Ludak Valgkrets: I appreciate the reviews! It's very good news to me that someone's reading this. I think a lot of SJ fans have given up reading the fanfic because of the influx of Mary Sues. Can I blame them? No. Can I resent them for not contributing more proper fanfic anyway? Hell yes. Ha.

-SDChapter Two

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

-Bob Dylan

***

The next day Jared woke to thunder rattling the panes of the window. The sound jerked him half out of a deep sleep and he sat up, still mostly dreaming, and bolted to the window, his flailing hand twisting in the drapes as he yanked them away from the glass and stuck his face there. Just as he did Jared woke fully from his dream to see white hot veins of lightning streak around the sky. He allowed himself a relieved chuckle; in his dream, the thunder had sounded like an explosion. He had run to the window, his stomach sinking, fully expecting a catastrophic riot to be happening outside.

He had never been happier to see a thunderstorm. Usually he disliked them, because certain weather seemed to happen when the Warden was in certain moods. When moods were not good, it rained and stormed a lot. No one would disagree; they all knew what the weather was like, too, though Jared figured that he was the only one to have linked it to the Warden; no one else mentioned anything like that. For everyone else it was just weird weather; unpredictable. All sun one minute, the next a thunderstorm. Just like Superjail.

Just like his boss.

Jared dressed and shaved as usual, trying not to rush though he wanted to see the Warden, to observe the man's mood this gloomy morning, mostly to prove to himself that he wasn't making nonsensical connections. As sure as he always felt at the moment of these epiphanies, any distance of time always brought him back to the familiar feeling of self-doubt that had accompanied all his nervous life. And though time was so relative in Superjail, he wished fervently that some day soon it would simply stop; perhaps early enough to make it impossible for DL Diamond to come back.

Since the arrival of the letter, he had been unable to get a restful night's sleep, or to soothe the heartburn he felt during the entirety of his waking hours. It had only been a couple of days, but he felt himself beginning to break down beneath the weight of the dread that sat like a yoke on his shoulders. The tiny Inner Voice that had accompanied his thoughts his entire life just made the burden heavier with its dour logic. Sometimes the burden felt heavier than usual.

Like now, during these times of contemplation. Everything seemed like too much, yet there was no other way around it. He cursed the Warden for his naivety; his childish love for a man that Jared had exposed as a criminal right before his yellow-framed eyes and yet he still acted love stricken at the mention of his name. Alice was no help to Jared; horrifically enough she too held reverence for that man, judging from the flush in her cheeks whenever he was mentioned.

Everyone was blind. Except for Jared. He found himself wishing—even trying—to blind himself to be like the others; the temptation for escapism was overwhelming. Everyone else seemed so blissfully ignorant; why couldn't he be as well?

Because, retorted the Inner Voice, that's not your place here.

It was true. His place was Vigilance in the face of ignorance. To hold the ripping seams of Superjail and its inhabitants tenuously together beneath the guise of financial nitpicking. They needed him to see.

They needed him.

And, though he would never say it aloud, he had made it his job to protect the Warden from whatever he could. A job that he had unconsciously taken upon himself; one that he would live to curse time and again, but never abandon.

Because they needed him.

He finished his morning rituals, swallowing down the acid in his throat and with it, that burning Voice. When the time came to walk the long separated corridors that led to his office he kept a brisk pace, as if trying to shed a dogged pursuer.

Coming from his living quarters he had to walk past the Warden's office on the way to his own. Today he paused at it, his hand on the heavy door. His boss was probably meditating (a polite term for daydreaming or sleeping), or very possibly scribbling endless sketches of plans and ideas on the white butcher paper he kept rolled in his desk, off again on some wild tangent. He liked the butcher paper rolls because his plans would go on and on, what would have been pages and pages of sheet paper covered with spiky, impatient doodles and words. The Warden had told Jared that having to move from one page to another distracted him and made him forget. Jared supposed that it would be easy to interrupt the seamless, shifting evolution of his thoughts. They came suddenly and spectacularly likely to dart away at any moment, like a hummingbird at a feeder.

Yet, as unwelcome as he supposed he would be, Jared's curiosity got the better of him and he knocked lightly on the oak. The rapping sound his knuckles made echoed like a pond ripple down the vast hallways.

There was no answer, which he half-expected anyway. He cracked open the door and peeked in to see that the Warden wasn't even in yet. He shut the door again, feeling uncharacteristically perturbed, and headed on, trudging glumly toward the next ten hours of his life.

***

Alice was bored.

She arrived at the main inmate housing wing her typical five minutes early. It was fairly quiet all around; probably they were listening to the storm. It was a hell of a storm, too. Angry sounding; ominous. She liked storms; the way they sounded, the way they smelled, the way the concrete darkened and glistened like a tearing eye. The way they could change the nature of the natural light and in so doing change the nature of the day.

She approached the cell block as another mumble of thunder sounded, ample hands on ample hips, and cocked her pink gaze at the cells. "Scared, girls? You should be. If ANY of you try swapping trays again, it's Alice that's gonna bring the thunder."

No one responded and she grunted, slightly disappointed. It seemed not everyone felt the way she did about storms.

Jailbot was hovering by the entrance of the guard tower as she approached. His pixeled face was passively smiling, oblivious to the way the weather affected his fleshy counterparts. Alice liked Jailbot for traits like this; he couldn't speak so he never bored her with stories, his emotions were basic, uncomplicated (as far as she knew), and easy to read, lit up brightly on the screen.

Plus, his wrath was epic.

They rode up the elevator to the control room as thunder rumbled again. As she hit the button she became aware that she felt distinctly uneasy; unlike herself. Unsure of something, everything.

She placed a surreptitious hand on her cheek. Her face was hot and flushed and the space around her seemed almost terrifyingly small. By the time the doors opened at their destination she was standing with her hand on her club, ready to strike out if anything lay on the other side that might leap at her.

Of course, nothing came lunging out of the control room and she stepped out with Jailbot in tow. The panoramic windows overlooked the entire block and the grounds to one side; she could see the thunderclouds beyond.

She couldn't understand why she felt nervous, but the feeling did not go away.