Nightrise

the hours measured out with deadly precision, stretching out endlessly in the desert sun. There was solitary confinement or loss of privileges for anyone who stepped out of line; even an untied shoelace could bring instant punishment if the supervisors were in a bad mood.
    And there was the medicine wing. Boys who were violent or noncooperative went to see the doctor in a small compound set right against the cinder-block wall. They were given pills, and when they came back they were quiet and empty-eyed. One way or another, the prison would control you. The boys accepted that. They didn't even hate Silent Creek. They simply suffered it as if it were a long illness that had happened to them and wasn't their fault.
    It took Jamie very little time to find out what he needed to know. None of the other boys had met Scott.
    There was no record of his ever having been here. But he knew that what he had so far seen of Silent Creek was only half the story. There were two parts to the prison — he had seen that much for himself when he arrived on the bus. There was a whole area of the prison, on the other side of the wall, that stood quite alone. Nobody communicated with it. It had its own gymnasium, its own classrooms, kitchens, and cells as if it were a slightly smaller reflection of the main compound. And there were rumors.
    On the other side of the wall. That, it was said, was where the specials were kept.

    ***
    "They're the real hard acts. The killers. The psychos."
    "They're sick. That's what I heard. They've got something wrong with their heads."
    'Yeah. They're vegetables. Cretins. They just sit in their cells and stare at the walls…"

    Jamie was having lunch with four other boys. The chair he was sitting on was made of metal, welded into the table, which was in turn bolted to the floor. The canteen was a small, square room with bare white walls. No decoration was allowed anywhere in Silent Creek, not even in the cells.
    The food wasn't too bad, though — even if it was served up in a compartmentalized plastic tray. Jamie had been surprised by most of the boys he had met. Nobody had given him a hard time — in fact they'd been glad to see a new face. Perhaps his experience at juvenile hall had helped. From the start he was one of them. So far, he hadn't needed to use his false name. The other boys at the table called him Indian. He knew them as Green Eyes, Baltimore, DV, and Tunes.
    "The story I heard is that nobody wants them," DV said. He was seventeen, Latino, arrested following a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. The boys weren't meant to ask one another about their crimes but of course they did. DV was a member of the Playboy Gangsta Crips. He had tattoos on both arms and planned to go back to the gang as soon as he got out. He had never known his father, and his mother ignored him. The gang was the only family he had. "They got no parents," he went on. "So now they're using them for experiments. Testing stuff on them. That sort of thing."
    "How many of them are there?" Jamie asked.
    "I heard twenty," Green Eyes said. Jamie wasn't sure how he'd gotten his nickname. He was fifteen years old, arrested for possession of a deadly weapon — meaning a gun. His eyes were blue.
    "There are fifty at least," Tunes growled. He was the youngest boy in the prison, barely fourteen. He turned to Jamie and lowered his voice. 'You don't want to ask too many questions about them, Indian.
    Not unless you want to join them."
    Jamie wondered where all these rumors began. But that was the thing about prisons. There were never any secrets. Somehow the whispers would travel from cell to cell and you had as much chance of keeping them out as you had of stopping the desert breeze.
    As usual, they were being supervised while they ate. This was one of the few times when they were allowed to speak freely but they still couldn't even stand up without asking permission first. This was what had most struck Jamie about life at Silent Creek. They were no longer people. They were objects.
    At no point in the day could they do anything for themselves. The man watching them was the most senior — and the toughest — supervisor. He was a bulky, round-shouldered man with thinning hair and a moustache. His name was Max Koring. If anyone was looking for trouble, it would be him. He seemed to enjoy humiliating the inmates, carrying out strip searches for no reason at all, taking away a month's privileges simply because it amused him.
    Baltimore