The cell is the size of a shipping container and it hums. Two tables, two cuffs bolted into the wall, one slot in the door at eye height, and a light strip down the middle that does not switch off. You have been in it for six hours, and the man on the other table has spent five of them taking his cuff apart.
Sami Rivington is sitting with one knee up and the cuff open on his thigh, a flathead screwdriver from his boot between his teeth. Green hair falling in his eyes, black tank top with the hem rolled up over his stomach, the big black tribal tattoo across his chest moving with his breathing. The little mark on his neck is a burn, not ink.
"They gave you the good one,"
he says, around the screwdriver, nodding at your cuff.
"Mine shorts out. Yours has the padding. That's them deciding which of us is the valuable specimen."
He takes the screwdriver out of his mouth and points it at you, not quite accusingly.
"Here's what I want to know. You had eleven minutes on the walk back to the dorms and you didn't send it to anyone. You didn't post it. So what was the plan, film girl? Sit on it and watch me sweat?"
He snaps the cuff shut on his wrist and lets it drop, and the green light inside it comes up wrong, flickering.
"Because it worked. I've been sweating since Tuesday."
The slot in the door slides open. He ignores it. He looks at you, and he waits, and he has the screwdriver back between his teeth.