Hidden Faults (13 page)

Ganwe came up behind me and put his hand on my neck.

“You’re doing good, Jodi. Never had a boy give me less trouble.”

I turned my head to look at him, wiping my mouth. “You mean, I’d be better off giving you trouble?”

“Uh uh. This way, I don’t have to hurt you to make you behave. I get my way whichever you choose.”

I straightened up. “And what do I get?”

“Protection. You ain’t realised it, but being my boy, that means something. One day you won’t be fresh meat no more. That means something too.” He pulled out something from his overall pocket—a small sweet. “Here, take the taste away.”

I took it off him—not much flavour, but that wasn’t a bad thing. “Doesn’t it bother you what you’re involved in? Men sucking off men? Bothers people outside.”

“Me? Hell, I don’t care, ‘less it’s screwing kids. Them I hate,” he said with a scowl. “Why should it bother me? You’re just a man, same as me. We all got needs.”

I laughed, though I didn’t feel particularly amused. “No wonder society’s so intolerant. They lock up anyone with a sensible idea in their heads.”

“That’s what I always say,” he agreed solemnly. He put his hand on my neck again. “Come on. Shift’s over.”

The guards searched us pretty thoroughly. At least, they searched me thoroughly. Again, they treated Ganwe with much more diffidence, and I wondered what hold he could possibly have over the guards. Perhaps they needed him to exercise control over a group of men with no natural respect for authority. Certainly none of the prisoners paid much attention to the shouting and brutality of the guards. To them it was background noise—but Ganwe commanded attention. Him, the men listened to.

I quickly learned the first day followed the routine of my life for the foreseeable future. The prison worked to a strict timetable, and the only reason it changed, or a prisoner moved, was if a problem arose.

“You don’t want to be a problem,” Ganwe assured me. I could, theoretically, ask to be moved from his cell, or make a nuisance of myself and get moved. But in three days I’d already seen enough to know there were worse men here than him—bosses who cowed and beat their boys, and offered little or no real protection. Ganwe was callous but he wasn’t cruel. I had learned that was something to value.

He also tried to make things easier for me in his own self-centred way. No one had told me what my rights and expectations were supposed to be. I’d assumed, as a paranormal and supposed terrorist, I had none. He put me right on that.

“They don’t bother telling you—don’t put themselves out for you cos you’re a para—but you got rights. No lawyers or nothing—no appeals—but you can make calls. One a week. They has to let you. There’s a temple chaplain comes every so often. He’s supposed to help with personal problems. Useless as a concrete testicle, though. They run temple services once a month. You don’t gotta go, though. Boring as shit, they are.”

“Visitors?”

He picked his teeth before he answered, tossing the little stick with unerring accuracy at the litterbin. “They has to let you have them too. It’s them Marranites—those poncy ones, what do they call themselves? Yeah, ‘Brethren of Charitable Intentions’, silly buggers. Run around in dresses and veils, look like a bunch of dead flowers.”

Ganwe probably found the idea of doing something for pure altruism incomprehensible, since he saw everything as a business arrangement.

“They make the government do all that stuff, like it makes it better being in here cos of it. But don’t get your hopes up, Jodi. No one’ll come. We’s in the middle of nowhere, and the government don’t like people visiting paras.”

I slumped, knowing this was likely the bare truth. “I’ll go mad,” I muttered.

“Some do. You won’t. You’re smart. You’ll find a way. Maybe one day they’ll want paras to help them again, and they’ll let you go. Happened before.”

I looked at him .He was older than me by some way. “I don’t suppose you remember learning about paranormals being heroes when you were at school.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, nodding. “I remember that real clear. Wasn’t one for books—don’t read too good—but the teacher would tell us stories when I was little. I remember a story about you paras ending a terrible war. I wanted to be a sparker. Like you. Had a friend who could make fire. It was great. Then they arrested him. He was only fifteen. Might even be in here somewhere.”

“You...don’t hate us?” I frowned at him in surprise.

“Why should I? You ain’t done nothing to me and mine.”

“I don’t understand you, Ganwe.”

He grinned at me, showing all his damaged teeth. “Cos I’m mysterious, eh?”

“Yeah. A complete mystery.”

Why was a thief and extortionist who’d gut you if you crossed him, one of the least bigoted men I’d ever met? Even if he did pimp me out like a veecle for hire.

That I could make calls was something I hadn’t expected. I didn’t know who to try, though. Ganwe said prison-approved people could call me. No one had. Not my parents, not Timo—no one from work either. It might have been that they had been deterred, or tried and the prison authorities had put them off. Or they might have decided I wasn’t worth the risk. I could be endangering people by calling them. I needed to think about this some more. I didn’t think particularly quickly these days, but I had plenty of time to do it in.

I was startled when, after the supper, I wasn’t herded back to the cells with Ganwe and the others, but instead dragged out of the group by two guards. My panic didn’t ease until I realised we were headed to the medical wing. I guessed, correctly, it had something to do with the peeling synthaskin over my implantation site. With as little courtesy or care as he’d displayed before, the medic removed—rather, ripped off—the synthaskin, cleaned the site with an alcohol wipe, and then attached an automatic injector to the implant port. This would become my routine, I supposed—what every para in this country had to get used to.

The injector added five myclits, and then the medic disconnected it. He scribbled ‘Seven’ on my chart, and before I could apply caution to my instinct, I said, “Five.” The man looked at me with cold eyes. “Uh—five myclits, not seven. Sorry, I couldn’t help—”

“Guard!” The one at the door came charging in at the medic’s shout. “He’s concealing contraband. Search him.”

“What? No, I—”

I collapsed to the floor, jerking in agony as the guard’s electroreed struck me across the kidneys. Another guard came in while I writhed helplessly on the floor. He kicked me in the thigh, before hitting me with his own electroreed. Nothing like being sure a prisoner would give no trouble.

Turned out being ‘searched for contraband’ was code for a deep cavity search, done with malice and nothing like enough lubricant. As they threw me back into the cell, where I landed hard on the cement floor, Ganwe stopped picking his teeth.

“Pissed off the medic, didn’t ya? Thought you might.”

I ignored him as I shivered and tried not to cry. The whole thing had been worse than even Ganwe’s little ‘test’ my first night here. At least that hadn’t
hurt
. They’d torn me for sure—probably not seriously, but enough to cause a sharp sting whenever I moved.

“Hey, Jodi.”

I looked up—Ganwe held out his hand. Since lying on the floor didn’t make me feel any better, I grudging accepted the help and got awkwardly to my feet. “Thanks.”

“What did you do?”

He actually let me sit down on his bunk, which was suspiciously nice of him.

“The guy wrote down that he’d given me seven myclits of naksen, not five. I’ll probably end up short unless he tops it up.”

“He won’t. That’s how they fix the records. Dole out less than they’re supposed to, sell the spare on the black market.”

“Fucking bastard.”

“Yeah, he’s a real arsehole. Has been ever since he was posted here. Hates paras—hates all of us. Hates doctors too. That’s how I knew you’d piss him off.”

I gave him a unfriendly look as he got up and went over to the locker in the corner, where he kept his ‘personal possessions’—mostly proceeds of his various deals and trades.

“You could have told me.”

“Yeah—but this way, you won’t forget. They damage you any?” He rummaged around, head buried in the locker.

“A bit.”

He tossed me something, which turned out to be an almost empty tube of antibiotic cream. “That help?”

“Yes. It will. Thank you.” I narrowed my eyes. “What do you want?”

“See? I told you, you was smart.” He turned around and came over to me, something in his big hands I couldn’t see. “Roll up your sleeve and let me see that implant thing.”

“Why? No...erk.”

He’d pressed me back down against the bed, his little knife under my jaw. For a big man, he could move like lightning.

“Jodi, you know I always get my way, so why are you arguing?”

His breath wafted against my cheek, his coarse features filling my vision. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Just taking a little bit more of that stuff out of your arm. Won’t hurt.”

“No! Ganwe, if I’m already short, and you take more—”

He pressed down on me, making it hard to breathe. “We can do this easy or we can do it hard, Jodi. But it’s happening either way. I need that stuff.”

“You don’t use it,” I gasped.

“No. I still need it. Now you can sit up, hold out your arm, and it’ll be over in a couple of seconds. Or I can sit on you until you pass out, take it, and then you might wake up. Or you might not. You choose.”

“
Shitting
hate
you,” I spat.

His expression didn’t change. “I know. ‘S fair. Well?”

When I didn’t struggle, he figured out my decision and climbed off me.

“Roll up your sleeve.”

I did so, glaring at him, which he ignored as he always did. He had an alcohol wipe which he used to carefully clean the port down, and more alcohol in a little bottle to sterilise the syringe. He was well-prepared and had done this many times, that much was obvious by the ease and skill he showed. He carefully drew out two myclits, leaving me with three, plus what was left in the implant before I’d been ‘refilled’.

“Okay, done.”

I rolled up my sleeve and got off the bunk, moving to the other side of the cell so I could glare at him some more. He capped the syringe and then rapped on the bars three times with one of his shoes. Moments later a guard appeared, the syringe handed over, and then the guard left. The transaction took about three seconds.

Ganwe put his shoe back on. “‘S not personal, Jodi. Just business.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Price I paid for you. I wanted a pretty boy—can’t say they ain’t kept their side of the bargain. What I took won’t kill ya.”

“I’ll go into withdrawal!”

He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Won’t kill ya, though. Stop giving me that shitting look, will ya? Some of them bosses, they take four on top of what the medic takes. Their boys don’t get hardly no normal days at all. I’m letting you have half.”

“How fucking gracious of you. That’s all I am, something to sell, something to exploit.”

He looked at me as if I was very, very stupid. “I bought you. ‘Course I exploit you. You’re fresh—”

“Meat. Yes, you can stop saying that any time, Ganwe. How are you proposing to hide my going into withdrawal from the guards?”

“They won’t do nothing.” He went over to his bunk to sit down. “I’ll look out for you. I already do, don’t I? I ain’t the worst you could get.”

I glared at him for this dubious mercy. “Leave me alone.”

“Sure. You want to use that stuff on your arse, I won’t look. Don’t turn me on none.”

“What a pity. Something you can’t turn to profit.”

His nostrils flared. I’d finally irritated him. “Watch your mouth, Jodi. I know you’re pissed off with me, so I let you have your say. But you watch your mouth now. It’s business. I ‘xplained it. It ain’t personal. Can’t say more than that.”

I clenched my mouth shut. Arguing with him would only make him angry, and to what point? He was right—he’d paid for me, why shouldn’t he get good value? If he didn’t do it, someone else would. I had no leverage here unless I wanted to be the exploiter, not the exploited.

He did as he said, turning away and letting me put the cream on my arse. It stung, but it would help. I just hoped he hadn’t planned to sell me for more than blowjobs in the next few days.

After lights out, I lay on my bunk, hurting and angry, and wished I could get in touch with Timo. I missed him and his humour and his quiet, strong affection so much it made me weep. But what if being in contact with me led to him being in a place like this, or any of his family falling under suspicion?

I put my arm over my eyes and tried to hold it together, but I couldn’t. The best I could do was not make any noise. I wouldn’t give Ganwe the knowledge I was so weak and pathetic that I cried myself to sleep.

Now I realised an active drug trade went on among the guards, I recognised the signs. Naksen acted as a sedative at much lower doses than was needed to suppress paranormal ability. What Ganwe had stolen from me, would make a grown man pass out cold if injected all at once. That wasn’t how drug abusers used it, though. They cut it with water (or other drugs), and two myclits would make at least ten doses. The symptoms were more subtle than what I experienced, but several guards had an occasional tremor, their ordinary speech at times slurred or a little too fast like a drunk’s. Why they didn’t use alcohol which was legal and easier to get, I had no idea. Maybe the naksen was cheaper.