The break period came around the same way it always did, without ceremony and without explanation. Movement windows opened, schedules shifted, and the prison settled into one of those stretches where nobody was in a hurry but nothing was actually relaxed. Xavier used the time the same way he used everything else in this place, by doing something that looked ordinary on the surface and wasn't.
But today, he put in a request for a call.
It didn't bounce around the system or sit pending the way it did for most inmates. The approval came back almost immediately, clean and quiet, the kind of response that meant someone higher up had already flagged his name. A short while later, an officer escorted him down a different corridor and into a private communications room that felt more administrative than punitive.
Xavier sat down, glanced at the terminal, and keyed in a number from memory.
The call rang, but here was no answer.
