#always meant to imply more that Lucas is snarky and pushing it outside office hours

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Dead of night

Crossed out - Continued from ch.10 - Prologue

-

With a heavy-handed sigh, Lucas slid into an open seat at the long breakfast table among his ‘work’ buddies and deposited his tray with a disgusted glance.

“Beatings continue until the morale improves,” he muttered and dragged a spoon through the slob they called porridge, “but the food here continually destroys any bit of morale you build up…”

The man next to him, Trey, guffawed softly into his sludge. When he made eye contact he quickly glanced away again, but with a soft smile.

“You’re finally starting to get it, newbie.”

“Finally being the key word here,” the man across from them spoke up. When Lucas looked at him in question he didn’t look up, just kept his head down and continued: “Nero says you’re a fast learner. I say you’re a fucking dumbass.”

“Hey, I watch and learn,” Lucas countered a little offended, recalling Marcus’ words.

“Sure, that’s why you got that black eye.”

“And you were limping back to your cell last night.”

“Learn faster.”

“He’s gonna learn sooner or later that everyone here calls him ‘that new dumb fuck’.

Lucas huffed, but with a smile. It’s not like he could counter that. His intelligence wasn’t really the problem here; more the fact that his stubbornness just kept overriding every logical decision he had to make here. And being stuck between a rock and a hard place didn’t really bring out his best decision making skills. Maybe he didn’t perform as well under stress as he had always thought. Or corporate stress was just a whole different beast.

He brought his fork up to his lips. Wasn’t porridge supposed to be at least somewhat liquid? They say chewing more will make you feel like you’re more full. But chewing on this… well, he hadn’t decided yet whether that was a crime or the punishment.

He swallowed the bite in one go. Pulled a face. “Do they sell snacks at the shop? I think I’m gonna need to be able to look forward to some good, overly sweetened processed food every now and then.”

“Wait ‘til lunch,” one of the guys said.

“Get your essentials first. Then snacks,” another said with some better advice.

“What are the essentials? I got my toothbrush and slippers…”

“Painkillers, in your case, seem essential.”

“They sell that here?!”

“Sure, just mild variants.”

Still, every little bit would help, Lucas thought. Would’ve been nice if he’d known about that earlier, but he wouldn’t have had money saved for it anyway. He still refused to visit the infirmary. It felt like admitting defeat, plugging up some of the cracks with aspirin.

“You got earplugs yet?” Trey asked.

“I don’t have a bunkmate so I don’t need it.”

The conversation halted and all the men glanced up at him, then looked around at each other, uncomfortable. Trey whispered, “It’s not for the snoring…”

“What?” Lucas looked up but they all avoided his gaze. “What then?”

“Speak for yourself, Trey,” one man said with forced laughter after the silence became too tense. “You try sleeping in the same cell as Lorenzo.”

“Actually, two cells down I can still hear Lorenzo.”

“Even with earplugs in.”

“Hey.”

The man across from him tried to steer the conversation away. “You’re so lucky you don’t have a roommate, though,” he said wistfully.

“Actually, I think it’s the other way around. With the speed this guy is turning Nero into his mortal enemy, I’d say we all are lucky not to have him as a roomie.”

Lucas, getting more and more confused with the breakneck speed they all danced around several subjects, piped up. “Why’s that?”

The conversation instantly gloomed again.

“You saw what happened to Graff,” Trey said softly, patiently.

“Yeah?”

“Nero employs something we call the buddy system. When you break one of the rules, Nero doesn’t just punish you, but your cellmate as well. It works well.”

After witnessing the unfair punishment of Graff, Lucas had suspected something like that, but to hear it said out loud… that just hit different. “I bet,” he said, a bitter undertone in his voice.

Right on cue, Nero marched into the cafeteria and Lucas found he couldn’t keep the bitterness in.

“Found another evildoer to punish,” he said a tad too loud as Nero stomped by, and he instantly regretted it.

Nero stopped dead in his tracks. Very slowly he turned towards him, straightening up as if daring him to repeat that and within a five yard radius, the conversations around him stilled. Nero shot him a glance that turned the gooey breakfast in his stomach to solid lead. “Why don’t we discuss this in my office tonight, Varga?” he said, no louder than necessary.

Fuck him and his big waffle… Nero kept staring at him, holding a steely eye contact until Lucas muttered a defeated “Yes, sir” and stared into his bowl. Then Nero stoically marched on.

The man across from him raised his eyebrows in a way that said both ‘yikes’ and ‘yeahh’ and he mouthed an exaggerated “Learn faster,” as he picked up his tray and stood.

That night, after fervently ‘discussing’ his outburst in the cafeteria, Nero spoke to the figure outstretched on the floor. “Now I was quite sure you were in the company of Georgiou at your first breakfast. Didn't he teach you anything?”

Lucas groaned, not recognising the name with Nero’s stupid tendency to call everyone by their last name. “Marcus?” He pushed himself onto his elbows and glared at Nero who barely nodded. “Yeah, he told me to keep my head down.”

“Shame you didn't listen to him.”

Normally, he’d accept the hidden implications behind those words and assumed the threat was for him. But after what he heard this morning, about Nero’s buddy system, a panic rose in him and his head shot up, eyes searching Nero’s to find out what he meant by that. “You’re not going after him for this? Right?”

“I won’t, Nero said, short. “Unlike you, Georgiou is a model prisoner. Just... join him for lunch a little more often. Maybe it will rub off on you.”

And Lucas knew they both severely doubted that.

Luckily, their ‘discussion’ that night was a short one and for once Lucas was allowed the dignity to walk back to his cell instead of limping or hurriedly wobbling across the halls to make curfew.

Relief still shot through his body when he could finally lie down on his cot, and he folded his hands behind his head, processing everything he heard today. He glanced at the other empty bed in the cell, indeed glad he didn’t have a bunkmate, but now for other reasons than just his privacy. If he had a bunkmate… well, he would’ve had a little more incentive to have kept his mouth shut this morning and at other times. Getting responsibility beaten into you for your own mistakes – rebellion – was one thing. Watching someone else get roughed up for your mistakes… that was a hard one. He could understand most in here kept to their own business.

The familiar evening ritual echoed through the cell block; buzzer, groaning iron, guards stepping past to check the cells, a tense silence for a few minutes that was broken by heavy footsteps and a single cell door opening. The warden was a busy man, Lucas thought bitterly. Apparently, keeping to your own business wasn’t as easy as it seemed. His cell wasn’t close enough to hear pleading, maybe there was just resigned silence, and the footsteps retreated.

A door slammed slut and Lucas turned over, able to sleep now that the ritual was over.

Only it wasn’t.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, a scream pierced the silence.

Lucas shot right up in bed.

Though muffled and distant, and with him on the brink of sleep, he was certain he hadn’t imagined that and he lay very still, listening intently. He heard it again.

All hairs stood right on end, panic and a sense of immense wrongness seared through him. These weren’t the grunts and occasional scream that went with a beating. This was something else. Something very wrong.

It was desperate. Broken screams forced out, interrupted by something he couldn’t hear. Sobs. Crying, probably. Vowels of pain, interrupted by shorter vowels that indicated a pleading, cut off again by pain. Settling in a sickening rhythm, more broken with each repetition. He didn’t dare think about what in the world was happening there, not wanting to analyse these horrors. All he wanted was to shut it out.

Even the silence that followed was repulsive and did not comfort him in the slightest that it was over.

-

So as soon as he had scrambled enough petty cash through more hard labour, he immediately went to the prison shop.

“I’m guessing we don’t need to explain anymore?”

Trey stood behind him in line. He flashed a wry smile and nodded at the earbuds Lucas had bought.

Lucas stood aside and merely shook his head. The earbuds plus the dark bags under his eyes showed exactly what had kept him up these last couple of nights. Even when the nights following the incident had been quiet. He waited for Trey to finish his turn and watched in envy as he bought a Twix.

“You’ll want to be careful, though,” Trey warned, slipping the candy bar into his sleeve. “Not wanting to hear is good. But you also won’t hear him approach. He doesn’t care if he wakes people up, so the earbuds do help but… Well, let’s just say that it’s also not good for your blood pressure if you wake up with him already standing next to you.”

Good god, could you imagine… Literally waking up into a nightmare.

“I’ll be careful.”

-

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