Nail Care Blades

(Hiding key evidence while doing the Warden's crystal nails)

The warden's office smells sweetly of OPI nail polish and blood, and Amber is sculpting Warden Black's nails with a dentist's mirror-modified UV lamp. For this month's "beauty service day," the other woman chose the same Volcano Red from Valentino's high-fashion show-the exact color of Scarlett's nails when she was in court.

"Sharpen them again," Warden Black's crocodile boots ran over Amber's ankle monitor, "to be as sharp as when you were doing hostile takeovers at Morgan Stanley." Under the manicure lamp, the warden's ring finger bears a dark red bloodstain from the carotid artery spatter of last week's failed escape attempt.

Amber removes a 0.01mm blade from a Chanel hobo bag-shaped toolbox - laser-cut from a federal prison's annual financial report. As she embeds the blade in a crystal armor extension, Warden Black's smartwatch suddenly vibrates, and Bloomberg terminal data reveals that Ethan's pharmaceutical company shares are being pulled up by mysterious forces.

"I hear your father had the hands of a pianist." The warden picked Amber's chin with a shotgun pass bar, "Too bad he jumped off a building after signing an organ donation agreement." Amber's eyelashes fluttered at a precisely controlled rate of three times per second-a parameter for showing weakness she'd learned in her women's prison psychology class-while her right pinky finger pressed the micro-RFID chip into her nail polish.

When the alarm goes off and the Svetlana gang sets fire to the laundry room, Warden Black kicks over the manicure table and rushes out, Amber quickly licks off the dripping nail polish-mixed with the emetic she stole from the punishment room. She pried open the warden's computer and dipped a nail sculpting pen into the iron-ion-containing base coat and wrote magnetic ink characters on the screen: ethan's offshore account was in safe deposit box B612 in the Cayman Islands.

"Sweetheart, your mascara's smudged." Maria's dirty braid dangles from the vent, handing over nitroglycerin-soaked false eyelashes.Amber braids a sample of the warden's hair into her crystal armor, a lock of gray that unlocks the encrypted data in Manhattan's top-end genetic bank-where three generations of Ethan's family's records of genetic disorders are stored.

The dressing mirror suddenly reflects Queen Latifah's Supreme headband, and she's hiding bitcoin-mining machine coolant in a scrub jar." Little Princess of Wall Street," she turns her manicure light to SOS Morse code, "the Russian bitches found out you're stealing computing power." Amber laughs as she lights an alcohol swab and the firelight illuminates the ceiling mezzanine - where the satellite signal receiver she traded 300 manicure services for is hidden.

Released the next day, Amber is dragged into the punishment room, Svetlana's ice pick manicure against her newly tattooed Nasdaq chart, "The mining pool is 3% less arithmetic, just enough to crack Ethan's blockchain will." Amber spits out the diamond braces she holds under her tongue - fused from Warden Black's wedding ring - refracting the light to cast Swiss bank codes on the wall.

At the beauty salon on a stormy night, Amber repairs Warden Black's chipped crystal armor. She seals the warden's dander with a sample of the prison's tap water into the extension nail, a bio-capsule that will release the Vibrio cholerae bacteria in 48 hours - just in time for Ethan's charity dinner at the Four Seasons. Between flashes of the manicure light, she glimpses an encrypted e-mail on the warden's computer: that Scarlett has booked the best maternity ward in Manhattan, with a due date that coincides with the date of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike.

"Any idea why you were chosen for the service?" Warden Black suddenly grabbed Amber by the neck, the poison needle on the inside of her wedding ring popping out, "Scarlett said you were the best at applying makeup to dead people." Amber's pupils are contracting rapidly, and her foot, hidden under the manicure table, is tapping the floor with the heel of her Jimmy Choo shoe - the frequency corresponding to the time code of one of the Dow Jones' famous crashes.

Amber smiles as the stun gun is pressed against her temple. She pushes the dark button at the base of the manicure lamp, and the warden's freshly finished crystal nails suddenly begin to play a holographic projection-surveillance footage from her mother's hospital room from twenty years ago showing a young Warden Black adjusting his morphine pump dose. The prison alarms wailed in synchronization, and all the electronic shackles switched on in response.

"Now it's your turn to sign the organ donation agreement." Amber pressed the hardened blade against the warden's carotid artery and held up the surreptitious video in her left hand-the 4K footage of the other man and Ethan counting gold bars on a private jet was going viral on the dark web. Fireworks suddenly explode outside the window as the Queen Latifah gang uses Molotov cocktails to spell out the Sell signal in the playground, and Ethan's stock plummets 30 percent in response.