SOLITARY
Shivering from the cold, shivering from the flood of adrenaline sloshing through his guts, Arthur pressed his body to the front of the cell. The atmosphere in his cell was too thick, too lumpy to breathe. Only the free air trickling in through the door's keyhole window seemed to carry enough oxygen to sustain a man.
"Kavi?" Harris spoke hesitantly from his middle cell.
"Yeah," Kavi answered.
"You, uh…" Harris couldn't risk asking if she still had her bit from the book.
"I do." Kavi said. Both parties exhaled relief. The pieces were in place. "I heard the alarm go…what did you do to get in here?"
"Got in a fight with Death Fist over there"
"Me too." Kavi said. "Not with Death Fist, though. With a meth head"
"Meth head," Arthur sighed. "That probably would have been a lot less painful."
"Quiet!" A single guard patrolled the row. He wore blues and brass like a kielbasa wears pig intestines. The fabric blistered at buttons of his barrel chest. Arthur, nose poking through his keyhole window, caught disparate glances—a swath of bald head, the point of a crown, the ridge of a scar. Panic pushed away the cold. The flashes assembled in his brain like a child's jigsaw puzzle.
"You fucking bastard." Panic amplified Arthur's brogue. "Here to finish us off? You fucking coward!" Arthur slammed against the door. "Talk to me!"
"What?" Harris called. "What?"
The guard hitched his patrol for only a heartbeat. With a grunt, he slammed the butt of his rifle to the steel door. The concussion squeezed the air from Arthur's chest, his cell like the inside of a bass drum. Arthur stumbled back to the icy, foul air in the back of his cell as the guard resumed his patrol.
"Qu.. quiet." The voice, though whispered, was unmistakable.
Arthur's heart sank.
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