Deadlock || ᴠᴍɪɴ

Chapter 1

“Hey, so how many times have you been locked up?” whispered the Caucasian young man sitting beside him. The blond man who had boarded at San Jose looked no older than twenty. His anxious face still retained some boyish innocence, and he looked like a high-school student pale with car-sickness.

“First time,” Jimin Lennix replied. He glanced at the young man briefly before turning his face forward again. The front and back of the prisoner transport bus was divided with metal fences, and security guards stood on both ends with rifles, keeping watch on the prisoners within the vehicle.

“It’s my first time, too,” said the young man. “Talk about unlucky. I can’t believe I’m being thrown into the Schelger Prison, among all places! Isn’t that where―”

“You! No talking!” barked a voice behind him. The young man hastily shut his mouth.

A mood of dread enveloped the bus as it carried a load of about twenty prisoners in orange jump suits, heading straight north along the Interstate.

The bright April sunlight streamed in through the fenced windows, in stark contrast to the dark and clouded hearts of the prisoners. When would be the next time they would see the light of day? Jimin found himself growing sentimental as he narrowed his eyes and watched the scenery slip by.

After a while, the bus arrived at its destination. The Schelger State Prison, located in California, was even larger than what rumours said. An immense expanse of land lay before him, the acreage of which he could hardly begin to estimate, all surrounded by miles and miles of fencing. Around the top part of the fence was an obscene amount of spiralled barbed wire, which was probably charged with high-voltage electric current.

The bus stopped temporarily in front of the gates. The guards in the surveillance towers on each side of the gate stood with their fingers on the triggers of their rifles, ready to fire. This intimidating sight convinced Jimin once and for all that this very place was the most guarded maximum-security prison in the States, with a history of over a hundred years. Approximately two thousand and five hundred prisoners served their sentences here.

The gates opened and the bus lurched into motion once more. It trundled around the spacious grounds surrounded by wire. There were basketball courts and squash courts, and prisoners in blue denim clothes could be seen loitering in large groups.

The bus stopped in front of a large building. The guard in front opened the cage. They were instructed to get off the bus one by one. A Caucasian guard with sharp eyes and a hooked nose greeted them outside the bus, barking at the lined-up prisoners like an army sergeant from Hell.

“Welcome to Schelger State Prison!” he shouted. “First off: here, the word of the prison guard is absolute. I don’t care what kind of important job you had out there, or how much of a badass gangster you were. Once you’re inside the walls, it doesn’t matter. Don’t think you can get away with any rebellious attitude while you’re here. Disobey orders or show suspicious behaviour, and most likely you will be shot. See that gun tower over there!”

The guard pointed to a surveillance tower in the middle of the grounds. A prison guard with a rifle was looking out.

“Let’s say a commotion happens on the grounds. A warning shot will be fired into the air. If you hear a gunshot, you are to get down and lie on your bellies. Any gunshots you hear after that will mean that someone has been shot. All of the guards in the gun towers here are expert shots who spend three hours each day shooting rounds. Keep that in mind!” the guard snapped menacingly, before commanding them to file inside the building. Jimin and the rest of the prisoners began to shuffle forward like pitiful cattle being herded in, their hands and feet in shackles. The prisoners watching from the other side of the metal fence began jeering at them.