Nightrise (16 page)

Life at the prison was not brutal, but it was boring. There were library books for the boys who could read, but otherwise every day was the same, the hours measured out with deadly precision, stretching out endlessly in the desert sun. There was solitary confinement or loss of privileges for anyone who stepped out of line; even an untied shoelace could bring instant punishment if the supervisors were in a bad mood.

And there was the medicine wing. Boys who were violent or noncooperative went to see the doctor in a small compound set right against the cinder-block wall. They were given pills, and when they came back they were quiet and empty-eyed. One way or another, the prison would control you. The boys accepted that. They didn't even hate Silent Creek. They simply suffered it as if it were a long illness that had happened to them and wasn't their fault.

It took Jamie very little time to find out what he needed to know. None of the other boys had met Scott.

There was no record of his ever having been here. But he knew that what he had so far seen of Silent Creek was only half the story. There were two parts to the prison — he had seen that much for himself when he arrived on the bus. There was a whole area of the prison, on the other side of the wall, that stood quite alone. Nobody communicated with it. It had its own gymnasium, its own classrooms, kitchens, and cells as if it were a slightly smaller reflection of the main compound. And there were rumors.

On the other side of the wall. That, it was said, was where the specials were kept.

***

"They're sick. That's what I heard. They've got something wrong with their heads."

'Yeah. They're vegetables. Cretins. They just sit in their cells and stare at the walls…"

Jamie was having lunch with four other boys. The chair he was sitting on was made of metal, welded into the table, which was in turn bolted to the floor. The canteen was a small, square room with bare white walls. No decoration was allowed anywhere in Silent Creek, not even in the cells.

The food wasn't too bad, though — even if it was served up in a compartmentalized plastic tray. Jamie had been surprised by most of the boys he had met. Nobody had given him a hard time — in fact they'd been glad to see a new face. Perhaps his experience at juvenile hall had helped. From the start he was one of them. So far, he hadn't needed to use his false name. The other boys at the table called him Indian. He knew them as Green Eyes, Baltimore, DV, and Tunes.

"The story I heard is that nobody wants them," DV said. He was seventeen, Latino, arrested following a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. The boys weren't meant to ask one another about their crimes but of course they did. DV was a member of the Playboy Gangsta Crips. He had tattoos on both arms and planned to go back to the gang as soon as he got out. He had never known his father, and his mother ignored him. The gang was the only family he had. "They got no parents," he went on. "So now they're using them for experiments. Testing stuff on them. That sort of thing."

"How many of them are there?" Jamie asked.

"I heard twenty," Green Eyes said. Jamie wasn't sure how he'd gotten his nickname. He was fifteen years old, arrested for possession of a deadly weapon — meaning a gun. His eyes were blue.

"There are fifty at least," Tunes growled. He was the youngest boy in the prison, barely fourteen. He turned to Jamie and lowered his voice. 'You don't want to ask too many questions about them, Indian.

Not unless you want to join them."

Jamie wondered where all these rumors began. But that was the thing about prisons. There were never any secrets. Somehow the whispers would travel from cell to cell and you had as much chance of keeping them out as you had of stopping the desert breeze.

As usual, they were being supervised while they ate. This was one of the few times when they were allowed to speak freely but they still couldn't even stand up without asking permission first. This was what had most struck Jamie about life at Silent Creek. They were no longer people. They were objects.

At no point in the day could they do anything for themselves. The man watching them was the most senior — and the toughest — supervisor. He was a bulky, round-shouldered man with thinning hair and a moustache. His name was Max Koring. If anyone was looking for trouble, it would be him. He seemed to enjoy humiliating the inmates, carrying out strip searches for no reason at all, taking away a month's privileges simply because it amused him.

Baltimore leaned across the table. He had been named after the city where he'd been born. He was a tall, handsome black boy who never spoke about the crime that had brought him here. 'You want to know about the other side, you need to talk to Koring," he whispered. "He works both sides of the wall."

"How do you know?" Jamie asked.

"I've seen him come in through the medicine wing."

The medicine wing stood right up against the wall. Everyone knew that it served both sides of the prison. At least, that was what they said.

"He's one of the only ones who's allowed," Baltimore went on. "They've got guards working the whole time on the other side. Armed guards. They don't have nothing to do with us."

"You want to visit the other side, just ask Max," DV said. He smiled briefly. "The only trouble is, he'll have your brain wired up to a computer, and the next time anyone sees you, you'll be a vegetable like all the others."

The meal came to an end. The boys handed in their trays and plastic forks, then turned out their pockets and stood with their legs apart for the pat-down before they were returned to their cells for an hour's rest.

As they left the room, walking slowly through the blinding sunlight, Jamie noticed Joe Feather standing on the edge of the football field, examining him. It seemed to him that the intake officer had been watching him from the moment he had arrived. Did he suspect something? If so, Jamie would have to move quickly. He might be running out of time.

He remembered what Feather had said when he was processed. He had seen the tattoo on Jamie's shoulder and had asked, 'You have a brother?" There was only one way he could have known that. He had seen Scott. And that meant that Scott had to be here, at Silent Creek.

Jamie was sure of it. After all, it made sense. Silent Creek was the only privately run prison in Nevada and it was part of the Nightrise Corporation. According to Alicia, Nightrise had been responsible for the disappearance of not one but many boys with paranormal abilities. What better place to keep them than within a maximum security prison, miles from anywhere, in the middle of the Mojave Desert? He had seen the name in Colton Banes's thoughts. And what else could there be, concealed on the other side of the wall?

Jamie took off his sneakers (it was rule number 118 or 119…no shoes inside the cell) and left them neatly in the corridor. The other boys had done the same. He went into the cell and a few seconds later there was a buzz and the doors slid shut electronically. His room, painted white, measured ten steps by five. There was a bunk that was actually part of the floor, molded out of it. The cement simply rose up to form a narrow shelf with a thin, plastic mattress on top. Opposite the bed, he had a metal shelf that acted as a desk, with a chair bolted into the floor. A stainless steel unit stood beside the door — a toilet and a basin combined. There was a mirror made of polished steel. And that was it. The room had a single window, a long strip no more than a few inches wide. There were no bars. Even if he had been able to smash through the industrial-strength glass, he could never have slipped out.

The other boys had told him that the door was electronically sealed, and whenever he was alone, locked into the cell, Jamie had to fight back a growing sense of panic. Alicia knew he was here. At the end of his second week, he would be allowed to telephone her. But she was his only link with the outside world. What if something happened to her? Then he would be stuck here as Jeremy Rabb — or Indian.

How long would it be before he went crazy and either had to be locked up in isolation or drugged?

But that wasn't going to happen. Jamie still had his power, and tonight he was going to use it. There would be a guard on duty in his unit and that guard would take him to the other side of the prison. He would find Scott and together the two of them would walk out.

Except…

It was only now, when it was much too late, that the first whispers of doubt came. Scott had the same powers as Jamie — so why hadn't he used them to break out himself? Was there something Jamie didn't know? Why was he so certain that Scott was even there? A sickening thought occurred to him. Scott could be dead. He could have escaped and gotten lost in the desert. Anything could have happened.

Sitting alone on his bunk, Jamie opened his mind as he had done every night since he had arrived. He was sending his thoughts along the corridors, into the different blocks, trying to feel for any sense of his brother being nearby. He concentrated on the other side of the wall. But there was nothing. Why was that? Jamie refused to accept that Scott wasn't here. He had to be somewhere. Inside the secret compound. And if he wasn't responding, there had to be a reason. Maybe it was simply that he was asleep.

Somehow the next hour crawled past. Then there were more lessons, an hour in the gym, dinner. The day finished with a wrap-up session in the unit's living area — an open space with four circular tables where they were allowed to play cards or board games. The boys were supposed to talk about the day and how it had gone, but of course there was never very much to say. A guard sat watching them from behind a bank of monitors that showed different views of the corridors. There were no cameras in the cells. Tonight, Max Koring was on duty, which meant that the lights would snap out at exactly ten o'clock — or perhaps fifteen minutes earlier if he felt like it.

They were sent back to their cells at nine o'clock. They were given nothing to wear in bed — it was too hot anyway — so the boys just slept in their shorts. Each of them was given a toothbrush to use but it was collected and locked away again before the doors were shut. The handle of a toothbrush, sharpened, could make a lethal weapon, and the supervisors weren't taking any chances. Jamie had no watch. It had been taken away from him along with everything else that might give him any sense of identity or independence. Eventually the lights in the cell blinked out although it still wasn't truly dark. There were arc lamps all around the prison perimeter and they would stay on all night, the white glare seeping in through the window. Jamie lay on his bunk for about half an hour. Then he got up and dressed. It was time.

He pressed the call button next to his cell door.

A few minutes later, there was the rattle of a key and the door slid open. Max Koring stood there, his stomach rising and falling, his face half hidden in shadow. He had opened the door manually, overriding the electric control. And he wasn't pleased to be here. None of the supervisors enjoyed the graveyard shift. But being bothered by the kids just made it worse.

'Yes?" he demanded.

"I want you to take me to the units on the other side of the wall," Jamie said.

The supervisor stared at him. He looked puzzled.

'You will do it now," Jamie continued — and pushed, projecting his thoughts into the man's head. He knew what he was doing. He had done exactly the same thing when he had come face-to-face with the policeman at Marcie's house in Sparks.

Max Koring didn't move.

"We're leaving now," Jamie said. And pushed again.

'You think you're being funny?" Koring muttered. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Jamie felt a shiver of bewilderment — followed by panic. It wasn't working! But it had to. "Take me to my brother!" he demanded. He was still pushing, burning a hole in the man's brain.

Now Koring was examining him as if seeing him in a completely new light. He smiled — but there was nothing warm or pleasant in it. 'You have a brother?" he asked.

Desperately, Jamie changed tack. He couldn't make the man obey him — but he could still use the moment to get information from him. He no longer cared about the consequences. He had to know about Scott and so he concentrated and jumped into Koring's mind, just as he had with Colton Banes.

Nothing happened. His power wasn't working. Jamie just had time to absorb the shock before Koring grabbed hold of him and backhanded him — hard — across the face. The room spun. Jamie tasted blood. Then he was thrown backward, crashing into the bunk.

"I don't like my time being wasted," Koring said. "And you don't give me orders. You may be new here, but you should know that. So maybe it's time you had your first taste of CRR."

CRR. Corrective Room Restriction. Another way of saying solitary confinement.

Ten minutes later, Koring returned with another supervisor. Neither of them said a word. They simply jerked Jamie out of his cell and dragged him down the corridor. The other boys must have heard what had happened. Suddenly they were all awake and shouting encouragement.

"Good luck, Indian!"

"Don't let them grind you down!"

"See you soon, Indian. You take care!"

The isolation cells were in a separate area, a pair of heavy, steel doors separating them from the main unit. Jamie didn't even try to resist. He was flung into a cell half the size of the one he had left. This room had no mattress. And although there was a narrow window, the glass was frosted, so there was no view.

"Let's see how you feel after a week in here," Koring said. "And in the future, you call me sir."

The door slammed shut.

Jamie stayed where he was, curled in a ball on the floor. He had hit his head against the bunk when he fell and his nose was bleeding. He was utterly alone. And his power had let him down. Had it gone — or was there something about the prison that he didn't know? Maybe it had been built in this part of the desert purposefully. There could be something in the water or even in the soil that was playing with his mind. It made sense. If they were locking up kids with powers, they would have to be certain that those powers were under control.