The processing center was white. White walls, white floors, white lights that hummed at a frequency that made Philip's teeth ache. He'd been in the building for three hours. He'd filled out seventeen forms. He'd been photographed, measured, blood-tested, and addressed exclusively by number.
7749-B.
The clerk who processed him was twenty, maybe, with a name tag that said T. HENRY and a smile that said I have been trained to appear sympathetic. She didn't look up when Philip approached the counter.
"Name?"
"Philip O'Brien."
Fingers on keys. "Crime?"
"Attempted robbery. First National Bank."
"Sentence?"
"Rehabilitation. Indefinite."
The clerk stamped a form. A printer whirred. A number printed in block letters: 7749-B.
She held it up. "This is your designation. This is how you will be addressed. This is how you will file requests, report medical issues, request visitation. You do not have a name here. You have a function. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
She pressed a button. A door opened. "Through there. Change into the issued uniform. Orange. Do not keep personal items. Anything not surrendered will be confiscated and destroyed. You have five minutes."
Philip walked through. The changing room was white too. Lockers, benches, a mirror scratched with initials he couldn't read. The uniform waited on a hook. Orange jumpsuit. Plastic shoes. No laces.
He changed. The fabric was synthetic, coarse, designed to last years. He thought of his father's blue uniform. They'd changed the color. Rebranding. Same machine, new paint.
In the mirror, he didn't recognize himself. Good. That was the point.
The door opened to a corridor. Long, straight, fluorescent-lit. A guard waited at the far end. Not Reyes. Not anyone Philip knew. Tall, white, fortyish, with a face that had learned not to show anything.
"7749-B. Follow."
They walked. The corridor turned. Turned again. Philip counted steps—seventy-three, seventy-four—then stopped. Counting was suspicious. Noticing was suspicious.
The guard spoke without turning: "You look like someone."
"I have a common face."
"The someone I mean is dead. Died here. Long time ago." The guard stopped at a door. Swiped a card. The light turned green. "You have his eyes. Same number, almost. 7749. Just the B different. You know him?"
Philip's heart stopped. Then beat again. Too fast. He controlled it. In four, hold four, out four.
"He was my father."
The guard smiled. It was worse than his neutral face. "Small world. Welcome to Sunshine, 7749-B. Try to last longer than he did."
The door opened.
Sunshine Correctional Facility was not white.
It was gray. Concrete gray, sky gray, the gray of industrial carpet and metal stairs and faces that had stopped expecting color. Three stories of cell blocks, open in the center like a throat, with walkways crossing overhead and the constant sound of movement—feet, wheels, machinery—echoing off every surface.
Philip stood in the intake area and felt the weight of it. The smell. Disinfectant over sweat over something else, something organic and permanent. The sound. Not silence, but the absence of quiet. Too many people, too close, too long.
"7749-B!" A voice from above. Philip looked up. A woman on the second-floor walkway. Gray uniform, different from the prisoners. Administration. "Welcome to the rehabilitation program. You have been selected for immediate integration. Your assignment is Workshop Seven, electronics salvage. Your cell is Block C, 247. Your counselor is Dr. Voss, appointment Thursday. Do you have questions?"
Philip had a hundred. He asked: "When is Thursday?"
The woman smiled. Same training as the clerk. "You'll know when it arrives. Move along. 7749-B."
A prisoner approached. Older, Black, with a scar across his left cheek and eyes that had seen everything twice. He carried a clipboard. Official. Trusted.
"New fish," he said. Not a question. "Workshop Seven. Follow me. Don't talk. Don't look at anyone. Don't stop walking. You stop, you stand out. You stand out, you become interesting. You don't want to be interesting."
Philip followed.
They walked through the gray. Past cells with faces pressed to bars. Past a common area where men sat at tables, playing cards, not playing cards, watching. Past a medical station with a line of men waiting for pills they probably needed and pills they probably didn't.
"Name's Moses," the old man said, not looking back. "They call me Numbers. 'Cause I remember 'em all. Cell numbers. Death numbers. Invoice numbers. You want something, you come through me. I know who has it. I know what it costs."
"I don't have money."
"Nobody has money. We have other things. Favors. Information. Silence." Moses stopped at a door. WORKSHOP 7. "Your daddy was 7749. I knew him. Briefly. Workshop detail, 2009."
Philip's breath caught. "You knew him?"
Moses turned. Looked at him directly. The scar caught the light. "Today I do. Tomorrow I might not. Memory's a funny thing. Comes and goes." He opened the door. "Get in. Work hard. Don't ask about your father again until I remember who you are."
The workshop was noise and heat. Rows of tables, prisoners dismantling electronics—computers, phones, tablets—sorting components into bins. Copper here. Circuit boards there. Batteries separate, dangerous. Everything had value. Everything was harvested.
Philip was assigned a station. Old desktop computer, probably ten years obsolete. Tools: screwdriver, pliers, static band.
"Salvage everything," the supervisor said. A prisoner, not a guard. Trusted with authority. "Nothing wasted. Sunshine doesn't waste."
Philip worked. The computer came apart under his hands. He'd done this before, in another life, when electronics were hobbies and not survival. Hard drive. Memory. Processor. Each piece separated, sorted, filed.
On the hard drive casing, someone had scratched initials.
T.O. 2009.
Tommy O'Brien. His father. Two days before his "accident."
Philip touched the scratches. Felt the grooves. His father had been here, at this station, touching this same metal. Had known he was going to die. Had left a message for someone.
For Philip? Impossible. He'd been twelve. No access. No knowledge.
For someone else, then. A confidant. A witness. A Numbers who remembered.
"Don't stop working," a voice behind him. Not Moses. Younger. Harder. "You stop, you lose privileges. You lose privileges, you lose hope. You know what happens to men without hope, 7749-B?"
Philip turned. The speaker was thirty, white, muscular, with a smile that belonged in a different place entirely. A guard's uniform, but no name tag. Authority without accountability.
"I don't know your name," Philip said.
"You don't need to. You need my permission. For everything. Food. Sleep. Work. Life." The man leaned close. His breath smelled like mint and something chemical. "I'm Captain Holt. I run Sunshine. The warden signs papers. I sign destinies. And I remember your father, 7749. I escorted him. More than once. He cried. They all cry. You will too."
He walked away. The workshop continued. Philip's hands moved automatically, dismantling, sorting, surviving.
7749.
His father's number. His inheritance. His target.
And now, scratched in metal, dated two days before death: proof that his father knew. Proof that he tried to leave something behind.
Philip swallowed the Joplin that night in his cell. It went down easier than he expected. Ceramic, smooth, cold. It would record everything for seventy-two hours. Then he'd retrieve it. Then he'd transmit.
If he lived that long.
The cell was six feet by eight. Concrete bed, thin mattress, toilet, sink. A window too high to see through, showing only light or dark. The door was solid metal with a slot for food and a small window of reinforced glass.
Philip lay on the bed and listened. The sounds of Sunshine. Coughing. Weeping. Someone shouting numbers, lottery numbers maybe, or just numbers. The constant hum of ventilation. The occasional scream, cut short.
7749-B.
He was inside. He was recorded. He was committed.
Tomorrow, he'd find Moses on a good day. Tomorrow, he'd ask about his father. Tomorrow, he'd start building the trust that would get him to the files, to the evidence, to the truth.
Tonight, he counted his breaths. In four, hold four, out four.
And remembered his father's eyes through the glass. The way they'd looked at him, the last time, like they were saying goodbye without saying it.
Stay ready. They can't see inside.
But Philip was inside now. And he was going to make them see everything.