heaven and hell 1/1
Author: spookycc
Thanks to my beta, JudyG!
This is a pre-quel to my story UnBound
Timeline: This fic takes place during Goren's incarceration at Tates Correctional, in the episode "Untethered"...
Rating: T for violence and abuse
Prison gates won't open up for me
On these hands and knees I'm crawlin'
Oh, I reach for you
Well I'm terrified of these four walls
These iron bars can't hold my soul in
All I need is you
Come please I'm callin'
And oh I scream for you
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin
--from Savin' Me, by Nickelback
heaven and hell 1/1
--
Tates Correctional Facility
Upstate New York
Warden Pellis worked her way through the halls of Tates Corrections, ignoring the looks of CO's and convicts alike. Her job was to rule above them, and this she did, with an air of royalty about her.
Pellis was far from royalty, having been born into a poor family in Pennsylvania. When she was only six years old, her mother had been raped and killed by a parolee from The State Correctional Institution at Retreat.
She had never forgiven the system for that. And anyone sent to Tates only needed to step a bit out of line to find out how serious she was about payback. They were there for her to use, to rectify the gross injustice that had left her motherless.
She cared not at all about her employees, either. She would use any of her officers to further her own career. But they respected her, she believed, and they feared her, of that much she was certain.
As warden, she had installed cameras in nearly every area of Tates. She had a wall of screens in her office, ostensibly to make sure her people were doing their jobs, and that the inmates were in-hand. But she used them for much more than that... They stimulated her. The things she saw on those screens made her feel like she was getting even with the system. And getting even with men like the one who had killed her mother.
Pellis walked toward the door of the medication room near Dr. Stern's office, determined to demand retribution from her latest unruly prisoner. He was refusing his meds, the guards had told her, and he had injured one of the snitches in MO.
She'd sent Mr. Brady to MO, or Mental Observation Unit, when he arrived, because the "judge" had told her intake guard that he acted like he was "off his meds" or something to that effect. And as high as she ranked in her little kingdom, the judge ranked higher.
When Pellis entered the room, she stopped short, and then quickly masked her horror. Her new inmate, Brady, was almost a perfect double for the main who had raped and killed her mother those many years ago. It was uncanny. It was unsettling. But her mother's killer was dead. And she'd read Brady's file, and had found no unusual information in it.
Pellis wouldn't let Brady, or any of her subordinates, see the affect his similarity to that killer had on her. She was above that, at least in their presence.
Bringing herself back to the present, she met his surly gaze. He looked like hell already. Dr. Stern was there, undoubtedly trying to cajole him into taking his meds. She didn't approve of putting them in isolation. That didn't matter to the warden.
"Mr. Brady. You've been giving my staff a hard time?" she spoke calmly.
Dr Stern, the new prison physician, spoke up for him, as she always did with her patients. And Pellis ignored her, as was her wont. The point was made moot when Brady said he wasn't taking anymore pills, and spilled the pills and water.
Pellis nodded to her CO's, and they unlocked the single restraint on Brady's right wrist, and lifted the big man to his feet between them. Brady did not offer a fight, he simply let them lead him wherever they wished. Pellis smiled to herself. If he knew where he was going, he would put up a fight.
She'd given her guards instructions to take Brady down for his first visit to "heaven". That was what the inmates called it, and the guards. In fact, the room was closer to hell than heaven, as Brady would soon find out firsthand.
Pellis left Dr. Stern worrying about Brady, her latest "hard luck case", and returned to her office. She wanted to watch. She always watched. And she would watch especially closely, with this one...
As they wheeled Brady into "heaven", Pellis saw him put up the first little bit of fight she'd seen in him. She turned the volume up on the monitor. The guards were explaining to Brady that the room was hot because of its proximity to the boiler room. They told Brady the length of time he spent there would be "up to him". She smiled thinly. That was anything but the truth. And the room had lights that radiated heat far more than the fluorescent bulbs they looked like.
The CO's strapped Brady to the metal slab with restraints over his waist, and on his wrists and ankles. And they left him there...
The warden tried to concentrate on a bit of paperwork while her new inmate adjusted to the conditions he had been placed in. Some prisoners watched the lights, fascinated. Some closed their eyes, either to shut out the light or to close themselves off and retreat to a safe place in their minds.
This one, Brady... he stretched and tested his bonds, but not seriously. Before long, he was asking for water. Well, that was a normal request. His body temperature would shortly be over 100 degrees. And he wouldn't get relief anytime soon.
Pellis pulled her chair closer to the "heavencam" monitor. Brady was saying something, but she couldn't tell what it was. She turned the volume up, and listened intently.
"Ten, nine eight..."
"Ten, nine, eight, seven..."
Brady was counting backwards from 10, over and over. She'd never heard any of the many visitors to heaven do that. She wondered if it was from some type of training he might have had at one time...
Later on, he asked for water again, and she watched as the guards came into the room with a small disposable cup. One made a big show of taking it to him, and then poured almost all of it down the side of Brady's face.
"Please, gimme some more!" Brady implored the guard.
The CO's smiled. In her office, Warden Pellis smiled, too...
"You spilled it all over!" Brady's voice was hoarse and angry.
Pellis watched, intrigued.
"I'll take my pills, just get me outta here!" Brady yelled. "I'll take my pills, just get me out!"
Brady began counting backwards again, more quietly this time. He sounded like he was crying, but she couldn't see tears from her view. They wouldn't last for long anyway, because he was already dehydrated.
Pellis took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She'd been watching for hours, and it gave her a headache. But she couldn't look away... not from this one...
The guards came and unlocked Brady's restraints. He gave them no trouble at all as they pulled him to his feet and led him from the room. He was as docile as a kitten. It was amazing how time in "heaven" changed a man...
The CO's took Brady to his cell in ISO, as her gaze shifted from one monitor to another, tracking their progress.
Brady laid in a heap on his back, unmoving, when they put him down, his arms crossed weakly over his chest. He breathed very slowly and shallowly, as Pellis watched. It wouldn't do to have another "accident" like they'd had with Lowry, not this soon. But she wanted this man Brady, this one, pushed to the limit...
--
Bobby Goren slept fitfully, flat on his back in the cell...
Bright lights played behind his closed eyelids, as he relived "heaven" in vivid dreams that shocked him awake and then left him even weaker than before.
His head pounded, and even his lying perfectly still did not alleviate the pain. It felt like his head would split open from the pressure, and he held his face in his hands.
Somewhere deep inside Goren, his CID training was still in control of some parts of his thought process. Get water. Get help. He tried to sit up once, but his low blood pressure made him so dizzy that he simply fell back on the bed. Goren tried to lick his lips, but he had no saliva, and his cracked lips only felt worse for the effort.
In the time he remained in the cell, Goren was finally able to move enough to lie on his side, to release the pressure on his back. It ached from the extended time he had laid on the flat metal slab. His wrists hurt, and he stretched both his arms out in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain. One arm laid on his side, the other he stretched toward the floor...
Several guards came into Goren's cell, and all but carried him out into the hallway, to take him back to heaven.
"Nooooooooooo! It's too long, it's not fair!" Goren's voice echoed through the granite and metal of the hall.
Goren threatened the guards, told them he was a cop. Anything to keep from going back there. He couldn't go back there.
But that's where they went, and by the time they got there, Bobby Goren, in his delirium, was babbling something about being a space cop and finding Jimmy Hoffa.
They secured him to the table once more. Goren winced as the restraints closed around his raw wrists. His skin was dry from dehydration, and that intensified his pain.
How long had he been in heaven, last time? He had no idea. He remembered talking to Eames. How long ago had that been?
Did it just seem like days? Or had he been in here for days? Goren's mind was fuzzy, and he had lost all sense of time.
The big detective laid motionless on the slab this time, not counting, not talking. His CID training was losing ground to the dehydration that claimed his body, cell by cell. If a soldier was captured, it was assumed that the captors would want information, and the CID training would be more helpful. They would want him alive, to pry information from him. But these people didn't want anything from him. They just wanted him to suffer...
He tried to lick his lips again, a fruitless attempt that once again did nothing. His tongue felt swollen, dry and hot.
He knew his partner would have been waiting for his next call, that she would be worried. But how long could he last, while he waited for her to send help?
He coughed, a dry raspy sound, that rattled in his ears. He closed his eyes against the harsh lights, but they seemed to penetrate right through his eyelids.
Goren's body temperature spiked at over 100 degrees, since he could produce no sweat to cool his body anymore. His heart beat more rapidly, and his pulse pounded in his ears.
He couldn't focus his mind on anything, as the dehydration took over. Only one name came to his lips, and it required no thought, it was always there.
"Eames!"
Goren's vision dimmed, despite the bright lights, and he felt himself fading, as his respirations grew faster and faster, then shallower...
Finally, unable to fight anymore, Bobby Goren fell unconscious...
--continued in story UnBound, which can be found here and at the USA network forum fanfic sub-forum--