“Like I said, you just get a knack for it,” Donovan replied. He got to his feet and started walking toward the canteen. I made to follow, but he waved for me to sit back down again, shouting over his shoulder, “Allow me.”
I watched him go. The inmates were all hovering around the canteen but there was no queue—not that I really expected one in a place like this. It was more like vultures picking at a corpse. The strong ones got priority, barging past everyone else to be served first. I don’t know whether it was a relief or a shock to see Donovan plow his way to the front, the smaller kids backing away from him and hovering on the outside of the throng. But even he stood to one side to let the Skulls through, never taking his eyes off them as they snatched their food and walked away.
I was distracted from the spectacle by a gentle hand on my shoulder and swung my head around to see Zee. He sat down on the bench beside me and leaned in close, his face twisted in panic.
“This place is like a death camp,” he whispered. “What with the gangs and the guns and those scary guards—”
“The blacksuits,” I said.
Zee shuddered. “I’ve even got bloodstains on the floor of my cell, for Christ’s sake.” I thought about the marks on my wall but didn’t say anything. “What’s your guy like? Carl?”
“Donovan,” I answered, watching him cross the floor with two trays of food. “Nice. I was lucky, I think. What about you?”
“Yeah okay. Quiet kid. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose, as my gran used to say.”
“I don’t blame him,” I answered. “I once got chased around a park by a goose. I could swear it was trying to break my arm. They’re evil.”
We were both giggling when Donovan arrived back, and he looked at us as if we were crazy.
“It usually takes a few weeks for people to crack up in here,” he said as he sat down, sliding my tray across the table. “Don’t tell me you two have lost it already.”
“Donovan, this is Zee.” They nodded at each other, although both remained wary.
“Another new fish,” said Donovan, shoveling his food into his mouth. “I’d get it while it’s hot if I were you. Not that this crap is hot.”
I looked at the mound of gray mush in front of me and instantly thought about the mess I’d made on the prison bus. They looked alike, and the smell wasn’t too dissimilar either. It felt like my stomach was tying itself in knots, and I pushed the tray toward Zee.
“Help yourself,” I said. But he had turned green at the sight of the food and looked like he was on the verge of chundering as well. Donovan’s eyes were twinkling with affectionate humor.
“A few more days and this will seem like heavenly macaroni and cheese,” he said, pulling the tray toward him. “It’s surprising what you can get used to when you’re starving.”
SKIRMISH
DESPITE THE FOOD, I began to feel a bit more relaxed during trough time. With a little imagination I could almost pretend that I was back at school, chatting with friends over hot lunches (which admittedly hadn’t been much prettier than this anyway) and just enjoying time away from lessons. Instead of talking about teachers, soccer, and girls, though, we discussed life inside Furnace. But even that seemed distant, like we were chatting about a film we’d seen on television or some new computer game.
“So there really is no way out?” Zee asked when Donovan had finished eating. The older boy had scoffed two helpings of muck and was eyeing the canteen hopefully on the chance there was any left. “I mean, no tunnels, no secret exits?”
“First off, you better watch what you say and who you say it to,” he answered, giving up on thirds and returning his attention to the table. “To the warden, talking about escaping is the same as escaping. And I can’t even bring myself to tell you what happened to the last guy who actually made a break for it.
“Second, yeah, this place is full of tunnels but they all only go in one direction: down. This prison is wedged in a massive gorge, and as far as I know there are tunnels in the rock that go much deeper than this. They use some of them for storage, and some for the warden’s offices, and I know from personal experience that the hole is down there.”
“The hole?” Zee and I both asked together.
“Solitary. I was down there for three days after I got into a fight with some gang wranglers—not the Skulls, the Leopards. They’re not really around anymore. Anyway, it’s just a hole in the ground right at the bottom of the prison, and they lock you in it with no light or food and only a pipe for a toilet. The only water you get is the condensation on the walls.” His face had paled from the memory.
“After a day you think you’re going crazy. After two days you think you’re in hell. After three days you lose a little piece of yourself that you don’t get back. I never heard of anyone being in there more than four days and surviving. That place drives your soul right out of your body. It’s the screams you hear when you’re down there, like demons. They don’t ever shut up.”
He shook his head, seeming to come out of a trance.
“I’ll die before I go back in there.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth closed. But Zee didn’t seem as fazed by the threat of solitary confinement.
“But some of those tunnels must go somewhere. I mean, underground passageways, that sort of thing.”
“Well, you’re welcome to try,” replied Donovan with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I don’t think you’d be the first and I doubt you’ll be the last. But believe me when I say that the hole isn’t the worst thing you’ll find behind these walls. Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe they’ll take you tonight and you’ll see for yourself.”
“Take me?” asked Zee. “Take me where?”
But Donovan wasn’t listening. Zee turned to me but I just shrugged. He slumped back on the bench, obviously annoyed.
“So, your old cellmate, Adam. Was he your friend?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Friend?” Donovan replied, as if trying to remember the word. “You don’t have friends in here, you’ll soon come to understand that. You get attached to someone, then you’ll just lose them. They’ll get shanked or they’ll jump or they’ll be taken one night. When they reach eighteen they get sent up to level fifteen and you’ll lose them then, too. Not that many survive to eighteen.”
He paused when a shout echoed across the room, starting again when it died away. “Don’t make friends, don’t make connections. They’ll see it, and it will get you both killed. Don’t make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.”
The shout rang out again, angrier this time. Donovan seemed to freeze, his hackles raised, and I felt my heartbeat quicken. There was a growing tension in the room. You could almost see it—like a black shadow seeping over the tables and compressing the air. It was emanating from a bench on the opposite side of the trough room where two inmates were on their feet and nose to nose.
“Let’s go,” Donovan hissed, getting up. Other people were doing the same, eyeing the confrontation warily as they made for the exit.
“What’s going on?” Zee asked.
“Trouble,” was his reply. “And we don’t want to be anywhere near it.”
As if on cue there was another sound and a metallic crash. I looked back to see one of the boys reeling backward, a red gash in his head where something had struck him. His attacker was preparing for another blow, the tray raised above his head, the sharp edge directed forward like an ax.
“Can’t we do something?” I asked. But we’d reached the tunnel and Donovan was already walking inside.
“Feel free,” he shouted over his shoulder. I stood and watched for a moment longer, but as the makeshift blade descended I was pushed forward by the crowd, and the moment was lost behind the bloodred wall.
FOR THE NEXT few minutes chaos reigned in Furnace. We emerged into the yard just as one long blast rang out from the siren. The sound seemed to activate the machine guns lined up along
the walls. They spun out toward the crowd of panicking inmates, their slick, smooth movements reminding me of some crazy, homicidal robot on the rampage.
The deafening wail of the siren had the effect of a fuel injection on everybody in the giant room. It was like somebody had hit the fast-forward button, making the inmates move at a ridiculous speed. Most were running for the stairs, their fear palpable as they pushed each other out of the way. Even Donovan was jogging across the yard, his usual calm expression twisted into a mask of apprehension. He shouted something, but it was lost in the noise of the stampede and the unending scream of the siren.
The terror was contagious, flooding my mind and making my head swim. I felt something crash into me from behind and I sprawled out over the hard ground, a sharp pain running up my arm from a twisted wrist. Ahead of me lay an engine of legs, each a piston that trampled anything in its path. I struggled to get up, but something struck my arm out from under me. I wrapped my hands around my head and curled into a ball as the kicks rained in from every side—just wishing for it to be over, to wake up from this sick nightmare.
After what seemed like an eternity I felt somebody grab my wrist, hard, and haul me up. I resisted for a second but the force was insistent, and I relented. Opening my eyes, I saw Donovan above me, his expression furious. Digging his fingers into my flesh, he pulled me along with the tide, shoving other kids out of the way until we reached the stairs. I followed without thinking, my brain too exhausted to do anything other than put one foot in front of the other—and it wasn’t very successful at that either.
Like the aftermath of a tsunami, the flood had died to a trickle by the time we reached the sixth level, buoying us into our cell only seconds before the siren cut out. The absence of sound was almost as disturbing as the noise itself. The prison had been plunged into a gulf of silence broken only by the occasional sob. But it didn’t last. With a noise a little like the one a roller coaster makes as it’s being pulled up a slope the cell doors began to slide shut, a thousand gates sealing with a boom that made the very stone tremble.
Donovan had slumped onto my bed and was wiping beads of sweat off his brow. I didn’t even have the energy to make it to the bunks, and just slid down the cold metal bars until my knees hit the floor. For a moment neither of us did anything but pant. My whole body was aching, my stomach felt like it was unpeeling itself, like I was coming apart. I offered silent prayers of thanks that I hadn’t eaten dinner.
Below, on the ground floor, I could see the vault door opening and a dark shadow sweep across the yard toward the trough room. There must have been twelve or thirteen blacksuits down there, armed with guns.
“Dogs?” asked Donovan in a whisper. Then, when I didn’t answer: “The dogs, are they out there?”
I watched the vault door swing shut, but nothing else had come out. I shook my head, not quite able to speak. Donovan muttered a thank-you to someone, or something, and I heard him collapse back onto the bed.
“Is anyone out of their cell?” he went on.
I scanned the circumference of the prison and saw dozens of faces peering out through the bars at the events unfolding below. But everybody seemed to be locked up pretty tight. I shook my head again, then twisted around on my knees and found a more comfortable position leaning against the wall.
“Jesus,” Donovan said eventually, directing his words at the bunk above him. “Talk about an induction. You’ve been here a couple of hours and you’ve seen a skirmish and a lockdown. You should consider yourself lucky.”
“Lockdown?” I asked, not feeling in the least bit lucky.
“That siren, that long one, it translates as ‘get the hell back in your cell in the next minute or your ass is grass,’ ” he explained, finally turning to look at me. “Lockdown is one of the worst things that can happen here. This one isn’t too bad, it’s just the guards. That skirmish in the trough room must have triggered it. Sometimes fights do, sometimes they don’t.
“The worst lockdowns come for no reason. One minute you’re playing cards in the yard and the next you’re all running for your lives, trampling each other so you don’t get torn to pieces when . . .” He paused, his voice catching in his throat. I didn’t want to press him, something about his expression made me hold my tongue. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more.
I clambered up off the floor and walked to the bunk, sitting down at the foot of the bed and putting my head in my hands. He swung himself around so we were sitting side by side.
“Look,” I said sheepishly. “I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for coming back for me. I would have been pummeled out there.”
He looked at me and nodded, but his eyes were cold.
“Don’t mention it. But don’t expect it again. I told you, there are no friendships here, no loyalties. I helped you because you’re new, and because when there’s two people in a cell then there’s only a fifty percent chance they’ll take you. You’d better wise up, Alex, I’m not your guardian angel.”
I knew already that Carl Donovan was many things, but he was a terrible liar. I found myself smiling inside, although a sliver of that smile must have escaped through my eyes because Donovan caught it.
“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” he muttered, but that tiny smile was contagious, and took strength from the adrenaline that still pounded through our arteries. He flashed a wide grin at me, all white teeth against his dark skin, and gave me a gentle cuff around the back of the head. “You crazy, you know that? You belong in here, no doubt about that.”
I just nodded. We sat in silence for a few minutes, our heartbeats gradually slowing and the rasps disappearing from our breaths. It wasn’t long before I saw movement below, and walked over to the bars to see the crowd of blacksuits head back across the yard carrying the wounded kid between them. He wasn’t moving, and there was a thin red line on the stone floor that trailed behind the group as they disappeared through the massive door.
“Are they taking him to the infirmary?” I asked, quite pleased with myself despite everything for remembering the posh word for a prison hospital.
“Something like that.” Donovan clambered up into his own bunk and lay facing the ceiling. “Anyway, lockdowns this late don’t tend to finish until morning, so I’d make myself comfortable if I were you. Be lights-out in an hour or two.”
I looked around the cell and tried to imagine what I’d do for an hour or two. The thought felt like a weight pressing on my chest, and once again I found myself panicking at the idea of spending the rest of my life in this tiny cell. The sensation ran up through my body, and when it reached my brain it was so powerful that for a moment I saw lights popping on and off before my eyes. I wanted to tear through the bars and fight my way back to the surface so I could be free again. Instead, I just stamped my foot against the floor, so pathetically that not even Donovan heard it. The feeling ebbed from my body, unsatisfied, and I collapsed on my bunk.
“So is that what you do all evening, then?” I asked eventually. “Sit and stare at the ceiling and rot away quietly?”
“Pretty much,” he replied, laughing. The bed squeaked as he turned over. “To be honest, with jobs and all you’re usually dead to the world by lights-out, so you don’t mind the peace and quiet.”
“Jobs?”
“You’ll find out all about it tomorrow,” he replied. I could hear his voice starting to slur, like he was drifting off already. “You think we just sit about all day?”
Sitting around, dueling with canteen trays, and running from guards. Yeah.
“Oh, and listen,” he said, his voice alive again. He popped his head over the bunk and fixed me with a glare that made my pulse race. “If you hear a siren during lights-out, and the blood lights are on, then you don’t get out of bed for any reason, okay? Doesn’t matter what you hear outside those bars. Keep your eyes closed and pretend to be asleep, don’t draw attention to yourself and especially not to this cell.” I tried to say something but he cut me off.
“No exceptions. They catch you looking, then you’re as good as dead already.”
He vanished, leaving me wide awake and terrified.
“Sweet dreams, Alex.”
DARKNESS FALLS
I DON’T BELIEVE THAT anyone truly loses their fear of the dark. Yeah, grownups act like they feel at home when the lights are out, they say there’s nothing to be afraid of, that nothing’s changed just because you can’t see anything.
But they’re bluffing. I defy even the bravest adult to spend the night in a place like Furnace in the pitch black without thinking that every noise is something right behind you with dagger teeth and eyes of silver and blood on its breath; that every whisper of air that runs over your skin is the rush of a descending blade; that every flicker of movement is a tendril of darkness wrapping itself around your throat and coiling in the pit of your belly, where it feasts on your soul.
The darkness came without warning. One minute I was lying in my bed thinking pretty rationally about my life behind bars, the next I was plunged into a void so profound that I thought I’d gone blind. It was such a sudden change that I sat bolt upright, clawing at my eyes and desperately looking for even the slightest hint of light to prove that I still had the ability to see.
I stumbled out of my bunk, crawling across the rough floor with my stomach in my mouth. I was in such a panic that I crashed right into the bars, but through them, far below, I caught a glimpse of the giant screen mounted above the elevator, a white Furnace logo rotating lazily on a black background. The darkness was doing its best to smother the image, but its weak illumination reached out like a beacon. I clung to the bars and watched it, the sensation of relief so powerful that it brought tears to my eyes.
It was here, holding the bars of my cell like they were my only friends, that I first heard the symphony of Furnace. It started with the sobs, which rose up out of the darkness all around me like the gentle strings in an orchestra. They began as hushed moans choked back by the countless musicians that crafted them, merging together from every level to create a fountain of sound that ran down to the deserted yard below.