None of them moved in on the situation.
“Fuck you, Knives.”
The shifter’s eyes narrowed, her pupils shrinking to fine points. She lashed out, winding back her arm and going for a closed-fisted strike against my cheek. It was easy enough to block, and even easier to twist her arm around her back. Knives was quick, but she was also weak without her ability to shapeshift.
I spun around behind her, locked her arm up behind her back, and slammed her cheek against the table. “Is that really all you’ve got?” I whispered in her ear.
“I’m going to kill you,” she hissed, “One of these nights, they’re going to pull you out of your cell and I’m going to kill you.”
“Not if I kill you first.”
I pulled her arm up further, and as Knives cried out in pain, one of her friends came in to join the fray. She grabbed my shoulder, and the momentary distraction was enough for Knives to wriggle out of my grasp. I whipped my elbow at the girl who’d grabbed me and blood spurted from her nose, freeing myself just in time to block Knives’ next attack as it arrived.
I was about to throw another punch of my own when Sanchez stepped in between us and broke up the fight. “That’s enough!” she yelled, “The both of you need to cool it, right now!”
“She started it!” Knives shrieked.
“I don’t care who started it.” Sanchez shot an angry look at the guards who were just standing there. “Could one of you swinging dicks come and take that girl to medical? Or do I have to do everything around here myself?”
The two guys who’d been watching the fight unfold finally approached. One of them grabbed the girl whose nose I’d broken and carted her off. The other pulled Knives away and went to escort her out of the canteen. Knives shrugged out of his grip and jabbed a finger at me.
“This isn’t over, fiend,” she snarled.
“You know, you’re gonna have to find a different insult,” I yelled, “You’re starting to wear that one out.”
“Alright, smartass,” Sanchez said, dragging me away, “Let’s get you back to your cell.”
I didn’t fight or resist her. Sanchez, out of everyone here, was the only guard I had any kind of respect for.
“You need to be more careful,” Sanchez said as we walked through the hallway back to D-Block.
“She’s an asshole,” I said. “I don’t have patience for assholes.”
“Maybe not, but this place will eat you alive if you don’t watch your own back. There aren’t many in here who will watch it for you.”
She was right. As soon as I turned my back on the rest of the canteen, another girl had jumped in to help Knives—to get a one-up on me. They were out for my blood, and I’d just been careless enough to let one touch me while my back was turned.
“Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say,” I said.
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re a guard. You wear a uniform, you have the weapons, the magic.”
“You think I don’t fight my own battles every single day around here? Look around you. How many female guards have you seen working the prison?”
I paused, trying to think. Again, Sanchez was right. She was the only girl I’d seen around here. “Why aren’t there more women?”
“This isn’t a place for women. It’s male run, male dominated, make controlled. Women are weak, in their eyes. We have to work four times as hard to get the same respect.”
“Isn’t it the same outside of the prison?”
“It’s worse, especially in Devil Falls. At least, in here, you get a uniform and a baton. I don’t like it here. I don’t like caging people. But as long as I’m here, I’m not out there, struggling to survive every single night… and I can try and make things a little better for those who come through me.”
We entered D-Block and continued on the short walk back to my cell. There was nobody in here, except for the guards manning their posts. Everyone was still in the canteen, having lunch. It was probably why Sanchez was being so candid with me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” I said. “Is this it? Is this my life now?”
“I still don’t know what to make of you,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re as much a killer as everyone says, or if you’re just sick of being treated like dirt.”
“The second one.”
“You can say that all you want, but I’ve seen the way you fight, how easily violence comes to you. It scares me.”
I shrugged. “You’re not the only one trying to make it in a male dominated world. Where I come from, women were there to serve. There were no equal rights fights because we had no rights. We were there to breed, and only breed. Wouldn’t you want to learn how to fight if it was up to you to make sure some swinging dick didn’t try putting a child in you in the middle of the night?”
“I’m… sorry you grew up in that world.”
“Water under the bridge, now. I survived. So, did you. Now we’re both trying to do what we can to make life easier for others.”
I thought I saw a smirk move across her face. It was like a ghost, then gone. “Get in your cell, inmate,” she said.
I planted an exaggerated salute, then stepped through the door, only to be immediately hit with a scent I didn’t recognize. It was potent, it was everywhere, and it was coming from the girl lying in the top bunk. My hackles instantly rose.
“Hey,” I snapped.
The girl sat upright, gave me a quick stare, and hopped off the bunk. She was shorter than me, but she had an incredibly in-shape figure, brown skin, big brown eyes, and curly black hair held up in a tail. Impossibly, her lips were painted bright red. I wasn’t even aware lipstick was allowed inside the prison.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
The girl placed her hands on her hips, eyed me up and down, and frowned. “I’m Alexa, who the fuck are you?”
CHAPTER THREE
I had barely laid eyes on her, and already I wanted to tear her throat open with my teeth. I frowned, jaw clenching, heart racing. “I’m Six,” I said, trying to hold onto my own self-control for as long as possible, “And that’s my bunk.”
“I don’t see your name on it.”
I walked up to her. “Maybe you should look a little closer.”
She squared up to me. “Maybe you should make me.”
It was like a quick snap. The dam of my resolve broke, and I couldn’t hold back. I grabbed her head and went to smash it into the metal part of the bunk, but she pushed against it with her hands, and with incredible acrobatic prowess, she spun around and kicked me in the stomach.
I had to let her go and stagger back a few paces, staring at her—glaring at her.
Neither of us were even remotely finished, though. She came at me this time, fists flying, feet swinging. I ducked, and dodged, and blocked, trying to keep ahead of her movements but more than anyone I’d met so far, she was able to keep up with me. She’d had training, real training, and under normal circumstances that would’ve made me pause, even for a second.