Caged Is A Kind Of Cornered

20260612

Prompt from “pridemonthprompts” 2025 list.

“What do you mean, ‘what do you expect’??” James scoffed incredulously. “I expect people not to smash up police drones, that’s what I expect!”
Cory shrugged. Unbothered. “Fair thing to expect, since most folks don’t smash police equipment. But we’re talking about thems pushed right out to the margins. If existing’s already illegal, anything else makes sense.”
“You’re skirting dangerously close to sounding like a sympathiser, there…”
“Psh, please.” Cory rolled his eyes. “If I grab a nettle bare-handed, I wouldn’t say you’re ‘siding with the nettle’ when you asked what I expected to happen.”
“Nettles don’t think, though-”
“People don’t either, really, when they’re trapped.” Cory spoke calmly. Confidently. As if stating simple fact. “Cornered cat’s gonna scratch, cornered dog’s gonna bite, cornered human, well, they’ll lash out with every tool they get their mitts on. And there’s too many of them. When we were just surveilling violent criminals, it was manageable. Even once they widened criteria to individuals ‘at risk’ of committing violence we could just about keep on top of things. Now?”
He shrugged and clicked his tongue. “Can’t outlaw a fifth of the population and expect to keep order. Never gonna happen. Cutting edge surveillance state or not. You’d need sci-fi mind control.”
“Reckon they’re working on that?” James’s tone was mostly joking.
“Probably.”
James shot Cory another incredulous glance. But the other man just sipped his coffee and idly watched the PanOptic(tm) readouts. Endless scrolling assurances that video feeds from across the city were being received and analysed - and, where the system deemed it necessary, cached for human inspection.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know what you were signing up with, kid. Back when I started working here, well, in hindsight it was naive to believe those claims of ‘we’re gonna stamp out violent crime’. I like to think it wasn’t daft, though. Just optimistic. But now everyone knows what’s going on.”
He looked up, one eyebrow raised. “Or did you think you were selling your soul to escape their prying eyes, and learned too late you’d walked into tighter surveillance than the streets, because here we’re right under the control freaks’ thumbs?”
“How are you still employed?” James muttered, his gaze darting to the unblinking camera.
“Because they long ago trimmed everyone else who knows how to fix shit. So they can’t fire me, and I’m not allowed to quit.”
“What, it’s illegal for you to hand in your notice?”
Cory slowly swirled his mug. His eyebrow creeping higher. “You’re talking about the people who write the laws, kid. You think they’ll hesitate to hammer a vital cog back into place if it starts tryna work loose?”
James glanced up at the camera. He looked over at the scrolling readouts. He ducked his head and sipped at his own drink.
Wait, what time was it? Shoot. He’d gotten lost in the conversation. He was meant to be…
He kept his voice casual. “Need a fresh coffee?”
“Nah, I’m alright.”
“Suit yourself…”.
He was meant to be down the hall two minutes ago, but maybe he still had time-
Power to the building was cut, plunging the office - and the rest of the tower block - into pitch darkness.
“Sh-shit!”
“Ah.” Cory’s voice remained a dispassionate monotone. “It’s happening, huh?”
“What’s happening??” James barely had to fake confusion at this response.
“Whatever you brought a knife in for.”
James froze. A click made him yelp, hand flying to his apparently-not-hidden-enough weapon, but it was just Cory turning on the little desk lamp, which must have a battery.
“So, what’s the plan?” Cory could’ve been asking about weekend plans! “I wouldn’t expect a setup this elaborate if you were just going to shank me.”
“I…” James gripped his knife tight. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“No? Wouldn’t blame ya. I just told you I’ve been a crucial cog in this suffering factory for years.”
“O-okay, but… I don’t think you’re a bad person.”
Cory snorted and shook his head, his expression… exasperated? “You’re trying to bring down a massive rotten system, kid. You don’t have the luxury of dividing the world into tidy comfortable categories like ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’. Not if you really want to sort this mess out.”
“Well, I, if you want me to stab you, you shouldn’t be talking like this!!”
“Mm.” The corner of Cory’s mouth twitched. “Not sure I want you to stab me, so, fair.”
He drained his mug and set it down. “So. What’s the plan? You must have one.”
“I’m…” James hesitated. The Plan was still an option. And he didn’t have much time. But… it felt like he had options they hadn’t accounted for when setting this up. Options he didn’t want to squander. “I was going to threaten you into letting me into the third floor…”
“Ah. Sabotaging the mainframes?”
“Yeah.”
“Amateur tactic.”
“Excuse me??”
“What you want to target is the access network. Half of it’s custom parts. And spares of those small custom parts that’d take weeks to source replacements of are all kept in a locker in the office. Stuff the contents of that locker in a bag, smash all the delicate pieces in that office, and those mainframes are useless. Having a trillion terabytes of data doesn’t mean shit if you have to unload each hard drive by hand and plug ‘em into a terminal to find out what’s on there.”
Cory stood up and fished his key ring out of his drawer. “So. Shall we move over two offices, while your friends have the cameras off?”
“I, uh… sure?” James hesitated, then said “Er, we were sort of hoping to maybe kidnap you after, if…”
“Might as well. No way I’m getting away with this.” Cory shot him a thin smile. “Don’t look so surprised, kid. Told ya, didn’t I? Put people in a corner and they’ll lash out with anything they can. You’re my opportunity to do what I should have done years ago. Let’s get cracking.”

Prompt was “Criminal”.