The walk to his cell seemed to take longer than it should have.

Even though his fear was now apparently completely burned out, Eric found that his instincts were still rather strong. He found himself scanning everyone he passed, glancing quickly and unobtrusively into each cell as he passed it. At a glance, there seemed to be about fifty cells per level and two people to a cell. Eric glanced up and down again, confirming that there were at least a dozen levels. And most of the cells seemed populated.

Why did they need so many?

He supposed he would find out in due time.

Eric sized up everyone he came past. He figured he could take most of them. Some of them seemed like they would give him a run for his credits. Mostly they looked the same: tattooed toughs with muscles and scowls and shaved heads, about how he imagined prison would look. What bugged him was how many were sporting Marine Corps tats. It begged the question: were there that many shitty Marines or were they just scooping them up because it was so easy to make Marines disappear nowadays?

Probably some of both.

Eric made it to his cell without a problem. He liked to imagine that he looked tough enough, but he knew that wasn't really it. He'd always looked scrappy. Five ten, wiry instead of muscular, even now, slightly bugged out eyes. He knew that the thing that gave him his edge here was that these men were looking at his face and seeing the face of a man who genuinely did not care if he lived or died. Who would gleefully die if it meant taking you with him.

There were things to be gained from fighting someone like that, but it was early enough that no one really wanted to be the first to test the psycho. Then again, as he reached his own cell, he wondered if it was because they knew who his cellmate was. And no one wanted to get between V and his latest victim.

Eric found his cell door open. He walked inside.

"You're in my cell."

V turned out to be a muscular man with a shaved head, tan skin that came from heritage rather than the sun or out of a bottle, and an extremely deep voice. He was laying in his bunk, the top one, with his hands behind his head, staring idly at the pitted steel ceiling.

"Our cell now," Eric replied.

That got his attention. V raised his head and studied Eric for a scant few seconds, then hopped lightly and easily to his feet. That one motion told Eric all he needed to know about the guy's skill: he was fast, he was smooth, and he was absolutely lethal.

"Heard tell of new meat being sent my way," he said. His voice, though deep as a granite quarry, was calm and neutral. "You're a Marine."

"I am," Eric replied.

"Are you the one who killed nine fellow jarheads?"

Interesting. The guy didn't seem the type to make idle jabs. Which meant it had been very intentional, because this was a man who did nothing unintentionally. So it was a test, maybe. See what kind of reaction it would provoke.

"I am," he repeated.

"Why'd you do it?" he asked.

There was the tiniest shift in V's stance, a shift so subtle most people wouldn't even realize it had happened. He'd slipped into an offensive posture. Meaning that if he heard the wrong thing, he would attack, and likely kill, Eric in a heartbeat.

"They were evil, and I was sick and tired of looking the other way."

"Hmm. Dead men don't learn lessons," V said.

"If I'd also killed the ones who I thought could be taught, the body count would be a hell of a lot higher," Eric replied.

V continued studying him. It had gone quiet outside of his cell.

"Look man, you seem pretty deadly. If you're gonna kill me, could you just do it, and fast?" Eric asked.

V remained still and silent for a long few seconds. "I've killed my last ten cellmates," he replied finally. "Mostly for different reasons, though honestly it really just boils down to the fact that we could not coexist. You and I, though? You follow a few simple rules and we can coexist."

"What rules?" Eric asked.

"I keep a clean cell, as you can see. Make sure it stays that way. Don't be loud. Don't be rude. Oh yeah, and if you touch my books without my permission, you forfeit your right to live," he replied.

Eric glanced over at the desk tucked away into one corner. It had a neat row of a dozen novels atop it, pressed against the wall, held in place by a wooden figurine.

"I understand and accept these rules, and I agree to abide by them," Eric replied.

The lightest of smiles touched the man's face. "I'm glad we have an understanding." He hopped lightly back onto his bunk and assumed his original position.

"Don't suppose you can give me the rundown of this place?"

"I'm not much for conversation. Lunch is in half an hour. Find Ranse, he'll tell you all you want to know. However, because you broke Johns's finger, I'll answer one question."

Eric didn't have to think long about what he wanted to ask. "I know this place isn't just a prison. They bring us here for some kind of experimentation, has to be, but I have no idea what. Do you know what it is?"

V frowned, just a little. All he said was: "No."

Eric believed him. If his read on the guy was correct, he was the type of man who often told the truth simply because he didn't care enough to lie. Though he would do it in a heartbeat if it served him. But he didn't know what they were really doing in the dark heart of this isolated installation. And that bothered him.

It bothered Eric, too.

Prison food was, somehow, worse than he had been led to believe.

The gray paste the irritated cafeteria worker slopped into his bowl hardly smelled of anything at all, though Eric supposed he should take that as a blessing. At least it didn't actively reek. He thought there might be more coming but all he ended up with was a bottle of water. As he stepped away from the serving line and looked out over the too-bright messhall, no one particularly jumped out at him. Already, there were some two hundred prisoners shoulder-to-shoulder at the tables.

Eric looked around and he selected one who seemed less hostile than the rest. He was a pasty, middle-aged guy with a heavy build that, to a layman, would look out of shape. But to a more trained eye like Eric, he knew that this guy probably knew how to take care of himself and his bulk hid musculature that was less for show and more for practical strength.

"Hey, man, I'm looking for Ranse."

"Fuck off, new meat," he grunted with barely a look. It sounded like an automatic response.

"I'm going to ask again, and I'm the kind of person you don't want to get on the wrong side of," Eric said.

That got his attention. The prisoner turned fully to look at him, teeth clenched, dark eyes staring out from beneath a tangled mop of dark hair. He must've seen something in Eric's gaze, though, because he relaxed, ever so slightly.

"You're that Crow guy, huh?" he muttered.

"Guilty as charged."

That at least got a tiny chuckle. "Ranse is there, in the far right corner, beside the heavy. Word of advice: don't piss them off. The heavy is named Molina, and he can, and will, break your jaw off and beat you to death with it. I've seen him do it."

"Thanks. What's your name?" Eric asked.

The prisoner stared at him for a long moment. "Gauge," he said finally, and walked off.

Well, that had gone pretty well, as far as conversations in prison went. Eric made a beeline for the far corner, eyes on Ranse. He was a scrawny guy with the build of a strung out stringbean. The sides of his head were buzzed and the black hair on the top was a messy and peppered with gray. He had several tats along his arms and on his neck. Despite his look, when the man's eyes shifted up and locked with Eric's as he approached, he immediately got a sense that he was looking at a very sharp, very smart man.

The heavy next to him, Molina, looked like a bigger version of most other prisoners: jacked, tatted, bald. He had an air of menace about him, like the calm that fell over a forest just before a tornado ripped through it all.

He got to his feet when it became obvious Eric was approaching Ranse. He had to be six foot seven.

"Piss off," he growled. His voice was even deeper than V's.

"It's all right, Molina," Ranse replied calmly. "Mister Crowe here seems like he's quick on the uptake, and I'm sure he's already puzzled out just how unnecessary and dangerous it would be to upset me, let alone try to hurt me. Why don't you go remind Dahl that we collect tomorrow on his debt, and...see if Murph knows anything about the Yeheyuans."

Molina glared at Eric for two seconds and finally issued a low growl somewhere deep in his chest. "Yes, sir, Mister Truman," he grunted, and walked off.

Ranse nodded to the man across from him and the guy immediately got up and moved elsewhere. "Have a seat."

"Thank you," Eric replied, sitting down and starting to eat. He was actually really hungry. "I hear you're the man with the answers," he said between bites.

"That could be said. You've been here an hour and you've already made quite the name for yourself. In general...not a good idea."

"Thought you had to kick someone's ass immediately or you wind up someone's bitch," Eric replied.

"More or less. There's a difference between kicking someone's ass and making waves. Waves are bad here at The Hole."

"Noted. Can you tell me things?"

"I can. But first, I want you to tell me something. What's the truth about what you did?"

"What'd you hear?"

"Nine counts of homicide."

Eric chuckled grimly. "That's just the ones they found."

"Why? I want to know why."

Eric lost whatever dark smile had been there. "They were monsters. I killed them for being monsters."

"I'm afraid you'll find a lot of those in here, Mister Crowe."

"Yeah, well, I got tired of serving alongside them. Of having to pretend they were the good guys. Of tolerating them. They all did terrible things."

Ranse leaned in. "Who was the first? What was his sin?"

"I'm not going to talk about this very much," Eric replied. "But...first guy was a wife beater. He bragged about it. He had pictures he liked to show his friends. We got into a fight about it. I beat his ass. Then some time passed. We were on R and R, happened to be where he and his wife lived. I saw her in the flesh finally and...something just snapped. They were at a grocery store together. They looked...like a normal couple. And the idea of what was happening behind closed doors-I was finished. I thought to myself, very clearly and very calmly, like it wasn't even me thinking it, but it was like I was being told: He can't beat her anymore if he's dead. So I followed him, studied him, eventually tailed him to this shit hole in the wall bar where he got wasted. He stepped into an alleyway to take a leak. I followed him and stabbed him in the throat while he was pissing. I watched him flop around for about...thirty seconds, and then I walked away when he was dead."

"I see," Ranse murmured. Eric realized it had gone very quiet at the table, and though they weren't looking at him, he could tell the other prisoners were listening intently. "How'd you get caught?"

"Last guy I went after...I won't get into it, but his sin involved children. So I took my time with him. That's ultimately why I got caught. Anger made me sloppy. Now, I answered your questions."

Ranse nodded. "True. What would you like to know? If you're looking to escape, I'm afraid that's a very unlikely prospect. No one has ever done it."

"For now, I'm where I want to be," Eric replied. "What do they do here? What do they really do here?"

Ranse immediately frowned and looked around. "That, I'm afraid, is the question that has no answer for us prisoners."

"Figured," Eric grunted. "If V didn't know, I imagined no one would."

"Yes. He is...about as privy as I am to the goings-on in The Hole. There are clues though. Whatever it is, it's dangerous, and it involves us. They come and take us away sometimes. In the beginning, they came back. There were stories of strange experiments. Men injecting things into the prisoners, or subjecting them to strange forms of energy. Some spoke of testing spacesuits and combat armor. I was here almost from the beginning. They never took me."

"How long has it been going on?" Eric asked.

"Five years, give or take. But they didn't start with the serious stuff until about eighteen months ago. What I think happened is that they were testing the prisoners for this and that, nothing really specific, and then, suddenly, they had some kind of breakthrough in one of their stranger projects, and that became the focus. There was a change overnight in how they handled things. Before this was treated like some boring, backwater assignment by the guards, but then suddenly they came down hard on us, got serious, got strict. Things have sort of resettled since then, but it's a much meaner place than it used to be."

"Any other clues?" Eric asked as he finished off his slop.

"It's hard to sift through the noise. There's always new rumors. They're trying to make super soldiers, they're testing new bioweapons on us, they're making zombies, or they're running some kind of sick gladiator-style game where the prisoners all fight each other and whoever survives gets to go free. That one is more of a myth for our own sanity than anything else. Whatever it is they're doing down there though, it's burning through our population at an increasing rate. Your batch was the biggest we've ever gotten, but I know another, even bigger batch is coming in next week."

"Great," Eric muttered. "One more thing, what're you in for?"

"I planned heists," he replied.

"And that got you sent here?"

"I planned one too many successful heists against the UAC. Pissed off someone high up, and they wanted revenge for making them look bad," he replied with a sardonic grin. "That's life, I guess."

"Apparently," Eric grunted. "Thanks for the info."

He got up. Ranse shifted. "Wait," he said, growing more serious, "Crowe...I could use someone like you."

Eric considered it. "As you said, I'm making waves. That may not stop."

"Mmm...nonetheless, I could still use you. Make your life easier."

"I'll think about it," Eric said, and walked away.