"Around the yard. The open one." He nods toward the perimeter — the big yard inside the electrified outer fence, where Red House residents get supervised outdoor time. Beyond the electric hum, trees. Mountains. The single road winding north. Inside it, packed dirt and thin snow and about a dozen Red House guys scattered across the space. Some walking. Some standing in small clusters. One sitting on the ground with his back against the building, eyes closed, face tilted toward the weak sun.
And at the far end, a chain-link fence with razor wire coiled along the top, separating the main yard from a smaller run.
RJ's run.
“Thirty minutes. Fresh air. Movement. Your body needs to remember how to move.”
We walk. The air is sharp and clean and my lungs expand in a way they haven't since I got here. Red House air is recycled — filtered through vents and heavy with the scent of too many bodies and too much bleach. Out here it's just cold and pine and space. My body loosens. Hands relaxing in my jacket pockets.
Stone walks beside me. He doesn't fill the silence. He lets it exist. After days of being talked at, monitored, questioned, and delivered from room to room like a package, the absence of agenda feels like drinking water after being thirsty for so long you forgot what thirsty was.
We make two laps of the yard. Other Red House guys give me space as we pass — some instinctively, stepping sideways without seeming to decide to, others deliberately, turning their backs or finding somewhere else to look.
On the third lap, I start noticing things. The way the compound sits, the tree line close on three sides, the mountains beyond. The generator building hums. A bird calls from somewhere in the canopy.
"Do you ever take them into the woods?" I ask. "Beyond the fence."
"When they're cleared for it. Gold House, mostly. Some Orange." He pauses. "Not Red."
"Why not?"
"Red House is containment tier. Outdoor exposure for Red residents is limited to supervised yard time within the perimeter."
"That's a long way of saying no."
"It is."
We're on the north end of the yard now. Closest to the chain-link divider. Through it I can see the smaller run — maybe a hundred feet long, fifty wide, with the same packed-dirt surface as the main yard. No benches. No equipment. Just open ground and fence on all sides. The chain link is standard gauge — not the heavy reinforced steel of the outer perimeter. Just metal and razor wire. The kind of fence I've climbed before, minus the wire.
And RJ is in the run.
He's pacing today. That long, repetitive circuit. Back and forth along the fence line.
My feet slow down.
Stone notices.
"Keep your distance from the divider," he says. Not sharp. Observational.
"I know. Sven told me."
I keep walking. My eyes stay on RJ. He's at the far end of his circuit, heading away, and from this angle I can see the full length of his back — the way his shoulders move under the red shirt, the tension in his spine, the loose swing of his hands at his sides. He hasn't noticed me yet. Or maybe he has and he's pretending he hasn't.
A shout from across the yard.
Stone's head snaps left. Two guys — Orange House, by their shirts, in the yard for their own supervised time — are squaring off near the east building. One of them is in the other's space, chest to chest, and even from fifty feet away I can see the way their bodies have changed. Wider. Shoulders rolling forward. Hands curled. Fists.
"Stay here," Stone says. Already moving. "Don't move."
He jogs toward the fight. His stride changes — longer, faster, something shifting in his posture that reads less like a staff member and more like an animal asserting rank. He's across the yard in seconds, putting himself between them, his voice carrying back in fragments. Low. Commanding.
I should stay where I am.
I should stay exactly where Stone told me to stay and not move and wait for him to come back and be a good compliant intake.
But my feet are already moving.
Toward the fence.
