Heaven and Hell, One Bar Apart

Heaven and hell are one iron bar apart.

It might sound like a cheap bit of wordplay to some, but anyone who had ever played this game would back that statement without a second thought. Which was why I took my time surveying the residents of this ridiculously comfortable heaven, all of them letting the tension drain out of their shoulders as if they were on vacation.

Never mind the oily stares of the ones who had wandered out of their cells to gawk at me. They all still looked, for the moment, reasonably intact.

Either Darkzone exploration hasn't really kicked off yet, or even if it has, most of these guys have little to no experience with it.

You could tell just by looking at their faces. A veteran prisoner NPC who had cycled through more Darkzone deployments and extractions than you could count never wore an expression that loose.

That said, the population in here was still considerable. Even factoring in the free-spirited types who had gone off on a spring outing to other sectors, the way they had in the last area, there were a lot of them.

"Ah, right. I almost forgot to tell you the most important part."

"Which is?"

"That your Human Rights Guarantee Period here is almost up."

The remark was so abrupt and so absurd I didn't even have time to ask him to repeat it. The man in front of me suddenly rolled up his sleeve and, with theatrical composure, produced a digital wristwatch no death-row inmate should ever have been able to get his hands on. Then he checked the time. Right in the middle of the cell block.

"This isn't public knowledge, but every convict who comes into Seoul Southern Prison from anywhere in the country is issued Time-Limited Human Rights as a baseline. Sentences of one year or more but less than five get six months after intake. Five years or more but less than fifteen get three months. Fifteen or more but less than thirty get one month. Anything longer than that — ultra-long stretches, life — gets one week. And death-row inmates like us? One hour."

"When does the clock start?"

"Sharp. The second you walk through the front gate."

I ran a rough count of the guards' brief welcome ritual, the simple intake process, and the time it had taken to get here. About thirty minutes, already.

I rolled my eyes around the block again. Everyone I could see had a far more generous Human Rights Guarantee Period than I did. Meaning none of them were as desperate as they ought to have been. Or they had already been dealt with before they ever had the chance to feel desperate.

Human Rights Guarantee Period, though?

The prisoners in the game had never had anything resembling human rights to begin with. The Warden would toss out a daily mission — go fetch this, go resolve that, go look into the other thing — and we would be "deployed" without a word of complaint. That was a prisoner's life. Compared to that, this place still seemed to have a line it wouldn't cross.

At the start of the game, the inmates' rights had already been stripped. So this has to be earlier than that.

By that logic, the game's story hadn't started yet. I couldn't afford to show that I knew, though, so I decided to play the wide-eyed newbie bursting with questions.

"So how do you keep those human rights?"

"Most people want to know what happens when they run out first."

"I've got a pretty good idea. So? You're the 'veteran' here. I'd figure you'd know."

"Oh, I know. Believe me."

He only shrugged, though, with no apparent intention of handing over the information that actually mattered.

"Try surviving the day first. Otherwise where's the fun in raising a promising sapling from the first leaf?"

With that, the man made an infuriating little tick-tock, tick-tock with his tongue and started up the central stairs ahead of me.

I was just thinking I would sew that mouth of his shut later when, with impeccable timing, the internal broadcast ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rolled through the block.

Every convict in sight dropped the staring contest and filed back to their cells. Mine, as it happened, was on the third floor, dead center of the right-hand corridor.

Even the cell assignment has a peculiar kind of malice to it.

The highest floor, the most central cell? I would be boxed in from above, below, and both sides, with nowhere to run.

"Nothing I can do about it."

I gathered the most basic personal effects I had been issued along with the prison uniform before getting off the elevator, and started up the central stairs. Every step I climbed, every floor I passed, I could feel countless eyes on me through the bars.

By the time I finally stepped into the cell I had been assigned, three men were already sitting in a row, waiting for roll call. The instant I was inside, the bars slid shut on their own. Whether the AI had done it directly or someone watching the CCTV had thrown the switch, I couldn't tell.

Not that it mattered either way.

I tossed my things onto one of the four small, battered bunks. One of the men who had been sitting quietly let his face twist.

"Anyone here into sharing a bunk with another guy?"

"You little—!"

"Lucky you. I'm not into that either."

A heartbeat later I kicked the one who had started to lunge up in a rage square in the chest.

I am not particularly good at fighting. Before I got dragged into the game, I had done my military service like everybody else and dabbled in combat sports as a hobby. That was the whole of it, and I had even quit that after a few months because adult life was too much of a grind.

Games, though, I had played with a patience that bordered on the pathological. Which attacks could put a fatal hole in somebody — that was common knowledge to any hardcore gamer, no live combat required. Pair a mind that had that kind of trivia filed from one to ten with a body whose reaction speed and motor nerves were unnervingly sharp, and the result was exactly what it sounded like. I could fight like a game.

"You fucking bastard!"

The first one off the floor yanked a crude blade from inside his clothes and slashed at me with everything he had. The sensation of that edge ripping through the damp, faintly chill air of the underground and coming for my throat was not a pleasant one. The filthy, sparsely toothed roughness of the thing was a massive liability and an advantage at the same time — if it so much as nicked you, you were not going to like what came next. In the game, it would have slapped you with a debuff like Bleed or Muscle Damage.

Slip it first.

The way he charged in with no thought for front or back, desperate not to lose the initiative, was easier to read than I had expected. I tipped my waist at an angle, let the blade that had been boring honestly toward my throat slide past, then drove my shoulder up under the arm he had overextended and snatched his wrist the wrong way, hauling it down.

A wet crack.

"Ghk—aaaaagh!"

With his arm hooked over my shoulder at that awkward angle, simply straightening up was enough to break the bone. That was what happened when you were still running on a bare body, no enhancement implants. I timed a heel-stomp onto the blade he had dropped over my shoulder, dragged it forward, and flung the man who was no longer useful off to the side.

He slammed into a bunk's metal frame with a spectacular clatter and went rolling across the floor in an undignified heap. By then the others had already drawn their own weapons and were coming in.

I kicked the blade I had been pinning under my shoe as hard as I could and buried it in the ankle of the one charging me head-on. Crude as it was, it didn't sink all the way in — but it was more than enough to shred the locked-up ankle muscle of a man running hot. A sliver of hesitation became an opening, and that opening arrived as a gift.

"You fucker—!"

"Pick one. Either swear or yell. Not both."

A sharp crack.

"Ghk?!"

One of them was down. Another had stalled with a torn ankle. In that window I slapped aside a homemade knuckle punch with my forearm and drove my forehead straight into the face behind it.

Whether it was because they were thugs at the root, or because living in packs in a place this vicious had left them rusty at one-on-one work, their movements were painfully honest and clumsy. I didn't even need one of those high-end Smartlink units — the kind only the faithful attack dogs chosen by people in power were allowed to wear — to keep up with them.

When the one in the knuckles clutched his streaming nose with both hands and started backpedaling, I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him in before he could get out of range. Then I put him in front of the man squeezing in from the side, using him as a shield so the blade wouldn't find my ribs instead.

A wet punch of steel.

"Ah—ghk! You fucking idiot—!"

"Goddamn it! Don't just stand there, get out of the way!"

"Now, now. Cellmates ought to get along."

I shoved the poor bastard with a blade half-buried in his gut even harder, driving him and the rat who had put it there into the cell wall together. The one suddenly trapped between two sweating men, leaking something sticky and unable to move, let out a scream that climbed another octave. That was not, at present, my problem.

I excused myself for a moment from the steamy threesome of two grown men writhing and screaming at each other. Then I spun a kick into the one who had ripped the blade out of his own ankle and was trying for my back. The cell wasn't wide enough for a big rotation, so I cut the leg up on a diagonal instead, aiming for the jaw.

A crunch of bone.

"Ghk—grrrhh…"

Unless you had implants that reinforced bone and muscle themselves, a Smartlink slathered in assist functions, or some illegal cocktail that turned people into animals, most human beings were soft around the temple, the jaw, and the solar plexus. Adrenaline would have been dumping into him from the bleeding ankle and the pain, but a boost like that only lasted a moment. His jaw turned cleanly. He went down in slow motion, spraying blood and spit like foam.

The cell's little hazing stage was winding down. Only the rat who had rammed that ugly rod into his own partner and I were still standing. The poor bastard it had gone into and come back out of was twitching on the floor, clutching his stomach. Leave him and he would go into shock and die.

Under ordinary circumstances, this was the point where you surrendered and looked after your people. The rat, though, didn't seem to give a damn about his colleague. He came at me again with a bizarre, animal howl.

He doesn't think of the cellmate he was fighting beside thirty seconds ago as a friend or a partner. A relationship of convenience, then. And the violence he's showing me is strangely excessive.

Even an idiot could have seen it by now. This wasn't about establishing dominance or blowing off steam. They had a clear, specific reason to put me at least halfway in the ground.

"Die!"

"Even a prison this insane has to stop inmates from killing each other, right?"

"The fuck do I care!"

A whoosh, a hiss. He kept boring in with the blade, hunting for a wound that would actually matter. He was so obviously aiming for the major organs in the upper body, the arteries, the tendons, that not noticing would have been the stranger thing.

I slipped his attacks with an almost ghostly economy and measured the angle. This body was like a high-end PC stuffed with the latest graphics card and CPU. It did exactly what I asked, exactly when I asked, and the fact that it was mine still raised the hair on my arms.

Persuasion isn't going to land in a situation like this, and threats won't mean much either.

There was a madness in him, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the kind you saw in gambling addicts and junkies, something that had him by the throat. Which left only one answer. When he started throwing punches as fast as a boxer's jabs, I eased my upper body back and snapped a surprise low kick into him.

A meaty crack.

"Gah!"

A low kick you aren't ready for hurts enough to punch the air out of you. Especially a finishing blow that digs into the thigh while all your weight is loaded in the upper body — one wrong instant and the legs just go. Like now.

"You should've fallen backward."

"…!"

He had the misfortune of collapsing forward instead, presenting his head in a completely undefended state — temple, philtrum, and jaw, all of it on a platter. Afraid I would kick him again, he snapped both arms up into a guard. I didn't care. I closed, caught his arms and wrenched them apart, and drove a knee up at the same time.

A wet, flattening impact.

His face caved in under a clean knee strike. He hit the end of a bunk spraying blood and spit. Three down, one still clinging on. I walked over to the man groaning and clutching his stomach.

"Who put you up to this?"

"Kh—hh… what?"

"Don't play dumb. If you don't get first aid right now, you're looking at half-crippled at best. Unlucky and you go into shock and die. Even if heaven smiles and you stop the bleeding, sepsis and peritonitis are not going to leave you alone. You'll be dying by inches in a body that isn't really alive anymore."

"Th-there's a first-aid kit inside the mattress! With that I can—!"

"There's no way an ordinary inmate could get something like that in here. Which means you 'prepared' it in advance. That almost sounds like you knew a death-row inmate was walking into this cell today."

I pressed a fingertip into the abdomen of the man whose face was still knotted with pain. He screamed again. I knew nothing about this body, which made even the smallest scrap of information precious. I needed to know why this body had been sentenced to death, and why the moment it walked into prison it had to go through something like this.

"The adrenaline's still ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dumping, so you can stand it for now. Give it a little time and it'll hurt enough to black you out."

What he was feeling was probably in the neighborhood of appendicitis, except the part where his life was leaking out was happening a lot faster.

"You know what this uniform means. Worst case, I kill every last one of you and I still don't have anywhere lower to fall. A death-row ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inmate is a death-row inmate no matter what he does."

"…"

Cold sweat was running off his forehead and the back of his neck. His pupils were shaking hard. Fear of a death that was getting closer by the second, confusion and dread aimed at me, and worry aimed at something that wasn't me — all of it tangled together.

"The assassination you dressed up as a hazing already failed. You got your asses handed to you. What's left to hesitate about?"

"Y-you can say that because you don't know what this place is. Goddamn it!"

No. I knew this place better than anyone. I just didn't know this body.

"I don't care about that. You should be worrying about yourself. Or should I just leave you here for ten minutes and see what happens?"

"Shit, shit, shit!"

For a convict, he seemed to be having a remarkable amount of inner conflict, wailing like a teenager with a complicated home life. Dying still looked worse, though. He finally leaned in close and spilled the truth in a small voice.

"I-if a cell block doesn't protect an inmate whose Human Rights Guarantee Period has run out — if they handle him themselves, voluntarily — every inmate in that block gets paid. That's what we were after!"

"…Money? In a prison?"

I already knew there was money in this prison. More precisely, the EFD system had a currency that only circulated inside. Players used it to upgrade themselves, kit out better gear, and cycle in and out of the Darkzone. I listened as if I didn't know any of that.

"Kh—! Cough! This place is crazier than you think. Everyone claws to stretch their Human Rights Guarantee Period to match their sentence. That's the only way you finish your time and walk out of here."

"So you can extend the Human Rights Guarantee Period with that money."

"Yes! I told you everything, so hurry and—!"

"No. There's still one more."

I slit the mattress with the crude blade, pulled out a first-aid kit neatly wrapped in plastic, and dangled it in front of his face.

"Going after a death-row inmate whose Human Rights Guarantee Period is almost gone, I understand. But there seemed to be a fair number of death-row inmates walking around just fine. So why have they survived this long, and why was I supposed to die the day I walked in?"

"Th-that I really don't know! We just—!"

"I'll give you three seconds."

Without a disposable smart syringe loaded with antibiotics and rapid cell-regeneration agents — what everyone called Red Medicine — he was going to die. I mouthed a silent three-count. He finally broke whatever last scrap of stubbornness he had left and spilled.

"It's true! I really don't know! This morning, before roll call, the Facility Management AI just sent us that kit and a note with instructions! Death-row inmates are already condemned, so people usually leave them alone! You were just a special case!"

There was a fair amount of genuine feeling in the words a dying man forced out with that pleading look. Questions remained, but I decided to leave it there for now. Whoever had known in advance that I would be processed into this place today, and had specifically ordered me killed, was obvious enough without being told.

I said nothing, unwrapped the plastic, drove the syringe into his abdomen, and pushed the drug in. The tension went out of him at once. He sagged with the face of a man who had just been told he would live.

The kit was good enough to close a certain class of wound on its own, one of the consumables players liked best. It kept Darkzone inmates breathing. A single stab was going to knit in no time. It still grated that I had to spend a first-aid kit this rare — the kind no ordinary convict should ever have been able to get inside a prison — on a man like him. Leaving him to die, though, was not an option.

Guards would look the other way if inmates knocked each other around with fists, quietly or otherwise. People dying was a problem in the real world and in the game alike. Especially if I was involved. I was already on death row, so nothing I did would change the "result" — but that didn't mean I intended to be led around by the nose exactly the way they wanted.

Try surviving the day first, was it?

In the end, I spent my first night in here without closing my eyes. I really wished there was a skip-day button.