Chapter 4: The Vanishing Game Begins
Avocado found his shoes at 0630 during morning count.
Or rather, he found where his shoes should have been—the empty space under his bunk where he'd left them the night before.
The entire cellblock heard him.
"WHAT THE FUCK! WHO TOOK MY SHOES?"
I was standing at my cell door for count, hands behind my back, face carefully neutral. Bellick walked past, clipboard in hand, and paused at Avocado's screaming.
"What's the problem, inmate?"
"Someone stole my motherfucking shoes!"
Bellick's eyes narrowed. "Check your bunk. Check your cellmate's stuff. They didn't just walk away on their own."
I watched from three cells down, tracking every reaction. Avocado tore his cell apart while his cellmate pressed against the wall, trying to be invisible. Nothing.
"They're gone, boss! Someone came in here and—"
"Nobody came in here," Bellick said flatly. "Doors are locked from 2200 to 0600. You know that."
"Then how—"
"Maybe you're just stupid and lost them yourself. Now shut up before I write you up for disrupting count."
Avocado shut up, but his face was the color of a tomato.
Count finished. The doors clanged open for breakfast.
I filed out with everyone else, grabbed my tray, sat down with Sucre like always.
"Did you hear Avocado?" Sucre asked, grinning. "Man's losing his mind over some shoes."
"Weird," I said, biting into toast that tasted like cardboard.
"Yeah, but check this out." Sucre leaned in, voice dropping. "Julio said he saw them."
"Saw what?"
"The shoes, man. They're hanging on the fence in the yard. Like, way up high. No way Avocado could've put them there himself."
I sipped my coffee. "Huh. That is weird."
By 0900, the whole prison was talking about it.
The ghost. The phantom. Some supernatural force that stole Avocado's shoes and put them where everyone could see but nobody could reach without climbing the fence—which would get you shot by the tower guards.
Theories flew. Someone paid off a guard. Someone had a key to Avocado's cell. Someone had mad climbing skills.
Nobody suspected the truth: I'd waited until 0200 when the guard rotation changed, slipped out of my cell using a lockpick I'd fashioned from a paperclip, activated Low Presence Zone, walked into Avocado's cell, taken his shoes, walked to the yard, climbed the fence while invisible, hung them up, and returned to my cell.
Total time elapsed: eight minutes.
Cost: splitting headache that lasted three hours and a nosebleed I'd hidden by keeping my face down during breakfast.
But watching Avocado rage at the fence, jumping and failing to reach his shoes while inmates laughed and guards shook their heads?
Worth it.
BELLICK'S POV
Something was wrong.
Brad Bellick had been a CO for fifteen years. He knew every trick, every scam, every way inmates tried to game the system. And this—shoes appearing on a fence overnight—didn't make sense.
The security footage from last night showed nothing. The yard cameras had clear sight lines on that section of fence. Nobody had been there between lockdown and dawn.
Nobody visible, anyway.
Bellick stood in the security office, rewinding the tape for the third time. 0200 hours. Guard rotation. Three-minute gap when the yard was unwatched while the new shift got coffee.
Freeze frame. The fence was clear.
Fast forward ten seconds. Still clear.
Fast forward ten more seconds. The shoes were there.
Son of a bitch.
"See something, boss?" The tech running the monitors looked bored.
"No," Bellick said slowly. "That's the problem."
He thought about Miller. The new fish who was too smart, too comfortable, too good at making himself useful. Who'd pickpocketed Avocado's wallet in broad daylight. Who'd humiliated the bully and walked away clean.
You're playing a game, Bellick thought. And I'm going to figure out what it is.
DANIEL'S POV
Rec time. Sucre found me at our usual table, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Danny, man, you gotta teach me more tricks. Maricruz wrote back again and she said—" He stopped, smile fading. "She said Hector proposed."
The air went out of him like a popped balloon.
I put down my cards. "What did she say?"
"She said no. She told him she's waiting for me." Sucre's voice cracked. "But her mom's pissed, Danny. Her mom told her she's wasting her life on a convict. That Hector's a good man with a good job and I'm just... I'm just trash."
His hands were shaking. The coin he'd been practicing with fell from his palm and rolled across the table.
"Hey." I caught the coin, pressed it back into his hand. "You're not trash. You made a mistake. You're paying for it. But you're still the man Maricruz fell in love with."
"Am I?" Sucre looked up, eyes wet. "I robbed a store, Danny. I'm in here for two years because I wanted money for a ring to marry her. How stupid is that? How—"
"It's not stupid to love someone," I interrupted. "Stupid is giving up on them."
"But what if she gives up on me?"
I studied him. Really looked at him. The desperation, the fear, the love that was eating him alive from the inside out.
He needs hope, I realized. Not platitudes. Not false promises. Real hope.
"You're going to get out," I said. "Two years, maybe less with good behavior. And when you do, you're going to find her. You're going to show her you learned, you grew, you became the man she deserves. And you know what? She's going to say yes."
"How do you know?"
Because I watched you in another timeline, another reality. I know how your story ends. You get the girl. You have kids. You get everything you're fighting for.
"Because I can see it," I said instead. "The way you talk about her. The way she writes you back even when it would be easier not to. That's not nothing, hermano. That's everything."
Sucre wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Thanks, man. I don't know what I'd do without you."
Probably the same thing you did in canon, I thought. Survive. Help Michael. Get your life back.
"You'd do fine," I said. "But you don't have to find out. I'm here."
We practiced card tricks for the next hour. Simple stuff—forces, false shuffles, basic palming. Sucre's hands were getting steadier, his timing better. He'd never be a professional, but he could make Maricruz smile.
That was enough.
The old man approached at 1600, just as the yard was starting to empty for dinner count.
Charles Westmoreland moved like a ghost—quiet, unassuming, easy to overlook. But his eyes were sharp. Intelligent. The kind of intelligence that came from surviving seven decades, most of them hard.
"You're Miller," he said. Not a question.
"Yes sir."
"You play chess?"
D.B. Cooper asking me to play chess. This is surreal.
"I play."
"Good." Westmoreland gestured to the empty board on a nearby table. "Sit. Let's see what you've got."
We played. Westmoreland was better than Pope—more aggressive, willing to sacrifice pieces for position. I had to actually try to keep up.
"You're different from the usual fish," Westmoreland said, moving his bishop. "Most new guys either try too hard or not hard enough. You just... exist. Like you've been here before."
Careful.
"Just trying to survive, sir."
"Survive." Westmoreland smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "That's what they all say. But survival's different for different people. Some survive by hiding. Some by fighting. You? You survive by being useful. Making friends. Making yourself hard to remove."
He took my rook.
"That's smart," he continued. "But smart men make dangerous enemies. People notice you, Miller. They wonder what your angle is."
"No angle," I said, capturing his knight. "Just want to do my time and get out."
"Mm." Westmoreland studied the board. "You know what I think? I think you're waiting for something. Or someone. You've got that look. Expectation. Like you know something's coming."
My heart rate spiked but I kept my face calm. "I don't know what you mean, sir."
"Maybe not." Westmoreland moved his queen. "Checkmate in four moves. You see it?"
I looked at the board. He was right.
"I see it."
"Good." Westmoreland stood, joints creaking. "You're smarter than you pretend, Miller. Remember what I said—smart men make dangerous enemies. But they also make powerful allies. Choose carefully."
He walked away, leaving me alone at the table.
I stared at the chessboard.
He knows. Not everything, but he knows I'm playing a bigger game.
The question was: would he help or hurt when the time came?
That night, I practiced on my cellmate.
Raul was a small-time dealer, in for possession with intent. He snored like a chainsaw and never woke up before dawn. Perfect test subject.
I waited until 0100. Then I moved.
Raul's commissary slip was in his pocket. I palmed it while standing two feet from his bunk, my fingers moving with the precision the original Daniel had spent years developing. Raul didn't stir.
I put it back. Waited five minutes. Took it again.
Third time, I took it, walked to the cell door, examined it under the faint light from the corridor, walked back, and replaced it.
Raul's snoring never changed rhythm.
My hands were steady. My breathing calm. The skills were solidifying, becoming instinct.
Initial phase, I thought, cataloging my current abilities in the mind palace. Pickpocketing works on unaware targets. Cold reading is solid for basic deductions. Low Presence Zone functional but costly.
Two more days until Michael.
I climbed into my bunk and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow I'd make final preparations. Scout the routes Michael would take. Identify the key players he'd need to recruit. Position myself perfectly.
The pieces were all moving into place.
Avocado's shoes stayed on the fence for three more days before a guard finally climbed up and cut them down. By then, everyone had forgotten whose they were.
Everyone except Avocado.
And he was watching me now. Watching and waiting.
Good, I thought. Let him watch. Let them all watch.
They still wouldn't see me coming.
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