They stormed in eight deep like it was a raid for television—except the only audience was me. Ramesh leading, chest puffed like he’d won a war; Li right behind him, eyes mean and empty. And waddling along was a squat, extremely unattractive, frumpy woman I’d never seen before, handheld camera clutched like her ticket to county stardom.
She wasn’t there to help. She was there to film.
That’s how I knew this was theater.
Their kind of theater.
Ramesh snapped the cuffs on, steel biting my wrists so tight my fingers went numb. Li grabbed me by the back like I was cattle and started driving me out of the dayroom. No explanations. No paperwork. Just raw force.
My gut expected the usual left turn—back to the Box, my coffin, my control.
But when we hit the hallway, they shoved me right.
Hard.
“Where the fuck are we going?” I barked, my voice bouncing off the cinderblock walls.
Silence.
Just the squeak of boots and Li’s hand pushing harder between my shoulder blades.
Up ahead a trustee had the B7 door open, waiting like a stagehand at a play.
That’s when Li made his move.
Cheap shot.
He slammed me in the back of the head, my skull rattling, stars flashing across my vision. Before I could shake it off he shoved me into Cell #4 hard enough my chest hit the bunk rail.
“Back up!” he barked.
I knew the drill.
Hands through the slot. Head down.
Let them play god with the cuffs.
I stepped back and slid my wrists into the steel mouth of the slot.
And that’s when the real sadism came out.
Li didn’t just unlock the cuffs.
He twisted them.
Hard.
Grinding the metal into the tendon at the base of my hand until white-hot pain shot up my arms like electricity.
I clenched my teeth, refusing to give him the win of a scream, but my nerves were on fire.
He smirked while the cuffs finally clicked off, pulled them free like he’d won a prize, and the slot slammed shut in my face.
That was their victory lap.
Humiliation disguised as routine.
I turned and took stock of my new cage.
Six by nine feet—smaller than my old Box.
Bed bolted to the wall. Thin mattress. Toilet and sink that actually worked this time.
No shower.
Bars in front, open like a stage.
Sound carried from every direction.
The fluorescent light buzzed above me like an insect that wouldn’t die.
The smell?
Bleach losing a war against mildew and dried shit in the cracks.
And it clicked.
This wasn’t an upgrade.
This wasn’t mercy.
This was strategy.
KSA had made me untouchable. Too much distance for their ISFs. Too much control for me.
So they forced me out.
Shoved me into B7 where the phone, the showers, the commissary—every goddamn necessity—lived in the dayroom.
Their plan was simple.
Force me to mesh.
Force me to play their circus.
But I wasn’t buying it.
They could shove me. Hit me. Twist every tendon in my wrist.
I wasn’t stepping foot in their dayroom.
Not then.
Not ever.
I don’t fucking mesh.
I never have.
And because I don’t mesh, their whole machine can’t manufacture the thing it needs.
A fight.
A breakdown.
A confession.
They needed me to snap so some asshole could start a brawl and they could crank the indictment meter up another notch.
That’s the play.
Get a man to melt down on camera.
Stack another charge.
Tighten the screws.
But I didn’t melt.
I adapted.
Starve me.
Wash me.
Break me?
Fuck you.
By the end of week three the pattern was clear.
The commissary thefts.
The vent chatter.
The coded language.
The plants.
This wasn’t chaos.
This was design.
A system.
A lab.
And I was the experiment.
But they forgot something important.
Experiments sometimes bite back.
I said it when they first slapped those bullshit charges on me.
And I’ll say it again now.
I DON’T FUCKING LOSE.