"Friday night. What's the top card for the cruiserweight bout at Cicero?"

Bellick shifts his legs along the control board, folding back the pages of the Sun-Tribune sports section. "Quillen and Galatas," he grunts, reaching for his cup of cold coffee. "Why, you got money riding on it?"

"Nah, man, I don't gamble." Patterson lights up another Lucky and takes a long, thoughtful drag. "I just like the fights, that's all. You know, the sweet science."

Bellick regards him sourly. The Pope didn't forbid him from smoking at work after the mess with the breakroom -- not in so many words, anyhow -- but Bellick knows he's skating on some hellaciously thin ice these days, so he's taken to chewing nicotine gum between eight and seven. He watches Patterson tap the ash from his cigarette and French-inhale with a barely-leashed sense of grievance, then he shakes his newspaper back out. "You don't get enough of that crap around here, Pats? You want fights, just put any two of those gumps out on Broadway with mops in their hands. You'll get your fight."

Patterson laughs. "Hell, if wrecks was what I liked, I'd have gotten my bellyful of 'em last week. That was the jump to end all jumps. I tell you, if I was a gambling man, I'd have put some money down that it'd have been you and not Bob --"

Bellick slants him a look from behind the funnies that turns the end of the sentence into a stutter. Patterson stubs out his cigarette hastily and gets up. "You know what I mean. Because that's how cons are, hating on the authority figure. That's all, man."

Patterson pops the bolt of the booth door and the usual sounds of A-Wing flood in; yelling, laughing, radios tuned to hip-hop and salsa and talk shows, shuffling feet on concrete and the slap of cards. But through the threads of sound a different noise is predominating, concentrating, rising louder and echoing through the cell tier. There's a roiling knot of inmates, whooping and shoving, clustered at the far end of the block just below the gun gallery. Bellick's feet hit the floor at the same time as Patterson reaches for his baton.

"Son of a bitch, a wreck," Bellick mutters "Never a moment's peace. Not so much as a moment's good goddamned peace."

Before the riot, Bellick would have had faith that just the sight of him in full come-to-Jesus stride with a couple of bulls at his back would have been enough to make cons melt away back into their cells. Now, after Bob, he takes nothing on faith. He signals his men to snap their batons long before they reach the crowd and they start laying about them in wide arm-swinging arcs, cracking heads and backs and shoulders until the floor clears in double-quick time all the way down to the source of the trouble.

Bellick shoves and kicks the last few gawkers aside, then pushes back his uniform cap to wipe at the sweat on his forehead. He gestures with his baton. "You want to see the Friday night fights, Pats? There's your top card. A bantam and a heavyweight. A pair of goddamned idiots who are going straight to the SHU." He turns and bellows at the bloody, oblivious combatants, "Bagwell! Abruzzi! Gas it up, you dumb fucks, now, or it's tasers for two!"

"A diversion," T-Bag snarls under his breath as they stumble their way to the infirmary. His right eye is purpling shut. "A di-ver-si-on. If you didn't know what that meant, compare, all you had to do was ask."

Abruzzi raises his manacled hands to wipe at the blood from his nose. He says softly, "If you ever mention my kids again, you will die. I don't care who sees it, I don't care who knows it, I don't care what happens afterwards. You do that again and you have my word that the next moment you're going to be as dead I can make you. Do you understand me, peckerwood?"

The CO is three or four steps ahead of them, signaling Cathy, Dr Tancredi's nurse. Bagwell says sulkily, "Didn't mean nothing by it. I was just making conversation. I didn't know that we had a topic list for our diversions."

Abruzzi checks the CO's back, then lets his hands swing down. He pops his handcuff chain in front of Bagwell's throat and brings him up short. "Well," he says, tightening down just long enough, just hard enough to hear a wheeze, "I guess you know it now."

Dr Tancredi seats them at opposite ends of the exam room and snaps on her gloves. She looks harassed. "I've just gotten done sewing half of Gen Pop back together," she says, swabbing busily at the blood over Abruzzi's chin, "and then you two decide to come late to the party. Tilt up, please."

Abruzzi obediently bends his head back, and Dr Tancredi holds a penlight at his nose, feeling gently down the sides. Her breath smells like peppermints, the kind of English peppermints Abruzzi remembers that they sell in little tins, and her dark eyes are serious and intent. Her hair holds the scent of lemons; her fingers, moving over his cheekbones and cupping his jaw, are warm. If his daughter ever tells him she wants to go to medical school, Abruzzi's shipping her off to a convent.

"Nothing broken," she announces, switching the penlight off. "Cathy will get you a compress and some ibuprofen. I want you to ice it for the next few hours and avoid blowing your nose forcefully for a couple of days."

She gets up from the little stool as Cathy leans past her with a paper cup of water and two pills. Abruzzi swallows them gratefully. Across the room he hears the doctor say, "Now for you, Mr Bagwell. You know the drill. Hands in sight, feet on the floor, and if your tongue leaves your mouth at any point I'll mace you."

All the way from the infirmary to the SHU, John Abruzzi holds the cold pack to his nose and does mental calculations. Four feet down through the concrete, two less men on the job, fifteen days until Burrows' execution; he may not know the layout like Fish, but he knows demolition. They're going to have to bring another man in, maybe even two, to replace him and the freak for digging. Sucre and Scofield and Burrows on their own won't be able to get through enough, fast enough. Two weeks until Fibonacci testifies. More people on the break means more risk; he slants a glance at T-Bag. More people might make them both expendable.

Bellick is standing at parade rest at the entrance to D-Wing, his hands behind his back and a pleased smile on his face. "Hello, boys," he says, and pulls a deck of smokes from his pocket. "She kiss it all better for you?" As the CO snaps the manacles from Abruzzi's wrists, then Bagwell's, Bellick lights up and takes a long, noisy drag. His eyes close for a moment in bliss, then he turns on his heel to stalk between them, his cigarette trailing smoke behind. Abruzzi feels his nose throb and concentrates on not sneezing.

"You two punks, like you probably already guessed, are going to be spending the weekend in the SHU." Bellick's grin is widening. "But it's not going to be just any fifty-six hours in the hole, no sir. See, we have a full house here in D-Wing thanks to last week's party, and when the SHU's full up, usually that means that the old man tells me I have to send you clowns over to play dime poker with the pillow-biters in Ad Seg instead. Bet you'd like that, wouldn't you, monkey mouth?" He leans in closer, jabbing at the air next to T-Bag's head with his cigarette. "Only the old man isn't here. He just got called up to Springfield to explain to the state congress how a full-scale riot happened here at his prison. And he left me in charge."

Bagwell rocks back on his heels, sneering, "Why? He getting a percentage on the renovations?"

Bellick shifts his cigarette to his right hand so he can pop the back of T-Bag's head with his left. "You, shut up. Learn from John here. He's gotten so quiet and obedient since his little reversal of fortune, he hasn't even asked me where you'll be staying for the weekend." Bellick pulls a ring of keys from his belt and tosses them to the CO. "Show 'em, Green."

The CO frowns. "Sir, I thought the warden said not to use it any more?"

Bellick's glare could cut glass. Green shrugs. "It's your watch, Captain." He shakes out the keyring, selects one, and moves to the door at the end of the hall, a door that's a solid steel plate set flat against the tile, no jamb.

Behind Abruzzi's shoulder, T-Bag groans. "Oh, now. That's not right. You know that this is just all kinds of unconstitutional, don't you?"

Bellick flips the butt of his cigarette to the floor and grinds it out viciously with his heel. "Cry me a fucking river, pervert. You two have some differences? Fine, you're going to have time to work them out. You're spending the next two and a half days in each other's company, and and you're gonna do it here. No tv, no phone, no heat, no lights. Two cons go in, and we'll see how many come out, and in what size pieces. If you're lucky, we'll even remember to feed you."

Green swings the door open with a screech of protesting metal and stands aside, shaking his head. Bellick points at them, his eyes narrowing.

"Walk in, gentlemen, and strip off. You're checking into the Oriental."

(tbc)