Silent Mike was faster. He didn’t even stand. He simply threw a heavy aluminum lid from the water bucket.
The metal struck Corkscrew in the shoulder. He cried out, stumbled, and slammed headfirst into the steel door. The sound was dull and ugly.
Corkscrew slid to the floor clutching himself. “Quiet,” Mike said. “They’ll hear.”
Ethan went to the door and listened. The corridor was quiet. The guard’s footsteps had faded down the hall.
“We need to tie him up,” Ethan said, looking at the whimpering Corkscrew. “He’ll sell us out the first chance he gets.” Val looked at Ethan.
“Can’t tie him. Morning inspection. If they see that, they tear the place apart.
They’ll find the note.” “Then what?” Ethan looked at his broken fingers. “Kill him?”
Val shook his head. “Bodies don’t get removed till morning. If we drop him, the smell starts.
And then we explain. Doran will know something’s wrong.” It was a deadlock.
Three men in the cell were willing to risk everything for a slim chance at life, and one rat was ready to sink the ship for a gram of heroin. “I’ll watch him,” Silent Mike said. He walked over to Corkscrew, picked him up by the back of the shirt like a stray cat, and tossed him onto his bunk.
“Lie down. You twitch, I break your neck. Quiet. Easy as snapping a chicken bone.”
Corkscrew went still, curled up and trembling. Val returned to the table. He looked at the clock.
“Three a.m. Three hours till wake-up.” He turned to Ethan.
“How are you, hacker? Still with us?” “Functional,” Ethan answered, pressing his injured hand against the cold wall.
The pain had dulled into a constant pulsing background. “The brain works better under stress. Evolutionary mechanism.”
“Evolution,” Val snorted. “We’re not evolving in here. We’re rotting.” “No, Val,” Ethan said, looking straight at him.
Through the cracked lens his gaze seemed doubled. “Tonight we moved up a level. We stopped being tools.
We became players.” “Players.” Val took out a cigarette but didn’t light it.
“Let’s just hope we don’t get played into a box before morning.” Silent Mike went to the toilet.
He started working with a cord braided from unraveled sweater threads. The line was being prepared. Ethan slid down the wall to the floor. His strength was gone.
But sleep was impossible. He watched Corkscrew, who pretended to be asleep while peeking through half-closed eyes. There was a vulnerability in this system.
And that vulnerability breathed, sweated, and waited for its chance to strike. Ethan understood.
Not all of them would make it to morning. Four a.m. The deadest hour in a jail.
The wolf hour, when even the guard dogs beyond the fence doze with their noses tucked into their tails. In Cell 208, tense activity filled the air, like a mission control room before a launch. Only instead of consoles there was a rusted toilet, and instead of a launchpad there was a drainpipe.
Silent Mike knelt by the toilet. He had bailed out the water with a cup, clearing the bend in the pipe. Now it wasn’t plumbing. It was a phone line and freight elevator in one.
Ethan sat on the floor, cradling his broken hand. The pain was hot and pulsing, but it had moved to second place. His future was being decided.
“Two-oh-five!” Silent Mike called into the pipe. “Package coming! From the drifters!”
A muffled gurgle came back, then a voice, hollow as if from inside a barrel. “We hear you! Send it!”
Mike tied the bread ball with the hidden capsule to the line—a long cord braided from unraveled sweater yarn. “Here she goes,” he whispered, lowering the package into the pipe. The cord slid through his thick fingers.
One foot, two, three. No one in the cell breathed. Even Corkscrew on the bunk stopped whimpering.
What if the line snagged? What if 205 had a snitch in it? What if the guard heard?
The cord jerked. Once. Then twice. The signal.
Package received. Mike quickly pulled back the empty line, rolled it up, and tucked it inside his shirt. Then he poured water back into the toilet bend, restoring the seal.
He stood, wiping his hands on his pants. His face, usually stone, split into a broad broken-toothed grin. “Made it,” he rumbled.
“The boys in 205 are solid. They’ll move it up the stack. In an hour, North will be reading.”
Val exhaled. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, hands shaking as he lit a cigarette. “That’s it,” he said, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.
“Message is out.” Ethan closed his eyes. He felt a strange lightness, as if he had just hit Send on the most important email of his life.
The virus had launched. Information had escaped the closed loop of the cell and entered the network. “What now?” Val asked, watching the cigarette ember.
“Now comes the chain reaction,” Ethan said without opening his eyes. “North checks the code. His people on the outside get into the system.
They see Doran’s accounts. They see the transfers from the mob fund. By morning, when he comes to work, his phone will already be blowing up from men he cannot ignore.
He won’t have time for us. He’ll be trying to save his own skin.” “And us?” Corkscrew called from the top bunk.
“They won’t touch us?” “They’ll move us,” Ethan said with confidence. “North will freeze this cell.
We’re now witnesses in an internal theft case. That makes us untouchable.” Val laughed.
Rough, nervous, but relieved. “You really are something, four-eyes. I thought we were done, and you turned the whole board over.
So we won?”
