Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

returned the box to Xavier, the other two cons watching the exchange in nervous silence.
    Xavier slowly opened the box and caught the stench immediately. He grimaced and gagged as he pushed the meal away, his breakfast tainted with the waste product of one of the inmate’s previous meals. The two bearded lifers smiled grimly as they tucked into their meals, savoring each bite and watching Xavier. Xavier knew he had to make his first tough decision, and he glanced across at other tables and saw dozens of other cons watching, waiting, some of them exchanging items as bets were placed. He thought of his little child and for a moment he felt the grief return to wash over him like a black wave, fought back tears that welled uncontrollably in his eyes.
    The two bikers began to chuckle, one of them shaking their head as they saw the fluid beading in his eyes. Xavier thought of his child for a moment longer, and he wondered what she would think of him if he were to simply do nothing, say nothing, to take the punishment even though he had committed no crime.
    His tears vanished as the wave of his grief lit up with flames of rage. Xavier stood up from his seat, reached across with one hand and grabbed the back of the nearest lifer’s head as with the other he lifted the breakfast box and upturned it into the bearded man’s face, shoved hard and ground the mess into him.
    The lifer let out a wail of disgust and fury as he propelled himself backwards into the man sitting at a table behind as he tried to get away from the filthy mess smeared across his face and mouth, the box falling away to reveal excrement lodged in thick clumps in his beard. Xavier jerked backwards and up off the bench, on his toes and ready as the other lifer leaped off his seat, his fists clenched like giant rocks by his sides.
    Prisoners scattered from the two tables as other convicts staggered back in horror as they saw the excrement wedged into his nose and beard. Roars of disgust went up from them as they retreated away. Xavier glanced up at the watch station and saw the guards looking down at him, neither helping nor hindering.
    Xavier silently reached across to the lifer’s seat and picked up the clean breakfast before he sat back down. The uproar in the hall died down as the sticks bellowed across the hall.
    ‘Two–one–eight–Mike, get to the infirmary and get that mess off your face! What are you, some kind of animal?!’

    The lifer seethed, his chest heaving and his eyes filled with murderous rage as he lifted one thick arm and pointed right at Xavier.
    ‘You’re mine!’
    Xavier, his heart thumping in his chest and his skin tingling with prickly heat, smiled back at the lifer.
    ‘You’re gonna need better perfume to get me.’
    A burst of grim laughter rippled across the hall as Xavier took a long, slow bite of the lifer’s breakfast.
    ‘Two–one–eight–Mike, move, now!!’

    Snarling with impotent fury, the lifer turned and stalked away toward the sally port.
    Xavier took another bite of the breakfast and looked across at the other lifer, who watched him with a look of absolute hatred, his voice rolling like boulders across the table to Xavier.
    ‘We’re gonna slice you open a bit at a time, and make you eat yourself.’
    Xavier, his pulse still racing, drowned his own fear with a chuckle.
    ‘I’ll taste better than your friend right now.’
    The lifer scowled, but Xavier knew that his bravado and veil of fearlessness would only last so long. He figured the respect he’d gained in the eyes of the other inmates would buy him a couple of extra days of life at most.
    ***

V
    Fourth Precinct Station
    New Washington
    Built on the corner of a block that looked as though it had probably been the first ever built in the station, the precinct was a blocky, angular building stained with the coalesced filth of ages. Nathan figured that once its walls would have been of shimmering steel but now they looked almost like brick, countless years of