Reborn at a cost

Liana’s POV

Prisoners on my level don’t get beef stew.

We get congealing porridge. Bread. Potatoes. Rice.

So when the tray slid through my door and I saw a bowl of thick, dark stew with actual meat floating in it. I didn’t touch it.

Something was wrong.

The slot clanged shut with the usual metallic echo. The steam rising from the bowl carried a faint, oily warmth.

Prison smells like rust, old sweat, and mold. I learned that the moment I got thrown in here.

The fluorescent bulb above my bunk has been flickering for weeks. It doesn’t bother me anymore.

Each stutter of light sent faint shadows dancing across the pitted concrete walls, like insects skittering just out of reach. The air felt thick, always slightly damp, clinging to my skin and making every breath taste faintly of iron.

I lie flat on my back, my hands laced behind my head, staring at the ceiling tile. I count the brown stains again.

One thousand, two hundred and twenty-three.

Twelve years.

That was my sentence. Twelve years for leaking company secrets I didn’t even know existed.

My first month here was excruciating. Then I got a cellmate. She was transferred two weeks later. I’ve been in isolation ever since.

By my sixth month, I stopped flinching when the guards slammed metal batons against the bars just to remind us who we were.

By my twelfth, I stopped trying to prove myself.

Because innocence doesn’t protect you here. Neither does silence.

They said I was a corporate spy.

Me. Liana Bennett. All I knew was how to analyze data and create spreadsheets. I color-coded my grocery lists. I cried once because my plant died while I was on a business trip.

They said I leaked confidential Blaise Corps data to a rival company. Sold access logs. Manipulated servers. Took bribes.

The evidence was clean. Too clean.

My access ID showed downloads at 2:14 a.m. from a secure terminal.

An IP address traced directly to my home router.

An anonymous tip, written in perfect corporate language, flagged me as a high-risk internal actor.

I didn’t even know how to access half the systems they accused me of breaching.

It didn’t matter.

The judge barely looked at me when he read the sentence.

Twelve years.

My mother fainted in the gallery. My lawyer avoided my eyes. My colleagues from Blaise Corps didn’t show up at all.

I stopped counting days after that.

The cell is smaller than my old bathroom. Concrete bed. Stainless steel toilet. A thin slit of a window that lets in light and nothing else.

They said the isolation was for my protection.

Funny how protection feels exactly like punishment.

The thin blanket scratched against my arms like sandpaper, never quite warm enough. My scalp itched from the cheap shampoo that I had been using.

I sit on the edge of the bed now, hands folded, nails bitten. My dinner tray rests on the metal shelf by the door. A