Diamond Eyes by A.A. Bell

obsidian statuette of the Greek king Sisyphus had been shifted from one side of the desk to the other and laid down on its side so the condemned king was no longer struggling to push his boulder to the top of his hill in Hades. He could simply roll his burden sideways.
    She picked up the statuette to set it right again beside her other statuette of Zeus, and realised the condemned king had been used as a paperweight to hide a handwritten note that said
From Neville.
    She smiled as she picked up the whip, and caressed the intricate pattern of ivy leaves stamped only lightly into the leather handle. Opened out, the miniature whip was barely as long as her shrivelled arm, but it looked like a real stockwhip, right down to the tiny twitch at the end.
    Sanchez whispered a cowgirl’s cry, ‘Yeehar!', and flicked the air. A cute
crack
broadened her smile. She tried it again, this time striking the twitch against the bare skin of her leg and was punished by only a slight sting, no more than a mosquito bite. ‘Lovely!’
    She glanced at the old photos and paintings on her wall — a set of five depicting the colonies on Likiba Isle through the centuries: one with lepers toiling to grow hemp and sugar cane between the mangroves and melaleuca swamps; another of a quarantine station for ships carrying typhus, measles or worse. The biggest frame, hanging out of order between the reconstruction images of a Catholic mission and the Benevolent Asylum, was a portrait showing a line of chain-gang prisoners being harassed by a guard on horseback with a whip. She compared her small whip to the one in the painting and her smile tightened. The detail was precise, virtually a replica, and yet.
    A scream from the other end of the building seized her attention.
    ‘What now?’
    Scuffling noises and raised voices sang the raucous tune of an argument. She checked her pockets for her whistle and watch and, still with the whip in hand, bulldozed into the hall and ducked a shortcut through a storeroom to intercept the fracas in the first-aid room.
    Chaos inside. Two nurses, a male intern and a security guard were attempting to peel Mira Chambers off her newest social worker, who had somehow managed to land himself in a wheelchair with bleeding feet. Balancing his shoes in his lap, Ben was also trying to push away the intern who was attempting to bandage his wounds.
    ‘Stop fretting over me,’ he complained. ‘See if Mira’s hurt first!’
    ‘No!’ Mira wailed. ‘Only Ben!’
    ‘Enjoying your first day together?’ Sanchez asked, but her voice dissolved into the din.
    She blew her whistle, attracting their attention, and tapped the mini-whip menacingly against the hem of her skirt. ‘Story time! Who wants to go first?’
    Silence answered.
    ‘Well, come on! Or shall I let Mira —’
    ‘That girl belongs in higher security,’ snapped the guard. He pointed at Mira, who still clutched onto Ben’s shirt as though it were a life-preserver. ‘I caught her escaping again.’
    ‘No, you didn’t,’ Ben argued. ‘You caught her coming back in.’
    ‘Back in?’ laughed the intern. ‘Matron, he’s delirious! Mira Chambers spends every waking second trying to get out of here. She’s not allowed anywhere near the front gate.’
    ‘I know, Sam,’ Sanchez replied. ‘I issued the staff notice myself. Do you have anything original to add, or were you simply called into this mess by someone else?’
    Sam shrugged and pointed to the guard, an action which automatically dismissed him from the room.
    ‘Anyone else?’ The matron’s glare scraped across the remaining two nurses, who glanced at the guard, then fled silently.
    ‘Wait,’ Sanchez said, using the whip handle to stop the slowest nurse, a slim red-headed woman with her hair tied loosely in a bun. ‘Janet, take this over to basket-weaving in B-wing, please. Tell whoever’s in charge of the class today that Neville Kenny can teach them how to make a dozen more for the pantomime.