Sinn'ous straightensto his full height, rubbing both hands up and over his jaw and face, flicking off as much blood as he can. His hair is a dripping mess that only a shower will solve, and the blood quickly runs back to attack his eyelashes, fighting to get back at his eyes. He swipes it again and is met with an endless stream to replace it.
It looks like someone filled a leaf blower with red paint, hit reverse, and tried to repaint the whole room and everything in it. And during the frenzied painting the crew fell asleep and their apprentice said‘fuck it’and just painted right over them.
He scans the scene for any twitches of life he needs to crush—
Movement brings his gaze to a machine at the end of a row which cuts half way down the middle of the room. He strides forward, stepping over bodies as he goes, and rounds the machine to find the guard pulling himself up into a sitting position. His hands pressing against his upper thighs to stem the blood flow from unseen wounds. His uniform is rich in so many dark patches he doesn’t have a chance of putting pressure on them all. The cuffs are gone, either Sinn'ous mistook him for being restrained or he found his keys and removed them.
Pain filled eyes flick up to Sinn'ous, doing a double take over his blood-soaked body.
Teeth visibly gritted in pain, the guard’s voice is stalked by a ragged, shaky breath, “for a second there I thought you weren’t going to do anything.”
“I wasn’t.” Sinn'ous tone is flat, and emotionless.
“Ah, right. Well,” the guard laughs, a nervous sound to go with the shaking of his hands over his trembling thighs, the adrenaline visibly crashing, “I think it goes without saying, but thank you. And as far as I’m aware, I didn’t see the face of who helped me, I passed out.”
Sinn'ous digests the words for a moment. Then adds, “you owe me your life.”
The guard sends a nervous glance to the door, eyes flickering back to the carnage spread over the tiled floor, then to Sinn'ous’s towering form. His Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow. “Sure, yeah.”
Sinn'ous dips his chin on a nod, neither caring if the guard is lying or telling the truth. He takes accountability for his actions, no regrets, and he wouldn’t change a second of it. If that means he has to spend his life behind bars, so be it.
He turns his back on the room, and the cooling bodies strewn over it, leaving the guard to deal with the clean up. Stripping out of his soaked prison orange he wraps the soiled clothes in a towel and drops them onto the guard’s lap. Using a clean-ish towel he finds at the bottom of a folded pile he scrubs at the blood in his hair and on his face. Drying as much as he can to prevent trailing a path to the showers. The soles of his feet are dried last, he then steps onto a blood-free patch of floor by the closed laundry door. He grabs a clean pair of prison greys off a table, and pulls on the pants, adjusting the tight fit over his thick thighs. The shirt is next, tugging it over his head to settle on his blood smeared torso. He’ll wash his body in the showers, and dumpthe clothes in a bin, then fake like someone stole his prison orange. He’s sure hazing the new guy isn’t above the men in this shithole. Either the guards believe him, or they don’t. There isn’t much he can do about it. He doesn’t regret his actions, but that doesn’t mean he needs to make it easier for them to lock him up and throw away the key. And wearing his blood-soaked prison orange would be harder to explain away than walking around butt-ass naked.
His mind links a thought—no guards have come barreling in guns blazing. Yes, it’s a minimum security prison, but surely someone is monitoring the cameras?
A glance around at the rough ceiling reveals a thorough lack of cameras. He hums in thought at the very obvious hazardous-to-ones-health oversight on the prison’s part. Do they care for their guards’ safety?—his eyes come to rest on the downed and stabbed guard—clearly not.
Should be something the prison boardlooks into fixing. Not that he can find any complaints. His lawyer did warn him not to make waves, to keep his head down and stay out of trouble until he can clear up his charges and get him out. His lawyer’s voice is choppy in his head, his words of warning to not kill anyone and get sent to a maximum security facility. A lack of cameras is a sure way to follow his lawyers exasperated advice.
A look into the corridor shows old as fossil cameras plugged into the ceiling at varying intervals down the empty space. He tips his face back to the guard, who is halfway off the floor using a machine to balance on.
“You’ll take care of the cameras.” Again, not a question, it will either happen or it won’t and he’ll deal with whatever comes next.
The guard simply nods, lips pinched and eyes furrowed in open pain.
Sinn'ous steps out, the door shutting at his back, his body thrumming in a wash of endorphins and adrenaline. A palatable taste he can sense as if it were a tangible presence hovering behind him.
A dark grin spreads his lips, chased out by a laugh which bounces down the starkly lit corridor. He spreads his arms out wide, almost touching both sides of the narrow corridors white brick walls. The bricks are painted in the same way as the rest of the prison, a lumpy coat of mouthwash white, like a landlord might paint over everything they want to hide from the new tenant until it’s too late for them to do anything about it. Something to satisfy the prison health inspectors or human rights activists?
“Hail Satan,” he bellows to no one in particular. No one needs to be here to hear it. He heard it and Satan heard it. That’s all that matters.
1
SINN'OUS
As far as prison stints go, this one isn’t so bad. He’s kept busy culling the population, hasn’t had to worry about any new cellmates. His guardfriendtaking care of that and any unwanted items of evidence or witness statements. Either the evidence is lost or the witness has a spat of depression and hangs themselves. And Sinn'ous has no part in that, he hasn’t snuck into anyone’s cell and wrapped a sheet around their neck to hang them from the cell’s bars. Of course not. He would never do such a thing. Such a terrible terrible thing.
He smirks at his own memories of struggling men and kicking, half lifeless bodies.
Besides, after the first two witnesses mysteriously fell into a suicidal depression that ended in their deaths, no more witnesses have stepped forward.
Although there was that one guard who thought blackmail was a smart idea. He found out in a very agonising way—whilst he was being posted to Hell—why one should not blackmail another. Especially someone such as Sinn'ous.
His footfalls slap on bare concrete ground, past empty cells to the one on the far end of C-Wing. The cafeteria is open for breakfast so most of the Wing has cleared out. A perfect time to get what he came here for.
The cell he is headed to is one he’s well accustomed to. As is the man in prison grey, crouched on the floor, ass in the air as he looks for something under his bunk.
Sinn'ous lets his shoes slap, signalling his arrival, and a grunted singsong voice drifts out from under the bed.
