“My word is law. From this moment on, you’re under my personal protection. Carl won’t lay a finger on you.”
“And the guards won’t touch you either, as long as I hold this place together. You’re not just another inmate now, Alex. You’re a brain. And brains are worth protecting.”
The Count nodded toward a bunk beside his own. “Sleep there. My men used to have those spots. Now it’s yours.”
“It’s warm, dry, and nobody comes near it without permission.” Alex dropped onto the clean blanket. The moment the adrenaline left his system, he was gone.
He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. But morning brought a new reality. The wake-up was different.
There was no usual strike on the rail, no shouting from the orderlies. The barracks woke to the sound of rifle bolts. The door flew open, and a tactical squad stormed in with dogs, guns, and officers.
At the front was the camp commander himself, Major Bailey. He was pale, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Everybody stand still!” Captain Smith barked.
“Hands where I can see them. Nobody move.” Major Bailey walked slowly down the line of half-awake, frightened inmates. He wasn’t looking for the gold. He knew it was already hidden well enough that they’d have to tear apart the whole camp to find it.
He was looking for a man. The major stopped in front of the Count, who sat on his bunk drinking tea as if nothing had happened. “Morning, Major,” the Count said with a faint smile.
“Lose something?” Bailey ignored the jab. His eyes moved past the camp boss and settled on Alex, standing nearby.
The major was no fool. He had inspected the safe that morning. It hadn’t been forced. It hadn’t been blown. It had been opened cleanly, by combination, in the dark, in fifteen minutes.
There was only one man in the camp capable of that. The physics student Smith had told him about. Bailey stepped up to Alex.
He saw the circles under the young man’s eyes, the scraped knuckles, the soot marks on his neck that hadn’t been washed off. “Walker,” Bailey said quietly.
“You understand that I know.” Alex straightened. The fear had left him. What remained was cold logic.
“Knowing and proving are two different things, Major,” he answered, looking the commander straight in the eye. “In physics, that’s called measurement error.” Bailey stared at him for a long moment.
In the major’s eyes there was rage, but also something close to curiosity. He understood that this boy had challenged the entire system. And for the moment, he had won the first round. But the game wasn’t over.
“Measurement error,” Bailey repeated thoughtfully. “Fine. We’ll test your theory. Get ready. Today you’re not going to the logging crew.”
“Today you’re on a special transfer to the far mines.” The barracks went dead silent. The mines were a one-way ticket.
Men didn’t last three months there. Hard labor and radiation killed slowly but reliably. The Count tensed but said nothing.
Against a direct order from the camp commander, even his power meant little. Alex felt the floor drop out from under him. He had calculated the safe, the criminals, Carl, all of it—but he had missed one thing.
The system always had a backup move. And this one led straight to a cold grave. The transfer to the far mines was assembled outside the wire near the rail spur.
It was a terrible place, where hope ended and mortality became a statistic. Wind full of ice crystals lashed the faces of ten condemned men lined up by the truck. Alex Walker stood among them.
His face was expressionless, a mask of stone. He knew that once the truck doors closed, his life would turn into a short half-life. Major Bailey watched the loading from his office window.
The gold—the haul that could have bought him a comfortable retirement somewhere warm—was gone. That cursed student had hidden it, and now he was taking the secret with him to the grave. Greed battled fear inside the major.
If he left the student in camp, he remained a living witness to the theft. If he sent him to die, the gold might be lost forever. At that moment, the office door opened, and a duty orderly appeared, pale as paper.
“Major, over at the boiler house…” “What?” Bailey snapped. “Pressure’s climbing fast. The gauges are pegged.”
“The chief mechanic is drunk and useless. If it blows, half the headquarters and the guard barracks go up with it. It’s superheated steam.”
Bailey went cold. The boiler house was the heart of the camp. At 50 below, if the heating system failed or exploded, the camp would be dead within a day.
That was the kind of disaster that brought tribunals and firing squads. The major looked toward the line of condemned men…
