Chase awoke lying on the floor in a dark, cold cell. Cement walls, cement floor, no windows, no lights. Though it was dark, much darker than merely being out in the woods at night with the stars and moon, Chase's eyes could still pierce the darkness just barely, not that there was much to see. No furniture at all, not even a bed. Nothing except a latrine in the corner. Douglas was gone, too.
She could, however, make out the outline of a door. When she stood up and walked to it, she realized she was barefoot. The door was heavy and made of metal, and locked so tightly and solidly it was like part of the wall. Chase grabbed the handle and tugged, putting a foot up on the wall for extra pulling power, but she couldn't even make the door wiggle. After a few minutes of struggling, she sighed and sat back down on the floor.
She didn't have to wait long to be rescued. After a couple hours, the door opened. Chase stood and shielded her eyes while they adjusted to the sudden onslaught of light. Standing in the doorway was Miss Cha.
“Mom miss!” said Chase excitedly. “You here!”
“Yes, I'm here,” said Andrea patiently. “Getting thrown in the hole before you even made it through intake, huh? I'm almost impressed.”
Chase hung her head. “Am sor-ree. Not mean to be bad girl. But them take Doug.”
“Doug?” asked Andrea. “Ah. Right. The gargoyle.”
“Did try hard though. Not kill none!” said Chase, brightening up at the sound of her own positive spin on things. “In some ways, was good girl!”
“Yeah...that was good of you, I guess,” sighed Andrea. “Come on, I'm checking you out of the hole early. And I'll see if I can talk to somebody about letting you have Douglas.”
Andrea was really a life saver. Professing her gratitude, Chase followed her out of the hole. In the room beyond, they met two guards, who were assigned to escort them to H-Block. They seemed reluctant to approach Chase, and only did so when they had Andrea's assurance there was nothing to worry about.
“If you say so,” said one of the guards. He opened the exit door while his partner moved behind the two women with a scoff.
“Have you seen what blondie here can do, lady?” the second guard asked. “I know I wouldn't want to be around if something really set her off.”
“Oh, you just don't understand Chase like I do,” said Andrea, as she and Chase left the room. “Isn't that right, Chase?”
“Yes. Not want hurt no folks,” said Chase. “Am new. Do a new start.”
“I'll take your word for it, lady,” the guard who held the door told Andrea. “If you work in H-Block, that would have to make you some kind of freak whisperer.”
….........
H-Block had the same layout as the prison block she had seen before, when she was trying to rescue Douglas. Circular, two stories, with a catwalk around its perimeter. However, it also felt somehow very different. As she looked around, Chase realized it was because H-Block was much more sparsely populated.
Whereas Chase could estimate the prison block to have 60-70 residents, Chase counted fewer than ten here that she could see. Since the lockdown was now lifted, most of them were out of their cells. Some played cards in a large common area in the center of the room, others watched TV, others kept to themselves. There was plenty of space in which to do it.
The girls looked at Chase as she crossed the room, escorted by four guards this time instead of two. Some sized her up, some smirked to one another. No doubt they had already heard about the new girl's antics.
The guards led Chase to one of the cells. Chase assumed it was to be hers, but as they drew closer she saw that there was a woman inside laying on her bed, reading a book titled 'Out of Africa'. She had long, wavy tresses of blonde hair, on top of which she wore a black cowboy hat. The only other piece of “furniture” in the small room was a toilet in the corner. As in the other cell block she'd seen, the walls of the cell were made of bulletproof glass.
“Powell,” said one of the guards. The girl flicked her cool blue eyes at them. And she really was just a girl. Chase saw this, now that she was standing right beside her. She looked seventeen or eighteen, if Chase had to guess.
“Yeah?” she asked. Her voice had a lilt to it that struck Chase as odd, which she didn't recognize as a southern accent.
“This is Chase,” said another guard, as he unlocked Chase’s handcuffs. “A newbie. Warden wants you to show her the ropes.”
She looked at Chase and sighed. “I always been a believer in the school of hard knocks, myself.”
“You girls have fun,” the other guard said as they turned to leave. “And play nice, understand?”
“Always do,” said Powell. She turned the page of her book, wasting no time in getting right down to all the Chase-ignoring she had planned.
Chase, on the other hand, was quite excited, and would not be ignored easily. This must have been one of the girls like her whom Andrea had alluded to. “Hi!” she said cheerfully. “Am Chase! You Pow! Nice meet Pow!”
Powell flinched at this sunny greeting. She reluctantly set her book down on the bed beside her, splayed open with pages down to hold her place. “Powell's my last name. Call me Liz,” she said, sitting up. “What's with the caveman talk?”
Chase thought about this question a while, then smiled and nodded. “Thanks! Leash taught me!”
This statement was just as cryptic to Liz as the original question was to Chase. “Hmm. Alright then.” She must have been a little funny in one way or another. That wasn't a shock. In H-Block you met more people without a full deck of cards than with. She swung her legs off the bed and stood up. “Well, c'mon, let's get this over with.”
Chase watched Liz rise and cross to the door. “Get what with?” she asked.
“I'm supposed to be your tour guide, right?” asked Liz. “All aboard.”
She opened the cell door and left, and Chase followed her. “Liz can leave?” Chase asked.
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“Yeah. I mean, not H-Block, except for meals and rec. But we can leave our cells.”
“When I was run, all girls locked up.”
Liz smiled. “Ah, so that was you. Yeah. When there's an incident they put everybody on lockdown until it's resolved. What did you do, anyway?”
“Just fight guards. Not big deal.”
“Yeah, well, that'll do it,” said Liz. As they walked out into the room, the eyes of the other prisoners returned to Chase. A dark-haired, glasses-wearing girl sitting at the card table peered at Chase over the top of her hand, and her opponent, a strong-looking girl with dark skin sized Chase up from over her shoulder. Another girl, wearing a backwards baseball cap over reddish-brown hair, was watching TV in one chair, with another turned around to prop her feet up on. She gave Chase only a quick, bored look. Chase heard a slurping sound from overhead, and looked up to see a brown-haired girl with a ponytail leaning on the catwalk's railing and eating a pear, watching Chase expressionlessly.
Many of the girls stole glances from their cells, including one with large, froggy eyes and unkempt black hair, who, unlike the others, wore an almost fearful expression. From a few cells down, a native American girl rested on her bed, headphones on her ears.
“So this is pretty much your world now,” said Liz, gesturing at the room. “We got TV, five channels... Those cards are Sisler's, but she'll let you play with her if you want. We used to have a chess set, but then Monica sharpened one of the bishops and... Stupid bitch, ruining shit for everybody. There's also the library and the gym, but you have to ask a guard to take you to them, and the cafeteria, but we only go there at mealtime.”
Chase was confused by this. Her world? She looked at the window and pointed. “Out?”
Liz smiled. “Nah, they don't let us out in the yard no more. Too risky. That's for the good little girls.”
Chase looked back at Liz. “You not good?”
After giving Chase a funny look, Liz said, “You're not all there, are ya? Show ya the ropes. Jeezus.” She sighed, led Chase away from the others, then said, “That’s okay. It’s kinda endearin’, in a way. You realize this is a prison, right?”
“Priz?”
“Yep. Prison. And H-Block is for the worst of the worst, the really dangerous ones. High security. So no, none of us are exactly good seeds, and whatever you did to get you landed here, you aren't either.”
This was a revelation to Chase. She looked down at her shoes. A prison. A place for dangerous women. For girls who weren't good seeds. Was that why she was here? Yes, she supposed it was. She had pretended to be good for a while, and Alicia and the others had helped her with that, but she was bad. So this was what Miss Cha meant when she said she was bringing Chase to a place with people like her.
“Yes, guess that true,” said Chase sadly.
“Of course, there's something else we all have in common in H-Block. They don't advertise it, but it's hard not to notice,” said Liz. She turned Chase around to face the room. The other girls had lost interest in Chase and gone back to what they were doing before she arrived. “What do you think it is, Chase?”
Chase looked from face to face thoughtfully. “Girls?”
“Well, yes, but aside from that,” said Liz. “We're all underage. Underage, but tried as adults.”
Chase looked again. Yes, now that Liz mentioned it, they all did look pretty young. “Why that?”
“We don't know,” said Liz. “But there's always a bunch of weirdos in suits around. Government types. Different sorts of people from the guards I, we, saw before we were transferred here. Some of the others think it's, you know, some kind of sex trafficking thing. But now I think it might be some kind of experiment. Wouldn't be the first time Uncle Sam used prisoners as guinea pigs.”
“Pigs? Us pigs?” asked Chase, alarmed. The only thing you did with pigs, that she knew of, was eat them.
“Who knows? Anyway, there ain't any gangs you need to worry about. Women's prison ain't really like that. But there are some, I guess you'd say, cliques.” She nodded at one of the cells. A very pretty girl with long, straight, sandy brown hair and a pale girl with cold green eyes and a blonde pixie cut sat on one of the beds. The brunette had her back turned to the blonde, who was methodically twisting her locks into neat, precise braids. “The girl getting her hair done is Olivia Sharp. Rich kid. One day she decided she was sick of waiting for her inheritance, so she killed her whole family, tried to make it look like a robbery. She has a tight li'l posse, three girls who follow her like little puppy dogs. You'll wanna steer clear of them, they're nothin' but trouble.”
Chase watched Olivia for a moment. The girl was saying something Chase couldn't hear to her hairstyling puppy dog. The blonde said something back, and Olivia laughed. Then, Olivia noticed Chase staring. She regarded Chase silently for a moment, then gave a chilly smile.
“Not scared of Liv,” said Chase, for the record. But she knew she was also trying to stay out of trouble, so if Olivia was nothing but that, she'd do her best to take Liz's suggestion. “Who blonde?”
“Kristal Olesnik,” said Liz. “I don’t know that much about her but they say she’s a professional. Was a professional. Not self-taught, either.” She nodded at the two card players at the table. “Sisler, the one in the glasses, you mighta heard of her, they called her the Butcher of Rodriga Bay back before they caught her. Killed twenty-somethin’ people over a couple years. Can you imagine? Little nerdy lookin’ kid like that. And Brianna there, she botched a house robbery, ended up shootin’ a couple folks.”
“Wow,” said Chase. They really were like her. Kind of. “Lots of kill girls.”
“Yep, you meet all kinds here,” said Liz lackadaisically. “But as long as you don't go around pickin' fights most of 'em are pretty reasonable. If somebody picks a fight with YOU, though, I recommend you fight back and kick their ass. If you look weak to the group, your time here will be a lot harder.”
“Not look weak. No chance,” said Chase.
Liz smiled. “I like that confidence. Yeah, you're a scrapper, I can tell.” Then, she socked Chase in the stomach.
Chase was caught completely by surprise. The wind was knocked out of her and she dropped to one knee, clutching the spot where she was hit. She looked up and gasped, “Hey! What that for?”
Liz raised her fists. “How 'bout it, darlin'? You're a scrapper, ain'tcha? I can tell you are. Been a while since I had a good sparrin' partner. Let's go.”
Chase caught her breath and stood up. “Not want fight,” she said, confused. “Want friend. Us same, right?”
But at the same time, she remembered what Liz said. If somebody challenged her, she should fight back. If she didn't, she'd look weak. She didn't really understand the logic behind it, but she was the new arrival here. The only society she'd ever been a part of was normal society. Sunnycrest, being a regular high school girl. The cheerleading squad. She'd learned the rules of that society, even though it wasn’t the one she belonged in. Maybe this was normal for a society of violent girls like her.
Reluctantly, she raised her fists. Taking this as an invitation, Liz charged at her with a wild grin, aiming a punch at Chase's face. Chase sidestepped to the left and threw a left hook.
To her surprise, Liz ducked underneath it. She was fast. Liz came up with an uppercut, which Chase leaned back to avoid. She turned this motion into a backflip, planting a solid kick beneath Liz's chin as she went.
She landed on her feet and Liz landed on her butt, rubbing her chin. “Yep,” said Liz excitedly, “You're quick.”
She sprang at Chase, charging at full speed. She was aiming low, so Chase leapt over her. However, Liz expected this, stopping on a dime and throwing an elbow backwards. Chase landed and spun around to face her opponent, only to take the elbow squarely on her cheek.
“Acrobatic, too!” praised Liz, spinning a roundhouse kick at Chase's head. But Chase recovered quicker than she expected. Chase ducked under the swinging leg and wrapped Liz's planted one up in a heavy tackle driving her to the cement floor.
By this point almost every head in the room had turned in their direction to see what was the ruckus was. Some had taken to egging them on, happy for a little entertainment outside of the usual. “Shit yeah! Get her, newbie!” shouted the girl with the baseball cap, ignoring the TV.
“Come on, redneck. Don't let her get you on your back,” giggled Brianna, watching the two girls tussle on the floor. "The hell's the matter with you?"
Sisler thoughtfully laid a card from her hand down on the table. “Okay. Your turn.” When she got no response, she looked up at Brianna, over at the wrestlers, then back at Brianna. Annoyed, she snapped her fingers at her opponent a couple times. “Yoo hoo. We're playing a game here.”
But there wasn't much more to see anyway. Already the guards intervened, pulling Chase off Liz and separating them.
Olivia watched the guards haul the two combatants away. “The newbie's interesting, this time,” she commented, while Crystal methodically twisted her hair.
Up on the catwalk, the girl with the ponytail took another bite of her pear, then nonchalantly turned back to her cell.