FREE SAMPLE (Ch.1)

Rott was an island, and that was really all that could be said about it.

Like most prisons, it was a tasteless mass of concrete. The guard towers and cramped barracks had long since crowded out most of the sand from the shore, their barnacle-crusted foundations disappearing into the water with high tide. There was no need for a barbed wire fence—the open waters of the frigid North Atlantic had the same effect. Cold wind whipped mercilessly across the yard at all hours, and the only thing that disrupted the monotony was the occasional silhouette of a passing ship.

I had been shuffled between five prisons in so many months, but this reassignment had a finality about it. Maybe it was the location—a dead-end in the middle of the ocean—maybe it was the name. I’d like to think the name was a sadistic pun, but the United had literally never done anything clever during its illustrious tyranny, so I assumed the name was just a happy accident.

Still, the island definitely seemed like a place where you left things to decompose. I was confident that’s what the government intended to do with me.

They assigned me the number 120518 because it was convenient; the patch for the jumpsuit had just been sent up from the morgue, and the secretary hadn’t put it away yet.

I immediately donned a nickname, because I was told that’s what all the prisoners did. I chose Quetzalcoatl. The name had no significance, except that it was as far removed from my real name as possible, and I enjoyed watching the secretary suffer when she tried to spell it.

It didn’t matter what they called me. Personally, I had zero intentions of learning anybody’s name, real or assumed, on this island. Anytime someone was so rude as to introduce themselves, I made a concentrated effort to purge their name from my mind as soon as they walked away. I didn’t want to know anyone, and I didn’t want anyone to know me. I wasn’t here to make friends.

The only person whose name I retained was Tower. He was a guard. You can guess where he was stationed.

I’d asked him for the time once while taking a lap around the yard, and he had the audacity to introduce himself. Since he was one of the few reliable sources of time, I decided to let it slide.

I took laps because I had nothing better to do. There was plenty of activity on the island; most of the prisoners had been assigned to a nearly-complete construction project in the middle of the yard. Based on the random bits of machinery that were continually getting delivered, I assumed it was a factory, but I hadn’t bothered to ask. I hadn’t been assigned to work on it; in fact, I hadn’t been assigned a job at all.

I wasn’t sure if my unemployment was error or slight, but I was in no rush to correct their mistake. I figured if I took laps and acted like I had somewhere to be, no one would pay me any mind. So far, it was working.

My incarceration went swimmingly until my 29th day on Rott. That’s when everything went to hell. Never mind it was a short trip.

It was a bright, but not in any way cheery, day, and I was getting another lap in before dinner. I had just passed under Tower’s station when I heard the shout.

“42.”

I jumped, mainly because this was the first time he had initiated a conversation. I glanced up at the control booth that sat atop the three-story tower. The window was open, and I could see him sitting there, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were molded to his binoculars, as they often were, and he was watching something across the yard.

“I’m sorry?” I called back.

“42,” he repeated. “That’s how many laps you’ve taken today.”

“Were you counting?”

Without taking his eyes away from the scopes, he held one arm out. It was covered with tally marks checked in black permanent ink.

“That’s weird, and I want to unsee that.”

He shrugged.

“Why are we having this conversation?” I demanded.

“I just thought you should know they’re looking for you.”

A chilly breeze brushed my arms—but then again, that was the only kind of breeze they had around here. “They who?”

“I don’t know, I can’t read nametags from here. They’re meeting with the big boss right now.”

“How do you know they’re looking for me?”

“Who else would they be looking for? You’re the only criminal on this island worth the title.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but this all sounds like a lot of conjecture. The United had me in prison for months on the mainland and barely talked to me. I don’t think they’re looking for me now.”

He swiveled his binoculars to the other side of the yard. “All I’m saying is, you might want to lay low during dinner—and avoid government officials.”

“I make a habit of it,” I muttered, and resumed walking. “Stop me when I get to 50 laps.”

Dinner was called before I completed my 46th lap. As I always did, I waited until almost everyone else had gone before joining the back of the line. My theory was that everyone would have already picked their seats by the time I got to the mess hall, and I could choose the most abandoned table.

Tonight, however, I was not so lucky. No sooner had I sat down than two old men got up from their table and came to join me.

I was appalled. Sure, there was no rule forbidding people from changing tables—I had just never seen anyone on this island exude that much effort.

“Hey Q! It’s your buddy John!” the first one said.

“And Dowe!” the second echoed. “Remember us?”

I groaned. I did remember them, and that was the problem. This was the third time these fools had tried to introduce themselves to me, and the repetition was making it hard for me to block them from my memory.

It didn’t help that their appearance was also very memorable, in a downright creepy way. John and Dowe were almost identical in height, hair, and weight, so much so that from across the yard you would swear they were twins. But when you got up close, you could spot just enough differences to know that they couldn’t be related. Yet, they were joined at the hip and completed each other’s sentences in a way that amplified their obnoxiousness.

“Much to my dismay,” I returned. “But you seem to have forgotten that my name is not Q.”

“Yeah, I’m not saying that,” John retorted. “It takes too long.”

“Sorry I’m such a test of patience.”

“It’s fine, he could use the practice.” Dowe drained the last of his water and thumped his canteen on the table. “We’ve been looking for you, Q.”

Tower’s warning flashed through my mind. I eyed the curious pair, but I couldn’t imagine them as government agents. Firstly, they were ancient. Secondly, they were dumb. Not in the inept, hive-mind way most United officials were—no, John and Dowe were actually stupid. I was sure some of it was an act, but the fact that they never broke character was disconcerting.

Best case scenario, they were harmless mental cases. Still, I would take any excuse to avoid them.

“I’m sorry, but my mom always told me never to talk to strangers.”

“Don’t worry, I left our big white van at home.”

“Correction, you drove our big white van into the ocean six months ago.”

“We can still get to it! It’s stuck on a rock or something like ten yards out. I think we should turn it into a party space and rent it.”

“What, so people can picnic on the roof?”

“Yeah!”

“I like the way you think.”

“That’s the entrepreneurial spirit,” I inserted, hoping the interruption would derail the conversation permanently.

“We’ll give you a cut if you advertise, Q.”

“No thanks,” I stood up and gathered my dishes, even though I hadn’t had a chance to take a bite. “I’ve already got a job.”

“So I heard.”

I looked up sharply, but not quickly enough to see which one had spoken. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing definitive,” Dowe answered. “But just in case, we wanted to cover our bases and make sure we got to you first.”

Maybe Tower was talking about these two.

“I’m not interested,” I snapped.

“Take it easy—we just wanted to give you this.” Dowe pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and tossed it at me.

I smoothed it out. It was a coupon for free pizza delivery. Expired, of course.

“Order whatever you want, on the house,” John beamed.

“But it only works on the mainland,” Dowe clarified. “Overseas shipping is too expensive.”

“I’ll save it for when I go on vacation.” I crumpled it back up and dropped it on my tray.

“Hey, don’t throw that away! It cost us an arm and a leg!”

“Yeah, Bob and Fred would be mortified.”

“Dare I ask who Bob and Fred are?”

“When you see guys missing an arm and a leg, you’ll know.” Dowe held my gaze, dead-serious.

With the tips of my fingers, I gingerly picked up the coupon and stuffed it in the pocket of my jumpsuit, intending to throw it away or forget about it, whichever came first. “Well, thanks for the invigorating intellectual discussion, but I need to go…”

“Right, right. Hey, are you going to eat that?” Without waiting for an answer, John pulled my tray to himself and dug in.

“Nah, lost my appetite.”

Neither of them appreciated the implications of that statement, so I left them to it and went to finish my laps.

“That’s 50!” Tower called down to me. I saw him make another tally mark on his arm.

“Seriously, stop doing that.”

“Who’s the prisoner and who’s the guard in this relationship?” He picked up his binoculars.

“Touché.” I stopped beneath his tower. “By the way, you were right about them.”

There was a pause. “Them?”

“John and Dowe,” I clarified. “They found me. Again. I can’t get rid of them.”

He snorted. “I wasn’t talking about them. They’re friends.”

“Well, that explains everything. So who were you talking about?”

He lowered his binoculars, revealing sunken raccoon eyes that were nearly hidden under a mess of unkept dark hair. “I was talking about Ambrose.”