SINN'OUS
Worry isn’t something he experiences often. Or at all. In fact he can’t recall the last time he felt this way. The nagging pressure in his skull consuming everything in its ball of tangled strings. But sitting in the cafeteria and watching an empty seat where his prey should be, has him on edge.
He should have flipped the boy and checked under his shirt. Why didn’t he? What if he was bleeding internally? What if he died during the night?
Time continues to crawl and it takes everything in him not to grab his tray and start smashing faces in, until the whereabouts of Jasper is finger-painted in the congealed brain matter.
He can’t take it. And in the next blink he is storming down endless corridors. If anyone knows anything around here it’s Rogers—on the living-slash-dead statusof inmate health or who is in Med-Wing.
Where would he be? Someone better not have grabbed him before Sinn'ous has the pleasure.
At K-Winghe finds Rogersstanding around and talking with two other guards. CO Nathan Jones and Carson Miller. Jones is of a tall slender build and Miller is a short buff ball of loud demands. Neither of whom are on Sinn'ous’s list of corrupt guards who can be effortlessly swayed.
He plants himself out in the centre of the corridor so he can be seen. And waits. Tracking every detail of the interaction before him.
Miller spots him first.“Inmate, visitation hours have not started, go back to the cafeteria.” He places his hand on the taserclipped to his hip. The other two swivel, their hands going to their tasers. When Sinn'ous moves not one inch Miller’s voice booms in the enclosed space, “you hear what I said?”
Rogers drops his hand once he recognises Sinn'ous. “I’ve got this.” Frustration bleeds into his tone, while the other two eye Sinn'ous and mutter something—no doubt unflattering—under their breaths. They turn and slip into the guards’ break-room.
“Are you just here to make everyone nervous, or. . .” Rogers taps his foot, fidgeting, eyes skirtingback to the closed break-room door.
“Do you know where Jasper is?”
“Yeah, he’s working the kitchens. Should be in there, although Williams is overseeing that today, so who knows?” An old senile and incompetent guard that should have been retired years ago. Not that Sinn'ous is complaining, he’s a guard you can slip anything past.
“I need more pain meds.” He’d used the last on Jasper. And if his prey is to heal post-haste more meds are a requirement.
The faster he heals the faster Sinn'ous can slip his blade between those tantalising ribs and play with a warm body. It’s been too long since he’s made a sacrifice to Satan and the itch to do so is a clambering drive steering all his actions.
“Sure.” Rogers gives him a once over, a calculating expression in his eyes, but doesn’t say anything.
They walk to Med-Wing in silence, nothing but the heavy thud of guard boots and the soft shuffle of prison shoes. Once there, Rogers does all the talking and they clear out in record time. A collection of a couple pill baggies in their possession.
Rogers hands Sinn'ous the handful of foil squares containingtheir twin pills. And parts ways without another word, leaving Sinn'ous to pocket the drugs and be on his way back to A-Wing. Where he will leave a set of pills in his prey’s cell.
9
SINN'OUS
The pool of water flooding the centre of the cell is not what Sinn'ous thought to encounter in Jasper’s cellafter lunch. While the smaller inmate is sleeping like the dead, his floor is drowning in liquid.
A quick assessment informs him it’s not coming from a leaking pipe dripping through the wall or from under the toilet, but rather it splatters from the sinks edge to pool off to one side. Like someone tried to bathe in their cell.
Sinn'ous’s eyebrows raise in question at Jasper, who is tightly wrappedin his sheet, lips slightly parted. His face a mottled display of colouring bruises.
How someone can be such a heavy sleeper and still be alive is a miracle in itself. Satan Himself must be protecting the boy—well, protecting him from others’ so he can be gifted to Sinn'ous.
Praise Satan.
But this can’t do. The mess is unbecoming.
Reni’s towel solves the issue, soaking up the spill like a starved desert. He balls the sloppy wet mass, and promptly tosses it out the cell door where it clangs on the rails, momentum carrying it right over. It lands on the ground below with a resounding thwack, followed by the ripe curses of exasperated inmates.
Cunningham’s irate face pops around the cell’s bars, the guard’s lips parted on words of reprimand that instantly smooth to neutrality the moment he sees Sinn'ous. He glances at Jasper, then back, mutters a curse and retreats back the way he came. Grumbling about not wanting to be killed over collecting an inmate for kitchen duty.
The youngguard is one under Sinn'ous’s thumb. With a baby girl who needed a heart transplant and time not on her side. It was all but a cinchto call Zayne and have a hacker lined up to do a little tampering. A lot of money greasing the right palms. A mystery aunt’s recent passing leaving an inheritance to Cunningham. And she was bumped all the way to the top of the list. Leaving one guard indebted to Sinn'ous.
Alone again he takes the time to run his fingers through his prey’s hair, smoothing out the hazelnutlength. Each pass of his fingers has the boy’s eyelids fluttering in sleep.
