Hiliana Inez's Point of View
Let me get one thing straight—
I don't save people.
I'm not some prison messiah waiting to lift the broken out of their misery. I don't do charity, I don't do pity, and I sure as hell don't do dead weight.
But I notice things.
And I use things.
So when I caught her—skinny, quiet, eyes sharp like needles—I knew right away she wasn't normal. We met her at the library once, cold and distanc
They called her Abby. No one really knew her last name. Most didn't even know her face. She was like a damn ghost in this place—slipping in and out of the background like the cracks in the walls.
Three years in this hellhole, and barely anyone knew she was still alive.
That's what made her dangerous.
People like Abby?
They don't hide because they're weak.
They hide because they're waiting.
It happened after dinner.
Ryena and I were walking back from the yard. She was mid-rant about how the mashed potatoes tasted like chalk mixed with regret.
"And I swear to God, if they serve me that powdered puke one more time—"
I held up a hand. My nose twitched. Something was wrong.
And then—screams.
Not your typical drama. This wasn't the slap-and-hair-pull type of fight. This was serious. Ugly. Desperate.
It came from the janitor closet down the hall. I sprinted, Ryena right behind me.
The scene stopped us cold.
Three girls—fresh meat from C-block, barely in long enough to learn who not to cross—had pinned someone against the wall. The girl was thin, wearing a stained uniform too big for her. Blood dripped from her temple.
And still—her face was calm.
Not crying. Not scared.
Just watching.
Like she was analyzing it.
"Let's see if the brainiac can solve pain!" one of them cackled.
I recognized the girl being attacked.
Abby.
She never talked. Ate alone. Never got involved in drama.
But her eyes… they didn't belong in here.
They belonged in a lab, behind a screen—someplace where equations made more sense than fists.
"Back off," I said, voice low and sharp. "Or I start breaking bones."
The girls turned.
Wrong move.
Ryena didn't wait. She yanked the closest one back by her collar and slammed her into the sink. I kneed another in the gut. The third tried to punch me—so I twisted her arm behind her back until I heard a pop.
They ran.
Cowards always do.
When I turned back, Abby was standing. Not shaking. Not crying. Just brushing blood off her lip like it was nothing.
"You good?" Ryena asked gently.
"I didn't need help," Abby said.
I raised a brow. "Right. Looked like you were one IQ point away from getting your skull cracked."
She didn't blink. "I would've handled it."
Her voice was soft but confident.
"You got a death wish or are you just used to suffering?" I asked.
"I'm used to idiots," she said.
And damn. I liked her.
Later that night, I called her over during rec hour.
She hesitated, glancing around like a deer spotting a trap.
"Relax," I said. "I'm not gonna jump you. You're interesting. Sit."
Abby sat across from me and Ryena at the corner table—our usual spot, far from the drama, near the broken vending machine that no one fixed because this place was a joke.
"So," I started, "you gonna tell me how a freakin' genius ends up in prison, looking like she belongs in a robotics competition?"
I already knew her story because word's spread around here like a wild fire.I ask because I want her to talk more.
She pushed her glasses up. "Rich classmate. Fake evidence. Daddy covered her tracks. I took the fall."
I stared. "And you didn't fight it?"
"Tried. But courtrooms don't care about IQ. They care about money." She said with monotone
Damn.
"Are you really a genius or are you just good at pretending?" I ask
Abby didn't answer. She reached into her pocket and slid out a folded slip of paper. The guard schedules. Labeled. Annotated. Color-coded.
"The hack I did got me ten years," she said. "It took them six months to even figure out how I did it. I broke into a locked university server using a program I built with a pen and a prepaid burner phone."
Ryena's mouth fell open.
"You hacked a university with a phone?"
"And crashed a donor list for a corrupt senator's daughter. They say the leak 'mysteriously happened.' They never pinned it on her. Just me."
I leaned back, grinning like a wolf. "I think I'm in love."
She raised an eyebrow. "Flattery won't get you root access."
"I don't need flattery," I said. "I have knives. But I'll settle for your brain."
One week later, Abby was officially part of the crew.
We didn't do stupid initiations. You earn your place by being useful.
And holy hell, Abby was useful.
She taught Ryena how to make an antenna out of tinfoil and a paperclip so she could intercept the guards' radio channel.
She showed me how to code a virus—on paper—that could corrupt the prison's supply chain tracker if we ever got access to a USB port.
"I'm gonna start calling you Doom," I said one day. "It will be my sweet endearment for you"
She shrugged. "You can call me whatever you want, as long as you don't get caught."
She made forged letters look like they came from HQ.
She calculated guard rotations using probability algorithms.
Even figured out the guard named Miller was sleeping with an inmate—just by watching hallway timestamps and soda can preferences.
"She drinks orange," Abby said one morning, tracing a circle around a time slot on a map. "Every Wednesday at 2 p.m. Miller brings one. From the officer vending machine. Never logs it. I'd bet my sentence they're meeting in the library back room."
"You're scary," Ryena said.
"Good," Abby replied. "Because fear gets results."
People started noticing us.
Not just as fighters.
But as planners.
They didn't understand how we knew so much.
Why we got things no one else could.
Why guards started avoiding our corner like it was cursed.
Abby wasn't loud. She wasn't violent.
But she was a weapon.
The kind you don't see until the damage is done.
And I?
I was building an army.
Not of fists.
But of minds.
And Abby was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
That night, under a flickering light, the three of us sat in our cell—Ryena sketching escape routes, me whittling a toothbrush into a shiv, and Abby tracing code in her notebook like it was holy scripture.
"We could run this place," I said.
"No," Abby said without looking up. "We already do. They just don't know it yet."
Ryena chuckled. "So what's the next step?"
Abby looked up, and for the first time, smiled.
"We burn it down."