“Are we there yet?” Itsy finally broke the silence during the otherwise somber drive. They’d crossed the border into Regend a while ago, but the prison was still nowhere in sight. The group was making the trip in The VANisher, which was currently disguised as a prison transport van.
Those lucky ‘Lessers’ who were being escorted received complimentary prison uniforms and handcuffs courtesy of Chorus—“Quiet back there!”—who was getting rather engrossed in their role as a guard since they’d lost out on the opportunity to play a convict. They’d gone all out in their own uniform, even carrying a fully-modeled shotgun that shot confetti.
Rezin, who was next to them in the driver’s seat, looked more like his uniform was wearing him instead. The boy looked like he’d stolen the getup out of his parent’s closet. It also didn’t help that he could barely reach the pedals of the van. A convincing guard he did not make, but his Curse would take care of the physical inadequacies, making those around him perceive a man not to be trifled with.
“Something wrong?” Gatrim asked Kaizu who had just let out a troubled sigh followed by a few deep breaths to calm herself.
“When I started killing people, I always knew there was a good chance I’d wind up behind bars,” she relented. “Just never thought I’d go to prison voluntarily.”
“Hmph, you’ve already been locked up several times,” Gatrim casually mocked her. “Pretty sure you’ve spent more time in their compound’s holding cell than in your actual room. At least here you won’t have to do endless administrative work. Though you may start to miss it after a few days out of sheer boredom.”
“There are jobs and tasks that they’ll assign us. Menial labor usually, though I was given filing to do on occasion. I think the work may have been part of my downfall on the last attempt. I performed it too well and enthusiastically. By being good at everything, I made myself too indispensable to transfer. So that’s something to think about for the job. Be good at something, but don’t be good at everything.”
Speaking of that sort of work, Crucion had been muttering to himself for most of the ride; a list of his duties that he was checking off in his head again and again, making sure he had gotten through all of them. He was more worried about the punishment he may face if he was neglectful when they returned from prison than the imprisonment itself.
All in all, the trip wasn’t really chaotic, but the air became thick with tension when the penitentiary came into view.
“Whatcha got?” the guard at the gate asked when Rezin rolled up to the checkpoint.
“Prison transfer. Four Lessers,” the boy kept his answer short and concise, pushing the persona he was trying to exude.
“Ah, yeah, we got the heads up about them this morning,” the guard poked his attention to the back of the van, trying to get a nosy glimpse at the criminal scum he was about to shepherd to their fate. “You’re good. Go on through.”
“Well, that was easier than last time, at least,” Gatrim dwelled back on being brutally manhandled and thrown around by police.
Once they made it to the intake office, Rezin and Chorus escorted the new prisoners inside, but they sadly wouldn’t be sticking around for long, just until the transfer paperwork was completed. But that was the part where Rezin’s presence was most crucial.
The actual files they’d submitted were near-perfect counterfeits, but the boy was making sure that the processor saw everything that they wanted to see. It was probably a wholly unnecessary gesture, since the glazed-eyed clerk barely glanced at the papers before stamping them and handing them off. But it was certainly better to play it safe so as to not ruin the mission at its most crucial point. Because once they were inside, no one cared anymore who they were.
The four ‘Lessers’, who were chained to their chairs during this dull ordeal, then had to watch their friends and last connections to the outside world leave without so much as a farewell. Eventually, a door near them buzzed, and two heavily armed guards entered the room and undid the Lessers’ restraints. And from then on, the dehumanizing had already started, the guards not lowering their weapons for even the briefest moment, the group perpetually an erratic trigger pull from death.
Then a third guard entered the room. This one at least wasn’t pointing her weapon and wasn’t wearing a helmet, making her feel somewhat more down-to-Rathe. At least until she opened her mouth, her sense of self-righteous authority leaking out with every word, walking around them as she spoke like a cocky drill sergeant.
“When I call your name, you will step forward and proceed to the next room. There, you will be searched. Lucky for you, since you’re transfers, we will be forgoing the cavity search and just be doing a thorough pat down. Which is good for me since I’m pretty sure this one could snap off my fingers,” she made a vain attempt at a joke while rapping the back of her hand against Itsy’s stomach like a piece of metal that she expected to clang.
“Once your pat down is complete, if we find your hygiene lacking, you will be given a shower. It will not be pleasant. We can not account for your previous accommodations, but we can tell you that here, we do not want to smell you. Keep yourself clean. That is an order, not a choice, or we will shower you again.”
“After that, you will be given a new uniform and taken to your cell. Once the four of you have been processed, we will go over the rules, our expectations, and your daily schedules. Fortunately, we have a clustered block that just opened up, so we won’t have to repeat ourselves. Hope you four are friends already, because you won’t be getting any new neighbors for quite some time.”
“To keep things simple. Do as we say and nothing more. You Lessers may think you’re hot zjik just because you’re a bit stronger than the rest of us. But I can guarantee you that our guards are nothing to sneeze at. We have the munitions, the training, and the mindset to put you down if we need to. I hope we don’t need to.”
“Now first, Gatty Pulpis, step forward and proceed to the next room.” This was Gatrim’s alias, derived from what his older sisters used to call him when they were younger. It was better for him to have a name he’d notice, even if it was one he didn’t care for—better than being caught off-guard by forgetting what his fake name was supposed to be.
The rest followed similar guidelines, and the guard called them forward one at a time every few minutes. “Ketzka Reel,” was Kaizu’s grandmother’s maiden name. “Riki Dawe,” another inconspicuous name for someone as inconspicuous as Crucion. “Gantua Hopeful,” Itsy decided to go the opposite of her usual name and donned one more fitting of her stature.
Taken and isolated in a damp and dreary room, Gatrim put his hands up against the wall and prepared to be patted. There were two guards for the process, one to get handsy, and another to point a shotgun at Gatrim’s back the entire time. The drain in the room could both be used to shower him and wash away the blood. It was a good deterrent for misbehavior.
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The pat-down itself didn’t take too long, but it was uncomfortably thorough. Even though it wasn’t a full cavity search, which the Lesser had gotten to enjoy during his last visit, it was everything but. The guard got so intimate, like he was measuring Gatrim’s inseam for the tightest outfit in the world. The Lesser had to hold back making a joke about charging the officer for the pleasure that his normal pretentious self wouldn’t resist.
After the inspection, the guard gave Gatrim an exaggerated whiff to check his cleanliness. He was deemed acceptable and handed a new uniform to change into, but not the privacy. So the Lesser changed as quickly as he could, still not used to getting undressed in front of others, and he probably never would be.
For this anticipated strip-show, the man had made one other slight alteration to his disguise. He had Niloy put makeup over all his existing Curse Marks, which he was now up to four, and then visited a tattoo artist to apply a temporary one to a spot on his back. The covering makeup would last a few days at most, but that was all that should be needed. After that, the guards wouldn’t pay attention with how many prisoners were painted with tattoos.
Crucion had also joined him in getting a fake Curse Mark, while Kaizu had a few of the more erratic ones covered up to make her look a bit less like a mass murderer. And Itsy also had to have a temporary blood-red one added on her thigh, since her normal Curse Marks were actually colored, but still looked enough like regular tattoos to not be questioned.
After getting changed, Gatrim was then marched to his new cell. They passed by a few points of interest on the way. The first was the storage room that he’d broken into so he could retrieve his gear. The lock had already been replaced, but the paint and damage still hadn’t been touched up.
And the second was his old cell which already had a new occupant. The lazy louse was curled up and snoring in his old bed, already having made herself at home. This spurred a strange emotion in Gatrim, surprised at how aggrieved he was that something that felt like his possession had been passed along so flippantly. But such was the nature of his situation and prisons in general.
In turn, he was given a brand new cell, a part of a set of four that had just opened and were still under construction during his last stay. The four cells were isolated away from the main row, tucked away in a corner that had previously been used as an activities room. It made sense why the change had happened. Lessers weren’t deemed worthy of community activities, so the room had gone mostly unused. And with the alterations, they could cram in four more prisoners and receive more funding as a result.
However, the prison’s greed was certainly the infiltrators’ gain. The four of them being alone from the rabble would make communication that much easier. While there were some negative aspects in it being harder to monitor the other prisoners and their situations, the outcome was still certainly a net positive.
The other For Hires steadily trickled into their cells. Gatrim recognized their looks of violation etched into their faces, even Kaizu, having probably never experienced anything like it in their lives. “They had to get a stepladder to check me,” Itsy at least laughed at that part when the guards left them be for a moment.
They were left to rot in their cells for longer then expected until their handler from before came by to give them the rundown. Gatrim had already heard the rules, so he mostly tuned out of that part, but paid attention when it came to their schedules. The prisoners, especially Lessers, all had different schedules so that the guards could keep a better eye on them.
For the most part, they’d stick together as a group of four for meals and recreation, but for work, they’d usually be split off into pairs. Unsurprisingly, the boys and girls were paired together by gender. While Gatrim would have preferred sticking with Kaizu through all this, at least he had someone to rely on—reliable and hardworking basically being Crucion’s core values, even if he didn’t have too much confidence.
And then as expected after the guard wrapped her spiel, they’d be confined to their cells for the rest of the day. Normally, they’d get some time in the yard and eat their meals in the cafeteria, but it was a common tactic to fully isolate the prisoners for a day or two. That really broke them down as the reality of their circumstances set in. It also hampered the statistic where new inmates were more likely to pick fights with the guards and other prisoners upon first arrival.
Once they were alone, the four Lessers didn’t really talk much to each other. Gatrim had prepped them on how they should act their first day based on what he’d seen. Prisoners rarely opened up right away and usually tried to act strong and solemn, only to break down that night when they hoped no one was listening.
It was also pretty commonplace for the Lessers to give the bars a rattle, to check to see if they’d break out of them. Gatrim didn’t bother this go round, but he suggested that the others do so periodically throughout the day so that the guards didn’t get suspicious. Even though they weren’t directly around, the man was convinced they were still being watched in some form or another.
When their dinner came, Gatrim derived a bit of joy seeing his comrades eat their meals, not that he could catch Kaizu’s expression since she was in the cell next to his, though he heard a bit of gagging coming from her direction. But he got full view of the two across the hall. They’d clearly been spoiled by the delicacies at the compound, not ready for how rough and bland prison food would be.
And it was barely a few minutes before Itsy’s stomach was grumbling again since they hadn’t given her a proportionally-sized meal. Crucion was so kind as to chuck some of his food her way since he couldn’t finish the whole thing. It missed her hand horribly and landed on the floor, but she still took it and ate every bite.
Gatrim enjoyed the moment so much—others understanding the suffering he went through—that he felt the need to snap a few pictures and blinked his eyes. Apparently, during his previous incarceration, the compound had been burgled by a Fiend thief, one that none of his companions had seen or met. But the thief had interesting tech that let her take pictures with a contact lens.
Nathym had, of course, been able to recreate this technology and improve upon it, and had colored them for the non-Lessers to fill that need as well. Now they could take unlimited pictures since the contacts only had temporary storage. Every few minutes or so, they would sync with a remote server and extract the information, freeing up any space they used.
This also meant they could take as much video as they wanted, with the only caveat being a runtime limit that’d fill up the temporary memory. But once it was synced and processed, they could record a new clip. So there was no reason to hold back. If there were any good moments among the bad they were about to face, it was just as important to preserve them.
Eventually over the evening, the four of them introduced themselves to each other as if it was their first time meeting. Their backstory was that Gatrim and Kaizu already knew each other, along with Itsy and Crucion, since those were the obviously closer pairs. They talked about their fake crimes, people they had on the outside, lives they wanted to go back to, recited their fake sentences and the days they were counting down—more to keep it firm in their memory in case they were questioned again.
But other than that, the night was pretty uneventful. Right after lights out, the guards came by and clanged on the bars with their oversized weapons to remind the Lessers of their presence, and cruelly disturbed any attempt at sleep. Gatrim had too much on his mind to nod off really, and it seemed the others weren’t fairing much better—plenty of tossing and turning in the nearby cells. Well, except for Itsy, whose snoring was making the world around them vibrate ever so slightly.
The next morning, after whatever little sleep they got, the four of them were split up by gender and marched off to the showers. Both boys finished up first and were then escorted to the cafeteria, joined by the two girls later at their table. They were off in their own corner, slowly forcing down their heinous rations. None of the other Lessers tried to approach them during that meal, either too tired or too wary of their new prison mates. The circle of guards around the room certainly didn’t lend the atmosphere for friendly banter either.
After breakfast, they were divided back into their gendered pairs and assigned their work for the day. The two ladies were tasked with soldering computer chips of all things. Apparently, the prison outsourced labor to some tech recycling company. Meanwhile, Gatrim and Crucion were told to clean the laundry room. But there was one minor interruption before they could get started.
Leaving the cafeteria, Gatrim was stopped by one of the guards. “Gatty Pulpis, your lawyer’s here to see you.”
He had to do a double take, making sure he’d heard correctly. “Err, my what?”