Story code: ST-001826
Part 2: The Extortion Rate
The heavy iron door crashed shut, severing the tier’s chaotic acoustics with a deafening metallic finality. A motorized deadbolt engaged above Kevin’s head, the clatter vibrating down through the soles of his boots. He stood frozen in the center of the cramped space as the overhead fluorescent lights snapped off, instantly replaced by the sickly, crimson glow of emergency lockdown bulbs. The mechanical siren cut out, leaving a sudden silence that was immediately filled by the muffled, furious shouts of trapped men echoing through the ventilation grates.
Kevin sank onto the razor-thin mattress. The internal springs groaned, biting into his aching lumbar spine. His clinical mind automatically processed the environmental shift. An unannounced lockdown of this scale usually meant a major violent incident elsewhere in the facility. It also guaranteed a minimum of forty-eight hours of total confinement. Sometimes seventy-two. Sometimes a week.
A spike of pure panic shot through his exhausted system, pushing his heart rate back into a dangerous tachycardia. By refusing the extortionate kiosk fee to call his father, he had gambled on trying again during tomorrow’s recreation block. Now, tomorrow was gone.
He buried his face in his rough, calloused hands. His mother’s message, which he had so casually swiped away, flashed in his mind. She was expecting a detailed update on his thoracic rotation. The intricate facade of his elite “overseas medical fellowship” relied on a fragile, meticulously timed illusion. To prevent his parents from calling the actual overseas hospital, Kevin utilized a shadow proxy service on the outside-a digital intermediary that maintained a VoIP number with a foreign country code. The service charged a monthly maintenance fee of ten dollars, payable via a convoluted web of commissary transfers. His next payment was due in exactly twelve hours.
If he missed the deadline, the proxy number would be wiped. When his mother inevitably called to check on him, she wouldn’t hear the automated, professional voicemail he had scripted. She would get a dead line. The dominoes would rapidly fall: calls to the embassy, international missing persons reports, and finally, the catastrophic discovery of his incarceration.
The sharp clack of his door’s food slot shattered his spiraling thoughts. A brown paper sack was shoved unceremoniously through the narrow gap, dropping to the concrete floor. A face appeared in the vertical, wire-reinforced window of the heavy door. It was Miller, a tier sweeper and one of the few inmates allowed out of their cells during a lockdown to distribute mandatory caloric minimums.
Kevin rushed to the door. “Miller,” he rasped, his voice rough from dehydration. “How long are we down?”
“Stabbing in Block C,” Miller muttered through the perforated steel grate, his eyes darting down the catwalk. “Tactical team’s coming in for a full sweep. We’re in the box for at least four days, Doc.”
Four days. The proxy service would burn his number by morning.
“I need an outside line,” Kevin said, desperation bleeding through his carefully maintained neutral tone. “Right now.”
Miller let out a low, breathy laugh. “Kiosks are dead, man. Breakers are cut.”
“You have a burner. I know you do.” It was an open secret that Miller smuggled micro-cellphones in the laundry carts. “I need one text message.”
Miller’s expression hardened. “A minute on the micro costs twenty bucks, transferred to my books upfront. I know you’re broke, Doc. You survive on the generic kitchen slop.”
The brutal economy of the facility pressed down on Kevin, suffocating him. He had barely twelve dollars to his name. He couldn’t afford the phone, and he couldn’t afford the proxy service. But he had a different currency. He stared at the side of Miller’s neck, analyzing a swollen, angry red cluster of nodules creeping above the collar of his orange uniform.
“That’s not a spider bite,” Kevin said, his clinical voice taking over-cold and precise. “The margins are irregular, and there’s localized necrotic tissue forming at the center. It’s a staph infection. Likely MRSA.”
Miller instinctively reached up to touch the inflamed skin, flinching violently as his fingers made contact.
“If you go to the infirmary, they’ll give you basic penicillin,” Kevin continued, leaning closer to the grate. “It won’t work. The infection will spread to your lymph nodes. Within seventy-two hours, you’ll be fully septic. But I know which broad-spectrum antibiotics the night nurse keeps unlocked in the secondary cabinet. I can tell you exactly what symptoms to feign to get her to bypass the doctor and dispense it directly.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. The bartering of survival. Miller’s fear against Kevin’s desperation.
“One minute,” Miller finally hissed. “I’ll slide it under the door when I collect the trash in ten minutes. You send your text, you slide it back. Then you give me the symptoms.”
The face disappeared. Kevin slumped against the steel door. He picked up the brown sack, pulling out two slices of processed, graying meat between stale bread. He forced himself to chew the foul-tasting food, desperate for the calories to keep his mind sharp against the creeping edge of his migraine.
Ten minutes later, a soft scratch sounded at the base of his door. A tiny object, wrapped in clear plastic, was pushed through the narrow gap beneath the steel frame.
Kevin snatched it up. It was a micro-smartphone, barely larger than a lighter. He peeled back the plastic. The screen was severely cracked, spiderwebbed with jagged glass. He pressed the power button. The harsh light seared his dark-adjusted eyes.
A battery icon flashed in the top right corner: 6%.
His fingers trembled violently as he navigated the archaic touchscreen. He opened the messaging app, manually typing his mother’s number. The jagged glass dug into his thumb, drawing a small bead of blood that smeared across the display. He began typing his fabrication, fighting the system’s aggressive lag.
Mom. In a rural surgical clinic for the weekend. Terribly understaffed. Cell reception is blocked by the mountain terrain. Will be out of contact for a few days. Love you.
He pressed send. A small loading circle appeared on the shattered screen.
At that exact moment, the heavy, rhythmic thud of tactical boots echoed down the catwalk. A blinding flashlight beam swept across his cell wall, cutting through the red emergency glow. The tactical unit was moving fast, conducting an unannounced contraband shakedown.
The loading circle spun, mocking him. No signal.
The boots stopped directly outside Kevin’s door. A metal baton smashed against the exterior of his cell, rattling the frame and vibrating against Kevin’s spine.
“Inmate! Face the back wall, hands on your head!” a voice barked through the grate.
Kevin stared at the tiny screen. The battery dropped to 4%. The message was still trying to push through the facility’s thick concrete walls. If they found the phone in his hand, he wouldn’t just lose his cover story; he would be thrown into solitary confinement, stripped of his last remaining ties to sanity.