He was forcing his battered body into maximum energy-saving mode. In Eastern traditions they might call it meditation. In physics, it was minimizing entropy. He had to become as cold and still as the forest itself, so the forest would overlook him.
When the dull strike on the rail sounded to mark the end of the shift, the crew slowly formed up. Darkness had already settled over the ravine. Searchlights from the towers cut through the frozen haze, catching bent gray figures that looked like the walking dead.
“Five abreast!” the guards shouted, releasing the dogs. The shepherds lunged at their leashes, barking themselves hoarse. Alex found the strength to stand in the third row.
He could feel the deadly cold working its way under his clothes, locking up his muscles. But the greater danger wasn’t the weather. On his left and right stood two of Carl’s loyal men, hard cases with heavy eyes.
Carl himself walked close behind him, breathing down his neck. Their plan was obvious. On the narrow icy trail above the ravine, they would “accidentally” shove him.
Or clip his stride just enough to knock him out of rhythm. One step left or right on that trail counted as an escape attempt. The guards shot without warning.
The column moved forward. Snow squeaked under hundreds of tired feet, blending into one steady, deadening sound. Alex kept his eyes on the back of the man in front of him and counted his steps.
One, two, three. He matched his movement to the rhythm of the column. In physics, that was resonance: become part of the wave, and the wave carries you.
Three miles into the march, the trail narrowed just as he knew it would. A rock wall rose on the left. On the right, a steep drop fell into a snow-filled ravine. Guards walked the edges, cursing and driving the slower men forward with rifle butts.
“Move it, student,” hissed the convict on Alex’s left, a man called Wheezer. At that moment Alex felt the movement before he saw it. Wheezer lunged hard with his shoulder, trying to knock Alex out of line and into the forbidden zone where the guards would do the rest.
It was the simplest kind of vector attack, all force and no finesse. But Alex had been waiting for exactly that. He didn’t resist.
He simply removed the point of support. The instant Wheezer’s weight came in, Alex dropped on the exhale and turned his body. The convict slammed full force into empty space.
His own momentum, multiplied by the slick trail, did the rest. Wheezer lost his footing, windmilled his arms, and stumbled two yards out of formation into the dead zone. “Stop!” a guard shouted.
The crack of the rifle tore through the frozen woods. Wheezer didn’t even have time to cry out. The bullet hit him square in the back, and he collapsed into the snow like a dropped sack, staining it dark.
The column flinched but never stopped. “Keep moving!” the convoy chief yelled. Alex straightened and stepped back into line, closing the gap.
The second thug, the one who had been meant to back Wheezer up, walked pale as paper, staring straight ahead. He had just watched death miss him by inches, guided by the student’s invisible hand. Behind Alex, Carl ground his teeth in helpless fury.
He understood now that this physicist could turn any attack into a weapon against the attacker. That made two men gone in one day. Two loyal followers erased from his circle.
The rest of the march passed in absolute silence. When the heavy camp gates clanged shut behind them and the column broke apart in front of the barracks, Alex felt the last of his strength leaving him. Hunger and cold were finally taking over.
He barely made it to the barracks, wanting only one thing: a cup of hot water. But right at the entrance, Carl blocked his path. The two men stood face to face.
“You think you’re untouchable?” the crew boss asked softly, almost politely. “You get lucky in the woods. You get lucky on the trail. But now we’re back inside the wire, and there’s no convoy here.”
“Now it’s night. And I’m telling you plain: you won’t see morning. I’ll cut your liver out myself.”
Alex slowly raised his exhausted eyes. The lenses of his glasses were cracked from the cold, but his stare was the same. “You didn’t study much physics, Carl,” he whispered through dry lips.
“Pressure in a closed system always rises until something blows. You sure you want to be standing at the center when it does?” He stepped around the stunned crew boss and walked into the barracks.
Alex knew it was a bluff. He had no strength left for a real fight. If Carl attacked right then, Alex would lose.
He needed an ally. Or a weapon. Or a miracle. And when he stepped into the overheated barracks, he saw that a miracle was already waiting for him.
It just didn’t look the way he expected. Sitting on Alex’s bunk was a man the entire barracks feared even more than Carl the Cannibal. And he was smiling.
On Alex’s bunk, sitting cross-legged, was a very thin old man. He might have been fifty, or he might have been seventy. His face looked like a baked apple, all folds and lines, but his eyes were different.
They were startlingly young, sharp, and alive, like a hawk’s. In front of him sat a tin mug of strong prison tea and a neatly sliced ration of bread. This was Solomon.
In the camp hierarchy, he occupied a place that didn’t fit the usual categories. He wasn’t one of the criminal bosses, and he wasn’t an ordinary inmate. He was the accountant.
The man who kept the camp’s entire shadow economy in his head: debts, card losses, tea and liquor traffic, and the bribes paid to the administration. Men feared him not for his fists but because he knew everything about everyone.
And Solomon’s word carried more weight than Carl’s steel pry bar. Alex stopped where he was.
He had no strength left to run or fight. He was shaking from low blood sugar, and colored spots floated in front of his eyes. “Sit down, son,” Solomon said, his voice dry and creaky like an old hinge…
