DepressedBean

The prisoner's gaze flicked from Marek to Kellen, back to Marek. He didn't stand. Didn't bother with the please or the I can explain. He knew the math. He just swallowed, hard, and said, "You're dead. You're both fucking dead, you know that? The whole block saw you walk in here."

Kellen stepped inside, letting the door clang shut behind him. He pulled the cot's thin mattress half-off, sat down like he owned the place, and rested his elbows on his knees. "See, that's the thing about uniforms." He rapped his knuckles against the badge. "Magic little fuckers. Walk anywhere. Do anything. Nobody asks."

"Fuck you," the prisoner said, but his voice had gone thin.

Marek pushed off the frame and crouched right in front of him, close enough to smell the shitty jail soap on his skin. "You remember that night? The drop by the docks? You said—and I quote—'No way they find us, we're ghosts." He laughed, a sharp, happy bark. "Ghosts, man. Ghosts." He tapped the prisoner's knee. "But you found the light switch, didn't you? Sold us right the fuck out."

"I had a family—"

"Bullshit." Marek's hand shot up, not hitting, just two fingers jabbing the air an inch from the prisoner's nose. "You had a stomach problem. Couldn't hold your nerve. Started crying to anyone with a badge and a notepad." He stood, stretching his arms wide, turning a slow circle in the cramped cell like he was showing off a new apartment. "So we thought, hey. Fair's fair. Get ourselves some badges too. See how we like crying to the law."

The prisoner looked at Kellen, who hadn't moved from the cot. "This is insane. This is—" He laughed, a broken, desperate sound. "This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. You think you're just gonna walk out?"

Kellen finally stood, rolling his neck. "Already did the paperwork." He pulled a folded sheet from his breast pocket, let it flutter to the floor. Transfer order. Signed, stamped, official as a heart attack. "You're being moved to protective custody. Tragic thing, protective custody. So many blind spots. So many doors that lock from the outside."

Marek pulled the collapsible baton from his belt, flicked it open with a satisfying snick. "You want to do the thing?" he asked Kellen.

"Do the thing," Kellen agreed.

Marek looked down at the prisoner, all the play draining out of his face in one smooth motion, like a mask slipping off to show something worse underneath. "Thing is," he said, quiet now, "we're not actually police."

The baton came down. Once, twice. Not enough to kill—Marek knew his work—but enough to drop him, gasping, curled around his own ribs. Kellen moved fast then, pulling the zip-tie from his belt, looping it around the prisoner's wrists behind his back, hauling him up like a drunk friend.

"On your feet, inmate," Kellen said, loud enough to carry. "Transfer time."

The prisoner tried to speak, blood on his teeth, and Marek cuffed the side of his head, casual, almost affectionate. "Nah-ah. No talking. Prisoner rights and all that."

They walked him out between them, Marek gripping one arm, Kellen the other, the prisoner stumbling, head down, looking for all the world like a man who'd been beaten resisting. Which he had been. Just not by cops.

The desk sergeant looked up, bored. "That him?"

"That him," Marek said. "Tried to shank Kellen with a sharpened toothbrush. Can you believe this guy?"

"Animals," the sergeant said, not looking closely. He buzzed the sally port. "Van's in Bay C."

"Cheers," Kellen said.

Bay C was empty. Dark. The van was real enough, stolen that morning, still smelling like the driver's lunch. They loaded the prisoner in the back, Kellen climbing in after, Marek sliding behind the wheel.

The engine turned over. The bay door rattled up.

In the rearview, Marek watched Kellen pull the pillowcase from his pocket—the one he'd lifted from laundry duty, thin, institutional, nothing special—and settle it over the prisoner's head with almost gentle hands.

"Wait," the prisoner mumbled into the fabric. "Wait, I can—"

"Nah," Kellen said. "You really can't."

He looped the second zip-tie around the prisoner's throat, pulled it tight, and held it while the van bumped over the speed humps, past the gate, onto the road where the streetlights didn't reach. The prisoner kicked once, twice. Then didn't.

Marek drove, humming that same tuneless nursery rhyme, until Kellen tapped the partition twice. All clear.

They left the van in a Walmart parking lot with the keys in the ignition and the body in the back. Someone would find it by morning. Someone would run the plates, trace them to a stolen vehicle, shrug, file it under prison shit. Happened all the time.

Marek lit a cigarette, leaning against the fender while Kellen stripped out of the uniform, kicking the polyester into a storm drain. "Pizza?" Marek asked.

"I'm starving."

"You get pepperoni this time, I'm not sharing."

"You're a pepperoni guy, don't lie."