“Go ahead,” he says, rattling the chains. “Break them! Get us out of here!”
“I can’t,” Javier says, but really he doesn’t want to. Sitting next to so many humans at once is nice. It is nice in a way he can’t quite define. Something about the warmth of them all clustered together. Something about the sweat glittering in their hair and rolling down their necks. He feels sharply aware of his environment, as though each of his receptors – visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory – has upgraded its resolution.
“He won’t do it,” says a man leaning against the truck’s cab. He’s chewing a cuticle and speaks around his wet fingers. “I’ve tried. They won’t let you out. They know why we’re here. They know what we’ll do when we’re out.”
Javier doesn’t know, but he keeps his mouth shut. It isn’t as though he wants to go to prison, necessarily, but that he has no other plan for the moment. The foreman said something about food, and he needs food. He has no real idea how to get it, otherwise, and Arcadio isn’t coming.
Arcadio isn’t coming.
So they roll through the gates, under loops of razor wire and wood planks speckled with broken glass, onto another, even worse road that gushes dirty water as the truck’s tires roll across it. There are four different towers, all of them with turrets. They overlook four mid-rise concrete buildings with windows and railings and concrete steps leading to each level, with a central courtyard in between. There is a fence around all of it, but it’s not that high. If Javier were bigger, with stronger legs, he could clear it easily.
Nearest the gate, there is a covered area with picnic tables and women and children. The children are all organic. They look chubbier than he is. Dumber, too. Not quite all there, yet.
A man in uniform opens the cage, and Javier is first to hop out. He makes it five feet in the air. The little organic kids roll their heads back to watch him.
“Ay, conejito,” the man with raw cuticles says, standing and stretching. He jumps out of the truck. “Come here.”
Javier trots along beside him.
“What are you doing here?” the man asks. He is now chewing the cuticle of his other thumb.
“I tried to learn how to steal food, but I got caught.”
“And they sent you here? Mierda. They should have taken you to the church.” He pauses, and sucks blood away from his thumb. He eyes Javier up and down. “Then again, maybe not.”
A guard comes. He squints down at Javier for a minute, then looks at the man with the bleeding thumbs. He smiles.
“Ignacio.”
“Sir.”
“How was it with los fabricantes?”
Ignacio only smiles.
“You print up some drugs? Some knives? Some gun grips?”
“Mostly just parts for toilets,” Ignacio says. “This country has a real problem with shit. There’s shit everywhere you look.”
The punch comes out of nowhere. It lands in the thin man – Ignacio’s – gut. As Ignacio bends around the guard’s fist, Javier’s vision de-rezzes wildly. Suddenly Ignacio is made of bricks of light. He coughs, sputters, falls to the ground, and Javier’s vision begins to darken, his hearing to sharpen to only the sound of wet choking. He is going to die. The sudden stillness of his muscles tells him so. He makes a flawless leap at the guard’s chest. He wraps his legs around the other man’s middle, his arms around his neck.
“Stop! Stop! Please stop!”
The guard tries to pull him off, but Javier won’t budge. Behind him, the other prisoners are laughing. The chains rattle with appreciation. Even the women and children are laughing. Javier pauses to flash them a smile – laughter sounds so nice, it cures him right up – and finally the guard yanks him off and tries to throw him on the ground. Javier lands gracefully, though, and that is somehow annoying. The guard spits and tucks in his shirt.
“You’re the one from the Corcovado?”
Javier nods. “My name is Javier.”
“Your name is 2501,” he says. “That’s what we called the last one.” He turns and gestures at the prisoners, and they all shuffle forward to follow him.
Ignacio is the last to join. Javier runs up and helps him stand. “That was stupid, conejito,” Ignacio says.
“I can’t help it.”
“I know. You’re a guardian angel.”
Javier has never really considered himself this way. “But I don’t have any wings, though.”
Ignacio smiles. “From what I can tell, you don’t need them.”