Island

Going into prison, they don’t tell you that you need a weapon. You assume the state is there to protect you from the other inmates. This is a lie.

I was caught smuggling FDA blacklisted data chips from the Netherlands. I should have been sent upstate for 2 years max. But here I am 10 months later, on a high security island prison, there are no guards, just the inmates, the facility and an AI security reef to keep us in.

I never needed a weapon before, when I was a cyber smuggler. All I needed was the code. I could write shelter, defense and attacks. Physical violence was anathema to me. That changed in the first ten minutes.

There were two of us arriving that day. I was in a state of shock from my sentencing. That, plus the noise of the helicopter left me in a bubble of isolation. I should have been paying more attention.

We were instantly accosted by large, heavily muscled men. They took everything we had of value, which wasn’t much considering, but I lost my shoes. Better than the man who arrived with me.

He didn’t want to give them anything. There was a flash of obsidian and he was dead.

The first thing I did was get a blade. It’s the key to survival.. I take better care of it than I ever did my rig before, better even than myself.