The corridor widened as the flow of inmates moved forward, opening into a long transit hall lined with markers embedded in the floor. The crowd adjusted without being told, splitting into lanes, spacing themselves just enough to avoid collisions. So walked with purpose. Others drifted, eyes scanning faces, taking stock.
Rin noticed it imdiately. "There’s a structure," he said quietly. "Nobody’s rushing. Nobody’s lost."
"They already know where they sit," Xavier replied. "New people don’t."
Rin leaned closer. "There’s a hierarchy."
"Always is," Xavier said. "Especially when guards don’t babysit."
That was when the looks started.
Assessnt. Heads turned as Xavier and Rin passed, eyes lingering longer than polite, tracking posture, movent, weight distribution. A few inmates slowed just enough to force proximity. One of them stepped into Rin’s path deliberately.
"Fresh," the man said, glancing between them. "You two are new."
Rin stopped, but Xavier didn’t.
Another man moved in from the side, then a third behind them, close enough that Rin felt the pressure of bodies without being touched. Around them, the flow bent but didn’t stop.
"Where do you think you are going?" the first man continued. "Don’t you know the rules?"
Rin clenched his jaw. "We’re just heading where everyone else is."
The man smiled slightly. "Not how this works."
Xavier finally stopped and turned.
"You want to skip the part where you pretend this is about rules," he said. "Or do you need to hear yourself talk a bit more."
The smile dropped.
The man stepped closer and reached out, fingers brushing Rin’s shoulder.
That was enough.
Xavier moved without warning. He caught the man’s wrist, twisted, and drove him face-first into the floor with a single motion that cracked hard enough to echo through the hall. Before anyone else reacted, Xavier turned and struck the second man in the throat with his elbow, folding him instantly. The third barely got his hands up before Xavier kicked his knee sideways and shoved him into the wall.
It took less than five seconds.
The surrounding inmates stopped moving.
Three bodies stayed down.
The corridor slowed but didn’t stop. People watched without interfering, the way inmates always did when they were deciding what the new order looked like.
Xavier turned slowly, eyes moving across the hall until he was sure everyone within earshot was paying attention. "Listen," he said, voice level. "I don’t care about your pecking order. I don’t care who runs which corridor or who thinks they own which stretch of floor."
No one interrupted him.
He pointed at the n on the ground. "You don’t touch . You don’t touch him. If you leave us alone, I leave you alone. You cross that line, and I won’t stop at making a point."
He gestured briefly toward the n on the ground. "That’s the warning."
Nobody argued.
So nodded. Others backed away. The flow resud, wider around Xavier and Rin now, giving them space without being obvious about it.
Rin let out a breath once they were moving again. "You really treat this like routine."
Xavier glanced at him. "It becos routine when people learn fast."
The disturbance didn’t go unnoticed.
Elsewhere in the facility, far from the corridors the inmates walked through, indicators shifted from green to amber. A cluster of feeds highlighted the sa location, replaying the brief exchange from multiple angles. No alarms escalated. No containnt teams were deployed.
A woman seated at a control console leaned forward. "Three down. Sa subject as the artillery survivor."
Another voice answered from behind her. "Log it. But don’t intervene."
"They’re establishing hierarchy faster than projected."
"That’s what this block is for," the voice replied. "Let it play out. We still don’t know anything about him, except the space corps emblem. We would be in big trouble if he turned out to be soone we shouldn’t have ssed with."
Back in the corridor, the movent slowed again as everyone lined up.
The crowd parted just enough for a figure to step forward. Shorter than most, broad through the shoulders, skin patterned with dark tallic scales that caught the overhead lighting. Four eyes, two set lower than the others, fixed on Xavier without blinking. His uniform was torn at the sleeves, exposing cybernetic plating along his forearms.
Rin felt it before anything happened. "That one’s not backing off."
Xavier stopped walking and turned fully toward him. "Good."
The scaled inmate tilted his head and spoke, his voice rough and layered, translated cleanly by the facility’s systems. "You hit three weak ones and think that makes you untouchable."
Xavier looked him over. "If you’re here to test it, get on with it."
More inmates stopped now. Humans, off-world colonists, tall avian shapes with folded wings, a pair of insectoid figures standing perfectly still near the wall, and others Rin couldn’t even begin to classify. The corridor beca a loose circle without anyone calling for it.
The scaled inmate stepped closer. "This block already has order."
Xavier nodded once. "Then let’s clear it up."
He raised his voice enough to carry. "Anyone who thinks they’re a problem should step forward now. Fight once and be done with it. I’m not repeating this every day."
Murmurs spread through the crowd. Nobody else moved.
The scaled inmate’s upper arms flexed as the cybernetics whirred softly. "You speak too much for a human."
"Yeah well, we have a mouth and a tongue to speak." Xavier shrugged with a scoff.
The inmate lunged.
He was fast, faster than most humans. Xavier sidestepped and drove his elbow into the joint of the augnted arm, forcing it wide. The follow-up punch glanced off Xavier’s shoulder, hard enough to hurt but not enough to slow him.
Xavier countered imdiately. He stepped inside the inmate’s reach and slamd his knee into the scaled torso, then grabbed the back of his neck and drove him face-first into the floor. The impact cracked loud enough to echo.
The inmate roared and pushed up, swinging again. Xavier t him head-on this ti, catching the punch and twisting, using the inmate’s own montum to throw him across the corridor. He didn’t give him ti to recover. He closed the distance, struck twice to the ribs, then once to the jaw, dropping him back down.
The scaled inmate tried to rise again. Xavier planted a foot on his chest and leaned down just enough to be heard.
"Stay down," he said.
The inmate froze, chest heaving, eyes locked on Xavier. After a mont, he stopped struggling.
Xavier stepped back.
He looked around the circle of inmates. Different species. Different builds. Different ways of watching him. "That’s it," he said. "I’m not here to run this place, but take all your rules and problems, write them down sowhere, and shove them up in your asses."
The crowd hadn’t fully closed back in when another figure stepped out.
He was tall, taller than most of the inmates around him, with a lean build and long avian limbs that folded in on themselves when he stopped. Iridescent scales ran along his neck and down his arms, catching the overhead light in muted colors. Feathered wings rested tight against his back, trimd short enough to fit the prison uniform without tearing it apart. His posture looked relaxed, almost lazy, like he’d rather be anywhere else, preferably eating or asleep.
He studied Xavier with open curiosity instead of caution.
"I recognize that voice," he said, his voice smoothing the avian cadence into sothing easy to understand. "I heard it back there. The tone matches."
Xavier turned toward him and didn’t answer right away. He looked the Kla’ots up and down, taking in the wings, the scales, the familiar lack of urgency.
After a mont, he said, "Klatos?"
The Kla’ots blinked, then tilted his head. "Whoa~ You actually rembered!" he replied. "People usually get it wrong."
Rin glanced between them. "You know each other."
"Unfortunately," the Kla’ots said, then looked back at Xavier. "So it is you. Xavier."
Xavier nodded. "Yeah."
The Kla’ots’ eyes brightened slightly. "Didn’t expect to see you off Earth."
"Didn’t expect to see you anywhere that didn’t have food," Xavier replied.
User Comments
0 comments from readers