Immediately the vise-grip hands release from my arms, and I pull the makeshift hood from my head. Three dingy men surround me, their attention at the opening of their cardboard hovel.
“Sorry, man,” one of them says. “She was by herself. Didn’t see her tat that says your name. . . . Her arms are all covered up.”
“I said I belonged to Jacks,” I hiss, pushing myself up and scrambling toward him. I take his hand, squeezing it gratefully.
“Jacks, man, don’t tell the Warden I messed with your girl. He’d toss me out.”
Jacks pulls me toward him and embraces me in a half hug. Then he turns to them. “Stay away from her,” he says, growling. “Don’t let me catch you near her again.”
He grabs my pack and we head back into the Yard. “What the hell is wrong here? Why didn’t anyone help me?”
“Those people are too weak to help anyone. And the last thing they need is some guy with a grudge against them who’ll remember them later. So everyone minds their own business.”
“So people really are on their own,” I whisper.
“Yeah. Which brings me to my point. You can’t just take off like that. If you’re looking for this guy, you need to be careful. Or else you’ll end up dead.” Jacks stares at me for a minute, his soft brown eyes studying my face. The look reminds me so much of the way Rice would gaze at me sometimes. There’s concern in his face, and a warmth that makes me feel at ease. Then Jacks leans in and for an anxious moment, I don’t know what to expect. But he wipes some of my attackers’ filth off my face and smiles.
“Also, if you start turning into a Florae, I need to be here to kill you.”
I exhale. “It’s nice that you care,” I reply with a smirk.
Jacks grins. “Seriously, I can help you. I can even protect you—as long as you don’t do anything idiotic, like run into the Yard alone.”
I nod. “Okay. That’s a deal. But I do think I just saw the guy I’m looking for. Can you come with me to look?”
“If . . . and that’s a huge if, that was him, he’s long gone. Why don’t you rest a little and think of a plan?”
“At your place?”
“Well. We can kick one of those kids out of their cardboard boxes, if you want.”
I look out into the Yard. Someone at the end of the row yowls.
“Fine. I’ll sleep on your floor for tonight.”
“Oh, I’ve got an extra bunk. We’re talking luxury.”
With no other choices, I put my hand out for Jacks to take. If I want to find Ken, there’s nothing to do but play the game.
Jack looks down with a faint smile as he takes my hand, and we make our way back through the crowds, I assume in the direction of his cell. Again, I’m horrified by the desperation in the eyes of the hungry.
“Can’t anyone help these people?”
“Sometimes the Warden makes a show of giving them food,” Jacks says. “He’ll have the Scrappers throw them a dented can or two. They’re all expired, but mostly they’re still good.”
I nod. “What’s a Scrapper?”
“Someone who travels far outside the walls to find food and supplies.” He steps over a rusty can, pointing it out to me.
“Thanks,” I say, although I’m in no danger. A sharp can won’t tear my synth-suit if a Florae’s claws can’t. But Jacks doesn’t know that.
We’re most of the way across the yard when another gunshot stops me in my tracks.
“Feels like the Wild West in here, doesn’t it?” Jacks says, pulling me back into motion. “People are just left to sort things out for themselves.”
“Yeah, or not sort them out.”
“Right,” he says. “Well, it makes things exciting. It’s weird, but I sort of like it. I always wanted to be a cowboy when I was young. . . . It’s a Texas thing, I guess.” He chuckles at his childish admission.
We come to a heavy, open door in the center of a massive gray building, the middle of three that rise past the shantytown of the exercise yard. The structure is built of cinder block and stone. The walls drip with condensation.
“This is our cellblock—B. It’s the middle one. . . . Don’t forget,” Jacks says, pointing out the large B on the door as we walk through an entryway and into a sort of multileveled atrium surrounded on all sides by jail cells. Walkways soar above us, and the walls echo with voices. Garbage litters the floor: empty cans and broken pieces of plastic and debris. Most of the cells are open; the ones that are closed are secured with thick chains and padlocks.
Jacks points at the second floor. “I’m level two, number sixteen.”
I follow him up the metal stairs to the second floor and down the walkway between the cells and the railing, stepping over shattered glass and around a discarded broken chair. I’m glad to see the cells are at least separated by solid walls instead of just bars. There will be that much privacy, anyway.
I’m passing the second cell down when a man with an ear-to-ear grin leans out like he’s been waiting for me. “My, my,” he says. “You anyone’s yet, sweetheart?”