The land on which the new prison was built doesn’t have the violent history of the last one. It helps. But once a potential riot gets out of hand, it’s difficult to gain control again.

But me? I’m Sweden. I’m nonpartisan. I’m neutral territory. I read in my bunk while my new cellmate goes out to party. He never takes me anywhere.

I do my best to stay out of it. I really do. But when a guard—one of the good ones, not the douche bags who think they walk on water—is taken hostage, I have no choice but to step in. Either that or live with myself, and God knows that’s hard enough as it is.

I step out to see three men dragging O’Connell, the guard, toward the control room. He’s bleeding at the temple and mouth and struggling for air. Partly because of his injuries and partly because of the pepper balls that have been shot into the dayroom. Tears are streaming down all their faces, and I’m starting to feel the effects of the pepper spray as well.

One inmate holds a shiv at O’Connell’s throat. The second is wielding a wrench he stole when the rioters invaded the shop. And the third is telling him how he is going to decapitate him and use his dismembered body as a toilet. Only his words are, “I’m going to saw your head off and shit down your throat.” I was paraphrasing.

O’Connell is terrified, and for good reason. These things rarely end well. I cross the catwalk through a ticker tape parade of toilet paper, trash, shredded bedding, and the occasional mattress.

The inmates at the end of the walk grow wary. The closer I get, the more nervous they become, but adrenaline has flooded every cell in their bodies. They’ll be hard to stop. Well, harder than normal.

I lower my head as I walk forward. Glare from underneath my lashes.

They get more fidgety. The one with the shiv turns, positioning O’Connell between him and me. I curse under my breath when I realize O’Connell’s been stabbed. At least twice. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but he needs medical attention fast. I’ve learned that human bodies are much more fragile than my own. While his wounds would hardly faze me, they could be fatal to a mere mortal.

“Back off, Farrow,” the shiv wielder says, holding it out proudly like a peacock displaying his feathers.

I smile and the guy resigns himself to fighting me. But what he wants is the guard. That particular guard, and I wonder why.

He rushes me, dropping the guard in the process. O’Connell crumbles to the ground while the other two join their comrade. It takes me longer to incapacitate them than I thought it would. The adrenaline keeps them moving despite broken bones and possible skull fractures. I slam one’s head into the rail of the catwalk. He’ll live. The other I toss over it. His future is more iffy.

Now that I’ve gotten them out of the way, I dodge the leader’s shiv, grab him around the throat, look into his eyes, and search for why he hates the guard so much. It’s not a pleasant process when I scour the minds of the living. I don’t do it often.

Since he has O’Connell on the brain anyway, I find the memory easily. He’s being strip-searched, and the guard eyes him with blatant disgust. Not that I can blame him, but he tells the testy inmate that he smells like fish.

O’Connell was standing back, observing. He laughed when the guard spoke. But what Shiv failed to see was that O’Connell was not laughing at him. He was laughing at the other guard. The idiot that none of the guards liked. He was fired months ago, but Shiv never forgot the insults that were thrown at him. Some guys can hold a grudge.

Shiv’s going to hell for his malicious treatment of the elderly in his neighborhood. Clearly he never got the whole do-unto-others thing. I figure I’ll be doing the world a favor by sending him on his way a few years early.

As he pushes forward, I use his own momentum to snap his neck and send him over the catwalk as well.

I grab O’Connell and head for the control room. No one else comes after me. They know better. Even as I’m shouldering a guard, an enemy player in the game, they leave me alone.

When we get to the control room, there is a group trying to get through the glass barrier. They see me coming and part, their faces a mixture of fury and shock.

One of them itches to take me out. I can feel it. He doesn’t want to give up the game yet, but most of the men have been put in lockdown already. Those who are still roaming have absolutely zero chance of getting out. Not that they all want out. Some just want revenge. They go after other inmates who have “wronged them,” according to their demented, drug-scarred minds.

“Open the door,” I say to the guards in the booth.

They glance at each other, trying to decide what to do.

“He needs medical attention.” O’Connell slumps lower and lower at my side.

Holding him up is not a problem. Holding him up while fighting off the men who have gathered might be.

I turn to them. They all know what I’m capable of. Or they think they do. I lower the guard to the floor, then give them my full attention. I’ve decided to see this as an opportunity to make my name even more influential. Even more powerful.

Most of the inmates in Level 5 are in for murder and other violent crimes. Nobody will miss them. I take a deep breath as they close the circle around me, gaining courage from the numbers they have.

The world around me goes silent. Alarms stop blaring. Inmates stop yelling. Doors stop banging.

There are eleven. Two are almost as tall as I am. I start with the men on my left and work my way around, deciding in the span between a single heartbeat who lives and who dies. Their crimes are numerous and plentiful.

The trick is to keep them from rushing me long enough to incapacitate the majority. And like all tricks, sometimes there is a technical glitch. I throw a quick jab at the first one, hard enough to shatter every bone in his face and fracture the third and fourth vertebrae of his spine. I step in and elbow the next one, causing pretty much the same amount of damage. The third inmate wins a broken kneecap and dislocated shoulder. The fourth loses several teeth, the contents of his stomach, and a fair amount of blood. I do all that before the mob takes a single step. Trying to thin out the herd.

It doesn’t work. They jump me en masse, kicking and punching and stabbing. But the icing on the cake is inmate number 5447. He’s pulling my hair. He’s pulling my fucking hair. I snap his wrist along with a couple of necks, crack a few ribs, and relocate several noses.

By the time I’m finished, only three are dead. The worst of the worst. They deserved to die long ago, in my humble opinion. Not that either me or my opinion has ever been humble.

The rest I leave rolling on the ground in agony, their bones broken or their skulls a little shattered. All in all, it takes me seven seconds to take them down. I counted.

The guards behind the glass are standing with mouths agape.

I rest my hands on the glass, my chest heaving from exertion. “I trust you’ll have my back on this?”

They nod, too astonished to speak.

“Then open the fucking door.”

They scramble to get the control room door open and drag their downed man inside.

“Farrow,” O’Connell says through gritted teeth, “get in here. If they find out—”

I laugh softly. “If they find out, I’ll be more of a freak?”

“More of a legend,” one of the other guards says.