Free Web NovelChapter 301: Supermax, Missing Man
A little over a week has passed since Maya got transferred to Ashgate Supermax.
Somehow, she had managed to get used to life here.
The fortress-like facility was strictly divided into men’s and women’s prisons, meaning many of the people inside never even hoped for any kind of romance. But really, that was the least of their problems. Ashgate Supermax was the kind of place where emotions came to die.
Everything about it was deeply depressing.
From the dead-eyed inmates to the grueling schedule and the ruthlessly cold security guards.
Yet, somehow, Maya survived her first week without entirely losing her mind.
It’s likely all her crying at night that helped her.
Like every other prisoner housed in this block, she was in solitary confinement, so she didn’t have any cellmates her weeping would disturb. Then again, she wasn’t the only one who spent most of their nights crying into a thin mattress here. So it was perhaps fair.
Every morning, the routine was exactly the same.
The guards would wake them up with a buzzing alarm and conduct the first invasive search of the day.
Once cleared, the inmates were marched straight to the metalwork factory.
There Maya had to drill and shape heavy masses of metal into smooth blocks. After hours of backbreaking labor, she’d strip off her heavy safety gear and join the line for the second search of the day.
There was no cafeteria in the supermax. Instead, they were immediately returned to their cramped cells and fed a bowl of brown soup... a disgusting slop that moved around in the bowl like it was alive. On generous days, that slop was accompanied by side vegetables that looked and tasted like dried grass.
Maya hated having to force these things down. She had a delicate stomach, and the prison food gave her serious stomachaches at night, leaving her pale and vomiting early in the morning.
Because of that, she was always dull and sluggish during the morning metalwork shifts. Her slow pace never failed to irritate the security guards, who’d readily use the shock function programmed into her inhibitor collar to electrocute her into working harder.
BZZZZT!
"Ahhh!"
Maya gasped and her small body convulsed as the current surged through her neck.
No one around her bothered to speak up.
They knew they’d just get electrocuted too.
But they did feel bad...
They had to watch this little girl get mercilessly shocked into exhaustion day after day.
It was as if with each passing day, everyone could see the life and light actively slipping out from her big purple eyes. Her eyes that used to be so bright and expressive were now dull, hollow and half-lidded.
Maya stared down at the heavy drill in her hands with lifeless eyes. She wanted to just turn the drill around and stab herself with it to end the nightmare.
But the instant she tried it, a painful surge of electricity shot through her entire nervous system.
"GAHHH!"
The shock left her temporarily paralyzed as she collapsed on the concrete floor.
That’s the anti-suicide function of the inhibitor collar.
It was "mercifully" designed to stop prisoners from killing themselves.
Everyday life in Ashgate Supermax was so draining that it tortured the mind and left many prisoners insane.
In the first year of this prison’s debut, they registered a staggering 60% death rate ALL from inmates taking their own lives.
In the second year, it flew to an 80% death rate.
To preserve their labor and control, the prison head forced the engineering team to design a new feature into the inhibitor collars. And that’s how the automated anti-suicide function came to be.
The chief guard walked over and kicked Maya’s aching stomach in disgust.
"Get her up. Put her in solitary for two days. No food or water. Is that clear?"
The junior guards quickly straightened.
"Yes, sir!"
They saluted and dragged the silent girl away.
...
Meanwhile, back in the city.
No one had seen Scott for over a week.
"..."
Things have been quiet like that ever since Emma picked him up from Ashgate Penitentiary.
She’d tried her absolute hardest to talk to him but he’d ignored her like it was nothing.
This made Emma worried and desperate to cheer him up so she got all the other girls to coordinate a surprise. They all wore matching revealing silk nightdresses with nothing like panties or a bra underneath. Their plan was to give him a wonderful, unforgettable night with all five of his girlfriends eager to please him and suck him dry.
But when the time came and they gathered in the master bedroom, Scott wasn’t there. They searched the whole mansion from top to bottom, only to realize he had totally disappeared.
"Tch... now I feel ugly..." Beca frowned.
Nadia chopped her the top of her head. "Behave."
"Like you didn’t enjoy a cafe date with him..." (¬⤙¬ )
"Hmph. Just lucky I guess." (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝)
Currently, all five of his girlfriends were just lying around the massive living room like random pieces of clothes littered everywhere. The mood was gloomy as they talked about how or why Scott had vanished.
"I just don’t get it..."
Gwen groaned and slumped over the arm of a sofa.
"He didn’t say a single word before ghosting."
Beca rolled her eyes from her spot on the rug.
"The millionth time you’ve said that. Now I’m starting to think maybe he just needed a damn good break from all your constant nagging, Gwen."
Gwen snapped her head up.
"Excuse me? He probably doesn’t want to be here to taste your crappy food, Beca!"
"Don’t call my name like that!"
"Like what? BECA?!" ( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀)
Beca sat up and pointed at Gwen.
"At least I try to cook! Unlike you, who can’t even boil a pot of water without setting the kitchen on fire!"
Gwen’s face turned red.
"THAT WAS ONE TIME!"
"Quiet. Both of you."
Nadia broke it up from the armchair. She looked equally gloomy, but her voice was still scary enough to make the temperature in the room drop.
"If I hear one more word, I’ll make sure you guys have to eat each other’s cooking for a week."
The two bantering ladies shrunk back instantly.
"Sorry, ma’am..."
They muttered together with their heads faced down.
Kara’s legs were curled up on the loveseat as she looked at Emma who was on the center couch.
"Emma... you’re unusually quiet."
Emma was just staring blankly up at the high-ceiling.
Sigh...
She sounded hopeless.
"I’m just thinking. I can’t tell if it’s the Megaman thing that got Scott pissed... or if it was the news about Pulsar going to prison. That could be it..."
Nadia raised an eyebrow and adjusted her position.
"Why would Scott be upset about Pulsar?"
Gwen nodded in agreement as she waved her sylph-like hand dismissively.
"Yeah, he’s never been a fan of Pulsar, so that won’t make sense. If anything, he’s a bigger fan of heroes like Shadow Monger and Lady Fortress."
Hearing her hero name, Kara’s cheeks went a little red.
She shyly looked down and fiddled with the hem of her silk nightdress.
"Really? He... he likes Lady Fortress?"
Gwen rolled her eyes lazily.
"Please, like you don’t know."
This started a small back and forth banter.
But Emma couldn’t stop thinking.
It wasn’t a closely guarded secret between them that Pulsar was actually Maya, but the other girls in the room didn’t know that. Emma’s buxom chest tightened as a painful thought crossed her mind.
『Does he still have feelings for Maya?』
She bit her lower lip.
Honestly, she really wouldn’t mind if he did.
『Is that why he’s so depressed now?』
She just wished he’d tell her more about it, but it was always so typical of Scott to keep his pain entirely to himself rather than share it with others.
Emma gently gripped her chest as her eyes softened with deep affection.
『I’m willing to bear any manner of pain with him... or even for him. Doesn’t he know that?』
Her face turned really sad as she sighed.
...
At Westerfield High, winter break was officially over.
Jake was back in school and currently gathered with the academic decathlon team in the combined gym and auditorium area.
Their fierce new president Mira was standing at a podium to conduct a brutal round of rapid-fire questions to prep them for the upcoming season.
"Next! If a frictionless particle slips down a cycloidal path under uniform gravity, derive the tautochrone curve equation and explain its relation to isochronous oscillations!"
A senior team member quickly pushed up his glasses.
"Got it. The time of descent is independent of the starting point, leading to T is equal to pi times the square root of r divided by g!"
"Correct, but too slow!"
Mira immediately flipped her notes. freewёbnoνel.com
"Next question! Analyze the pharmacological pathway of Pentazocine and identify its primary receptor binding affinity compared to standard opioid antagonists!"
A girl in the front row raised her hand.
"It acts as a kappa-opioid receptor agonist and a mu-opioid receptor weak antagonist or partial agonist!"
"Acceptable!"
Mira slammed her hand on the podium and turned her sharp gaze directly toward the back row.
"Jake! Given a matrix A where the characteristic polynomial is defined as the cube of lambda minus five times the square of lambda plus seven times lambda minus three equals zero, determine the exact minimal polynomial and verify if the linear transformation is completely diagonalizable over the real field!"
Jake didn’t answer. He wasn’t even listening.
"JAKE!" Mira barked. (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞
Still nothing.
Jake was slumped in his chair and spaced out. All he could think about was where the hell Scott had gone. He hadn’t heard from his best friend in over a week, and he was getting worried about him.
『Where are you, buddy? Are you even okay?』
BANG!
Mira slammed her hand onto the wooden podium with immense force. The loud crack startled Jake out of his thoughts and scared every other member of the academic decathlon team into a stiff freeze.
Mira just recently transferred here from a highly prestigious private academy where she was consistently the top student. The moment she arrived at Westerfield High, she’d taken over the role of president, mostly because their new club adviser, Ms. Corben, wanted to change things up and shake off the old lazy habits of the team.
Mira had short, vibrant red hair and a face that looked quite pretty... if you could somehow overlook her perpetually mean, intense expression. She was also quite petite, both in her assets and her overall physical size, but her attitude was massive.
A simple look at her and her polished tone would tell you she came from money.
"What is wrong with you people?!"
Mira shouted as she glared at the room.
"You’re lazying around too much and can’t even give me good answers! We have a title to defend!"
One of the male team members timidly raised a hand.
"But... President Mira, we’ve answered every single question correctly so far..."
Mira pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out a frustrated sigh.
"You got the answers right, yes! But I want you to dissect the questions so perfectly well that the judges won’t even know how to proceed! That’s exactly how I won the decathlon for my old school in the UK! Honestly, I wonder how this school managed to win the academic decathlon championship two years in a row with this level of mediocrity."
An shy Asian girl wearing thick glasses raised her hand to answer.
"Um, it’s because of—"
"I know, I know! It’s because of Scott McQueen."
Mira cut her off aggressively.
She picked up the school yearbook resting in front of her and flipped to a prominent page. Her eyes scanned the photo of Scott smoothly collecting the award for top student at the state academic decathlon.
According to the records, he had single-handedly answered over 90% of the questions for the team during the finals and shattered the historic scoring record.
Mira scoffed loudly and casually tossed the yearbook back onto the table.
"I seriously cannot begin to understand how this McQueen guy has all this academic promise and just chose to throw his entire future away to become... what, a model? It’s so dumb and pointless!"
She crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes.
"I wonder if he’s perfectly fine with just abandoning his teammates like this. What a total shame. I really wish I could’ve met him myself. I heard he was so good that when he left, the former club adviser outright quit because he knew the team wouldn’t three-peat the academic decathlon without Scott. They’re both cowards, hmph!"
The longer she talked, the angrier Jake got. He could feel the anger bubbling up in his chest. Scott was dealing with heavy, life-altering stuff, and this random new girl was sitting here tearing down his character.
Jake finally snapped and abruptly stood up from his chair with an annoyed look.
"Hey!"
He glared directly at Mira.
"You shouldn’t talk about someone you haven’t even met like that! Especially not Scott! You don’t know a single thing about him, what he’s been through, or what he’s dealing with right now!"
"Did you just..."
"Save it."
Jake snatched his backpack off the floor and walked straight out of the auditorium.
BAM!
He slammed the double doors behind him.
Mira looked a little shaken that someone had actually stood up to her so fiercely. She cleared her throat to regain some composure then let out a sharp sigh.
"Whatever. Let’s just continue..."
...
Once he was outside the school gates, Jake felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out and his eyes widened when he saw the sender’s name.
[Scott: Hey man. Sorry I haven’t texted you at all. I just needed some alone time to gather my thoughts. But if you want to see me, you can come over to Silverlake Square Rentals. Room 286.]
This one message erased all his previous anger.
"Yes!"
He didn’t waste a single second. He quickly mounted his bicycle and started pedaling at maximum speed straight for the location.
Silverlake Square Rentals.
It turned out to be a massively luxurious apartment building located in one of the less occupied, high-end districts of the notably cramped Metro City.
Jake hurried through the glass doors and walked straight up to the front desk.
"Hi, I’m here to see Room 286. Scott McQueen."
The receptionist gave him a polite nod, picked up the desk phone, and dialed the room to confirm the visit. After a brief conversation, she hung up and gave Jake a warm smile.
"You’re good to go, sir. Elevator is to your left."
"Thanks!"
Jake hurried down the hall and took the elevator up to the designated floor.
He soon found the door labeled 286.
"Finally... I’m tired as shit..."
He took a deep breath and knocked.
The door swung open and Jake walked in with a huge grin on his face.
"I’ve missed you, br—"
The words hooked in his throat.
His brain short-circuited.
Scott sat at the kitchen island, looking relaxed and happily enjoying a towering stack of fluffy pancakes alongside a tall glass of fresh orange juice.
But that wasn’t what made Jake freeze.
Standing right next to Scott was Brigid. She was currently wearing a frilly kitchen apron... and most definitely nothing else under it. Her toned legs and bare sides were fully on display. She held a wire whisk in one hand, and there were stains of pancake batter and whipped cream smudged all over her incredibly cute face.
Brigid ignored Jake’s existence and leaned in close to Scott with a sweet, adoring face.
"Do you want some more, honey?"
Scott took a sip of his juice and nodded.
"Yeah. Some honey would be nice."
Brigid giggled happily as she wiped off a bit of cream from her cheek.
"Some honey for my honey! Coming right up!"
Jake was still very lost.
"Errr..." (｡· v ·｡) ?
