The Phoenix Project

Chapter Three-1

Chapter ThreePresent day

The sun shone on the concrete walls of Salverford, the gritty floor warm to the touch as Raven found a cool shadow in the corner of the exercise yard. The other prisoners began to file out, filling their lungs with fresh air and turning their faces up to the afternoon sun. A peculiar bunch of tough guys shouting, trying to match each other's bravado; haunted, emaciated youths, wandering alone, staring at the ground; veterans of the prison, chatting and laughing, wise in the understanding that, if all was futile, they may as well enjoy their last weeks, months, years, however long they had left.

For four months Raven Kennedy had endured the sterility of Salverford, and the darkness that clouded his heart had increased daily. He had spoken to nobody, not a word in four whole months, except for the odd grunt to the guards when it was absolutely necessary. He didn't know if he was capable of maintaining a conversation anymore.

This antisocial attitude was a side effect of the depression which had racked him since his incarceration. It was difficult to maintain a positive attitude towards life when it could be torn from you at any moment, and the guilt and self-hatred Raven carried around with him made his heart darker with every passing day.

Four walls obscured Raven's view in all directions. Giant towers stood in every corner of the small rectangular exercise yard. Onyx, Amethyst, Emerald and Ruby. The gargantuan observers. He knew he would never escape them.

They had named the towers after precious materials to make them appear less terrifying, but in reality the design of the prison was inefficient and inhumane. Four equally-sized towers, two crammed with prisoners, two almost empty.

The two occupied towers were also the dirtiest. Even the outside was covered in a layer of grime, and Raven swore the corridors and cells had never been cleaned. The monstrous Onyx tower, an ugly concrete block, stood beside Raven and he glanced up at the towering structure as it blocked out the sun.

At least 300 cramped cells were inside the tower and it was almost always filled to capacity, every cell occupied by a thin, dirty prisoner. When one was killed, another hopeless case was ushered in to take their cell.

For the majority of inmates, the sterility of the basic cells was almost all they got to see, day in, day out. They visited the mess hall for meals but it was also a grey and dreary place to be, though at least there were other people to talk to. Coming to the yard once a week was a treat. It was an hour long, no exceptions.

Even in falling snow, freezing winds and rainstorms the prisoners had to stay outside. There was no shelter either, just four bare walls and four gigantic towers. In the summer it was a brutal heat trap, but the prisoners enjoyed the heat upon their skin, blistering sunrays falling on their bare arms.

The more optimistic prisoners even enjoyed the poor weather conditions, smiling as they opened their mouths and let the cold rain run in, tasting the sharp, fresh essence of winter. When it became really cold, they would race each other back and forth through the yard to keep their body temperatures up. Raven declined to join in. He preferred the numbness the aching cold brought.

Today the sun was bright, and the prisoners basked in the warmth, but Raven wanted to feel miserable, so he moved into the shade and sat with his back pressed against the red brick wall. The yard seemed sterile even in the warm spring sunlight. A perfect rectangle, it allowed no place to hide and no room for privacy. All you could do for peace and quiet was to find a corner, at least partially away from the keen gazes of the prowling guards. Whichever corner you sat in, a huge structure towered over you. Raven sat beneath Ruby Tower and he could feel a menacing warmth emanating from the monstrous building, as if it had eyes that bore into his back.

Raven looked over the hundred prisoners on this recreation shift. The brutish men of Onyx mixed with the equally tough women of Amethyst. On the ground between the two immense barrack towers, a tattered makeshift soccer net had been strung up and the inmates shouted and ran back and forth, enjoying a good game before they were ordered back to the isolation of their cells.

Some prisoners, the ones who preferred not to get involved with a game that frequently turned hostile, jogged the perimeter in an attempt to stay in shape. A young man, of no more than twenty years, ran past Raven. A new arrival, he still looked healthy and determined to stay alive.

Raven watched as the young man ran on, wondering how long his plucky optimism would last. But he knew the answer: Salverford would crush him as it crushed them all. It would either take his life or his sanity, and more than likely, it would take both.

The man jogged up to a group of female prisoners, who deliberately stood in his way, forming a wall that he would have to weave around. He slowed as he approached and gave them a charming grin, but they laughed and tried to trip him. He haphazardly dodged their obstacles, ignoring their mocking shouts and laughter.

Raven watched as he came to a stop at the bottom of Emerald Tower, an altogether different cell block. If Onyx and Amethyst were the slums, Emerald was the Taj Mahal. It was the same size as the other blocks, but had suites with multiple rooms forming apartments for the inmates.

Raven had never been inside, but he had overheard other prisoners gossiping about the curtains, carpets and paintings on the walls. The large and luxurious cells were reserved for the prisoners who gave something back to Salverford, those whose families paid a lot of money to keep them there, who abused political contacts or were media heroes. They were the people who really brought money into Salverford and in turn could buy their way into relative comfort and privacy.

Raven could see the opulence from where he sat, the golden glow of cozy lighting, thick plush curtains hanging at the crystal clean windows. It turned his stomach.

The tower he sat pressed up against was no better: Ruby, the administration block. It was mostly empty, an entire tower just to hold the equipment they used to promote and televise the fights. An enormous hulking skeleton, hollow and bare, while just metres away the prisoners of Onyx and Amethyst rotted in tiny, cramped cells.

It also housed the cellars where the stricter punishments were handed out. Raven had never been inside, but he had heard the stories of t*****e chambers, cells where the occupant had to sit in freezing cold water, and worst of all, the sensory deprivation chamber—the ominously named 'dark room.'

Raven was dragged from his thoughts as a stray ball flew through the air towards him. It hit him on the shoulder and rolled a few metres away.

“Hey, Kennedy! Ball!” A middle-aged woman shouted in his direction, with her hands on her uniformed hips. He looked at her blankly, then at the ball again, before turning away.

A tall, muscular man walked over.

“Kennedy. The ball. Lady wants it back. Pass it over.”

Raven's intense, dark eyes bore into the other man's, but he said nothing and didn't move a muscle. The man's mouth twitched with anger, but he walked over and picked the ball up himself.

“Jackass,” he hissed at Raven and spat a glob of saliva onto the ground at his feet.

Raven stared at the disgusting froth in the bright sunlight, slowly dwindling and drying in the warmth.

He shuffled further into the corner where the two walls met. He liked corners. It meant there was nothing hiding behind him.

A little more privacy would have been nice, but people kept coming to congratulate him on his first success in the ring. Every time somebody came over they were met by blank silence or a hostile glare. After a while they gave up and kept their distance.

Raven wished he was back in his room where he found relative comfort in the cool, dark cell, the isolation. He held his arms out in front of him. Faint red lines were streaked across his skin, some recent, others fading into white scars. The product of his self-hatred.

He had racked his brains over and over again to think of what he could use as a better weapon for his self-harm. Compulsion often took over his mind and he had to carve his skin open to calm the guilt that raged within him. He had been using anything he could get hold of, the edges of furniture, stones from the exercise yard, but nothing really worked to his satisfaction. He yearned to feel the sting as a blade ripped across his skin, the cathartic release of guilt and pain.

It wasn't that he was suicidal; he certainly wasn't planning on killing himself. If anything, he was desperate to stay alive for as long as possible, so that his own self-punishment could continue. If he died too soon, he could never achieve the level of retribution he felt he deserved. Cutting himself was just a means to an end, a way of dealing more pain without allowing himself to slip into the blissful oblivion of death.

But the guards weren't stupid; anything even vaguely dangerous was kept well away from the prisoners in their cells. But in the arena it was different. He didn't know how they did it, but sometimes when a fight was taking place, other prisoners would manage to fling a weapon into the ring. Only a week before, a knife had been thrown into his fight. He had seen the face of the man who had thrown it. Where had he gotten it from? Surely there was no way he'd taken it in with him when he was admitted. And all packages were thoroughly scanned and checked. It couldn't have come in that way.

There must be something I'm not seeing, he thought, and looked around the yard. Was one of these people connected to the outside world? He scanned the faces of the prisoners, and that was when he saw him. The large, broad-shouldered man who had thrown the knife into the ring during Raven's fight. His heart jumped. This could be it, his chance to get a weapon.

Raven hesitated for a long time, debating whether it would be worth it, whether it was a good idea. He hadn't spoken to another prisoner since he had been in Salverford, and he had been very happy to maintain that solitude. This wasn't meant to be a bonding exercise and he wasn't here to make friends.

Even though this was where he belonged, the idea of talking to another criminal made him uncomfortable. If he could last his entire sentence without ever speaking to another person, he would happily do that, but there was a voice nagging at the back of his mind, telling him he had to cut, he had to punish himself further.

He rose to his feet and walked over, interrupting the man's conversation with another inmate.

“What?”

“I need to talk to you,” Raven said bluntly, his voice cracking from weeks of disuse.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead,” he replied.

“Alone.”

The man stared back at him and there was silence for a few moments before he turned to the man beside him. He muttered something inaudible to Raven and the other prisoner glared at Raven before stalking off.

He turned back to look at Raven, eyebrows raised, questioning. Raven checked that no other prisoners were within earshot.

“Last week, in my fight, you threw a knife into the ring.” The man visibly stiffened as he heard the words. “Where did you get it from?”

“Don't know what you're talking about. That wasn't me.”

“I saw your face. I know it was you.”

The man looked nervous and drew a deep breath. “I can't tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I could only get it if I promised not to tell anybody the source.”

“Tell me now,” Raven barked, anger rising within him.

“Sorry, no can do.”

“TELL ME!” Raven roared and the man looked around nervously. Nobody was close enough to help him if the situation got out of hand. In the outside world, Raven would never have been so aggressive, especially to a man so much bigger than him. But in here, Raven had less to lose. There was nothing anybody could take from him anymore.