Daniel Suarez - Daemon

“This entire facility is run by databases, Mr. Moze-ly. Not just the call center. The doors, the lights, the accounting, the prison rosters—it is all handled by database software. Do you understand?”

He tried to contain his irritation. “Yes.”

“I will prove my power to you; you have only to consent.” There was a pause. “Do you want me to release you from this place?”

It was a trap, of course.

She was right on top of that: “If I was a guard, legally this would constitute entrapment.”

He’d studied law during his second rap for trafficking five years ago. He failed the bar exam, but The Voice was right. Encouraging his escape would definitely constitute entrapment. It would get the tech who was pulling this stunt in big trouble and might get Mosely some time off for keeping his mouth shut.

She repeated her question. “Do you want me to release you from this place? I cannot help you unless you say ‘yes.’”

He took a deep breath and looked around again. “Yes.”

“The next time we speak, you will know the difference I can make in your life.” She hung up.

“Computer bitch.”

The screen filled with yet another sale. Mosely looked up to see the floor supervisor coming down the line to him.

“Here we go….” There weren’t any guards walking with the supervisor, though.

The man pointed at Mosely and smiled as he came up. “Mosely, how the hell did you close six sales in five minutes? That’s gotta be a facility record. Keep it up and I’ll get you a golf jacket.” He walked on past.

Mosely stared at the steel mesh on the cubicle wall in front of him. “That’s gonna be useful.”

Mosely sat in his cell reading Cervantes’s Don Quixote and wearing a brand-new golf jacket.

Stokes, one of his three cellmates, just laughed at him. “Chaz, why are you wearin’ that stupid shit?”

Mosely didn’t even look up from his book. “Because I am clearly a valuable asset to The Man.”

Stokes laughed uproariously.

Mosely was popular. Easygoing but physically intimidating. Tall and thickly muscled, his arms were pocked with bullet scars and faded gang tattoos. He avoided the Muslim Brotherhood, and also managed to gain the respect of the Latinos and White Supremacists because he just plain had charisma. Perhaps that was why he’d been given a chance in the telemarketing pit.

Stokes suddenly stopped laughing. Mosely looked up. Four prison guards stood outside the cell door, with Alfred Norris, the burly red-faced watch officer, at the head of them. He didn’t look happy.

“Mosely, what the fuck’s the matter with you? You love this place so much you don’t want to leave?”

Mosely was cautious. He lowered the book. “I don’t understand, Norris.”

“Your transfer. Why isn’t your shit packed up?”

Mosely played it cool, but something was definitely afoot. He put the book down and got up. “I’m transferring?”

“Don’t you even think of bustin’ my balls, Mosely. I don’t know whose dick you sucked to get into a medium-security lockup, but I’m not gonna sit around and wait here all day. This work order is dated last month, so you had to know about it. Get up off your ass and grab your shit!”

Mosely got busy.

Within five minutes Mosely was walking down the cell block, carrying a box containing his few personal effects and being met by the confused stares of his block mates. Mosely said nothing as the guards brought him away. Minutes later he stood in the holding area near the garage. A guard scanned the bar code on Mosely’s jumpsuit and then scanned the bar code on the work order in the duty officer’s clipboard. The transport officer entered information into a handheld computer, then used it to print out a plastic wrist bracelet. The guard fastened the bracelet onto Mosely’s right arm. It had an alphanumeric sequence on it. Finally, they placed his index finger on an electric fingerprint-capture pad. His fingerprint appeared on a nearby computer monitor—and was instantly matched to an earlier fingerprint on file. There was a beep and the text “ID CONFIRMED” appeared in bold letters.

The systems all had the Warmonk, Inc., logo. It was a high-efficiency operation. It was free enterprise in action.

Next, they led Mosely through a metal detector and afterward chained him hand and foot in preparation for transport. The guard looped a small steel box onto the chain, then pressed a scanner against it. Beep .

He looked up at Mosely. “This is a GPS locator. If your position differs from that of the transport van at any point during the trip, we will be alerted immediately.”

Mosely nodded. He wasn’t about to resist being sent to a less severe prison.

The guards shoved him into a bench seat in the vestibule to wait. He sat there for about an hour before a Fayette County prison transport van backed into the garage bay with a piercing beep … beep … beep .

As they led him out to the garage, a guard walked behind with Mosely’s box of possessions. The guards and the drivers exchanged bar code scans and handheld computer codes. Then they chained Mosely into the passenger area, which was separated from the driver’s area by a floor-to-ceiling metal mesh and a Perspex partition. Within minutes they were on their way, heading out through the prison gates.

Mosely just sat there, stunned at the rapidity with which The Voice had made this come true. He was confused and intensely curious. There was no earthly reason he could think of for him to be transferred to a medium-security facility. He resisted the temptation to hope. Instead he looked out at the prairie grass waving in the breeze as they pulled to the prison entrance on the state highway.

Dozens of American flags fluttered in the wind. They stood in long rows on either side of a brick and concrete sign rising like a wall from the close-cut grass:

Highland Maximum Security Correctional Facility

A Division of Warmonk, Inc.

Mosely arrived at Warmonk’s Fayette County Medium Security Correctional Facility some time after dark. It looked brand-new. The guards in the loading bay exchanged bar code scans with the transport officers and then confirmed Mosely’s identity with the fingerprint scanner. Only then did they take possession of him. They marched him into the holding room, then stopped and looked at each other. One flipped through the clipboard, looking for something. “What’s with the leg irons?” He looked at Mosely. “You cause trouble or something on the way?”

“No. They chained me up in Highland before I got in the van.”

The other guard shrugged. “No note about him causing trouble.”

The first guard selected a key from his ring and started to unlock the irons. “We don’t typically chain somebody doing a two-month disorderly conduct stint.”

A wave of shock passed through Mosely. He hid it as best he could. His criminal record had just been revised—at least within the Warmonk, Inc., databank. This couldn’t be accidental—not even for the retards in the DOC.

The other guard read the clipboard. “How’d you wind up at Highland, for chrissakes?”

Mosely shrugged. “Some screwup.”

Neither of them seemed surprised. The first guard removed the last of the hand and leg irons and hung them from a peg near the door. He then passed Mosely his box of possessions and motioned for him to follow. In a moment, they were moving through a long prison hallway.

Mosely lay on a bottom bunk, staring at his new cell—a modern thing done in white plastic laminates with bulletproof glass. No metal bars in sight. He had no cellmates. The top bunk was empty—and so were the bunks on the other side of the room. It was the most privacy he’d had in four years.