Free Singularity by Joe Hart Page A

his head tilted back against the wall behind him, his mouth open to the world. Soft snores issued from his nose every few seconds. Sullivan narrowed his eyes at the guard as he stepped into the infirmary, and saw Barry motioning if he should wake him. Sullivan shook his head. Let him sleep, we’re not here to see him.
    Instead, they proceeded across the tile to the two medical beds that hugged the left wall. The closer of the two was unoccupied, with blankets stacked neatly in its center. The other held a skinny dark-haired man with a sheet drawn up just below his scruffy chin. He had blue eyes and they followed the two agents as Sullivan and Barry made their way closer. Fairbend was slender, almost alarmingly thin, as if he were battling something worse than bruises and minor abrasions . Sullivan stopped beside the bed and smiled as he pulled out his wallet and flipped open his ID.
    “I’m Special Agent Shale with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and this is Agent Stevens. Are you Mr. Fairbend ?”
    The supine man’s eyes squinted at Sullivan, and after a moment Fairbend’s head nodded slightly.
    “We’d like to speak with you about what happened concerning Mr. Alvarez, if that’s okay with you.” Sullivan watched the skinny man lick his lips and then strain to swallow.
    “Choked the fuck outta me, that’s what happened.” Fairbend’s voice sounded like sandpaper on a concrete floor, and gradually the prisoner drew the sheet down below his neck, revealing a collection of mottled bruises ranging from purple to green.
    Sullivan could make out individual finger marks on the edges of the mass. Fairbend had been accurate; Alvarez had choked the fuck out of him. “I see that. Looks really painful. Could you tell me what happened, maybe why Alvarez decided to do this to you?”
    Fairbend shrugged, which caused the bruises in his neck to ripple like a black-and-purple pond in a breeze. “Crazy Mexican.”
    Sullivan ran his tongue over his front teeth and turned to look at Barry who made a face that said, well, isn’t that something. Sullivan looked back at Fairbend and leaned in closer to the man. He noticed a scent as he neared him. Something organic. Not really human waste, but close to it. Sullivan grimaced but didn’t relinquish his hold on the edge of the bed as he closed the distance between his and Fairbend’s faces.
    “Listen, bud, I’m not new to this and neither are you, so let’s just cut the shit, shall we? I want to know what happened in that cell. I want to know what Alvarez said and what you said in return to make him want to squeeze the life out of you. I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, being in the state that you’re in, but your cellmate got torn apart last night. There wasn’t much left of him. I’m guessing you already knew that, but what I want is a name.”
    Fairbend remained unmoved by Sullivan’s speech, and his eyelids had even drifted closed while Sullivan spoke. The thin man shifted in the bed and steel clinked just below Sullivan’s grip. When he looked down, he saw that Fairbend’s hand was cuffed to the bed’s rail.
    “ Ain’t gonna get me to talk no matter what you throw at me, buddy. He was a crazy spic and no one’s gonna miss him. So just trot along and leave me to heal up.”
    Sullivan resisted the urge to reach out and grasp the other man’s throat where Alvarez had less than a day ago. He was about to try another angle on the prisoner when he heard the door open and close behind them and a voice speak with authority that woke the sleeping guard.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    Sullivan turned and saw that the voice belonged to a woman striding across the floor toward the beds. Sullivan guessed her age to be within a year of his own and he noticed that she walked confidently; this room seemed to be her territory. She wore a white coat over blue scrubs and her auburn hair flowed out behind her, held up by a black band. The brown eyes, which normally