In spite of the heavy work she did earlier over at the IMCQ, along with the gamut of activity that occurred after her shift, Tasìa could not drift off to sleep. There was unfinished business still that she needed to put her ass in gear and get accomplished.
It was time to be decisive.
No mercy. They chose to fuck with her on their own accord. If she let them get away with it, they would fuck with her even more.
It was two-thirty a.m. and most of the inmates were in their cots asleep, but not all of them. A few nightlights scattered a low level of illumination across the dorm where the women stayed up late and read into the morning or listened to their radios and streamers.
There was the media room, open night and day, where the large-screen panoramas played high definition media - more alive than real life, the promoters claimed quite nonsensicaly - more qūbtexels per cubic millimeter than reality itself!
At this time of night, and not yet the weekend, only a few girls would be in there.
With the low level of lighting in the corridor, Tasìa could move around, inconspicuously.
Castro slept with her head plunged into her pillow. This naturally worked in Tasìa's favor.
She slipped over to an empty cell nearby Tasìa's own. It had been vacated three weeks previously by an inmate who moved on to better things (shipped off to a work release camp).
However, Tasìa knew the combination to the locker. She kept some items in it that she wasn't willing to risk possessing in her own locker.
Most of the items she kept in the locker were things other inmates would shrug off as being too inconsequential to ever become a matter of a disciplinary shot against them.
Tasìa, however, was meticulous in avoiding any infractions as she knew how the system could be turned against anyone.
Especially those who got too comfortable.
A lot of things were overlooked and tolerated in the correctional system, that is, until they weren't. She not only knew this to be the case, but Tasìa assumed that at some point in time things would be turned against her.
After all, what was the business with the fake chemo about in the first place but the system turning on her for some purpose she could not fathom?
She had no idea why she was the focus of machinations of those who worked for the governing body, the Salvage, but she made a vow to find out. Ultimately, she would use her honed skills as a rogue to do something about it.
That too she vowed.
Tasìa grabbed a pair of plastic gloves among the dozen she had swiped from the medical floors. Almost all inmates kept some in their lockers convenient for the preparation of meals to be shared with or sold to others.
Tasìa was careful; she never opened this locker nor did she enter the vacant cell in the presence of other inmates.
It took quick timing on her part to avoid scrutiny. She was in and out of the cell in less than forty-five seconds.
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As she returned to Castro's cell with the surgical gloves fitted on her hands, Tasìa glanced back at the woman on the cot.
She is definitely not a light sleeper, Tasìa assessed of her mark.
Castro's body molded into the cot spread eagle and she breathed while lying asleep at a snail-like pace.
Tasìa gave herself another forty-five seconds to rummage in the locker and make a grab-run at Kae-Kae's stash. Although she knew most of the combinations in the dorm, she never stole from the other inmates.
In her eyes, as fellow inmates, they were a protected class, except for snitches and the dirty bitches that did their bidding. Those people were fair game.
She grabbed twelve items. A personal notebook, a folder of Castro's casework - several months worth of her precious time with her jailhouse lawyer would be wasted when, later on, Tasìa tossed the paperwork in the garbage, well shredded - six-packs of cigarettes, twelve books of stamps, a pair of multimedia buds, an old fashioned radio clock, two stacks of poker chips, an electric razor, a photo album, a Noog-Noog bar, and most interesting and disquieting over everything else, four thick rolls of coins.
The top of one roll was open. The weight, the size, and the glint of the metal as she held the roll in the dim light confirmed Tasìa's suspicion. Liberty gold coins from the United States.
Her stomach knotted. She was shocked to her core; Tasìa glanced at Castro. In prison systems around the globe, the coins were used for one purpose and one purpose only. The agreement between parties for the commission of assassinations.
Tasìa guffawed silently to herself. She stifled the nervous chatter of her teeth. Castro was no assassin, she told herself.
Tasìa quickly tucked away the items inside a netted laundry bag. Once the grab was complete, she darted back to the annexed locker.
She shoved the bag with everything in it, except for one roll of Liberty gold coins, into the locker. The roll of coins she stowed away underneath the band of her sweats.
She hit Ria's locker in the same manner that she did Castro's. The woman was a heavy snorer. Even as quiet as Tasìa tended to be, no one was going to hear her over the mafiosa's noise.
No matter what.
She could have pulled the job humming to herself and still not waken anyone who wasn't already kept awake by the noise.
Tasìa made off with similar effects, as she did previously. Purely out of spite, for the rogue ate very little, she also stole all of the woman's food. Ria had expensive taste.
Oysters, clams, canned ham, dried figs, jars of cashews, Gouda cheese, chai tea. All of the high-end items listed on the commissary.
Curiously, there were no gold Liberty coins in the mafiosa's locker.
In the middle of her raid, Tasìa noticed a set of seven prescription pill bottles sitting on a middle shelf.
Like she did with the combination locks, Tasìa gathered every slice of information on the other inmates' medical conditions and prescriptions on the down-low that her brain could absorb.
Tasìa's heart raced. She saw an opportunity.
She knew one type of pill in Ria's possession was taken three times a day. It had a similar enough appearance to be mistaken for a pill another inmate was prescribed that was meant to be administered only once a day.
A higher dosage could cause severe liver as well as other internal organ damage.
Tasìa could swipe out twenty or so of Ria's pills and she could place the more dangerous ones on the top portion inside the bottle.
Ria would not know the difference until it was too late.
As this late-night scheme casually took root, Tasìa suddenly felt a wave of admonishing shame flush through her face and throughout her body.
As if the Lord was disapproving of her very thoughts as she considered this possibly lethal act of revenge.
No mercy, she had told herself earlier, but she was wrong. Tasìa could take matters only so far.
Whatever else can be said of me, I am not a cold-blooded killer. Tasìa thought.
Disgusted with where her criminal imagination ventured forth in uninhibited swagger, Tasìa gathered up the full bag, shut the locker, and she left the cell.