Kent had his head in his fourth toilet bowl of the morning. He still had the grasses to mow and waste to sort out as he was serving two consecutive punishments. He had been washing the toilets and bathrooms for the past few weeks while the lawn and waste were due to his talking back to the warden.
The warden himself didn't issue the punishments but his deputy, Maxwell. With each passing day, scrubbing 25 toilets clean did not suck half as bad.
"What if he sees me?" He finally voiced out his fears.
"No." Kent quickly countered his thought. He was dead weight. Useless, that was what they all called him. He had every reason to run.
He ignored the ache that spread across his every joint, using up all the strength he could muster. The sharp pain felt like it was eating him alive, gnawing at his joints with every passing second. His muscles screamed for relief, vision blurring. He couldn't let anyone see him this way; weak. He needed Lily.
Splash!
The bucket of water he held up fell from his hands. They were losing grip again. His vision went completely blank for a second and he quickly attributed it to his lack of breakfast.
"It is pretty late." He muttered to himself. Kent decided to take a trip to lily. Lily was a doctor in the facility who possessed healing magic. He met her while he was on library duty.
There were only a handful of healers in the country with most working for the influential families.
With the asteroid came a lot of strange occurrences, the emergence of powerful abilities being one of them. A lot of individuals were exploited for their gifts and so a lot of people went into hiding, living mundane lives whilst having abilities that could potentially help the nation. Kent didn't fully blame them, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't do the same.
Lily worked as a librarian in the prison.
"I hate using my powers for bad." She told him when he asked her why she was in the prison's dusty library.
"I know it's a privileged thing to say." She chuckled nervously, "after all there are a lot of people who lost their lives fighting. I could be of use. I only get to waste away here because of my father."
"It's your truth." Kent said in response. "It's not your fault you were born privileged."
It was the first time someone didn't judge her. She watched the man who clearly looked like he was suffering carry on with his cleaning.
"How long are you stationed here?" She heard herself ask.
"Until the deputy warden decides I've inhaled enough dust." His response made her laugh heartily. Kent thought she sounded amazing.
"Can I" She asked and Kent arched a brow, making her laugh.
"I can tell. You're hurting." Lily ignored her thumping heart and turned Kent towards herself. Looking into his eyes, she gave him a stern look, one Kent interpreted as her telling him o trust her.
Kent spent two weeks in the library and Lily helped him with his pain since then.
All she did was stretch out her hands and all his pain was gone. It was a strange feeling knowing that she used something other than modern medicine but he was grateful.
Wheh she was healing him, it didn't just feel like something physical; for a slight moment, they felt connected and coming from Kent, it was a foreign feeling but it was enough to frighten him. Only this time, he couldn't afford to distance himself from her; he needed her.
He saw Lily every other week to keep his pain at bay but lately he found himself in pain every day with each episode worse than the next.
Kent had always had pain since the surgery. He was never sure if his ailment was as a result of the surgery or something else but he never got answers.
George did give him pills for the pain but since his fake death and escape eleven years ago, he had been without relief. Until he met Lily.
"Fuck my life." Kent muttered as he held his abdomen and exited the bathroom stall. His vision got blurry and he held onto the wall. Kent's mind struggled to focus, the edges of his consciousness slipping through his fingers like sand. His chest heaved with panic, afraid that he wouldn't make it to the library. Was he going to die before seeing Brie again?
His body felt foreign, every breath a battle as the darkness crept back in. He felt himself slipping.
"Fuck." He cursed again and his vision went black.
~
The sound of monitors beeping drew closer as Kent felt his consciousness return. He hadn't opened his eyes yet but he knew he was in a hospital and that wasn't good. The prison had no monitors.
"Where the hell am I?" He thought to himself. All he could hear were the beeping sounds but he knew for a fact that he wasn't the only one present.
Kent had keen observation skills and once walked a mile with his eyes closed. That was one of the many skills he acquired at the lab with the scientists.
He drew a breath.
"Eleven years." A familiar voice said and Kent's blood ran cold, stomach twisting. The voice was unmistakable, cutting through the haze of his thoughts like a knife. He could already feel the weight of his past crushing him, the suffocating fear that had never really lefy, creeping back to claim him.
"No…no. Not now.." He repeated in his brain.
"Today is my lucky day." The man chuckled, "Anthony?" He called out to the prison warden.
"Sir!" The poor man trembled in his boots so much that he was sweating despite the air conditioning. To everyone in his facilitly, the warden was a man who had never once shown fear and now, his usually controlled demeanor had dissolved into one of outright terror, a man on the edge.
"Do you mind telling me how my favorite toy ended up in your facility?"
Kent's pulse raced faster, breath shallow. The pieces of the past were coming together—too fast. It wasn't enough that he's escaped. It wasn't enough that he's made it this far. The ghosts of his past were alive, and now they had come to collect what was owed.