Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [1]
It wasn’t that they were ignorant: just that in their chosen line of work muscle and physical agility were more critical to continued survival than the mental kind. Not that this usually mattered. With few exceptions, their cranial capacity normally exceeded that of those they were expected to dominate.
Normally.
The third member of the triumvirate standing just inside the cell door defined himself through his words, though having attended to many present and former residents of the prison he too had inevitably been toughened by the experience. Over the years his recitation of the traditional biblical standards had devolved into a monotone tinged more by a lingering, bastard hope than actual expectation.
While the priest’s optimism in the face of the brutality human beings could render unto one another had never been entirely quashed, it had been repeatedly squeezed and pummeled by a demoralizing range of harsh realism until it bore little resemblance to what one could expect to hear asserted on The Outside.
His faith was punch-drunk.
“Yea,” he intoned mechanically, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Stupid, Marcus Wright thought. Stupid and redundant. Why would I be afraid of myself? Wasn’t he evil incarnate? Hadn’t that asshole of a judge told him so, and hadn’t he had it confirmed by a smarmy, quivering public? If that was their verdict on him, then it had to be true, didn’t it? He’d long ago lost any desire to dispute society’s judgment. That much he had in common with the concrete wall at which he was presently staring. Both of them were solid, impenetrable, blank-faced, and mute. If the wall could accept its fate in silence, so could he.
“...for thou art beside me.”
The priest droned on. Why couldn’t the man just shut up? Wright wondered silently to himself. Why would he, why would anyone, spend one minute longer in the bowels of this gray cesspool of decomposing humanity than they had to?
“Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”
Now that was a homily Wright felt he could get behind. Give me a rod and a staff, he thought with grim humor, and then you better get out of my way. Give me a chance...
One thing about hard polished floors and solid enclosed corridors: they make for excellent acoustics. This can be unpleasant when someone is screaming incessantly, an activity not uncommon at Longview. The construction can also magnify ordinary footsteps, and this was the sound that caused Wright to give a cursory glance in the direction of the outside.
An instant later his full attention had shifted from the immovable wall to an approaching waist. His suddenly alert eyes proceeded to rove silently over everything both above and below that gently bobbing dividing line.
The guards looked, too. Visitants like Dr. Serena Kogan were rare in Longview. Her title was not what interested them, though Wright’s reaction was more conflicted than they would have suspected. Long used to such blatant testosterone-fueled stares, Kogan ignored them.
Still in her thirties, she was unconventionally beautiful. Part of this was due to the nature of her work, which gave her an aspect of perfection that was partly the result of intense concentration. Uncharacteristically, desperation announced itself in the slight gauntness of her face and the tightness of her lips. It detracted from her beauty only slightly.
Halting outside his cell, she looked in and met Wright’s gaze without flinching. The ensuing silence between them spoke, if not volumes, at least a word or two. He looked up at the priest.
“Leave.” Emerging from the prisoner’s mouth, it was plainly a command and not a request.
His State-supported visitor gestured hesitantly with the Bible he held.
“I’m not finished, son.”
Wright’s gaze shifted from wall to uninvited confessor. His stare was, arguably, more unyielding than the concrete.