The bus tires crunched over gravel that had been baked brittle by a relentless, bone-white sun. Here, the sky was not a canvas for weather; it was a magnifying glass. There were no clouds to offer reprieve, no threat of rain to wash away the dust that coated the throat like powdered glass. This was the Scorch—the colloquial name for the basin holding the Ironbark Correctional Facility for Women.
Mercy sat in the back row, her wrists bound in steel cuffs that had warmed to the temperature of the stagnant air inside the vehicle. Around her, other women wept, cursed, or prayed. A girl with a spiderweb tattoo on her neck was hyperventilating, her sobs jagged and wet.
Mercy did not weep. She did not sweat. She sat with the perfect posture of a marble statue, her spine a rod of iron, her gaze fixed on the horizon where the heat haze made the barbed wire fences dance like liquid silver.
She was nineteen years old, though her eyes held the ancient, flat indifference of a reptile sunning itself on a rock.
"Quiet back there," the guard shouted through the cage separating the driver from the cargo. He banged his baton against the mesh.
The weeping girl choked on a sob. Mercy didn't blink. She was breathing in a four-count rhythm—*inhale, hold, exhale, hold*—a technique she had mastered when she was twelve, the year her parents stopped setting a place for her at the dinner table.
'Control' she thought. 'The body is a vessel. The mind is the captain. The world is just water.'
The bus hissed to a halt before the maw of Ironbark. The gates groaned open, revealing a courtyard of concrete that radiated heat visible to the naked eye. This was the hell she had been promised. A place where the weak were currency and the strong were the mint.
As they were herded off the bus, the sensory assault was immediate. The smell of unwashed bodies, industrial disinfectant, and old grease. The sound of jeering. The inmates in the yard had lined up against the chain-link fences to appraise the "Fresh Meat."
"Look at that little doll," a voice rasped, heavy with smoke and malice. "She won't last a week."
Mercy looked at the speaker. It was a woman with arms the thickness of oak saplings, scarred and tattooed. Mercy's expression did not shift. Her face was a mask of porcelain calmness. She cataloged the woman's stance: heavy on the left foot, favoring a bad knee. An opening.
Mercy looked away, dismissing the threat not out of fear, but out of efficiency.
***
The intake process was a ritual of humiliation designed to break the spirit before the body could even settle. Strip searches, delousing powder that burned the scalp, and the donning of the uniform—a coarse, orange jumpsuit that chafed the skin.
As Mercy buttoned the jumpsuit, the rough fabric triggered a memory, sharp as a shuriken.
-The living room. Three weeks ago.
The air conditioning had been humming, a stark contrast to the stifling heat of the prison. The house was cool, smelling of lilies and expensive polish. Her parents, Robert and Elena, were sitting on the velvet sofa, doting on Felicity.
Felicity, two years younger, with hair like spun gold and eyes that could summon tears on command. Felicity, who had never known a day of invisibility.
"Oh, look at you, my angel," Elena had cooed, brushing hair from Felicity's forehead. "You look beautiful for the gala."
Mercy had been standing in the doorway, wearing her gi. She had just returned from the dojo, her body aching with the good, honest pain of three hours of sparring. She was thirsty. She had walked toward the kitchen.
"Mercy," her father had said, his voice dropping an octave, losing all warmth. "Don't drip sweat on the hardwood. Go around back."
"I'm not sweating, Father," Mercy had replied, her voice flat. She rarely sweated. She ran cold.
"Just go," he waved a hand, dismissing her as one would a fly.
Later that evening, the scream had torn through the house.
Mercy had run down the stairs, her movement silent and fluid. She found them in the study. The family's antique katana—a decorative piece, dull but heavy—lay on the floor.
Felicity was crumpled on the Persian rug, clutching her arm. Blood seeped between her fingers, dark and rich against the pale carpet.
"She... she went crazy!" Felicity screamed, pointing a trembling, blood-stained finger at Mercy. "I told her she couldn't have the necklace... and she grabbed the sword... she tried to kill me!"
Robert and Elena turned to Mercy. There was no question in their eyes. No hesitation. No search for truth. There was only immediate, calcified loathing.
"You monster," her mother had whispered, rushing to cradle Felicity.
"I didn't touch her," Mercy said. Her pulse remained at sixty beats per minute. She looked at the angle of the cut, the position of the sword. "The trajectory is wrong. She did it herself. Look at her grip."
"Silence!" Her father roared, his face turning a mottled red. "You've always been jealous. You've always been cold. Unnatural. I'm calling the police."
Felicity, buried in her mother's chest, had looked up at Mercy. Just for a second. The tears were still streaming, but the mouth—the mouth curled into a tiny, triumphant smirk.
Mercy hadn't fought the arrest. She hadn't screamed her innocence. She realized, with a clarity that felt like ice water in her veins, that she was finally free of them. They wanted a monster? She would go to a place where monsters lived.
"Cell 402. Top bunk."
The guard, a man with a neck that spilled over his collar, shoved Mercy into the cell. The door slammed shut with a finality that vibrated through the floor.
The cell was an oven. A single fan spun lazily on the ceiling, merely churning the hot air. On the bottom bunk lay a woman reading a magazine. She looked up, her eyes narrowing. She was wiry, with skin like leather and teeth capped in gold.
"I'm Trix," the woman said. She didn't sit up. "You take the top. You don't touch my stuff. You don't talk to me before noon. You snore, I smother you."
Mercy nodded once, tossed her thin pillow onto the top mattress, and vaulted up. She didn't use the ladder. She grabbed the frame and pulled herself up in one smooth, silent motion, defying gravity with casual ease.
Trix paused, watching the movement. "Gymnast?"
"No," Mercy said. She lay down on her back, staring at the concrete ceiling.
"You talk much?"
"No."
"Good."
Night fell, but the heat remained. The prison came alive with the sounds of the caged. Shouting, banging on bars, the rhythmic thumping of boots on the catwalks. Mercy closed her eyes. She visualized her internal energy, her *Qi*, as a cool stream running through the center of her body, insulating her from the chaos.
She slept without dreaming.