Once again Judy hoisted the satchel and flashlight in her left hand, her other holding the gun. In the dim light, Sylvia now saw that there was a wall behind her, featureless and only about fifteen feet long. She had smacked her head against it near its middle. Above her head, there was a fresh crater in the wall, with a small pile of concrete dust below it. Apparently Judy's bullet had struck there. This newly revealed wall, and the wall with the gate, formed the sides of a short, featureless corridor. Judy swung the flashlight towards her left. "Locked gate over there." Sylvia's gaze followed the light and saw that the corridor ended at a blank wall, turning a corner there into a perpendicular corridor whose entrance was, indeed, blocked by a gate, or more properly a chain link fence, a little less secure than the thick steel bars guarding the entrance to the cell block. "They used these internal gates in the cell block to keep crowds of prisoners manageable. At various times, prisoners could mingle outside their cells, but usually only in small groups."

All very fascinating, Sylvia said to herself. Congratulations on your research, she thought at Judy, but please just tell me what you want of me.

Judy swung the light to her right. Again, the corridor ran to a wall, where the entrance to another perpendicular corridor was visible. This one's entrance was wide open. "Start walking, and turn left down there. Then keep going until I say stop."

Sylvia stood and faced Judy, her arms held out in what she hoped was a calming gesture. She spoke quietly. "Judy, let's just talk for a minute. I'm sure we can find a way to make things right. Maybe something you just haven't thought of..." She cautiously shuffled a little closer to Judy.

Judy sighed audibly. "We're about to make things right, and I've spent a lot of time on it. I hope you won't make all that time go to waste by making me shoot you." She pointed the gun again, and Sylvia froze. "You're not following orders, Sylvia. Remember the consequences of that."

Sylvia, while still keeping remaining alive as her top priority, suddenly realized that was not the only reason she needed to avoid being shot. Judy, with her unexpected expertise with the weapon, might not shoot to kill at first. She might only wound Sylvia, adding the pain of a gunshot to whatever agony or humiliation she had planned. Sylvia immediately saw the value in doing without that. Still not, at present, seeing any chance of success with attacking Judy, she couldn't see any upside at all in resistance for now.

Judy gestured with the gun to the corner towards which the flashlight was still pointing. "Go. Then all the way to the end."

Still shaking, beginning to control it now to the extent that her legs managed to support her, barely, Sylvia shuffled to the corner, glad that, with Judy trailing her, she wouldn't have to look at the gun. She felt temporarily safe, in a relative way, since she was following orders, and assumed Judy wouldn't shoot her in the back. She reached the corner and turned it, walking cautiously into the darkness until Judy herself reached the corner and the flashlight began dimly showing the way ahead.

Sylvia's stomach was twisting in knots. I have to get out of this, I have to get out of this, she repeated to herself, over and over. She steered her mind away, with difficulty, from specific images of what might be about to happen to her.

The corridor down which Sylvia was walking was about twelve feet wide, but had a low ceiling, perhaps seven feet. The ceiling, for as far ahead as Sylvia could see, seemed oddly to consist of chain link sections with flat concrete just above them. Sylvia, mystified for a moment, finally realized she was seeing more of the fences like the one that had blocked off the other corridor. The first section was hinged at the front, with the farther end suspended from a hook, from which it could presumably be detached and swung down to close off the corridor's entrance. In the very center of the entrance, a small cleat was anchored to the floor. Most likely, decided Sylvia, it served as a hasp, complete with a hole for a padlock, to secure the gate when it was swung down.

On either side of the corridor, the moving beam of Judy's flashlight now picked out prison cells. Each was fronted by a wall of steel bars, its other three walls, floor and ceiling appearing to be concrete. The cell to Sylvia's left and the one to her right appeared identical, each about fifteen feet long and seven feet wide, the bars on the long side, with a low ceiling, at the same height as the corridor. Inside, each cell was featureless, except for a narrow metal bunk bed against one of the short walls, stripped of mattresses and any other bed furnishings. On reaching the end of this first pair of cells, there was an entrance to another corridor on the left, a bare wall on the right. That corridor, like the one in which Sylvia was walking, was around twelve feet wide. Sylvia's eyes, adjusting to the dimness, saw that the corridor met another perpendicular to it -- clearly, Sylvia realized, the same corridor whose entrance had been blocked at its beginning. The floor plan clarified in Sylvia's mind: the cell block was traversed by two long parallel corridors, each lined with cells on either side, the long corridors connected by short ones, the cells and cross-corridors alternating. The chain link motif for the ceiling continued, as did the occurrence of cleats, for locking the gate swung down from above, at the start and end of any section of corridor. Sylvia didn't usually examine her surroundings quite so thoroughly and compulsively, but she felt a strong need to see the nature of what would probably be her future accommodations. She didn't know why Judy didn't order her immediately into one of these cells, rather than make her walk the entire length of the hallway. Possibly Judy wanted Sylvia to be conscious of being as far from freedom as possible.

Sylvia passed by a second pair of cells, another cross-corridor, another pair of cells, another corridor. She could only see a portion of the corridor she was walking in at any one time, which gave her the impression that it continued forever.

After the sixth cross-corridor, the pattern of having cells on both sides was interrupted: the seventh section had, instead, a cell on the right, and a solid wall on the left with a single metal door in the middle of it. "Prisoner recreation room," said Judy conversationally, waving the flashlight at the door. "No idea what exactly was in it. Everything moveable was stripped out when they closed the place."

The long corridor ended with one final cross-corridor. Along this corridor, Sylvia saw at first one door on the right side, then, very dimly farther away, a second. Both doors were of metal, like that of the rec room. Sylvia, understanding she had to be at her destination, stopped and awaited further instructions, her stomach swarming with butterflies.

Judy flicked the beam of her flashlight momentarily at the farther door. "Library. No books now, of course." She then pointed the beam at the nearer door, giving it steady illumination. "This is the one we want. Move down towards the library so I've got some space here."

Sylvia, suppressing a groan, saw that Judy was being as careful as ever about letting Sylvia get anywhere near her. She moved aside, and watched intently, hoping to catch any momentary lack of attention from Judy.

The door, unfortunately, already had a key in its lock, so opening it diverted Judy for the barest of instants, leaving Sylvia still unable to mount any sort of assault that wouldn't get her shot. Judy, her eyes steadily on Sylvia, turned the key and, with a slight grunt of effort, pulled the door open. The loud creak of its opening was preceded by a whispering sound, as if from a pressure seal.

Judy beckoned to Sylvia and entered, carrying all of her burdens. Sylvia understood she had no choice but to follow. The gate through which they'd entered the cell block was a long way off, and Judy had its key with her. If Sylvia ever wanted her freedom again, she had to follow that key.

In her first moment after passing through the door, Sylvia blinked as she took in the size of the room, about twenty feet deep, eighteen across -- her last thought, for some time, about anything other than what she saw in the center of the room, the one single feature of note in the room, standing between herself and Judy.

Sylvia barely heard Judy remarking, "The air is relatively fresh, all things considered. I brought a fan in here and spent a couple of days airing it out. Used up a bunch of batteries. It was awfully stale before that, and it was giving me a headache. Not that I would mind giving you a headache, but I'm going to be in here too. At least part of the time. Oh, that rubber seal on the door is pretty much intact, though it starts to disintegrate as you rub it. But it should last as long as I want it to."

Sylvia lifted her arm shakily and pointed. "You... you..." She wanted to say, calmly and matter-of-factly, "You want me to go in there, don't you?", but was unable to concentrate on speaking long enough to form the sentence. But she didn't really need to ask. There was nothing else she could possibly do in the room.

She was pointing at a simple free-standing cage, about six feet on each side and four feet high. Its sides were formed of vertical steel rods embedded, at the bottom, in the room's concrete floor, which served as the floor of the cage, and braced by horizontal steel strips. The roof of the cage was similarly barred.

There were no furnishings inside the cage, other than the bare floor. In the center of the floor there was a circular hole, about eight inches across, whose purpose, if women had been kept in the cage any length of time, seemed obvious to Sylvia.

Sylvia knew she could not afford, under any circumstances, to let herself get trapped in such a tiny cage, alone with Judy. Judy would be able to do absolutely anything she wanted to her, and continue doing it for as long as she wanted to. This cage symbolized, to Sylvia, the absolute end of all of her options.

Sylvia backed away slowly, shaking her head. "I... I... Judy, what if... Instead of this, maybe we can come to some sort of accommodation, something that would satisfy you -- I mean, of course I know you are angry. But we can solve this. That's what I do for a living. Anyway, if we can't work this out, I'll go right in there, I promise. I won't cause any trouble. But first let's talk."

Judy smiled. "I don't expect any trouble as it is." She raised the gun once more, aiming it towards the wall. "Want to watch how much damage a bullet from this does to the wall? Like a bomb going off. In fact, it wouldn't do much less damage if it had to pass through you on the way." She swung the gun around to point straight at Sylvia.

"No!!" Sylvia went down on all fours again, and scrambled towards the cage. "How do I get in it??"

"Door is on the left side. Sorry, on your right." She continued tracking Sylvia with the gun as Sylvia moved.

Sylvia crawled frantically around the right corner of the cage, saw the cage door partly open, hinged on the far side. She pulled it open, crawled through it and into the cage. She stopped, her breath heaving, still on hands and knees, her head hanging down. For the moment she was too breathless to cry.

"Good for you, Sylvia. Now I want you to lock the door -- use this key..." She withdrew a key from her satchel, stepped closer to the cage and tossed the key underhanded though the bars of the cage, carefully away from the hole in the floor, until it stopped in the folds of Sylvia's skirt on the floor, "...and then throw the key back to me. It's another double lock, so use both keyholes."

Sylvia's arms nearly gave way again, and she gave out a high-pitched moan of despair. I can't, she told herself, I can't, I can't do this to myself!

In a sing-song, Judy called out, "Syl-via! You're almost there. Don't blow your chance of living through this now!"

Through a sob, Sylvia asked the one thing she had to know. "Are you... going to just leave me here? I need to know if I'm better off doing this or not doing it. You said you won't kill me, but will you just leave me here to die?"

Judy sighed loudly in exasperation. "Sylvia, I made that promise before God! You heard me! If I left you here to die, that would be killing you, wouldn't it?" She sounded like a parent patiently reasoning with a small child.

Sylvia pushed herself up to kneel upright -- on her knees, her head didn't quite brush the top of the cage. She picked up the key, and stared at it. I'm using this to give up my last chance of freedom, she thought. Brushing away tears with the back of her other hand, sniffling, she reached out to pull the door closed. The keyholes, of course, were on the outside of the lock. She checked with her finger to locate the first, then fumbled the key into it. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, making a tight sound in her throat like a teakettle just starting to boil, she twisted the key, sensing the bolt emerging to penetrate the lock plate. After a full revolution of the key, she could turn it no further, and pulled the key out of the lock. She then found the second keyhole, above the first, used the key in that one, and pulled it out.

I'm still holding the key, she thought. I could put it back in now and unlock the door. But she won't let me. She'll kill me if I don't give her the key. With one last sob, she flung the key away from her, watched it slide across the floor almost to Judy's feet, saw Judy's look of triumph as she bent to pick it up.

There was a bench, the room's only other noticeable feature besides the cage, along the portion of the wall where Judy stood -- really just a flat wooden shelf extending out from the wall. Judy heaved a sigh and sank tiredly onto the bench, and tossed the key back into the satchel. She bent over the gun, and Sylvia could hear a soft click. The safety catch, she decided. Judy tossed the gun casually into the satchel and sat back upright, smiling.

"Nice to be able to put that down. I'm sure you realize that I was hoping not to need to use it. I can do without it, now." She leaned back, her hands behind her head cushioning it against the wall, and closed her eyes.

Sylvia sat on the floor, pulling her knees up, smoothing her skirt over them, wrapping her arms around her shins. She laid her head on her knees, closing her eyes. Trapped as she was, she nevertheless felt some of the tension draining away. For the first time in hours, she wasn't being forced to do something at the point of a gun. And Judy didn't appear to intend to do anything painful, or even threatening, to her at this time.

Sylvia nearly missed hearing Judy, she was talking so softly. "I want to tell you some of the history of this place."

Sylvia realized she should listen closely. Any information Judy might give could conceivably help her survive. In spite of Judy's promises, dangerous things could happen here.

"This," Judy gestured at their surroundings, "is the isolation room. I'm sure you've figured out it was used for punishment. A sort of solitary confinement, with a few added twists. Oh," she said, as she saw Sylvia's quick intake of breath, "Probably not what you're picturing. Not medieval torture, whips, heated irons, anything like that. Even in the early twentieth century, which everyone agrees was not quite as enlightened to prisoners' rights as our glorious twenty-first, that sort of thing wouldn't have gone over.

"But the warden who supervised the construction of this place did have some original ideas about discipline enforcement methods. He had this room built, and used it, and because of it, discipline improved remarkably over what the staff had seen at the earlier prison. Though in any prison setting, behavior is never perfect. Every inmate was here because they broke laws. If they'd had complete control over their behavior, they wouldn't be in prison to begin with. But this room helped.

"It wasn't used for minor infractions, but they could accumulate. Collect enough demerits, and you're put in here. The first time it might be just a few hours. A second offense, for collecting that same number of demerits afterward, might be twice as long."

Sylvia looked around. She understood perfectly the humiliation a prisoner must have felt, being kept like an animal in a cage, since she was now experiencing it, burning underneath the surface level of fear for what Judy's plans might be. If it was just a matter of a few hours, Sylvia decided, she could handle it, though she was exhausted, needed to sleep, and knew it would be hard to do that on the concrete floor. She supposed one could get used to it. She felt sure, though, that it would be longer. Much longer. She suddenly felt her fear level rising again.

"For longer stays, the prisoner would be fed and watered, of course. And for sanitary facilities, she had that opening in the floor."

Sylvia had long since guessed that. She shuddered. "You... wouldn't watch me use it, would you?"

Judy simply shrugged. "I might. What will you do about it?"

Sylvia bit back an angry reply. There was nothing to be gained by it.

"Being in here wasn't too bad if the prisoner was docile enough about it. If she resisted, though, and they had to call in extra guards to subdue her, forcing her to submit, there were various levels of restraint that she'd be left with in the cage -- chains, shackles, that sort of thing. Restricting her movement that way made it more difficult for her at mealtime, or when answering calls of nature."

Sylvia curled her lip. She loathed the idea of bondage, was always astonished to think she lived in a society that saw nothing wrong with handcuffing non-violent offenders upon arrest.

She suddenly shuddered violently when the significance of Judy's words occurred to her. She can't mean she's going to do that to me, can she? she thought. Put me in chains? I didn't fight her! Well, I did my share of resisting, but... Sylvia closed her eyes and moaned. Judy's going to apply her own rules to me, she thought. She wouldn't even be telling me this if she wasn't planning to do it to me.

"For major things, like fighting, the stay here would be several days, for the woman who started it. If they couldn't determine who'd started the fight, both women would serve time in here, one after the other.

"The longest punishment would be for the prisoner who acted as a leader, instigating resistance against the authority of the staff. She'd stay in here at least a week, maybe more.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I know all this. I stumbled on an article about this place about a year ago. It seemed mildly interesting then, as something I could shake my head over and think, how cruel people can be.

"When I was in the hospital I remembered it suddenly, and since the hospital rooms had online access, if the doctor gave permission, I looked up everything I could find about this prison. Official records, interviews with prisoners. There was really a lot of it.

"Oh, one thing you wouldn't have realized -- I was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago, not one. The doctor thought I'd made remarkable improvement, though he wasn't sure why. It was because of this. As soon as I was out, I came up here and started looking, like I told you. I found it pretty much like you've seen it, except as I said, I did do a little cleaning up."

Sylvia suddenly noticed the bars of her cage looked remarkably clean, considering the passage of time. As if steel wool had been used to scrape off the dust and rust that had surely accumulated over the years. The floor was clean as well. Judy had done more than just brush away a few cobwebs, Sylvia now understood. This had been a real labor of love. Love for the idea of what she could do here. Sylvia shuddered again. Considering the amount of effort Judy had already put into this, Sylvia found herself again revising upward the length of time she might have to stay here. How much money could Judy have set aside for this? Could she keep Sylvia here an entire month?

"Most of the original furnishings are gone, probably taken to the new prison, I guess. Nothing missing from this room, or course. There hadn't been anything removable to start with. And I did find keys to various things, luckily. There hadn't been any point in taking those, so they left them.

"I even found the key to that trap door over there." She pointed, and Sylvia followed the direction of Judy's gesture to see an unobtrusive wooden slab, about three feet square, in one corner of the room. "It goes down to the room underneath, where the prisoner's wastes would accumulate in a bucket. When the prisoner's sentence in this room was over, her last task was to go down, bring up the bucket, empty it out and clean it. Then she could go back to her own cell. As I said, I've got the key, so if you're wondering if there's a huge pile of shit down there, there's not. I've put a more modern chemical toilet down there. It'll keep the smells way down."

Sylvia felt the tears starting in earnest. She hugged her shins more tightly and buried her face against her knees. She mumbled against them, "Please, could you just let me rest awhile? You've got me. I can't get out. Please, I'm just so tired."

Judy stood and stretched. "I'm pretty tired too. I just need you to do a couple more things. You'll probably be grateful for the first one." She reached down into the satchel and withdrew something, then walked over to the cage. She flipped the tiny thing into the cage. "You obviously don't need those ankle cuffs anymore. This is the key. Take them off, and then throw me the cuffs and the key."

Sylvia blinked in surprise. She felt a small bit of cautious gratitude -- not voicing it in case there was something worse on the horizon, but pleased for the moment at any rate. She picked up the key, fiddled with the cuffs to locate the keyhole, and in a few seconds succeeded in unlocking them. She was glad to fling the cuffs out of the cage.

Judy picked them up, restored them to the satchel, and nodded. "The next thing I need you to do is give me all of your clothes. That was part of the protocol for the isolation cell: inmates were always confined to it naked. That was a key part of the punishment."

Sylvia scrambled up to her knees, furious, and pounded the heel of her hand against one of the bars. "No! I've done everything you've asked me, but this is just too sick! No wonder you were in the hospital! You should still be there!" Her hands gripped the bars tightly, her fingers whitening. She was for the moment so angry she had forgotten the gun, currently out of sight. Remembering it belatedly, she was still too heated to back down. She realized, despairingly, that she was sure to lose this round, as she had all the previous ones. But until that device of coercion put in an appearance, she was damned if she'd give in.

Judy simply smiled. "Are you any hungrier than you were a while ago? Any more thirsty? Some water would be wonderful right now, wouldn't it?"

Sylvia blinked at the change of subject. "What do you..." She stopped, understanding suddenly that the subject had not been changed. The mere mention of water made her simmering thirst flare into a flame of need. And trapped as she was, she was utterly dependent on Judy for anything she needed.

She thought about how long since she'd had a drink. How much water she'd lost in sweating in this intolerable heat... Stop it!

Sylvia suddenly gasped, as she realized she was in an even more desperate situation now than when she'd been facing a gun.

She remembered the feeling of relief when Judy had put the gun away, the constant tension of looking down its barrel dissipating, the danger lessened.

She understood now, all at once, how wrong she had been. The gun was no longer important. Judy had a much stronger, more effective weapon than a gun now.

Judy's smile widened. "I'll give you some time to think about it. I'll be back in a couple of hours." She walked over and picked up the flashlight and the satchel. "There's one more thing I didn't tell you. Can you guess what the name of this room was? What everybody called it?"

"How could I? Don't go, please, I..."

Judy talked over her. "They called it the Black Hole. There's no electricity for lights in the building now, of course. But this room never even had any light fixtures. Once the door was closed... well, you'll see. Or that is, you won't see. It was soundproof, too. It may be a little less so now, than when the door seal was new, but it should be close enough. Inmates who talked about this place said they shouted and screamed while they were in here, but they never heard any sounds coming out of it, not even in the nearest cells." She was slowly walking towards the door as she talked. Standing in the doorway now, she said, "I'll see you soon, Sylvia. I'm sure we can work out a deal on the food and water situation." She left, pushing the door closed behind her.

As Sylvia saw the rectangle of light from the doorway narrowing, she shouted, "No, please, wait, I'll do it! Don't go!" She had never felt so helpless. She was banking on Judy's promise not to leave her to die, but there was nothing at all she could do if Judy changed her mind. "No, please..."

The strip of light disappeared, and an instant later Sylvia heard the whisper of the door closing. She felt the world close in on her. She couldn't even determine whether her eyes were open -- she thought she could feel them blinking, but there was no corresponding flickering of her vision. There was only the black.

As if she were a marionette whose strings had snapped, she sat abruptly on her heels and buried her face in her hands on her thighs, her body wracked with the heaviest sobs she could ever remember.