Two weeks after the riot.

I'd been called to the Warden's office exactly once before — Year 1, some paperwork bullshit about my intake forms being incomplete. Guard walked me down, I signed three things I didn't read, walked back. No drama.

This was different.

Morning count. Guard Thompson read my name off his clipboard like he was reading a death sentence. Flat. Official. The kind of voice that means someone above him gave the order and didn't bother explaining why.

"O'Reilly. Warden wants you."

The entire tier went quiet for about half a second. Then the noise came back — louder, if anything. Everyone talking at once, speculating. I could feel the eyes tracking me as I grabbed my jacket off the bunk. Brotherhood noting it. Latin Kings noting it. The unaffiliated guys who kept their heads down and their mouths shut, they were noting it too.

Books was on the upper bunk with his Dostoevsky, watching me over the top of the pages. He didn't say anything. Didn't need to. His eyes said it all: Be careful. Come back.

Yeah. That was the plan.

Thompson walked me through the facility — past the dayroom, past the Pit where the noise echoed up from all four tiers like the place was screaming, through two locked doors that clanged shut behind us with sounds that felt final. Admin wing. Different planet. The floors were actually clean. The fluorescent lights actually worked. No smell of sweat and bleach and fear, just... office smell. Coffee. Paper. The air conditioning worked here.

Warden Hutchins's door was open.

He was behind his desk — wire-rimmed glasses, coffee in a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST DAD, organized surface with not a single paper out of place. The man had been running CNCC for fifteen years. Three Wardens before him had burned out or transferred. Hutchins stayed. That told you something.

"Sit down, O'Reilly."

I sat. Cheap plastic chair across from his desk. The desk was elevated — subtle, but effective. Power dynamic crystal clear. I was looking up at him. That was the point.

Thompson left. Door closed.

Hutchins took a sip of his coffee. Looked at me over the rim of his mug. Not angry. Not friendly. Just... assessing.

"You do spells," he said.

Not a question.

I kept my mouth shut.

"Curses. Protection work. Love spells, probably. Whatever the inmates want and can pay for. You've been doing it for about a year now." He set the mug down carefully. "I know this because my guards know this, the inmates know this, and frankly the only person in this building who pretends not to know is you."

I still didn't say anything. Hutchins didn't look like he wanted a confession.

"I don't care if it's real," he continued. "That's not my concern. My concern is 1,400 inmates in a facility built for 1,200, with not enough guards to keep them from killing each other on a good day. On a bad day, I need something else."

He leaned back in his chair. Not relaxed — Hutchins didn't do relaxed — but settling in for an explanation.

"You're useful to me, O'Reilly. You know why? Because inmates come to you for their bullshit instead of going to the yard with a shiv. Fear of your curses prevents some violence. Hope for your spells prevents some despair. It's not a solution. It's a pressure valve. And I've been letting it run."

The math was cold. Pragmatic. And it made perfect sense. Of course Hutchins knew. Of course he'd been allowing it. The question was why he was telling me now.

"But the riot changed things."

There it was. My stomach dropped.

"You fought," Hutchins said. His voice didn't change. Still flat. Still bureaucratic. "You bled for Brotherhood. Saved one of Axel's enforcers, from what I hear. That's not a neutral practitioner anymore, O'Reilly. That's a faction weapon."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. What the fuck was I supposed to say? *I didn't mean to become a faction weapon*? That would sound stupid even to me.

"And faction weapons," Hutchins continued, "get targeted. By other factions, by their own people when they become inconvenient, and by me if they become a liability to institutional order."

He picked up his coffee again. Took another sip. Let that sink in.

"So, here's the deal. You stay useful. You stay *just* neutral enough that the other factions don't decide you need to disappear. You do that, I let you operate. You step out of that line — contraband, violence, disruption — I put you in the Hole so deep you forget what fluorescent light looks like."

The Hole. Segregation. 23-hour lockdown, concrete box, no human contact except guards who hated you. I'd heard stories. Guys came out different. Or didn't come out at all.

"We clear?" Hutchins asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Get out."

I stood. Walked to the door. His voice stopped me before I reached it.

"O'Reilly."

I turned.

"Don't make me regret this." He was already looking back at his paperwork. Conversation over.

Thompson escorted me back. The walk felt longer going back than it had coming in. Every locked door that clanged open, then shut, then locked again. Every tier we passed where inmates watched me through the bars. By the time I got back to 3-Alpha, the whole facility knew I'd been summoned.

Books was still on the upper bunk. Still reading. He glanced at me when I came in.

"Still breathing," I said.

"Good sign."

Yeah. For now.

Next yard time. Wednesday afternoon. I was sitting on my usual bench — not really *my* bench, but I'd been sitting there long enough that people knew it was where I could be found. Made business easier. Clients knew where to approach.

Werner found me there.

He didn't waste time. Brotherhood didn't do small talk when it was serious.

"Chains is dying."

Garrett "Chains" Holbrook. 44. Enforcer. Loyal to Axel since before I'd arrived. I'd seen him around — big guy, quiet, the kind of quiet that meant he'd done things he didn't talk about. Pancreatic cancer. The fast kind. Doctors had given him six months. That was two months ago.

"Yeah," I said. "I heard."

"We want you to heal him."

My first instinct was to laugh. I didn't. Werner's face told me this wasn't a joke.

"I can't cure cancer, Werner. I'm not Jesus."

"We're not asking for Jesus." Werner sat down next to me. Close enough to be having a private conversation, far enough to not be threatening. "We're asking you to try."

There it was. Brotherhood language. Try. Which meant do it or else. Werner wasn't the one making the call — he was delivering it. Axel's fingerprints all over this.

"Try," Werner said again. "That's all we ask."

It was a lie. They wanted results. But I was smart enough to know that trying — visibly, publicly, with enough ritual weight behind it — bought me something even if it failed. It demonstrated loyalty. Demonstrated effort. And Brotherhood understood effort, even when it didn't pan out.

"I'll look into it," I said.

Werner nodded. Stood up. Walked away without looking back.

I sat there on the bench for another ten minutes, running the math. Healing magic. The books in the library all said the same thing: it was the hardest kind. Harder than curses. Harder than protection wards. Because healing required giving something up. Your own life force. Your own energy. And even then, cancer might not give a shit.

But I'd told Werner I'd look into it.

So, I looked.

Library. Evening. After dinner count, before lights out. Books had the place mostly to himself — he worked there now, shelving returns, helping inmates find what they needed, keeping things organized in the way only Books could. I found him in the back corner, surrounded by a stack of books three feet high.

"Healing magic," I said.

He looked up. Didn't ask why. Just nodded and started pulling books.

Crowley. Rampa. Some Christian mystic I'd never heard of. A translated copy of the Corpus Hermeticum that looked like it had been printed in 1952 and read by exactly nobody since. Books stacked them on the table between us.

"Healing requires life force," Books said, opening Crowley first. He'd already marked the page. "Not ambient energy. Not belief alone. *Your* life force. You'd be giving part of yourself to fight what's eating him."

"How much?"

Books looked at me over his wire-rimmed glasses. "Enough to matter. Enough that if it doesn't work, you've paid the price anyway."

I stared at the page. Diagrams of energy transfer — old-fashioned occult art, all flowing lines and ethereal light. Pretty on paper. In practice, it meant cutting myself open magically and pouring the contents into a dying man's chest.

"And even then?" I asked.

Books was quiet for a moment. He set the book down carefully. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. Books was good at that — delivering hard truths without being cruel about it.

"Cancer isn't a curse, Thor. It's not malevolent. It's not someone's ill will made manifest. It's biology gone wrong. Magic fights intention, belief, will. Cancer doesn't have any of those. It just... grows."

"So, I might bleed myself dry and it doesn't do shit."

"You might manage the symptoms," Books said. "Pain. Energy. Quality of life." He met my eyes. "That's not nothing."

I thought about Chains. The yellow skin. The way he moved like everything hurt. The way he'd stopped coming to the yard because walking from his cell to the weight pile took everything he had.

"No," I said. "It's not nothing."

Three nights later. Infirmary. After lights out

Patricia Mills had been running the infirmary for eleven years. She'd seen inmates pray, rage, beg, and die in her twenty beds. When I came to her that afternoon — quiet, direct, asked for permission to work on Chains after count — she looked at me for a long time.

"I don't know what you do," she said finally. "And I don't care. That man is dying. If you want to try something, I'll be here."

She didn't leave. That surprised me. When I showed up at 11 PM with my razor blade and my books and my head full of diagrams, Patricia was standing in the corner by the supply cabinet. Arms crossed. Watching. Professional. Curious.

Not afraid.

Chains was in Bed 12. Corner by the east wall, under a window that looked out on nothing but dark yard and fence. He was thinner than the last time I'd seen him —and that was only two weeks ago. Skin the color of old newspaper. Eyes sunken but alert. Scared, underneath the enforcer's face.

"You gonna fix me?" he asked.

"I'm gonna try."

I set up the circle first. Slow. Deliberate. Blood from my palm — the razor blade was taped inside my waistband, same one I'd been using for every major working since Kraus died. I drew the protection circle on the concrete floor around Chains's bed. Algiz rune at the four cardinal points. North, south, east, west. Then the healing sigils inside the circle — drawn from memory, from the books, from instinct that might've been Kraus's or might've been mine. I didn't know if the specific symbols mattered. I thought what mattered was that I believed they did.

Healing sigils on Chains's chest. I pulled back the hospital gown, drew directly on his skin with my blood. He watched. Didn't say anything. The yellow skin made the blood look almost black.

Then I laid my hands on the cancer site.

Right side of the abdomen. Books had showed me the diagrams — pancreas tucked in there behind everything else, doing its job until suddenly it wasn't. I could feel it immediately. Not physically. Magically. Like pressing your hand into something rotten.

It wasn't a smell. It was a *sensation.* Wrong cells. Multiplying. Hungry. Alive in the way that tumors are alive, which is not the way anything should be alive.

I closed my eyes.

Poured will into it. Visualized what I wanted: the cancer cells shrinking. The healthy cells fighting back. The body remembering what it was supposed to do. I spoke — Norse prayers first, because that's where I started, that's where Kraus started me. Then Christian prayers, because maybe Jesus actually knew something. Then words that weren't prayers at all, just raw desperate *need* pushed outward through my voice.

*Heal him. Fight it. Shrink it. Kill it. Please.*

The drain started immediately.

It was like someone opened a valve at the base of my spine. Energy flowing out of me and into Chains — into the ritual, into the blood circle, into the fight his body couldn't wage on its own. I could feel it leaving. Could feel myself getting lighter. Emptier.

Ten minutes in: nosebleed.

I tasted copper. Didn't stop.

Fifteen minutes in: the room started to tilt.

I heard Patricia step forward. I waved her off with one hand, kept the other on Chains's abdomen. Didn't stop.

Twenty minutes in: my legs gave out.

Patricia caught me before I hit the floor. Lowered me down to the concrete. Professional. Efficient. I was shaking. Blood on my upper lip, my chin, my hands. Head splitting like someone was driving a nail through my skull from the inside.

"O'Reilly." Patricia's voice, steady. "You're done."

I looked up at the bed through blurred vision.

Chains was sitting up.

"Pain's gone," he said. He sounded surprised. Sounded like a man who hadn't felt something other than agony in weeks. He moved his arms, twisted his torso experimentally. "What the fuck did you do?"

I didn't answer. I was too busy trying not to black out.

Patricia helped me to my feet. Walked me back to Cell 47 herself — against protocol, probably, but she did it anyway. Books was pretending to sleep on the upper bunk. He opened his eyes when I stumbled in.

"Bad?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah."

I collapsed on the lower bunk. Didn't even take my shoes off. Just lay there, shaking, bleeding, feeling like someone had scooped out my insides with a rusty spoon.

Three days before I could do anything more strenuous than walk to the toilet without my hands shaking.

The news came through the Brotherhood grapevine on day two.

Chains had scans. Routine check, seeing how fast the cancer was spreading. The results were... complicated.

Pain was gone. First time in months he wasn't on morphine. Energy was back. He could walk without help. Could eat without wanting to die. Could sleep without waking up every hour from the agony.

The cancer was still there.

Werner found me in the yard on day four. I was sitting on my bench, still pale, still drained, drinking water like it was the only thing keeping me upright.

"Axel says thanks," Werner said.

I nodded. Waited for the *but.*

"He says good enough. Protection continues."

No but.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Good enough. For now. Chains would die eventually — the cancer would win, because cancer always wins against magic. But I'd bought him months. Maybe more. Months of living without pain. Months of walking. Eating. Being human instead of just suffering.

That counted for something.

It had to.

A week after the healing ritual. I was mostly recovered — still got tired faster than I used to, still had a headache that wouldn't fully go away, but functional. Back on the library cart. Back to business.

Rey found me during yard time.

He didn't approach casually. No pretense of browsing or passing by. Just walked directly up to my bench and stood there until I looked up.

Luis "Rey" Santana. 38. Dominican. Street-smart in the way that meant he'd survived things most people don't survive, and he knew exactly how much that was worth. Latin Kings leader on 3-Alpha. Flaco had reported to him — though Rey had never acknowledged Flaco as anything more than a low-level soldier.

"El Bruja," Rey said. Slight smile. Not friendly. Assessing. "We got a problem on 2-Beta. Needs handling."

"What kind of problem?"

"A Kingsmen. Disrespecting. Running his mouth about La Familia." His tone was even. Conversational. Like he was discussing the weather. "Want you to curse him. Make him sick. Scared. Whatever you do."

I looked at him. Held the eye contact. Didn't flinch.

"I don't do gang wars."

Rey's smile didn't change. But something behind his eyes did. A door closing.

"This isn't a request, bruja."

"Then it's a refusal."

Silence. The yard didn't go quiet — it never does — but the space between us felt compressed. Rey tilted his head, studying me like I was a new piece of information he was filing away for later.

"You do work for the woods," Rey said. Not accusing. Just stating fact. "For the Kingsmen. Thor heals Chains last week — that's Brotherhood business."

"That was personal. A man was dying."

"And this is personal to La Familia."

"No. This is politics. I don't work politics."

Rey held my gaze for a long beat. Then: "Piénsalo bien. Think careful, bruja. You're either with us or against us. That's how it works in here."

I stood up. Didn't rush it. Didn't show fear.

"Then I guess I'm against you."

I walked away. Back exposed. Expecting the hit — shiv, fist, something. It didn't come. Too public. Too many eyes. Rey wasn't stupid enough to start something in broad daylight over a refusal.

But the damage was done.

I could feel it in the air for the rest of the day. Latin Kings watching me differently now. Not with curiosity. Not with the cautious respect they'd had before. With calculation. Like they were running the math on when and how to make me pay for the insult.

Werner saw the exchange from across the yard. I knew because he told me about it that evening, leaning against the bars of Cell 47 during free time.

"Axel says Brotherhood backs you," Werner said. "But don't make enemies faster than we can cover them."

Translation: You're running out of room.

Yeah. I knew.

Cell 47. Lights out. Books on the upper bunk, reading by the last thin light from the window. Me on the lower bunk, staring at the ceiling, running the math.

Warden wanted me useful but not too powerful. Brotherhood wanted me committed but controllable. Latin Kings wanted me gone. Black Kingsmen were watching to see which way the wind blew. And everyone — *everyone* — wanted to use me.

"Everyone wants to use me," I said out loud. Not complaining. Just stating it. "Brotherhood. Kings. Even the Warden."

Books didn't look up from his book right away. When he did, he set it down carefully on his chest. Considered.

"How do I keep my soul in all this?" I asked.

Books was quiet for a moment. The question deserved a real answer. Books always gave real answers.

"Same way anyone does inside," he said finally. "One choice at a time."

I nodded. Stared at the ceiling. Thought about Chains sitting up in bed, pain-free for the first time in months. Thought about Rey's eyes closing like a door. Thought about Hutchins's clean desk and the Hole somewhere below us, waiting for anyone who stepped out of line.

One choice at a time.

Yeah.

That was all anyone could do.