“Stay calm,” Adam said. “People will only spot us if they think we are behaving unusually. You can do this, Julio.”
He pitched his voice with a note of encouragement, when he would much rather have snapped at the guard for being so foolish.
The two of them kept walking without hurry. The corridors were lined with artworks that were meant to be soothing, mixed in with others that had been painted by the inmates in art therapy classes. Most of those inmates would be asleep in their cells, and the few who looked out through their doors gave no signs of recognizing him.
Adam saw more guards walking the corridors. A pair of them even turned their way. Adam pulled his cap down and kept moving towards them, making sure that he didn’t give any sign of hesitation.
Adam didn’t have the kind of doubts that other people might have had in his position: what if the guards recognized his face? What if they saw that, while he had the uniform, he didn’t have the full belt of cuffs, nightstick, and stun gun with which to subdue violent prisoners? What if Julio got second thoughts and simply denounced him? People could be used, but they could rarely be trusted.
Adam wasn’t prey to those doubts. Instead, he continued walking, reminding himself that the whole point of ensuring that there were more guards on duty was to make sure that there were plenty from other wings. Plenty of unfamiliar faces.
“How are things your way?” one of them asked.
“All quiet,” Adam replied, because he wasn’t about to let Julio do the talking on this.
The other one looked at him for a moment or two. “Don’t think I’ve seen you on this wing before.”
Adam felt sure for a second there that he’d been found out, and that his whole scheme would come to a crashing halt. He felt himself tensing to fight, ready to lunge forward. Even so, he forced out the next words.
“I usually work on B wing. I’m only over here because apparently one of the prisoners threatened to escape. Like they don’t do that every couple of days.”
That got a short laugh from one of the guards there. “Apparently, one of the shrinks got spooked. Tell me, you were back that way. Did Riker escape yet?”
“Not yet,” Adam replied, making another joke of it. It got a bigger laugh than the last comment. “But we’d better keep moving, just in case.”
He nodded again to the guards and kept walking, with Julio beside him. The guard looked flustered as they both headed off, away from the danger.
“That was too close,” Julio said. “They could have-”
“They didn’t.” Adam couldn’t keep the annoyance out of his voice for a second. “We need to keep moving. If we stop, then they will catch us, and… well, I’m already in a cell. You’re the one who stands to lose his freedom.”
Sometimes, threats worked better than enticements. In this case, it was enough to keep Julio moving, all the way to a door with a keypad lock.
Adam stood back to let him punch in the numbers. A light flashed green, and the door swung open. They stepped through, out of the area that held the inmates, and into the sections reserved for administration.
Here, there was even less reason for anyone to look their way. Adam had worked out a long time ago that people saw what they wanted to see. They saw a handsome face, a winning smile, and they assumed that everything was all right. Here, it was even simpler. Inmates were in the sections reserved for inmates. In their cells. Adam wasn’t there, and therefore, he couldn’t be an inmate. It was the kind of circular logic that made his life considerably easier, even as he despised people for it.
He actually smiled at one of the nurses on duty, seated at a desk, a small selection of medical supplies set out in front of her. She was pretty enough, in her way, and he found himself leaning over the desk to speak to her.
“How’s your evening going?” he asked.
“Well enough,” she replied. “No one needing medical attention, no sedatives to calm anyone.”
Adam had been given more than his share of those, in his time there. They’d fogged his brain, slowed his body. “Well, that’s good. Gives you more time to talk to-”
Julio chose that moment to cough, pointedly. “We have things to do.”
Trust him to get jealous. But then, Adam had expected that. He was already moving back away from the desk. As he did so, he kept the small surgical scalpel he’d picked up hidden in his hand. It was better to be armed.
They made their way through the admin area to one of the smaller exits, used for bringing in the supplies that a place like this needed to run. There was another door, with another code needed to open it. There was also a guard, and Adam found his grip tightening on the scalpel.
This time, though, it was Julio who came to the rescue. “Oh, hey, Kevin. Hell of a night to have to double up.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Can you punch us out? Apparently, this whole increased security thing means that we have to walk the perimeter every hour.”
The guard on the door frowned. “That’s not the usual pattern.”