Season 02 - Episode 17

‘mask the silence’

The maximum security wing of the detention centre is silent. Iz is lying on her bed, staring at the low, concrete ceiling of her cell. Outside the bars, an EnFo is sitting hunched over in a chair. His heavy gloved hands are at his groin and his head is down, breathing hard through his mask.

The silence is broken by the heavy boots of another EnFo entering the room. He is several inches taller and broader than the one in the chair who now attempts to leap to attention but then staggers and cries out.

“What hell's wrong with you?” growls the larger EnFo, his voice crackling through his mask.

“Nothing, sarge,” says the smaller EnFo. He glances towards the cell then stands straight with visible effort.

“You tried to have some fun with her, didn't you?” asks the sergeant. The other EnFo doesn't respond but hangs his head.

“Pathetic,” snarls the sergeant. “Look at her! She's a tiny little woman! Are you telling me she fought you off?!”

“She's tougher than she looks, sarge,” whines the other EnFo. “She tore my body armour!”

The sergeant strides to Iz's cell, unlocks and opens the door then steps inside. Iz continues to stare at the ceiling as he looms over her.

“Listen to me, bitch,” he says, his fuzzy voice thick with hate. “You're nothing, you're less than nothing. You're a scapetrash whore and a murderer and the moment GovCo's done parading you around, they're going to execute you. In the meantime, you're ours and we can do whatever we like with you because nobody gives a shit about you. In fact, if they knew what we were doing, they'd thank us.”

Iz yawns, stretches and shifts position on the thin yet lumpy mattress.

“So now,” says the sergeant, starting to unfasten his armour. “You're going to take what I have to give you and then you're going to take care of my man here, make up for what you did to him. And let's not pretend you've any dignity to offend. You scapetrash are all the same, you'll have been whoring yourself out since you could walk.”

The smaller EnFo stands at the cell door and watches as the sergeant lunges down on top of Iz. Sounds of struggle fill the small, hard walled space. A moment later the sergeant stumbles back out of the cell, knocking the younger EnFo aside.

“Sarge!” cries the smaller EnFo, rushing to his superior's aid.

“My arm,” wheezes the sergeant. “She broke my arm!”

The sergeant staggers from the room while Iz cackles.

“Where you going?” she shouts after him. “I thought you had something to give me? Come on, I'm just a tiny little woman!”

The smaller EnFo closes and locks Iz's cell before rushing out after the sergeant. Iz wipes a small trickle of blood from her lip and chuckles bitterly. She rolls onto her side, turning her back on the bars, then considers the two small, newly acquired objects, clasped in her palm.

A short, ragged strip of black fabric, edged along one side with a length of metal zip, sits beside a single bullet. The sergeant has clumsily scratched a word into the casing of the bullet but she can't make out what it is. Apparently the bullet is some kind of memento or lucky charm and it occurs to her that losing it might hurt him even more than his arm. The thought makes her smile just a little.

Iz's sharp eyes flick back and forth between the zip and the bullet before narrowing as she thinks. Eventually she sniffs, slips the objects inside her mattress through the secret hole she has made and rolls back onto her back to stare at the ceiling some more.

“Fucking Inners,” she says.

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