Chapter 2: Midnight in Block D
At eleven fifty-seven that night, Maya left the staff dormitory wearing dark pants and a maintenance jacket she had stolen from an unlocked supply room.
Blackridge was never truly quiet.
Metal doors slammed in distant corridors. Radios whispered behind guard stations. Pipes groaned inside the walls like something enormous was moving beneath the prison.
Block D had supposedly been closed since the riot that killed Lucas.
According to official reports, an electrical fire had damaged the ventilation system, making the entire wing unsafe.
Maya had spent three years studying those reports.
The photographs showed smoke damage.
They did not show a fire.
She reached the lower corridor and found a steel door marked:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
The electronic lock was active.
That meant someone was still using the wing.
Maya removed a copied access card from her pocket and held it against the reader.
The light turned green.
The door opened.
Beyond it stretched a corridor with no security cameras.
Maya stepped inside.
The air smelled of bleach and damp concrete.
Cells lined both walls, but their numbers had been painted over. Several doors contained fresh scratches around the locks.
Someone had tried to get out.
At the end of the corridor, Maya heard a faint metallic sound.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Then three more.
“Lucas?” she whispered.
The knocking stopped.
Maya moved toward the final cell.
Before she reached it, a hand shot through the bars beside her and grabbed her jacket.
She twisted free as a second hand seized her wrist.
A prisoner stepped from the darkness of an open cell.
He was thin, pale, and barefoot. A faded number had been tattooed across his forearm.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“Who are you?”
The man studied her face as though searching through an old memory.
“Someone who failed your family.”
Footsteps sounded behind them.
Maya turned.
Two masked officers entered the corridor carrying electrical batons.
The prisoner shoved Maya into the open cell.
“Stay down.”
One officer charged.
The prisoner caught his arm and drove him into the bars. The second officer swung his baton, striking the prisoner across the shoulder.
Maya grabbed the officer’s belt and pulled him backward. His head struck the concrete wall, and he collapsed.
The first officer recovered and reached for his radio.
The prisoner seized the radio and crushed it beneath his heel.
Maya stared at him.
“Who sent the note?”
“Not me.”
“Then who did?”
The lights went out.
Complete darkness swallowed the corridor.
A mechanical lock released somewhere ahead.
Then came the sound of a door slowly opening.
The barefoot prisoner grabbed Maya’s hand and guided her through the dark.
“Don’t speak,” he whispered.
They entered what felt like a narrow maintenance passage.
A red emergency light flickered to life behind them.
For the first time, Maya saw the prisoner clearly.
He appeared to be in his late fifties. A long scar crossed his cheek. His dark hair had turned almost entirely gray.
Something about his eyes unsettled her.
They looked familiar.
“What is your name?” Maya demanded.
The man hesitated.
“Elias.”
“Elias what?”
“Names are dangerous in this place.”
A siren erupted throughout Block D.
The emergency lights flashed.
Elias pushed Maya toward a ladder leading upward.
“Go.”
“I came for my brother.”
“Then you came fifteen minutes too late.”
Maya stopped.
“What does that mean?”
Elias looked toward the corridor.
“They moved him.”
Maya grabbed the front of his prison shirt.
“You saw Lucas?”
“I saw what they made him become.”
Boots thundered through the passage behind them.
Elias pulled a small metal key from beneath his collar and forced it into Maya’s hand.
“Find Cell Zero.”
“Where is it?”
“Under the place where you fought Calder.”
Maya began climbing.
Before she disappeared through the hatch, Elias called after her.
“Maya.”
She looked down.
His expression had changed.
For one brief second, he did not look like a stranger.
He looked like someone who had watched her grow up.
“Your brother may remember your face,” Elias said. “But that doesn’t mean he is still your brother.”
May you like
The hatch slammed shut beneath her.
Seconds later, Maya heard two gunshots.
