Sam and Colby: The Penitentiary

74 (corey's pov)

*Corey's POV*

As we made our way to the mailroom for work, something caught my eye. A door I'd never seen open was slightly cracked and I saw something that would solve our problem about what to tell everyone. If I could manage to bring something back with me, that is.

I looked up at Jake right in front of me, but he wasn't looking. I stopped walking for a second to see if any of them noticed, but they kept moving along. Perfect.

I quickly slipped through the office door that'd been left ajar and softly shut it behind me so no one walking by would see me. I made my way over to the desk in the corner of the room and stared down at what I'd come in for.

There was a camera sitting on the desk.

It wasn't a normal camera like something I could ever find back in our year. But it was a camera nonetheless. It wasn't actually even a camera, but a camcorder. For taking videos. The thing was gigantic and obnoxiously chunky, but I'd find a way to stash it somewhere so I could use it during yard time later.

I popped the side of the camera open and found a tape inside. I looked around the room for a moment, trying to find where there might be blank tapes. The one in this camera might be full already.

I ended up finding a drawer in one of the office's file cabinets with a divider in the middle. On the right side of it were tapes labelled with dates and on the left were tapes with no markings. Those were probably blank ones.

I shoved ten of them into my socks and pants, then tucked the camcorder into the front of my pants. It was wildly obvious that I'd stashed something in there, but I prayed that no guards would run into me on my way to the mailroom.

I noticed one more thing on the desk before leaving the room. The same newspaper we'd bought the guard the first time we'd tried to escape. The time that had worked. I rolled it up and put it in my pant leg, then made my way back over to the door. I opened it as slowly as I possibly could, then peeked out.

Blaze and everyone else had been at the beginning of the pack of people making their way to their various job sites. There was still a small sea of people walking past the door. After checking for guards, I shuffled out of the door and joined the crowd of people making their way to the mailroom. I held my hands over my stomach to try and conceal the large lump in my uniform, but it didn't do much good. That didn't really matter though. I made it to the mailroom and over to our bin without any trouble.

"Is there something in your clothes or are you just excited to see us?" asked Jake.

"Ha ha. Very funny. No, I got something that might save our asses and something that might help us prove this all happened," I said.

"What are you kids talking about now?" asked Blaze.

"Don't you have a package to grab?" asked Nessa, looking over at him.

"Shit, I do. Thanks for reminding me," he responded before darting out of the room.

"First off, I have the newspaper for today. The good one," I said, taking it out of the bottom of my pant leg.

"No way," said Colby.

"Where'd you get that?" asked Sam.

"Same place I got a camcorder," I replied.

"A camco—you mean... we can record this?" Nessa whispered.

"Will we have it on us when we wake back up if we actually pull this off this time?" asked Jake.

"I don't know but I'd say it's definitely worth a shot," I said.

"So you snuck off and managed to find us a paper and a camera? Fucking awesome, brother," said Nessa, offering me a fist bump.

"Do we even know how to use that thing, though?" asked Colby. "Plus there's no light on it."

"We can tape a flashlight to the top of it," said Jake. "Ness, you found some flashlights to put with the food, right?"

"Sure did. We keep masking tape in the kitchen, too, so I can grab that before we leave," Nessa added.

"Okay, but how do we use it? Shit's old," said Colby.

"I know how. Or I can figure it out, at least. I took this online class a couple years ago on the history of videography," said Sam.

"You took a class?" asked Jake.

"On purpose?" asked Colby.

"For fun?" I asked.

"It's not that weird. I've taken tons of classes for fun," said Nessa.

"I'm not surprised about that," chuckled Jake.

"Oh, shut up," she laughed back.

"Wait, did you get any tapes for the thing? If there's one in there already it might not have enough storage on it," said Sam. "Those things only hold like two hours of footage."

"I took like ten," I replied.

"Oh, hell yeah," said Sam.

"Now we've just got to manage to carry that shit around without anyone seeing it," said Nessa.

"Yeah, that thing is pretty bulky," said Colby.

"We can unscrew the lens from it and the handhold on the bottom. We can put it together really quick after we hop the fence to show the full jailyard of people for a few seconds," said Sam.

"If this works, I'm going to be so fucking stoked. They might believe us if we have video evidence," said Jake.

"I really want to be able to tell Kat, man," said Sam.

"And I really want to tell Dev," I replied.

"Let's just pray that we can manage to get it back with us," said Colby.

"I'm going to try my best," I said.