When the constable returned she had a wooden bowl in one hand and a metal pot in her other hand. She set the pot down on the table, then threw the bowl at me. I caught it, naturally, and set it down before taking the lid off of the pot. Inside was the same gruel that I had eaten earlier, plus some chopped-up vegetables. This begs the question, was I simply unlucky or was someone actually petty enough to remove the greens from my meal? I wondered. Regardless, I scooped out some of the food in the pot using the bowl, then sucked it down as quickly as I could.

The constable stood in the corner and watched me with clear disgust on her face. I spilled a fair amount of the food due to lacking proper utensils and the bowl not matching my mouth correctly, but I was beyond caring. I had thought I was hungry, but I didn't know the extent of the hunger until a large amount of food was actually placed in front of me. The contents of the bowl vanished as the majority of my green bars rose. I ate so quickly that I barely noticed the taste, which was quite mild. Once the pot was empty I took several deep breaths, then set the bowl down beside it and stretched my abdomen out as much as possible.

“I didn't say you could have all of it,” the constable griped. She walked over and sat back down in the chair, then slid the pot out of the way so that we could see each other across the table.

“You didn't stop me,” I replied. The feeling of my strength returning to me was very odd, but certainly not unpleasant. My body enjoyed it, but to my mind, it felt almost like the pressure inside my muscles was increasing. A quick check of my heads-up display showed that I still lacked at least five key nutrients, but I had no idea which ones they were.

“So you say the Hatchet Crew wants to kill one of the Steelheart admins,” the constable said, “tell me more about that. You're feeling talkative now, right?”

“I never said the Hatchet Crew wanted to do that,” I corrected, “I said that it would make sense that they would want to. I don't know anything about them.” The constable hissed through gritted teeth.

“Well then hypothetically if they wanted to do this, which admin would they hypothetically want to target do you think?” she prodded.

“Am I getting out of here if I give you my thoughts?” I asked.

“Just answer the question,” the constable snarled. I saw her hand raise up a centimeter from the table very quickly, then slowly go back down, as if she was going to slam it but decided not to.

“Hypothetically,” I began, “I think that Thaajh would have been the main target, but they screwed up and didn't manage to kill him. I don't know where he is but if I were him I would be outside their reach by now. The next closest office is the... east-central office? I think that was what it was called. So since the main target is gone and so is the east office, my next attack would be there.” The constable narrowed her eyes at me, then huffed through her nose. “If I was involved, that is,” I added. Some of my point was just conjecture, but the meat of what the constable wanted was in it.

“So that's Dawpvaol then,” the constable said. Interesting that she would know that off of the top of her head, I thought, but then again I do recall someone telling me that Steelheart contracts out guards to the city, so maybe that's the reason.

“Yes,” I said, “Dawpvaol is the administrator of that office, as I recall.” The constable's face briefly lit up, then darkened again as she realized I hadn't actually admitted to anything. I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive, certainly, I thought with a warm feeling in my chest, better interrogators than you have tried.

“So then what were you doing in that alley?” the constable asked. She attempted to give me a piercing glare, but my own glare was far better than hers.

“Is it any of your business?” I retorted. “I was clearly the victim of any encounter that happened, and I have no desire to involve the guard in my business.”

“You weren't the victim if you instigated it!” the constable shouted, slamming the table with her hand. Now she's angry again, I chuckled.

“So then, would Jhihroyjh have been a victim if he was the instigator of his own killing?” I asked. “Hypothetically of course.”

“Self-defense does not allow for killing in Uwriy,” the constable stated flatly. I contained a mild amount of surprise, then thanked my newfound luck that I came across it before I ended up doing something stupid because I lacked it. I suppose it makes sense in a society made of people who are excessively hard to kill, I thought, I wonder how they would fare against firearms. A couple of shots in self-defense might not even be enough to put someone down for a minute. The constable was watching me, trying to gain some insight from my body language. I recognized the look.

“I see,” I replied thoughtfully, “how unfortunate for whoever killed him.” The table was slammed again, and the bowl bounced from the force.

“Why were you out in the street threatening people with a knife?” the constable demanded.

“I wasn't,” I shrugged, “I have no idea who said that, but they must have been mistaken.” That, or someone made a false report, I thought, maybe someone spotted me trying to stab Yaavtey? I can't quite figure out where this story came from.

“Okay,” the constable smiled, “stand up.” For the first time since I had entered the room, I was unnerved. The constable let out a whistle once I got to my feet and two other guards, both male, entered the room. “These men will take you back to your cell,” she explained, “you can sit in there until you're ready to talk some more.”

The two men led me back to my cell, pushed me inside, then one of them tripped me using the chain around my feet, causing me to smash my face on the ground. White-hot pain wracked through me from the force of the stone against the ivory implants, which had become very tender. Both men had a laugh, one kicked me in the gut, then my cell door was locked and they left. What's the point of that anyway? I asked myself, It's not like the inmate will have a bruise to remember the experience. Do they just enjoy hitting people?

I looked around the cell for anything sharp that I could use. I need to get these implants out of my face, I thought, even if it raises questions, they could cause other issues if left in. My hands and feet were still bound, but a few snapped bones and some torn skin fixed that problem very quickly. My regeneration was still slowed, probably due to lacking nutrients, and my blue energy was at around seventy percent of total and refused to increase any further. I checked myself over for boils or other signs of infection, but found none. Maybe it has a limiter, I thought, it won't regenerate further if it would deprive my body of necessary components. If the hypothesis was true I only had a limited amount of healing to use, but I still needed to get the implants out.

An hour later I was bashing a stone I had dislodged from the wall against the iron bars in order to make a knife out of it when I heard footsteps stomping down to the cell block. I quickly hid the stone and saw the constable walk in with the same two male guards who had thrown me into the cell. If she was surprised I was out of my chains, she didn't let it show on her face. The same couldn't be said about the two male guards.

“What are you doing down here?” the constable yelled. “Do you know how seytoydh annoying that banging is when you're trying to write a report? Do you?”

“Sorry,” I apologized insincerely.

“And how did you get out of those chains?” she snapped, before turning around to look at her male counterparts. “Did you idiots unlock him?” she yelled.

“No constable,” the left man replied, “we put him in still tied up, like you said.”

“Then how did you get out?” the constable demanded, turning back to me. Did it never occur to them that someone could just break their thumbs to get out of the handcuffs, and break their heel to get out of the ankle cuffs? I wondered.

“He's lying,” I said, “he unlocked me after he kicked me in the gut.” The left man snarled at me, but the constable didn't react to it. Instead, she drew her sword and stabbed it into the cell towards me. I avoided it easily, then stepped back out of her range.

“What happened to your bed?” she demanded. “I wanted to ask before but I forgot.”

“I was hungry,” I explained, “the bedding is edible.” The man to the right of the constable gagged, and the other one began to laugh. The constable was not amused.

“Well then you've got plenty of food for the next few days,” she scoffed, “enjoy your stay.” The group turned to leave, but a question popped into my head at that moment that I had to ask so I rushed to the bars.

“Koylzmeyl,” I called out. The constable paused, then looked back.

“What about him?” she asked.

“Do you have him in custody too?” I asked. I want to know why the fuck he didn't shoot Yaavtey like we planned, I thought with an amount of anger that surprised me.

“And if we did?” she asked. “You want to trade some information to me so you can see him or something?”

“Tell him I'm going to have a talk with him once I'm out of here,” I said.

“I'll tell him once we find him,” the constable replied. “In fact I'll do you one better, he can be your cellmate. Maybe you two will kill each other, that would certainly improve the world.” They don't have him, I thought as the constable and guards walked off, where did he go?

Later that night, or at least I assumed it was night, I managed to finally break the rock into a suitable knife. It was no obsidian blade, but it would hopefully be enough to cut through my thin facial skin. I took a breath in, then brought the rock up to my left cheekbone and dug it in. After half a minute of cutting, I finally had the skin apart wide enough to reach in with my right hand and grip the ivory, but my fingers slipped and the skin healed before I could make a second attempt. Steeling myself, I brought the blade back up and began again.

An hour later my nutrition had fallen again, a large amount of blood was on the floor of my cell, and six pieces of ivory along with twelve nails rested inside the waste chute. I couldn't see my face, but feeling it over made me believe that the scarring couldn't have been too bad, which was surprising. Now exhausted I laid down on one of the more clean parts of the floor and covered myself with my mattress blanket again, then tried to rest.

A dream came to me once I was finally asleep. I was back in my old life, inside a warbreed village. For some reason in the dream I was actually a warbreed and not an infiltrator unit. Several of us were sent out into the woods to scout for animals we could hunt, and while we were on the trip people began to disappear one by one. Eventually, it was only me and one other warbreed left. We rushed back to the village, but just before we could reach safety I felt a pain in my back. I turned around and saw the man behind me smiling, then I collapsed and woke up. With the ability to be rational restored, I recognized the face of the man who had killed me in the dream.

Yaavtey, I seethed, you won't get the better of me a second time.