#prison-tech

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Flying Logos https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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KGBO https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suncorp_Bank_ATM.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[here-comes-the-moose]

Crosshair: Do you think I’m going too far?

Tech: No no you went too far seven hours ago. Now you’re going to prison.

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

(Not sure if this idea has been floated already, I'm relatively new to tumblr)

I'm convinced the finale is going to have plenty of callbacks to the Bad Batch's intro story in TCW (I mean, we've already gotten a few callbacks).

So...

Since Tech was the one who directly helped Rex find and retrieve Echo, and then carried Echo through the shafts...

What if Echo is the one to find Tech and carry him out of Tantiss???

[dontfindmeimscared]

what if Leo figured out Krang tech in the prison dimension?

[staycalmandhugaclone]

Fool's Errand Pt 6

Part (6) of Fool's Errand, the next arc of Doc's Misadventures! If you're new, start at the beginning with Touch Starved!

Bit of a shorter one today, but figured that was better than holding out for another week!

Warnings: reference to previous medical procedures (blood/ needles), wound cleaning, some, uh, tension, child trauma

WC: 2,648

“Still alive up here?” I called warmly as I entered the cockpit. Echo’s helm tipped back to look at me with what I knew to be an unamused stare.

“How’re they doing?” He asked, attention turning back to the viewport. I moved closer to him before answering, sitting lightly on the edge of the copilot’s chair as I set my pack between my feet.

“Tech and Crosshair are still out. I can’t fix Tech’s arm while we’re moving, but I got a chest tube in Hunter.” I didn’t have the strength to hide the exhaustion in my voice, adrenaline finally quelling now that no one was in imminent danger. “Wrecker’s knee still needs to be reduced, but I might have to rig a damn pully system to pop it back into place.” I added with a deep sigh. “The girl will be alright – minor burns here and there, but nothing a little bacta won’t fix… Which just leaves you.” Forcing some feint of strength back into my voice, I tilted my head expectantly toward him.

“Not a whole lot you can do while I’m flying.” He dismissed. “Only have one hand to steer with. What’s the story with the girl?” Ignoring his excuse, I pushed myself back to my feet and walked around the chair to his injured shoulder.

“Not sure yet,” I replied, attention clearly focused on the task before me. “Don’t crash us. They found her where the senator was supposed to be.”

“Doc.” He grumbled, trying to shrug me off.

“Echo.” I retorted in the same tone. “I can get some bacta on the worst of it, at least.” His chest swelled in preparation, I was sure, to voice some further argument, but I cut him off with a sharp look and he let out a deep sigh.

“Apparently,” the conspiratory lilt in my voice offered both distraction and gratitude as I removed his shoulder pauldron, stance carefully widened to better steady myself in the event of sudden turbulence, “she saw Tech and immediately threw herself at him.” The very edges of my lips pulled up in a poorly restrained, knowing grin as Echo’s bucket dropped slightly, breath held lest a barely silenced snort escape him. “He had to carry her all the way to the ship.” I continued, “And I’ll give you one guess who she clung to while he was piloting.”

“Oh no…” He couldn’t fully suppress the threat of laughter from his hushed sigh.

“Yup.” The word popped with that same mirth, pleased to note the ease in his posture as I brought my sheers to his shoulder, snipping quickly through the ruined fabric to better expose the burn beneath.

“Echo…” I couldn’t help the groan in my voice upon seeing the wound, nor the huff that followed at how he pointedly avoided looking away from the viewport. “I swear, if you’re about to say that you’ve had worse….” I interrupted the instant he started to respond, and the silence that followed was more than enough to justify the accusation.

Releasing a tense breath, I stepped away from him a moment to dig back into my bag.

“Want me to numb it?” I offered, voice instantly dropping into a soft murmur. He didn’t answer at first, but I was already readying the medication. He hated burns. He didn’t need to explain why; not with me, and I hoped he was far passed feeling any need to pretend otherwise. When he gave a small nod, I didn’t try to hide my own relief as I returned to his side, hand reaching out to rest lightly on his forearm in some silent show of support or appreciation or some unspoken combination of that and so much more, before touching the autoinjector lightly against the blackened skin.

There were moments in which I hated our armor. I hated the distance it created between us when I so desperately wanted to offer the comfort of a gentle touch. I hated the harsh veneer it forced upon the brilliant, kind-hearted people within; hated how it sought to rob them of their individuality in the Kaminoan’s endeavor toward perfect, unthinking uniformity, but in that moment, I was grateful for it. I was grateful because it granted the man before me a mask to hide behind that he might be free to let his face twist in full display of the pain suffered beneath my ministrations. I longed for him to feel no need for such a façade with me but wasn’t so naïve as to feign otherwise, and his comfort was of far greater importance than my pride.

“I’m going to try to get under your rerebrace a bit.” I warned, already shifting the plastoid tube awkwardly down his arm just enough to reach the edges of marred skin. He offered neither argument nor consent, attention locked on controlling the ship absent what wretched distraction my actions caused, but I could feel the full breadth of tension coiled through his toned body, could see the powerful muscles about his shoulder flex, steering column of the ship groaning beneath his iron grip. I didn’t bother voicing another warning as I did the same with his chest plate, carefully cleaning away the layer of charred, dead skin before smearing the raw flesh beneath with that soothing, blue gel.

“Almost done.” I promised quietly, movements far more delicate now as I slipped a bandage over the wound, eager to keep the edges of his armor from grating against it. My hand lingered for a moment longer, palm spread atop the sterile fabric gleaming stark white against the darkness of his ruined blacks, fingers spread just enough for my thumb to feel the heat radiating from his chest, to catch the steady thrumming of his heart.

He'd barely made a sound when he’d been hit; had played it off so effortlessly in the exhausting hours that followed of helping me drag Hunter through those endless corridors while taking out however many dozens of droids tried to stop us, voicing no hint of complaint or hesitation. I hated the feeling of admiration just as much as I hated how desperately worried for him it made me.

His helm shifted ever so slightly, gaze dropping toward that soft touch for several seconds before lifting just enough that I was sure he was looking at me, and I felt my eyes turn toward him as though no opaque visor lay between us, as though I could see the pale gold of eyes that had known far too much pain; eyes that I longed only to see shining with carefree bliss as they had when we floated in the crystalline pools of Deveron, before the chaos of my brother’s death and the confusion of everything that followed.

The subtle rhythm dancing beneath my thumb quickened, breath shallowing as he suddenly went still, and in that moment, those long weeks of silence vanished. I remembered the first time I’d heard him laugh – truly laugh – back when I was a stranger, a threat, who’d trapped him into trusting me before revealing how that trap had backfired and asking for his help after all. I remembered the safety I’d felt from his presence after being attacked by that mercenary Sergeant. I remembered holding him as he trembled with the afterimage of nightmares I couldn’t imagine, and I remembered how he’d held me in the wake of losing myself to a grief that nearly broke me after losing my brother.

Echo was the first one among this squad to give me a chance, the first I truly considered to be my friend. The weight pressing against my heart from how ruthlessly I’d pushed us apart crippled me, fingers subtly tightening in some subconscious plea to keep him near me, if only for what few seconds of quiet might be stolen in the too-short flight back to the Marauder, and the way his body seemed to turn toward me, to lean into that touch with the same selfish, impossible want left my breath shuttering slightly with promises and apologies and whispers that could never be granted voice.

“Doc!” My head jerked up at Wrecker’s hushed shout, chest bucking with a sharp gasp. Swallowing back the swell of emotion still lingering just on the verge of breaking through, I snatched his pauldron and quickly began reattaching it to his shoulder.

“Try not to move it too much for at least a couple hours.” I ordered, already dashing around him to grab my bag. “And drink some damn water, or I’ll shove an IV in you, too!” The added threat thrown over my shoulder was made in jest if only to feign some useless façade of ignorance to the tension yet lingering in his silence.

“Wrecker?” I called breathlessly as I raced back into the cabin, still trying to convince myself that my heart was racing solely from fear that he’d summoned me because of some imminent medical disaster. The towering clone only briefly met my eyes before nodding toward one of the seats beside him, and I followed his gaze to see the cowering figure of the small girl curled into the crash cough, tiny fingers trembling as they locked around the oversized harness strapped all around her.

Lips parting with a small gasp, I quickly went still, hands slowly raising, body automatically lowering to a knee. Bright, green eyes darted around, pupils dark and blown with a fear I knew too well.

“Hey, sweetie.” I murmured, voice as gentle and soothing as I could manage. “I know you’re scared, but I promise you: no one here is going to hurt you.” Those eyes darted from me to the still unconscious form of Crosshair across the aisle and then to Wrecker before returning to me. “That’s Crosshair,” I told her quietly, “He got bumped around a bit, just like you, but he’ll be alright, and the big guy behind you is his brother, Wrecker – he gives the best hugs you’ve ever felt!” Wrecker offered a tentative smile as she peaked nervously toward him. “I think you already met their other brother, Tech.” I added, pointing, and I felt myself smile at the flash of familiarity that washed over her upon following my gesture. After telling mine and Hunter’s names, I took a small step forward, relieved that she didn’t balk at my advance.

“I bet those burns don’t feel very good.” My heart broke at the way her chin quivered slightly, head shaking as her arms pulled even tighter against her chest. “I have something that’ll help. I promise, it won’t hurt.” I added warmly, movements slow as I pulled a tube of bacta from my bag. Recognition lit in those shockingly expressive eyes and, without further prompting, stretched a leg out toward me. My breath caught in a quiet chuckle as I pushed myself up and crossed the few meters between us.

“No change with the others?” I asked Wrecker as I kneeled before the girl. He merely shook his head. Hunter and Tech, I expected little improvement from, but I didn’t like how long it was taking Crosshair to wake up. Resolving to check on him soon, I turned my attention back to the child.

“The place we found you was pretty scary. Do you remember how to you got there?” I asked. She watched carefully as I smeared some of the bacta onto my fingertips before gently dabbing it onto one of the larger burns on her shin, lips still pressed firmly together. “That’s okay,” I reassured her, worried that the memories might be too much for her to willingly talk about. “How about your name? Can you tell me your name?” After several more seconds of silence, I paused attention shifting from her dappled legs to those piercing eyes.

“She wouldn’t tell Tech, either.” Wrecker whispered. I tried not to let my uncertainty show, forcing my expression back into a warm smile before moving on to another patch of burnt skin.

“You know… we were looking for someone when Tech and Wrecker found you.” I said, voice dropping into a whisper as though it were some great secret, and her attention instantly shifted back to me expectantly. “He’s this really special Senator. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” I shot Wrecker a pleading look, cursing myself for not paying more attention to the man’s name.

“Uh, yeah; real special. Gno.” He stammered slightly, belatedly realizing what I was asking. A sharp gasp caught in the girl’s throat, her fear forgotten as she sat upright, hopeful gaze darting between us.

“Looks like you know him?” I teased, and she nodded so violently, the safety harness jangled around her. It wasn’t a huge jump to guess how, but I voiced the theory regardless. “Is he your dad?” Again, she nodded, lips parted around excited breaths, but, still, she made no effort to speak. I had to fight to quell the nervous dread stirring in my gut. Why had they taken the girl? Had they accidentally left her father behind in that abhorrent maze of underground tunnels? If they had, he’d be impossible to retrieve now…

“Was he down there with you?” I asked, pointedly ignoring the way Wrecker’s gaze had already darkened with the same theory. The girl paused before giving a halting nod, but then she shook her head and pointed up. My head automatically twisted to follow her gesture, but Wrecker didn’t miss a beat.

“They took ‘im away in a ship?” She looked at him for a long moment before nodding, and I couldn’t decide if I should be relieved or even more hopeless toward the prospect of him ever being found. “Maybe Tech can track ‘em. Doubt there’s a whole lot of folks coming and goin’ from that place.” I flashed him a brief smile before turning my attention back to the girl.

“We’ll just have to ask him when he wakes up.” I said as I finished the last spot on her leg. “Are you hungry? I bet they didn’t have anything tasty to eat down there.” The pleading look in her eyes made my heart twist, and I quickly reached back into my bag for ration bars and offered her a few different kinds. “Choose whichever color you like.” She bit her lips in that undeniably innocent display of childhood excitement as she reached for one. After helping her open it, I tossed another bar to Wrecker with a knowing grin.

“Alright, let’s see what’s going on with Mr Tall, Dark, and Grumpy.” I said, smiling reassuringly to the child.

Crosshair still hadn’t moved, and I couldn’t ignore the growing unease gnawing at my chest as I approached him, teeth absently nipping at the inside of my lip. I’d just begun reaching for his helmet when it suddenly shifted toward me, and I couldn’t silence the sharp gasp that tore from my throat nor the way my body jumped as my heart nearly leapt from my chest. His head shifted slightly in that mocking, judgmental tilt that instantly drew my lips back into a snarl.

“You kriffing-”

“Ah.” He interrupted, and I could hear the smirk in his raspy voice, “language.” The smug, chastising lilt drew several more curses to my tongue that I pointedly bit back, and his shoulders danced beneath a silent laughter. I tugged his bucket off with a touch more force than was necessary, treasuring the flash of annoyance in those sharp eyes.

“Look who’s awake!” I called over my shoulder, smile returning to my lips as his jaw tensed with understanding before I turned to see the girl watching us from across the cabin. “If you’d like, I bet Crosshair would love to keep you company for the trip.” I offered, and I had to bite back laughter of my own at the quiet grumble that caught in his throat.

Next Chapter

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[relaxedstyles]

[nerfpuncher]

Hunter: Listen Tech, you should probably let Omega win one game of Mario Cart.

Tech:

[roninreverie]

Everyone's out here making "Empire Strikes Back" comparisons, so how about a "Return of the Jedi" one?

Side-Note! While I was looking up the Leia Saves Han scene, I was reminded of Han's hibernation sickness from being stuck in Carbonite. According to Wookieepedia, a cure for this sickness is a spice called "Andris"... And Andris was mentioned in a book from 1998 called "Young Jedi Knights: Return to Ord Mantell".

ORD MANTELL!!!???

[good-beanswrites]

My thoughts on how the Milgram mv machine works based on the evidence we have:

(I know there’s been discussion about where exactly the interrogations take place, but wherever they are,) the prisoners are made to sit in a specific chair near the wall that houses the machine.

It’s ordinarily hidden, but the wall panels shift aside to reveal it when the mechanical sounds play in the dramas. As well as the walls moving, the chair transforms to restrain the prisoner and attach whatever it takes to access their brain. The fact that none of the more frightened prisoners try to run or break it makes it seem like they physically cannot. This is why Fuuta sounds so panicked, and why Amane is suddenly helpless in front of Es in their T1 vds.

(My mind conjures very classic sci-fi mad scientist machines with wires, pipes, lights, nodes, needles, etc, but I’d love to hear how other people visualize it.)

In some vds (maybe all? I’d need to check,) you can hear Es take some steps right before their iconic line -- it would make sense that for safety reasons, the power mechanism is placed across the room. Once again it could be anything, but the sound effect makes me think of one of those giant wall-mounted levers you have to pull down.

The voice dramas don’t really provide the type of crime details that an actual interrogation would reveal, and it’s odd that they’re placed before the extraction rather than after Es gets to see the new details. This leads me to believe the machine functions with priming. All Es needs to do is get them talking about their murder, so it’s on their mind.

The video produced is much like a (non-lucid) dream. Even if the prisoners figure out that this is how it works, they can’t control it just by thinking really hard about something else. The murders produce the strongest emotional affect, and that’s what it picks up on. If someone else used the machine, it would default to whatever gave them the strongest emotional reaction in the ~15 minutes beforehand, hence why Es’ video focuses on their daunting task ahead. (The Undercover theory is still a bit loose, though, given the private shots that Es wouldn't have known about). It’s why the videos are usually closely linked to the vd topics/beats. I also like to think that the reason their prisoner colors appear so much is because they’re looking at those colors on their uniform 24/7.

The bell rings to inform Es that it’s the optimal time to use the machine -- the prisoner has been thinking about things for long enough that the video will be about their crime, and if the conversation lasts much longer they’ll start thinking of other things. It’s at a different time for each prisoner because it’s based on the specific conversation. I guess Jackalope is listening in to the interrogation, timing it perfectly. (The only one that kind of messes with this theory is Yonah, because they just keep talking afterwards lol, but it could just show that the interrogation is still in Es’ control.)

Their “Sing your sins” is the final priming nudge to get them to think of their actions as a sin, revealing their guilt.

Once activated, the prisoner enters a sort of trance/sleeping state. It’s very much like REM sleep, with the machine forcibly activating neurons and recording the output. The prisoners have asked Es what they saw, meaning they don’t remember the mvs. I like to think the prisoners do experience the mv in real time, acting as the major version of themself that appears, but can’t remember it afterwards. It’s when you experience a dream, but as soon as you wake up you’re just left with fleeting emotions and memories right on the tip of your tongue.

The video plays immediately upon extraction -- whether on a huge projection or little screen depends on which room it’s in. It simultaneously saves the memory so that Es can rewatch it later (on those old TVs in the jailbreak mix). The machine downloads the song and video together, but requires special parts to retrieve them. The technology is pretty new and fragile, so if one is broken, there might be a delay between when Es can hear the extracted song and see it with the video. (That’s my justification for Kotoko’s delays -- after 9 prisoners the parts wear out, or maybe Mikoto himself overheats it with his complex situation.)

Based on the lack of conversation we get afterwards, I picture Es leaving before the prisoner wakes from the trance. The machine adjusts their brain back to normal before they awaken, restraints freed and able to return to the rest of the prison.

It’s very much like a dream, so it’s not harmful despite the amnesia/head injuries the prisoners have. It does, however, exhaust them. Brain activity alone takes a lot of energy, so forced brain activity with added emotional strain would cause them to feel pretty drained the rest of the day.

[goodbirb]

Isn't it fucked up Warren accepted to be cyro frozen With the risk of memory loss because he didn't want to be responsible for his life. And when he did lose his memory he still wanted the same thing... It's like the only way to get rid of your problems is to face them

[turtleblogatlast]

Love when people make the Prison Dimension essentially Rise Leo’s version of 2007 Leo’s jungle

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.

Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.

Which brings me to Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.

This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."

This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/

As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.

Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.

Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.

It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.

Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/

So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music

Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/

Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:

https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/

But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":

https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/

Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).

As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."

The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.

The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.

Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.

These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.

This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.

As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.

This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.

It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/

But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:

https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration

Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:

https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.

Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.

The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.

It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

[mic-check-stims]

Linkuriboh breaking out of prison stimboard for anon

X-X-X X-X X-X-X

[deargravity]

one of the many things that bothers me about goku luck is the fact that they have kenta (a minor) in a penitentiary full of adult convicts. where was the juvenile welfare officer and why are they not doing their job. hope they’re fired

[staycalmandhugaclone]

Fool's Errand Pt 5

Part (5) of Fool's Errand, the next arc of Doc's Misadventures! If you're new, start at the beginning with Touch Starved!

Btw, @youreababboon - sorry! I'm certain you were on my taglist initially! I must have goofed at some point 😘

Warnings: fair bit of medical procedures in this one: blood, needles, big needle, body horror, brief mention of child prisoner

WC: 3,578

“Uh… She…” I barely had time to notice that he’d somehow found his helm, and that he was using Crosshair’s rifle as a crutch, all but confirming his brother still hadn’t woken else I was sure I’d be able to hear him shouting at Wrecker even through the roar of the fire. He’d just begun to speak when something in the cockpit blew. The flash briefly overloaded my HUD, blinding me even through the visor, and the shockwave that followed nearly knocked me and Tech to the ground.

“Later!” I dismissed sharply, starting forward once more. “Is there anyone else in here?!” He shook his head, already turning to follow me out of the ship, and, despite the threat of dread stiffening my throat, the horror at realizing how close I’d come to leaving the small girl to the mercy of the flames, I let out a short huff of relief.

“Echo, we’re ready for pickup.” I called out over my com.

“Copy.” There was a tension in his voice that reminded me about the still untreated shot he’d taken to his shoulder, and, for just a moment, I felt a temptation to falter beneath the overwhelming work still to come. They all needed help… and we were so far behind enemy lines that there was no backup; no nearby flagship we could run to for supplies or safety. There was just me…

“Tech, I’m going to sit you down beside Crosshair, okay?” I said, voice nearing something of a gentle whisper as I noted how quickly he was breathing, how much he was clearly struggling to stay upright. He gave a weak nod, and I carefully helped him the rest of the short distance to that ditch and eased him down before turning to Wrecker.

“Alright, give her to me and sit down before Cross sees what you’re doing to his rifle – I don’t need any more work patching you guys up.” A barely muffled chuckle escaped him as he leaned down to pass the young girl to me, but he still used the Firepuncher to limp the rest of the way to his brothers before collapsing to the freshly upturned earth.

She couldn’t have been older than six. Tawny brown hair dangled to her shoulders in twin pigtails decorated with soot-covered jewels and metalwork. Dark shorts revealed skinned knees and small but vibrant patches of burned skin dotting her legs. It was the thin bead of blood slowly outlining the subtle curve of her brow that worried me, however.

Words automatically left me in a gentle, reassuring murmur as I began an initial assessment; telling her my name and title, reassuring her that I was there to help, and voicing my every action before I did it. It didn’t matter that she appeared unconscious. I was a stranger, and I didn’t want her to be afraid.

As the scanner hummed softly, I glanced up to see the rapidly approaching transport, a wave of ineffective, crimson bolts following in its wake from the battalion below. A quiet chime drew my attention back to the screen, pleased to see nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own. Still, I knew her burns would be painful, and we had enough bacta on the Marauder to spare.

There was a moment as we waited, maybe as little as a handful of seconds, in which I found my gaze turning back to the ruined shuttle behind us, and I didn’t fight the memory of that sloppily painted loth cat on the tail. I remembered her laugh just before the alarms blared. I remembered the feeling of her hand in mine. And I felt the desperate need to venture once more into those flames; to fight my way back to the engulfed cockpit that I might find her; that I might whisper her name if only to say goodbye.

But then the scream of engines wrenched my attention back to the present, and I granted myself no further time to waste on fables as I gathered the girl into my arms.

As soon as the transport touched down, I could hear rapid footsteps echoing within. Echo was waiting before the doors had begun to open, chest jerking around quick breaths, and I couldn’t ignore the subtle gleam of moisture darkening the fabric about his shoulder. Still, a small huff of laughter escaped me at the obvious confusion in his stance as he noted the small form in my arms.

“Who’s”

“You’ll have to talk to Wrecker.” I interrupted with a tiny chuckle, “How’s Hunter?”

“No change.” He answered, voice heavy. I didn’t press as I tread passed him. The faster everyone was loaded, the faster I could check him over myself.

By the time I’d secured the girl into a crash seat, Echo was already helping Wrecker into the ship, and I winced at the barely audible grunt that occasionally caught between ground teeth as the massive clone hobbled unsteadily beside his brother. I wanted to offer my help, to lessen the strain on his injured leg, but every second brought the droid army closer, so I darted back into the cool night air.

“Tech, you still with me?” I asked, words rushed as I kneeled down next to him. He only managed a weak grunt in response at first, eyes reluctantly opening behind soot-smeared, topaz lenses. “Hey, honey – Echo’s here.” I explained softly even as I carefully slid my arm beneath his shoulders to begin easing him up. “Can you walk?” He frowned as he looked around us, lips pulled into a weak scowl from some wretched cocktail of confusion and pain.

“… I…” I could see him struggling to remember, to formulate an accurate response, and that was all the answer I needed.

“It’s alright. I’ll help you, okay?” I murmured, body bracing against his before slowly hauling him upright. A strained groan only just caught on his tense exhale, but it was enough to force me to pause, debating if I needed to carry him outright. He took the first step, however, so I tread with him, arm locked around his waist to offer what support I could.

“I'll get Cross.” I said as Echo started back down the ramp, adding, “I don't want you straining that shoulder anymore,” when his helm tilted in confusion. I didn’t need to see him to picture the subtle, unamused frown as his head sank down ever so slightly. “He’s the lightest one between the lot of you – just make sure Tech doesn’t bleed out before I get back.” I added dismissively with a scoff, words just touched by the hint of a smirk on my lips, still, he let out a short huff before turning inside.

It wasn’t until after hoisting his lithe form over my shoulder that Crosshair finally began to stir.

“… the kriff…?” He muttered groggily, body tentatively moving in weak, unsteady twitches.

“About time you woke up.” I teased warmly, carefully hiding the breathiness from my voice as we entered the ship. The weary confusion with which he called my name left my heart dancing violently in my chest. “Don’t worry,” I whispered, “everyone’s here. Just need to get you strapped in, and then we’re leaving.” His head shifted slightly for a moment as though he was trying to look around before pausing, attention briefly locking on the still form of the child, but then he seemed to abandon even that minuscule effort as he went limp once more.

Echo had another wad of gauze pressed against Tech’s arm, attention flitting between his brother and the cockpit, as I reentered. Wrecker’s gaze flicked only briefly to me before darting back to the young girl, jaw taut with a worry he made no effort to hide, and Hunter hadn’t moved, body leaning faintly into the harness while his chest jerked with quick, shallow breaths.

“How long before we’re in firing range?” I asked, mind racing to remember how long we had before reaching the Marauder, to triage the injuries of those around me, and to prepare myself for the weight of juggling them all at once.

“Not long.” Echo replied, glancing at me for just a moment as I eased his brother into a nearby couch before he leaned over to press his scomp to Crosshair’s chest. I said a quick “thanks” as I secured his harness, jaw aching from how firmly my teeth ground together as my gaze wandered toward Hunter.

“I’ve got him.” I murmured, reaching over to clasp my hand around Tech’s arm. “If you can find a spot to land for a few minutes, let me know; otherwise just… hurry.” As I said it, words lowered into a tense whisper, I nodded subtly toward the Sargent. Echo nodded, offering no further recourse before pushing himself up to all but sprint toward the cockpit. Within seconds, the ship lurched to life, leaping sharply from the ground before rocketing away from the black site below, again making me snatch at a harness to steady myself.

Releasing a short breath, I turned my attention to the man before me. Tech’s skin was pale. His head hung listless toward his chest, sweat dripping down his forehead, along the sharp curve of his cheeks, and soaking into the already damp fabric clinging to his form, and the rapid dance of his chest beneath too-quick breaths left me subconsciously tightening my grip on the still bleeding wound.

“Tech? Tech, come on, I want you to stay awake – stay with me.” I instructed, voice rising slightly in hopes of catching his attention even as I quickly jostled myself out of my medbag’s uncomfortable straps. He didn’t respond, instantly drawing a curse from my lips.

“Anythin’ I can help with?” Wrecker asked, an odd meekness to his words, and I instantly felt some of my tension fall away at the innate gentleness of him.

“No,” I said softly, glancing back toward him with a smile I knew he couldn’t see. “I just hate seeing you guys get hurt… but he’ll be okay.” I added warmly. “Let me know if those pain meds start to wear off, okay?” He nodded, and I turned my attention back to the injured pilot, carefully pulling away the gauze just enough to study the already subsiding blood flow. It was steady. Not an arterial bleed, at least, but I needed to repair any ruptured major vessels before I could remove the tourniquet, and that wasn’t something I could do during flight. Securing the additional gauze with more bandages, I moved to his other arm and quickly stripped it of armor before cutting through the fabric at his elbow to reveal the thin skin below.

“What you can do,” I started, calling back to Wrecker once more as I began prepping an IV, “is explain why we went down there for a Senator and came back with a child.” He let out a quiet chuckle, the deep, familiar sound an effortless balm to my worries.

“Not sure.” He answered far too nonchalantly for the severity of the situation. I almost scoffed, but bit it back in favor of listening, attention split between him and quickly placing the IV. “Tech figured out where the guy should’a been, but, when we got there, we found her instead.” He explained, shoulders rolling fluidly to emphasize his own confusion before motioning to the girl.

“Was she conscious when you found her?” I didn’t want to think about how she might react to suddenly finding herself surrounded by strangers…

“Oh yeah.” He replied emphatically, head nodding. “Came running right up to Tech an’ wouldn’t let go – he thinks she recognized his armor.” Maker, I would have given anything to have seen Tech’s face in that moment… I wondered if Wrecker saw how still I went, even if only for the few seconds it took to fight the image of Tech, utterly frozen, arms flared, jaw agape as he stared at the tiny girl clinging to his leg in pure shock, from my mind.

“Did she tell you what happened?” I could hear the barely restrained laughter just tinting my words.

“Nah; wouldn’t say anything. Just held on to Tech ‘til the droids started shootin’ at us; then he had to carry her.” He explained, voice still oddly quiet. That humor faded, replaced with something far softer as I glanced once more toward Tech’s still lax face. “When we met up with Cross, Tech got her to stay in the cabin with him – she didn’t like me much. Pretty sure you can guess the rest.” He said it so dismissively, as though the words were meaningless, but I instantly stilled. That was the reason he hadn’t been wearing his helmet… why he’d so carefully kept his voice hushed and sat quietly rather than ignoring his injury in favor of insisting I let him help, and my heart broke for him.

I wanted to go to him, to cradle his hand between mine and whisper promises that he’d done nothing wrong, but time was a luxury not often granted in moments when even a few seconds of stillness was so desperately needed.

“You saved her life.” I whispered instead, attention pointedly trained on securing Tech’s injured arm to his chest before dragging my bag with me as I moved toward Hunter. He didn’t respond, head tilted down as his fingers picked thoughtlessly at the straps binding his leg. There was no uncertainty in the quiet that settled between us as I began scanning Hunter. He didn’t need to explain how the girl’s fear had hurt him in a way that would never stop haunting him, how it gnawed at a wound he wanted to pretend didn’t exist despite how effortlessly it crippled him, and I knew that no amount of heart-felt reassurance or affectionate words would dull that pain.

“How is he?” He asked somberly as the scanner went quiet.

“Stable, but not great.” I answered, quickly glancing over the results. “It’s stopped now, but he was bleeding internally, and that’s putting pressure on his lungs.” I didn’t mention that the bleeding could start again from even gentle movement; that the collected blood would soon begin to clot; that I was shocked his lung hadn’t collapsed already, and that I found myself counting every passing second, certain his body would suddenly jerk beneath some instinctual panic as his breathing all but stopped.

I let out a tense breath and glanced uselessly toward the cockpit before activating my com.

“Echo, any update?” I called, loathing the subtle plea that I couldn’t fully silence.

“We’ve already had to dodge a few patrols.” I heard the apology in his voice, the note of a guilt we both knew was unavoidable.

“Think you can keep us level for a minute?” He didn’t answer immediately, and I could only assume he was scanning for any hint of danger before answering.

“Do it quick.” There was a warning in those short words, and I didn’t waste a moment, quickly tossing my helmet onto a nearby seat.

“Wrecker, if you can move carefully, I could use your help.” I murmured, attention focused on retrieving the right supplies. In truth, I could have done this on my own, but there was comfort to be found for us both in sharing this burden. He responded merely by undoing his harness and hobbling across the small cabin toward me, one hand absently pressing against the roof to steady himself.

“Help me get his cuirass off.” I was already reaching out to begin undoing his armor, loathing the seemingly endless steps needed to gain access to his torso. Wrecker readily lowered himself into the seat beside his brother and followed suit, quickly piling the dark plastoid into a pile at his feet, and I couldn’t unsee how his jaw had tensed in that first moment after pulling off Hunter’s helmet. Deep bruises painted what skin wasn’t already darkened by his tattoo, leaving both eyes nearly swollen shut, and the gauze I’d secured to his nose was soaked through with now dried blood.

It wasn’t until I eased him toward me, balancing him against my chest as I kneeled on the floor in front of him to start carefully removing the heavy cuirass, that Hunter began to stir, a groggy hum catching weakly in his throat.

“Welcome back.” The warmth in my whispered words veiled the regret sinking through my chest at having woken him.

“…where…?” The question only just found breath to tumble from barely shifting lips.

“We’re all headed to the Marauder.” I answered calmly, stomach churning at the choked grunt he only belatedly managed to bite back as Wrecker shifted his arms to guide through the holes of his armor.

“Sorry, Sarg…” Wrecker muttered remorsefully. That flare of pain seemed to drag him further into a cursed awareness, head turning slightly to take in the dimly lit cabin.

“Wh… wha’ happe’ed?” He asked, voice thick and strained, trying vainly not to fight us as we maneuvered him out of his armor.

“A lot, but everyone’s onboard with us.” I said before Wrecker could offer a far more frightening answer. A low, tense groan caught in his throat as we gently leaned him back.

“…Doc…” The short word left in something closer to a cough than true speech. I hated the subtle tension in his brow, the faint creases it formed about tightly closed eyes, but I wouldn’t let myself stop, moving quickly to unwrap the plackart from his torso. “Pretty hard t…hard to b…breathe.” He huffed weakly, and I granted myself just a moment to wrap my hand around his, fingers twining together in a silent offer of whatever comfort that touch might grant him.

“I know, hun. I’m going to fix that right now. Okay?” He paused, as though processing what I’d said before a new tension stole through him, grip tightening around me for mere seconds before he forced himself under control. “I’ll give you something to take the edge off, and it’ll be quick.” I promised, squeezing his hand once more before releasing him.

“You want somethin’ to bite down on?” Wrecker asked as I retrieved the autoinjector. Hunter answered only with a small shake of his head, but his entire body jerked slightly when my fingers brushed along his lower ribs.

“Not ticklish, right?” I teased, earning a short, scoffed chuckle. In the same beat, I laid the injector against his side. Something akin to a growl escaped lips pulled into a weak snarl, fingers locking around the harness now hanging loosely around him, and Wrecker instinctively laid a massive hand over his chest. We all knew that gesture was meant to hold his brother still just as much as it was to offer support, but it was easier to pretend otherwise.

“Big poke.” I allowed him barely a second after the warning left my lips before piercing his side, automatically following the way his body bucked away from the intrusion to slip the catheter over the long needle. A strangled grunt morphed once more into that near growl before faltering into a shuttered sigh as a gush of dark blood shot between my hands onto the seat beside him. It quickly subsided to a slow drip, and the way his next breath broke with something too close to a whimper beneath a relief I knew too well left me straining to keep my own breath steady, eyes taking in the way that tension abandoned him into a boneless heap beneath his brother’s hand.

“Good,” I murmured, “just take a few deep breaths, and try not to move around too much.” He gave a small nod almost as an afterthought as I quickly secured the line to his side with an abundance of tape lest it jostle and cause even more damage. “How’s your throat feel?” He didn’t respond for a moment, tongue absently dragging out to wet his lips before wearily opening his eyes.

“It’s…” His hand shifted vaguely toward the bruised flesh in an almost dismissive gesture, “…sore?” He offered, but it was clear that whatever thought he’d given toward the answer was far less concerned by that than he was with the bliss of finally managing to fill his lungs with the crisp, nighttime air, and I couldn’t help but grin softly at him.

“Okay, let’s get you strapped back in, but let me know if anything gets worse.” He seemed to melt even further into the crash couch at my quiet whisper, eyes falling shut once more as Wrecker and I secured the harness around him.

“You, too.” I added with a smirk, my eyes shifting to meet Wrecker’s. He seemed surprised for a just a moment before his lips pulled into a slightly embarrassed smile.

“Really doesn’t hurt that bad.” There was no earnest fight in his feigned objection, and he let out a quiet chuckle as my brow hitched in a silent order, hands already pulling his own harness snugly around him.

“Alright; I need to check on Echo. Can you keep an eye on everyone back here?” The question wasn’t meant to placate whatever sense of uselessness his injury may have given him, and, as I held his gaze, I didn’t doubt that he understood that. He nodded, and I knew I could trust him to call me the instant something changed, freeing me to retrieve my pack once more before starting toward the cockpit.

Next Chapter

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