03:22:08:38
The prison is called the Piston because it’s visible from the city center of New Prima, and it looks like a grotesque black cylinder that clashes with the rest of their buildings.
The guards parade me inside, past the inmates in cellblock A. They’re two to a small cell with bunk beds, a toilet, and sink, and there are eight floors of them. It’s not much different than any prison I’ve imagined or seen on television.
But the fact that I’m here, in restraints, about to be put into a cell, makes my skin feel cold and clammy.
A few inmates call out to me as we pass, a few more whistle, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t be housed with the general prison population. I’ll be in a solitary cell, where they keep the worst kind of prisoners, the ones who are a danger to others, and the ones they want to forget.
We go up one flight of stairs and turn the corner. We’re heading down a long hallway toward cellblock S, the solitary cells, and my shoulders relax just a little. Every small thing that goes right means I have a better chance of getting out of here.
According to Barclay, solitary confinement is small. There are sixteen cells, eight on each side, with low ceilings and thick black walls. There are no bars because there are no windows.
When we turn into cellblock S, I see that Barclay is right.
I also see that we’re not alone.
03:22:05:08
The fifth cell door on the left is ajar. The opening is blocked by a man who isn’t in a guard uniform. He’s wearing jeans and a drab olive button-down shirt. His haircut is military, high and tight. A tattoo of black barbed wire peeks out from his shirt collar and climbs up his neck.
A shiver moves through my body and air seems to get caught in my throat. His shirt is spotted with dark blobs.
Something inside me wants to stop, to dig my heels in and refuse to get any closer.
Then I hear the muffled sounds of a struggle coming from inside the cell, and I realize the dark spots on his shirt are blood.
My heart pounds harder in my chest. I don’t want to be anywhere near this man.
“Hurry up,” he says to whoever’s in the cell. “Get him out.”
That cell shouldn’t be Elijah’s. Unless he’s been moved? No, why would they?
My guards continue to push me forward, and the man with blood on his shirt turns to watch us approach. His eyes linger on me, and I have to fight to keep from looking away. The bitter smell of urine hits me like a wall, and fear slithers through my veins until I’m dizzy with it. Then comes the rusty, damp smell of blood.
The man is still studying me, his face passive and emotionless, and it feels like with one look he’s seen more about me than I want him to. The hallway is tight and he doesn’t move, so we have to squeeze by him. The whole time he’s watching me.
One of the guards says, “Excuse me, Mr. Meridian,” as we pass.
I steal a glance inside the open door and the whispered word slips out with my breath before I can stop myself. “Ben.”
He’s inside the cell. His hair is matted against the side of his face with dried blood, his cheek is bruised and swollen. My breath catches in my throat, and I refuse to move forward with the guards. There are too many emotions rolling through me to try to process them all. They’ve beaten him—I don’t want to know how many times—and then just tossed him back in his cell to sleep it off. But he’s here. I can try to get him out with Elijah.
But when he raises his head and our eyes meet, I realize I’m wrong. This isn’t Ben. He has the same dark hair, the same bone structure, the same deep-set eyes. But this guy’s face is just slightly different.
Ben’s brother, Derek.
He grunts and says something. We’ve never met, and I’ve only seen his doppelgänger, but I know that it’s him. He’s Ben, a few years older, swollen and beat up, in need of a shower and a shave.
The guard to my right squeezes his fingers into my upper arm and pushes me forward. I twist around and try to see behind me, but the guards block my line of sight, pushing and dragging me to the cell that will be mine—the last one on the right. Behind me, Derek says something. Then I hear a groan, labored breathing, and the sound of someone’s feet dragging on the floor.
As the guard opens my cell, I realize what Ben’s brother said to me.
He said, “Run.”
03:22:04:29
I can’t breathe. It feels like the walls are closing in on me, like the ground is moving underneath my feet. My face is too hot, my body is too cold, and my insides are flipping around. That was Ben’s brother, with dried blood caked onto his clothes and bruises over his face and arms. Who knows where they’re taking him now—and what they’re going to do to him.
My body starts to shake, and I try to suck air into my lungs.
When I break out in eleven hours, I’m supposed to leave him here.
03:20:17:25
My cell is small and dark, just large enough for the thin cot on one side. Instead of a toilet, there’s a dark hole in the floor in one corner. The weak light bulb on the ceiling flickers a little, giving the room a horror-movie type of feel. The fact that everything smells like bleach, but I can’t get the scent of blood and urine out of my nose, doesn’t help either.
I’m lying on top of the cot in the standard light-blue cotton prison jumpsuit.
But I can’t will my body to relax or my mind to stop spinning long enough to even have a fitful nap.
I hear faint screams coming from somewhere else in the prison and I’m not sure if they’re real or part of my overactive imagination. I can’t leave Ben’s family in here. I have to get them out, but I don’t have the codes to open their doors—only Elijah’s—and I don’t know how to contact Barclay.
My legs shift a little. They’re restless, and I stand up to pace around the tiny room.
No matter what, I can’t stay here. Every time I hear a noise outside, I worry Meridian is coming for me. I’m worried about Elijah and about everything that could go wrong tonight. What will I do if he’s too injured to walk?
My hands shake as I pace, and I press them to my forehead. I have to relax and stay focused. Falling apart now won’t help anyone. I force myself to take a deep breath. There must be a way to save Ben’s family.
I shouldn’t let my legs get too tired so I climb back on the bed, close my eyes, and think of Ben. I see him, wearing one of my dad’s old T-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants, freshly showered, smelling like my shampoo, the night Elijah got shot. I remember how he reached out and grabbed one of my hands. Our fingers intertwined and those dark eyes looked straight into mine, lying next to each other in my bed, holding on to each other before the world fell apart.
You’re strong and smart, and you never put yourself first. You don’t let anything get in your way, and you’re beautiful.
I can almost feel the heat of his body next to mine, the strength of his arms around me, and the way he made me feel like no matter what happened, we wouldn’t give up, we would fight for what we wanted up to the very end.
I hold on to that memory. It’s easier to keep fighting if I don’t feel alone.
03:11:20:57
I lie on the cot, flat on my back. I’ve got nothing.
I haven’t come up with a single viable plan to get Ben’s brother—or anyone in his family—out of their cells.
And I’m running out of time.
I’m going to have to leave them. The idea settles over me like a lead blanket. I think the words—I’m going to have to leave them. It leaves me tingly and a little sick—it’s the same feeling I got when I had to tell Jared about Alex, news I didn’t want to admit in case it made it more true, and news I wasn’t quite sure how he’d react to, just that the reaction would be bad.
Tonight at midnight, during the guards’ shift change, Barclay will hack into the security system, my cell door will open, and he’ll set off an EMP. Then he’ll wait just outside the grounds.
When the EMP goes off, it will knock out all the power in the prison. It’ll take about thirty seconds for the backup generator to power up and then another twenty for the computers and security systems to reboot. I need to get to Elijah’s cell, open his door, and get him out, and then we need to make it through the prison and down to the infirmary without being seen by the cameras.
I recite the numbers of the door codes out loud and visualize each step of the plan. If I get one code wrong, it’ll trip the alarm.
I suppose I’m glad now that my dad quoted movies and The X-Files and forced me to do the same if I wanted to keep up. I should thank him—and my mom, since I had to always keep a step ahead of her to stop her from drinking or hurting herself somehow. They both helped prepare me for this in their own way.
Although I’m wishing I had Cecily’s photographic memory. That girl could picture and recall anything she wrote down in her own handwriting. If she wrote it down once, at the snap of a finger, she could recite it back to you. If it had been that easy for me, I could have just written the plan down and followed the map in my mind. As it is, I’m stuck repeating everything over and over again so I don’t mess up.
I’m thinking of Cecily when the watch under my skin beeps and comes alive.
And the numbers start counting down.
00:05:00
03:11:05:00
This is it. My life-or-death moment. I take a deep breath and jump up off the cot.
4
I only have one chance to follow all of Barclay’s instructions. If this doesn’t work, and I’m still alive, I’ll be stuck here.
3
Barclay won’t be able to do anything without going against orders.
2
If this doesn’t work, if I don’t get us out, I could end up being beaten and tortured for the escape attempt, and Barclay will most likely leave me here.
1
I’m standing in front of my door, muscles tense and ready to spring, my fingers ready to pry the door open as soon as it unlocks.
The sound is audible. It’s the sound of electronics powering off. The sound of silence.
And the lights go out.
03:11:00:00
I hear something click inside my cell door. My heart pounds in my chest as I push through. The door gives easily as if it was never locked, and I’m in the hallway. I move steadily north, staying along the right side of the hall just in case the cameras come back on early. My heartbeat and my feet hitting the floor as I run are the only things I can hear.
I try not to look at the doors I’m passing by. I know there’s nothing I can do, but my insides twist anyway. I hate that I’m leaving people behind.
As I run past Derek’s door, I pound on it with my palm and yell, “I’ll come back for you,” because if we make it out of here, I’m not going to forget what this place is like.
Then I keep running.
I slam into Elijah’s door, cell number thirteen, and I key in the code burned into my memory.
4-0-7-5-2
The door swings open, and I gasp.
Even in the dark, I can see he’s been tortured. The left side of his face is swollen and distorted. Blood and dirt are caked on his face mixing with the bruises. It looks like he hasn’t showered in a month or more—his reddish-blond hair looks brown. He’s thin, bony in places, like he’s lost fifteen, maybe twenty pounds. His mouth opens when he sees me, but no sound comes out. I’ll be lucky if I can get him walking. I grab his empty food dish and use it to prop the door open, then I run to him and pull him off the ground.
“Elijah, I’m going to get you out of here,” I say. “You have to follow me.”
He nods and I can feel him pull himself together to support himself. “You look good.” His voice cracks, another sign he’s delusional.
I sling his arm over my shoulder to help support him, and we move to the cell door. I hold the edge of it just barely open, kick his food dish out of the way, and look down at the numbers on my skin.
00:14:70
We don’t have much more time. If we’re caught by the cameras, we might as well just head back to our cells.
I throw open his cell door and pull Elijah through, then hobble, half running and half dragging him down the hallway. His breathing is labored, and there’s a definite hitch in his step like he can’t put much weight on his left leg. Which means most of his weight is on me.
But we get to the stairwell, and as I’m pushing through the door, dim overhead lights start to click on.
The backup generator.
“I need you to hurry,” I grunt, pulling him down the stairs. My pulse pounds in my ears, and the muscles in my arms are shaking under Elijah’s weight.
“If you get us caught, they’ll probably just kill us,” Elijah says with a cough.
“Stop trying to be helpful.” I almost smile. This is the Elijah I know. They haven’t broken him yet.
We hit a landing, the halfway point, and I adjust my grip and keep pulling him with me.
We have to get through the infirmary to the medical bay—where dead or severely injured prisoners are taken, operated on, or even transported to the morgue. There’s a grate down to the sewer system. With the code, I’ll be able to deactivate it, and Elijah and I will go through and down into the sewers. We’ll make our way through the tunnels and come up where Barclay will be waiting for us. He’s apparently already gone through them from the outside to make sure they lead the right way.
We hit the bottom of the stairwell, and I punch in the door code to let us onto the restricted basement level floor.
3-5-1-1-7
The door opens and I push Elijah through.
Barclay and I were hoping the power outage and any general confusion during the shift change would give me enough time to get to the infirmary, down the grate, and into the sewers without being seen by the cameras and setting off the alarms.
But when I glance at my skin and see that I’m at fifty-three seconds, I know I’m too slow.
We’re going to get caught on camera.
I grit my teeth and try to move faster.
The infirmary is in the opposite wing of the prison, and as long as Barclay’s directions are correct, we should make a right at the end of this hallway, then a left at the end of the next one, and it will be in front of us. If we flat-out sprint, maybe we’ll be able to make it.
We turn right.
I’m dragging Elijah down the corridor as I run. I don’t have to glance down at the numbers counting down on my skin—I know we’re not going fast enough.
We’re about to take our left and turn the corner toward the infirmary when a door at the end of the hall opens, and a guard shines his flashlight on us.
I make eye contact with him, and I see the surprise on his face as he fumbles for his weapon.
“Hurry!” I say to Elijah, because I can’t keep supporting him and get both of us out alive.
Only my voice is drowned out by the gunfire.