Episode 35, “Something to Sign”
[image error]He is Ian Peyton. He fears nobody. He finishes every fight he starts. He is not a big man; he doesn’t need to be. He’s tougher and he’s meaner and he’s faster with a gun or a knife. That’s why the Triads used him for his dirty work. When you needed a tough guy, you called Ian Peyton. Everybody knew that.
They all looked at him like they expected him to wet himself. The guards outside the Promontory looked at each other and at him, snickering and making comments about how popular he’d be inside. Like that kind of cheap psych-out would work on anyone who wasn’t weak. Peyton had never been weak. He wasn’t going to start now.
They gave him the full treatment in processing: Strip search, delousing, UV and EM, organ screen. The whole time the screws and the support staff acted like they knew something he didn’t. He took their attitude and gave it back to them. He knew he wouldn’t be the big fish he had been on the outside; this was the Promontory, after all. To get sent inside you had to be bad news. Well, he was Ian Peyton. He was born bad news.
They’d adjust to him and he’d learn to make some concessions to them. He would do his time and get out without running his mouth. Next time around, he’s run a little faster, try a little harder. He didn’t intend to come back.
On his way to his cell, he dealt with the usual catcalls, the typical thrown bedding and body wastes. Hazing. You couldn’t skip it. Everybody had to deal with it. His cellmate was a lifer debit-kiter who’d been caught one time to many draining bank accounts that weren’t his. He did Peyton the courtesy of getting stabbed three days into Peyton’s term in the prison. It was nice to have a private cell. Peyton wondered when they would assign him somebody new.
People left him alone for the first week. He figured he was doing a good job of putting out the vibe. Don’t look like food and you won’t get eaten. Prison wasn’t much different than life. It was just a lot more boring.
On the eighth day, they came for him in the yard.
There were four of them. He never learned their names. They tried to sweet-talk him at first, tried to get him to meet them in his private cell after yard time, tried to tell him that if he cooperated, his time inside would be plenty sweet. He broke the closest jaw with his most vicious uppercut, ready to dive into the others and make them pay for their insult. You had to show these guys who was boss right way. You had to show you weren’t a victim, or it would never stop. The rules were simple. He liked simple.
Except that there weren’t four. There were six. The two he didn’t see snuck up on him while he was dealing with the other four. They grabbed him, pinned his arms. He tried to use his legs, but two of the others grabbed these. That left two grown men to beat him bloody, beat him until his spleen was ruptured, beat him until his ribs were cracked and his eyes were so badly swollen that he was practically blind. He spent three days in the infirmary, one of those in a robot tube getting his liver and spleen mended.
They were waiting for him when he got out. He had defied them. They were going to break him, now. They were going to show him his place. When they broke him, they would take him, and his personal hell would be complete.
His second visit to the infirmary lasted twice as long. He had to have bones knitted that time. One of his eyes was out, hanging by its optic nerve. His orbital bone was cracked. They put the eye back, lasered the retina in place, and fused the bone closed.
The third time, he was in a coma for three days. When he woke, he had no idea what had been fixed. He only knew that every part of him hurt. His future stared back at him — an endless succession of beatings and violations, which could only end in his premature death at the hands of his tormenters.
Lying in his hospital bed, Peyton considered taking his own life and thus ending the torture.
That was when Warden Richards came to him. He remembered every word of the conversation.
“Looks like you’ve found yourself some trouble, son,” said the Warden.
“It’s your prison,” Peyton had said through swollen lips. “You should do something.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” said the Warden. “No prison can control its population one hundred percent of the time. It’s all I can do to keep the prison service off my back, keep the place running smoothly, keep our rankings high enough that I don’t lose my job. Do you realize how valuable it would be to me if you’d all just do your time and not make trouble? I’d do you some favors, son, if I thought you could give me anything in return.”
“Name it,” said Peyton.
“Well,” said Richards, “as it happens, there is something you can do. I’m just a messenger. They don’t tell me much about the program. But the government is running some trials and they’ve asked me if I can provide them with a suitable test subject. You could be that subject.”
“Be a guinea pig? No thank you.”
“You should reconsider,” said the Warden. “If you agree, it looks good on my record. And if my record looks good, I stay in charge around here.”
“And in return you’ll protect me?” asked Peyton.
“No,” said the Warden. “That would set a bad precedent. “But there are other things I might be able to do for you. A little favor here, a little favor there. And the good news is that you won’t need me to protect you. They tell me if you join this program, you’ll soon be bigger and stronger than you can imagine. Once you join, Peyton, you’ll be so powerful that nobody in here will ever mess with you again.”
“What’ll they do to me?”
“Something about implanting organs that will boost your growth, your strength. Like legal steroids.”
“I don’t want to be an Oggy.”
“No, no,” said the Warden. “Nothing like that. I’m not even sure that would be legal. This is entirely biological. The organs are grown in a laboratory.”
Peyton thought about it. He thought about all the years he had ahead of him in this place. He thought about the damage his enemies had done. The next time they might kill him — or worse, permanently cripple him.
“Show me something to sign,” Peyton said.
