Leon held an intake physical examination form.
The name field at the top was still blank.
Across from him, the new female inmate was still in her own clothes , a denim jacket.
“Take off your coat.”
He recited the procedure from memory.
He’d long since stopped thinking about the words.
The woman crossed her arms.
Beneath a tangle of red hair, her face was all defiance.
“Says who?”
“Physical exam, step one.
That’s who.” Leon tapped the form with his pen.
“Procedure?
Whose procedure?
Guards’ procedures are just fig leaves for stomping on human rights.”
Sharp words.
She’d clearly rehearsed them.
Leon looked up and studied her calmly.
Another troublemaker.
A troublemaker who thought she knew the law.
These inmates were the most difficult to deal with and the most predictable.
They always believed the law was their weapon.
What they didn’t understand was that inside these walls, the rules here were the only law that mattered.
Step out of line and you got hurt.
It was that simple.
“You have the right to remain silent.
You do not have the right to refuse a physical exam.”
“I refuse.
This is an unreasonable search.
An invasion of my body.
According to the Constitution—”
Leon cut her off.
“This isn’t a courtroom.
I’m a guard, not your defense attorney.”
He turned and pointed to a laminated document taped to the wall.
“Georgia Department of Corrections Intake Regulation, Section 3B-1.
All incoming inmates must undergo a comprehensive physical examination to confirm health status and rule out the possibility of contraband concealed on or within the body.”
The inmate clearly hadn’t expected that.
She’d come in armed with a whole speech about human rights and dignity, and a cold administrative regulation had blocked every word of it.
Her face went red.
“You’re all cowards hiding behind your rules!
Perverts who get off on controlling people!”
“What’s your name?” Leon’s pen hovered over the form, unmoved by the outburst.
“Go to hell!
You don’t deserve to know!”
“Unidentified female.
Preliminary assessment: violent tendencies, non-compliant behavior.”
Leon spoke as he wrote, his pen scratching steadily across the paper.
The inmate’s composure cracked completely.
“You bastard!
You’re labeling me!
I’ll file a complaint!
I want a lawyer!”
Leon set the completed form in the metal tray beside him.
“You can file a complaint.
You can get a lawyer.” He looked at her.
“But right now, you need to take off your coat.”
Same instruction.
Same flat tone.
The inmate stared at him, her chest heaving.
“And if I say no?”
“Then I record your refusal to comply with a guard’s directive.
You lose all privileges.
Your initial custody classification goes to maximum.”
Leon pulled open a drawer and took out a pair of blue latex gloves.
He put them on slowly, smoothing the wrinkles down each finger, one by one.
“The physical exam will still take place.
The method, however, will be somewhat different.”
He picked up a metal detector.
“We start with this.”
Then he pointed to the examination bed against the wall, covered in a disposable sheet.
“Then a manual inspection.
Including body cavities.”
He said it the way someone reads off a menu.
“Body cavities?” She repeated the words.
Her voice had developed a tremor.
“Oral.
Nasal.
And all other…
potential concealment spaces.”
Humiliating.
Degrading.
This wasn’t a debate about rights.
It wasn’t a test of willpower.
It was a purely institutional, depersonalized crushing of a human being , methodical, impersonal, inevitable.
That was exactly what Leon wanted.
With inmates like this, trying to provoke them was the stupidest move possible.
The only thing that worked was making them understand — clearly, completely — that every act of resistance they could manage meant absolutely nothing against the system.
Only then would they feel real fear.
Fear was the most effective conditioning tool a prison had.
“You…
you devil.”
Her lips were shaking.
The curse came out thin.
Leon snapped his gloves flat with a sharp pop.
“I’m just a guard.
Not a devil.” He glanced at his watch.
“My lunch break is almost up.
Please cooperate, ma’am.
I’d like to eat today.”
He waited.
Either she undressed herself with whatever dignity she had left, or he called in three guards to hold her down and run the procedure by force.
The inmate bit her lower lip so hard it went white.
Seconds stretched out.
Then she moved.
Her hand rose, slow as if fighting gravity, and gripped the collar of her jacket.
Leon watched without expression.
This was only step one.
The jacket came off and hit the floor.
Underneath: a black t-shirt.
“Continue.” Flat.
Unhurried.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Her hands trembled as they found the hem of her shirt.
Then she ripped it over her head in one motion , like she was tearing off a bandage , and stood bare from the waist up, exposed to cold air and white fluorescent light.
She was thin.
Her skin was pale.
Her ribs showed clearly through it.
She opened her eyes and fixed Leon with a look of pure hatred.
The kind that wanted to burn his face into memory forever.
Leon’s gaze swept over her once, clinical and brief, and then he checked a box on the form.
“No visible tattoos or scarring on the body surface.”
He wrote it down without looking up again.
That complete indifference landed harder than any leering stare ever could.
“Pants.”
Her whole body stiffened.
She didn’t move.
Only the tears moved, sliding silently down her face.
She didn’t make a sound.
Leon didn’t push her.
He just waited.
He knew how this worked.
Once a wall developed a crack, collapse was a matter of when, not if.
Her fingers eventually found the button of her jeans.
Leon checked several more boxes on the form.
“Turn around.”
She turned stiffly, her back to him.
“Squat down.
Arms out.
Cough twice.”
She spun back, face streaked, eyes raw.
“Do you have to do this?”
Leon set down his pen.
He looked up and met her eyes directly for the first time.
“I’ll say this once more.
This isn’t my requirement.
It’s the regulation.” He held her gaze.
“Everyone goes through it.
Doesn’t matter who you are.
If the First Lady walked through that door, she’d do the same thing.”
He pressed the call button on the wall.
The medical room door swung open.
Two large female guards stepped in, both wearing the same blue latex gloves, both wearing the same expression Leon had been wearing the whole time.
The inmate looked at them.
She covered her face with her hands and slowly squatted down.
Leon picked up the form and his pen, turned, and walked out.
His job here was done.
The rest wasn’t his concern and he had no interest in making it so.
He’d barely cleared the door.
“Hey, Leon.
Got a minute?”
He didn’t need to look.
He knew that voice.
Sticky and deliberate, easy to pick out of a crowd.
Ashley.
He stopped and turned.
She was standing in the corridor in a loose orange prison uniform that somehow still managed to show every curve she had.
Blue eyes fixed on him, completely direct, not bothering to hide what was in them.
She’d been here going on a month.
As one of the few young male guards working the women’s wing at Georgia Correctional, Leon had long since gotten used to looks like that.
“Something wrong?”
Ashley stepped closer , almost into his space , and dropped her voice.
“You know how it is in here, Leon.
The heavy labor assignments, I really can’t keep up.”
She twirled a strand of blonde hair around one finger.
Her eyes drifted from the buttons on his uniform down to the baton at his hip, then back up.
“There are no easy assignments in prison, Ashley.” Leon stepped back half a pace.
“Actually, there are.” Her smile got a little wider.
“If I were pregnant, I could apply for lighter duties.
Maybe even get time knocked off my sentence.”
Leon’s expression didn’t change, but he filed the information away.
He knew about this particular trick.
Some female inmates would do whatever it took to get pregnant, treating it as a bargaining chip , sympathy, special treatment, reduced time.
In a women’s wing, male inmates weren’t an option.
So the new male guard became the obvious target.
“Say what you’re trying to say.”
“I’m saying you’re good-looking, Leon.” Ashley’s gaze was steady and unapologetic.
“And you’re the best option I’ve got in here.
Do me this favor and I won’t let you lose out.
When I get out, I’ll—”
“Stop.” Leon raised a hand.
“Drop it.
I’m not interested, and this causes problems for both of us.”
“Don’t be so cold.” A note of pleading slid into her voice.
“It’s nothing for you — just one time, a matter of loosening your belt.
For me, it’s—”
“For me, it’s my job.” Leon cut through it.
“Maybe my life.
I won’t say it again.
Stay away from me.”
The smile died on her face.
She clearly hadn’t expected this from him.
Young, Asian, looked approachable.
She’d read it wrong.
She pursed her lips, muttered something under her breath, and walked away, hips swaying.
Leon watched her go, a pulse of pressure building behind his temples.
Almost a month in this place.
A month of dealing with exactly this kind of thing, every single day.
Back home he’d been a regular office worker , nothing special, nothing remarkable.
Then he’d woken up one morning as a corrections officer at a rural prison in Georgia, occupying a body that wasn’t his, with a name that wasn’t his.
Chen Ang, on paper.
He’d started calling himself Leon.
Unfamiliar country, unfamiliar face, and a language barrier that could’ve finished him before anything else did.
If not for how quickly he adapted, he wouldn’t have lasted long enough to figure out which end of a baton to hold.
His only real advantage was something that should’ve been worthless: a complete memory of events that hadn’t happened yet.
Events from ten years in the future.
In a normal, stable world, that knowledge was useless.
He rubbed his temple and turned to resume his patrol , then a siren cut through the air from the direction of B-wing’s main entrance.
It rose and fell as it got closer, then went silent at the front gate.
Shouting followed.
Leon’s hand went straight to his baton and he moved toward the gate at a quick walk.
He came around a corner and found several colleagues already positioned behind B-wing’s iron gate, alert and tense.
Outside the fence, a police cruiser sat with its lights going, doors hanging open.
Two officers were hauling a man out of the back seat , roughly, with no care for the man’s weight or limbs.
One of the officers was a big white guy, and he was the one doing the hauling.
His face was tight with something past anger, past reason.
He put a boot into the man’s stomach and sent him to the ground, then grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him toward the prison entrance like dead weight.
“Get up!
You piece of shit, get up!”
His voice echoed across the yard.
He put another kick into the downed man’s gut , hard, deliberate.
The man on the ground made a sound like air leaving a tire and folded around the impact.
“Shane!
Enough!” The second officer grabbed at him.
“We hand him over here, that’s it!”
“Hand him over?
Rick is in a hospital bed right now!
This piece of garbage almost killed him!”
The cop called Shane had eyes like open wounds.
His chest was working like a bellows and he wasn’t listening to anyone.
He drove a fist into the inmate’s face.
Shane.
Leon stood at the back of the crowd that had formed, and something in his skull went very quiet.
Shane.
Rick.
King County, Georgia.
He stared at the man in front of him.
That haircut.
That face, all aggression and barely-contained violence.
And the partner he kept shouting about , “Rick” , shot and down in a hospital somewhere.
Oh.
Oh, hell.
This was The Walking Dead.
No wonder this backwater Georgia prison had felt familiar from the first day.
It had been right there the whole time and he hadn’t put it together.
Which meant the clock was already running.
Not long now before the whole world came apart at the seams , law, order, civilization, all of it.
Gone.
And he was here for it.
No cheat codes, no system, no special abilities.
Just a body that didn’t belong to him and a guard’s uniform, stuck in the middle of a world about to turn into something out of a nightmare.
But.
He made himself stop and think clearly.
A prison, in the early days of an outbreak, wasn’t the worst place to be.
And Rick had just been shot , meaning he’d wake up to a world already transformed, which meant the timeline between now and the end was longer than it might seem.
He had time to prepare.
More time than almost anyone else on Earth.
That was something.
Leon watched Shane , still kicking, still not done , while the plot moved through his head like a film reel.
This was the man who’d shot Rick Grimes.
Put him in a coma, made him miss everything that came first.
And because Rick had been absent at the start, Shane had stepped in.
Had been there for Lori when she thought her husband was dead.
Had planted every seed of the rift that would eventually tear them all apart.
Leon’s breathing had gone shallow without him noticing.
He was an ordinary person.
All he wanted was to survive.
He looked at Shane, still working out his rage on the bloodied inmate, and felt a thought take root and start to grow.
The prison warden arrived with two senior guards and put a stop to it.
“That’s enough, Officer Walsh.
This is a correctional facility, not your personal interrogation room.
Hand him over.”
Shane took one last kick at the man on the ground , final, vindictive , and let himself be pulled back.
Two guards moved in and grabbed the barely-conscious inmate by the arms, dragging him toward the isolation block.
Leon watched them go and felt nothing resembling sympathy.
This one had shot a cop.
Whatever was coming his way, he’d earned.
He took a slow breath and straightened his uniform.
Now wasn’t the time to stand around processing things.
He moved casually, without drawing attention, edging toward where Shane had parked himself against the side of his cruiser.
Shane was wiping blood off his face with the back of his hand, still breathing hard, the anger in him nowhere near burned out.
“Damn it.”
He drove his fist into the car roof.
The metal rang dully.
Every other officer in the yard gave him room.
His partner was in the hospital.
Nobody wanted that energy turned on them.
That gap was exactly what Leon needed.
He walked over and held out a cigarette.
Shane glanced at it, then at him, and didn’t take it.
He fished his own pack out of his jacket pocket, shook one free, lit it, and pulled in a long drag.
“Something?”
The words had an edge to them like broken glass.
“Nothing much.” Leon lit one for himself and leaned against the car, mirroring Shane’s posture.
“I just thought that beating was too easy on him.”
Shane exhaled a slow cloud of smoke that blurred the air between them.
He turned his head and looked at Leon properly for the first time , really looked at him.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean bruises heal.” Leon kept his eyes on the isolation block in the distance.
“A few days and he won’t even feel it.
But some kinds of pain go deeper than that.”
He let a beat pass.
“Some kinds of pain make a man regret he was ever born.”
Shane’s hand stopped moving.
The cigarette between his fingers trembled, just slightly.
He turned his head and his eyes locked onto Leon.
“Who are you?”
“Leon Chen.
I work C-wing.” Leon met the stare without moving.
“Help out in B-wing sometimes.”
He paused, and dropped his voice until it carried no further than the two of them.
“I know how it works on the outside.
Official channels.
Rules.
A lot of things you can’t touch.” He let that sit for a second.
“But, officer — this is a prison.
We have different rules in here.”
Leon’s tone stayed level.
But the words behind the calm made Shane’s pupils pull tight.
He studied this mild-looking young Asian guard , the steady eyes, the stillness in him , and couldn’t quite read what was moving underneath.
“Say it straight.”
Shane ground out his cigarette, his voice flat with suspicion.
Leon let a small smile cross his face.
He leaned in close to Shane’s ear and spoke quietly, word by word, making sure every syllable landed.
“You want him to pay for what he did to your partner.
Don’t you.”
A pause.
“I can make his life in here a living hell.”
➤ Next: The Deal with Shawn