After breakfast and the lunch box was taken away, Verak knew that the time was approaching nine o'clock, so he had no intention of sitting down and wandered back and forth in the small cell.
Keating, who had been imprisoned without seeing the light of day for much longer than Verak, remained as usual, smiling lightly and not showing any excitement because he could leave here soon.
"Lecter should send someone to keep an eye on us openly or covertly. Don't do anything rashly on the first day. Wait until you get used to it before moving forward with the plan," Keating instructed.
"Understood, teacher." Verak came to the bed frame, "Teacher, let me help you take down the wheelchair first."
"Why are you in a hurry? It's still half an hour before nine o'clock." Keating leaned over and patted Verak, "Sit down first."
Verak put his hands on his hips and looked outside the cell door.
"This is the most important problem you need to overcome now. You must learn to be patient." Seeing that Verak was unwilling to sit down, Keating pointed out Verak's problem calmly, "It's useless to be anxious about some things, so you have to
Think about the meaning of everything you do in a hurry."
"...I'm sorry, teacher, I'm too excited." Verak sat down, "I really want to see the outside...I really want to go out..."
"Like you, I couldn't stand this kind of life when I was first imprisoned, because there was really nothing in sight, and all the information I could absorb was squeezed out within the first ten minutes of being imprisoned.
What’s next? It’s a day, a month, a year, a lifetime, repeated day and night. Not only can I not bear it now, I can’t even imagine the future.”
Verak listened carefully.
"I don't think that every experience in our life is destined, so we should not accept it as a matter of course, but face it." Keating found that Verak could never completely calm down and said with great solemnity,
"Everything here is a kind of battle. We are fighting against bad food, fighting against infectious diseases, fighting against all life-threatening things, and fighting against loneliness. You should know that the taboo in fighting is impatience, which is very dangerous.
It is easy for the opponent to catch a flaw in a certain round, leading to defeat."
"yes……"
Keating continued: "Although I am much older than you, I have also been locked up here for two years before I learned something. What I want to do is tell you what I know so that you don't have to spend a lot of time doing it.
Repeated groping.”
"I will try to stabilize myself, thank you." Verak knew that this point that Keating had been emphasizing was very important. In fact, he performed well when he was in Lezein, but it was completely different from Lezein here. The depression made him
All kinds of emotions will be amplified and may get out of control over time.
"Yeah." Keating nodded slightly. He knew that in an extremely harsh environment, it was very difficult to learn to face the light so close without any alarm, and Verak also needed some adaptation process.
"Like fighting?"
"Think about it for yourself."
Verak thought.
He felt that Keating used combat as an example and used combat to give the answer. This angle was very clever and suitable for people like him to understand, because when he was in Lezein, he was fighting all the time.
"...I understand." After surviving the torture of not being favored by anyone, the prison escape plan has also realized the first step. Verak previously thought that he had done a pretty good job, but now he also realizes that, subtly,
His mood was also affected by the environment, becoming anxious and extreme.
This man who has gone through so many great events has so much to learn from him.
For the next half hour, Verak tried his best to remain calm and follow Keating's lead.
At early nine o'clock, two menacing prison guards with guns whom Verak had never seen before opened the door of cell 208 and let them out.
Verak asked the prison guards to carry Keating onto the wheelchair, and then, escorted by the prison guards, he pushed the wheelchair out of the underground floor and returned to the main floor.
The first floor is mainly divided into three areas, namely the cafeteria, the work area, and the square. This was informed by the prison guard early in the morning, but Verak was imprisoned with Keating by chance and never had the opportunity to learn more about it in detail.
.
After pushing Keating up the stairs on the underground floor, he encountered three passages on the left and right, and directly in front of him. Verak looked straight ahead first. There was a passage every twenty or thirty meters in front of him, guarded by four prison guards with guns.
He deliberately slowed down his speed and counted seven open doors.
The last door, about 200 meters away from them, was lit with light. It was the only exit, which meant freedom.
That's where Verak came in on the 12th of last month. However, he was in a very bad state of mind after running around for several days and had no intention of paying attention to this. Now, after more than half a month, he has the opportunity to learn this information again.
This distance of 200 meters, seven doors, and thirty prison guards is quite difficult.
There is no doubt that the prison escape must be done from here, but even if a large number of prisoners riot at the same time, they will be blocked by prison guards who react in time and close the door after rushing through three or four doors at most. The longer the blocking time is, the other
It's a dead end when the prison guards arrive.
Therefore, it is not advisable to attack hastily, and there is no possibility of success.
After quickly absorbing the information, Verak looked around, pretending to be confused, and tentatively pushed Keating to the left: "This way?"
The corridor on the left also has iron gates every twenty or thirty meters, a total of two. The number of prison guards in front of each gate is the same as that in the front passage, four.
"On the right." The prison guard said coldly.
The square is on the right.
"Okay." Verak turned the wheelchair and pushed it to the right. There is also a long corridor on the right, with three doors. There are canteens on both sides of the long corridor, and at the end is a square for outdoor viewing.
The left side should be the work area.
There are two doors in the work area, three doors in the square, and seven doors at the exit. There are four prison guards in front of each door.
In the more than ten seconds after ascending the stairs to the first floor and then starting to push Keating towards the square, Verak had a preliminary understanding of the terrain and mastered the basic information.
To simply describe the layout of the first floor, you can directly think of it as the letter t. It is composed of two main passages. The intersection of the two passages is the staircase that leads to the first floor or the first floor. The short one is
The two sides of the long one are the work area, canteen, and square, and the end of the long one is the exit.
Because of the existence of multiple iron gates, the two corridors are directly divided into more than ten sections. Once prisoners riot, each section can be closed immediately to control the riot to the minimum range. Then all that is needed is
Waiting for support, they suppressed it.
In this special prison where riots occur frequently, prisoners are severely overcrowded, and prison guards are insufficient, segmented closure is undoubtedly the best choice.
There is a distance of about 80 meters from the stairs to the entrance of the square. Because there are too many people, the canteen also adopts a partition management method. The two sections separated by iron gates are canteens on both sides.
After passing through three doors and arriving at the entrance of the square, the escorting prison guard handed over to the entrance prison guard, and Verak was able to push Keating in formally.
Just standing at the entrance and looking at the sky outside, Verak couldn't help but feel excited, and Keating's face, which had been worn away by the years, also glowed with energy.
Pushing the wheelchair in, Verak took a deep breath of the air outside and looked up at the cloudless sky.
There was a slight stench in the air, but it was still better than the cell on the ground floor where the air was not very circulated. Verak felt refreshed, and his clear eyes reflected the blue sky, reflecting his desire for freedom.
Keating raised the corners of his mouth, closed his eyes and enjoyed the sunshine. He had not seen the sun for nearly two years, and his body became very weak, lacking resistance, and his skin turned white abnormally.
The other prisoners came earlier than Verak and the others, and were wandering around casually as usual, chatting about repetitive and boring topics. Suddenly, they saw Verak pushing Keating in the wheelchair, and their eyes were attracted.
Verak, who was in a happy mood, looked at the sky and became more determined. He glanced at the other prisoners, pushed Keating deeper into the center of the square, and glanced at the wall.
The entire square is about the size of the football field where Verak and Carmine watched football. It is surrounded by walls six or seven meters high. There are sentries every ten meters or so on the walls, and there is a guard standing on each sentry.
The prison guard armed with a gun looked around and saw at least thirty people.
"Teacher, how do you feel?" Verak wrote down all the important information and asked Keating how he felt.
"Very good." Keating replied simply.
"You can come out every day from now on. It will be good for your health to get more sunshine." Verak pushed and looked at the prisoners who were gradually surrounding him out of curiosity.
The entire prison was divided into two batches, that is, there were about a thousand people in each batch. There were thousands of prisoners gathered in the not-so-large square, which seemed quite crowded.
"Keating? Why did you come out?" A prisoner asked in surprise as he recognized Keating.
"Lecter gave me permission to go out for two hours a day," Keating replied.
"Why? You've been imprisoned for many years, right? Have you revealed the whereabouts of the gold?"
Although there were only a hundred prisoners who had lived with Keating in the past two years, almost all of the more than 2,000 prisoners in the entire prison did not know him. The whereabouts of the gold and Keating's identity were the topics they talked about.
When a prisoner guessed that Keating had revealed the whereabouts of the gold and was released for inspection, more prisoners gathered around and started asking questions.
"Where is the gold? Tell us."
"Then are you going to be let out?"
"Is this person Keating's new roommate? Did he ask?"
"It's impossible. Keating has to say it himself. If he could do it because of what others said, he would have been released a long time ago."
Listening to the noisy inquiries and discussions, Keating said nothing.
This was a good opportunity to communicate with other prisoners. Verak was about to find an excuse to excuse himself, but a sudden exclamation interrupted him and others.
"Isn't this Keating's roommate, Chris? The one who tortured Lecter for more than ten days!"
"Are you Chris?!"
"I remember, wasn't he seriously injured? Why did he stand up so quickly and push Keating over for a break?"
"How did you carry it for so many days? Tell us."
The prisoners immediately turned their attention to Verak. In the past half month, Verak was the most discussed figure in the prison, especially during the days when he was tortured by Lecter. Gambling was even popular in the entire prison.
Bet on which day he will die.
Every day he lasted, he shocked the other prisoners. Until the end, everyone was not even betting, but hoped that he would persist, as if if he persisted, it would be everyone's victory.
What was the victory? What was won? No one knows. They only think that this is a kind of struggle, a struggle that they cannot do.
In the end, Verak survived and began to slowly recover from his injuries. Lecter stopped targeting him, and the discussion subsided little by little.
Now, this man who was scarred at the beginning stood up in just ten days, subverting their cognition once again. How strong a body and how strong a will does this require?
Only those who have experienced it personally can understand the power of Verak.
"I'm Chris." Verak admitted his identity.
Suddenly, the prisoners' eyes of admiration and even adoration focused on him.
"You can't die?"
"How on earth did you do that?"
"Why did Lecter suddenly stop torturing you?"
Some prisoners asked Verak unbridled questions about things he didn't want to recall. Verak didn't know how to answer. He still had unhealed wounds under his clothes. Whenever he thought about the past, those wounds would cause a faint pain.
"Well done!"
Among thousands of words, Verak only heard one special compliment.
He looked at the crowd, searching for the person who said these three words, but couldn't find him.
"You don't need to know what I have experienced or what I have done." Verak shouted back, "I am the answer to all questions just standing here."
The prisoners were stunned.
"I didn't tell the whereabouts of the gold. It was Chris who fought for me to be able to show off." When it was quiet, Keating briefly explained the reason for being here.
When Verak heard Keating's words, he immediately understood Keating's true purpose.
He endured Lecter's torture for ten days, and was able to stand up after ten days and win the prisoner's right to be released.
These three things that were originally impossible were now accomplished by him one by one.
I won’t say that I will be admired and admired by everyone, but at least everyone will recognize and convince me.
Verak's escape plan includes joining forces with other prisoners. If he can establish a good and trustworthy image in their minds early, it will be of great help to subsequent cooperation and escape.
Sure enough, Keating said it was because of Verak that he was released, and the prisoners looked at Verak a little differently.
This was really beyond Verak's expectation. He did not expect that his previous persistence would achieve such a positive response here, which unexpectedly helped him lay the foundation for an important part of his prison escape.
With such an aura attached to him, it will be much easier than Verak imagined if he wants to unite with other prisoners.
"Huh..." With the noise in his ears, Verak breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at Keating.