The double steel doors of the Bridge hissed open. The air in the corridor was pressurized and cold, a stark contrast to the stagnant, sweat-heavy heat of the South Block Sarah had just left.
Sarah stepped through first. Her boots didn't click; they thudded with the heavy, rhythmic finality of someone who had already decided the outcome of the night. Behind her, Mendoza and Jenkins pushed the gurney. Donny sat upright, his back stiff, his hands gripping the side rails. He looked less like a patient and more like a captured general returning to the front lines.
To the left, through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass, was the North Block's administrative nerve center. Sarah saw the faces. The Associate Wardens, the shift commanders, the clerical staff—they were all pressed against their own glass, watching the "Sergeant" take their hallway.
"Eyes front," Sarah commanded her team, though she was looking directly at a Captain she knew was on Valenti's payroll. She didn't blink. She didn't move her hand toward her sidearm. She didn't have to. The authority radiating off her was more effective than a drawn weapon.
To the right of the Bridge, the view was different. The glass looked down into the "well" of South Block.
The sound was no longer just a hum; it was a physical force. Fifteen hundred men were standing at their bars, their hands thrust through the steel, rhythmically beating against the metal skins of their doors.
Clang. Clang. Clang-Clang-Clang.
As the gurney entered the center of the Bridge, the rhythm broke. A single voice from the bottom tier—Lou's voice—bellowed out, a raw, tectonic roar that silenced the block.
"THE KING!"
The silence that followed was more intense than the noise. Every eye in the South Block turned upward toward the glass Bridge. They saw the silhouette of the man they thought was dead. They saw the woman in the tan shirt standing over him.
Donny raised a hand. It was slow, trembling with the remnants of the sepsis and the brain trauma, but he made the gesture. He closed his fist.
The South Block exploded. It wasn't a riot; it was a salute.
In the far corner of the North Block, behind a mahogany door that had remained locked for forty-eight hours, the Warden watched the Bridge on his private monitor.
He wasn't shredding paper anymore. He was holding a telephone.
"She's on the Bridge," the Warden whispered into the receiver. His face was sallow, the sweat soaking through his silk tie. "She's got 4492. If she reaches that exterior window, the neighborhood sees him. If they see him, I lose my leverage with the streets. The 'Gold' becomes worthless if the King is free to talk."
A voice crackled on the other end—a voice from the capital. "You let a Sergeant take your facility, Arthur. You let her cite the Regional Director. If that crowd breaches the gate, we can't protect you. You have to kill the feed. You have to kill the light."
The Warden's finger hovered over the Emergency Override button. It would cut the power to the Bridge. It would plunge Sarah and Donny into total darkness, trapped in a glass tube between two warring blocks.
"Do it," the Warden said.
Sarah reached the exterior glass. The crowd outside was a sea of fire—torches, lighters, and the strobing blue-and-red of police cruisers that were too afraid to intervene.
Sal was at the front. He had the megaphone raised. "THIRTY MINUTES, MILLER!"
Sarah took the megaphone Mendoza handed her. She didn't look at the crowd. She looked at Donny.
"Ready?" she asked.
"I've been in the dark for two days, Sarah," Donny rasped, his eyes reflecting the flickering lights of the neighborhood. "Let them see me."
Sarah pressed the trigger on the megaphone. The feedback shrieked for a second, a high-pitched wail that cut through the chanting like a knife.
"THIS IS SERGEANT SARAH MILLER," she began, her voice amplified until it shook the glass. "I AM THE OFFICER IN CHARGE OF SECURITY AT BLACKWOOD. STAND DOWN."
The crowd froze. Sal lowered his megaphone.
"I HAVE THE KING," Sarah shouted. "AND HE HAS THE TRUTH."
She reached down and grabbed the handle of the high-intensity floodlight mounted to the Bridge. She aimed it inward, illuminating Donny's face in a halo of white light.
Then, the world went black.
The transition from the sterile, hushed atmosphere of the infirmary to the pressurized tension of the North Block corridor felt like stepping into a vacuum. Sarah led the procession, her boots striking the linoleum with a heavy, rhythmic finality that echoed off the high concrete ceilings. Behind her, the wheels of the transport gurney chirped—a small, shrill sound that seemed to grate against the nerves of every guard they passed.
Sarah's new Sergeant's stripes felt like they were made of lead. She could feel the eyes of the "Old Guard" boring into her back—men like Halloway and Riley, who had spent a decade building a kingdom of kickbacks and "lost" paperwork. To them, she wasn't just an officer; she was a traitor to the blue wall. She was a "climber" who had traded her soul for a mandate from the Regional Director.
She kept her gaze fixed on the heavy steel doors at the end of the hall. This was the "No-Man's-Land" of Blackwood—the Bridge. It was a three-hundred-foot expanse of reinforced glass and steel that hovered forty feet above the central courtyard, connecting the white-collar rot of the North to the blue-collar rage of the South.
"Mendoza," Sarah said, her voice low but carrying the iron of a Warden. "Check the secondary locks on the Bridge doors. I don't want a North Block 'accident' locking us in that tube."
Mendoza, his hand never leaving his holster, nodded. He was one of the few she trusted—a man who had been passed over for promotion because he refused to ignore the weight of the "Gold" flowing through the mailroom. "The override is still green, Sarge. But the Warden's office is silent. Too silent. It's like they're holding their breath."
Donny sat upright on the gurney, his back braced against a thin hospital pillow. The sepsis had left him with a lingering, bone-deep cold, but the intracranial pressure had subsided, replaced by a crystalline, painful clarity. As they entered the Bridge, the view opened up. To his left, the administrative offices—plush, carpeted, and hiding a thousand secrets. To his right, the South Block—his world.
"They're waiting for a sign, Sarah," Donny rasped. His voice was a wreckage of what it had been, but the authority was returning. He looked down into the "well" of the South Block. He could see the silhouettes of the men pressed against the bars. He could see the glint of thousands of eyes reflecting the dim emergency lights.
The sound from the South was no longer a hum; it was a physical vibration that rattled the glass of the Bridge. It was the "Silence Strike" breaking. A single inmate on the fourth tier began to beat a rhythm on his door, and within seconds, fifteen hundred men joined in.
Thump. Thump. Thump-Thump-Thump.
It was the heartbeat of the neighborhood. It was the sound of the South telling the North that their time was up.
"Look at them," Sarah whispered, stopping the gurney at the center of the Bridge. She looked out at the exterior windows. Beyond the prison walls, the city was a sea of flickering lights. The news helicopters were circling like vultures, their searchlights periodically blinding her as they swept over the Bridge.
She wasn't just a Sergeant anymore. She was a diplomat between two warring nations. If she moved too fast, the North would call it a security breach and open fire. If she moved too slow, the neighborhood would breach the gates and turn the facility into a slaughterhouse.
"I have to speak to them," Sarah said, reaching for the megaphone clipped to the gurney. "I have to let them see you, Donny. If they see you're alive, the air comes out of the balloon. We buy ourselves enough time for the Regional Director's Internal Affairs team to reach the front gate."
"And if the Warden cuts the power?" Donny asked, his eyes tracking a movement in the shadows of the North Block office.
Sarah followed his gaze. She saw a curtain twitch in the Warden's private suite. She knew the man behind that glass. Arthur Vance was a man who survived by being invisible, by letting men like Valenti do the dirty work while he took a percentage of the "Gold." He was cornered, and a cornered man didn't care about the rules of engagement.
"If he cuts the power," Sarah said, her grip tightening on the megaphone, "then we show them that the King doesn't need a spotlight to be seen."
She stepped toward the exterior window, the cold glass leaching the heat from her forehead. She looked down at the main gate. Sal was there, his face illuminated by the orange glow of a flare. He looked like a demon from a fever dream, a representative of a world that had been pushed too far.
"THIS IS SERGEANT MILLER!" Sarah's voice exploded through the megaphone, amplified by the exterior speakers she had commandeered.
The world outside went silent. The helicopters seemed to hover in place.
"I AM IN COMMAND OF BLACKWOOD SECURITY. THE NORTH BLOCK ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN RELIEVED OF DUTY PENDING AN INTERNAL AFFAIRS INVESTIGATION. YOU WANTED THE KING? HERE IS YOUR KING."
She reached back and grabbed Donny's hand. She pulled him toward the glass, his feet dragging slightly on the linoleum, his weight leaning heavily into her. Together, they stood in the center of the searchlight's beam—the Sergeant and the Inmate, the Law and the Neighborhood.
For three seconds, there was absolute, terrifying silence.
Then, the neighborhood roared. It was a sound that didn't come from the throat; it came from the earth. It was the sound of a thousand men realizing they hadn't been abandoned.
But in the North Block office, Warden Vance reached for a small, red toggle switch on the security console. It was the "Blackout Protocol"—designed to be used during an escape to disorient inmates.
"End of the show," the Warden whispered.
He flipped the switch.
The Bridge didn't just go dark; it vanished. The massive floodlights, the hallway lamps, the emergency exit signs—everything died. The only light left was the distant, wavering glow of the flares outside, casting long, monstrous shadows across the glass.
"Mendoza!" Sarah screamed, her voice echoing in the sudden, tomb-like silence. "Tactical lights! Now!"
But before the lights could flicker on, Sarah heard a sound that made her blood run colder than the sepsis ever had.
Click.
The sound of a heavy, industrial solenoid bolt sliding into place. The Warden hadn't just cut the power.
He had locked the Bridge.