Donovan still wasn't talking to me, so I scanned the crowd for Zee. He was standing in a group that included his cellmate and a few others, but it took me a while to recognize him. The cocky smile had gone and his face had drawn in on itself, as if he'd lost half his body weight overnight. He saw me looking and walked over, meeting me halfway across the yard. We both opened our mouths to speak, but neither of us seemed to remember how to have a normal conversation.
The duty roster materialized on-screen, putting me and Donovan back in the kitchen but sending Zee to the laundry. I waited for Monty's name to appear but it had been stripped from the records as if the boy had never existed.
Hard labor was hell that morning. Donovan acted like he couldn't stand the sight of me, posting himself in the canteen serving up mush and leaving the processing to me and another couple of inmates I'd never really spoken to before. I tried asking them questions about the wheezers as we stuffed crate after crate of leftovers into the industrial blender, but they just sent back one-word answers that meant nothing.
To make things worse, Kevin Arnold had been assigned to the trough room too, and several times throughout the morning I was ambushed by flying chunks of rancid meat and mushy vegetables and barbed comments. I remembered the way he'd pushed Monty across the cell last night, sending him to his terrifying fate without a shred of remorse. I wanted to stuff his mouth full of rotten food until he choked, but instead I turned my back on him and suffered his abuse. What else could I do?
Umpteen hours later, after washing the slop from my hair in the showers and donning a fresh uniform, I found myself standing alone in the yard. I didn't realize how much I had come to depend on Donovan. Without him by my side I felt completely lost, utterly vulnerable. I saw him make his way up the stairs to our cell without a backward glance but I didn't try to chase him. Instead I picked an empty table toward the back of the yard and cursed myself for not just curling up in bed last night and ignoring the blood watch like everybody else.
Holding my head in my hands, I didn't hear Zee slide onto the bench opposite me until he coughed gently.
"You look like battered crap," he said as I lifted my head.
"You're no oil painting yourself, mate," I replied, wondering if I still had the ability to smile.
"Where's Big D?" he went on. "You two are like Siamese twins, weird not seeing you joined at the hip."
"I'm not in his good books," I replied after a humorless snort. "After last night. I wouldn't stay in bed, had to see what was going on. He thinks I drew one of them to our cell."
"Seriously?" Zee asked, eyebrows practically leaping from his forehead. "You saw one up close?"
I nodded, trying not to recall the experience in too much detail.
"He'll be okay," Zee went on, cracking his knuckles. "He can be a moody lug, but I'm sure he'll come around."
"I hope so. If he doesn't then I'm a dead man. He's pretty much the only thing standing between me and the Skulls."
"Don't forget me," Zee said with a grin. He flexed his arms, but the satsuma-sized bumps beneath his uniform didn't exactly fill me with confidence. "Could take them all on single-handed with these muscles."
For a moment it looked like we might break free of the gravity of the situation, but it quickly pulled us back in.
"What the hell were they doing last night?" Zee asked, leaning across the table so that his low voice would reach me. "What are those things with the gas masks?" I shrugged and shook my head. "I mean, they look like Nazi storm troopers with those masks and coats. I've seen them on TV. My folks used to watch war documentaries all the time. But why would they be here? And why do they need help breathing? I mean, it's not like this place is full of Zyklon B."
"They're attached to their faces," I told him. "The masks. I saw it last night. The metal is sewn into their skin."
Zee looked like he was about to hurl.
"No way," was all he managed, but I could tell he believed me.
"Whatever they're doing, it's bad," I said. "Donovan told me they took prisoners to a fate worse than death."
"Maybe they're using us as human guinea pigs," Zee suggested. I laughed at the idea but he was serious. "During the Second World War the Nazis and the Japanese army used to perform all these sick experiments on innocent people, civilians and prisoners of war and stuff. They'd cut them up while they were still alive, infect them with all these diseases, biological weapons and gas, blow them up-"
"Come on," I interrupted, but he held up his hand.
"No, seriously. They used prisoners as test subjects. They'd just think of things they could do to them and then they'd do them. They claimed it was all about science, but they were just butchers. I saw this on TV too, but Dad made me go to bed halfway through because it was too gross."
"But we're not in a war, Zee. I mean, this is one of the most advanced countries in the Western world; you can't even call somebody a pensioner now without it being politically incorrect. They're not just going to let somebody open a prison where a bunch of sick freaks do experiments on kids."
"What about a prison where mutant dogs chew up the inmates?" he asked. I didn't have an answer. "Everything changed that summer, Alex, all those gangs on the rampage and all those people who died. People got scared of kids, that's why they got away with building a prison like this, that's why those freaks can take us and butcher us and nobody gives a crap. Did you see who they took, anyway?"
"Monty," I replied. "They took Monty. I didn't see the others."
Zee swore beneath his breath and stared out across the yard. I thought I saw his eyes filling up for a minute but then he wiped his hand across his face and was back to normal.
"Do you think anyone on the outside has any idea?" he asked.
"I don't think anyone on the outside cares. We did the crime, we're doing the time. In their eyes we're just as bad as the kids who went around killing everyone. What was it that blacksuit said? As far as the outside world is concerned, we're already dead."
Somebody in the yard shouted and I looked over to see two inmates pushing each other, faces red and angry. But it died out after a couple of shoves, one of the boys walking away with his hands held up in submission.
"I'm not going to just wait here until I get taken, Zee," I said. "I can't just lie down and let them come for me, let them jab me with their filthy needles and haul me off to some butcher shop."
"Alex, what choice do you have? Throw yourself off the eighth floor? That's about the only way out I can think of, and it isn't pretty."
"I'm just not ready to give up, that's all I'm saying. There's always a way."
"There's a mile of rock in every direction, and those dogs will chew you up if you even piss the wrong way."
I slammed my fist down on the table in frustration.
"Didn't you tell me on the first day that you were getting out of here no matter what?" I asked, ignoring his guilty shrug.
"That was back when I had a little hope," he muttered.
"Well, don't lose it just yet," I said, leaning over the table and once again thinking of mountains, of fresh air. "I'm telling you, there's a way out."
ALL GOOD PRISON breaks need a plan. I'd seen them in films so many times-learning the guard rotation, bribing somebody for blueprints of the sewer system, getting your girlfriend to smuggle in a file so you can get through the bars of your window. One good plan, perfectly executed, that's all it would take to get us out of here.
But I had nothing. There was no guard rotation here, the monsters in their pinstriped suits seemed to patrol when and where they liked. The sewer system just led farther down toward the abyss, dumping its filth in the center of the earth. And even if I'd had a girlfriend, which I didn't and probably never would, we weren't allowed personal visits or letters. Hell, we didn't even have windows. None of the things I'd seen on-screen were going to work in Furnace, but that shouldn't really have been a surprise. I mean, television isn't real life.