A Sneak Peak into Prisoner's Dilemma
Here is a brief snippet of the current fic I am working on called Prisoner's Dilemma. A fanfiction where Cecil is a little more broken after everything heâs been through. He never accepts Radcliffeâs offer. Never gets out of prison. Somehow, he still manages to get dragged into the Grayson family drama.Â
Life in prison made sense. It was easy and simple. Everything had structure and Cecil ensured it stayed that way. When Cecil first arrived here over a decade ago, Payton Penitentiary had been a chaotic hell hole where any day could be your last. A place where the powerless didnât last long. Hell, heâd taken the bed of someone whose remains had to be scrapped away into a bucket. It was still a hell hole but at least you werenât gonna get your head caved in for looking at the wrong person funny.
Cecil accepted his life here. Radcliffe had stopped trying to convince him to lead the GDA years ago. He wasnât interested in that life anymore. He couldnât be responsible for people. Not after those seventeen people. He thought about them every day, repeating their names in his head like a mantra. Cecil knew he would never be a hero not like he dreamed of when he was young wrapped in a threadbare blanket in a too-cold and still house, his head buried in comics and papers telling the real stories of heroes like Immortal, War Woman, and Brit. Back when he still believed in good and evil. Heroes and Villians. Back when the world was black and white and not the monotone greys of Payton Penitentiary. But that didnât mean he was willing to become the person Radcliffe claimed the world needed him to be.Â
He was willing to carry out the rest of sentence in the only way he knew howâby keeping order in the place where order had no right to exist. Becoming top dog of this place hadnât been easy. But Cecil wasnât going to allow a bunch of superpowered criminals push him around.
Cecil had learned early on that prison wasnât about strength, not really. Strength helped, sure, but it wasnât what kept you alive. What really kept you alive was control. Knowing who to push, who to pull, and when to let things settle on their own. Payton Penitentiary had been a place where people died for the smallest thingsâa misstep in the yard, an insult thrown in the cafeteria, a wrong glance at the wrong person.
He built something hereânot a kingdom, because he wasnât that vain, but a structure. A system. He made sure people who followed the rules lived, and those who didnât? They got put down fast. It took years, but eventually, people listened. Even the ones who shouldnât have.
"Boss," a deep voice rumbled from behind him.
Cecil glanced over his shoulder at the massive light blue-skinned man looming in the doorway. Titus barely fit through the damn thing, ducking his body so his massive frame didnât crack the top of the doorframe. He had been a monster when Cecil met himâpure rage packed into a body too strong for its own good. Back then, Titus killed without thinking, without reason. But now? He wasnât exactly soft, but he followed Cecilâs rules.
That was the thing about monsters. You could teach them to listen if you spoke the right language.
"What is it?" Cecil asked, dragging his cigarette from his lips.
Titus crossed his massive arms, shifting his weight with a grunt. "New fish cominâ in."
Cecil flicked the ash off his cigarette. "Since when do you care about fresh meat?"
Titus shrugged, the motion making his massive shoulders roll like shifting tectonic plates. âYouâll wanna see this one.â
Cecil sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He didnât give a shit about new prisoners anymore. Once, maybe, he wouldâve scoped out fresh arrivals, decided where they slotted into his carefully maintained order. But after years inside, after clawing his way to the top of this hellhole, after turning chaos into something resembling civilizationâwhat more was there to do?
Still, if Titus thought this was worth his time, that meant something.
âAlright,â Cecil muttered, flicking his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out. âLetâs see what poor bastard theyâve tossed in today.â
They made their way through the cell block, the heavy steel doors groaning as they passed. Other prisoners saw them coming and stepped out of the way. Even the ones with powers, the ones who thought they were untouchable, kept their distance.
Titus led him past the cafeteria, through the back corridors where they kept the new arrivals before processing. Cecil expected to see the usualâsome bruised-up thug with too much mouth and not enough brains, or another idiot who thought they could take over what he had built here.
Instead, what he saw made him stop cold.
Because standing in the dim light of the processing area, small and terrified, was a child.
A kid who couldnât have been older than eight, wearing clothes too big for his small frame, fists clenched at his sides as if pretending he wasnât scared when everything about him screamed that he was.
Cecil felt something settle in his gutâsomething dark, something sharp.
He turned to the nearest guard, voice like ice.
The guardâa young recruit, probably fresh out of whatever hellhole Radcliffe had picked him fromâstammered, shifting under his glare.
"Orders from the GDA," the guard mumbled. "Director Radcliffeâs orders."
Cecilâs jaw clenched. Of course it was. Radcliffeâs games had always been cruel, but this? This was something else.
"Who is he?" Cecil asked, voice low.
The guard swallowed. "Mark Grayson."That name meant nothing to Cecil. But it would. Because even though he didnât know it yet, this kid was going to change everything.
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