Chapter 435 Identifying Snow Claw
The next day...
On level 1 of detention, Evan was walking down a large corridor that had cells on only one side of it.
He was pushing a cart with several lunch boxes stacked on it, stopping in front of the cells from time to time to deliver water and food to the inmates.
Clang!
He banged a metal club against the bars of a cell, drawing the attention of the inmates inside.
When he stopped in front of the cell, he looked around and saw more than 20 inmates in the cell, even though the cell's capacity was only 17.
Some levels of this prison were overcrowded because of the high crime rate in the kingdom in recent years.
Since the idea of this prison was to lock up hazardous people, there were fewer places for less dangerous inmates, like the people in this wing.
But it was the weaker people who committed the most crimes. So this place where there were thieves, people who had accidentally killed or damaged other people's property, was overcrowded.
But even with the overcrowding, Evan could see all the faces of the inmates in this cell.
'That must be the man Cesar was talking about...' Evan thought as he saw a man with yellow hair and blue eyes.
As he thought, he handed the lunch boxes and water bottles to one of the inmates who approached him. Meanwhile, he continued to observe the interior of the cell.
The blond man was Eve's father, whom Vicente had recently identified and wanted to save from this place!
He was lying in a corner of the cell, dressed similarly to his cellmates, very sweaty and with blood stains on his clothes.
The inmates fought over all sorts of things. If a newcomer slept in someone else's bed, ate before the senior inmates, or refused to do many things, it wasn't uncommon for them to suffer as a result.
Since all inmates had their powers sealed inside the cells, they all had more or less similar physical strengths depending on their level of incarceration and fights inside the prison could be just as dangerous as outside.
Moreover, depending on the crime committed by new inmates, even their history outside of prison could earn them beatings or respect.
A man in prison for abusing women or children should suffer as much as possible for most inmates. If he made it to a place like this in one piece, he would become the "plaything" of the more active inmates and suffer every kind of punishment imaginable.
The soldiers themselves favored this, and even if the new inmates tried to hide their crimes, the soldiers would find a way to tell the truth to the inmates in the same cells as the newcomers.
But sometimes, someone who had been sentenced to prison for killing the murderer of a son or even the abuser of a daughter, in short, things like that would come to such a place. People like that came to prison with respect. They obviously couldn't push their luck, but the inmates tended to "take it easy" on people like that.
There was an ethic among criminals!
Although there were always exceptions, there were certain crimes that even criminals abhorred!
Soldiers in such prisons only acted when problematic situations arose with the possibility of a rebellion. But when criminals tried to punish other inmates, most soldiers looked the other way and pretended not to see.
So Evan didn't find the blood on the blond man's clothes strange and imagined that if a personal problem didn't cause it, there was a possibility that the blood came from other inmates.
'That's the case...' He sighed as he saw an unconscious body in the most difficult place for him to observe in that cell, a man with a wholly bloodied face lying next to the wall where the metal bars of this cell were.
One of the inmates there saw Evan's curious look and asked with a smile. "Soldier, you're new here, aren't you? There was a shift change recently, right? Don't be surprised. This guy is a piece of shit. He did things he shouldn't have done with his own daughter and killed his wife after she found out. We're going to keep doing things to him until the miserable bastard dies."
Gulp!
Evan heard this as he saw the unconscious prisoner's pants being pulled down. 'Don't tell me they...'
He wondered what those inmates had done besides beating the man...
The inmate who picked up the lunch boxes laughed when he noticed Evan's silence.
"Hehe, not everyone has the guts to do that. But everyone here knows they must at least participate in the collective beating."
That was another inmate law. It was acceptable not to do everything necessary to punish newly arrived vermin. But if the group decided to beat a newcomer, everyone had to join in. If someone refused to, they would be seen negatively by the others and risked being beaten as well!
"What about that guy?" Evan asked as he pointed to Eve's father, seeing the others there distancing themselves from the man as if to avoid him.
The inmate stopped smiling when he realized who the soldier was talking about. "That's Mister Nico. He has nothing to lose. We don't take any chances with him. But when he's willing, he's a good friend."
"I see. All right, see you later." Evan was on his way to finish delivering lunch boxes to the inmates in this wing.
...
Meanwhile, Sarah was in the common area of the prison's maximum security wing.
Although the maximum security wing was designed to hold the strongest and most dangerous criminals in the unit, these inmates didn't live in solitary confinement 24 hours a day.
They spent most of their time in individual cells, with as little contact as possible between criminals. But they were allowed to sunbathe, meet with prison doctors, and work inside the prison.
The point of a prison was not to end the lives of all inmates but to make each inmate live as long as possible to pay for their crimes. What could be worse for a human being? To see their life end in a single, brief moment? Or to see decades or even centuries of their lives wasted?
As much as some might think that killing was better, often the worst torture for criminals was to take away their freedom and make them watch their own demise slowly unfold in prison.
That's why this prison did its best to keep its inmates healthy so they could stay there for a long time!
For them to have the physical and mental health to understand how their lives were being thrown away, places like this allowed even the most dangerous bandits to have a minimum of socialization and regular meetings with doctors.
But that didn't happen in the maximum-security wing like it did in other areas of the prison. In this area where Sarah was watching, only four inmates a day had the opportunity to come to the common area.
But as she did her job, she saw the inmate Vicente was interested in appearing for the first time since she had infiltrated this place!
This chapter is updated by freew(e)bnovel.(c)om