The Machinist Part One: Malevolence Read Free

stupid name did she call herself again?
    McHenry smiled, remembering how the two of them fucked like rabbits after the handful of jobs they’d pulled together.  He covered the bulge in his pants with his good arm and focused on the which-female-hero-is-hotter debate.  It was picking up in intensity.
    The tits-pointer-outer shouted gruffly. “What would you know, you’ve been here six years?”
    “I know that kinda girl don’t know how to treat a man right,” Said Mike in a matter-of-fact way.
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah, what you want is a woman like that Stormsoul chick.  She’s high-class, you know.  European.”
    “Pfft,” another inmate at the second table interjected.  “I got pinched by her, she ain’t all that.  Cute, but there are hotter superbitches out there.”
    “Fuck you!” Mike retorted.
    “Oh, hell,” Jones muttered.   “Morons gon’ get zapped.”
    Magnetic kid looked confused.  He went to stand up but Krudoff grabbed his sleeve, saying, “Sit down, shut up, and don’t move, kid!”
    All the inmates at McHenry and Krudoff’s table ducked their heads down.  Inmates at other tables stopped their chatter and did the same.  A wave of silence overtook the room.
    Mike flipped his own tray over and took a swing at his table-mate.  The other inmate lunged forward with a growl, but was grabbed a third.  Mike kicked the interloper and tackled him.
    Red lights started to strobe in the room.  The cafeteria became eerily quiet aside from the sounds the brawling inmates made.
    “Cease altercation immediately,” a robotic voice blared over the intercom.  “Three second warning.”
    The melee didn’t stop.  Mike’s opponent punched him in the forehead and there was the sound of celery snapping—the one felon’s hand breaking against the indestructible skin of the other.  The attacker cried in agony and clutched his wrist.
    All the three combatants suddenly yelped in pain. They cried out in unison as the hissing noise from their restraint collars grew in intensity.  Each grasped at their own throats and collapsed to the ground, twitching.  Armored security officers poured in through the reinforced doors of the room, surrounding the unconscious felons before dragging them off.
    The silence in the room persisted for a few seconds after the security doors shut.  Then the boisterous conversations and general bullshitting picked up again.  Jones continued what he had been saying before the fight broke out.  “They say the Master has something big coming up, and we all gonna get our licks in.”
    “Bullshit,” interjected Duffy, a guy about the same age as magnetic kid, but who’d been in the game for a few years.  He was on his third month in Blackiron.  “Everyone knows there ain’t no ‘Master.’  The Network used to be called the Brotherhood, right?”
    McHenry guessed that Duffy’s question answered his own.  When he was in the Brotherhood they’d always given him a fair shake.  There was no need, as far as he could tell, to worry about anything just because they changed their name.  He nodded, replying to Duffy’s question.  “When I was out there, yeah.”
    “Yeah, and it’s all about getting a fair share, everyone’s equals and shit.  There ain’t no mastermind running nothing.”  Duffy scratched the little soul patch on his chin.  “That ‘The Master’ shit is just to keep the heroes chasing ghosts and running down dead ends; keep them off our backs.”
    “You’ll see, man.”  Jones leaned back , shaking his head.  “You’ll see.”
    ***
    Hours later, back in the cell, McHenry reclined in his bunk and drifted in and out of his thoughts.  Krudoff strained to evacuate himself in the toilet at the back wall of the tiny room.  After what felt to McHenry to be an eternity, there was a flush.  Krudoff stood up, fastening the buttons along the front of his jumpsuit.
    “Damn,” he said.
    McHenry turned his head and raised a quizzical eyebrow at