"Put yourself in my shoes." Calm, dismissive. "Everything in here happens behind big walls. Without someone telling me what's going on, how would I know?"

"And you trust that their version is right?"

"I don't trust anyone. Anybody telling you something they shouldn't has got a reason for it. Doesn't mean they don't know what's going on. You can't dig up s.h.i.t without smelling some sewer."

I thought of Melinda Reizner and her justifications for working with informants.

"I got a feeling it's not going to matter what I show you or how I act. You'll just write what you want anyway."

He told me to cut the tour guide s.h.i.t and do my rounds, and we could work on the mutual understanding later. I laughed. It was better than telling him to f.u.c.k off.

I took him into dis, where all good inmates were snug in their drums, but they'd been roused by something, every third or fourth man at his face slot. I didn't like it. A voice yelled out, "You want to really know what's going on in here, ask me!" It was as if they knew Stone was a reporter. How? Porous walls, psychic talents, a CO letting the information slide to an inmate? "You want to know the whole truth?" another voice shouted. Four cells ahead, a splash of something liquid shot through the slot and hit the floor, startling me.

"All right, this is no good." I pulled Stone back by his thick and ungiving arm, nudging him reluctantly around and walking us hard for the exit. You weren't supposed to show fear, and I was showing it now by abandoning dis, but I had responsibility for a civilian. I needed to keep his GQ duds dry and stain-free.

I spoke into my radio and buzzed for exit, but got no response. f.u.c.k me, I thought as the hoots and jeers got louder. One Mississippi, two Mississippi ... I buzzed again. Then the click, and I pushed the door forward and hustled Stone out. How heavy and solid the steel felt under my shove.

"Nice show," Stone said, as if I'd arranged it. "You let them out during the day?"

"Special caged playground, three at a time max, one hour give or take. We're not cruel. You want to see where we watch them take a c.r.a.p?"

I showed Stone the evidence rooms and the floppy s.p.a.ceman gloves tubed into the gla.s.s buckets by the inmate c.r.a.pper.

"You really get your hands dirty here, don't you?" he asked.

"Somebody's got to," I said. "You want people to understand, you write about this. I'll give you a detailed description of the typical encounter."

I thought of taking him to the infirmary, showing him the bugs and the howlers and the ones wasting away like plants that never got watered, but I didn't want to stray too far from the bubble. I wanted to be in there, if possible, when the exchange between Fenton and Ruddik took place, just to make sure. So we walked back down the long tunnel to the hub.

"You want to know what I'd be doing right now if you weren't here?"

He nodded, the patronizing s.h.i.t, and gave me his blessing to proceed.

"Officially, if I was on walk-around, that means I do timed checks of all the ranges on one of the blocks. I walk down each tier five times over the course of the night, counting heads. Brilliant, huh? Think you could do a mile in my shoes?"

"Sounds rough," he said.

"It's not," I said, "unless something happens."

"And what could happen?"

My turn to shrug. "A wind chime. An OD or other medical condition. A splasher. You'd love those. Did you know it burns the eyes? Maybe a group disturbance. A bad count. A hot shot. A gasher. Maybe you spend half your shift talking someone down from some drug they took. Maybe an incident on another range stirs up your range. Who knows how the news gets pa.s.sed along. The boys get pretty good at hand signals and flying kites. But if you catch a kite, you probably can't read it. And you sure as h.e.l.l can't read a hand signal. You just know it means something's about to happen. On a good night, it's mundane as h.e.l.l, and you're grateful. But if you walk the shift believing it will be like every other, that's the night you'll get shot by a zip gun tipped with HIV or you'll miss a stringer even though you swear the dead man was sound asleep in his cot when you went by."

"Doesn't sound like you guards are actually running the show."

"'Dynamic security minimally manned' is supposed to give us the empowerment to handle an environment that's inherently unstable, but it brings up ratio issues. What it really means is we don't have enough COs to maintain total control. You can write it down and call me your unidentified source. The government's too cheap to let us do the job right, and people are endangered as a result. Not just COs-inmates, too." I couldn't wait to see that in print.

"Total control," he said. "You sound paranoid."

"Inmates are trying to subvert control all the time. To injure, con, overpower, manipulate, dominate, and corrupt COs and other inmates on a more or less constant basis. Would you say paranoia is the right or wrong response in that circ.u.mstance?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

The hub was empty, and the lights around the gallery were dim.

"You think we could go in there?" Stone asked.

I didn't answer, but led us to the bubble. I was able to see nothing inside from my low angle, but I stood before the door and signaled my desire to enter. Was Cutler alone or had Droune arrived?

No response from the barred door, as though someone inside was wondering what the f.u.c.k I was doing.

"What's next?" Stone asked. He hadn't noticed the delay, or he was too jacked up to feel anything subtle.

Then the door unlocked.

"We sit for a while," I answered. "You think we work this hard without a break?"

I swung the heavy door shut behind me and followed Stone up the five steps onto the raised platform of the bubble.

Cutler swiveled around at the console, a big man, fat and cheerful. Droune, a bit sulky I thought, made himself look busy, checking b.u.t.tons before one of the monitors. He probably resented that a snowstorm got him knocked off the glory duty.

"What's going on?" I said.

"You here to show our writer friend who really runs this inst.i.tution?" Cutler asked.

Stone, on cue, began to ask questions, and the boys obliged.

"This is your central command," Cutler said. He loved the attention. "We've got cameras on all access points and hallways, same system as there is in the Keeper's Hall and the front gate."

I made my way to the console board in order to watch the monitors, as if curious myself. The third floor of B block was empty and dark.

"So what makes it central command if there are two other setups just like it?"

"Att.i.tude." Cutler laughed. "Isn't that right, Droune?"

Droune gave no response, just kept his hands on the control deck, locked into one of those dark and solitary moods that can hit a CO once in a while, usually just before he hits his wife. I watched the boards.

Cutler kept talking. "Basically, we're first in line when it comes to movement and response. And even though we're inside the security perimeter, we've got a s.h.i.tload of ammunition in here with us."

"And where's that?" Stone asked. "I don't see any weapons."

"Down below," Cutler answered, and pointed to the hatch. The upside-down fallout shelter sign above the stairs. "Everything's in the gun lockers down the hatch. But the inmates know it's all within reach. They sense our power. You get that?"

"I'm not sure I do," Stone said.

"Well, let me give you a subtle demonstration."

I looked over, slightly alarmed, and wondered what Cutler had in mind.

He picked up a bottle of household cleaner from the floor at his feet, the kind with the spray nozzle, lifted it up, then turned on the microphone switch on B block. Leaning in, he put his mouth close to the microphone, spun the dial to maximum, and intoned, "Good night, boys. Pleasant dreams."

Then he raised the bottle of Fantastic and shook it hard next to the microphone, sloshing the contents repeatedly.

I saw a shadow on the second tier of B-the dim figure of a CO climbing the stairs-jerk around violently at the sound. Cutler's voice must have boomed in there like the word of G.o.d, and the sloshing would have sounded like storm waves crashing against hard rocks. It had to be Ruddik, I thought, making his way to Fenton's drum.

Cutler, laughing, flicked the microphone off.

"This is filled with CA," he explained. "CA means chemical agent. We mix it ourselves, the proportions diluted depending on the individual CO's mood and personal preference. You can scare an inmate with the sound the way you scare a cat. If you've ever been sprayed once, you never want to be sprayed again. Works better than the old-fashioned method of pumping a round into your shotgun in front of the microphone. Much more subtle, right? And less paperwork."

He looked to Droune and then to me for confirmation. Neither one of us was in the mood.

"That's cool," Stone said. "Can you show me how you hold your baton? You guys really call it a f.u.c.kstick?"

Cutler laughed and handed his over. "Never in female company."

Without trying to draw more attention to myself, I watched Ruddik reach the third range on B and walk along the tier, staying the obligatory two feet away from the cells, across the white line. He pa.s.sed Fenton's cell, and I saw the flash as he tossed the package in through the bars. I felt a physical easing in my shoulders. It's over. I willed Ruddik to get out quickly.

Cutler swung his chair around against my thigh and turned back to the monitor. Had he caught Ruddik's gesture out of the corner of his eye? Most COs would watch and say nothing. But a guy could have a beef with the resident snitch.

"Who's doing the count?" he asked, and peered closer at the screen.

"I don't know," I answered. "Maybe whoever is in the nest."

The nest was empty, I knew that much. It shouldn't have been, but often was on a night shift, when the CO manning it decided to stretch his or her legs.

"Garcia's supposed to be there tonight," Cutler said. "But he's got a bad stomach and went back to Keeper's Hall for a s.h.i.t break. I didn't see anyone go in, did you, Droune?"

"Uh-uh," Droune said.

"It's Ruddik," Cutler said, a little extra spite in there for our audience.

Ruddik reached the end of the tier and walked quickly down the stairs, too quickly I thought, and then stood before the gate.

"He's signaling out," I said.

"He can wait," Cutler said. "Let him talk his way through Garcia."

Ruddik's voice came across the radio. "Exiting B."

"f.u.c.k a duck," Cutler said. "We still having trouble on B?" he asked Droune innocently, then spoke into the microphone. "We're going to have to wait for a manual there, Officer Ruddik. Our apologies."

"Jesus, Cutler," I said, and I reached forward and hit the gate b.u.t.ton releasing him into the tunnel.

I'd crossed a line doing so. No matter what kind of an a.s.shole a CO was being, you didn't circ.u.mvent the control of someone manning the bubble. It just wasn't done. Cutler jerked back at the brush of my side, and then his arms flew up in the air and he flopped out of his chair as though zapped by a Taser.

I didn't understand. It was as though an earthquake had suddenly tossed him. I saw Stone leaning over Cutler, swinging down with a long, blurry arm-stroke. It wasn't until the second blow that I realized a baton was in Stone's fist.

I looked to Droune, someone to share my shock, and veered away from Stone. But I fell in that same instant, my feet tripped up, and splayed across the floor, my left wrist driving hard into the concrete, my chin clocking it next.

I lay there for one or two seconds, stunned by my fall, stunned by whatever was happening. Then a hand helped me, grabbing roughly at the shoulder of my uniform, hauling me up like I was a doll. In the next instant, in an entirely unnecessary enticement to get me to my feet, I felt a baton pull up against my throat under my chin. When I squirmed and twisted, the baton came in tight on my neck, strangling the sounds I was trying to make, perching me up onto the b.a.l.l.s of my feet, straining to see what was in front of me. Droune at the console, Cutler on the floor in a sloped lean against the console deck, a tipped-over chair resting cross-ways along his lap. "Jesus, you'll kill her," Droune said, and then the voice behind me said, "I f.u.c.king will kill her if you don't get on with it," and the baton pulled tighter.

When the baton relaxed slightly, the air poured in. Coughing, blinking specks, feeling gulps of spit in my mouth, I saw Droune at the controls, face withered with anxiety, muttering, "You never said this. You never said any of this." Behind me, reporter Bart Stone pulled a little tighter on the baton and told Droune to get on with it. I looked to Cutler, saw that his eyes were open but unblinking, and the urge to be brave got swallowed whole. Droune flipped switch after switch, the winch turning over, the big gears revolving, every cell door in every block opening. In one monitor I saw Ruddik running down the long tunnel for the main hub, and in other monitors I saw inmates pouring forth like ants, chasing him down. I willed him to make it. I willed him to get through to the hub, but when he reached the last door, it didn't give. With a sick, empty plummet in my stomach, I watched him turn to face them. Taking out his baton, he started swinging, wide sweeps cutting through the air before he was caught in the slithering tangle of bodies and pulled into their midst. He was gone.

My legs gave out, and Stone allowed me to slump into the chair, the baton tucked under my chin, pulling me back so that my feet splayed, toes stretching akimbo. When I reached up to pull the baton down for relief, it bit harder and my hands fell away.

"What are you doing, Droune?" I choked through my damaged air pa.s.sage at one of the moments I could breathe. I'd never liked the man. I'd always despised this a.s.s-kissing bully. But I couldn't hold back the startled question. At my words, as though released from a spell, Droune stood, gave me a frightened look, then ran by us both. Stone was just as surprised as I was, but he didn't reach out-as though not realizing he could release the ends of the baton wedged into my neck. Droune stumbled at the door and fell, splattering onto the floor of the hub. Stone jerked me around with the baton, nearly tearing my head off. He yelled to Droune to stop, but Droune kept going until he broke through the hub doors and disappeared into Keeper's Hall.

The abandonment was primal, every worst nightmare come true. I had been left alone with a monster, a beast in safari clothes kicking at the console desk.

"All right, we deal with it." Respite over, he tucked the baton under my chin again and lifted up. "You'll have to do it, you c.u.n.t."

Do what?

We walked like a shambling four-legged beast to the console.

"Open everything, every G.o.dd.a.m.n thing!"

And when I didn't reach out or obey, I felt one of his hands release the baton while the other kept it tight, and his fingers reach under my vest and through my shirt as though it were a flimsy curtain. His breath was hot on my neck. So this was the rape arriving. He scooped in past my bra and grabbed my breast, and I shut my eyes, expecting the hands on my belt next, the downward tug of my pants. Instead, a charge of electricity shot through my chest as he twisted my nipple with his thumb and finger like he was turning a dial hard. Then he slammed my face against the console, hissing in my ear to open everything. I couldn't move, and he threw me down. Released and stunned, I collapsed to the ground.

He pounded the console deck, furious that he didn't know how to operate it. He wanted to open the gates into the hub, but those switches were located off the deck, in a special panel below the central monitor. I tried to squirm away, to follow the path Droune had taken out the bubble door and into the hub, but that seemed to raise his anger again.

"Open it up, you f.u.c.king s.k.a.n.k."

He walked over the stone floor and kicked me in the face. I realized, as my head bounced back, that the kick wasn't that hard, more shocking than injurious. Twisted away, I lay on my back, my forearm over my eyes. His viciousness had peaked. Then his boot stepped onto my crotch-softly at first, as though testing the thickness of lake ice-before pressing down with all his weight, drawing the breath out of my body in a single whoosh.

"Don't you fall asleep on me."

When he released the pressure, all the agony surged skyward at once and I rolled into a ball, hands wedged tight between my thighs. He kicked me again, in the a.s.s this time, my tailbone exploding in a rosy bloom of pain that shot up my spine and spread to every hair follicle. "Open it!" he said. All resistance was over, and I mumbled through snot, and told him where the switches could be found, and heard him flick them rapidly, then the winching screech of the iron gates.

He was back in the next second, stepping past me, showing utter indifference. The disdain was gone, only arrogance left. I did not want to draw his wrath, to remind him that I was alive or that I had even a sc.r.a.p of defiance within me. But the shock kept walloping my grasp of what was happening. He had knowledge of this place. He knew what he was doing, and he moved urgently and economically, part of something larger, something coordinated. Not a reporter. Not a guided tour. But an invasion. A tight crew. A suicidal urge came, and I grabbed the bottle of cleaner on the floor, rolled onto my side, and aimed the nozzle up toward him.

I saw him smile, looking at the stupid b.i.t.c.h with a bottle of Fantastic. Maybe he didn't believe it would hurt. I squeezed the trigger and kept pumping.

Little aspirating canisters of pepper were no good when you faced more than one man, or when you just wanted to douse a room and stick some wet cloths under the door to keep the bad air in. But the pump action of a bottle of household cleaner had the close-range velocity and volume of a Super Soaker. The sharp spray hit him directly in the face.

Never before had I been in an enclosed s.p.a.ce with so much spray. The air around us became acid, but it must have felt like h.e.l.lfire to him, ruining his eyes, wrecking his throat. The overpowering instinct was to claw your face and run from the vapor, but our training made you grind yourself low and restrain the gasping. Stone collapsed to the floor, helpless in his choking. I crawled toward the door, coughing hard, wanting out of the bubble. I got up on one knee, ready to sprint for it, when I saw the inmates running toward me.

A single inmate in bare feet and sweatpants with no shirt reached the outside of the door as I reached the inside. We stared at each other. He looked as startled as a teenager who had crept into an abandoned house and found a uniformed policeman waiting in the kitchen. I must have looked horrible to him, all red-eyed and leaking mucus, some lurching zombie come back to life, because he turned his back on me and fled. I hauled the gaping door closed and cranked the locks over. Then I scrambled under the desk below the windows.

Outside, an avalanche of noise. I heard the din at first like an echo of fireworks mixed with screams, maybe bombs exploding over the distant part of some city, the voices of people fleeing wrath from the sky. Then I felt the first rock or brick hit the wire caging and shatterproof gla.s.s of the bubble, and the pounding began on the door. The noise was deafening, the world caving in on top of me. The air was still acid with chemicals, as though we were sealed in an industrial vat. I wanted to hide below the deck like a child, but then I saw Stone rise to his knees and start to crawl away. It seemed impossible that he could still breathe, impossible that he was still alive. I lurched toward him with my f.u.c.kstick and slammed it down on his back with all my force. I clubbed him again and again, out of murderous fear. Then, to be sure, I wrenched his heavy, lifeless arms behind his back and zipped his wrists and his ankles before scrambling back to my hiding place.

I dragged the handset down below the level of the console to make radio contact. I got no reply for a minute, and repeated myself. When a response finally came, I felt as though I'd appeared suddenly before a roomful of startled people, some party or meeting called without me. The voice demanded I repeat, that I cite my position and provide my status.

I told them my name. I told them my status was very f.u.c.king bad. "I am in the bubble. I'm injured and alone."

A silence, a hesitation, then a different voice, one I didn't recognize.

"What's going on in there? Where's your shift partner?"