Calvinus

Chapter 1
Crime

Joel

Joel knew the exact moment his life had gone to hell. He had been ten years old, and there was trouble at school. That was no surprise as this was a rough area of town and fights in the playground were not unusual, when tempers flared and some of the kids would set to, with everyone gathering around and shouting "fight, fight, fight!"

Those fights ended quickly, with teachers wading in and dragging the offenders off to see the headmaster, and Joel had always avoided being involved in any of those. Sure he had been in trouble before, but not for fighting. He was not tall and well built, and even the thought of fighting made him queasy, but he was also not bad looking, and with the flash of a cheeky smile and a funny comment he had always avoided such things.

Today was not one of those fights though. Today was the other kind of fight where one of the gangs of kids in year 6 had cornered a year 4 boy, and the stupid sod was refusing to hand over his lunch money. Joel walked smack into the middle of the scene just as Kyal was about to smack the smaller kid in the face.

Joel came to a halt and Kyal stared menacingly at him. Joel felt his heart suddenly start to race in his chest. He was about to walk on and pretend he had seen nothing when the little kid looked up at him and spoke.

"Get help! please!"

Joel swore under his breath. If the kid had not spoken, he might have been able to walk on by as if nothing had happened, but now with the plea for help he knew that this was not going to happen, and already two of Kyal's gang had stepped closer as if to grab him if he tried anything.

He could not ignore this now. He either had to help the snot nosed kid or else he had to help Kyal. Two choices and Joel knew what his dad would say. "Always follow your conscience, Joel."

He could make run for it, get to a teacher, stand up for the kid, save him from losing his lunch money and the beating he was about to endure. He could be a hero, doing what was right, or he could fall in with Kyal's gang and become a part of the darkness.

The choice was simple.

"Ain't no one gonna help ya," Joel spat. "Just hand over your sodding lunch money already!"

Kyal's face cracked a small smile at Joel's words and the other boys relaxed. The little kid's face broke though, his last hope shattered by Joel's refusal and he started to sob. Joel shook his head as the boy pulled out his lunch money and handed it over. Then Kyal handed Joel a fiver of it. Man, how much had the boy been carrying? Joel looked at the note and then at Kyal, who winked and then turned around and buried his fist in the boy's stomach.

Joel walked away as he heard the muffled wailing as the boy was beaten up by Kyal and his chronies.

***

That was where it started, but after that Kyal seemed to adopt Joel into his gang, and Joel, for his part, did not mind. People did not mess with Kyal's gang. It gave him protection, and occasionally more money. He didn't search them out and spend all his time with them, but neither did he avoid them, and they seemed to accept him as some kind of associate member.

He got in more trouble of course. One teacher took him aside and expressed her disappointment in his choice of friends, and didn't she see how it was affecting his choices? He had shrugged and left the teacher exasperated, as various complaints came in about Kyal's gang.

The kid who had been beaten up had not talked, but others did, and a few times Joel was implicated in things. It was nothing too serious though. Not until the day he saw Kyal out with his older brother.

"Hey Joel, just the man." Kyal said.

"Wassup?" Joel asked.

"We've got a job for you," Jez, Karl's older brother, said. "We need someone small and Kyal is getting too big for this shit."

Joel looked at Kyal and grinned. Joel had just had his eleventh birthday a few weeks ago, which made him a month older than Kyal, and although Joel was short for his age, he was not very short, and Kyal not much taller. The too big comment came from the fact that Karl was piling on the weight. He had always been what people would have called 'chunky', but over the last year he had become downright fat. Kayla saw the glint in Joel's eye and he scowled back and swore.

"Don't say anything if you want to keep you teeth, Joel!"

Joel knew the threat was bluster now. Kayl would not hurt him, so he just gave his friend the finger and turned back to Jeremy, who shared the family trait for excess flesh.

"What shit?" he asked.

"A little bit of breaking and entering. Need someone to climb up and through a bathroom window that has been left open."

Joel took a sharp intake of breath. Breaking and entering? that was serious stuff. That could get him sent to juvenile prison if he was caught. He started to shake his head.

"Come on Joel, I have done it hundreds of times," Kyal reassured him. "And your cut could be a couple of hundred quid, easy," Jez added.

That had Joel thinking. Two hundred pounds could buy him a new bike. Since he had fallen in with Kyal he had more money than ever before, but it seemed the more he had, the more he wanted things money could buy, and saving had never been his strong point.

"At least that," Kyal added, seeing how Joel had bitten his lip and considered the offer. "One time we found this stash of cash and we ended up with a thousand quid and no need to sell anything on first."

"For real?" Joel asked, and as he said the words, he knew they had hooked him in. H e knew he would say yes, because what he should have said was "no way." He should have done what his dad said, and followed his conscience. He should have walked away and had nothing to do with it, but instead he kept talking and over the next hour he had not only agreed to the plan but had gone over all the details several times, arranged times to meet and still had enough time left over to talk about the football results.

***

Joel had been scared beyond reason on that first job, but he had gone through with it. He might not have done had Kyal not called on him and handed his dad some line about his going over to their house to help with homework. His dad was not fooled of course, because Joel never helped anyone with homework, and few would thank him if he did. All the same he let the boys go, with a warning to not play video games too late.

Jez was waiting at the street corner, and now there was no hope of backing out without getting himself seriously beaten up, so Joel had gone with them to the house Jez had been watching. Sure enough all was dark and quiet, and it had a secluded garden that was not overlooked, just as he had been told. He saw the fence, the drainpipe, the narrow ledge and the bathroom window open just a crack, all as described, and so he started the climb.

It turned out to be easier than he had thought. The hardest part was controlling his terror. He was terrified of falling and of getting caught in equal measure and his hands wer shaking and his heart pounding as hi inserted the chisel that Jez had give him and forced the window latch. There was a loud crack, which seemed worse than it actually was, but then he was clambering through the narrow window, only large enough to admit a child. A few minutes later, he had found the back door and let Jez and Kyal in. That had set the alarm off, but they were ready for that and Jez and Kyal quickly scooped up the items they wanted to take and all three had run out the back to an alley and their escape route.

They had stolen a laptop, some loose change and some jewellery in that house, and Joel had thought they would be rich. He had quickly discovered, however, that stolen goods sold very cheaply, and his cut had been fifty quid. He should have stopped there. Should have realised the rewards were not worth the risks, but he didn't. Instead he remembered how easy it had been, and wanted to do better next time. He wanted to get the thousands of pounds Jez had promised he could earn doing this. Fifty quid had gone surprisingly fast on games and junk food, and so when Kyal and Jez said they had another job, he had jumped at the chance.

Over the following weeks Joel completed four successful burglaries, and in each case they earned a little more, and he got a little better at his job, climbing quietly and confidently, and squeezing through what seemed like impossibly small gaps. The more they did it, the faster Joel seemed to spend the cash he earned.

"We have a great one lined up tonight," Kyal told him one Friday morning as they walked into school. "This place is loaded. After this we will be set for life, honest."

"For life?" Joel gave Kyal a wry smile.

"Well ok, for as long as we want anyhow. It's gotta be worth thousands."

And so Kyal explained the plan for one more burglary in the fashionable part of town by the river.

***

It was dark when Joel first saw the house. They didn't always break in after dark. A couple of jobs they had done after school hours but before people got home from work, but this one was a house that had been left empty for the weekend. Jez had watched the owners pack up their car and drive off, as they did each weekend, leaving their townhouse empty. like the first night there was a climb involved, but this time there would be no hanging on a ledge to force the window: there was a balcony up there, looking out onto the river. The french door that opened onto the balcony was locked, but there was a vent beside it, with a plastic cover that he ripped off with the help of his trusty chisel. The vent hole was one of those that adults could not believe anyone could fit through, but Joel had become adept at squeezing through tight spaces, and although it took some effort, he pulled himself into a smart looking room.

Joel switched on a torch and headed for the door. He had to let Jez in quickly, before they tripped any alarm system, although he had not seen any evidence of an alarm, and Jez had said there might not be one. He was not going to risk being here too long though, and so he headed for the door.

And that was when someone grabbed him. Joel shouted in surprise as an arm went around his neck, but his shout was cut off when a hand clamped over his mouth. He struggled, but whoever had him was big, strong, and his struggling was futile.

Joel nearly wet himself in fear as he realised he had been caught. How? Why was there anyone in this house? Hadn't Jez checked it out? it was empty, right?

All those thoughts rushed through his mind along with a hundred of other panicked snatches. What would his dad say? Oh god, the police! He was going to be arrested. Would they send him to prison? Probably! There was no sympathy for criminals of any age these days. How could this have happened.

Joel bit at the hand on his mouth, but whoever held him did not flinch but instead frog marched him from the room and into another one. Then the lights went on, and Joel blinked in surprise at what he saw.

There was another man in this room, dressed in black, big and burly and mean looking. He was holding a knife, but what really surprised Joel was the chair in the middle of the room, on which there was a girl of about his age or a year or so older, dressed only in her underwear and tied to it. She was gagged but she looked at him with terrified eyes.

What the hell?

"Well hello, Joel. I have been looking forward to meeting you."

If Joel's heart could have sank any lower it would have when he heard the man use his name. How did he know his name?

The door closed behind him and Joel heard someone ether. A third man?

With the door closed, the hand on his mouth relaxed and his captor cuffed his head. "Bite me would you? little animal," his captor growled, and knife man laughed and tutted.

"Now, now Joel, you will have to learn not to bite what goes in your mouth, or else someone might decide to take your teeth out," the man said with menace dripping from his words. "But I suppose you want to know why we invited you here!"

"Are you cops?" Joel's voice was shaky as he asked the question. There were many other questions he had, but right now he needed to know if there was some chance he could escape without being arrested. Joel had grown up in a world haunted by the gang wars that had led to the summer of blood. It had all happened before he was born, but the crime had got so bad, with kids as young as he was openly involved in gang warfare alongside older gang members, that the laws had been changed. The state had got tough on crime, with harsh prison sentences for those involved, and although the death penalty had not been brought back, the concept of capital crimes had been revived with a return of slavery for those under life sentence.

Burglary was not a capital crime, but neither was it the kind of thing they would let you off with a caution anymore. If these were cops, then he was going to spend time in prison, and that thought made him sick with fear.

"No, Joel, we are not cops. Not exactly, anyway. But don't worry, we will call the police as soon as we are done here."

Joel swallowed. "Done here?"

"You see, it is like this, my boy," the man said in a voice that had a tone that might have sounded friendly had it not seemed to be awash with venom. "We have been watching you, and we quite liked what we saw. A client of ours has taken quite an interest in you. You should feel privileged, because he is a most discerning man."

"That is sick," Joel spat and the man laughed.

"Oh perhaps, but not as sick as you are."

"I am not sick!" Joel retorted and then swore at the man. "Fuck off and leave me alone."

"Oh come now, Joel, you are very sick. You are so sick that you broke into this house, and found this poor girl home alone. You are so sick that you threatened her, tied her up, and then – oh this is awful – you stuck your tongue in her little cunt and tried to pleasure her… just before you cut her throat with this knife."

Joel's mouth was open but no sound came out. The girl in the chair looked at him wide eyed and struggled, making the chair wobble a little.

"You murdered her, Joel. You murdered her and then stole what you could from this house and then tried to escape. Only you were seen and the police will have your description from the CCTV in that room you broke into. Oh you forgot to look for hidden cameras? Well the camera in that room is very well hidden, so perhaps that is understandable. Luckily my colleague here knew where it was so the only person showing on the camera is you."

"You can't do this!" Joel whispered.

"Joel, you will soon learn that we can do anything we like. Especially to criminals like you."

"You can't make me do that. I won't do it," Joel shouted angrily. The girl was still struggling but did he see a glimmer of hope in her eyes as he refused to harm her? If so it was weak through her tears. She looked as terrified as he felt.

"Oh Joel, I was not asking you. I am afraid, young man, that it is not your decision," said knife man, and with those words the man who held Joel pulled him to the chair, forced him to his knees. The man by the door came over too, pulling down the girl's black panties and Joel felt his face forced into her crotch.

Joel was only vaguely aware of the tightness in his underpants as his body reacted to the situation. He was too scared to really appreciate what was happening, and a little too young to fully understand it either, although the erection he had was not a new thing. Increasingly he had been getting erections, and enjoyed touching himself down there while thinking of girls he liked. He could not help the feeling he got from seeing this girl, tied up and in her underwear.

He was not going to play along though and he kept his mouth tight shut.

"Put your tongue in there right now!" knife man ordered and Joel felt the blade pressed to his throat. "If you don't, then I will cut your throat instead."

Joel was disgusted at the idea of putting his tongue in there. He had heard of such things, but he was 11 years old, and even kissing seemed somewhat unhygienic. Putting your tongue into the place a girl peed out of was much worse. He gagged at the thought. The knife was very real, very cold and hard, pushed to his neck, and Joel did not know where he found the courage, but some part of him said that these people would not kill him, would not hurt him. They knew who he was, and already had said that they wanted him, so what would they do? kill the person they had come for? Joel did not open his mouth.

Captor man snorted and grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, making Joel squeal with pain. He was still kneeling at the girl's feet, but far enough back to see what knife man did next.

"Calling my bluff eh?" the man asked, shaking his head. "Seems like the client was right about you. Oh well, this is on you then." And with that the man's blade flashed near the girl's head. There was a spray of blood and a dull plopping sound as her right ear dropped to the chair, and then fell from there onto the floor. The girl let out an anguished sound, strangled by the gag, her eyes wide in horror as she thrashed hard against her bonds.

"Now, Joel, you put your tongue in there or her other ear goes next. If you still refuse, we start on your ears. No one said we had to leave your ears in tact."

If Joel had been thinking rationally any more he might have still suspected a bluff there. They would hurt the girl, but hurting him would surely mess up their plans. However the boy saw the anguish and pain in the face of the girl, as she thrashed around so hard that the chair wobbled. He saw what his first refusal had done, and he saw the bloodied blade in the hands of a man crazed enough to use it. He did not dare refuse again, and when his head was again pushed into her crotch, he pushed his tongue past the fleshy lips of the girl's cunt and licked as the men laughed.

"That's it, Joel, get it nice and wet," they laughed. Joel kept licking, tasting something strange that made him feel ill even though it was not totally unpleasant. It was the thought of where that taste came from that was the worst thing for him, and he was glad when the man holding him finally pulled his head back.

"Very good. Now we just have one more thing to do," said knife man, and with those words he plunged his knife deep into the girl's throat. The girl's eyes went wide and her struggling changed to a kind of jerked movement, like she was having a fit. Her muffled cries became a gurgle as blood foamed from her neck, and the man holding Joel pushed him close to her. Now knife man pressed the knife handle into his hands, and Joel looked at it dully. He felt like he should pull it out, but as he tugged at it, the girl seemed to writhe and twitch.

Joel felt his eyes fill with tears as knife man stepped back, removing gloves from his hands that Joel had not even noticed until that moment. He pocketed the gloves carefully and then ruffled Joel's hair.

"Now then, Joel, let me tell you what happens next. Firstly, your friends outside, Kyal and Jez, yes?" The man looked at Joel but the boy just looked dully at the knife he was stupidly holding, still embedded in the dying girl's throat. He did not acknowledge the names. "They have also been captured on CCTV, entering the garden with you. They will be picked up an questioned, but of course they did not enter the house. They will be offered a plea bargain, to testify against you, to confirm that you scared them with your knife, and the things you said you would do to girls you liked with it. They will be offered suspended sentences in return for putting you away. You know, as we do, that they will go for that, don't you?"

Again Joel did not respond, but he did turn his eyes to knife man, his expression one of shock and defeat, but deep down there was a rage inside him that knife man seemed to recognise.

"Your friends will have seen nothing of us, nor will they. There will be no evidence we were ever here. Only your DNA and pictures of you on the equipment. The owners of this house did not, in fact, go away for the weekend. In fact they went out to the cinema, and they left one of their daughters behind because she did not want to go. This girl here is their daughter, and you found her here, tied her up at knife point, sexually assaulted her and killed her. You can bet the police are going to want to talk to you.

"But you know what, Joel? We want to give you a chance. We are going to let you go, and I think you may have as much as ten minutes before the owners of this house return home and call the police. I suggest that you start running."

Joel let go of the knife. It remained stuck in the girl's throat He looked at his hands, covered in blood, and wiped them on his jeans. He wanted to hurt this man, and for a moment he thought about pulling the knife free and lashing out at him.

Knife man saw the look and shook his head.

"Now don't go getting any ideas, Joel. We don't want to hurt you. Well not yet at least."

"You won't get away with this," Joel hissed.

The man laughed and headed for the door. "You have some balls, Joel. Well, for now at least. I don't suppose you will be allowed to keep them, sadly," the man laughed as he walked away, and then over his shoulder he called back, "we will be seeing you again soon."

Chapter 2
Capture

Joel

The men left, and Joel looked at the girl. She was dead. He knew she was dead. The blood had stopped foaming around her neck and she was slumped forward, pale and still.

Joel had never seen a dead body before, and he could hardly process the reality of what he saw. They had killed her. They had stabbed her through the neck and the police were going to blame him.

Suddenly Joel wretched and puked all over the floor, the contents of his stomach spilling into the pool of blood.

God, what was he going to do? he thought. Then he wondered what they would do to him. He knew the laws. This was a capital crime for sure, and if they caught him and found him guilty of it, he could say goodbye to his freedom forever.

How could this be happening? He had pushed away thoughts of capture since he had started robbing homes, but even if they had caught him for burglary, he would not have expected more than a few months in juvenile prison for a first offence. He had assumed, stupidly, that he would not get caught. That had been foolish, but if he had miscalculated and gone to prison, at least he would have been out again soon enough.

Not for this though. Capital crimes carried mandatory life sentences. A year in prison and then parole as a slave for life. That was the law, and it got worse too. Because lifers were considered to be dead, executed for their crimes, all their human rights ceased from the moment of conviction. What the man had said about his balls…

No, he would not think about it. He had to get out of here. He had to escape, hide out until someone realised that he had not done this. He had to get away, get help. He had to go. Now.

Joel wrenched himself into action, ran down the stairs, found a back door and wrenched it open. He ran down towards the river. Where were Kyal and Jez? He ran along the bank, looking for them, wildly clattering through the underbrush, soaking his trainers.

"Shh!" someone whispered. Kyal. Their eyes met and Kyal looked shocked. "What the hell happened to you?"

"We have to go back inside. I have to show you…" Joel started to say but Kyal shook his head.

"No way, dick face. That place is too hot. You were in there way too long. What have you been doing? And whose blood is that?"

"Did you see them?" Joel was looking around desperately now. Where had the men gone? did the have a car? Surely Kyal would corroborate the story.

"See who?"

"The men. The men who were in the house," Joel said, his voice shaky and louder than he intended.

"No one was in that house except you."

"Fuck!" Joel said, almost shouting the word. "You must have fucking well seen them. Three men. They were in there, they killed the girl, they came out."

"What is this crap? what girl? what fucking well happened in there? because me and Jez, we watched that house the whole fucking time you were poncing about in there, and no men fucking well came out of it. It was empty. You were on your own."

Joel looked at Kyal, and wanted to throw up again. How could they not have seen the men coming out?

"We have to get out of here," he said at last.

"First fucking sensible thing you said all night," and with that Kyal turned and ran along the riverside path and Joel ran with him.

***

Sirens. A police car swung into the riverside access road, and the boys dove into the reeds for cover. Kyal was panting heavily and had been having difficulty keeping up. The boy was overweight and unfit, and Joel had wanted to beat him to get him to run faster.

Two police officers were getting out of the car, torches raised as they scanned the riverside.

The boys ducked down as the beam glanced over the reeds they were hiding in. A radio crackled and one of the officers began talking, and then from a long way off they heard barking. Dogs!

Joel needed to pee badly as he lay in the damp reeds. Crap. They had to go. "We need to split up," he whispered to Kyal.

"No way! don't leave me. This is your fucking mess."

"So then maybe they will leave you alone," Joel said. "Anyway where is Jez?"

Where indeed. Kyal's older brother had vanished the moment he had seen the blood spattered boy coming out of the house. So much for sticking together, looking after each other. Kyal did not answer that question, and Joel supposed that he knew what his brother was like, but he was not going to let Joel go. He grabbed his arm.

"You don't fucking well leave me," he hissed.

A beam of light shone their way and the boys froze. With renewed terror, Joel saw the police man walking slowly in their direction.

They were going to be caught, and there was only one thing to do. Joel punched Kyal hard in the face, and as the boy let go of his hand in shock, he rolled away, kicking out, and threw himself into the river. The river was not deep and he half waded and half swam across to the far bank as Kyal wailed, caught by the police officers who were no doubt radioing in his position right now.

Joel ran until his lungs were burning, his heart threatening to burst in his chest. He ran until he was past exhaustion and he ran some more, making a circuit of the town, running for the only place he could think to run to now.

When he turned into his street, he saw his home. The lights were on, but outside were three police cars. He thought if only he could get past them, perhaps he could run and hide in his room. If he could get past them, dad would do something, sort it all out, stop them taking him away. But when he saw the police cars he knew that was stupid. He turned and ran back up the street, towards the recreation ground. Perhaps he could hide out there for the night. Perhaps he could hole up and make his way home when they had stopped looking so hard.

And then he heard the dogs again, close and excited. He turned and saw them coming from the other side of the recreation ground. Joel turned and ran for a stand of trees, but the dogs were coming fast. He tried to put on more speed but his legs seemed like they were ready to collapse under him. Joel sobbed, and panted, and ran but the dogs were almost on him. He felt a hot trickle of pee wash down his legs as he lost control of his bladder just as the first dog landed on him, teeth sinking into his leg, felling him.

Joel rolled himself into a foetal position, sobbing, wailing "I didn't do it" over and over again as he was handcuffed and dragged away.

Chapter 3
Trial

Joel

Joel stood in the dock and watched as the jury re-entered the court room. They had been out no more than half an hour, and that was not a good sign. He was expecting nothing better though, after the police interrogations, the failure to find any evidence that corroborated his story, the testimony of Kyal and Jez against him, and the way his own parents looked at him when they visited. He could see they did not believe him, and if they believed he was guilty, who else was going to believe him? Not the court appointed lawyer, that was for sure. He had advised Joel to plead guilty early, but when the boy refused, he had gone through the defence in a half hearted fashion, telling the story but lacking any conviction. Everyone in the room could see he did not believe it either.

The evidence against Joel was strong.

There were signs of sexual assault on the girl, she was called Lucy it turned out, and his saliva, testing positive for his DNA was found inside her. Tests had also found some of her DNA traces remained in his mouth, so that there was no question about what he had done. That revelation in itself was probably enough to convict him. Then there was the knife in her neck, with his fingerprints all over it, the blood all over his clothes with spatter patterns showing that he had been directly in front of her when Lucy was killed.

Kyal and Jez had testified that the house had been empty but for Lucy who had been left home alone to complete a homework project as her younger sister and parents had gone out to a movie Lucy had not wanted to see. Neither of them had known she was there, but they had seen Joel go in and come out all covered in blood and agitated.

They confirmed that Joel had been acting weird and had spoken often about how he would like to cut up a girl. Joel had shouted at Kyal that he was a liar when he said this, but Kyal had been unfazed and the court just took it as another sign of his volatile temperament. Someone had got to Kyal, but as their last meeting had ended with Joel punching him in the face and leaving him to be arrested, he supposed the boy felt few loyalties. He wondered what the plea bargain was that they had been offered to testify those lies against him.

There were other signs of interference too. The police found porn on his computer, including graphic descriptions of rape and murder. They presented messages that they must have written themselves that claimed he wanted to rape and murder a girl from his class at school. They even had his school teacher come in and explain how his hormones had been kicking in and he had turned into a nasty individual that the other children feared.

After that, there was only the demolition of his defence left, and that was not hard. The idea that three men would have framed him for murder sounded preposterous, and Joel supposed he would not have believed it either if he heard that story. Not least because no evidence had been found of the men. There was no other forced entry into the house, nor did the CCTV footage in the house show any sign of them. There had been no vehicles passing along the road either, as more CCTV footage confirmed. There were no finger prints, no marks, nothing. The only small hint that anyone could have been there but Joel was the fact the girl had been tied up, but the prosecution demonstrated that the knots had been inexpert, and if threatened at knife point, Lucy might have been persuaded to sit in the chair and be tied up. The ropes themselves had been used by painters and left on the very balcony Joel had climbed to.

Thus all the evidence pointed to just one conclusion, and through it all Joel's only defence had been to repeat over and over "I didn't do it."

Lucy's parents were in court to hear the verdict. Her mother was sobbing, her father was looking at Joel stony faced, a simmering deep hatred looking like it was barely subdued beneath the man's forced calm. Joel looked at them and then looked quickly away. He supposed people might read that as guilt too, but he simply could not hold their gaze. Nor could he look at his parents, also in court, their distress evident in their faces. Not least because they were convinced their son was a murderer and sexual predator.

The Judge turned to the foreman of the jury and asked the ritual question, "Have you agreed a verdict?"

"We have," the foreman confirmed with a grim nod.

"And on the charge of murder, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty, your honour." the man confirmed. The question was repeated for each charge, as Joel turned bright red, held onto the dock for support, heard the blood rushing in his ears and had a feeling that he was about to faint.

"And on the charge of rape, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty your honour," the foreman said again and the world wobbled around Joel. There had been no evidence of rape. None. They found his saliva in the girl but there was no evidence he had put his dick inside her, because he hadn't!

But they had argued that he did, and probably orgasmed, but as he was still having dry orgasms that this would leave no trace. The jury had bought to without any evidence at all.

After that, Joel knew he had no chance of a fair hearing. He had never had a chance, but the succession of verdicts piled up and Joel wished the ground would open up and swallow him up.

Guilty of murder, guilty of rape, guilty of sexual assault. Guilty of carrying an offensive weapon, guilty of burglary, with several other offences taken into account. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

"Joel Lewis," the Judge turned to Joel as he spoke now, "you have been found guilty on all charges. Your crimes are heinous and unforgivable. The despicable act you carried out for your own perverse pleasure, followed by the sickening manner in which you ended the life of poor Lucy Sawyer, demonstrate quite clearly that you are a dangerous and nasty young man.

"Once upon a time society might have been more forgiving, calling you disturbed, attempting to re-educate you and rehabilitate you, but such wishy washy social experiments always failed. Your kind will always be a danger as was so clearly demonstrated in the year of slaughter. No longer will we tolerate such behaviour, and if I had my way I would sentence you to be hanged by your neck until you were dead.

"The death penalty does not apply to anyone under the age of 18 though, and so it is with regret that I must settle for the more lenient sentence for capital crimes, but make no mistake over this – in the eyes of the law you die today. You are convicted of a capital crime and you pay with your life one way or the other.

"It is therefore without remorse or pity that I sentence you, Joel Lewis, for your crimes to a whole of life tariff without possibility of parole. From this day forward you are no longer a person. Your life records will be closed, you will be declared legally dead, and you will become the property of the state. You will be taken from this court room and transferred to the Sacramentum secure juvenile detention facility. You will have no rights or privileges and will receive the necessary processing to denote your new status as property. Your prison term will see you trained to your new role as a slave, and you will then be sold on as a slave a year and a day from today.

"Your sentence is at the most severe end of the scale, and so your sentence will include the fullest punishment the law allows. You will undergo full surgical nullification, and further processing will be at the absolute discretion of the Sacramentum facility. In this way we will be assured that you will never even wish to commit a sexual offence ever again."

Joel felt the blood rushing in his ears, his heart beating fast as his stomach knotted in sick dread. The reality of what he was being told struck him hard. Until that moment he had held hope that he had barely acknowledged, but it was there. Until this moment it had not been real, but now there it was on record – a life sentence. And nullification? Joel looked up once more at Lucy's parents, and saw a look of grim satisfaction on her father's face. There was a shout from the gallery as his mother started to protest, and a commotion as officers bundled her from the court.

Joel allowed himself to be led out of the room, shaking now, shocked that this had actually happened. He might have expected it, but the reality still bit hard, and this was harsher than he had expected. All lifers were sterilised, he had heard. He knew slaves were not allowed to have children, and some were castrated to make them docile. He had feared the castration since the man had mentioned about not being allowed to keep his balls, but nullification was rare, reserved for… well for murderers and rapists.

When he was out of the room he looked up at the court officer who was with him. The court officer patted his head, tried a wry smile, as though he actually felt a little sorry for the boy.

How could he have been so stupid? No one was going to think him cool now. A bad-ass who had spent a term in juvenile prison was considered hard, but a eunuch slave was just an object of fun, and doubly so if he did not even have his dick. If he saw Jez, Kyal and the others again, would they laugh at him to his face?

Probably they would, like they had laughed and mocked when they saw that eunuch slave in the town once, his tell tale high voice giving him away. They had all followed him around, mincing and holding their bums, and pretending to talk like a eunuch. Yes, Kyal would jeer at him – he was not one of them any longer.

And it was not just Kyal either – there were the little kids he had bullied for money, or just because it was fun making them cry. If they saw him now, they would not miss a chance to rub in his humiliation. He supposed everyone would know soon enough, but he would rather not see any of those people again.

"Come on kid, time to get on the bus," the officer told him, and led him past a jeering mob to the secure transport that would take him away to his home for the next year. It did not look like a bus to Joel – more like a meat wagon. As it drove away, angry people banged on the side, shouting obscenities, shouting he deserved all he got, and Joel curled up in the hard plastic seat and cried.

Chapter 4
Punishment

Joel

The prison transport stopped in a courtyard, and through the small window in the back Joel could see gates closing. He would not see the other side of those gates for a year, and as he was bundled roughly out of the vehicle by a bored prison guard, he knew that the closing of those gates signalled the end of his freedom. He turned to look with dismay at his home for the next year. The detention centre was a drab grey building, surrounded by fences and barbed wire. These juvenile prisons were designed to be as depressing as possible.

Dave, the transport driver, had chatted amiably on the way to the prison, and had told him already about the painted brick cells, the floors covered in cheap linoleum or just made out of concrete, because it was easier to clean the blood and puke from. Dave had told him all about the cramped cells, the early morning starts, the shared washrooms, the tiny gym and the spartan classrooms. Joel had wanted to shout at him to shut up, but instead he had mostly cried quietly as Dave had prattled on so long that Joel almost felt like he knew what to expect from this place. Almost, but the reality was even more stark and depressing than he had imagined it.

Lifers were looked down on in the prison, Dave had said. Everyone knew that once released at the end of their term, they were released only on a slave licence. Failure to be obedient as a slave would have the lifer returned to prison at any time, although masters could inflict their own punishments too. Lifers were deemed to have lost their humanity forever, whereas the other prisoners only had their human rights suspended. A lifer who was not sufficiently obedient at the age of 18 could still be executed for his crimes.

On the other hand lifers were usually hard core criminals, and they might have had celebrity status were it not for the castration. Many lifers had their balls removed as it made them less aggressive and also served to sterilise them. It also stripped them of that celebrity status they might enjoy, so Joel would not be the only eunuch in the prison, although Dave was not sure if there were any other nullos, as he called them. Only sex offenders were nullified.

"There is a social order in the prison," Dave had explained, "and you are going to be right at the bottom of it. Some of them eunuchs can still be sneaky bastards, but never heard of any of them having the aggression to work their way to the top of the caste system."

The transport had stopped and Joel was led off. He was pushed in through some double doors into a hallway where people started to jeer, just as the mob had done at the court house. He would discover later that this was just the normal greeting the prisoners gave to any new prisoner, but to Joel it felt like a special kind of insult, and he scowled, and looked away from the people congregating behind a barred off area from where he was.

He did not have to endure this for long though, as once Dave the driver had signed off a transfer form, Joel was led through a door into a smaller room with a medical table in the middle of it. In this room there were two people, a man and a woman, suited up like surgical staff.

"Take your clothes off," the man ordered him. Joel blushed but he pulled off his tie, his shirt and kicked off his shoes without complaint. He hesitated before dropping his grey school shorts, and stood there standing in his underpants. He hadn't liked those clothes anyway, he thought. He had only been dressed in his full school uniform because his lawyer had suggested it would make a good impression on the court. Some help that had been, he thought.

"All of your clothes, young man," the man said, waving his arms at the boy's underpants.

Joel bit his lip, and hesitated again.

"Joel Lewis, you will learn quickly that in this place all disobedience is punished swiftly. Orders are to be followed immediately. Your hesitation will earn you one stroke of the cane. Do not try my patience and earn more."

Joel frowned, and dropped his underpants. He muttered "perve" under his breath as he did so, and then covered himself with his hands, which made the woman laugh.

"Your insolence is noted. Two strokes of the cane then," the man said, and he fetched down a rattan cane from a hook, pointing to a table. "Bend over that."

Joel was slow again, and the woman took his hands and forced him into position, holding him there while the man took the cane and brought it hard down on the boy's bare bum. Joel had intended to stay quiet from the caning, but the sudden hot sharp sting on his bare bum was more painful than he had expected and he let out an involuntary yelp. The pain seemed to get worse over the next few seconds, like it was swelling and growing and Joel hissed, just as the second swish of the cane gave him the barest warning before a second stinging welt was raised on his exposed bum.

"Don't let the bastards know they got to you," he told himself, remembering some advice Kyal had given him about dealing with trouble. He then received two more strokes, for his failure to assume the position on his own, each one making him wince and as soon as the woman released him his hands went to his bum, rubbing himself there, feeling his flesh sticking up in hot, angry welts.

"I am Doctor Madison," said the man, "and this is Doctor Tracy. We will be performing your surgery today young man," and then he indicated the table. "Now lie down."

Joel reluctantly climbed onto the table and lay down. He did not want to do what he was told but his stinging and throbbing bum was lesson enough that he needed to follow orders or receive more of the same. He knew they would just force him to lie down anyway, so he complied.

The surface was cold against his bare skin, and he did not like the way he felt so exposed on it. The woman reached under the table and produced some handcuffs and foot cuffs which she proceeded to fasten to the boy's wrists and ankles. Once done, the chains were tightened, pulling at his limbs so that he was stretched out in a star jump position, and aware that his genitals were very exposed. He tried not to notice that he had grown a little stiffy.

"That was no doubt your first caning, although it will not be your last unless you learn obedience quickly. In future please bear in mind that you will be punished for rubbing your bottom without permission, but we have too much to do now to worry about that.

"Now we can make a start. First your tracking chip will be inserted, and we will give you your slave number. These won't hurt too much," Doctor Madison said.

Doctor Tracy had already pressed something cold to the back of Joel's neck, and she held it tight there. There was a small hiss and Joel felt a stab into his neck, that immediately began to burn and throb like a wasp sting. He wanted to put his hand to it but ended up tugging on the cuff restraints.

"Now that is the tracking chip. Don't worry, it will already be firmly embedded in your C3 spinal vertebra. The fact you can still move your arms and legs shows that Doctor Tracy made no mistake on that score."

Joel was not sure whether that was a joke, but Madison was not smiling. Might she have made a mistake? Could the chip have severed his spinal cord?

"Now later we will fit your collar," he went on and Joel saw him hold up a metallic circlet. "We don't fit the collars right away as our equipment has been known to interfere with them.

Just in case you do not know, I need to give you the warnings about your collar now, as you may have passed out when we do fit it at the end of your surgery. If you attempt to remove the collar, and it gets more than a couple of centimetres from the tracking chip it is coded to, the one we just inserted in your neck, then it will go into full alarm mode. Your position will be reported by GPS, the collar will also release loud audible alarms and jettison a special dye in a fine aerosol that should cover you before you can fling it away. This dye will show up especially well on ultraviolet scanners.

"I would strongly advise you not to remove the collar. There are severe punishments for slaves who attempt to remove their collars.

"Your collar also contains a GPS that constantly tracks whether you are in an allowed area. If you attempt escape, and move out of an allowed area, the collar will constrict and start to strangle you. If you do not move back into an allowed area, it will keep strangling you until you pass out, at which point the monitors should detect this and allow you to breathe. In the meantime the collar will again report your location to the authorities.

"Occasionally a collar malfunctions and does not allow an unconscious slave to breathe again, so be warned that if you do this, and let the collar strangle you, you may not be waking up.

"Do you understand all this?"

Joel nodded sullenly. and the man tutted. "You will need to improve your attitude if you want to avoid more canings."

After this the two doctors set to work on his number. They produced a tattoo machine which they used to etch a number into his leg:

28-05-03-22. His new designation for the rest of his life. The number was also the one encoded into the chip, and as they punched it in to a computer, he was officially enrolled in the state database of slaves. Joel Lewis was legally dead and 28-05-03-22 was born.

"Now just one thing remaining. Lifers have forfeited their rights to a family, and we find that slaves are much more compliant without their balls."

Joel felt his heart race now as Doctor Tracy picked up a scalpel and leant over his body to look at his legs. He had known this was coming and been dreading it, but until this moment he had still harboured some sliver of hope that it would not happen to him. Perhaps some kind of appeal would be held, or perhaps they would not do it straight away and he might be able to escape somehow.

Now, with the moment here, Joel knew there was no hope, but still he pulled tightly on the chains, trying to edge away from the terrible blade.

"Some centres allow the boys to keep their balls, at least for a while, but here in this facility we prefer to keep the boys docile from day one. In any case it is best to get it over with," Madison explained.

Joel struggled against the restraints now, but Tracy just laughed as she held his penis.

Perversely Joel could feel himself getting hard at her touch.

"Let me give you one last gift," she said, stroking his hairless penis. Joel felt it stiffen, and closed his eyes, moaning.

"Please don't cut my balls off," he begged, and squirmed a little as the woman played with his testicles and then his small and thin cocklet.

It took a while for him to achieve orgasm, but Doctor Tracy proved patient and persistent. Joel supposed that she knew how frightened he was, and made allowances, but slowly and gently she massaged the boy, and he felt that feeling he enjoyed when he touched himself there or pushed his crotch into the floor when he was reading. He felt the sensation rising inside him that he had learned about so recently when looking at a picture of a girl in a bikini at the beach. That picture was under his mattress at home, and absurdly he felt a moment of panic that his mother would find it now.

She massaged him and then even leaned over and licked his stiffened little shaft, and played with the head as it poked out of his foreskin, and through all this Joel felt a terrible conflicting sense of enjoyment and terror, as well as a deep sense of humiliation as this woman took charge of him, and slowly but surely brought the boy to his last full orgasm.

He gasped as his penis began to pulse and throb in its release, but his orgasm was still completely dry. This orgasm was both beautiful and terrible, as he knew what was coming next, and sure enough, Doctor Maddison did not even wait for the sensation to finish before he sliced into his scrotum and fished out his first testicle, a blue white nugget, painted red with spatters of blood.

"You see, boy, testicles are such a distraction. That feeling you just felt? you will never feel it again. You will never be allowed such pleasures, and so why keep your testicles? You are not going to be a man. Your days of looking at girls and imagining putting that inside them are gone, and we have to let the world know that crime does not pay, and criminals like you are just a bunch of pathetic losers, who will never amount to anything, never know any sexual pleasure, and will only ever be used by others. So say good bye to these balls, boy – you are not worthy of them. Goodbye to the hard guy who wants to terrorise girls…" and with that she severed the cord, dropped the testicle in a tray and quickly popped the other one too, cutting it away just as quickly. "And say hello to the pathetic little eunuch."

Joel was screaming now. The first cut had not been too bad but the excision of his testicles had caused a terrible gut wrenching pain deep inside him. The pain was excruciating, far and away the worst thing he had ever felt, and even as his mind processed what was being cut away, his body was shutting down his brain, trying to compartmentalise the agony. Trying and failing. He writhed and howled, and hardly noticed what happened next.

"But you drew the short straw, number 28-05-03-22. You see you did not just murder someone but you had to sexually assault her first. You are a disgusting, vile little thing and your judge has sentenced you to full nullification."

And with that Doctor Tracy took his penis in her left hand, pulled, and Madison held the boy's abdomen as she used her right hand to start to cut away his shaft, pushing the scalpel in deep to remove all the erectile tissue at its root. She grunted with exertion and he felt the blade slice deep inside him, but it was mere moments later she dropped his small penis that had just given him such indescribable pleasure into the dish beside his testicles, and then she cut away most of his scrotum too, before finally starting to stitch the screaming and terrified boy back up.

The wound was packed and padded and finally Joel was sedated, and taken away to the recovery room, not as a boy anymore but as a nullified eunuch, with nothing but a couple of scars and a deep indentation where his boyhood had been.

Chapter 5
Jack

Jack

Jack stood in the dock with his head bowed. The judge started to speak:

"Jack Thomas, you've been found guilty of aggravated theft. For one so young, it is unusual to find that you have already quite a history of offences."

Jack was hardly listening now, the word "guilty" hanging in the air seemed to blot out all other sounds. The boy looked around, distressed. Guilty. Guilty of theft. There was no coming back from a guilty charge.

Once upon a time it had been possible to appeal such sentences, but now things were different. Since the summer of riots, and the revolution, and the wave of new laws, most of it happening when Jack was still a baby, everything had changed.

People said that it was better. People said that justice was swift and efficient. There was no need to file an appeal, because there were no mistakes. That was what they said, but Jack doubted it was true in reality. How could they always be sure? How did they know when somebody was guilty? How did they know that he was guilty?

It didn't matter of course, because he was guilty. Jack was a thief. he knew what he was, but then he'd never really believed that they would catch him. He couldn't really believe it now. How had it happened? How had they known that that he had committed those thefts?

Once they had arrested him, of course, things had started to fall into place for the authorities. They dug around and found evidence, or perhaps they just manufactured it. The upshot of it was that Jack had been caught, and he supposed that it was fair and square. In fact there were a number of thefts that they had not managed to uncover and pin on him, and he did not confess them now. Small things like the tablets from the school IT store, or the money he had taken in the swimming pool changing rooms. They would not change the sentence much but it was a minor victory for Jack that they had no tracked down every theft – that he had at least got away with something.

Guilty.

Jack was guilty. What did it matter if he had got away with anything when he was guilty, and the damned cameraman was closing in on a shot of his reddening face. He wanted to cry like a little kid, but he fought back the tears, hoping the camera would not notice the rapidly blinking eyes.

He allowed himself to be ushered out of the court, and onto the waiting prison van. Belatedly he thought to look back to see his mother one last time before he was taken away, but when he did do so she was not looking at him, but seemed to be fighting with court officials. That was typical of mum, Jack thought. There would be no doubt about what she thought of his sentence, even though she knew as well as he did that he was guilty. Of course she knew, because she was quite happy to fence his stolen goods and pocket half the proceeds. Jack knew that she would be in court too next week, and he had wondered what would have happened had he been found not guilty and she had been found guilty. If she had been off to prison too, or worse, then he would have no doubt wound up in the state orphanage, and he had thought that prospect was no better than prison.

He had thought that until now, as he sat on the bus with the awful truth not just dawning on him, but blazing its way into his brain. He was on his way to Sacramentum. He would be there for three years, and even when he was let out he knew life would never be the same.

Jack had avoided the life sentence for the most serious of offences. Lifers always ended up being castrated he had heard, so that was something he had avoided. He imagined what that would have been like, and shuddered. He shuddered again when he realised he would be seeing some of the unfortunate eunuchs very soon.

A lifer, however, only spent a year in prison and then they were released on a slave licence, and sold. They may be looking at a life of slavery, and a loss of their own sex lives, but at least their detention sentence was shorter for it.

Not so his sentence though. Three years was three years, with no prospect of early release for good behaviour. On the contrary, bad behaviour would just get you locked up for longer or perhaps made a lifer after all. He was facing three years before he saw the outside world again, and when you were not quite 12 years old, three years seemed like a very long time.

Even after release he would continue to be punished. He knew about the tattoo he would be given – a permanent record of his punishment. Those tattoos could make other boys look up to you, think you were hard and cool, but they also ensured that no one would trust you, that you would always be known as an ex convict, and it was illegal to even try to have it removed.

He would only be allowed to stay in school until he completed 8th grade too. No one with a record was allowed past 8th grade, and that ensured he would never get a good job either.

Then there was the whole stop and search act – where any ex convict could be stopped and searched at will by the police, without need to give a good reason. He had heard the police used that to plant evidence on people they wanted off the streets, and the courts always believed the police, so ex convicts had to be very careful or they would end up before the courts again, and then a life sentence was inevitable.

It all added up to a bleak future for Jack, and any thought that being an ex-con would be cooler than an orphanage boy was chased a way by the sick realisation that his life had taken a very distinct sharp turn downwards.

***

"Welcome to the Sacramentum work-camp, boy. Your assigned convict number is 280503-05. You won't need to remember that, as we will be inking it on shortly, but you should know that we have today registered you with that number on the convicts database, so that is your identity from now on. However to make it easier, we will refer to you only as number 5."

Jack looked numbly at the prison warden who was explaining all this to him. He was standing in the wardens office, which was located high in a tower of the prison. He had been taken straight to here for what they called the start of his 'induction'. The induction had really started as they had driven through the drab prison gates though, and walked through bare brick corridors. The warden's office was out of character with those corridors, having frosted glass walls, a patio, soft leather furniture, and greenery all brightening it up. It was an island of luxury set on the pinnacle of the drab ocean of misery below.

Jack knew about the numbers already. His cousin was an ex-con and he had seen the tattoo on his thigh already. His cousin was 282201-87, and Jack recalled how he had explained the number. 28 was the prison number, so everyone in Sacramentum would be a 28. The explanation of the case number had something to do with the date and intake number, but Jack had never paid much attention to the details.

Jack had thought was that his cousin was cool for having the tattoo. He had been to Sacramentum, and bore the mark, and dark tales of a tough life and his heroics in overcoming adversity. A mark that had seemed cool on someone else, however, seemed much worse as he contemplated receiving it himself. Indelibly written onto his skin for the rest of his life would be a number that would forever link back to a record of his crimes.

The number had to be recorded on official documents like driving licenses and passports. Wherever he went from now on, people would see the 28 and know he had spent time in Sacramentum.

He realised that the warden seemed to be waiting for something, and a question occurred to Jack, so he asked it.

"Are there only four other boys here?"

"No, no!" the warden laughed. "We have eighty five boys here at the moment, but we just released our last number five – 282402-05 to be precise – this week, and so we have a cell waiting for you.

Your number is used to assign a cell, rosters, classes. Also we need a unique digit to give you a short name."

"My name is Jack," Jack said, his expression turning dark.

"Not anymore, five, and for contradicting me, I will introduce you to the punishment cane. Two strokes this time, and you can take that sullen look off your face too, or else I will make it four. You really don't want to see what happens when we go past six, so buck up your ideas!" the warden said, standing up and walking towards the boy. "Now, take your clothes off, because we need to do a strip search, and then canings are all done naked so we will get on with that. After that we will take you to X-ray to make sure you are not smuggling anything in, and then we will get you inked up and take your mugshots to file with your criminal registration."

***

Jack walked down the corridor flanked by a prison officer dressed in the red riot suits that he had quickly realised was standard issue in the prison proper. He thought back to the warden's office where he had been earlier in the day, and it felt like a different world. It was all part of the same prison, but the warden's office had been light and airy, with its own garden and the design was such that the view from the office itself looked out beyond the walls, so that you could almost forget you were in a prison.

The warden had been dressed in casual clothing. There had been no riot gear on him, and neither had he had any obvious weapons, protected as he was by a sequence of security doors.

He had been forced to strip and bend over and receive an intimate examination from the warden to check for hidden items. That had surely been unnecessary, as he had later been taken to the medical wing where he had been X-rayed. Still the intimate examination had happened, followed by his introduction to the cane, and his butt still burned angrily and chaffed against his prison issue underwear where the warden had laid out to angry red welts. That had hurt more than Jack had expected, but still he had managed not to cry out as the cane had landed with a loud crack on his bare flesh. Still his hole body had tensed up as he had gasped and snorted with the pain.

So the warden's office, despite its luxury, was not now one of Jack's treasured memories. Still the differences had been stark beyond it. The medical wing had been spartan, and the medics who proceeded to tattoo his number into his flesh, and collar him and insert a tracking chip, had few kind words to say.

Once this was done he had been collected by the officer who was with him now, and led him through the security doors into the prison proper, and the first thing that hit Jack was the stink. It was like school gym with a tang of blood and an underlying odour of rotting food. There was also noise, with people shouting and talking so that it was noisier than a school canteen, although the noise had subsided when he was led in, and Jack saw boys in cells or out of them, all looking his way.

They were curious about him, but he was equally curious and he looked back at them. Most of them were dressed, like he was now, in little more than some kind of underwear, whilst some also sported some kind of harness. Everyone had a collar, much like the heavy metal circlet that now sat on Jack's neck, although the collars seemed to differ in design. He noticed the tattoos of course, numbers indelibly inked into their thighs just as he was acutely aware by the burning soreness of his own thigh of the number that had been forever etched into his skin. The tattoo was small, and laser treatment might remove it if that were legal, but no, the mark was meant to be permanent.

The underwear hid the other thing Jack had been told: that nearly all the boys were locked in cock cages, just like the one he had been given after his tattoo had been etched into him. He had thought they were done after the tattoo, but the female medic had then rubbed his cock, watched it jump to attention, and looked at him with a mischievous grin.

"Do you masturbate?" she had asked and he had blushed. He had not wanted to answer but she had poked him in the balls, making him squirm, and so he had nodded reluctantly. He had discovered the joys of masturbation some months earlier, and since he had started he had not missed a day.

"You will not be doing that again until you leave here," she told him, her lips curving into a cruel smile and Jack had looked at her dumbstruck as she produced a shiny metal cage that she proceeded to fasten over his penis. He looked in horror as she forced the stiffening flesh into the downward facing steel restraint and the boy howled as his penis resisted. He had a boner now, so called because it was as stiff as a bone, made more so by the woman's handling of his private parts, but the doctor was trying to force it into the cage against its will. At last she gave up.

"It's no good, give him a shot Madison," and Madison produced a needle and injected something straight into the boy's stiffy. Jack had screamed at that and his stiffy seemed to grow burning hot before flopping to a flaccid state. Now at last the woman doctor could push it into the cage and then produced some kind of needle gun.

"I would reassure you that this is not going to hurt," she said, "but I like to be honest, so I won't. I can tell you that, unless I make a mistake, your balls will be unharmed," and with that she pushed the gun, pressed a button and there was a sound of compressed air, like an air pistol as the gum punched a hole right through his scrotum.

Jack let out a scream at this point, and hardly noticed as the medic pushed the wires of the cage right through the hole before locking it in place.

"There now. The cage is fastened through your scrotum so that no amount of pulling will get it off. Don't try, because rips to toe scrotum can cause all kinds of complications.

The drug that keeps you flaccid will only last a few hours. After that you can try to get hard again, but I would warn you not to. It will be extremely painful."

The drug had not worn off yet, so Jack's penis was tiny inside the heavy metal restraint, but he could still feel it hanging down on his crotch inside the stupid almost girly underwear that he now understood to be the standard prison issue.

Three years without masturbating? he had never gone three days since he had started. They might as well have cut it right off him as do that to him. No, he corrected himself, not that. The cage did at least show that they had not cut his balls off. He was not a miserable lifer eunuch.

"Does everyone have one of these?" he had asked, when the doctor had locked it into place.

"Nearly everyone," Madison had been the one to reply.

"Who doesn't?"

"The eunuchs don't need them. The nullos have nothing to attach them to. One or two others get special privileges, so don't have them."

"Special privileges?" Jack asked, thinking that maybe he would not be looking at three years without orgasm after all.

"Don't get your hopes up. If you were selected for special privileges we would not have put that on you in the first place. Nope, that is staying on you until you leave – well unless you really mess up and we take your balls off."

"Then how… how did they get special privileges?"

"Ah, now there are many things you will learn, but not from me. Up you get."

And that was all the medics had told him. After that his escort had arrived to take him into the prison, and here he was, being led to a cell with a number written on the wall beside it. Five.

"Your accommodation. Make yourself at home!" the guard said with a gruff laugh as he opened the barred door and pushed Jack inside.

The cell was small, dark, and stank of sweat and piss. He could immediately see a bunk, a toilet so close to it that if he rolled over in bed his face would be in the pan, and not much else. There was not room for anything else. There was hardly even room to stand up in there.

"This is your new home for the next three years. The bad news is that if we get any more prisoners, you will have to share it with someone."

The guard laugh and walked away, leaving Jack alone to sit on his bed miserably. The bed was hard, and the mattress, such as it was, was wrapped in plastic. There was one grubby and threadbare sheet and that was all. Jack blinked quickly but this time it did not stop the tears falling.

Chapter 6
Bitch

Jack

Jack entered the classroom and sat down on a hard wooden chair. It was immediately uncomfortable, not least because of the fresh welts on his bum from his caning that morning. As the seat reminded him of his misdemeanour, he thought back to the events at breakfast.

It was Jack's first full day in the prison, and he was still finding his feet. A boy from the next cell who called himself Tom although he was officially 64 had been explaining the way things were in prison. All the talk of a caste system, where some prisoners had higher status than others had seemed fanciful to Jack. In any case, Jack knew how to get his own way in life. A rightly timed cute look was as useful as a well judged kick to the balls, depending on the situation, but one way or another he had always been very good at manipulating people, and he was reasonably sure he knew how to avoid being trampled all over. Self confidence was the key. That and the willingness to fight when necessary.

Morning had come and the boys had lined up for breakfast. The prison canteen was little more than an outside caged area with a tin roof, and yet despite being open to the elements it felt cramped and noisy. There was a fair bit of pushing and shoving in the food line, but that had been little different from school. Indeed the whole canteen set up felt like a drab school canteen in which the walls had been replaced with wire fencing, and perhaps that half familiarity had lulled Jack into a false sense of security.

He could see some boys were being given bacon rolls. It was not high cuisine, but he was hungry and he wanted some of that. Thus when he reached the front of the line and he was handed a bowl of something that looked like very lumpy porridge, he pushed it back again.

"I'll have a bacon roll," he said.

"In your dreams," said a boy from behind the counter. The boy was older, perhaps 14, but dressed like any other prisoner, and Jack already knew that everyone had to work here at various chores. Working the canteen must be one of the better ones, he had supposed. Nevertheless the boy was just another prisoner, and he was not going to dictate what Jack ate.

"Fucking give me a bacon roll, or you are fucking well gonna regret it," Jack snarled, but the effect of his words was not as he intended, when someone in the line sniggered.

Jack whirled round and gave him the one fingered salute. As he did so, the bowl of porridge was taken back by the serving boy. Jack saw the movement, turned and added: "Now give me a bacon roll."

"Go sit down, you get nothing noob."

Alarm bells were ringing in Jack's head now. Don't let them get away with that or he would never have the respect he needed in this place. He had to show them right here and now that he was not some bitch to be messed with. He had to make sure he came away from this with some respect, and preferably a bacon roll too. Jack looked at the serving boy and scowled, moved closer and whispered:

"Give me the fucking bacon roll, you turd."

There was another laugh and then someone started chanting. "Noob, noob, noob."

Jack saw red and lunged across the counter, making a grab for a roll. The boy behind the counter tried to stab his hand with a fork, but Jack had the roll and now squirmed away, narrowly avoiding injury. He tried to put it in his mouth but someone grabbed his arm, and he looked up into the riot suited face of one of the prison warders.

"No food for you today, newbie," he said and then grabbed Jack's ear and forced the protesting boy across an empty table, before pulling a cane from his belt. All the warders carried canes, and now Jack learned why.

In front of everyone in the canteen, the warder pulled down his underwear, and stepped back to use his cane, but Jack was having none of that. He tried to get up, causing the warder to bark an order.

"You boys, hold him down," he yelled and two boys immediately pushed Jack down across the table.

Boys were laughing, gathering around now and starting to chant: "Cane, cane, cane!"

Jack tried to push the boys off him, but both were bigger and he was trapped down, his face close to the table, his arms held down, and because of the height of the table he was on tiptoe and kicking his feet was futile and just made the wood dig in more. He swore, and the boys around him laughed.

"Let's see, we have theft of food, brawling and swearing at a prison officer. Six strokes for you today, newbie," and the warder then raised his arm and hit him hard across the bare bum with the cane. There was a loud crack and Jack's butt suddenly exploded into unimaginably sharp pain, making him yell and curse.

"That's one," yelled the warder, and people jeered as Jack cursed. Moments later the second blow landed, and then a third in quick succession, each counted out by the warder. The last one had fallen across the top of his legs, below his bum, so that when he was allowed to dress, there was an angry red-blue welt showing everyone that he had recently been caned.

"Your punishment earns you six demerits, 03-05," the warder informed him, as he tapped something into a touchpad on his wrist. Jack was a little hazy still on what demerits meant, although Tom had warned him against accruing too many.

Since then, boys who had not even been in the canteen, on seeing the angry red butt with the visible blue line across the top if his legs, had taken delight in spanking his bum and then feigning ignorance when Jack cursed them.

He also had not been allowed any breakfast. He had tried reasoning with the warder, but the man had seemed quite unsurprised that the bacon roll had not been offered to him, and just shook his head, leaving him alone with the words "boy, you have a lot to learn."

Jack did not think he was going to learn anything in this class though. Apart from the discomfort in his butt, there was the unfamiliar feel of the cock cage on his penis, but those were not the only reasons he suspected he would not be learning much. There was also the fact that he hated school, and never listened much, so he expected little from the lesson.

The lesson was, in fact, to be taken by a social worker, and the subject was anger management, so the boy sat next to him informed him. Jack sighed. No, he did not want to hear about this, and heck, if they never saw him at a lesson, how would they know he was skiving off? And even if they did know, what would they do? issue more stupid demerits?

Like he cared.

Jack pushed his chair back and walked out of the classroom to the sound of the laughing of his peers, and some jeers, and at least one boy saying, "well that's brave."

***

The prison corridors were all monitored with CCTV, but Jack had spotted a door leading into a dark passage, with a sign on it: "Keep Out. Maintenance Only." The door had been left fractionally open, and he supposed a maintenance crew had forgotten to secure it when he had spotted this on the way to the classroom.

That was where he headed now. He glanced up at a CCTV camera and hoped no one was watching as he slipped into the room and walked through a small and dark corridor.

It was not that he thought he would escape or anything. He did not even think he would get away with skipping the class, and the warders might well find him quickly, but right now Jack was motivated by curiosity. He wanted to explore this place – and who knows, he thought, perhaps a good knowledge of the prison's secret places would serve him well later.

Only as he walked through the corridor he started to suspect this place was not so very secret, because he could hear voices. Boy's voices, laughing and jeering, and another one raised to a high pitch with fear.

Jack could have turned back, but he wanted to know what was happening, so instead he walked more slowly and carefully now, trying to place his bare feet as silently as possible on the loose metal grill floor, so as not to disturb the gratings. He crept closer to where the noise was coming from. The noise and a little more light that spilled from an opening ahead.

As Jack reached the opening he could make out more of what was being said. "Way to go! Fuck that virgin bum…"

"Ooh… oh… I am cumming… mmmffffff!"

"OK who is next?"

"Please stop! no more! No more… please…please."

The pleading boy was being ignored and the others present were talking over him, laughing and joking. Jack pushed his head around the corner and took in the scene.

There, pushed over some kind of maintenance barrier, was a boy being fucked by three other boys. One of them was older, perhaps 15 or 16. Sacramentum had a few teenagers, although always because they had been here years on a long sentence. This was a prison for preteens and young teens generally, and older teens were lucky if they were not tried as adults.

Once the older boy had finished cumming into the boy's butt, they pulled him up and threw him across the room. The boy screamed as he landed heavily and Jack ducked back into the shadows to avoid being seen.

The other boys were younger – not much older than Jack and the boy being raped. All the same it did not seem like the older boy who had just been doing the raping was in charge. As Jack watched from the darkness, he saw a boy of no more than 13, and maybe just 12, giving out the orders.

"Put him over there, I want him to suck me off," and the other boys pulled the squealing boy to a wall covered in some kind of metal grill. As they dragged their victim, kicking and screaming, Jack got his first view between the boy's legs. Perhaps not a boy then – at least not any more. This was Jack's first view of a nullo – a lifer who had been castrated, and his penis cut off too. There were just angry pink scars where his genitals had once been.

Now the nullo was propped up and the alpha male had dropped his prison issue underwear and was straddling his victim. No cock cage, Jack noticed. None of these boys appeared to have a cock cage, and as he watched he felt a sudden pain in his own crotch that made him wince and grab the metal restraint. Jack wanted to know how it was that they got to be unencumbered, but he knew better than to march into this scene and demand an explanation.

"Oh fuck, you are going to be a good bitch," the alpha male boy said, as he fucked his victim's face. "I am going to get you transferred into my cell so that I can have you every night. Oh yes… oh… oh, here I … mmmmff… cummm…."

The boy panted heavily and ejaculated into the nullo's mouth. Jack saw the victim's eyes go wide, as he choked on cum, and then the glistening white bead of it when alpha boy pulled his cock out of his mouth, and painted his cheeks with it, laughing.

There was a pause of a few moments as alpha boy collected himself, enjoying his post coital ease as his victims moaned quietly, still held down. The moment did not last long though as alpha boy stood up.

"Hold him down on the floor," he ordered, and then stood up and started kicking the boy, who writhed and tried to curl up into a foetal position. It did not help much as a foot slammed into his head, which hit the metal grated flooring with a sickening clang, and then he kicked the boy's scarred crotch, making him scream so loud that Jack was sure the warders would be here in a moment.

Now the older boy held their pleading captive down while the leader crossed the room and lifted a piece of grating. He removed a knife from the gap behind it and then went back to the struggling nullo. He dropped down over the boy in menacing fashion, and ran the knife over his face.

"Now, bitch, I get to mark you," he said. "Should I mark your face? Such a pretty face! That is not the face of a rapist and a murderer you know. How about a nice scar from here, to here?" he asked, running the knife menacingly from the boy's ear to his lips. The boy was pale, frozen in terror, and Jack knew why. There was no doubt that this boy was capable of doing what he said.

"Would you like that? we could give you a permanent smile! We could even call you Smiler. Shall I cut your face, 22?"

22 was frozen in place, the knife still pressed to his cheek so he dared not shake his head. Instead he stammered out a "no."

"When you speak to me, you call me Ashton. Finn Ashton. Don't ever forget. Every time you call me anything else, I will give you a new scar. Get it?"

"Yes, Ashton," 22 stammered.

"OK so not your face, how about I cut your eye out? One today, and one another day, and then you won't be able to see no girls, and then you won't want to rape them, right?" and with those words Ashton pushed a finger into 22's eye making the boy squeal.

"No, please no, Ashton," the nullo begged.

"Good, I like a bit of begging, so I guess I won't cut your pretty face. Not today. But we do need people to know that you are my bitch now. I want everyone to know I claimed you.

"Don't worry – when people see you are my bitch they won't ever fuck you without my say so, so you can thank me for protecting you. You know what they would do to you otherwise? A miserable rapist like you, giving us all a bad name! They would fuck you until you are dead, so I am saving your life here. You can thank me by sucking my cock again tonight," and with those words the boy leaned forward and thrust the knife into the screaming boy's belly button. The boy looked terrified, then aghast and then he writhed in agony as blood splashed from the wound, as the knife bit a deep gouge into the boy's navel.

Jack watched in horror, and moreso when he realised he had seen this mark before. One of the boys in the canteen who had been hunched up in a corner, with only a half portion of porridge clutched to himself had a mark just like that on his navel. A scar that ran across it like a knife had been thrust in there – and in the middle had been some kind of metal pin.

"You are mine now, bitch. I own you, and you know what? you are kind of cute. A cute but miserable little rapist, but you won't be doing that again. Nope from now on you are gonna let any boy in my gang have you whenever they want. No one is gonna stop you. If they say they want to rape you in the canteen with everyone watching, you had better let them do it, because you don't want us bringing you back here to teach you a lesson now do you? Don't want me taking one of your eyes out after all, do you? Well do you?"

The older boy released the nullo now and the terrified boy clutched his stomach, sobbing. He shook his head, saying "no Ashton" as he did so.

"No, no. You ar my bitch now. You say, no Ashton, SIR to me. Do you want us bringing you back here for another lesson?"

"N… no Ashton, sir," the boy sobbed.

"Good. So now will someone go and get the noob who is watching us in the corridor?"

Chapter 7
Fight

10.1 Demerits

• 10.1.1 Demerits are designed to discourage antisocial behaviour among boys. Demerits can be accrued for all misdemeanours, and will be handed out by guards where there has been misbehaviour.

• 10.1.2 Offences range from swearing (1-3 demerits), minor altercations (5-10 demerits), fighting (10-20 demerits) or more serious rule breaking such as breaking bounds or assaulting guards (30-80 demerits).

• 10.1.3 Any prisoner accruing more than 30 demerits in one day will automatically be placed in solitary confinement, the hot box (see: 10.4 Solitary Confinement), for a period of 1 day for every 30 demerits. Demerits do not expire following this punishment.

• 10.1.4 Each time demerits exceed a total of 50 they are converted to a permanent mark. The first demerit tattoo will be placed on the buttock, second will be placed on the chest, third on the back, fourth on the leg and fifth will be placed on the forehead. (see 13.4 Approved Designs and Marks) Any prisoner marked on the forehead will have their sentence converted to life, and will be sold as a slave on completion of their penal term.

Extract from Sacramentum Facility Penal Code

Jack

Jack ran down the corridor, the grating clattering noisily as he hurtled into the darkness. From behind he could hear the boys giving chase, but he did not look over his shoulder to see the pursuit. Instead he ran for the safety of the prison corridor he had left. Anger management classes might not be such a bad idea after all.

Jack was fit and fast, and he would surely have made it out safely, but all at once he found himself smashing into an obstruction. Something cold and metallic blocked his way, and even as he was thinking he was sure that this obstruction had not been here on the way in, he felt it move, grabbing him around the waist.

Now he heard a grunt of exertion and he realised that this was one of the prison guards, his red and black riot gear camouflaging him effectively in the dark corridor.

Behind him the clattering on the grating had stopped, and Jack realised that his pursuers must have seen the guard, or heard him, or something.

"What do we have here then?" the guard asked, and Jack felt a sudden tug of loyalties. He knew the way it worked in prison: you did not snitch on anyone, ever. At the same time he suspected the nullo could be seriously hurt. Surely a stab to the navel risked serious injury?

"Nothing… I just got lost," Jack answered the guard, deciding that the nullo was not his problem, and getting out of here without injury to himself was.

"Lost? You walked past a keep out sign accidentally?" the guard asked, still holding Jack firmly. "And what about these other boys? are they lost too?"

"I dunno. Never saw them before," Jack said and the guard tutted.

"Oh come on, 03-05, I know it is your first day here, but you can't tell me you didn't just spend 15 minutes watching these boys raping and beating up on 03-22, can you?"

Jack said nothing. Safer to say nothing when it was clear the guards knew more than they were letting on.

"Ashton, where are you?" the guard asked into the darkness, and a moment later a voice from much closer than Jack had expected, almost behind his shoulder, answered.

"Right here."

"What do you want me to do with this one?"

Jack looked over his shoulder at Ashton and then back at the guard. Oh crap, he thought, this is not good.

"He should get at least 50 demerits for being in here, don't you think?" Ashton said, and the guard chuckled. Jack swallowed, and looked as the guard punched something into a hand set.

"Looks like this noob already has six. Boy, you are going to love the hot box. 56 demerits on your first day is a new record."

Jack said nothing, and Ashton put a hand on his shoulder. Jack tried to push it off, but the boy gripped tightly.

"But Jack here wants to double or nothing, don't you Jack?"

Double or nothing? He looked at the guard and saw a dark smile cross his face. "Oh yes, the warden will like that. Some nice entertainment. Double or nothing, and if we double, 112 forfeits for a noob will make a record no one is going to beat."

"Wait, I didn't say I was going to do that…" Jack started. He was not sure what was happening but it was definitely not good. Ashton's grip grew tighter again and his fingers dug into Jack's shoulder.

"You would rather spend time in the hot box?" he said, his tone dripping with mock concern. "Naked, all hunched up so that you think you will die from the aching but you can't move. Sweating like an animal until you have no sweat left, feeling like you cannot breathe, and you are going to die, and you can't sleep, but you will be there for days. You want that? Do you? Because I am trying to help you here. Trying to cut you some slack."

"Fuck off! Cut me slack by not giving the demerits in the first place."

"Oh it's too late for that," the guard chimed in. "As soon as they are entered only the warden can take them away."

"So take me to the warden and I will tell him about what these turds were doing to that poor nullo boy."

Ashton kicked him and Jack grunted but the guard just chuckled.

"Oh boy, you just don't know when to stop digging do you? Five more demerits it is. And if you go to the warden with tales of Ashton here, you can pretty much give up on having your own comfy cell and just decide to spend the rest of your sentence in the hot box."

Jack glowered at the guard. What hold did Ashton have over them? Would even the warden allow that to happen? It was not fair, but since when had he expected prison to be fair? He mulled over the situation and the guard just waited with that stupid mocking grin on his face.

And here was the thing: Jack knew that he had to make an impression in this place, but if Ashton was already the power here, then what he needed to do was make an impression with Ashton. If he could be in Ashton's gang then he would probably be safe from others here.

He would probably get bacon rolls at meal times. So was this like some initiation? if he did what Ashton asked, the double or nothing, and if he succeeded, would he earn enough respect with Ashton? It was worth a shot.

"What do I have to do for double or nothing?"

The guard's grin spread wider and Ashton's grip relaxed.

"Oh that is easy. You have a submission fight in the gym. If you win your demerits get cancelled. You don't go in the hotbox and you don't get the decoration you earned yourself when you went over 50 demerits."

Decoration? Jack remembered the talk now. He had not really been listening but he had sat up at mention of tattoos and even brands. Had he already earned enough demerits for that? God! This place sucked.

"And if I lose?" he did not really want to hear the answer, but he had to confirm it anyhow.

"If you submit, the demerits get doubled."

Double the demerits would double the punishments earned. That was not good. Cancelling the demerits sounded like a good idea but the penalty for losing was severe. Then again, if he did nothing he was going to get punished anyway. This way he had a chance to wipe the slate clean and earn his way into Ashton's favour too. He squared his shoulders, looked up at the guard.

"Who do I fight?"

"Oh just someone else looking to get their demerits cancelled. Now who would want to do that?" Ashton asked, and then looked to the largest boy there. "Oh yes, you have twenty demerits you wanted to lose, right Jez?"

Jez nodded. "Yeah, and I am gonna crush the noob."

Jack turned and looked at the bigger boy and his heart sank. Fuck, there was no way he could beat someone that big. He was ready to fight, but he needed a chance of winning. He pointed at the other boy with Ashton. He was small, wiry and didn't look like he was all there.

"What about him? does he have any demerits?"

"You want to fight Ninja?" Ashton asked. Jack looked at the boy and reckoned the name was probably some kind of joke. Ninja looked scrawny and no taller than Jack was. He reckoned he could take him in a fight.

"Yeah, sure. I will fight him."

"How many demerits do you have, Ninja?" Ninja held up 10 fingers.

"Settled then. The noob fights Ninja," Ashton said, and Jack was troubled to see a look of amusement in the boy's face, as he added. "You are gonna regret it though."

Jack looked quizzically at Ashton and then at the scrawny boy. For a moment he wondered if he had underestimated him, but then Ashton got down on his knees and the guard took his cock out of the protective casing of his uniform and thrust it into the willing boy's mouth.

Regret it? Right! Ashton was nothing more than a cocksucker, sucking up the guards to get special treatment.

Jack's respect for the boy dropped through the floor as he saw him humiliate himself like that. Ashton was a trumped up little tart and Ninja was his feeble lackey. He would crush the weedy weird kid in the submission fight, and then?

Then Jack would find a way to have Ashton kneeling at his feet too.

No, he was not going to regret it.

***

Jack had not spent much time in the prison yet, and did not know his way around, but he recognised the exercise yard, even though it now looked different, because all the boys in the prison and plenty of the guards had gathered into a circle to watch the entertainment.

Double or nothing fights were entertainment, and a chance for the boys to let off steam. The guards had explained to him that there fight was essentially a wrestling match. No weapons were allowed, and the fight was over when one boy yelled that they submitted or when they were knocked out or pinned to the ground for three seconds. Leaving the circle would also lose the bout.

"So it is just wrestling rules?" Jack asked. "Oh no, boy. There aren't any rules."

Jack had frowned at that reply but did not really accept it. They had already told him a bunch of rules. No weapons, and how to win. Those were rules, so what did the guard mean? He was already coming to understand, however, that this place operated with its own screwed up code. He thought, belatedly, that perhaps he should have taken his punishment and learned a bit more about how things worked before accepting this bout. He probably should have thought a bit more before skiving off lessons on his first day too.

Too late now. He was here and the exercise yard was awash with the sounds of cheers and jeers as he and Ninja entered the circle. He could see the guards placing bets, and it looked like a number of the boys were betting somehow too. Ashton was watching on, looking directly at him, a smile plastered on his face. Jack frowned back and as he watched, Ashton licked his forefinger and then drew it across his throat, winking.

Jack looked away.

"OK boys, you know the score. Noob 22 here is already a record breaker, earning 61 demerits on his first day," one of the guards said, and his words were greeted by whistles, laughter and a number of shocked looks in Jack's direction. He supposed 61 really was a lot of demerits. "But in our generosity, we will allow him to wipe his record clean if he wins this bout. Jack has made the challenge, and you know him, you love im… here is … Ninjaaaaa."

Whistles and shouts punctuated the overly dramatic introduction and Ninja strode forward, arms in the air, and then everyone began to chant a count down. "Three, two, one… FIGHT!"

Jack turned to face Ninja, but from the moment the shout to fight went up, Ninja was running at him, making a snarling sound. Jack braced himself, squatting low, but Ninja did not run into him. Instead he planted a foot down, sprung forward and upwards into the air. Jack turned to watch in surprise as Ninja seemed to somersault over him, and Jack turned.

Ninja was already landing on his feet, but the lack of contact did not worry Jack, even if Ninja's athleticism was a concern. So what if he could launch himself into a somersault? that did not hurt Jack.

Ninja ran again, and Jack braced again. Was he going to somersault again? but no – instead Ninja threw himself onto his hands and suddenly feet connected with Jack's face. Jack fell back, grabbed wildly, but Ninja was a blur of movement. He was upright and a fist landed in Jack's face and then another in his stomach. Jack brought his hands up to defend himself but then Ninja landed a kick to his groin. There was a groan and Jack dropped, clutching himself with a cry of pain.

Ninja did not stop though, but threw himself onto the hapless boy, and suddenly Jack let out a howl of pain as he felt needle like teeth bite into his shoulder. He hit out at Ninja and landed a blow to his opponent's abdomen, but that just seemed to make him more angry, and the two were rolling in the dust, and Jack's head was being banged against the hard ground again and again.

He was feeling groggy, and he tasted blood. Ninja's fingers were gouging his eyes, and try as he might, Jack couldn't seem to land any telling blows on Ninja, who seemed to squirm and dodge like he was possessed by some demon.

Jack shouted in anger and punched, but Ninja dodged, grabbed his hair and wacked his head hard against the ground. Jack saw stars and the world went black for a moment, and then the boy was on top of him, pinning his shoulders.

Jack thrust his arms forward, but then Ninja grabbed his balls and squeezed. Jack screamed in pain and fury, writhed in agony. He did not submit. He did not shout it, but he did, in his agony, forget to break the pin and before he knew it, there was a chant:

"One, two, three…"

And then it was over. It had taken less than a minute for him to lose.

***

"Jack in the box!" Ninja said, over and over again, and laughing manically as the boy was taken outside to the hot box. He was stripped naked, chained and then pushed face down into the tiny metal box, barely large enough to contain him. Ashton leaned over the open lid and spat on Jack's back.

"I told you that you would regret it," he laughed, and then a guard shut the lid and all went dark in Jack's world.

Dark, but immediately too hot. Jack wriggled but there was no room in the box even to change position, and in any case the chains prevented that. He lay face down as he began to sweat, feeling like he could not breathe, and feeling the terror of being locked in, in total darkness, alone.

It was not long before he began to shout and then scream for help, for water, for air. He begged for someone to come, and yelled that he was sorry, he would be good, he would do anything – just get him out of this damned box.

Jack pissed himself once, before he became too dehydrated, and the box stank as the pee evaporated around him. He squirmed, kicked and howled in rage and terror, but no one came for hours, and even when they did, they just quickly gave him a drink and then closed the lid again. They did not want him dead from thirst, but that short blinding reprieve as the daylight flooded in and he gulped water down, was short lived and the terror was redoubled as the box lid closed again. He screamed in terror, begging again and again to be let out. He lost all track of time, lost his voice and when he started hallucinating of being free from this place and out playing football with his friends, he realised he was losing his mind too.

How much longer would they keep him in this box? Jack in the box.

He was Jack. Jack in the box.

Chapter 8
Terrorists

Matthew

"Now then class, as you know there have been some changes to the government. There is nothing to worry about, everything will be much like it always was, although I will be your new headmaster.

"I am sure you have many questions, and we will be going to classes shortly where you will be able to ask them, but before we do so there are just a few changes to make to the class rosters.

"As of today the Incomers Scholarship Programme has been suspended. That means that we will be saying good bye to our scholarship boys in this school. From now on only the sons of contributing patriots will be educated here.

"Would the following boys please therefore please stand up and make their way to the back where Mr Farad is waiting for you. Johan Aiken, Georg Fitzallen, Matthew Taylor."

Matthew felt his face flush as his name was called. He stood up and looked at his friends, but they were not looking at him. Instead their eyes were fixed on the new head like he held some kind of hypnotic spell on them. Matthew made his way along the line and headed towards the door, knowing that it was not hypnosis, but fear that stopped them from looking back at him. All except Robbie who turned and flashed him a weird look like he was trying to smile, trying to show moral support, but with eyes wide with shock and fear.

It shouldn't have been a shock, of course. Everyone knew the scholarship students would not get to stay… not after the terrible events of the last few months.

It had started slowly, and being just twelve, Matthew had not noticed at first. He was a boarder at the school, and so he did not hear the outside news so much, but little by little things had filtered through. Little by little he had noticed the change in attitudes towards him – not just from his friends, but from adults too.

It had started with the modelling contract drying up. He had not been asked to do a photo shoot for months now. Still, that might mean less money in his pocket, and less going back to his dad back home, but his scholarship was all paid for and safe. He did not need the work to stay in school.

But then Mister Gove had been off with him in science class. He had not cared at first as everyone knew Mr Gove knew nothing about teaching and was only a teacher at all because he could not do anything else. So what if a failed teacher was always giving him a hard time? So it was a few extra detentions – he could live with that.

Then other teachers too had started bringing up the incident with the laxatives. No one had mentioned that for months, but now they were all treating him like he was a troublemaker.

It rubbed off on students too, and he had been in several fights over one thing or another. That had not helped with the troublemaker image either, so in the last month he had spent more time waiting outside the headmaster's office than he had spent in the school yard.

There had been name calling too.

Scrounger, incomer, ispy, and a whole load of other names that would have got him in trouble for just saying out loud. Still his friends had stuck by him, and there had been good times too, although the last time he really remembered enjoying himself with his friends was that day at Fitz's pool. That had been the day after he had been caught cheating at strip poker, but his friends had forgiven him that. At least they had at first. Then one of them had spread it around school, and how he had shafted Will, and after that there had been taunts and people had called him gay and a cheater and worse.

Being called gay hurt. Society was supposed to be more tolerant these days, but in this school there was still definitely a stigma to being gay, and the worst part for Matthew was that he was not entirely sure it was not true. Not after last week with Robbie. Was he gay? He didn't think so… but why did he dream about Robbie every night After the rumours started there always seemed to be one reason or another why he could not join in with his friend's games.

Could he come over tonight? He would ask, and the answer would be no, because they were doing a family night, or they were already off to the cinema with someone else, or they had homework. Some boys were boarders, and some day boys, but even the boarders always seemed to have something they needed to do when he asked.

Matthew knew what was happening though. He saw the way his friends would see him from a distance and then walk in a different direction, or fall in with a bigger group of boy so as not to have to talk to him.

It was not that they out and out told him they hated him – he guessed they didn't, but the only boy who had been foolish enough to keep talking to him willingly was Robbie, and after that Robbie had mysteriously got a black eye and then he had taken to meeting Matthew in places where they would not be seen. Not that Matthew minded that, because those alone times with Robbie were some of the best ever. He could never admit to anyone that moment when he and Robbie had shared their first kiss.

Had that made them gay? Maybe, and that was why the jibes hurt so much.

Anyway if the kiss had not made them gay then what Robbie did after skinny dipping would have sealed it.

But in the last weeks the changes in government had happened – events so big that the news broke through into the school itself, and Matthew had seen clearly where all this was coming from.

So yes, of course the scholarship had been ended, and he was being sent away from the school. There would be no more free riders, no more co-operation and definitely no more incomers. Matthew's scholarship looked like all three, and so he had known the nagging fear that his days at school were numbered. He was being sent home.

He fought down the urge to cry as he approached Mr Farad.

"Follow me boys," was all Farad said as he led the three boys from the assembly hall, through the main entrance of the school and out to a waiting bus.

The boys walked in silence until they reached the bus steps, and then Matthew turned to the man who seemed to sport a leery grin, like he was enjoying everything immensely.

"Are we going home?" Matthew asked, and the other two boys looked at the man, clearly wanting to know the answer to that too.

"Two of you are being deported, yes. Georg and Johan?" Farad asked, looking at the faces and seeing the two other boys respond as their names were called. "You are the lucky ones."

Lucky ones? How was that lucky? Matthew looked uncertainly at the boys who both appeared close to tears, and then back at the man who was still grinning inanely.

"What about me?" he asked, swallowing as his voice faltered.

"You are Matthew Taylor? Ah yes, I have seen your file. Seditious acts, a trouble maker and with poor grades and performance too. No surprises considering who your father was."

Matthew did not miss the last word, and he felt a stab in his heart as he forced himself to ask the next question.

"Was?"

"Matthew Taylor, it is my sad duty to tell you," Farad said, still smiling broadly, "that your father was executed this morning under emergency order SA-1, section 1 part a, for treasonous activity against the state."

Matthew opened his mouth, and sucked in air. He wanted to say something, but no words came to mind, or rather too many words did. Instead he just looked at the man open mouthed, taking in every detail of his wrinkled potato shaped face. The silence stretched and the man made no effort to fill it. At last Matthew spoke again, his voice shaky.

"It's a lie."

"I am not the liar," Farad said, looking at his file. "It says here that you are though. Your father was working for a terrorist organisation. You knew this of course."

Matthew shook his head. That couldn't be true. His father? There was no way in the world he could imagine his father doing anything seditious. No way in the world that he could be… could have been a terrorist.

"No!" Matthew said, denying both accusations at once.

"There is no doubt about it. Of course we have had to impose a news blackout on the plots he was involved in to prevent their spread, but your father was plotting the overthrow of the legal government. He was a traitor and wanted to be a murderer too. He planned to despicably kill innocent people in cold blood.

"We know you knew about it Matthew, and that is why you were involved in your own sedition here in the school."

"I never! I didn't" Matthew protested.

"Of course you did. It says right here that you attempted to poison a teacher. I have no idea why you were not expelled on the spot when that happened.

After that it seems that quite a string of offences have been uncovered. Without a doubt you were in league with your father."

"Dad was no terrorist," Matthew shouted now, "and I didn't poison anyone – it was just laxative."

Farad's face broke and he laughed, before putting his face very close to Matthew's.

"He has already been found guilty, boy, and so have you. Look, it says right here that it was poison, and you have been found guilty of attempted murder and seditious acts. The court was quite forthright in their comments about such a vile and calculating act from one so young."

Matthew backed away from the man's foul smelling breath. He smelled of tobacco smoke, beer and garlic, but the rancid breath was nothing to the venomous look in the man's eyes.

"It's a lie… I didn't even get arrested… it's a lie."

"Emergency order SA-1 again, you were found guilty on a trial of the evidence in absentia and this, this is your arrest."

That was when Matthew turned and ran. He sprinted towards the back of the bus and the road beyond, but Farad shouted and at once he saw his mistake, as a man emerged from behind the vehicle. Matthew dodged, swerved to one side, felt a hand grab at him but he shrugged it away and kept running.

Moments later the tazer hit him. Matthew did not feel it hit but at once the voltages of the weapon surged through him and he fell to the ground, feeling a terrible agonising pain before his head cracked against the road surface and he blacked out.

Chapter 9
Matthew's Sentence

Matthew

When Matthew came to his senses he found that he had been stripped to his underwear, which was wet where he had peed himself when the tazer hit him.

"Good, you are back with us," Farad said, and then forced Matthew to his knees. "Now kneel there while I read you your sentence."

Matthew ached all over and his muscles felt weak. He knew he could not run again, and in any case he did not want another taste of the tazer. He hung his head meekly as the man began to read from his clipboard.

"Matthew Taylor, for acts of terrorism, You have been sentenced to one year incarceration, after which you will be sold as a slave."

"A slave?" Matthew asked, "but we don't have slavery here… they only have it in…"

"Matthew, you understand don't you that the government has changed?

We are no swamped by that human rights red tape. It has all been repealed. We have taken back control and the laws have already been passed. President Johnson signed Article 5 into law three days ago. We have slavery here now too. However we don't have the appropriate prisons in place yet, but not to worry, the president has already established a treaty with Fremont, now we are free to do so ourselves. You are honoured, as you are the first boy from this great nation who will be sent to the famous Sacramentum youth facility in lower Fremont for your punishment."

"Where?" Matthew asked. He had heard of Fremont, of course. He had never been there but his dad had been born there. He had emigrated from there before Matthew was born, and just in time before the border controls had gone up. His dad had always said that leaving Fremont was the best thing he had ever done, but he had not spoken of the place much. He had certainly never mentioned any place called Sacramentum.

"If you don't know where it is, you don't need to… although you might like to hear that it is very hot there. You can work on your tan."

"Please," Matthew began, his voice quivering again now, his lip trembling. "Please, I didn't do anything. Honestly, I didn't."

"Spare me the denials, boy. You are going to Sacramentum for a year and then you will spend the rest of your life as a slave. Oh and did I forget the best part? The court took into account your collusion with your father in his terrorist atrocities, and for his crimes and yours, we are going to castrate you. Publicly.

You are going to be a TV sensation."

***

The journey to Sacramentum was long. Matthew spent hours on a bus before being transferred to a transport plane. He might have been excited about flying, if he had not been so terrified about what awaited him at the other end of the flight. In any case the plane flight turned out to be hot, noisy and with nothing to see as the freight plane had no windows to look out of.

Matthew had given up any attempts to talk. On his way to the plane, the bus driver had clearly been under instructions to ignore him, and Farad, who accompanied him, was infuriating, nasty, vindictive. He had explained, without Matthew asking, all about the famous Sacramenum high security facility – the young offenders prison that had criminals cringing with fear.

He also explained all about the bomb plot that his father had supposedly been about to carry out. Bombing a shopping centre filled with young families. Matthew still could not believe it. Dad would never do something like that, would he? and yet Farad seemed to believe it. He spoke at length about all the evidence and how his father had been arrested, and the trail of correspondence that had implicated all the co-conspirators. But how reliable was that? because Farad said he was a co-conspirator, and Matthew knew that to be false. He supposed it was all false. But why? Why would they frame his father? Matthew had no idea.

He did not ask questions though. He did not like the sound of Farad's voice or his leery smile. He allowed himself to be buckled and locked into his plane seat and then spent the whole flight reading cargo labels on boxes stacked in front of him, over and over again. He already hated the word Sacramentum. Hated and feared it just like Farad said he would.

And all the time as the hours passed. Farad amused himself reading a book titled Manufacturing Consent, Interpreting Machiavelli In the Modern Context, a title that was enough to almost put Matthew to sleep, but Farad seemed to think it was something like a steamy romance novel from the expression on his face. Matthew wondered if that was indeed what it was, just in a boring cover to fool him. The man seemed to have an erection, so that did seem likely.

Such thoughts were only a momentary distraction to the deep gnawing nagging fear he felt. Every minute now was a minute closer to… he tried not to thin of it. He tried to sleep but the fear would not let him be, would not allow him to rest.

They wanted to castrate him. That was the worst of all. Worse than being ripped out of school, tazered, stripped to his underwear, told his father was dead and a terrorist, told that he was going to prison, and worse even than slavery.

They wanted to castrate him. Why would they do that? How could that be allowed?

He had vaguely heard that some places did that for the worst criminals.

You had to be a murderer or worse though, he thought. But, of course, they thought that he was a terrorist. They thought he had tried to murder someone. They thought he had wanted to murder others. Still, how could his country have changed so quickly and so completely that he could be sentenced to castration without so much as a trial?

What would it mean for him he wondered. He had heard of eunuchs but he did not know much about them. Weren't they singers in Rome once? because they kept their unbroken boy's voices when they grew up. There had been a eunuch in the Bible too but he didn't think the Bible said anything other than that the man was a eunuch. There was one thing he was pretty sure about though… eunuchs either couldn't or didn't want sex. That thought stung him, and again and again his thoughts were drawn back to something very special that had happened just last week.

Robbie.

He remembered the game he had played with Robbie in the park a week ago. It had been the last time he had managed to meet his friend alone, and so the last time they had played together. But boy, had they played. They had gone skinny dipping in the river and then they lay in the sunshine, and Robbie… oh God, just thinking of what Robbie had done was making him hard again despite his terror. Matthew's hand dropped to his lap to hide the little tent pole pushing out of his red and white striped undies.

Robbie, he remembered. Robbie who was younger than him but seemed to know so much more than he did about that kind of thing had gently teased him with his lips, explored his body with his fingertips, run his hands all over his naked river damp flesh.

Robbie had held him and licked his navel, run his tongue down Matthew's pubis, and all the while Matthew had been squirming, writhing with the intensity of it all, the pleasure.

Robbie's lips had found his foreskin, kissed it and slowly, oh so slowly, had allowed Matthew's very stiff shaft to slip into the boy's mouth. His friend had sucked him, playing with his balls, exploring his perineum with his fingers which then found his butt crack and then… and then…

Matthew's passion had exploded in a moment of overwhelming perfect joy, and he had shot his first ever load of cum into his friend's mouth, feeling something spurt out of him so that he thought he had peed in his friend's mouth by accident.

Robbie had feigned disgust, but he seemed to secretly like it and the two boys had lain together in each other's arms, enjoying the warm snuggled embrace, talking about everything and nothing, until they had been so late back that Matthew had earned another conduct mark.

He had not cared about the conduct mark, because that night his dreams had been filled over and over with Robbie and that perfect moment of perfect joy.

One week ago Matthew may have been unhappy about the way things were going in school, but he knew he had one special friend who had shared the most amazing, incredible moment of his life so far.

Would he ever have such a moment again? Would he ever see Robbie again?

Matthew closed his eyes and sighed.

How could this have happened? How could things have changed so much in the country without him realising it? He had known it was bad in some other countries, and there was the whole thing about migrants that everyone talked about, but he had not especially thought of himself as a migrant – he had been born here after all. He had never even thought slavery would be legal here, let alone that he might find himself on a flight to a prison where he would be punished and made into a slave.

Prison… slavery. What would they be like? Not being allowed to do whatever he wanted. Not being free to go to the store or go skinny dipping in a river?

Sometimes he had thought of school, with all its rules and bounds was kind of like prison, but the descriptions Farad had given him were nothing like school.

Well that was not true. Sacramentum had classes, Farad had said. In some ways it would be like school with classes and canteens and a sports yard and punishments for wrongdoing. In some ways it might seem familiar, but then he had been told about the collar and the tattoo he would be given and all kinds of other scary things, so Matthew was under no illusions.

***

The plane landed and Matthew was led out, still only wearing his underwear. Despite the embarrassment of wearing just his underpants where Farad was fully clothed, the heat of the aircraft had been more comfortable that way, and especially compared to the furnace blast that greeted him when the door was opened.

"Welcome to Sacramentum. I told you it was hot here," Farad sneered.

"You won't be needing those underpants now though. Take them off."

Matthew looked at the man, feeling his face turn red, but he did not move to comply. He was self conscious of his body and especially in front of this nasty man.

"Take them off now," Farad repeated but Matthew set his face angrily and shook his head. What could this man do to him that he wasn't already going to do?

"I won't tell you again, Matthew."

Matthew scowled and shook his head.

What happened next happened so quickly that Matthew was barely aware of it. Farad crossed the small cabin and took a handful of the boy's hair, pulled hard and threw him against a packing crate. Matthew put his hands out to stop himself, but even as he did so, Farad had a hold of his ear and twisted it upwards, dragging the squealing and protesting boy out of the aircraft onto the tarmac of the Sacramentum air strip.

Still squealing in protest, Farad pulled the boy's underpants down to his ankles and then kicked his knees so that Matthew collapsed to the ground. Then the man knelt on his back and started to pull off his own clothes.

"You will get used to this, Matthew, but I am going to be the first one to rape your virgin ass."

"Get off me. Get off me!" Matthew squealed, struggling, but to no avail. As he lay on the ground, Farad climbed on top of him, held him down. Matthew struggled but the man was bigger, stronger. He tried to push or slip away but Farad was wise to him.

"Help me! Help me!" he screamed, and he saw some of the crew getting out of the aircraft. "Help me! he is gonna rape me!" Matthew screamed.

"You'll get used to it," one of the crew laughed and then they came closer to watch.

Matthew felt something pushing against his butt hole, and gasped. He had never been touched there before… well except that once by Robbie. But whereas it had been good when Robbie did it, now it felt wrong. And then it felt worse than wrong. There was a flash of pain and Matthew screamed as Farad pushed his unlubricated cock into the boy's virgin ass.

"Oh god, you are so tight!" Farad groaned as he thrust his cock deep into the boy. Matthew screamed and screamed again as his sphincter collapsed and he took the man deep inside him.

Farad did not take long to empty his load into the boy's butt, but for Matthew if felt like forever. Every thrust seemed to tear deeper into him, and he felt the terrible pain as well as the humiliation as this man robbed him of his virginity in front of the other two men. He screamed all the way through it, his protests becoming sobs as he begged for it to be over, clawing at the ground, struggling under the weight of the big and strong man. He begged and begged again for it to be done. And then it was.

"Arghh…. mmmmppph," Farad sighed as he orgasmed into the boy, shooting hot cum into him, which mixed with the boy's own blood as Matthew continued to wail. He held Matthew tight and then sealed the boy's humiliation with a kiss on the back of his head.

"Oh boy, I needed that," Farad said as he pulled his cock out of the boy's butt. He lay there for a moment, holding Matthew's prone but sobbing body to him. "I wanted that since the moment I saw you. You know I always liked those modelling shots of you, used to wank myself to them. Now I get to say I was the one who took your virginity. How special is that, eh? You know you are going to make some master very happy."

At last he got to his feet, picked up Matthew's discarded underwear and wiped himself down. Then he went to where Matthew was still lying on the ground, crying, and lifted his face so that they were eye to eye. Farad kisses Matthew on the lips, holding the boys head, his mouth pressed forcefully and almost painfully to Matthew's. He kissed the blushing boy, and then moved hies head back, looked him deep in the eyes and casually pushed his blood and semen fouled underpants into the boy's mouth, patted him on the head and pointed towards the drab grey building beyond the airstrip.

"Come on, let's get you booked in, it's getting late, and we need to process you. You have a TV appearance to make at 8.00. Your going to be on the evening news," Farad said, helping Matthew to his feet and then dressing himself quickly. "Looks like you enjoyed that too," he said, pointing at Matthew's crotch. Matthew was ashamed by his traitorous body, and the stiffy he had at that moment, and he looked away from Farad, towards the building, although his view was made blurry by his tears.

Chapter 10
Matthew's Processing

Breaking News

Reports are emerging that President Johnson has been deposed in a coup. The transitional government has released a statement that simply reads, "President Johnson has agreed to step down forthwith." It is not yet clear who the new president of the Republic will be, but this move appears to be a response to frustrations that the President was having second thoughts about the scale of the reforms he was bringing into law, and in particular for allowing legal challenges to be brought against the bills of attainder.

Rumours are that the new president will be Terrence May, a well known advocate for stronger anti terrorism surveillance laws, and for the repeal of human rights laws for all citizens. May was thought to be behind the Article 5 bills of attainder, and there is rumour that he was particularly angry at Johnson's suggestion that the article might be subject to appeal to the supreme court.

As we have been reporting, the supreme court is set to rule on the legality of Bills of Attainder, but they may not have the chance to if Terrence May takes office first and abolishes the Human Rights Act.

President Johnson was last seen being driven away in a police cavalcade in the direction of the airport.

Hundreds of miles away a group of boys clustered around a television set in the school junior common room.

"There he is, there he is," one of them said and Robbie craned his neck to see past the shoulders of one of the other boys who was standing in his way.

Someone turned the sound up on the TV set.

"… Taylor arrived at The prison earlier this evening but has only just completed initial induction. As we reported a few minutes ago, The Fremont authorities have been asked to delay his castration pending an appeal to the supreme court over the legality of the order, but all other processing is now completed as we see…"

The commentary went on, but Robbie was concentrating on the picture on the screen. There was Matthew, standing naked in front of some kind of height chart as his picture was taken. Around his neck they had placed a heavy looking metal collar, and his wrists and legs were manacled. Worst of all was the way his beautiful body had been marred. Across his chest were a series of numbers:

20-16-06-23. The presenter was explaining this.

"It has just been confirmed that the boy's records have been updated, and he is now officially known as 201606-23. Meanwhile that collar around his neck has also been coded to his number and is designed to ensure he cannot move beyond permitted bounds in the prison. The collar will contract and strangle him if he moves beyond a sensor that is coded for his number. This technology has ensured that no one has ever escaped from the famous Sacramentum facility. We understand that he is to be under even greater restriction than usual, and unlike other inmates, his collar will only be encoded for a very few permitted areas.

"As we have been reporting, breaking news in the last half hour is that The castration and nullification order has been referred to the supreme court. This late legal move seeks to challenge the bill of attainder that was passed before he was deported. The bill stripped him of his civil rights and was the basis of the joint agreement with Lower Fremont on incarceration there. If successful we could see the legality of his detention overturned and the boy would have to be returned. On this basis it has been argued that the castration order should be suspended until the legality is established. Sacramentum authorities have protested and argued that any legal moves must be completed quickly to avoid subverting prison discipline. In the meantime, as you can see, the young terrorist has been fitted with a penile cage to ensure that he cannot prove disruptive to prison life.

"Prisoner 06-23 was convicted of involvement in murderous terror crimes. We go now to the mother of five year old Jem Cordon who was murdered by the boy's father in the notorious Arun Road bombing to hear what they think of the punishment of this co-conspirator."

The pictures cut away to a picture of an angry looking woman who was shaking and clutching a photo frame of a small child.

"Death would be too good for him," she was saying. "When I think of all the things he had been doing, and the way he brutally poisoned one of his own teachers and tried to blame his friends for it, I get so angry. They said he had picked out the spot for the bomb that killed my little Jem too. I hope he rots in hell. I hope he rots in hell, but now they say that he might get off. They say the courts are going to let him come home."

The woman turned to the camera, tears running down her face now. "For God's sake, don't let him come home to kill more people. He is evil. He is evil and he should stay there to rot."

She might have said more but at mention of his friend, every eye in the room had turned on Robbie, and as the woman on screen had descended into sobs, he turned bright red.

None of it was true though. Robbie knew that, and didn't everyone else?

None of it was true. All the adults were liars. A pack of bloody liars.

Robbie fled the room, and although he went to bed he did not sleep, as he thought over and over about that image of Matthew standing there, naked and tattooed.

***

Matthew

Processing at the prison had been quick. First he had been walked past a gate on the other side of which were boys dressed in what looked like little more than underwear, all jeering him as he hobbled in.

After that he was taken to a smaller room where he was searched and X-rayed and given a brief run down of the prison rules. Matthew did not take them all in, because all he could think about was what Farad had said about a TV appearance at 8.00. What time was it? He did not know but he knew it was evening already. He was hungry and thirsty, and tired from the travelling. He did not know what that was about but he suspected, and he knew it would be soon. Oh God it would be soon.

"We have to do your numbers now, boy," someone had said and they had taken him to a brightly lit room, laid him down and set to work with tattoo guns.

The needling had hurt, but worse was too watch the way his skin was discoloured by the tattoo inks as a number was needled into his flesh.

"We usually just needle new arrivals in the thigh, but you are our first inmate from the New Territories, and the protocol agreed is that your school records be incorporated into your prison record at a conversion rate of ten demerits for each school conduct mark. You had twelve conduct marks so that is 120 demerits. You are thus getting two extra tattoos.

"This is your identity from now on, 20-16-06-23. That is your name, and your shame. The first numbers are for the authority that imprisoned you, but here in Sacramentum you will be known as Oh six twenty three, or just twenty three for short," the man was saying as he tattooed the numbers into Matthew's flesh. "The tattoo is permanent of course. There are some surgeries that can lift a tattoo but they are not legal for slaves and ex convicts and in any case you would still carry the scar."

Matthew's eyes filled with tears as his chest and then his thighs were tattooed. All the time he still had the terrible fear. Was it 8.00 pm yet?

At last it was all done, and the man washed blood from Matthew's skin. "Now just one thing before your TV appearance," Farad said, and a man was approaching with some kind of small metal cage. Matthew looked at it and then at Farad.

"It seems that we are not going to get to castrate you today. Don't worry though, we will get to it soon enough. In the meantime, we are going to give you a cock cage because whether you have your genitals or not, I can tell you without doubt that you are never going to experience another orgasm ever again. This little device will make sure you cannot do that until we get round to removing these troublesome testicles of yours.

"Don't worry though, I am sure it will not be long now."

***

Matthew was left to sleep in a small recovery room of the medical wing that night. He got very little sleep, and spent most of the night curled up in a corner and crying. So much had changed in one day that he did not know where to start. The day had been a rollercoaster of emotions, of which the over-riding one had been terror, but now, at least, there was a flicker of hope. He had been so close to losing his balls for good, but now they had let slip that there was some legal move afoot. Someone, somewhere was on his side. He might yet see justice, and they might yet let him go.

That did not alter the fact that his chest and thighs were sore already from the tattoos they had given him. In the dark he could hardly make out the dark ink tattooed into his flesh, but he could feel where the marks had been made.

Tattoos! Ugly permanent tattoos marked his flesh. He hated them, and hated the people who had given them to him. He felt anger mixed with his despair and fear.

At some point he did sleep though because he was awoken with a terrible pain in his crotch. In the night he had dreamed about Robbie and his penis had tried to stiffen. Now it fought the metal cage that held it and Matthew woke up, groaning, clutching his caged genitals as the pain chased away any hope of pleasure. Slowly his flesh softened and he lay back panting and sobbing.

After that he did not sleep again, until someone came to fetch him early the next morning. The guard threw him what looked like a pair of black underpants.

"Put those one. Time to meet your room mate. We found a good one for you." the guard said and Matthew quickly pulled on the underpants, the bulg from his cock cage padding them out in front. He followed the man who led him into a yard, where another boy was also being led out.

"23, meet 5. The two of you will be sharing a cell from now on. 5 here is just out of solitary confinement and has just had a new set of tattoos too. The two of you can have a race to see which one of you can get the grand prize of a head tattoo first."

Matthew looked at Jack for the first time and Jack scowled back. "This is the terrorist?" Jack spat. "Looks more like a model boy."

Chapter 11
Bitch

Joel

"Ah, 22, come in, come in. I think it is passed time that we had a little chat, don't you?"

Joel entered the warden's office, and the door closed behind him, the guard who had brought him here waiting outside so that it was just the two of them. He looked at the warden warily, off guard by the smile on the man's face. The warden beckoned him over and he crossed the room to stand uneasily in front of the man.

"Now then, as it is just the two of us, how about I call you Joel? Would you like that? Our little secret."

Joel felt confused, off guard. The smile looked genuine, but he had gone a month now of being told that his name was 22 and any attempt to think of himself as Joel would be severely punished. Was this a trick? Would he be punished if he nodded his head? What about if he shook his head? It was safest to say nothing at all.

"Yes, yes, Joel," the warden continued as the boy stood to attention in front of him. "I understand your wariness. Believe me I do! I know how it has been for you this last month. I have been watching closely, but you will come to see that I have only your best interests at heart."

Joel's mouth tightened, a slight frown betraying the angry mass of thoughts clambering around in his head. He wanted to give vent to them. He wanted to open his mouth and watch the words come tumbling out, like grain pouring from a hopper. How could this man, or any man have his best interests at heart?

Involuntarily his fingers found the scar on his belly button. He touched it and pulled his hand back to his side. The warden had noticed though.

"Ah yes, so sad that you had to be maimed so, but believe me it is for the better."

"Better?" Joel breathed the question, so quiet he hardly heard himself say the word. How was this better? He had spent a week in the hospital wing after the attack, and the stitches had not come out for a week after that. Now he was left with a scar he would carry for the rest of his life, along with his other scar.

And this was just not any scar either. This scar marked him out as Ashton's bitch boy, and he had been forced to learn exactly what that meant.

Every day Ashton would share him with his friends. Every day he would count himself lucky if he had only been fucked once or twice. He had learned to stay close to Ashton, and to act like his good little pet, and he had endured the mocking scorn of every boy in the prison when he had been forced to suck Ashton's cock as the boy sat at a canteen table eating his lunch. The only way Joel even got any lunch was if he had got Ashton off before the boy had finished his own portion and Joel's, and if he managed that, then the scraps would end up on the floor beside him as he licked Ashton's cum from his lips. Ashton then would make him eat off the floor like an animal as the boys in the canteen would laugh and jeer and make baying and barking noises.

Joel had lost weight, and all sense of dignity, so how was this better?

His head had dropped but now the warden was lifting his chin with a finger and looked right in his eyes. Joel looked back, and still there was that open and genuine smile. He blinked away a tear.

No more crying, he told himself. He had done crying weeks ago. Never again would he cry like a baby.

"Better, Joel, yes," the warden repeated, and his eyes seemed big with compassion. "Better because you came to this prison as a convicted murderer, but also a rapist. You have to understand that Sacramentum is not a good place for criminals with your kind of record. You have to understand that, for all his faults, Ashton has been protecting you from far worse."

Joel's face reddened. He did not like being reminded of what he had been convicted of, even though he knew that most people just referred to him as the rapist. Even if he had raped the girl, of course, that would have been just once compared to the daily rapes he endured now from Ashton's friends, but he knew better than to make that point.

Joel clenched his fists and looked angrily ahead. He was especially angry because he knew it was true. He knew that being Ashton's bitch boy was probably the only thing that was keeping him alive. He knew that Ashton's mark on his navel was the only thing that prevented him having his face messed up in a dark corridor. People were scared of Ashton, so they let him be. They mocked him, derided him, but they did not hurt him.

And the real shame of it was that Joel had come to play his part. He fawned after Ashton now, stuck close to him, let Ashton treat him like an animal, a play thing, a pet. He gladly sucked cock and spread his legs for whoever Ashton gave him to, and he had started to learn how to make it look like he enjoyed what he was doing, even though he didn't. Even though he couldn't since his operation.

The warden was watching him, and saying nothing as these thoughts ran through Joel's head. When at last he did speak again, it was like he had read the boy's mind.

"I know you don't get pleasure from Ashton, but you know he looks after you. That is what I asked him to do."

"You asked him to?" Joel blurted out, shocked by that revelation. Again his fingers touched Ashton's bitch mark on his navel. He could have died from that stab, the doctors had told him. He had been lucky.

"I asked him to, yes," the warden confirmed. "I asked him to make sure that you survived, and he did what I asked. You will have noticed that Ashton gets some extra privileges not afforded to most boys. He knows how to pay for those privileges when necessary."

"So he is a snitch?"

The warden laughed and ruffled Joel's hair.

"Oh no, of course not. Why would I even need a snitch when we have you all so closely monitored? Ashton is Ashton, but I would caution you that if you want him to keep protecting you, you had best not ever repeat that statement in his presence."

Joel bristled, but the warden obviously felt talking about Ashton was done now. He sat down on his desk, and motioned for Joel to join him.

"Come, sit down. I have to tell you something."

Joel sat on the desk, close to the man, feeling out of place with the unfamiliar informality. Sitting on desks was not something you did when sent to the headmaster at school, so it was even more strange in a prison.

"You see that painting?" the warden asked, pointing at a painting on the far wall. "That was painted by a famous artist before the virus. She is dead now, of course, and the painting is rare. Very expensive. So much more valuable now the artist is dead. She and her subjects too it seems."

Joel looked at the picture in confusion. It showed horses leaping a cross a hedge, ridden by jockeys in bright jerseys and hats. The picture was well done, and he felt like he could see all the muscles rippling on the horses. He knew they were horses, of course, from the books and films he had seen, although he had never actually seen a horse in real life. Like so many of the women, most horses had died, suffering from the same virus that killed most women, and various other species too.

"Death, you see, Joel, is always an end, but it is also an end that so often opens up new possibilities. Had the woman who painted that picture not died then perhaps she would not be famous. Because she died, and because she painted horses that also died, the pictures are now worth a small fortune. Do you see how that works? Endings make openings. Yes?"

Joel shrugged, but the warden was looking at him until he muttered a response.

"I guess so," he said.

"The answer, Joel, is 'yes sir'. Yes sir, death is an end but also a beginning. Always there are possibilities. Always there is a positive. Yes?"

"Yes sir," Joel replied, but with no real conviction to his words. He agreed because agreement was expected.

"Yes sir," the warden repeated, and then unexpectedly put an arm around the boy. Joel cringed at the touch, but the warden did not seem to notice, just carried on speaking. "Joel, it is my duty to inform you that your father was executed at 6.00 AM this morning. He had been found guilty of seditious acts."

Joel stiffened, but now the warden's arm, that had seemed comforting, seemed to tighten, the embrace feeling more like constraint now. Joel did not know what to say. Was this a lie? But why would the warden lie to him? He tried again to shrug the man off but the warden held him firmly.

"It does not matter much to you, of course. You were already legally dead, and you would never have been allowed to see him again, but I understand that investigations began as soon as you had been convicted. It seems your father was involved in some nasty subversive business. Perhaps no surprise considering how his son turned out."

"It's a lie. I am not a murderer," Joel snarled, "and dad would never… he would never have done anything bad."

"Still sticking with that story you told the court, eh? You know no one believes it. You should give it up."

"It's true. I didn't do it. I didn't rape her or kill her."

"Oh yes, I know that, Joel. However you did break into the house with an intent to steal, did you not?"

Joel had been about to protest more, but the warden's words shocked him to silence. He looked at the man, his face contorting with confusion, and shame. Yes, he had intended to steal. He was a thief – just a miserable thief. Still a thief was not a murdered nor a rapist. And… the warden knew that?

"We had our eye on you for a long time, Joel. Such a perfect mark. Not the only one of course, but you were the first to come good. or should I say come bad? It was so deliciously good to see you robbing and stealing, getting involved in bullying and who knows what else.

"Your father knew, of course. And your mother. You were a great disappointment to them both. Did you know that? Your father died thinking his son was a murderer and a sexual deviant. You know it was almost too easy after that? It was like he had given up."

Joel cringed at the words, and again his eyes were stinging. He blinked and bit his lip. No crying, he told himself. He was never going to cry again.

"Your mother has also been convicted of sedition. However, as you know, we do not have the death penalty for women or girls: they are too valuable for society. So, Joel, I must tell you that instead your mother has been sentenced to surrogacy slavery. Do you know what that means? It means you are going to have lots of brothers and sisters.

"Well, not exactly brothers and sisters. Your mother's ovaries have been removed and all her eggs will be given new nuclei. She will carry babies to term from the frozen eggs of others now. Still, she will have many babies. The programme is getting quite efficient now and a multiple birth each year is the norm. I understand she has already been impregnated with her first surrogates."

Joel tried to struggle free from the man's grip, but the warden pulled him onto his lap now.

"Let me go!" Joel shouted and the Warden slapped him hard across the cheek. Joel flinched and held his had to his stinging flesh, and now the tears were flowing despite his determination that they would not.

"Don't ever tell me what to do, prisoner 22. Now take your clothes off, because I am going to fuck you."

"No! I won't let you."

"Oh dear, do we start having to accrue demerits, boy? That is 10. Now drop those clothes or it will be 10 more."

Joel shivered, but he knew what he had to do. He stripped and then breathed deeply, before starting to unbutton the Warden's pants.

"That is good. That is good, keep going."

Joel carefully removed the wardens clothing and started to do what he had learned to do well. He kisses and caressed the man, played with his cock, sucked on it, licked the balls, and went through all the motions of foreplay. At last the warden lifted him up, held him to his chest and gently lowerd the boy onto his engorged man cock. As Joel whimpered, the man's cock impaled him and he held on tight, feeling the Warden kissing his head.

And as he was slowly fucked by the Warden, the man told him more of how his father had died. His father who had always told him to do what his conscience demanded. His father with his strong sense of right and wrong. His father who had been a union member, and had fought for the rights of workers… and perhaps he really had fought for more. The Warden thought so.

As he fucked Joel he explained it all. The state just needed an excuse to infiltrate the network, to access all his father's files, and Joel had provided that excuse. They had seized everything on Joel's arrest, but not because they wanted evidence that Joel was guilty. They already knew all about him. They had already arranged his own conviction. No, what they had been after was his father's files, and the proof that his father had indeed been working for the underground in an attempt to overthrow the Fremont government.

And that, Joel realised, could have been true. His dad had always gone on about the terrible laws, and how it was wrong that civil liberties could just be suspended by decree. He had not thought about it much, but he remembered dad going on and on about it.

And now, thanks to him, dad was dead.

As the warden ejaculated inside him, with a grunt of pleasure, he squeezed Joel tight and gasped, before whispering in his ear.

"You are my bitch boy now too. You killed your father, but we are not done with you yet. We have a client who knows exactly what to do with you."

And then he kissed Joel and spanked his bum. "Now get dressed, and get out."

Chapter 12
Nightmare

Jack

Jack let out a shout and sat up. He was sweating and the single sheet on the small bed was damp, the plastic mattress sticky against his clammy skin. His heart was racing and for a moment he was lost, not sure where he was, before he recalled that this was his cell.

He had been dreaming of the hot box again. Of course he had. Every night since his release had been the same. At least he had not peed himself this time – that was progress he supposed.

The hot box had filled his dreams but why wouldn't it? It had been terrifying being locked in the box for days on end. He had lost track of how many days he had been there. After the first one they had all merged into one long waking nightmare. He had screamed and begged as long as he had voice, but as he had grown weaker the time had turned into a suffocating wave of delirium.

There had been a bottle filled with lukewarm water, but it had never been enough. He had sucked and gnawed at it like a demented rabbit, but had become increasingly dehydrated between the intervals when someone had filled it up. There had been no food at all and he had not been able to move for bathroom breaks. Instead he had been forced to do it where he lay, although after the first time there was very little need to go again. Still the box stank. It stank, and was dark, cramped and so very very hot.

He knew when night came as that had provided the relief from the heat. The box would cool down, and by morning he would be shivering in there, but once the sun rose, he only had a few minutes of comfort before it became stifling again.

When they had finally taken him out of the box he had been unable to stand, had been babbling inanely and barely knew his own name. They had taken him straight to the medical wing where he had been rehydrated through drips, and he had slipped in and out of consciousness, on one occasion waking up to find someone tattooing his chest.

Jack touched the tattoo, instinctively knowing it was there despite the darkness of the room. It did not sting anymore, and he could not feel any difference beneath his fingers, but he knew the ink was permanently etched into his flesh. As he had become more aware of his surroundings it had been explained to him about the marks. More demerits could earn him more tattoos, on the back, the leg and ultimately on his head. Anyone with a tattoo on their head was made a permanent slave regardless of sentence, and usually ended up in a mine or similar. He was already halfway to that end.

Jack heard a sob and peered into the darkness. The other boy was there somewhere, and snivelling again. He had cried a lot which suggested he was weak. On the other hand he was a convicted terrorist who sported his own chest tattoo. How could such a cry baby be a terrorist?

He had not said more than a few words to the boy since they had been assigned to share a cell, but now here in the dark, Jack felt a stab of compassion, although he tried to push it back down quickly. Compassion was for the weak kids.

The boy sobbed again and Jack sighed, turned over, pulled his sheet around him.

"You cried out," the boy said, but Jack ignored him. He did not want to be reminded of that. He did not want to think about the hot box again.

Silence, and then another sob, then a sniff. Jack closed his eyes, but his thoughts were filled with heat, suffocation, gnawing at a water bottle… He turned over again, huffed.

Silence, followed by another sob. A hiccup. The boy tried to swallow it. Jack sighed and sat up again.

"So what the fuck did you do to get sent to this hell hole?" he asked at last.

Matthew sniffed and sighed, paused and then answered. "Nothing. I didn't do anything. I was just a kid in school in the New Territories with a modelling contract who…"

"Wait, you are that kid? From the stupid school uniform adverts?"

Silence. Did the boy nod? What good was a nod in the dark of a windowless cell in the middle of the night?

"Go on… so how does a poncy model boy end up with a life sentence?" "They said my dad was a terrorist. Said he wanted to bomb a shopping centre. They said he had already set some other bombs, but its all made up. Dad would never have done any of that… and then…then they made some stuff up about me poisoning my teacher."

"Cool, I wish I had done that," Jack said. "But I didn't…"

"Pity. You should have done it."

"But I didn't… I mean I did give one of them some laxative, but…"

"You did? So cool."

"But I don't even know what everyone is fighting about. How can I be a terrorist when I don't even know what's going on?"

"What don't you know?" Jack asked.

"Like, why am I here, in Fremont? The New Territories doesn't do anything with Fremont."

"Yeah, well now they do. What, don't you know anything? There was a war going on more or less on your doorstep, with those religious nut jobs attacking on the borders of the whole Northern League so that there were migrants swarming across your borders, and no one could do anything about it because of your laws there… its no wonder they left the league in the end. It was the only way to cut themselves off and hide. And once they did that, of course they were going to start getting in bed with the Fremont government. Fremont is their ideal model you know. That is what they want to be."

"How do you know all this? You have been in prison for how long?"

"Not sure… weeks, a month or so? I lost count," Jack replied, "but it doesn't matter. I overheard the guards and medics chatting when I was laid up in the medical wing. That is what they were saying.

"I still don't get why they said my dad did that stuff," Matthew's voice was morose, quiet.

"Maybe he did do it."

"He wouldn't! That would be murder."

"And?" Jack asked, but Matthew did not respond, so after a while he went on, more gently. "So maybe it was something else. Get rid of people that would cause them trouble. What did your dad even do?"

"He was a journalist…"

"Well there you go! They probably wanted to shut him up."

"I guess," Matthew said and Jack did not reply again. He lay down on his bed, and somehow managed to sleep again, until his nightmares woke him again.

***

Matthew

Matthew walked down the corridor to the canteen, but when he reached the entrance he waited and watched the monitor by the door. It was still red, and he had heard the whir of his collar as the security mechanism engaged. He was familiar with this routine now, after just a few days of prison life. He seemed to have been singled out by the prison authorities, and his collar prevented him access to parts of the prison where there were crowds of other boys. The canteen, the gym, the exercise yard were all off limits to him when there were three or more boys in them already.

This meant that he had to wait until the end of meal times to get into the canteen, and only got whatever was left of the food on offer, which on two occasions had been nothing at all, and certainly was never anything appetising. The system was galling, and he hated it, but he knew that if he crossed a red marker then his collar security would instantly engage.

He had found that out the hard way, on his first visit to the canteen. He had simply ignored the red light and walked on in, only to find the collar close around his neck. He had grabbed and clawed at his neck as the collar squeezed him, and in the canteen there had been cheers and a group of boys quickly gathering around as he dropped to his knees.

Fortunately one of the boys had dragged him out of the canteen and left him sagged against the wall, gasping and sobbing. Then a guard had come over and issued him with 5 demerits for crossing the bounds and told him that next time it would be 25. That was when Matthew had understood the significance of the lights.

So now he waited, but he could see the canteen was almost empty – the only boy in there was the one who was shutting up the counter, and about to tip the slop bucket down the disposals chute. Just one boy, so why was the marker showing red?

Matthew tapped it but the light remained on red. His stomach growled and he looked into the canteen. He had waited until everyone else was gone, but now he needed food.

"Hey, can you bring me something to eat? The bounds marker is broken."

"No can do," the other boy said, still tidying things away. "Rules are food only gets consumed in the canteen. I can't take it out."

"Oh come on, I am right by the door, what harm will it do?"

"Nope, I am not getting no demerits for you."

"It's just a mistake. Come on, they won't do anything when they realise its just the marker is broken."

The boy looked at Matthew and then picked up all the remaining food and poured it down the disposal chute, eyes locked on his the whole time.

"You fucker!" Matthew hissed.

"You want to come here and say that?" the boy asked, his face contorted with a menacing grin.

Matthew looked at the marker and kicked the post hard, angrily.

Immediately an alarm sounded.

"That was stupid," the other boy shouted over the alarm, closing the kitchen hatch quickly and going out of the far entrance of the canteen that opened onto the yard. Matthew watched him go angrily and turned to go back the way he had come, only to see two guards racing towards me.

"The marker is broke…" he started but got no further as the first guard grabbed his arm and forced it up behind his back. "Oww… that hurts."

It hurt even more to be frog marched to the warden's office by the two guards. Any boys in the corridors stood aside as he went past, but he felt their eyes on his back.

Moments later he was pushed into an office, and there was the warden, sitting in a comfortable chair, and smiling.

"Ah 23, yes I thought we would be seeing you here today," he said, getting to his feet and crossing the room. "I thought it would be for breaking bounds, but it seems instead we have vandalism. We will have to impose a 15 demerit penalty for that. My, my, you will soon be ready for your next tattoo and perhaps a stay in the hot box, yes?"

Matthew looked at the warden angrily, defiantly.

"The bounds marker was broken. I couldn't get anything to eat."

"Now if you had just asked the question, 23, you would know that is not the case at all. The bounds markers are working just fine. It is just that we have decided you may not enter the canteen any more."

Matthew's mouth opened and then shut again. What was this? the rules said you had to eat in the canteen but he wasn't allowed in there? He felt a rush of anger at the whole situation, clenched his fists, but he knew he had to try to remain calm.

"If I am not allowed in the canteen, how do eat, sir?" he asked, his voice measured, his words slow.

"Quite simply. At meal times you will return to your cell and someone will be sent with your food for you. I have tasked 22 with this duty. He will be your official food bringer."

"22? The nullo?" Matthew asked incredulously. He had never seen 22 anywhere alone, he was always hanging on to Ashton like a puppy dog.

Everyone knew that he was Ashton's bitch.

"I thought you would like to be reminded of what is in store for you, 23.

Yes, he will be your food bringer. You will be required to eat in your cell and remain there for lunch periods. The bounds markers have been set to enforce this."

Matthew seethed inside. He looked quietly at the floor for a moment before returning his gaze to the warden.

"May I ask why I am not allowed in the canteen, sir?" he asked as politely as he could.

"You need to ask? You are a foreign convicted terrorist. You are a danger to good order in this prison. I will not have you radicalising our prison population."

"I don't want to radic…"

"Don't answer back," the warden said, his voice raised in rebuke. "Five more demerits for that. Oh and I think we also need to keep you out of other places you may get up to no good – at least without an escort. From now on you will only be permitted to go to the toilets if you are accompanied by your permitted escort. I think Ashton would enjoy the task of escorting you. Bear in mind though that we cannot have you disrupting his other activities so you may go to the toilet once in the morning and once in the evening. Any other visits will be permitted with your escort but will earn you 5 demerits a time."

Matthew seethed again, but he did not say more. To say more would just invite more demerits, and he did not want to end up in the hot box. Jack had described the hot box and he knew full well that was one place he never wanted to be.

"Now one more thing, 23," the warden said, and as he spoke he pushed hair from the boy's eyes, almost tenderly. "before you go back to your lessons, these guards are going to take you to the medical wing where we are going to apply a preparation to your underarm and pubic regions. It is nothing to worry about. it will just destroy the follicles where your pubic hair grows.

"As you know, we are waiting for the courts to decide on when we can complete your castration, but we don't want you getting any unsightly hair in the meantime."

Matthew frowned. He wanted to ask what would happen if the courts found in his favour, and what would happen if he was let out of this hell hole. If they did this, would he never have pubic hair ever? He wanted to protest, but he knew what would happen if he did. No more demerits today, he told himself, and so he meekly followed the guards and watched as a medic rubbed a foul smelling gel into his pubic area and under his arms. He winced as it started to burn, and felt tears running down his face, but he said nothing as he was led back to his cell, angry and hungry, scared and in pain, like he had been bitten by a hundred swarm of ants.

Chapter 13
Callum

Callum

Callum looked uncertainly at his crotch as JD inserted the tiny metal key. He knew what she was doing, but he was fairly sure she was not allowed to do it. Where had she got the key? that hardly mattered. Perhaps a better question was what did she plan to do now? That was an excellent question, although asking it was impossible of course. Not for the first time he missed the ability to speak (see The Fremont Stakes).

Slowly she unfastened the cage and slid it off his penis. Almost at once he felt his cock responding to its liberation and the light touch of her fingers on the flesh and it stiffened. He looked at it uncertainly and then at JD.

JD dropped the cage on the floor, leaned closer and pressed her lips to his. Now Callum felt the brush of her warm moist lips on his, smelt the fragrance of her skin, looked into her eyes, and oh God, he felt her hand on his penis and that felt good. It felt so good.

She slipped a finger under his collar and drew him to the bed. Callum needed no second bidding, and then he watched in wonder as JD removed her clothes, pausing at her panties, placing a finger on her lips, and then dropping them.

She lay back on the bed, and beckoned Callum to come onto it too. The boy did so, still uncertain, but the ache in his groin, and the longing inside him made him want it more than anything else. He climbed up beside her, and when she embraced him, he held her back, and this time when her lips touched his he kissed, long and passionately.

The next minutes were an orgy of discovery for Callum, and the greatest discovery of all was when JD spread her legs, and gently stroked his penis, guiding it, guiding it until he found the groove, the slot into which it could slide and oh…oh… oh that felt so good. He started to thrust, but JD spanked him, held up a finger. He closed his eyes, willing himself to stop.

He was aware that she wanted him to do it slowly, but his body, so long held in suspense and in its first young flush of passion, had other ideas. He thrust again, and then again when he was allowed, but try as he might he could not stop what was welling up inside him. He thrust again, and again and now JD was spanking him again, and he could hear her shout. He supposed she wanted him to slow down. He tried. He did try…

But he failed, and suddenly in a rush he felt something surge up inside him and then shoot out of him and with it came the most glorious sensation he had ever felt. He grunted and gasped and squeezed JD tight and it felt like he was peeing inside her, only not peeing but something else shooting from him into that hot tight space. Callum gasped and thrust one last time hard as he experienced his first true orgasm, shot his sperm for the very first time and all through him washed this overpowering animal urge that he could not describe, could not believe, could not fight.

He felt nails digging in his flesh, but only as the amazing sensation inside him began to subside did the pain sink in as JD clawed and pushed at him. He saw tears running down her face now, and she was pushing, scratching, beating her fists against him and all the time he knew she was screaming. He could not understand the words but he could hear the intensity of the sound. He looked at her in confusion, feeling guilt rise in him.

What had he done?

That thought was no doubt echoed in the angry shout now that came from the doorway of the room, but again Callum could not understand the words – only the dangerously enraged tone. Before he could so much as turn to look, two powerful hands had seized him, pulled him up and he saw the furious face of JD's father, mouth snarling as he shouted his rage. And then he was flying across the room, thrown there by the angry man.

Callum's head cracked against the wall and he lay there dazed as the man crossed to him and kicked him in the ribs. He tried to pull himself into a foetal position to protect himself but a foot collided with his head, and then he passed out.

***

When Callum came round he found himself trussed up on the stable floor. He lay there for a long time, dazed and trying to remember where he was, and as slowly the events of earlier came back to him he became more and more panicked. What had he done? What would happen to him now? Was JD's father going to kill him?

He lay there for a long while before anyone came to see him, but eventually two people approached. JD's father and his foreman approached. Both men looked angry still, although the blind rage of his master seemed to have settled now a little. He just stood and watched as he allowed the foreman to approach, holding a large syringe.

Callum looked at the syringe in alarm. Was that a lethal injection? Were they going to put him down? Was that even legal? Did it even matter if it was?

Callum tried to squirm away, and he opened his mouth to say something, desperate to apologise, to beg for mercy, but of course no words came out. Tied up as he was, there was no escape.

This was it! He was going to die. Oh god he was going to die.

Callum felt tears run from his eyes as the foreman knelt beside him, stroked his head, looked in his eyes. The man's face was blurry, but there was no sign of any compassion there. The touch on his hair might be just what you do to an animal that you want calm before you kill it.

Callum tensed, ready for the moment.

The foreman leaned forward, but instead of injecting his arm or leg, as he had been expecting, the man pushed the needle directly into Callum's scrotum.

The boy winced and let out a hiss of air as he felt the sharp pain of it. The man was injecting something into his testicle, and it hurt. A hot sharp pain as the needle bit into his flesh.

He was not done yet though, pulling the needle free and then stabbing it again into the boy's second testicle, pushing the end of the syringe until all the fluid in it was gone. Only then did he pull it out.

God, that hurt, Callum thought, but even as he thought it he realised that rather than decreasing, the pain now was intensifying. Callum writhed and moaned as it felt like his balls were starting to burn, and a terrible dull ache was spreading through his groin like he had just been kicked there very hard.

JD's father was still watching him, and as Callum writhed on the floor, the man unbuttoned his fly, crossed to where he lay and started to piss on him.

Callum felt hot pee splash on him, and he could smell the brackish smell and as the pain made him open his mouth to groan out his agony, he tasted pee too as it splashed all over his body.

The pain was getting worse and worse and Callum would have been shrieking if his vocal chords would work, but instead he just writhed and twisted, banging his head against the ground, choking in pain as it felt like his balls were on fire. He had never felt such pain, and could never have known such pain existed. He looked in horror at his balls, but could not see what was happening to them. They did not look like they were burning exactly, although the scrotum had gone a dark dark red now.

Please make it stop he thought, his eyes wide in terror. Callum's whole world at this moment was concentrated on that one spot between his legs, a hot caustic fire that he could not quench. It was like being stung over and over by a swarm of wasps on his balls. He just wanted it to end. Please make it end.

If someone had offered to hack off his balls at that moment with a blunt knife, Callum would have begged them to do it. Anything to make the terrible pain he felt end.

At last, for the second time that day he passed out.

***

The next hour for Callum was a mixture of delirium and periods of unconsciousness. When it was all done and he reflected on it he would only remember snatches of what had happened. There was the moment he awoke to see his scrotum being cut open, and something fetid and liquid spilled out onto the ground. He would remember the smell of that more than anything else. The smell of acid and dead flesh.

The next memory of that had been of his scrotum, black now and dead looking, being gut away, dropped into a dish. That memory was almost a dream, although he remembered the stitching a little better. Then there had been repeated waking and dreaming as he lay on a cold floor in the stables, alone and in pain, and then the memory of being lifted into a trailer and being driven somewhere.

The memories had become firmer as his fever and delirium lessened. The journey had been a long one. So long, in fact, that he had been given water en route by the foreman. Towards the latter part of the journey he had regained full consciousness. He was especially conscious of the dull ache in his groin, but that was nothing to the memory of the agony earlier.

He looked at his groin and sighed. His balls were gone, completely. He was still tied up so that he could not touch and explore the space between his legs, but he could see enough, curled up as he was. He could see his penis, and beneath it there was just a raw wound, stitched and lightly scabbed but oozing fresh blood.

His balls were gone. He had been castrated. He sighed again.

He supposed that was better than being put down, but not much better.

There was a squeak of brakes and the vehicle came to a stop. Now the foreman came to him again, untied his feet and pulled him to a standing position. That hurt! Every movement hurt, and Callum moaned and half shuffled as the foreman pushed him towards a large grey building.

Callum read the sign, and he felt his heart skip in dismay.

Sacramentum Penitentiary. He knew of this place. Everyone had heard of this place.

He was led towards the building where a guard met them, and he could see they were talking about him. Callum felt the shame of what he had done wash over him again, as well as the despair of what was to happen to him now, and what had already happened.

The guard tapped Callum's head to get his attention and then pointed at the sun, then mimed waving good bye to it, before laughing.

Callum, with sick dread, supposed he knew what that meant, although he hoped he was wrong.

Still he followed the man and the foreman turned away, walked back to his vehicle and drove away, leaving Callum to face his sentence for raping his master's daughter. His worst fears were confirmed when his mugshot was taken and he read the board placed beside him.

***

Upper Fremont Circuit
Bristol County Court Judgement
Judge Miller presiding

Approved Judgement Martin Drew, disposal of estate

1. In these proceedings the claimant presented evidence that property in his ownership had carried out a capital crime, namely the rape of his daughter, and he sought a legal order of disposal of said property.

2. The evidence before the court was unequivocal for the purpose of establishing the guilt of the property, a livestock slave known by the name Callum.

3. The court was mindful to the principle that livestock slaves, although not human, do enjoy the same protections as other animals against summary execution.

4. The court also took advice from a psychologist as to the mental state of the daughter of the claimant, who had a strong emotional attachment to the slave prior to this act, and for whom the slave's destruction might cause further trauma.

5. The court nevertheless took evidence that the presence of a slave that had perpetrated such an act would be disruptive in any slave owning society, and that the property must not therefore ever be allowed to mix with other slaves again.

6. The decision of the court was that the property should be disposed of by deposit at the Sacramentum Juvenile facility, where it would be permanently incarcerated for the rest of its natural life, and property rights would be vested with the facility.

7. The court further decided, with a view to paragraph 5, that the slave must not be allowed free congress with other slaves or prisoners who may one day be released, and would be confined to hard labour in the sub surface levels, levels -1 and below, reserved wholly for whole of life slaves.

8. The court approved of the slave's castration, confirming the punishment as appropriate.

9. The hearing concluded after 30 minutes.

***

Callum quickly ate the lumpy slop in the trough in front of him. He had to dip his head into the trough and lap it up because his hands were bound as usual. The food tasted foul, like rancid water from the boiling of old cabbages, but he was hungry enough that he ate ate it all down and licked the trough to get every last trace of the food before his next assignment.

Every muscle ached. He had spent most of the night on the treadmills again, endlessly working the machinery that generated small amounts of electricity. It was mindless activity and he supposed it was pointless too. He knew that the centre generated its own solar power, and that there was no power generated at night, but he did not think that what he generated could make much difference. He suspected he was not the only life slave down here, but still how much electricity could they be producing? And surely the centre charged batteries during the day to keep it going overnight.

No, Callum suspected that the treadmill work was as much a deliberate punishment as a useful power generation scheme. It kept him awake all night, and by morning he was exhausted, hungry and thirsty, and still with many hours of work ahead of him dredging the sewage systems, clearing the filters, and maintaining the drains, before he would be allowed a few hours of sleep ahead of the next night of mindless running.

This was his life now. Endless mindless effort, followed by stinking humiliating work with only the rats for company. He had killed a rat and tried eating it once, but it was tough going, and almost as soon as he had bit into his head he felt the squeezing of his collar. He worked largely alone, but every movement was watched by CCTV cameras, and if he slacked from his tasks for more than a moment his collar would be used to punish him, and remind him what he had to do.

In his first week he had rebelled, ignored the squeezing of his collar, and sat down on his treadmill. The collar had squeezed tighter, constricting his airway, but he had resolutely refused to get up until he had passed out.

That rebellion had been followed by a whipping and then he had been hosed down and fucked by four of the guards, one after another until he had passed out again. After that he had not tried rebelling again.

He thought about how stupid he had been. He had been a slave, yes, but as JD's pet slave he had enjoyed a life far better than most slaves. He had eaten scraps of her food, had been allowed to read books, and to live in her room. Yes she had loved dressing him up in stupid things, but still, those had been actual clothes, and life had not been so terrible.

Through one moment of madness he had screwed everything up. One stupid act and he now faced a life of what? Endless darkness, cleaning sewers and handling crap. He could not even get any pleasure from his penis anymore, as the chemicals that had dissolved his balls had also damaged the nerves and erectile tissue of his penis. It was just a mostly numb floppy appendage now.

Callum sighed and got up from the trough. A guard had come to lead him into the sewer system now. The man unfastened his cuffs and pointed towards the filters. Callum knew what to do now, and sighed as he set off to start sifting through the crap again.

He thought about ducking his head into the sewer water and drowning himself. He would have done it if he thought that he would have been allowed to die, but he knew that all he would get was more whip scars and a sore butt if he tried.

Callum sighed and went to work.

Chapter 14
Cumdump

Matthew

Matthew jiggled his legs and tried to concentrate on the lecture, which was no mean feat considering how boring the speaker was. Over and over the volunteer teacher was trying to explain to the boys the importance of civic responsibility, but all his questions met with a stony silence, just as quiet as the response to his attempts at jokes. On the other hand, any time he tried to say anything that might be at all educational, people would shout out or make stupid remarks. The teacher was getting flustered. Everyone could see that, but that was the point. Try to make the stupid volunteer teachers stop coming in. This one had lasted two weeks now, which was something of a record since Matthew had got here. Chances are he would not make it to three.

More to the point, however, Matthew was not sure he could make it to the end of the lesson, when he would be allowed his evening trip to the toilets. He was close to wetting himself, and he was sorely tempted to do just that. Sorely tempted but he knew it would earn him demerits, so he didn't do that. Instead he kept jiggling and biting his lip and trying to hold it in.

Some boys had noticed, Matthew knew. There was pointing and giggling, and he wondered if anyone had opened a book on whether he would wet himself. He would consider doing that if he thought it would lose Ashton money.

Somehow he made it to the end of the lesson though, and as the bell went, he crossed the room to join Ashton.

Ashton grinned and poked him in the stomach and Matthew groaned, doubling over and nearly wetting himself.

"Need to go somewhere?" Ashton asked.

"Please, Ashton, can we just hurry and get it over with?"

"Hurry? oh there is no hurry," Ashton replied smoothly and then beckoned for his friends to join him. Ninja's tongue was hanging out and he leered at Matthew crazily. Joel got up to join them of course, but Ashton waved him away.

"Not this time, bitch," he said. "I am gonna play with this boy instead." They went to the toilets, and Ashton held the door open.

"Please, enter good sir," he said in a mock upper class accent. Matthew glowered. His own accent was nothing like that, but still it had that British stiffness so that it was clear to everyone who was being mocked. He entered the toilet anyway and quickly started to relieve himself.

When he was done, Ashton was waiting outside the cubicle. "All done?" he asked.

"Yeah," Matthew replied.

"Not yet you are not. Spread 'em."

Matthew sighed, but he knew the drill. This was not the first time that Ashton had taken him, after all. The first time had been two days ago, right out in the open of the exercise yard when Ashton had been 'escorting' him. In front of all the boys in the prison as well as at least two watching guards, Ashton's friends had forced Matthew to his hands and knees and then the boy had raped him.

The one good thing was that Ashton's cock was not as huge and full grown as Farad's had been. It had hurt still when Ashton had forced his way in, but what had hurt more on that occasion was the cheer that had erupted. As he was publicly raped by one of the prisoners, the others had started to cheer and to count Ashton's thrusts, drumming their feet in time with the boys movements, and in time with the roll of his own body.

Matthew had blushed fiercely and felt a rage build up inside him, but he took it. He let the boy fuck him, and then when Ashton unloaded with a shout of pleasure, he had felt the rush of boy seed inside him, closed his eyes and imagined Ashton's death.

That had been two days ago, but since then he had been raped several times more, and the toilets were fast becoming the location of choice for it, as he was not allowed in them unescorted.

Matthew sighed and spread his arms and legs, leaning against the wall. He made no effort to resist now as Ashton dropped his clothing, and pushed his cock into the boy's tight arse.

Matthew felt the shame of it as the boy entered him, but at least Ashton did not hurt as much as his friends. The boy fucked him quickly, drooling over him before his passion exploded inside Matthew's butt, and his throbbing cock disgorged inside him.

Matthew bit his lip, closed his eyes. He could feel the throbbing cock inside him and hear Ashton's grunts of pleasure, felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as Ashton bit down on him, but he refused to make a sound. He was not going to let on how ashamed he was, although they must know it. He was not going to give them the satisfaction of hearing him voice his pain.

Ashton climbed off him, and now each of the gang members took their turn with him. One by one each boy fucked him, and each time a new cock was thrust into him it hurt more, until, despite his resolution, Matthew was squealing as a fourth and then a fifth huge cock entered him. He was vaguely aware that there were some more boys coming into the toilets now – not just the immediate gang but some of the hangers on, and each boy took their turn with Matthew as he howled in pain.

"Had enough?" Ashton asked after the sixth boy had fucked him. How many boys could even do it? he wondered. Most boys here had cock cages, but Matthew recognised the boy who had just fucked him. A big fifteen year old that He knew normally was locked up in a chastity cage too, but now his blood and cum covered cock was hanging free. Somehow they were taking off their chastity cages for this, and if that were so… how many more boys would rape him tonight?

"Please, no more," Matthew whispered.

"No more? you want me to do you a favour – is that right? You want me to turn away all these other horny boys?" Ashton asked, crouching down beside the sobbing boy.

"I can't take any more. Please no more," Matthew whimpered. "Please just let me go."

"Well it's like this, Matthew. I guess I could tell these boys that your bum has had enough, but they are still gonna be horny. Someone has to suck them off, and I already sent my bitch away. Who is gonna suck them?"

What choice did he have? Matthew looked at Ashton feeling hatred swamped by defeat. "You want to suck them off? You want to be the bitch boy today?"

Matthew gave the smallest nod of his head – just a twitch, but it was still compliance, and Ashton laughed as he did so and ushered the next boy over.

Now Matthew knelt on the floor and another boy thrust his cock into Matthew's mouth.

Matthew tasted the stiff hot flesh of boy cock, so large it made him gag. He felt a moment of panic, and almost spat the cock out, but managed to control it, and slowly he began to suck the boy's cock.

"He's a natural, don't you think?" one voice said. Matthew did not see who spoke, but Ashton agreed and there was a lot of laughing and joking, which became louder when The boy ejaculated into Matthew's mouth, and Matthew's eyes went wide and his face bore the tell tale signs of disgust as he got a mouth full of boy cum.

After that he serviced each boy one by one, until all had been sated, and Matthew knelt with his head hanging and cum running down his chin. Not just his chin either. They had rubbed it on his face, in his hair, down his arms and legs too.

"Cumdump," Ashton said, squatting down beside him again. "You are my bitch boy now. Chose it fair and square," he said and then before Matthew knew what was happening, arms had grabbed him, rocked him backwards so his back was arched, his stomach exposed and Ashton had produced a knife – a broken thing, more handle than blade, but still definitely a knife. A moment later he impaled it into Matthew's navel.

"You are mine, now, Cumdump," he laughed, but Matthew hardly heard the words as he let out a shriek, more from shock than the pain as the knife entered his navel, the shortened blade still biting deep through his skin and sinew, and blood gushed out in a hot red fountain.

As he was held, helpless and shocked, Ashton used his finger to scoop up some cum and then thrust it deep into the wound, looking into Matthew's eyes as he did so.

"My bitch," he said.

And then the boys got up and left him, bleeding and sobbing until one of the guards came to drag him away to the infirmary.

Chapter 15
Rats

Callum

Callum pushed his hands into the sewage pipe, feeling the foul and sludgy contents give way, squelching up his arm and spurting out by his arm pit under the backed up pressure. He thought he had got used to the stench of this place, but this was more rancid than usual and he gasped, almost suffocated by the smell.

The pipe was backed up, the filter blocked so badly that nothing was getting through and so, of course, he had been detailed to sort it out. An overseer, who was himself a naked slave, but older than Callum and not designated as livestock, so he could still speak and hear, had instructed him through a series of hand signals and gestures before retiring to a less polluted part of the sewers.

Callum worked alone, as usual, but he had to work quickly. He would be whipped for slacking, he knew, and whipping was bad news in the sewers. Wounds would fester and become infected. He had seen one other livestock boy down here in his first week, and that boy had been recently whipped and his back was a black and yellow puss filled mess. The boy had been barely able to stand, and Callum had not seen him since. He wondered of the boy had died from his infection.

Callum had been whipped since then, but only a few strokes at a time. He had worked hard to avoid worse, even though he worked himself to exhaustion. Several times he had simply collapsed, unable to work any more, but the overseer seemed to understand that these collapses were genuine, so he had only received light beatings for doing so.

He was exhausted now too. He was always exhausted, but as long as he could work he did so. He scrabbled around inside the stinking pipe, scraping the muck out with his fingers until he found something. His fingers closed on something hard, and he tugged at it. It was wedged in tight but he pulled harder and it gave just a little. Callum gritted his teeth, reached in further, the pipe sludge spurting over his face as he fought to find a better grip, and then with all his strength he pulled again.

Whatever he was holding came free then, and he fell backwards into the murky sewer water as it came tumbling out of the pipe on top if him.

Callum looked at what he had found, confused. Most of the blockages in the sewers were organic matter, hair balls, bones or fat balls or toilet paper. Sometimes there were other discarded objects like broken bits of furniture or broken cups and other ceramics. This, however, was none of those. This looked more like a postal package. It was shaped like a box, but carefully wrapped in plastic and taped down.

Whatever it was, it looked like it had been meant to be protected from the damp sewer environment.

Callum pulled back at the tape and found it covered a zipped seam. With a growing sense of excitement, he unzipped the plastic covering and revealed a cardboard box, still dry inside its casing. Carefully, he opened the box and when he saw the contents, he knew at once that this package had not been left there accidentally.

Callum closed the box quickly, zipped the package back up and pulled the tape over the zip as best as he could. There was not much time, but he was not going to let this opportunity pass.

He quickly ran through the sewer, splashing his way to the place he had found, above one of the pipes where it entered the wall. He reached through a grill and pulled it free, revealing a small space behind it.

He had found this loose grill a week ago. It was his own secret space, and now he had something to put in it. He pushed the package into the gap and reseated the grill. The grill should have been screwed in securely but the screws had rusted away, but it still sat in place, hiding the small gap behind.

Now Callum ran back to the blocked pipe. Sure enough the sewage was gurgling its way down it now, the blockage fixed. He turned to find the overseer to let him know he had finished, and so to be given his next job, or, if he were really lucky, perhaps the chance to get some sleep.

***

Joel

"You know that you are really quite special, don't you Joel?"

Joel looked at the governor. These little sessions were becoming a daily occurrence now. Each evening, after he had taken Matthew his supper, Joel would be summoned to the warden who would quiz him about anything Matthew had said to him, and would talk about other events in the outside world, and then would fuck him. Joel supposed it was the fucking that he particularly enjoyed.

For his part, he did not enjoy it. The warden's cock was big and he was not gentle, but it had one positive impact. It appeared that Ashton was now under instruction not to fuck his butt any more. That was off limits to anyone other than the warden now, and so Ashton would only make him give blow jobs now. He did not seem to mind either, because he had Matthew now.

Strangely, Joel resented Matthew for this. Ashton would fuck Matthew and Joel would feel jealousy. What was with that? He should be glad that the new boy was getting his butt hole stretched, and not him. So why did he want to spit in Matthew's food, or poke the new boy in the eye?

Maybe because when Joel had been Ashton's favourite bitch boy, he had felt just a little special. Now he did not feel special at all, so he just looked back at the warden, not answering the question.

"It is true, Joel. You are more special than you know. That is why we chose you."

Now Joel was suddenly alert. This was not the first time that the warden had suggested he had somehow been chosen, and he knew it had something to do with why he had been framed for rape and murder. He wanted to know what was behind that, but he tried not to let his curiosity show in his face, in case the warden chose to string him along again. He tried not to show it, but as the warden's face creased into a smile, he knew he had failed.

"That's right Joel, you were absolutely perfect. You ticked all the boxes. A father who was heavily involved in the union movement, that was part of it of course. We just needed you to mess up to get to him. But that was never all of it."

The warden studied Joel for a moment and Joel looked back. He was dying to ask the obvious questions but he knew that if he wanted the warden to say more, it was better he stay quiet.

"Oh I do love your big brown puppy eyes," the warden said, ruffling Joel's hair. "So cute. So adorable. Such a pity I cannot keep you for myself, but the client is waiting for you."

"The client?" Joel asked, not able to stop the words slipping from his lips.

"Oh yes, the client. The one who chose you. He has come to see how you are progressing. You are going to be his private slave when you leave here."

Joel swallowed, his cheeks colouring. He knew he was destined to be sold as a slave at the end of his year in Sacramentum, but he didn't like to think too much about that. Not that it could be worse than here, could it?

A door opened and a figure walked in. The man in the doorway was not attractive, could never have been a TV or film star, but he was familiar. Joel was sure he had seen him before. Where? It was on TV – he was sure of it. This man was famous, but who was he? And then he remembered a name. "President Johnson?"

The man smiled and shook his head.

"Not President Johnson anymore, my boy. It is just Mr Johnson now, but I am impressed. You recognised me."

Joel felt a little impressed himself that he had pulled the name from the depths of his memory. He had never cared much about world affairs and Johnson was not his president after all. No Johnson was president of one of the new territories. Victoria or something. One of those strange places where slavery was against the law, and all the news had been about how they had been fighting off terrorism and migrants and stuff.

He made a connection then. Matthew had been from The New Territories hadn't he?

Matthew who he had basically been spying on for the governor. Matthew whose every word got reported back each night.

Joel suddenly felt like he had been standing on a beach when a giant wave had come crashing over his head and now he was fighting his way out of the water, as it threatened to drag him away. Suddenly everything was so disorientating. Nothing was what it appeared. Why did the president, or ex president of some country up north care about him? He was a nobody living a nobody's life in a poor district of the country. His parents were nobodies, and now his dad was a dead nobody. What the fuck was going on here?

"Now I am sure you have many questions, 22," Johnson said, "but I know that the warden here has explained you are special. Do you know what makes you special?"

Joel shrugged, looked Johnson in the eye and shook his head. "You have no idea? Come on, take a guess."

Joel stared silently, shrugged again, and Johnson's smile faltered.

"You will take a guess right now or I shall have the warden fetch his cane."

Joel felt rebelliousness evaporate in the memory of his last taste of the cane across his butt. In any case, where silence might have been the best way to get the warden to talk, it might be that the opposite was true of Johnson.

"Is it because my dad was in the union?" Johnson laughed, shook his head.

"Nice try, but that is only a tiny part of it. Yes, yes, it was a part, but there is so much more. What else is special about your family Joel?"

Joel shrugged, but there was something else. There was something unusual. Not unheard of, but definitely not common. He looked at the man, and his eyes seemed to demand an answer.

"Is it because my mother is alive?"

"See, I knew you were a bright one," Johnson replied, his smile returning in full. "Yes, that is exactly right. You have a mother, and that in itself is rare, but you know what? there is something even rarer about your mother. Do you know what it is?"

Joel shrugged again, but he did know. Of course he knew. He knew because his father had often remarked on it, and had used it when talking about his own religious faith: the grace of God, he had said. The grace of God because his wife, Joel's mother, had actually caught the Oestrovirus, had been as ill as anyone with it, and then had survived. Not only had she survived, but she had conceived a child, him. That was so rare – most survivors of the virus became sterile.

She had survived the Oestrovirus that killed so many women. She hadn't just avoided it, but she had survived it.

"I am sure you understand, therefore, why we are going to find your DNA so very interesting. We already extracted some, and Today we are going to take some more."

"Why not just take it from my mum?" Joel demanded.

"See, again an intelligent question. The answer is, Joel, that we are doing just that, but we need more than that. To understand how a woman who has survived the oestrovirus can have children we need to study her children. Your DNA holds the key to a whole new understanding on that point."

"You want to use me to make a cure?" Joel asked.

"God above, no!" Johnson roared, his voice exploding like a walrus sneezing, and Joel actual felt dampness, making him close his eyes instinctively. "No! Why would we want to do that? We don't want to cure the virus, Joel. We want to make it better. Imagine if we could weaponise it? The immigrant crisis could be extinguished in a generation!"

Joel looked dumbfounded at the man. What was he saying? Surely he could not be suggesting what he seemed to be.

"You want to make the virus work better?"

"Exactly, my boy. Imagine if no woman could ever conceive naturally ever again? If the only way to have children was to pay for a lab built surrogate? We could have a points based system, where only the best and brightest would be allowed to have children. We could build a brave new world, a brighter future. You will help us with this. We have a whole set of tests and experiments we are going to run on you, and I am sure we will find what we are looking for. Imagine the possibilities. Imagine what we could do if we could just take back control?"

Chapter 16
Bitch Marked

Matthew

Matthew was sat in the corner of his cell, his head on his knees. He was tired and hungry, but he could hear the soft footsteps in the corridor and looked up as Joel entered with his food on one of the tiny plastic trays that everyone ate off. The food was unappetising as usual, and the portion small. He suspected the eunuch boy may be helping himself to some of it before he arrived each evening. He felt a stab of anger at the thought but pushed it away.

Better not to accuse before he knew for a fact that the boy was doing that.

Joel set the tray down in front of him and Matthew picked it up and put his hand into the grey mashed mush that tasted like it was made mostly from potato, water and vomit. It probably was not vomit, he told himself, but the alternative – that it was soured milk or something rancid – did not make the food much more appetising. Still it was food and he was hungry so he scooped it up in his fingers and thrust his hand into his mouth, swallowing it down quickly.

Joel was watching him, and Matthew looked warily back. He had tried engaging the boy in conversation before, but it seemed clear that the nullo was not interested. He had answered a few questions, so that Matthew knew his true name was Joel, rather than 22, but that was as far as things had gone in the last few weeks. Usually there were a few words and Joel would slip away.

Not today though. Today Joel was staring at him, and it was obvious, even to a hungry and not particularly perceptive 12 year old boy like Matthew, that Joel wanted to say something. At last Matthew set his tray down, and licking his fingers, he looked Joel squarely in the eyes.

"What is it?"

"You got the bitch mark too."

Matthew looked at Joel, his eyes narrowing. His hand instinctively travelled to his stitched navel. It was still sore as hell, but worse was what Matthew knew it meant. He looked at the scar on Joel's own navel, and knew that every boy in the prison saw it as Ashton's mark of ownership on a boy. He knew he would sport that same scar now. The doctors in the infirmary had stitched him up and tutted about the risks of serious internal injury. He had spent a whole night in the infirmary as they had pumped him full of antibiotics and then they had released him, but so far Matthew had been left in his cell. So far he had not had to face the prison population with his new mark.

He had dreaded what would happen when he did have to see other boys in the prison. Not that there were that many of them who had not either raped him or fucked his face or at least watched while he had been raped over and over again. How much worse could it be that he was Ashton's bitch boy now?

Joel must have known all that though, even if he had not been there. Even though he would never fuck anyone again, could never do that, still Matthew knew that there would have been no secret about what had happened, so why act surprised that he had the bitch mark?

And then Matthew realised, it was not surprise, it was something else.

"It wasn't my choice you know," he said quietly, and was surprised when Joel took a deep breath, his body shuddering. He looked like he was about to cry.

"I am Ashton's bitch. You had no right," he suddenly said vehemently. Matthew's mouth dropped open and then closed again.

"You can be his bitch. You think I wanted that? What the fuck?"

"If he likes you," Joel said and now there were tears running down his face. His voice wobbled. "If he likes you then he may stop liking me."

"He doesn't like me. He hates me. Why do you think he did that to me?"

"You are wrong," Joel said, his voice whiny now. "You are wrong. He wants you for himself… there was a bitch boy before me too and… and when Ashton took me… he… now he…"

Matthew waited for Joel to go on, but he didn't Instead he sat down on the floor cross legged and buried his head in his hands.

"Fuck, Joel, no! Stop that. Ashton's not going to dump you for me…"

"He already did," Joel howled. "He didn't want me to suck him off last night or today… he… he looked at me like… like…"

Matthew waited, and Joel cried. Eventually he pulled himself up from his corner and put an arm around Joel and Joel collapsed into his embrace, sobbing.

"Like what?"

"Like he was bored of me," Joel sobbed. Matthew held him and said nothing, lost in thought. He did not want to be Ashton's bitch boy, and he had seen the way Joel was around him, he knew that Joel did want it. Joel was like the perfect slutty little bitch. Matthew had watched him and though how submissive and weak he was, but now he saw that if Ashton did discard Joel then there was nothing left for Joel really. He knew what had happened to the last bitch boy. Everyone knew bout the boy who had managed to hang himself from a light fitting.

But Matthew was not going to be like Joel. He was determined to be stronger, better than that. He squeezed the boy.

"Joel, I am not taking your place. You watch me. If Ashton puts his cock in my mouth again I am gonna bite it off."

"Yeah, right! And then you are gonna end up dead."

"There must be a way. I am not gonna do that. I'm not. You hear me? You can have him coz I am not gonna do that."

"He will kill you… it's true… he will. And me too. I now they are gonna kill me."

"Ashton doesn't want to kill you."

"Not Ashton. Them. The guards. The warden. They are gonna kill me anyway."

"No they aren't. This is a prison, not a death camp."

"You know nothing, Matthew. You know nothing but it doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference. I know they are going to kill me."

"How do you know?" Matthew asked, looking at the boy in his arms. Joel looked small, lost, miserable. He looked like he believed what he was saying.

"Because if they were gonna let me live they wouldn't have told me about the Oestrovirus."

"Huh?" The Oestrovirus? Matthew knew all about that of course, but it was not what he had expected to hear from the boy at this moment. His mind was still on sex and rape and bitch marks.

So now Joel began to tell him all about what he had been told, about how they were going to experiment on him, and had already started, taking bloods and injecting him with who knew what. How they wanted to understand more about his DNA and his mother's and the Oestrovirus, and how they wanted to weaponise it. Matthew felt a growing sense of alarm and a deep anger as he heard it all, and all the more as he realised that this was all part of some terrible power game by ex president Johnson. Everything the man did was designed to make him powerful for power's sake, and he was ready to sacrifice what? the future of the whole world on this?

He could hardly believe it, but worse, he heard it and felt a terrible sense of impotence, and a deep nagging fear that if this was true then Joel was absolutely right. There was no way they were ever going to let Joel out of here. Why tell him what they were going to do if there was the slightest risk he could ever tell those plans to anyone else. Why bother release him if they had so messed up his body on the tests that no one would want him anyway?

"Shit!" was all he could say when Joel was done. And then because that was not enough, he said it again and again.

Chapter 17
Unwelcome Confession

Joel

"Fucking hell, why did you tell me that?" Ashton roared and lashed out, his fist connecting squarely with Joel's stomach, sending the boy sprawling and coughing in a corner of the cell.

"Of all the fucking stupid things. Why did you have to tell me that?"

"Don't you get it?" Joel sobbed. "They are gonna kill me."

Ashton kicked the boy in the head, and blood sprayed from his nose.

"Shut the fuck up! Shut up! Shut up!" he yelled.

Moments before Joel had begun to tell Ashton what he had told Matthew, but where Matthew had been sympathetic, hugging him and holding him tenderly like he had not been held in a long time, Ashton's response was the polar opposite. The boy looked positively deranged in his anger, and he shrieked at Joel as he kicked again.

Anger like he had never seen before, but Joel suddenly saw that it was not just anger. Ashton was afraid. Ashton who had the guards eating out of his hand, and who could get keys for cock cages and passes for off limit areas and extra food and who could stab a boy in the navel and earn no demerits at all, was afraid of something. He was afraid of what Joel had just said about the oestrovirus.

Why?

He curled up in a ball and waited for the boy to calm down, maybe then he would find out. "You fucking stupid cunt. Why did you have to tell me? Why did you have to tell ME?" Joel cringed and waited, not daring answer, not daring to move.

"Don't you get it? Don't you know the collars in here record every fucking word?"

Joel had not known that. He knew the collars worked to mark their location and could be used to strangle them if they tried to escape. He knew about the anti tamper mechanisms, but he hadn't known that they recorded everything. Or if he had known it he had forgotten.

"But… who is listening?" Ashton kicked him again.

"Who said you could talk? Fucking loser. You stupid twat. Of course they are not listening on mine, at least not all the time, but yours? Fuck. As soon as they told you about the oestrovirus I bet they have been listening obsessively. I bet they even analysed the sound of your pee in the toilets. And now… now you fucking well told me!"

Joel cringed. Had they really been listening to everything? He thought about all the stuff he had said about Ashton and cringed… what had they thought about him when he said all that?

"Who else did you tell?" Ashton asked, his voice an angry growl. "Spit it out. Tell me everyone who knows, right now."

"No one… except…"

"Yes?"

"Matthew."

Another kick landed in his back and Joel howled in pain. "The terrorist? You fucking told the terrorist?"

Joel cringed, he did not want to say more, was terrified of what Ashton would do next, but it had to be said. He had to know.

"And I guess Matthew told Jack."

Silence for a second, as Ashton looked at him so coldly it made Joel want to curl up and hide.

"Oh this just gets better and better." Ashton said at last, and then walked to the door of the cell. "Stay there, and don't you fucking move. Don't move a muscle."

And then he was gone, but not for long. A few minutes later he was back, and then he kneeled down beside Joel and pushed something into the boy's mouth. Joel gasped and bit on something hard, as Ashton tied something behind his head.

"You are fucking lucky I didn't just cut your tongue out and be done with it. Now that stays in. You are not telling this to anyone else again. You hear me? That gag stays in… until we can figure out what to do next.

"Fucking hell. What have you done? What have you done?"

Joel's eyes were streaming and he could only mumble now. Ashton slapped him across the face, and then grabbed his face by the cheeks, looking him in the eyes.

"Didn't you think? Didn't you know? Yes you are gonna die. You are right about that you fucking turd, but then why didn't you realise? Everyone you tell this too. We are all gonna die too.

"You just signed my death warrant you turd!"

And then Ashton hit him so hard that Joel's head snapped back against the wall with a sickening crunch and a black wave enveloped his mind. He lost consciousness.

Chapter 18
Escape

Joel

"In here, quick!" Ashton said, pushing Joel ahead of him through a small entry hatch. Joel climbed in stiffly. He was badly bruised from the kicking that Ashton had given him, and he sighed, supposing he was going to be raped once again.

Not so, however. When he was through the hatch and could stand in the dimly lit service tunnel, the kind of place Ashton liked to hang out so much, he saw that they were not alone. There was Matthew, naked but for his cock cage, because that he was not even allowed the underwear that most prisoners wore now. Standing beside him was #5, Jack.

Joel looked around at Ashton quizzically. Matthew being here made some sense, because Ashton had made him his bitch whether he liked it or not, but what was Jack doing here? Jack who Ashton had pretty much rejected.

"Here is how it goes. Thanks to my bitch's motor mouth, and Cumdump's lack of judgment, we four are now everyone in this damned prison who knows about the Oestrovirus work. That means, geniuses," he shot a reproving glance at Joel, "that all four of us are under a death sentence. You don't get to know this stuff and leave Sacramentum, believe me."

Jack was glaring at Joel and he looked away. Matthew's expression was different, perhaps showing concern but also fear and maybe a touch of guilt. He looked at Jack apologetically, and Jack scowled back.

"At least not until now. See bad things can sometimes happen here, so I had a plan B, and you three are going to help with it. The four of us are going to escape. Now."

"Fuck that," Jack said, crossing his arms. "That is a crazy notion. You want to just walk out of here? And just because of some crazy fool story about viruses and cures?"

"Do you want to live until tomorrow?"

"They are not just going to kill us. What are you thinking? They tell eunuch boy a secret and then wait to see who he tells and kill everyone?"

"That is exactly what they are going to do."

"Why? What sense is there in that? How are they going to explain the sudden deaths?"

"Not sudden. Just every one who knows about this is not getting out alive. You haven't been here long. You don't know how it works, but believe me… in time they are coming for you and when they take you away, they don't kill you but you are gonna wish you are dead. If you are lucky you die in the experiments. If not…"

"That's crazy talk," Jack scoffed at Ashton. "There are no experiments. This is a prison. You serve your time and then you get out."

"Not everyone gets out. They say 'accidents happen' and some don't come out. You remember the news about the prison riots? five boys killed? Do you really think there was a riot?

"Boys who learn not to look too hard at stuff, and who learn to dish it out too, they get out. Troublemakers, well, if they are lucky they get a full set of tattoos, throat and ear surgery and end up doing drayage as livestock on some god forsaken farm. That is the lucky ones, and yeah you could be lucky. They maybe won't kill us but believe me, you might as well be dead as have that happen to you. Then there are those who don't get out. Some don't come out at all," Ashton replied, his voice raised in anger.

"So we tell everyone. They can't kill everyone in the whole prison."

"You never heard about the North Ridge fire?" Ashton glared at Jack and Jack glared back, but there was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. The North Ridge fire where a whole prison, and all its occupants, had died in a huge gas explosion. The worst penitentiary disaster ever, they had called it, although many had said it was a blessing in disguise. It had been an accident, hadn't it?

The silence grew, and Joel watched nervously, his thoughts running riot. No doubt Jack was thinking the same. Could it have been more than an accident? The suggestion was like a seed taking root in his mind, and he did not like what was growing there.

"Whatever," Jack said at last. "We don't have to go now. We need to plan it out. It is like you said, they are not going to kill us right away."

"They are not, but Ninja is. I put the word out. If he or any of the others see any of you three again they are going to make sure you have a nasty accident. A very nasty accident."

"Your bluffing," Jack said hotly. "You can't just go murdering prisoners."

"No? You want to check that out? There's the way out. It was shit knowing you."

Jack looked at the entrance hatch thoughtfully, but did not move. Joel kind of thought he had a point about the bluff, but you didn't know with Ashton. He seemed to be able to get away with anything in this prison, but murder of a prisoner? that seemed unlikely… although if he thought he was already under a death sentence… but then why would Ninja agree to it? except everyone knew that Ninja was not all there in the head. Ninja would probably do it, yes.

Was Jack thinking the same way?

"Tell me the plan, and then I will decide if I am coming."

"Fuck that! You find out the plan when we do it. You think I am going to just tell you the plan and let you walk out there where you can try to find someone to dob us all in?"

"Do you think," Jack said, almost spitting the words out now, "that I am going to follow you without even knowing if there is a fucking plan?"

"Hell, yes," Ashton said. "You are going to come with us because you don't have a choice and you know it, and you want to get out of this place as well, and you know that too."

Jack looked at him thoughtfully.

"You know it makes sense. You know you are already half way to ending up a life slave anyhow, and as for these two… well one of them has no balls and the other one is gonna lose them. Life is pretty bleak here for eunuchs you know. Chances are both of them were going to be sold as livestock even if none of this had happened. There is no future here, so we are going. Leaving. Right now. Yes?"

Jack frowned, looked angrily at Ashton, but at last he nodded.

***

Jack

"So how do we get the collars off?" Jack asked as the boys started off down the service passage, climbing down some metal steps into the darkness below.

"We don't. Not yet. We need special tools for that which we can get when we are out." "What, did you just forget the induction talk?" Jack scoffed, pausing on a walkway to glare at Ashton. "We take one step out of bounds and the collar GPS activates and suffocates us."

"You know how the collars work?" Ashton asked.

Jack shrugged.

"Sure, everyone knows. There is a GPS chip in them that checks where you are and…"

"And how does it know what the bounds are?" Ashton asked, pausing now too in the darkness so that Joel and Matthew stopped too.

"The sensor posts I guess," Jack said, thinking of the sensors that had stopped Matthew from entering the dining hall. It had to be something like that or else how had Matthew's collar known to bar him?

"You have no clue. None whatsoever," Ashton said, shaking his head, a movement obvious even in the semi dark. "Now listen up coz I am gonna explain this just one time, OK?

"So yeah, you know the collar has GPS location tracking and you know the posts can be used to bar people from going into places. We all know that, but we are out of range of the posts here. We shouldn't be, but I decommissioned the last one before we came down here."

Ashton mimed a kick and grinned.

"You broke one of the posts?" Matthew asked. "I just hurt my foot when I kicked one."

"And that, Cumdump, is because you are clueless. OK I didn't exactly kick it. Actually I used some kit I had smuggled in to reprogram it. See the posts also relay the recorded data in the collars. If that post had been working right then the guards would know where we are and exactly what we planned."

"So what you are saying is that anyone can just break the posts and walk out of here?"

"Fuck, no!" Ashton laughed. "The collars have a failsafe mode in case of technical failure, obviously. One step out of bounds and even in fail safe mode, the collar activates and suffocates you and then it emits an audible alarm too. Only heard it once but believe me it is loud!"

"So what's the plan…?" Jack started again but Ashton growled and turned on him.

"Stop asking the fucking plan already! I am telling you about the collars and that is all you are fucking getting right now."

Jack folded his arms but watched quietly, waiting for Ashton to continue.

"So, if there is a failsafe mode, what that means is that all the location data about where you can and can't be is not in the posts at all. It is in the collars. Got it? If it was in the posts, you could just kick them down and walk away, but if the data is in the collars, you are stuffed."

Jack remained impassive, but Matthew's face suddenly seemed to light up, his eyes went wide and he breathed out an "oh!" of surprise.

"Yeah, oh! So all you have to do is tell the collars your bounds increased. Simple."

"Not Simple. You can't just tell the collars what you want." Jack said, his face showing he was far from convinced.

"But that is why the posts are important. So let me explain, only you won't get this bit, but I am gonna tell you coz then you are gonna know that I know what I am doing, right?"

Jack shrugged and Joel watched the two, like he was watching a game of verbal tennis. "Every time you get within range of a post, your collar receives beacon frames from it that issue its public key. Then your collar uses that public key to encrypt some data that it sends back to the post and the great thing about this is that only the secret key in the network server that the posts connect to can be used to decrypt anything encoded with the public key, so it is all encrypted, tamper proof. You could smuggle in network equipment but could never mess with those messages.

"So then the post uses that data to encrypt stuff that it sends back to the collar and now the collar and the post can talk secretly to each other and no one can decrypt what is being sent back either, even if its a really big data dump. No one can mess with it.

"Once that is done the collar uploads all its data and the post can send location updates and other stuff back to the collar and it is all tamper proof. Right?"

"Right," Jack said, although he was frowning. He was not sure that was right, but he was not going to say anything.

"But the flaw in all that is if you can send out a beacon frame from a post that is not a real post, you could get the collar to talk to it and send updates. All nicely encrypted but from a non real post, see?"

"So isn't that an obvious flaw?"

"Sure it is. You don't want anyone just intercepting the traffic, so every collar has another public key included in it. That public key in the beacon frame is encrypted with the private key of the Sacramentum facility, and can only be decoded with the public key. If you can decode the beacon frame you know it was signed by the Sacramentum private key, right? You know then it is a valid Sacramentum post and not some kind of imposter."

"Right," Jack said again, but he was not sure it was right. Ashton was clearly a boy of well hidden talents. "So you are saying that you can't just pretend to be a valid post then."

"Unless you have the Sacramentum private key that all the collars trust." Ashton replied with a smile.

"You have it?" Matthew asked.

"Had it for months. I had to let the sysadmin fuck me six or seven times before one night he finally fell asleep with me still in the control room. I guess he didn't know that I am in here for computer hacking. There are advantages to acting like a dick you know. People think you are one and always underestimate you."

"I still don't get it. Even if you had the key, what can you do with that?"

"A hell of a lot if you are letting the sysadmins and techs fuck you often enough. A few lines of code here, a stolen pass there, access to the network cables in these service tunnels when the guards think I am just fucking you lot… it all adds up you know."

"So you are saying you reprogrammed our collars?"

"I am saying that when I shut down that post earlier, the last thing I had it send out to each of us was an update to the approved locations map. Hopefully we can go anywhere in the world we want, except for Boston."

"Why not Boston?"

"I really don't like Boston. Have you seen how they drive up there?"

"What the fuck?" Jack asked, shaking his head but still he was smiling a little now. He did not like Ashton but he was realising now that there was more to the boy than he had thought.

"OK I may have been joking about Boston. Hopefully we can go anywhere we like."

"Hopefully?" Jack asked.

"Hopefully. Come on, I didn't have time to test it."

Jack's smile faltered again, his scowl returned and he swore.

"You are going to get us all put in the hot box, you know that?"

"Hopefully not… but so what? you are dead anyway. Come on, have a little adventure while you can."

Jack watched as Ashton set off once again. He seemed to be actually enjoying this, just a little. And as Jack thought about it, he supposed that he was too.

Chapter 19
Chasing Rats

Jack

"This place stinks," Jack hissed, stating the obvious. Joel and Matthew had already made similar remarks.

"What do you expect from a sewer?" Ashton asked, giving the boy a withering smile. "So why are we in the sewer?"

"Do you want to get out of here or what?" Ashton asked, crossing to a channel where murky water was gurgling down a pipe. As Jack watched in disgust, Ashton thrust his hand into the pipe. He reached up to his elbow and then frowned.

"Something wrong?" Jack asked as Ashton began to scrabble more desperately. "Fuck!"

"No thanks, the stench is putting me off," Jack said but the look Ashton shot him shut him up. Ashton's eyes were wide, and he looked uncertain for the first time.

"Someone has been here," he growled.

"Not guilty," Jack shot back. "I don't like sex in toilets."

"Will you shut the fuck up!" Ashton growled, kicking out in frustration, showering the boys in sewer water. Matthew let out a howl of protest and Jack raised his arms in mock apology.

"So what have you lost?"

"Everything, you stupid twat. Now listen, what we have here is a problem with a sewer rat."

"Yeah, rats like sewers," Jack said and Ashton glared at him. "Oh come on, of course they do!"

"Not an actual rat. Oh god, why did we have to bring you. Look, the sewers down here get looked after by livestock slaves. You don't see them because they are even less important than 22 over there. There are other slaves that do maintenance work, but the livestock slaves are called sewer rats because they are the ones sent to fix the pipes."

"You are a fount of all knowledge," Jack scoffed. "But so what?"

"So one of the sewer rats has taken my stuff… and if we don't have the stuff, then we are all going back to prison."

"Okay so the escape is off, we can go back and try again another day," Jack said, and made to head back the way they had come.

"Don't be such a fucking prick! You can't go back now, you are committed."

"If we just go back up and pretend we were all fucking each other down here…"

"And when your collar refuses to sync with the nearest pillar all the alarm bells in the jail will go off. Nope, it is too late. We go back, we get caught for trying to break out," Ashton explained in a tone like he was talking to a mental retard. "And you don't want to know what they do to escapees."

"So what do they do to escapees?" Jack asked.

"Fucking hell, someone needs to gag you. I told you, you don't want to know."

Ashton glared at Jack and Jack glared back, his mouth curved into a slightly mocking look, caught between a grin and a frown. The silence grew and the other boys watched on quietly too.

"Oh fucking hell," Ashton swore again. "Okay, so its like this… I had the whole escape plan worked out for months just in case anything happened that meant I had to go quickly, but you know why I didn't escape? No? I will tell you: because escaping from this place is the stupidest thing either of us could do. You, me, we are both here for a few years and then we get to go free.

Yeah, we have a tattoo and a record. Yeah we can never take a poxy government job ever again, and probably can't get any honest work. Yeah we pretty much have to drop out of school, but at the end of the day we are free, right?"

Jack shrugged. It was true enough he supposed.

"Of course those two are different. 22 is a rapist and 23 is a terrorist. They are going to spend their life as slaves. Eunuch slaves. If I was one of them I might want to escape this place, but I am not. I am better than them, and in another year I am out of here, and because of my skills I have a place to go. Some people have been looking after me, because they need me."

"Mob?" Jack asked, and Ashton just looked at him. He did not nod but it was all the confirmation Jack needed. So Ashton was mixed up in organised crime. That figured, and certainly explained how he had managed to get hold of smuggled in equipment like cock cage keys.

"But the thing is, if you escape and get caught, then you immediately get downgraded, right? You walk back into that prison now and the order goes out, and you are never gonna be free again. If any of us get caught here, we end up slaves. If we end up slaves we almost certainly lose our balls, and as for those two… well they are going to join the sewer rats.

"You know what they do to livestock slaves right? Take their voices and pierce their eardrums. Maybe they will have all your hair removed or fit permanent mouth gags. I dunno, there are all kinds of things that can happen, but one thing I can guaranty you: none of us get to just go back to the way things were, and that is entirely leaving aside the fact that we are all gonna end up dead now anyhow. In fact we just did them a favour: I bet we all get made into livestock the moment they catch us because then we can't tell anyone about Joel's little secret.

"So, we have to find the fucking thieving sewer rat who took my stuff, or else the deep shit we are standing in right now is the least of our fucking problems. Capice?"

***

Callum

Callum heard voices and saw someone come into the cell where he was running on his treadmill. It was a guard, and he could tell the man was speaking to someone else, probably another guard outside the cell, although, of course, he could not make out the words. The man pressed a button and indicated to Callum that he could stop running, so the boy sank to his knees, gratefully.

How many hours had he been running this time? He could not know, but it had ben long.

He had learned to switch off from his present, to live life in his head through the punishing exercise. He imagined he was out in the sun, playing with his friends. He built houses in his mind, brick by brick. He solved maths problems or imagined he lived in a world without slavery. Anything that would distract him from the mind numbing drudgery of his life now.

It did not really work though, he admitted to himself. He could imagine a better world, but this was his life now. It had been made quite clear to him that he would live down here in darkness for the rest of his life, and work until he dropped.

He scratched his head. He thought the lice were back, even though they had shaved his hair a couple of weeks ago to get rid of them. His muscles ached, he could tell he stank, and every day was like the one before: crushing monotony and exhaustion.

The guard had his cock out and Callum knelt where he was and took it in his mouth. The guard had not washed, and he could taste pee and sweat, but he was long past the point where he might gag at such things. Instead Callum did what he had learned to do well, using his tongue to stimulate the man, teasing his balls, and sucking the cock deep into his mouth, bringing the man to orgasm and then swallowing the rich creamy cum hungrily.

The cum was not enough, but to the half starved boy it was still welcome, despite the taste.

The guard put his cock away, and dragged Callum to his feet, spanking his butt and indicating the sewer pipe he needed to clear out, and Callum quickly crawled away into the sewers.

He thought about ending it all. He thought about throwing himself into the sewer water and drowning himself. He had tried once, but could not bring himself to do it. When it came to it, he could not breathe in the foul water and had emerged, coughing and spluttering. Still, if there were an easier way to end his life, he would probably have taken it.

The boy crawled through a narrow sewage pipe, and started to scrape the grill clean with his fingers. Despite the smell of the foul water that flowed around him, he had come to look forward to this part of his work. While he was squeezed into spaces too tight for adults to follow him, and off his feet, he could relax just a little. He was working, always working, but it was still the closest he came to recreation time, and sometimes he would find more small objects that he could squirrel away into his secret stash.

All too soon, however, he was done cleaning the shit from this grill and sliding his way back along the pipe, out into the larger sewer. Not to worry, there were several more pipes to clear out and then, perhaps, he would be allowed some sleep.

Callum backed out of the pipe, feeling the flow of air on his legs and bum as it was exposed from the entrance. He was moving back some more when someone grabbed him and tugged.

Callum opened his mouth to yelp, although his cut vocal chords meant he made nothing more than a breathy sigh of alarm. He flailed around, expecting one of the guards to lay into him with a whip for taking too long. He thought he had worked quickly enough, but he flinched, expecting the blow to land across whatever exposed flesh he showed.

Only as he flinched, he saw that it was not the guard glaring down at him but a boy of about his own age. A boy who was talking, although Callum could not make out the words. He looked angry, and was gesticulating wildly.

More boys were splashing towards him. Callum tried to squirm away, to run for safety, but the boy lunged and grabbed his collar, holding him, pulling him forwards, so that he was kneeling in the yellow sewer water.

The boy was still speaking, so Callum touched his ears and then put a hand over his mouth. The other boy looked at him, and his face darkened more in anger, although he stopped speaking.

Callum looked back in consternation. The boy looked at him, and sighed. Then he beckoned another of the boys over. Callum watched as a smaller boy came close, and the first boy picked up a lump of the brown sewer sludge, and using a finger, he started to draw a design on the boy's chest with it.

The other boy looked disgusted, but did not resist, and as Callum watched he saw a familiar shape being drawn on the boy's chest. It was the box. He knew it at once, even before the boy marked the design that removed all doubt. He knew what this boy wanted, but that was Callum's box. He had found it fair and square and he was not giving it up.

The boy added a question mark and then looked at Callum. Callum shrugged. That was when the boy hit him.

Callum fell backwards, banging his head painfully. He tried to struggle to his feet, splashing his way backwards but the boy was fast and strong and quickly followed his punch with a kick and then more blows.

Callum winced and fell backwards, tried to shield his face, but it was no good. The boy was like a wild animal.

When he paused, at last, he grabbed Callum's collar again, and then held him, a hand's width from his face. Callum could not hear speech but this close he could feel the boy's breath, see the movement of his lips too. There was no doubt what he said.

"Where is it?"

Callum shrugged, and the boy raced his hand again. He winced away but the blow didn't fall. Instead the boy repeated his question. Where is it? Where is it?

They were escaping. Callum knew it, and that was why they needed the box. This boy knew how to use it, and they were going to escape with it. If they were escaping, Callum was going with them. He was not going to live a day longer in this hell hole. He would rather die trying than pass up his one chance to escape.

He mouthed the words soundlessly. "Take me with you."

Did the boy understand? He was looking back at him, saying nothing. Was he thinking? trying to work out what Callum was trying to say? He repeated his demand and then raised a hand.

"Take," he mouthed voicelessly, and pointed to himself, "me," and then made a walking movement with his fingers before pointing at the boys, "with you."

One of the boys said something and the one holding Callum turned on them, shouted something angrily. Callum thought maybe he had said "I know that." Maybe or maybe something else entirely. Still the other boy fell silent and now the angry boy was in his face again.

Nothing was said for an uncomfortable amount of time, but at last the boy nodded.

For the first time since he had come to this place, for the first time in months, Callum felt a flicker of hope, and he smiled, and then pointed, and just like that they were off to Callum's secret stash.

NEXT PART