Chapter 85 You are the new No. 44
The corridor slowly turned on with dim light.
"It's time to eat!" The rude and indifferent voice came closer and closer along with the creaking sound of the cart.
I grabbed the railing with both hands and looked hard towards the end of the corridor.
A man in a black security uniform walked slowly over, pushing a metal cart. He had an electric baton and a bunch of keys on his waist, which jingled as he walked.
From the gaps in the metal railings, pale and skinny hands stretched out, holding a worn-out lunch box, waiting for food.
Their movements were very gentle, without making any sound, and each hand showed caution.
There was an eerie silence in the corridor.
The squeaking of the cart wheels and the jingling of keys seemed unusually clear.
The man stopped in front of the first window, took out a ladle, scooped a ladle of dark stuff into the metal bucket on the cart, and poured it into the lunch box.
The movement was very rough, and some of the paste was spilled on the ground, and several hands immediately started to scramble for it silently.
The man didn't even bother to take a second look. He pushed the cart forward with an expressionless expression, holding a metal spoon and routinely pouring black paste into those old lunch boxes.
In the quiet cell, the muffled sound of eating resounded.
"Brother Yunfeng, is someone here? Who is it?" Zhao Xiaohai, who was on the bed, heard the movement, sat up with difficulty, and looked at me nervously and expectantly.
"Probably not your brother, shush, lie down and don't make any sound." I made a silencing gesture to him.
Zhao Xiaohai's eyes showed disappointment, he gritted his teeth and lay down again.
My side seemed to be at the end of the cell, and it was my turn at the end. As the trolley approached, I smelled a strange fragrance.
It's the taste of medicinal herbs mixed with food.
This scent is incompatible with the dirty and dark environment.
I thought about it, turned around and looked around the room, and sure enough I found an old lunch box at the end of the bed. The lunch box was unexpectedly clean, but it had an unpleasant stench from being licked by saliva for a long time.
I followed the example of those people and stretched out my lunch box to wait for food.
"The newcomers this time are so smart! Don't they even need to go to class?" The man's eyes glanced towards me, and I lowered my head and looked at him with my peripheral vision.
His face was full of pockmarks and rosacea, and he looked fierce and ugly.
"Did someone talk too much? What did you say to him?" The pock-marked rude voice echoed in the corridor.
The cell was as silent as a cicada, deathly silent.
The hand stretched out from between the iron bars opposite me was trembling violently.
"Haha, that's good, it saves me time!" Pockmarked glanced at his trembling hands, sneered twice, with a sinister look.
"But don't even think about eating the pig food today! If I don't give you some color, you animals won't know how to obey!"
The hand suddenly shook violently and silently put the lunch box back.
With a pockmarked face, I scooped up a spoonful of the black stuff and poured it into my lunch box.
"You are new here. If you don't eat the first meal, you won't have the energy to work later! This is good food, enjoy it! Hahaha!"
With a pockmarked face, he threw the spoon into the metal bucket, sneered and pushed the cart away.
The lights in the corridor went out and darkness returned, and the muffled sound of eating began.
I took my hand back and looked at the contents of the lunch box carefully under the light.
A dark mass mixed with rice grains and black broken leaves. I don’t know what kind of vegetable it is.
It looks worse than pig food, but it exudes a strong fragrance that will tempt greedy people.
"What is it? It smells so good." Zhao Xiaohai sat up again and swallowed a handful of saliva.
"Xiaohai, you can't eat this!" My stomach was growling. I resisted the temptation and prepared to find a place to empty the contents of the lunch box.
"If you don't want to eat, give it to me! Give it to me, give it to me!" A hoarse voice came from the cell opposite again, very urgently.
"What is this?"
"Food, if you don't eat, you will be worse than dead! You only have one chance a day, give it to me, please!" The voice was trembling, and two dry and white hands stretched out from the railing, scratching at the air with their black fingertips. .
A haggard face emerged from the darkness. The hair was sparse and dirty, and the cheeks were deeply sunken. There was no flesh at all, as if there was only a piece of skin wrapped around the skull, which was not much better than a skeleton.
"Give it to me, give it to me"
The protruding eyes revealed incomparable desire, the wrinkled lips like dry leaves kept opening and closing, the man repeated weakly and eagerly, and the black fingertips kept scratching.
How does this sound like a drug addiction?
"Give it to me, give it to me!"
"Give it to me, please, give it to me!"
In the deep and dark corridor, hands as pale as skeletons stretched out from other cells, and their skinny faces were pressed against the railings, eagerly looking at the lunch box in my hand, like starving ghosts. .
This scene is horrifying.
"I can give this to you, but you must tell me everything you know."
"No problem, I can do whatever you want me to do!"
I put the lunch box on the ground and pushed it towards the opposite side.
The lunch box hit the metal railing and was immediately grabbed by withered hands. The skinny man opposite held the lunch box and retreated into the darkness. Soon, the sound of eating could be heard.
The other people in the cage looked there with disappointment and jealousy, licking their dry lips.
After a few minutes, the chirping sound disappeared, followed immediately by the sound of tongue licking the lunch box.
I finally know why the lunch box is so clean.
It wasn't until the skinny man opposite had finished eating that the people in the other cages sadly retreated into the darkness.
"Can you keep your promise now and tell me what you know?" I said, staring at the other side.
After a while, the man's haggard face emerged from the darkness, and he pushed the empty lunch box back to me.
"Thank you, but if you don't eat, you will die." The man leaned on the railing, with an expression on his face that looked like dead tree bark.
"Why did you die?" I took the lunch box back and threw it back on the simple bed.
"If you don't have the strength to work, you will either be beaten to death by them or you will die from exhaustion. There will be no good results." There was no apology in the man's tone, but only endless numbness.
"What work?" I frowned.
"You'll find out later." The man glanced at me and said, "My name is No. 39. Look at your clothes. Where is your name?"
serial number?
I looked down and saw a number on my chest.
44.
During this time, I seem to have a special affinity with the number 4.
"No. 44?" Hearing the number I reported, the man smiled indifferently, "The last No. 44 just died, and the new No. 44 appeared. Hell is always full of dead people."
Just died?
I felt a chill in my heart and looked at the blood stains on my clothes. It seemed that they had just dried up, and there was still a faint fishy smell left.