I’m visited by a group of men from the state. They tell me how smart I am. Say my IQ is what is known as “immeasurable.” They want to run more tests.

“I’m in prison,” I tell them. “How smart can I be?”

I refuse the tests and they leave with their tails tucked between their legs.

After I’m released back into gen pop, I get used to the thug life pretty easily. For the most part, no one messes with me. Not often, anyway. There’s always one or two trying to make a name for themselves. I’ve become the ultimate challenge.

And then there are the nations. The organizations that work inside, and outside, the system. A couple of them try to recruit me, but after I make it clear that I won’t be recruited by any of them, they calm down a bit. They know I won’t be out to get them based on the order of an enemy shot caller. It’s all about politics and survival.

The day-to-day life in prison is part boredom, part survival, and part bullshit. Every once in a while, a guard gets a tad too full of himself. Or a shot caller orders a hit. Or a random fight breaks out. In here, however, fights are lethal and taken very seriously.

I decide to use my time wisely. I continue what I started with the night classes, studying law, while also learning about computers. Mainly how to hack them. One of the first things I do is hack into my alma matter, where I spent three months learning about stuff I already knew, and assign myself a high school diploma. Then I earn an online degree in law.

I also become the local computer nerd. The administration brings me in to fix all the computers.

I create viruses to invade at a specific day and time. They call me in, and I eradicate my own virus, only to plant another one to go into effect a couple months later. They ask me why I can’t just fix the computers once and for all. I tell them to quit going to porn sites and it will stay fixed. That shuts them up every time.

*   *   *

So all that keeps me busy for a couple of years when Dutch isn’t in some sort of mortal danger. I’ve come to realize things are thrown in her path because of who she is. They have to be. No one could get into that much trouble without a little supernatural help.

Historically, reapers have never lived very long. They die young, then serve their term ferrying souls across dimensions.

How do I know all this? I’m learning a lot. Remembering a lot. Like who I am. Where I’m from. It’s as though a piece of glass that had shattered is being put back together. Slowly. Painfully. Each razor like shard fitting into the next one as images flood my memory.

Visions of hell fill my nights. Of inhuman armies and epic battles. That’s the part that surprises me the most, because I realize they were right about me. All the whispers, all the rumors and innuendos about my being the breath of the devil. I’m not human. I don’t know what I am exactly, but I do know there is a part of me that is no more human than Dutch is.

I’m also learning a lot, thanks to my abilities to venture into the world unchecked. It’s not like the bars of a prison can hold me. I can go anywhere. Once I realized Dutch was real, that I was literally leaving my body to see her, to seek her out, I realized I could go anywhere.

They think I’m having seizures. They do tests, but they will do only so much on the state’s dime. Probably a good thing, since I don’t think they’re really seizures. Not in the medical sense.

Sometimes I’m lured away and I seize. It’s inconvenient. Seen as a weakness. When I’m in that state, anyone could come at me. I could be dead because a certain reaper with a penchant for getting into as much shit as she possibly can is about to be killed.

It’s during one inopportune time that another realization hits me. One second, I’m on my bunk reading; the next, I’m in front of Dutch. She is on a college campus, UNM, and is being attacked. Naturally. Anger flashes inside me so hot and bright, I don’t even think before wielding my sword and severing his spine.

That’s not the surprising part. She’d called me to her. She’d literally summoned me. Had she always done so? Have I been seeking her out all this time or was she summoning me?

I figure it’s a toss-up. I brush my lips across her mouth before leaving her to deal with campus security. When I get back, I’m being stabbed by a Syndicate recruit. And here I thought we’d come to an accord. At the very least, a mutual understanding.

I don’t kill the kid. I don’t want the hassle. But it does bring into glaring Technicolor how detrimental Dutch’s near-death experiences can be. For me. Not her.

I rough up the kid a bit. Break his nose. Possibly his larynx. Then I hand deliver him to the Syndicate. Sadly, the hit wasn’t ordered. The kid acted on his own. An upstart wannabe out to make a name for himself. He died that night in a puddle of his own blood. A puddle that was not of my making.

A little over two years in, I get a visit from Amador. He comes at least once a month, actually, but this visit is special. This visit will go down in the history books as the day I almost break my best friend’s neck.

“I’ve been arrested for aggravated assault,” he tells me. “It’s pretty much a given I’ll go to prison.”

I stare at him, astonished. He is about to get married. His fiancée is pregnant. He’s never been so happy.

He clears his throat. Taps his fingers on the table.

“Why?” I ask him.

“Because I assaulted a police officer.”

“No, why would you risk everything—?”

“He’s a fucking cop, Rey. A human just like you and me.”

He was wrong on that count.

“Only this guy is an absolute piece of shit. He’s been stalking Bianca, and when she reports it—instead of telling me—he plants a stolen bottle of Oxy on her and has her arrested.”

His hands curl into fists and his eyes water with emotion.

I bite down, frustrated for him.

“They think because they wear a fucking badge, they’re above the law. ¡Cabrones, hijos de puta! Policías como ellos deben morir en un baño de sangre.”

While he vents in his native tongue, I can’t help but feel this is partly my fault. If Amador knew what I was capable of—really knew—he might have come to me instead of taking the matter into his own hands. I could certainly understand his desire for blood, though. I was feeling a little thirsty myself.

“The only reason I was able to get in to see you today,” he says, calming down a bit, “is because all this just went down last night. It hasn’t hit their system yet. But I don’t think I’ll be able to come see you anymore. Not for a while.”

That was the least of my concerns.

“I don’t know where they’ll send me. Hopefully here,” he says with a bitter chuckle, aware of the irony of his hope to get sent to a specific maximum security prison.

“I’ll take care of the cop,” I say.

“And how you gonna do that locked up in here?”

A slow grin spreads across my face, so he shrugs and goes with it.

“Just try to make sure you get sent here, if your lawyer has any say in the matter.”

He nods and we leave our good-byes hanging in the air around us, not sure of when we’ll see each other again. He’s one of the good ones. If he weren’t, I would’ve seen it the minute I met him. He deserves retribution. Bianca even more so.