The starving Officer Harris suddenly blacked out, and his mood took a nosedive.

He furrowed his brows, his face darkened, and he had no choice but to turn his gaze back to those cages. He said, “I have two questions.”

Eric Bennett raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

Scott Harris: “First, what exactly did you do during your prison break? How did the space prison end up in this hellish state?! Second, this… rotten meat—how are we splitting it? Fifty-fifty?”

The clanging inside the cages abruptly stopped, and the rotten meat fell into a deathly silence.

Mason: “…” Chief, you don’t look like a chief at all right now, you know? You’re basically a terrorist number two!

Chapter 9: A Little Prank

When Scott Harris asked this, he didn’t look at Eric Bennett, but instead walked over to the nearest cage.

When he was just half a meter from the cage, he wrinkled his nose and stepped back, probably overwhelmed by the stench coming from the prisoners. “Tsk—pardon me, but how long did you have to rot to ferment this kind of flavor?”

The prisoner: “…”

Anyone sent to the space prison could easily make it onto the government’s high-priority watchlist. In a way, they were all notorious figures in their field. Forget scaring children—just mentioning their names could terrify a few adults.

Even though they were locked in cages now, looking disheveled and even a bit ridiculous, in the eyes of ordinary people, they were still wolves ready to strike at any moment. Someone like Mason, who kept his distance and circled far around the cages, was acting just like a normal person would.

The prisoner in the cage probably had never encountered someone like Scott Harris who came up to provoke him. For a moment, he was at a loss for words, just staring in shock.

Mason shrank into a corner and couldn’t help but interject, “If I remember right, when you pointed a gun at me, you said if you couldn’t find meat cleaner than me, you’d rather starve… Now you’re not so picky?”

Scott Harris turned to him. “You sound almost disappointed.”

Mason: “No! Not at all! Carry on, I’ll shut up.”

As he spoke, he made an X in front of his mouth with his hands.

Eric Bennett glanced around. “There’s water and electricity here. Wash it seven or eight times, and it’s barely edible.”

Prisoner: “…”

He suddenly struggled, slamming his fist hard against the side of the cage and cursing out loud. Judging by the bulging veins on his neck, he was using all his strength. But even Scott Harris, who was right next to him, couldn’t hear a single word.

After silently cursing them out, the prisoner glared at Scott Harris and mouthed a sentence.

He still used a lot of force, but there was still no sound.

Scott Harris loosely clenched his fist and held it under his nose, barely blocking some of the stench. He watched the prisoner’s lips and read his words: “You’re saying you recognize me?”

No kidding! If I didn’t recognize you, I’d be seeing ghosts!

The prisoner continued to mouth his words through gritted teeth: I know you. You’re that executive chief Chu. Why isn’t that old gourd of a subordinate of yours with you, huh?

Just thinking about this mess made Scott Harris feel worse.

The prisoners in the space prison weren’t forced to stare at metal walls all day. After all, driving them insane wouldn’t benefit anyone.

They had set times each day to use some simple equipment, and every prison block had a huge screen that played things the government wanted them to watch, interspersed with harmless entertainment programs.

Commonly known as—round-the-clock, non-stop brainwashing: a slap followed by a date.

The selection and scheduling of these programs was handled by the publicity officer from the Fifth Office of the Security Building. The officer’s name was Gerald Baldwin, a mixed-race old man. Although he was technically Scott Harris’s subordinate, he was more than twice Scott Harris’s age and had helped him out a couple of times when Scott Harris first started at the Security Building, so Scott Harris was a bit more tolerant of him.

But this bald old man often pushed his luck and did things that especially got on Scott Harris’s nerves—

For example, on the 150th anniversary of the space prison’s construction, the old man suggested recording a commemorative video, and at the same time, giving the restless inmates a warning. He claimed, “Good-looking people are less likely to be hated,” and insisted on sneaking in a clip of Scott Harris’s speech at a security meeting into that lousy video.

That unfortunate clip lasted a full hour, taking up four-fifths of the entire video. The remaining fifth was split evenly between the intro and the outro.

The old man quietly had the video looped on the space prison’s broadcast screens for an entire day, and of course, Scott Harris’s speech was about “improving the encryption system of the prisoner controllers.”

It was like advocating for stronger collars and chains in front of a pack of captured wolves—if that’s not provoking them, what is?

And the old man even cheerfully went to Scott Harris’s office fishing for praise. As soon as he walked in, Eric Bennett-Young barged into Scott Harris’s office comms channel, clearly agitated.

Scott Harris could only thank the old man’s ancestors and kick him out.

Although Scott Harris was in charge of the space prison, the prisoners only knew his name; very few had actually seen his face.

But after that video played on repeat for a whole day, thanks to Gerald Baldwin, every terrorist in the prison had memorized his face—probably for the rest of their lives.