Reward systems between low-life prisoners... Hah!
Kallan answered for her. “No use trying with our boy here. I offered him the sun and the moon when he first got thrown in and found the more you try, the stiffer his lips get. My boy likes listening though... When he’s in the mood.” He laughed hoarsely. Everything Kallan said sounded disgusting.
Gunner’s eyes flickered with red light, just for an instant, before they went milky again. She was about to lean in to get a closer look when he turned from her and looked at Kallan, his face harder than before.
“Your...boy?” he asked, low and deep. Frighteningly.
“The best boy a man like me could have! Isn’t that right, Ely? Daddy left but a new one took his place. A boy always needs a dad.”
Fuck you, Kallan.
“Is that so? Ely doesn’t look like a boy to me, he looks like—”
“A woman?” Kallan interjected.
“I was going to say man,” Gunner finished, deadpan.
Kallan broke out into another laugh. “Shame that. Still, he only talks to his daddy and we decided who that was now before you arrived. If you want to talk, better pick someone else.” He spat. “Like your jacket buddy.”
“What if I want to talk to you, Kallan?”
“You should’ve thought about that before you gave away your fucking leverage!”
The next moment Gunner moved from her side and crouched at the other end of his cell, startling her. Something shiny and round rolled across the floor, through her space, with enough speed that it wasn’t until it perfectly slipped through the other bars and into Kallan’s unit that she realized it was a water gel. Herstolenwater gel.
Kallan caught it, ready for it, taking it before she had a chance to move. He drank it as she watched in despair, smiling cruelly at her through yellow teeth when he was done.
“I have new leverage now,” Gunner said, lifting up the second gel. “I have extra water.”
My water.
“If you’re certain you can get it past Ely here again, I guess I can answer some questions,” Kallan grumbled.
Elodie was gazing longingly at the water in his hand and hadn’t realized that Gunner was speaking to her now. “You can have this back if you say one word to me.”
Her lips parted.
His face was back at the bars in a flash, in line with her head. She jerked back.
Gunner pinned her with his gaze.
She could almost taste the refreshing liquid in her mouth, feel it move across her lips and over her tongue, down her throat, hydrating her from the outside in.
Her lips moved to give him one word...
“Waste of time! I told you!” Kallan’s shrill voice was edged with laughter.
Elodie shut her mouth.
Gunner stood up and gripped the bars they shared, his countenance shifting so precisely, so carefully, that it was almost indiscernible. He sucked up the space and had been sucking it up since he arrived. Elodie watched him uneasily, wondering if he was angry, knowing Kallan held his attention, and really saw him for the first time. Not in comparison to other men, not as a prisoner, or a man with bad luck deteriorating on a cell floor, but as a singular being. One with a lot more power than he should have.
She had been scared before, but now she was haunted.
He’s restraining himself.Elodie didn’t know how she knew, she just did, half expecting the metal in his hands to shatter like glass. Once again, the intimidation his presence created had her imagining him actually destroying the bars. Freeing himself.
If I say something, he’ll give me my water gel back.She knew she was trying to convince herself to talk to him but her instincts still warred.
There was something about Gunner that shook her to her bones, something about the way he moved and surveyed and...lurked that didn’t seem human. Even so, she could never trust his word alone. If she had a tablet she could write a bad rulebook about surviving in a prison, and the first rule she’d put down, the one that would be at the top of the page would be: never trust.
