop to his face—that was suicide. Val stood perfectly still. His face flushed dark.
The veins in his neck rose thick as rope. “You little punk,” he hissed. “You think you’re untouchable because you figured something out?
You think I won’t break you now?” “I didn’t figure it out,” Ethan said, taking off his glasses and wiping them again. “I know.
I remember your face. Two years ago. You were on a cash transport detail for Central Bank.
I built the route schedule. You were Lieutenant Victor Lane.
They fired you after the money bag disappeared. Officially for excessive force.” Ethan put the glasses back on and looked at Val without fear now. “But you didn’t take the money.
The convoy supervisor did. And they hung it on you.” The cell went so quiet they could hear water dripping in the rusted sink.
Val took a step back. In the eyes that were used to inspiring terror, something else flickered. Confusion.
Like an actor who’d forgotten his lines because someone in the audience had climbed onto the stage and started reading his part. “How do you—” he began, then stopped. “I told you.”
Ethan gave a faint smile with just the corners of his mouth. “I worked with data. And people are data.
The formatting’s just messier.” Corkscrew picked up the sharpened spoon. He looked at Val with suspicion.
“Val, is that true? You a cop or what?” Val slowly turned his head toward him.
“Shut up,” he growled. “Or I’ll ram that thing down your throat.” Then he turned back to Ethan.
There was no contempt in his eyes now. Only hatred and caution. “You talk too much, college boy,” Val said quietly.
“Way too much. We’ve still got forty minutes. And in that time I can beat the passwords out of you, along with all this attitude.”
He grabbed Ethan by the hair and yanked his head back, exposing his throat. “Corkscrew! Bring the stool!” he barked. “We’re playing dentist.”
Ethan looked up at the ceiling. He felt the pain in his scalp, smelled the tobacco on the man’s fingers. But his pulse stayed steady.
He had cracked the first layer of security. Val was no longer a solid wall. He was a vulnerable system with bugs.
And bugs were Ethan’s specialty. “You can beat me,” Ethan rasped, staring at Val’s upside-down face. “But the warden who put you in here isn’t shaving time off your sentence.
He’s burying you here. As a witness.” Val’s hand twitched.
In that moment Ethan knew. He had found the Enter key. Now he just had to press it.
“The stool,” Val repeated, still gripping Ethan’s hair. Corkscrew darted to the corner. He grabbed the heavy wooden stool, the kind bolted down in regular cells.
But not here. In a pressure cell, furniture was mobile. It was equipment. He dropped it in front of Ethan with a bang.
Corkscrew’s eyes shone with a feverish light. Withdrawal was setting in. And the adrenaline of someone else’s pain was the only drug he had left.
“Sit,” Val said, shoving Ethan down. Ethan fell onto the stool. His hands shook, his knees threatened to buckle.
Physiology was winning. His body feared pain. But his mind, locked inside his skull, kept working with cold, detached precision, like a processor in an overheating server.
Corkscrew moved in close. He smelled sour and rotten. In his hand the sharpened spoon danced, honed on concrete until it was almost razor-sharp.
“So, Val?” Corkscrew licked his dry lips. “Where do we start? Ears?
Or maybe we fix that eye so he can see better?” He pressed the point beneath Ethan’s left eye. The metal chilled the skin.
Ethan froze, afraid to blink. “Passwords,” Val said from behind him, placing heavy hands on Ethan’s shoulders. “Where’s the server?
Where are the keys and encryption? The boss is waiting.” “I… I don’t remember…” Ethan whispered.
“Don’t remember?” Corkscrew giggled and pressed a little harder. A sharp pain pricked the skin. A warm drop of blood ran down Ethan’s cheek.
“How about now—” Corkscrew started. “Samuel Krivens,” Ethan said suddenly, loud and clear. The hand holding the weapon jerked but didn’t strike. Corkscrew froze.
“What?” he blinked, as if waking up. “Born in 1975,” Ethan continued, looking straight into the man’s dilated pupils.
“Address on file: 12 Central Street, Apartment 5. Lives with his mother, Nina Krivens, retired.”
Corkscrew recoiled as if burned. The sharpened spoon traced a wild arc in the air. “What… what are you saying?
How do you know that?” “You owe money, Sam.” Ethan’s voice grew stronger. He was no longer mumbling.
He was reading a file. “Two thousand dollars. You borrowed it from the River Crew to move heroin.
But you never sold the product. You used it yourself. With your buddies.”
Behind Ethan, Val stiffened. His fingers tightened on Ethan’s shoulders, but now it wasn’t pressure. It was a man trying to hold reality together as it came apart. “Shut up!” Corkscrew shrieked.
His face went gray, his lips trembling. “Shut up, you little freak! I’ll cut you open!”
He swung, but Val caught his wrist. “Hold it!” the former cop barked. “Let him talk!”
“He’s lying!” Corkscrew yelled, spitting. “He’s a plant! How else would he know about my mother?”
“I’m not a plant,” Ethan said, pushing his glasses back up. “I’m an accountant. The shadow accountant for the same outfit you owe.
The River Crew doesn’t keep debts in a notebook. They keep a database. In Access.”
Ethan shut his eyes for a second. The table appeared in his mind. Green rows on a black screen.
“Row 412. Krivens. Status: bad debt.
Action: liquidate. Your balance is in the red, Sam,” he said mercilessly. “With interest, you’re at about four grand now.”
“Your mother’s windows got smashed last month, remember? Front door scorched. That was a warning.”
Corkscrew dropped the weapon. It clattered across the concrete and rolled to Silent Mike’s feet. The wiry sadist who had been enjoying his power a minute earlier suddenly collapsed into a shaking junkie.
“Don’t touch my mother,” he whispered, sinking to the floor. “Don’t touch my mom. I’ll pay it back.
I’ll get out and pay it back.” “You’re not getting out,” Ethan said flatly. “And you know it.
They keep you here for one reason. The lieutenant gives you a little heroin every week so you’ll do the dirty work. But out on the street, your debt’s already been sold.
Know to who?” Ethan paused. “The Syndicate.
And they don’t forgive debt. They collect in property. Your mother’s apartment.”
Corkscrew let out a low animal moan and covered his head with his hands. He rocked back and forth on the floor, muttering nonsense.
The cell fell silent except for his whimpering. Val slowly removed his hands from Ethan’s shoulders. He walked around the stool and stood in front of him.
Now he looked at Ethan in an entirely different way. Not as meat, but as a bomb with a timer that he had foolishly brought into his own house. “Who are you?” Val asked quietly.
“You’re not a hacker. Hackers are pimply kids in basements, and you…” “I told you.
I work with numbers,” Ethan said, rubbing the red marks on his neck where Val’s fingers had been. “And numbers don’t lie the way people do.” He looked up at Val.
“I kept the books for three criminal groups in this state. Every transfer, every payoff, every debt. I know who owes who, and how much.
And I know why you’re here, Val.” Val twitched. “Corkscrew is small potatoes,” Ethan continued, nodding toward the shivering addict.
“Disposable. But you… your story’s more interesting.
You weren’t put in this pressure cell by accident. They hid you here because on the regular block you’d have been killed the first day. But you’re not safe here either.”
Silent Mike suddenly leaned down from the top bunk. His face, usually blank and detached, showed real thought for the first time. “Hey, four-eyes,” he said in a deep voice.
“You got something on me in that computer of yours too?” Ethan turned his head.
Looked at Silent Mike. “Yes,” he said shortly. “And you won’t like it.”
Val raised a hand sharply, stopping Mike. “Quiet.” He went to the door and listened.
The corridor was silent. Then he came back, crouched in front of Ethan so their eyes were level. “Here’s how this goes, calculator,” he growled, though his voice no longer carried the same certainty.
“You shut your mouth. If you say one more word about the outside, debts, or my old job, I’ll cut your tongue out myself.
No help from Corkscrew. You understand?” “I understand,” Ethan nodded.
“But that won’t change the balance sheet.” Val stared at him, trying to find fear. The fear was there.
He could see it in the widened pupils, in the bead of sweat at Ethan’s temple. But it sat deep beneath a thick layer of cold, inhuman calculation. This skinny man was more frightening than any convict Val had ever met.
Convicts ran on emotion, pride, impulse. This one ran like a machine. “Corner,” Val ordered, standing up. “Both of you.
Corkscrew, get up. Enough whining.” Corkscrew crawled to his bunk, sniffling.
He was finished. With one set of facts, Ethan had turned a rabid dog into a beaten mutt. Ethan stood, picked up the stool, and carried it to the corner.
Then he sat down. His cheek hurt. His neck ached. But inside him spread a cold satisfaction. First round to him.
Corkscrew was neutralized. Val was shaken and off balance. That left Silent Mike.
And the real boss. The man on the other side of the door. Ethan closed his eyes.
In the dark, green lines of code floated up again. He wasn’t in jail. He was inside an operating system.
And he had almost gained administrator privileges. Ethan removed his glasses.
The world immediately blurred into a gray-green wash. The smell of jail—sweat, dampness, fear—receded, replaced by the phantom scent of ozone and expensive coffee. He closed his eyes.
The low hum of a server room. The steady, soothing sound of cooling fans moving air through racks. Temperature always 70 degrees…
Humidity 40 percent. Sterile. Clean. Ethan sat in a $3,000 ergonomic chair.
Three monitors in front of him. Market numbers on the left. Encrypted messages on the right. Database in the center.
No blood. No screaming. No sharpened spoons and busted kidneys.
In the chat window, a message blinked from user Admin01. Subject: L. Parker. Status: problem. Resolution: full reset.
Ethan took a sip of lukewarm latte. L. Parker. Owner of a chain of car dealerships.
Maybe he’d stopped paying protection. Maybe he’d crossed one of the bank’s silent partners. It didn’t matter. To Ethan, Parker wasn’t a man with a family, a girlfriend, and a Labrador.
He was a cluster of entries in public and private systems. Ethan opened a terminal. His fingers moved over the keyboard.
Step one: freeze accounts. Reason: suspicious activity under federal compliance review.
Parker’s cards became useless plastic while he was probably trying to pay for dinner. Step two: revoke digital signature.
Now Parker couldn’t manage his company. Couldn’t even log in to his tax portal. Step three.
Alter property records. Condo downtown. Lake house.
A backdated transfer appeared in the registry, gifting both to a shell owner. The notary was on payroll. Public records were full of holes if you knew the back doors.
Step four: DMV database. Flag on the driver’s license.
Lost. Invalid.
The first patrol officer who stopped Parker would have him face-down on the pavement. Ethan hit Enter. Total time: four minutes.
L. Parker was still alive. Breathing, eating, maybe yelling at a waiter about a declined card. But socially, legally, financially, he was already dead.
His life had been erased. He was a ghost the system would begin digesting the next morning. Ethan had felt no glee then, no thrill of power.
Only the satisfaction of a janitor who has scrubbed a stain off tile. Clean. Order.
Balance restored. People were just pixels on a giant city-sized screen. Sometimes pixels burned out.
Sometimes they started glowing the wrong color. Then you either fixed them or switched them off. Nothing personal.
Just database hygiene. A snap of fingers in front of his face brought him back. “Hey. You asleep?”
Val’s voice sounded muffled, as if through cotton. Ethan opened his eyes. Put on his glasses.
The world sharpened again. Dirty concrete floor. Corkscrew sniffling in the corner.
Silent Mike with his legs hanging off the bunk. And Big Val looming over him like a wall of meat. Ethan looked at them.
For the first time since his arrest, he did not see them as threats. Corkscrew—a corrupted file. A virus eating itself.
Silent Mike—a sleeping process, taking up memory but useless without instruction. Big Val—an outdated firewall. Powerful, but full of holes, easy to bypass with social engineering.
They thought they were predators and he was prey. Funny. They were just lines of code.
Broken, buggy lines with exploitable weaknesses. And he was the administrator. Ethan felt a cold, calm contempt spread through his chest.
He had erased the lives of men ten times more powerful and dangerous than these three. He had zeroed out politicians and mob bosses without leaving his chair. What could these men do to him?
Kill him? Death was just the end of a session. Log off.
But while the system was still running, he had access rights. “I’m not asleep,” Ethan said. His voice had changed.
The shrill edge of fear was gone. Now it was the flat, even tone of tech support informing you that your account had been permanently disabled. “I was just looking for the right file in memory.”
Val frowned. He felt the shift in his gut. The same skinny man sat before him, but now he looked at Val the way a pathologist looks at a body before an autopsy.
Without emotion. “And did you find it?” Val muttered, stepping back. He no longer liked standing close.
“I did,” Ethan nodded. “But it wasn’t the accounts. It was a biography.
Yours, Val. And the man who ordered you to work me over.” He folded his hands carefully in his lap.
His fingers were long and thin, almost elegant. Tools. “You think you’re the authority in here.
You’re not. You’re a function. And that function is about to be shut down as obsolete.”
“You trying to scare me?” Val clenched his fists, trying to recover confidence through anger. “I’m not scaring you.
I’m forecasting,” Ethan said, tilting his head slightly. “You know who runs operations here now?
Major Doran.
The same man who signed off on your termination.” Val froze. The name hit a nerve.
“How do you—” he began hoarsely. “I handled his accounts too,” Ethan lied calmly. Not entirely.
He hadn’t managed Doran’s money personally. But he had seen transfers moving through the criminal books. The major’s name came up often.
That was enough for a bluff. “And believe me, Val, there is no line item in his plans labeled ‘parole for Big Val.’ There is a line item labeled ‘dispose.’”
Ethan fell silent. In the server room of his mind, a red warning light blinked. The pressure-cell system was unstable.
Critical error. It only needed a push. Val stood motionless, like a stone figure.
The name Doran hung in the air, poisoning it faster than gas. “Doran,” Val repeated. His voice had dropped to a whisper.
But there was steel scraping inside it. “Major Doran. Head of operations.”
“Back then he was a captain,” Ethan corrected calmly. He sat on the stool with his hands on his knees like a model student. “Captain in economic crimes.
He supervised the case involving that missing cash bag from the armored transport.” Val slowly reached out and grabbed Ethan by the collar. He yanked him to his feet.
The giant’s face was inches away. Ethan could see the red veins in the whites of his eyes. Smell old liquor and bad teeth.
“How do you know?” Val growled. “That case was sealed. My own people buried me quietly.
No noise.” “Nothing is sealed, Val,” Ethan said without blinking. “There are only data sets stored on different servers.
The money from that bag—$300,000. It didn’t disappear. It moved through a shell company called Vector M.”
Val jerked Ethan so hard his teeth clicked. “So?” “The listed owner of Vector was a homeless proxy.
But the power of attorney on the account belonged to Captain Doran’s wife. I saw the transfer. I cleaned it.”
Val’s hand opened. Ethan landed lightly back on the stool and adjusted his glasses. “You went down for negligence,” he continued in the same dead-even tone.
“And Doran used that money to buy his promotion to operations chief in this jail, plus a new house in a gated subdivision. You paid for his career with your years.” Val staggered back.
He braced himself against the bunk. His chest heaved. In his head, built for simple categories like friend and enemy, something shorted out.
He hated the system that had spit him out. But he had told himself it was bad luck, politics, fate. Now this bespectacled little man was telling him he had been sold off like scrap so some rat in a uniform could buy a house.
“You’re lying,” Val muttered, but without conviction. “You’re stalling.” “Why would I lie?” Ethan shrugged.
“I’m here for the same reason. Doran knows what I know.” Silent Mike, who had spent all this time lying on the top bunk facing the wall, suddenly sat up.
He swung his big legs down. “Hey, Val,” his bass voice rumbled unexpectedly. “It fits.
Doran transferred you here six months ago. Off the law-enforcement block. Said if you worked, you’d get parole.”
“Shut up,” Val snapped, but automatically, without force. “No, let him talk,” Ethan said, turning toward Silent Mike. “They didn’t put you all here by chance.
You’re a cleanup crew. Disposable men promised freedom for dirty work. But think it through.”
Ethan stood and took a step toward the center of the cell. Now he was lecturing. “I am a carrier of information.
About Doran’s accounts, about the mob money he launders, about the drug flow inside this jail. If I talk, Doran goes away for a long time. That’s why they put me in here.”
He looked around the cell. “The assignment is simple: beat a confession out of me. Make me take extra charges, ship me out, and let me get stabbed in a shower somewhere.
Case closed. Loose ends tied.” Val stared at him from under his brow.
“Then sign,” he said hoarsely. “Take the transport. What’s it to us? We do our job, maybe they cut us loose.”
“Are you stupid, Val?” Ethan asked, and for the first time there was genuine surprise in his voice. “Or just pretending?”
It was an outrageous thing to say. To call the boss stupid. But Val swallowed it. He wanted the answer.
“The moment I sign,” Ethan said after a pause, “I become a dead man. And the three of you become witnesses to how that confession was obtained. Witnesses that Doran ordered the pressure.”
He stepped right up to Val. “Doran is afraid of me. But he’s afraid of you too.
You’re a former cop he framed. You know things. You hate him.
Why would he ever let you out? So you can show up at his house one day with a hatchet?” Val said nothing.
He breathed hard, wheezing. The puzzle pieces were falling into place. Bloody pieces. “The moment I sign,” Ethan finished quietly, “this cell gets cleaned out. They’ll plant drugs on Corkscrew, stage an escape, or toss a grenade during a disturbance. You’re canned goods, Val.
Used up inventory.” In the corner Corkscrew whimpered, still shaking from withdrawal and humiliation. “Val! Val! He’s right.
Doran’s a snake. He cut my stash last week. Said I wasn’t performing.”
Val looked down at his hands. Huge, scarred fists. The wolf tattoo covering the shield.
He had been a chained dog who thought he was serving a master in exchange for scraps. Turns out the master had just been fattening him for slaughter. “That rat,” Val breathed.
He slammed his fist into the wall. Plaster rained down. “That red-blooded rat.” He turned to Ethan.
There was fury in his eyes now. But it was the fury of a trapped animal. “So what do you suggest?” he growled.
“Start a riot? The tactical team would drop us in five minutes. Or sit here and drink coffee with you until Doran walks in?”
“I suggest thinking,” Ethan said. “I have a plan. But for that, you have to stop being muscle and start being allies.”
“Allies?” Val gave a bitter laugh. “With you? A white-collar guy?”
“With an administrator,” Ethan corrected. “I can destroy Doran. Not with fists.
With numbers. But I need time. And I need hands.”
Val looked at him. He saw a skinny man in a sweater and broken glasses. But behind those glasses was a cold, calculating darkness unlike anything Val had seen, even in the worst men he’d known.
At that moment the cell door clanged. The food slot opened. The sergeant’s face appeared.
“Hey, 208!” he barked. “What’s the story? Is the customer ready? Lieutenant wants an update.”
