HL 04-The Final Hour by Andrew Klavan

in here the best I could until Rose got me out.
    “Good luck,” I said to Blade.
    “Your funeral,” he answered curtly.
    Then he and his friends all got up at once. I was alone again at the long table.
    I sat there, staring down at my tray. I felt strange and unfocused, as if I were underwater. What was I supposed to do now? I wondered. Now that I knew there was going to be an escape? Should I tell someone? Should I warn the authorities? Or should I just keep my mouth shut?
    Man oh man, it can be hard to know what to do sometimes, what’s right, what’s wrong. It can be easy in theory, sitting around thinking about it, but hard in fact, in life. There could be no mistake about one thing: Blade and his guys were killers, every one of them. Those swastikas tattooed on their arms and foreheads: They weren’t some accident or some fashion statement or something. They weren’t like some kid wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his T-shirt because he doesn’t understand Che was a stone Communist killer or some girl wearing a Soviet hammer and sickle for a belt buckle because she doesn’t know the Soviets murdered a hundred million people. That’s just ignorance, just dopiness.
    But when these guys put swastikas into their flesh, they meant it. They wanted to express all the hate that symbol holds, all the evil and murderous meanness. If they got out of this place, they’d be doing the same sort of violence and murder that got them in here to begin with.
    So I couldn’t let them escape, could I? I had to turn them in. I had to. Didn’t I? I couldn’t just let them break out and get free to hurt people again.
    But then . . .
    Well, they had saved my life, hadn’t they? I knew they only did it because they were racist lunatics. Basically, if a black guy wanted to kill me, they were going to protect me on general principles, just to prove they were bosses of the yard. But the fact remained, I’d be dead if it weren’t for them. The idea of ratting them out to the Abingdon guards—who were almost as bad as the prisoners—didn’t feel right. It felt dirty.
    And, okay, just being honest, there was something else too. A rat in Abingdon is a dead man. If anyone ever found out I’d gone to the authorities—and they definitely would find out, they definitely would—the word would spread fast. Every single prisoner in this place would want me dead then. Some of them would come after me even after I got out of prison. They’d come after my family, after the people I loved. I’d never be able to rest.
    So that was the situation: I had to stop these guys from breaking out, but if I ratted on them, I’d have a target on my back for the rest of my life. That’s the thing, the crazy, brain-rattling thing about a place like Abingdon. When you’re in a world of evil, all your logic gets turned upside down. What’s right feels wrong; what’s wrong feels like your only choice.
    I tried to think what Sensei Mike would do, what he’d tell me to do. He was a war hero, after all. He had a piece of titanium in his leg from the time he held off an attack by a hundred Taliban almost single-handedly in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t be afraid of Blade or the guards or anyone who might come for him.
    I knew he’d want me to try to stop this escape—but how?
    A buzzer sounded. Dinnertime was over.
    I got up off my bench. My head was throbbing like my brain was overloaded. I moved to the garbage cans, emptied my tray, and set it on the stack.
    I looked around. I saw the swastika boys gathered in one corner of the room, murmuring to one another, eyeing me with suspicion. I saw some of the Islamist gang looking at me from another corner, waiting for their chance.
    I couldn’t join one and I couldn’t hide from the other. It was as if the stone walls of this prison were closing in on me from every side.
    I took a step toward the cafeteria door . . . and suddenly, the room went white. A terrible pain shot through me.
    The next few minutes