Authors Note: DevinBourdain (as always), SouthernCrossNorthernStar and Lara Valie, thank you all for your enthusiasm for my new little fic, (it probably won't actually be that little). Everyone else, please make me smile by sending me a few words to let me know what you think.

Chapter 2

John wasn't sure he'd slept at all. His first evening had been pretty uneventful. His two cellmates had ignored him and so he'd done the same thing back. When the buzzer rang for dinner, he'd marched down to the mess hall with everyone else, eaten his bland and overcooked spaghetti and then marched back up to his cell. He'd perfected a snarling frown and kept this on at all times, which so far had managed to keep everyone away from him. That night his two cellmates had played cards for contraband cigarettes and had pretended he wasn't there, so he'd laid on his uncomfortable camp bed and pretended to sleep while keeping alert, listening to their conversation to determine as much as he could about the men he'd be sharing a room with.

The man on the top bunk was clearly the leader of the two. He was in his mid-twenties a large build Hispanic male who was covered, neck to knuckles in tattoos and liked to wear his jumpsuit with the arms tied at his waist to show them and his considerable muscles off. The other guy called him Guerrero, John's Spanish was rudimentary at best but even he knew that it meant warrior, and he was unsure if it was a last name or a nickname. Judging by the guy's swagger he wouldn't be surprised if it was an affectation. Where as Guerrero was built like a bull and had a loud laugh which he used to punctuate his own bad jokes, the other guy was younger, skinny, pale and sullen. His almost skeletal arms were covered in little neat scars that told John he'd once been a self-harmer. The scars were old, unlike the track marks at his elbow, which told John that either he hadn't been in prison long or he was still managing to get hold of drugs. Guerrero called him Ads, which John took to mean his name was Adam. The two could not be further apart in personality but Adam seemed to humour Guerrero's need to talk constantly about himself and Guerrero seemed to have adopted a big brother type affection with the younger man.

By the time lights out was called, John was fed up of hearing about how Guerrero had been 'making it' as some 'big time DJ' along with graphic descriptions of a lot of sexual encounters and that he'd been victimised by 'the Feds'. He got the sense that Adam had heard it all before, and that it was probably a conversation for John's benefit. John recognised several of the tattoos as showing his gang affiliations and had serious doubts as to his 'innocence', but he just rolled his eyes at the immature posturing and went back to staring at the ceiling. He supposed there were worse people to have to share a cell with and was quietly confident that as long as he could keep the scowl up, that neither of them would give him much trouble.

An overcrowded prison, even in the dead of night, was a noisy place. The design of the building meant it had excellent acoustics which resulted in the amplification of everyone's snores. Not to mention the group on the level below John who had clearly had a new inmate dumped in their midst and they were doing their best to torment him to make him cry. John wondered if it was the trembling young man who had fallen on their way in. To be fair to him, no matter how much they jeered and threatened, John couldn't hear him break. Eventually other inmates got fed up of the noise and roared at them to shut up.

But even when they had gone quiet, or quieter at least, sleep eluded him. His crappy camp bed was uncomfortable and he didn't usually sleep in his synthetic leg but was unwilling to take it off in front of his new cellmates. The prosthetic would last for about two days before needing a charge but if he wore it for too long the pressure on his stump made the muscles twitch and the skin chafe. During the day it was hardly noticeable, but at night, when there were no other distractions, the pain was not easy to ignore. He'd just been about to give in and uncouple the leg when the buzzer sounded and the steel-barred door rattled open.

Adam got up first, rolling out of bed and giving John a sullen glare. He took a piss and then, without bothering to wash his hands, just dusting them off on the legs of his jumpsuit, strode out, glancing at the security cam mounted above the door just long enough for the retinal scan to beep in acknowledgement. Guerrero mimicked his actions, although thankfully with a little more thought to sanitation, and then suddenly John was alone for the first time in days. He sighed and went over to the sink, studying his face in the tarnished toughened mirror. He looked as exhausted as he felt and there was a few days growth on his face that made him look a little older. There was an electric razor among his issued toiletries but he considered keeping the beard, after all it would make him less recognisable.

He must have been stood there for a while because suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by an electronic voice coming from the speaker next to the camera. "John Kennex, report to the canteen. You are five minutes behind schedule." John ignored the voice and took his time washing up, enjoying the peace and quiet until the voice gave him another warning. Not sure he wanted to find out what would happen if he continued to ignore them he glared at the camera until it beeped and then made his way into the corridor.

The walkway was quite narrow and as John peered over the edge of the concrete barrier down to the canteen which was six floors below, he felt his stomach lurch with vertigo. He'd walked these hallways once or twice before, but always to interview a prisoner and all the other inmates had been locked safely away at the time. He dreaded to think what would happen if he got into a fight with someone so close to such a huge drop. The view up wasn't much better, there was a dark grey sky above the skylight this morning and the artificial lighting created shadows everywhere, giving the impression of night even though the sun had been up for over an hour.

John trudged to the stairs and made his way down to the lowest floor, where there was a large canteen and long tables with bench seating. John grabbed a plastic tray and joined the back of the line, annoyed that he'd been hurried down there and yet would still have to wait. When he got to the front, he was served a bowl of runny porridge, a small carton of orange juice and a black coffee in a plastic cup, by an MX. He turned to face the benches and scanned the crowd for a spare seat, preferably alone.

"Holy shit!" A voice rang out across the noise of hundreds of men eating and talking. "Is that John Kennex?"

John's heart sank. It had been less than twenty-four hours and his anonymity had been destroyed already. He tried to scan the crowd and see who had spoken. A lot of inmates had turned around to stare at him, but there was only one who was sat there with a big shit-eating grin on his face. He was a large balding guy in his fifties with a hard face. John felt like he'd seen him before but couldn't put a name to the face.

There was an empty seat in front of the guy, and so John gripped his tray tightly and strode over to take it. The other guy's smile widened as John slid onto the bench in front of him. "Listen," John growled in his best threatening manner. "You are not going to tell anyone who I am. If you do, I will find out. I still have friends on the outside who can make life very difficult for your family."

But the man just laughed. "You don't remember who I am do you?"

"I've put a lot of scumbags away. I don't remember all their faces." John sneered.

"That's rich, considering it looks like you're one of us scumbags now." The man laughed. "If you did remember me you'd know I ain't got no family left. The only person who ever loved me was my girl, and I shot her. Even my goddam dog's dead by now. Word of warning, you'd better start remembering some of those faces, because it looks like I'm not the only one in here who recognises you."

John was about to say something back when a hand clamped down on his shoulder, the fingertips digging viciously into his collarbone. John turned to see who it was and looked up into a thin, snarling face. Now this man he did remember, Lee Vincent, a drug trafficker who had entered a club and opened fire on the owner and a couple of patrons. He and his old partner Marty Pelham had been close enough to hear the shots and had rushed to the scene just as screaming crowds of people had rushed out. It had still been dark and in the chaos John hadn't seen Vincent until he pistol-whipped him. Then Marty had leapt out of the crowd and the three of them had ended up rolling around on the floor until they could successfully detain the man. Not only had Vincent been charged with the three murders at the club, forensics had shown that the gun had been used in two other murders and were then able to tie him to all three.

Vincent still had a scar on his eyebrow, which had been a result of Marty slamming his face into the marble floor when the gangster had managed to aim his gun again at John's face. He was a looking a lot older now, it had been fourteen years and it looked like prison had not been kind to him. His hair was greying at the temples and his face had lines on it but he still looked like he could pack a punch.

"Officer Kennex!" He said, loudly, so others would hear. "What a pleasure it is to see you in here. Knew that power of the badge would go to your head. What did you do? Shoot an unarmed man?"

John stood up for face the man, he was a couple of inches taller and wanted to use every advantage he had. He gritted his teeth, looked down at Vincent and tried not to look intimidated. The whole of the canteen had gone quiet and were watching the interaction, it wouldn't do to look weak now.

"I thought I'd never see your pretty boy face again. I've had fourteen years to think about what I want to do to it. You put me here on a life sentence, trust me when I say I have nothing to lose by making your life hell." And then to prove a point, he swung a punch. His bony knuckles hit John in the jaw, snapping his head to the side with enough force to cause whiplash. John didn't even think before retaliating, before Vincent had even manged to regain his balance, John drew up his right leg and kicked out. He drove his leg into the gangster's solar plexus, the extra power in the synthetic leg causing Vincent to fly backwards, sliding across the table that was behind him, and landing with a thud in a heap on the other side. There was a beat where everyone stopped and stared, unsure what they'd seen, but then the balding girlfriend killer barked out a laugh and both John and Vincent became surrounded by MX's.

"John Kennex, the penalty for violence is one week in the cubes."

John watched over the MX's shoulder as two others pulled Vincent to his feet and escorted him away while he was still struggling to draw in his breath. "That was in self-defence." John protested. "You were there, you know I didn't start it."

"John Kennex, the penalty for violence is one week in the cubes."

"Of for fucks sake," John growled. "I have a right to have the video watched by someone who can make an actual human decision on my punishment."

The MX cocked his head as though the request was unexpected, but it didn't argue, and god knows MX's could definitely argue when they thought they were right. John folded his arms and waited. After a few minutes of absolute stillness the MX got back to him. "John Kennex, please return to your breakfast."

"Thank you." John replied sarcastically as the MX's drifted back to their posts. John grabbed his tray off the table and glared down at the man who had started all this. "Don't you dare to fucking cross me either." He snarled before striding over to a less crowded table. As he sat down, the other inmates on the table shuffled away from him in fear and he was left to eat his breakfast alone.

By the time he was done eating, most of the inmates had started to drift back up to their cells. He trudged up the six flights of metal stairs but as he approached his cell he could hear voices so he quietened his approach.

"What the hell?" He could hear Adam saying, just has he appeared at the door. He found Guerrero sat on the bottom bunk while Adam was knelt on the floor with his back to the door. He'd pulled the box out from under John's bed and the pair of them were peering in it. John cleared his throat and Adam jumped, instinctively releasing his hold on the box and shoving it back where he found it.

"What the fuck is that dude?" Guerrero asked as Adam scrambled to his feet.

John frowned at them, debating what his answer should be but figured they'd find out sooner or later and he didn't really want to spend another uncomfortable night. "It's a prosthetic limb charger. But don't for a second think that makes me weak."

Guerrero cackled. "No, I think you've proven your point there Cerdo!" There was a hint of malice behind it. Adam just glared at him. It was clear that his cellmates had not only seen the fight but had heard him being outed as a police officer. He wasn't sure anymore how he'd thought this would go, but he was starting to get the sense it would just be a victory to survive the end of the week.

A voice sounded in room, "Levels one to six, proceed to the exercise yard."

Guerrero stood and deliberately shoulder barged him as he headed to the door, whispering in his ear. "You're in our world now." He warned. "Don't drop the soap."