The noon work-detail transition sent Nyx to the kitchen.
The kitchen remained the kitchen.
Which sounded obvious until you spent enough time in prison to appreciate consistency as a personality trait.
The supervisor stood at the stove conducting the same detailed consultation with it he performed every day.
The two general-population inmates assigned to the rest of the kitchen detail worked with the relaxed efficiency of people who had repeated a task enough times that thought itself had become optional.
The supervisor turned when she entered.
He looked at her with the expression of a man who had spent twenty-four hours reviewing a situation and arrived at conclusions he personally resented.
"Yesterday's stew," he said. "I received some feedback."
"Good feedback or bad feedback?" Nyx asked.
He cleared his throat.
"It was not," he said carefully, "the standard complaint."
She looked at him.
