Spider didn't roar when he was losing. He whispered. That was his real weapon—the kind that didn't bruise skin but rotted the block from the inside out.
After the laundry room setup failed to break Jayden, Spider doubled down. Contraband started flowing faster: candy bars, smokes, sharpened toothbrushes, little luxuries that made kids feel alive in a place meant to kill them slow. Spider handed them out like a king tossing scraps to the starving, and every gift bought silence. Every favor bought loyalty.
The message was simple: stand with Jayden, and you'll starve. Stand with Spider, and you eat.
---
Lenny's Beating
Jayden saw the price of that choice in the showers two nights later. Lenny, the scrawny kid he'd slid bread to, got cornered by two of Spider's boys. They didn't even speak. They just shoved him against the tiles, fists pounding his ribs, his cries swallowed by the roar of water.
Jayden moved without thinking. He yanked one attacker off by the collar, slammed him into the wall, and shoved the other back with a forearm across the throat.
The guards burst in late, batons swinging. They barely glanced at Lenny on the ground, clutching his stomach. Their eyes locked on Jayden, chest heaving, fists clenched.
"Always you, Carter," one spat, jabbing him in the chest with a baton. "Can't go a week without starting something."
Jayden's lip curled, but he said nothing. He knew it wasn't worth it. Not here, not now.
Later, in the block, Lenny found him. His lip was split, his eyes wide with fear. "Thanks," he whispered. Then he slipped away fast, shoulders hunched. Gratitude couldn't erase the cost of standing too close to Jayden.
Across the room, Spider's smile was a knife. He tapped his temple and mouthed the words: I own them. Not you.
---
Dre's Warning
That night, Jayden tapped the wall twice, their signal for talk. Dre's voice came back rough.
"You're seeing it now, Scrap. Spider doesn't fight with fists. He fights with strings. He pulls and pulls until people dance. He don't even care if they hate him, long as they obey."
Jayden stared at the ceiling, fire coiling hot in his chest. "So how do I cut the strings?"
Dre's answer was slow, deliberate. "Not with fists. You gotta show them there's another way. Spider feeds them poison. You gotta give them something real. Something that lasts."
Jayden closed his eyes, hating the truth of it. Strength wasn't just about surviving blows anymore. It was about surviving the silence after.
---
The Sketch
He opened his sketchbook, hand trembling, pencil digging grooves into the paper. He drew Spider as a spider for real this time, a swollen body with too many legs, threads stretching across the page, wrapping kids, guards, the whole block in its web.
Then he drew scissors. Sharp, glowing, suspended just above the strands. In his hand.
Underneath he wrote: Strings snap louder than fists.
---
Spider's Gift
The next day, Spider made a show of power. He strolled the cafeteria with a bag of candy bars, passing them out one by one. Each hand that reached out was another string tied tighter. Each nod was another thread binding the block to him.
When he stopped at Jayden's table, he dropped one on the tray. The whole room hushed.
Jayden didn't touch it. He slid it across to the same scrawny kid he'd fed before. The boy hesitated, glancing between Spider and Jayden, then grabbed it fast, eating like he hadn't had sugar in months.
Spider's grin didn't break, but his eyes burned cold. "You can't win giving away what I own, fire-boy."
Jayden met his gaze, steady. "Then maybe you don't own as much as you think."
The silence that followed wasn't laughter. It was something else. Something Spider couldn't control.
---
That night, Dre's tap came slow and steady. "That's it, Scrap. You just showed them Spider bleeds. Keep cutting. Don't stop."
And Jayden lay awake, fire burning steady inside, whispering to himself: Not his game. Mine.