text: he game. All you could think about was Vein. You spent most of the afternoon staring at your table, losing more hands than you ever had before. So intently did you think about him that you didn't even notice when the other men around you started to leave the table.
  
  Despite your intentions, you flinch when Vein sits down across from you. "Hi, Fish," he says with a crooked smirk. "Thought we'd get to know one another." You look over to the guards. An inmate is raising a fuss at them, yelling and stomping. "The CO's aren't coming over here, Fish. I took care of that." You look him in the eye. "I got nothing to say to you," you say with as strong a voice as you can. Vein makes a mock-pout before saying, "Hey, I just wanna play a game. I have a couple questions. See if you can get the right answer." He leans back in his seat. "First question: why do they call me Vein?" You don't know if you should humor this psychopath, but maybe not answering would show weakness. You say, "Too much heroine?" Vein laughs out loud at that. "Good guess, but no." Reaching between his legs he says, "Think of something veiny." He laughs again, a single, loud bark.
  
  You can see exactly where he's going with this. Leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table, he looks you in the eye and says, "One more question, Fish, then I'll leave you alone." He looks back toward the guard shack to make sure they're still occupied, then licks his lips and asks his final question.
  
  "Have you ever been fucked?"
  
  > answer with "No, and I don't plan on it."
  This has gone on long enough. You need to make it clear you're not going to be this guy's bitch. You look him in the eye and in as intimidating a voice as you can muster, you say, "No. And I don't plan on it."
  
  He contorts his face into mock-shock? "Aw, Honey." He shakes his head. "You don't plan on it?" He leans forward, drops his smile and says, "Well, we're gonna fuck you."
  
  That's it, he's said enough. You have no choice. You clinch your fist as tight as you can, brace your legs to jump, and leap toward him as hard as you can. Just before your fist connects with his face, Vein jumps backward with a laugh. You suddenly feel a painful blow to the back of your head, and then a forearm is pressed against your throat from behind, choking you. Your head is slammed into the table once, then twice. You're unconscious before your head hits the third time.
  
  You wake up on your stomach. Your arms and legs are pinned so that you can barely move. At least three or four people are holding you down. You're naked from the waste down. You feel a pressure on the back of your legs from someone's knee, then a hand reaches around your neck from behind and pulls your head back. You feel a face pressed against your ear, and warm, heavy breathing tickles your face. "I wanted you to be awake for this, Sweetie." Vein says. "I want you to feel it when I fuck you."
  
  Suddenly you feel more agony than you ever have in your life. You begin to scream, but someone shoves a sock in your mouth, and little sound comes out. Vein viciously thrusts into you over and over again as you struggle uselessly. An unknown amount of time passes before Vein falls down on top of you and in ragged breath whispers into your ear, "Mmmm, that was wonderful, Sweetie. But now all my friends need to feel what it's like to be inside of you." He shoves his tongue into your mouth before slaming your head into the ground. You momentarily lose consciousness. Seconds later, more intense, searing agony brings you back to awareness as another one of Vein's gang takes his turn.
  
  It lasts for what seems like hours, but eventually you are left on the floor, bleeding. You lay there, sobbing with your hands to your face, curled in the fetal position. You don't even move when the guards call for a count. They find you there, nearly unconscious.
  
  > Recovery Part II
  You stare at the floor. Lying on your stomach in the medical wing, you contemplate all that has happened, all the choices you made, and the unfairness of the situation you are in. Yes, a man died, but he deserved to. Your punishment grossly outweighed whatever crimes you committed.
  
  You look at the digital clock just as the doctor comes in: seventeen hundred hours. Military time, for some reason. "You needed stitches in three places, but I think you'll make it. You should be good to return to Gen Pop in about a week, should things go well." Distressed, you turn back to the doctor. "Doc, please, you know what will happen to me if I go back there."
  
  He looks at you with concerned eyes, saying, "I'm sorry son, but if you are healthy enough to return, I'm legally obligated to discharge you to where you belong. If you want to go to Administrative Segregation, you're going to have to name names to the Correctional Officers, and probably the Warden too." You slam your fists on the cot. "Doc, if I snitch and the guards reject my application for Ad Seg, eventually someone is going to find out and I'll be a dead man." With a sigh the doctor says, "Again, I'm sorry, but my hands are tied." He looks at your IV and says, "I'm going to get you some more pain medicine, then I'll leave you. I can add one more day to your time here, but unless you file a formal complaint, there's nothing I can do. I know it's backwards, but this is the way it is." With that he walks out the door.
  
  You collapse in despair. Backwards indeed... The clock reads 17:03. Three minutes and your only chance at survival is pulled out from underneath you. Frustrated tears fall down your face as you look out the window, realizing your life was now measured in days.
  
  > Hard Time
  No one killed you, but as soon as you returned to General Population Vein and his gang of slime balls came back. Your first day back you tried fighting again, but after they subdued you, a knife point to your eye made you submit. Afraid to put you back in medical wing so fast, they forced you to perform fellatio on each one of them instead of raping you anally again, but even that was full of pain, as they forced you to vomit over and over again. The degradation and humiliation to come, however, was far worse.
  
  The second week after your return they made you shave off every hair on your body below the neck, and after that the attacks only increased in frequency. Every day they took you after that, thinking of new ways to degrade and abuse you. Vein began making you call him 'Daddy' and talk dirty to him when he raped you. Soon you began to contemplate suicide, but Samantha's letters were your saving grace.
  
  She wrote you once a week, telling you to hang in there, and that she'd wait for you. These letters kept you going. You'd already endured today's attack at the hands of Vein and his group, so you tried to relax as much as possible, passing the time.
  
  You sigh. Passing time is all you could really do in this place.
  
  > A Change
  The routine continued for several weeks, until you didn't receive a letter from Samantha. For the first couple of weeks you kept your worry in check, but after the third week you started panicking. Your despondence got to the point that even Vein and his rapist friends seemed to take less joy in your humiliation.
  
  You are close to giving in to despair when you finally receive a letter from her. Hurriedly you open it.
  
  Crushed, you let the letter slide to the floor. With no reason to carry on, you slide down to the floor with it and remain there, catatonic. At Count, the guards see you and harass you. One of them even kicks you, but you refuse to move.
  
  Perhaps fearing for their jobs, the guards have you moved to the medical wing. After refusing to respond to the doctor, you're eventually shipped off to Psych Ward, where you sit in your single-occupant cell and wait for Death to free you from your mortal chains.
  
  > A letter from your "Attorney"
  Days went by with you barely eating or drinking. Sometimes you didn't even move to use the bathroom. You were trying to will yourself to die, and slowly succeeding. Frustrated at the slow pace of your demise, you began to rig your sheet into a hangman's noose. You were just about to do the act when an envelope slipped under your door.
  
  Curious, you take the envelope and open it. Reading it, you can make no sense of it. It seems to be a letter from a religious organization, but the last sentence gives you a start: "And Never forget to look for the truth that hides in the lies."
  
  Arjan had said something similar to you. In a rush of adrenaline, you re-examine the letter.
  
  > get Out
  You realize Arjan must have sent this letter. But what does it mean? It seems to be just a warning about an impending apocalypse, but you sense there is something more. You spend the better part of the day reading the letter. Frustrated, you fling it to the floor. Then you notice the left-most column. Is that a vertical message? You outline the letters.
  
  You quickly write down each letter, discovering a message saying, "To get out remember arraignment." Your arraignment? You think back to the day, and nothing special comes to mind. All you can remember is that your original 'attorney' had the wrong date for your arraignment. March seventeenth.
  
  Suddenly you freeze. March the seventeenth. 3:17. That was the scripture Diego quoted to you, and it was about being free! 2 Corinthians 3:17. A lifetime of strange occurrences has conditioned you to believe that there are no coincidences. The Veil Watchers didn't betray you, they gave you the means to escape! These numbers must be the code to open the door beyond General Population. You don't know how they did it, but after what you saw in the black SUV, you figure they have the ability to influence Diego in just the right way to fabricate a "coincidence" for you to discover.
  
  "Arjan, you sneaky bastard," you muse aloud. You have a means to open the door, but you still don't have a way out. Not with those guards. Something will have to be done about them.
  
  You begin to plan.
  
  > Plan
  After days of thinking about it, you have an idea of what you need to do - and it will involve extreme risk. First, you need to be back in your old cell block and outside your cell, so your escape will have to be in broad daylight. Second, you need the correctional officers in the guard shack to open the doors and come into the common room, so that you can sneak past. This part will be extremely difficult, and may require you harming a guard. And how do you get them out? You'll have to start a riot, another extremely risky action. Fortunately, that won't be impossible, as word is that racial tensions are getting high in your old cell block. All you would need to do is give a small push to tip the balance.
  
  The third portion of your escape requires you figuring out the guard code, and to your disappointment it won't be as simple as you first thought. You stood near the gate for a couple of days, listening as correctional officers input the code. As best as you can figure, there are six digits to enter, not the three-one-seven you had assumed based on Arjan's letter. Surely Arjan would have given you enough information to figure it out. Could it be the number of lines in the letter are a part of the code? You look at the letter.
  
  Twenty-seven. But even if you add a two and a seven to the digits, you still only have five. You are missing one digit. Not to mention, it's possible that two of the digits are from the number actually written in the letter: 44. Either way, you know of two possibilities for five of the six digits.
  
  You rack your brain for over an hour trying to figure out the last one. You recall all the events that led to this moment: your trip with Samantha to the Carnival, your time in the hospital, the death of Reiner and your arrest, and your time in prison, including the events with Vein and your cellmate, Diego.
  
  Suddenly you smile. Something Diego had said to you the night before Vein attacked you; the scripture he quoted: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." There was one more number besides 3 and 17. It might have been obvious to you had you been raised Christian. You'd almost forgotten, but now you know that digit, and you know that it has to be the first one in the sequence. All that remains is finding the two final digits, and there are only two possibilities for them...
  
  You found the code. Now all you need is to start a riot.
  
  > Riot
  Everything was set. You convinced the doctor you were well enough to return to General Population, and managed to avoid Vein and his gang for most of the day. All that's left is starting the riot, and you were well on your way to doing that.
  
  You'd been playing poker at the table for a few hours, and had been dominating as usual, except this time you made sure all your big wins were against a particular inmate, a leader of the local branch of the Vice Lords gang. While not an exclusively Black gang, in prison you've learned that few things matter more than race, and in this case you were playing with that sentiment. You felt horrible taking advantage of the constant racial tension in prison, but getting out of prison was more important to you than feeling good about yourself. To add insult to injury, you'd invited an older member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a notoriously violent White supremacist gang, to the table, keeping your heritage to yourself to get him to join. Finally, you told some members of the Latino gangs that you heard about an impending attack against the White inmates while you were in Psych Ward, and to others you told the same about Black inmates. The rumor quickly spread, and by that afternoon both Black and White inmates lined the hall looking vigilant and angry. All that was needed was a match to light the fuse, and you were about to provide it.
  
  Playing Five Card Draw, you and a Black inmate were playing Heads-up on a massive pot of cigarettes, Ramen Noodles and several hundred dollars cash (the latter being contraband and worth far more than what it would be on the outside). You'd already beaten him for a couple of big hands before, and talked just enough trash to get him pissed off, but this one was for almost everything he had.
  
  "Alright, Snowflake. You're about to be sucking dick for money after this hand." You had three Kings and an Ace. You call. You suspect the dealer for this hand, the White racist, was cheating every time he dealt for a Black person and White person playing Heads-up. You bet big, and won, every time he dealt. You recall your Carnival date with Samantha, with the rigged shooting game. You always seem to know.
  
  Just as the dealer begins to deal your card, you reach for it and deliberately knock it over. An Ace lands face up on the table. Hastily the White man says, "I'll burn it and re-deal," and the Black man grabs his hand. "An Ace? Why is it this Pinky keeps getting big cards?" He grabs the dealer's hand and takes the next card, a two of spades. "So you were going to deal the spade I need for a Flush, after giving him an Ace. Trying to make me bet hard on a losing hand?" He turns to you. "Show me your hand." This was your moment. You jump up and scream, "You calling me a cheater?"
  
  "You damn right I am." From behind someone grabs you and throws you to the ground. Another Vice Lord member grabs your card hand and flips it over. "Full house, huh bitch? Motherfucker you fucked up." Suddenly you hear Vein shout, "Is there a problem, boy?" Racially charged emphasis on the word "boy." Perfect. It didn't occur to you that Vein and his group were White supremacists, too. He may think of you as meat, but you'll take his help to start this riot. As the two of them yell at one another, other people gather around. The correctional officers start noticing the commotion. You won't get another opportunity like this. You run to the table and flip it over.
  
  Immediately chaos erupts.
  
  > Escape
  You carefully sneak over to the corner by the guard shack, using the escalating violence as cover. So far, things were working out perfectly. The correctional officers on the floor had tried to corral the riot before it started, but after one of them was knocked down and attacked, the ones in the guard shack radioed for the 'Ninja Turtles,' the prison slang for riot control officers. People were getting hurt and probably killed, but you didn't have time to feel remorse for them. Any moment the Ninja Turtles would run through the common room, and you needed to make your escape before that door closed.
  
  As you hoped, they arrive shooting tear gas into the room. You take a deep breath, close your eyes and cover your face. Under the cover of smoke, you slip in behind the last guard. Two correctional officers were looking out the bullet proof glass and didn't notice you. Using a can of tuna fish in a sock like a flail, you beat one of them in the head as hard as you can. He falls to the ground, unconscious. You duck the baton swing from the other guard and duck behind him, putting him in a rear naked choke hold. Soon he falls unconscious, and you take his clothes and magnetic badge. You handcuff both to the bars protecting the window and turn to the outer door.
  
  Now you face the moment of truth. You are confident you figured out the six-digit code. You are pretty sure only two incorrect entries are allowed before the door is time locked. Reaching for the key pad, you enter the code.
  
  > enter the code
  You enter your best guess into the door code.
  
  > enter 231727
  The door opens! You run through before anyone notices.
  
  Thank you, religious nutcases, you think to yourself. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," 2 Corinthians 3:17. The first four digits, 2317, came from that, and the last two from number of lines in the letter. Since 44 wasn't one of the two, you know that the location in the letter, the Joplin 44 Petro Truck Stop, off of I-44, was where you need to go if you get out.
  
  > Don't look back
  You know that either your wing has been locked down from the rest of the prison, or it will be shortly. You hurry down the hall as quickly as you can, listening carefully to the radio you lifted off the correctional officer. At two gates you are able to use the stolen magnetic badge to get out, but the next gate requires a guard outside of it to let you out. Simply wearing a correctional officer uniform won't be enough to convince that guard to open the gate. You'll have to do something drastic.
  
  Just as you reach the corner before the gate, you hear on the radio the Warden demanding that the wing be locked down. There's no more time to waste. You have to get through that gate now.
  
  > try to use your skills of manipulation on the guard
  You have always had an inexplicable talent able to sniff out deception, so you hope you have the same ability to deceive others. You confidently walk to the gate and ask to be let out. The guard looks at you strangely and says, "Warden just said to lock down this wing."
  
  "I know," you answer. "But I have to report." The man tilts his head. "Let me see your badge. Slide it through." As casually as you can you unclip the stolen badge and slide it through. You start talking to him in hopes of distracting him from paying attention to the photo on the badge. "Yeah man, it's bad in there. Full scale race riot. I barely got out." The guard raises his eyebrows. "So why aren't you in there, 'officer?'" The last bit was said with sarcasm.
  
  At that moment you know you've failed. "I think I'll go ahead and keep this door locked." To his radio he says, "Officer Brown, I think we have an escaped convict at the E-wing entrance gate." You can't make out the radioed response, but the guard answers with, "Ten-four, we'll keep him here until the unit arrives." He stares at you with a satisfied smile as you sink to the ground.
  
  Soon the guards you incapacitated arise, and they quickly alert the riot squad. You are apprehended and thrown in the SHU, while the rest of the cell block is locked down.
  
  Time passes, and your sentence is increased to 50 years. Not only did they hit you with an attempted escape charge, but also two assault charges, one with a deadly weapon. You will probably never make it out of this place. Even worse, when you were finally returned to Gen Pop, Vein and his gang had not forgotten you. Their attacks continued almost immediately. You were able to fight them off sometimes, but usually they had their way with you.
  
  Even worse, you found out from your mother that Samantha eventually moved on and married a man from her college. Broken and with no hope of ever seeing her again, you take your own life. The guards found you hanging from your sheet one morning.
  
  However, had you known the true cost of your mistake, you might have tried again.
  
  Mere days after your suicide, everything Arjan warned you about began. It started with a dark cloud forming across the Mid-West, flinging strangely infected matter around, spreading faster than any of the Veil Watchers could have imagined. Everything it touched transformed. Strange creatures from across the cosmos invaded through a tear in time and space, and each carried the diseased matter with them.
  
  Without someone as talented as you to help, the Veil Watchers were overrun, and shortly after them the World's governments were too. Humanity disappeared like water in a bath tub, the last bubble of life slipping down the drain with nary a whimper.
  
  > Weren't Ready
  Unfortunately not everyone has the temperament to do what needs to be done, even if they have the talent. You certainly had the gifts needed to make a difference, but unfortunately you made the wrong choices. It's a shame. The world desperately needed someone of your abilities. But you didn't have the heart or the mind to do what was needed to be done.
  
  Perhaps in the next life you won't be found lacking at the Moment of Truth.
  
  You have obtained the following Achievements:
  Leap of Faith
  Loyalty
  Murderer
  Prison Bitch
  Race War
  Lucky Numb3r
  Thank you for playing!
  Image credits:
  
  Aurora image courtesy of Pixabay.com 'Free images and videos you can use anywhere,' by Noel Bauza.