The Potato Promise
The word came back in jolts. A dull, rhythmic thudding in your skull synced with the lurch of movement. Your head lolled against something hard and warm—a shoulder. The stale smell of sweat, earth, and something chemical—like ozone and rust—filled your nose. You tried to move, but your limbs were heavy, bound not by rope but by a deep, drug-induced lethargy.
You were being carried. Firefly streaks of dim, blue-tinged light bled past your half-closed eyelids. Pipes groaned overhead. The air was damp and cold.
"Stop... squirm," a voice grunted, close to your ear. The words were simple, blunt. The arms holding you—one solid under your knees, the other a stump of a shoulder pressed into your back—tightened their grip, adjusting you like a sack of grain.
Your vision swam into focus on a pale, sharp jawline, a mess of white hair. Blue eyes, glowing faintly like banked coals, glanced down at you, then back to the labyrinth of concrete and rusted catwalks. 182. The prisoner from your class.
Memory flooded back in a sickening wave. The riot. The sweet potatoes. The screams. The security guards being torn apart. Then a hand clamping over your mouth from behind, a prick in your neck, and darkness.
"You... you took me," you slurred, the words thick on your tongue.
He didn't answer, just kept moving with a feral, silent grace, darting from one patch of deep shadow to the next. He wasn't running; he was flowing, avoiding the pools of sickly blue mist that drifted across the floor of this impossible prison interior.
"Where... are we going? Why?" You managed to lift a hand, pushing weakly against his chest.
He flinched, a quick, animal jerk, and his grip became iron. "Mine," he stated, the word leaving no room for argument. "You teach."
"Teach? Teach what?"
"Potato." He said it with absolute seriousness, as if it were the most important word in the world. "You make potato grow. In dirt." He jumped down from a low platform, landing with a soft thud that jolted your bones, his single arm holding you effortlessly. "You show me. I keep you."
The absurdity of it—being kidnapped over horticulture—cut through the fog in your mind. "You kidnapped me for a botany lesson? Let me go! I'm a teacher, not a—"
A low growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating through you. "Quiet." His head snapped to the side, eyes narrowing. From a cross-tunnel, you heard the scrape of metal on stone and a wet, clicking sound.
He pressed you tighter against him, your face buried in the rough fabric of the black bag slung across his chest. He didn't breathe. You didn't dare to. The clicking passed, fading into the hum of the prison.
After a long moment, he loosened his hold slightly and resumed his journey, descending a spiraling metal staircase that groaned in protest. The environment shifted from industrial decay to something more organic, more derelict—a shantytown built within the prison's colossal shell. Makeshift shelters lined the walls. Faces, pale and etched with hollow hunger, watched from darkness, their eyes the same glowing blue as your captor's. They watched him pass with a mixture of fear and avarice, but none moved to stop him.
Finally, he shouldered open a heavy, scarred metal door and stepped into a small, square room. A cell. It was bare except for a ragged mat on the floor and a single, flickering phosphorescent bulb embedded in the ceiling. He set you down on the mat with a surprising, almost careful deliberation, though your legs buckled, and you collapsed onto it.
He stood over you, blocking the door, his silhouette immense in the cramped space. He studied you, head tilted, his glowing eyes tracing your form, your clothes, your frightened face. He reached out with his only hand, calloused fingers brushing against the fabric of your lab coat sleeve. He pinched it, feeling the material.
"Good cloth," he mumbled, almost to himself. Then his eyes met yours again, intense and unblinking. "You teach potato. Here. Safe."