sHe: THE RISE OF THE NEW BREEDS [Book 1]

The Awakening [Part 6 Of 7]

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2033

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THE EMACIATED REEVES was both sweating and shivering on a bunk of the prison infirmary. He had red spots all over his face and body. Both of his hands were bound in leather straps to the side of the bed, while he grimaced uncomfortably from the itches and aches. A handwritten marker-pen sign hung outside the bed screens curtain...

'Quarantine — Chickenpox.'

Nearby, was a nurses' station with two nurses on the night shift in the infirmary — and their only stay-in patient for that night was the seventeen-year-old Reeves Jensen. A Black nurse, Giselle in her late twenties was entering data into a computer while an older White nurse Cindy was knitting...

"This is interesting that the death rate in Tombscradle dropped significantly for the first time last month because none of these freaks had either died in fights or suicides."

The older nurse retorted. "Hey, what are you doing? You are supposed to be entering data — not snoop on the Warden's C-files record and inmate's database." Giselle laughed at her own gaffe.

The records entry were part of the updates which Dr Sharmini Bose had to submit to Warden Graves — who reviewed and forwarded it to the Governor of Texas, Gertrude Harris, who would then have a concluding look and say — before submitting the final report to Washington, on the semen collection in Tombscradle...

The Governor had won awards for three consequent years for the project in Tombscradle — and she had high expectations to maintain its efficiency — and in return, she had put a lot of pressure on the warden with her never-ending demands.

"I find this more interesting than reading a mystery novel on our night shift. You see, all these inmates to me are really like some interesting storybook characters — well, some of them have real, shitty, dark pasts."

"Don't let Bose catch you doing that."

The wily Black nurse laughed again. "It ain't nothing, Dr Bose will not know," she went back snooping into other restricted information...

"Hey Cindy, that Preacher-guy, I was checking his background the other day..."

Cindy interposed straight off by saying without taking her eyes off her knit-work...

"Oh! He is one big 'hog' — he even broke the midget's nose. Is he still in solitary, after the whipping he got?"

"Yeah he is there, but listen here — did you know that the Preacher was 7 years old when the cops found him being locked for several days, starving in a basement of a coal cellar in his house? They broke into his house after neighbours complained about a foul stench — and they found that his mother had committed suicide by burning herself alive. They then rescued the malnutitioned kid, from that basement and they put him in a Convent-orphanage," said Giselle, enlightening the older nurse with Tombscradle's internal hearsay.

Nurse Cindy was the judgmental apathy sort...

"Hmm, he is one creepy psychotic looking feller — with all those scars on his face — I think it is self-inflicted."

Nurse Giselle nodded and was prying into other data record updates — and one caught her eye, and she called out...

"Oh, my dear Jesus! The poor thing — this kid's mother just died yesterday..."