Servant of the Flame, Part One

At the heart of the compound, the engine burns with blue fire. The whirring, grinding noises rattle the minds of the men in their quarters, trying to sleep. Many of them try earplugs or headphones. Nothing stops the noise of the engine. At night, they say, you can hear it in your bones.

It's been burning for decades. We don't know how to stop it, but we can slow it down and contain it. In the fortress, we caged the fire and learned to yoke it.

Our car pulls up and stops along a nondescript stretch of road. Too far from civilization for anything to be too well maintained. There's a patch of dirt where we always make the tranfer. Brown, scratchy weeds poke through the cracked asphalt, only to wither under the dry, Arizona heat. Seems like a waste trying to grow roots out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

The bus is already waiting for us when we pull off the road. These things go like clockwork. The guards climb down out of the bus. I've seen them all before, though I don't know their names. It's a courtesy, really. They know enough about what's going on to know it's bad. And since we're always collecting, they must assume we're bad people. You don't want to get too friendly with bad people.

The guards lead the prisoner off the bus. We climb out of the car. One guard has a clipboard that he shows me. I flip through it. It lists the prisoner's information, criminal records, aliases, accomplices, family. He wants me to sign off on something, but I never sign anything. He puts away the clipboard and nods. All part of the routine. Clockwork.

The prisoner is a skinny looking thing, like cold gristle. He's got tattoos creeping down his arms and up his neck under the orange jumpsuit. The clipboard said he was a killer, but I could've guessed without looking. I spend enough time with killers.

This guy was all calm and careful till he got off the bus. He started sizing us up, likely imagining how he'd most like to kill each of us had he the chance. He didn't seem worried till he noticed the guards' faces.

The guards are fucking terrified of us. I love this part. They've all got pistols, and mace, and batons. One of them always has a shotgun, and yet they're scared of us, two guys in dark suits driving a company car. They're scared because they have no idea who we are or why they regularly hand over prisoners to us out in the middle of nowhere.

So now this animal is jerking his arms around and shouting. Even with the hand-and-ankle cuffs, he's still dangerous. The guards are shouting and struggling to hold him. They shove him up against the bus, but this guy won't quit. We just wait by the car for all the drama to die down.

The guy with the shotgun gives me a nervous glance. I nod. He walks over and smashes the butt of the weapon against the prisoner's face. I can hear that nose crack all the way over by the car. Blood is pouring like a garden hose from the murderer's face. That guard hit him really fucking hard. Fear can do crazy things to people.

After that it was easy enough to get him to cooperate. I brought some tranquilizers with me just in case, but we normally don't like to use them. It sometimes messes up the process.

We load the creep into the back of the car. He's getting blood all over the place, but that's okay too. The lab guys put some kind of special coat on the upholstery. You wouldn't believe the shit we have to clean out of there and it all just comes right off.

We fix his chains to a couple of special hooks at the bottom of his seat. He just sits there, playing hurt, but I can see those little eyes of his flicking around. The hooks look really fragile and he probably thinks he can just rip them right out and kill us. The real hard asses always try some shit like that. He's in for a motherfucking surprise when he does it.

The guards are already back on the bus. I can see the driver sweating behind the wheel. They can't wait for us to leave. Three guards, one driver, and a big-ass bus. They could have hauled forty prisoners out here, but they just took one. Whenever the order comes down, they only take one prisoner. And when things go like clockwork, they get big fat paychecks.

That's how things like this work. A little bit of money and a whole lot of fear. No one asks questions, everyone goes home happy.