InsaneJournal

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Entry tags:	games, keptverse

The Games - Part Five
This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four. There is the beginnings of a cast list here.

This is part 5 of a six-episode Arc 1: the closing episode of Arc 1 will be posted whenever I get the first episode of Arc 2, "The Players", written. *plotz* I think there's going to be four Arcs, and Arc 2 is going to be about the same length as Arc 1, but I don't have a clear picture yet of how many episodes it's going to take to get me through the plot of Arcs 3 and 4. Also I have disturbing thoughts about doing Nanowrimo this year.

Part Five

Kimble swallowed. He wasn’t even particularly hungry. “I think you want to beat me up,” he said. “I’d rather get that over with.”

Sam stood still, looming over him, his face thoughtful. After a moment, almost absently, he turned briefly away from Kimble and switched the heat off under the two pans.

“They said you were a smart guy, Richard. What do you think, were they right?”

“I don’t know,” Kimble said. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“You just started something,” Sam reminded him.

“You could have asked me to watch the pans – turn the bacon, stir the potatoes. You handed me a knife. You were watching me to see what I’d do.”

“I figured I could handle a knife better than hot bacon fat,” Sam said. “So that’s what I gave you. If I’d let you use the pan, the hot fat would have gone on you or on me, and neither one of us would have got breakfast.”

“I didn’t use the knife.”

“I can beat you up,” Sam said, slowly, factually. “I will, if I have to. I still think I might have to.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Kimble said. “Okay.” He pushed himself to his feet, and stood there, facing Sam. They were the same height, he realised. “Okay.” He stood still, his hands out. Slaves were no more allowed to fight in the arena dorm than they were allowed to speak: he hadn’t been in so much as a scuffle for three years. “Please,” he said, after a pause of more than a minute, wondering whether Sam was waiting for him to ask, to apologise, to do something – “Please, just get it over with.” He closed his eyes again.

There was a long moment’s silence. Then some clicking of switches, and the bacon started to frizzle in the pan again. Kimble opened his eyes. Sam was standing over the two pans, watching them. He didn’t seem to be looking at Kimble, but almost at once, he said “Okay, Richard – toast.”

Kimble swallowed. On not quite steady feet, because he knew he had to, he walked over to his owner, picked up the slices of bread, and slid them under the grill. His hands shook, but he managed it.

“Check the fridge, see if Ray left any mushrooms.”

Still numb, Kimble walked from stove to fridge, opened the door, and stared, trying to focus. There was a carton on the third shelf with half a dozen mushrooms. “Yes, Sam.”

“Good. Bring them over here.”

Carton out of fridge, holding it in both hands, walking back towards his owner. Sam had picked up the vegetable knife again: the breadknife still lay where Kimble had set it down.

“Put the bread back in the bin.”

Kimble obeyed, and, still numb with obedience, came back to stand and watch the grill. He was within arm’s reach of his owner, but Sam was focussing on the pans on the stove. He said nothing. Kimble slid out the grill and turned the bread, and watched his owner.

Sam dished up breakfast for both of them, and poured more coffee. Kimble sat staring at the plate: tomatoes and mushrooms fried in bacon grease, crispy pieces of bacon, potatoes and onions, three pieces of wholemeal toast.

“Richard.”

Kimble looked up.

Sam gestured with his fork. “You don’t need to eat it all,” he said, “but I don’t want you just staring at your food, okay?”

Kimble nodded. He picked up the fork, and began to eat. A slice of tomato, a couple of mushrooms,a piece of bacon. The world had shrunk down to manageable proportions: somehow, he had to deal with the food on this plate. His face hurt, but he didn’t think about that.

After a while, his owner said “Richard,” again, and he looked up.

“You want ice for that?”

Kimble shook his head, not understanding the question, and went back to pushing the food on the plate about with the tines of the fork.

His owner stood up and walked away. Kimble moved the biggest pieces of leftover food under the third slice of toast. He had eaten most of one and half the other. The plate didn’t look empty, but it looked cleared.

His owner came back, and held out something that Kimble stared at without comprehension: he had finished with the food on the plate, more or less,and he could not think of anything more. Then Sam put it on to his face, and grabbed hold of the back of his neck when he jerked away from the icy touch.

Ice pack. Where Sam had punched his jaw hurt. You want ice for that? The question suddenly made sense.

“Just hold that there,” Sam said. He let go of the back of Kimble’s neck when Kimble’s hand came up to the pack, and, after a moment, began stacking the dishes on the table.

Make yourself useful. “I should do that,” Kimble said. He didn’t say it clearly, but Sam seemed to understand him.

“Sit there and keep that on your face.”

The scraps went into the bin – Sam glanced over at Kimble – and the dishes were stacked in a washer.

“We’ll go outside and walk around the house,” Sam said abruptly. “You’ll need a coat.” He glanced down. “And outdoor shoes.” Kimble left the ice pack on the table.

A door from the kitchen, unlocked, led into a concrete-floored blank-walled room with a washing machine, drying lines, and hooks for coats and an array of shoes and boots. Kimble’s feet were bigger than Sam’s, but Sam had a pair of hiking boots that fit Kimble more or less: the dark blue coat he handed Kimble was worn and shabby. Sam opened another door – double-locked with a security code – and gestured Kimble out ahead of him.

The sky was grey with unshed rain: the stone paving was wet. The air smelled wet. “It’s going to rain later,” Kimble said out loud. He was standing on a low stone platform, and beyond the stone paving was scrubby flat grass, and round the grass, a wall. Kimble breathed in fresh air, and turned, staring.

The house was made of stone, the windows – where there were windows – were shatterproof glass. It was bigger than he’d seen, downstairs and up.

“Okay,” Sam said. “See that wall?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s walk a bit closer.” Sam’s hand went round Kimble’s wrist: they stepped off the stone platform on to the grass. It was worn grey and shabby with autumn rain. It had been late winter last time Kimble had been outside, further outside than a prison exercise yard, nearly five years ago.

Sam’s hand round Kimble’s wrist was a solid hard grip. They had walked five steps on the grass when without warning he turned Kimble, snatching his wrist from one hand to the other, and his free hand caught at the collar round Kimble’s neck. That collar had been locked there when he was remanded to jail, welded on when he was sentenced. Kimble hardly thought about it any more. There was nothing to think about. Sam’s grip made the collar almost choking-tight. Kimble froze.

Sam was leaning close to his ear, and his voice was quiet, almost expressionless. “If a person wearing a convict collar gets within ten feet of that wall, an alarm goes off in three places: in my office, in the federal marshal’s office in Chicago, and in the local police station. That wall is wired, and if at any point a convict collar gets close enough to the wires to be activated by them, the metal of the collar starts heating up, and it keeps right on heating up until someone deactivates it. I am told it can get hot enough to burn your fucking head off, Richard, though naturally we’d deactivate it once you were dead.” He stopped. Kimble could hear his breathing in his ear. “Do you have any questions?”

They were standing, Kimble figured, about six yards from the wall. There was no mark on the grass. No warning. You knew, or you didn’t.

If not for Sam’s hand on his collar, Sam’s grip on his wrist, he could have run forward, head first, thrown himself at the wall.

“Do you have any questions, Richard?”

How long do you think it would take to kill me?

“No,” Kimble said.

“Okay.”

Sam didn’t let go of his collar. He stepped back, easing Kimble back with him, turning them both: Kimble didn’t fight him. When they were facing the house, Sam let go of his collar and transferred his grip on Kimble’s wrist from one hand to the other: he began to walk back across the grass. At the corner of the house, the stone became a gravelled path, and Sam walked them both on to it, keeping Kimble next to the house.

Once, the house had more windows: many of them on the ground floor were blocked. Workrooms, Sam had said.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” Kimble asked.

“What’s that?” Sam glanced at him. “Told you, I live alone. Have you seen anyone else?”

Kimble shook his head. If there was anyone in the workrooms, Sam wouldn’t tell him.

The wall ran all around the house: the same height all the way. The same security system. If it worked like the one on their town house, even the gate wouldn’t be a weak point. The same scrubby, autumn grass. Their feet made crunching noises on the gravel, loud in the silence: there was a faint noise of road traffic beyond the wall, but nothing else.

“The wires run through the gate,” Sam said. The front of the house was a gravel parking lot: there was a car, the four-door saloon, parked to one side. “They deactivate only when the gate is opened with a security code. If a convict collar passes the gate on the way out, they deactivate only with one of a specific set of security codes. My kids could bring you in, but they can’t take you out of here.”

Kimble didn’t look at the gate. He had a vague memory of it from yesterday: high and solid, not even as climbable as a wall. “Yes,” he said.

The gravel path ran on round the other side of the house. There were no windows at all on this side on the ground floor: two, small ones, high on the second floor. The wall was closer here. Sam’s grip on his wrist almost felt like a lifeline. What would it feel like to have the metal against his skin get hotter, hot enough to scald, to burn, to scar – burning through skin and flesh –

He didn’t want to know. But he could find out. And his life would come to an end, not quickly, but certainly. A slave could be damaged so badly it wasn’t worth expending anything to save the owner’s property.

He didn’t want to know. But, as they reached the back door, as Sam used his free hand to enter a code and open it again, Kimble thought he could feel the wall looming at their backs, almost as if it was looking at him, daring him to come to meet it.

“There are two doors to the outside,” Sam said, as Kimble was pulling off his boots. Sam had hung up both coats. “This one and the one at the front of the house. They need a key and a security code to open. Don’t try and get a hold of either one. I don’t want you going out of the house unaccompanied. Don’t bug my kids about it, either. If I’ve got time, I’ll take you out.”

Kimble looked up, saw Sam was looking at him, and nodded. He didn’t want to know.

“You want a fresh ice pack?”

Kimble touched the side of his jaw: it was still tender. He supposed he’d show a bruise. That wasn’t his problem. “Whatever you want, Sam,” he said.

Say as little as possible, don’t fight, don’t flinch, don’t die. Live.

If only he could remember why he wanted to.

to Part Six

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[Update: The Keptverse universe belongs to poisontaster, and she made clear after I completed this section - and clarified for me again in January - that she approved no FPF being written in the Keptverse. This story is non-official, non-approved by the universe's creator, fanfic.]