349

The familiar electric hum reverberating through the small space was like a warm muffler over his ears as Jennen gazed into the flickering monitors. Cold, stagnant coffee sat forgotten at the edge of his peripheral vision. He leaned back in his seat, which groaned under the pressure of his heavy body, and drummed his fingers against his knee. The light overhead flickered at regular intervals, and he’d grown so accustomed that he’d forgotten they needed to be changed. He briefly stole a glance down to his watch; another five hours before he could return home to sleep through the daylight hours and repeat the cycle. In short, it was an evening like any other before it.

Jennen remained very still for the duration of his shifts. He’d heard the whispers of security personnel being dismissed for policy infractions as benign as looking away from the screen wall for longer than but a moment. He had a family at home to consider, and losing his only means of income was out of the question. So he sat, nearly rigid, shifting his focus through the two hundred and fifty cameras that he had assigned to himself. To do this required that he only spend seconds on a given feed, which left his recollection of past shifts hazy at best. As long as he kept earning money, though, his memory mattered little.

Coss, the Watcher sitting to his left, was the more animated of the two. He chewed noisily on a flash-heated dinner which consisted primarily of protein and preservatives. A half-memory passed briefly through Jennen’s mind as he recalled tales his Grandmother passed down when he was still just a boy. During her prime, it had been common for friends and family to gather several times a year to feast upon eloquently prepared meals and simply enjoy one another’s company. Cooking food in your own home with your own hands was a foreign enough concept, let alone the gatherings. Who could possibly have the time for such aimless luxuries?

An abrasive buzzing pierced the lethargy and Jennen’s attention was drawn to screen 141, which was now vignetted in bright red. As the gate was opened he saw light filter in around the shadows of three figures. A young, gaunt fellow was unceremoniously pushed toward the far wall of the cell, the surface of which viciously met the side of his head as he stumbled into it. The prisoner pulled his limbs into himself and hid his face away from the two shadows looming over him until the gate was pulled shut and locked into place.

Coss let out an appreciative hum, nodding his head toward the highlighted screen. “Ouch. Those cell walls’re full-purity albino steel alloy. I don’t think a bomb would leave so much as a scratch.”

Jennen raised his brows and nodded, not bothering to voice a response. After working alongside Coss for nearly five years, he knew the older man was perfectly content to fill the void of silence with his own banal ramblings. It suited Jennen just fine; to be frank, he couldn’t imagine where some of his coworkers got the confidence to speak so freely within the walls of Tank 12. Even now, he could feel the tireless gaze of the security room’s camera burning like a blister on the nape of his neck. He wondered idly, and not for the first time, who might be stationed on the receiving end of that particular camera’s feed.

Cross had started speaking again during Jennen’s private musings. “I’ve seen that the walls are actually a pretty deadly weapon when the guards have to make a quick execution. Some prisoners kinda lose their heads, they freak out - I mean, if you don’t wanna be here, why’d you break the law? Doesn’t make any sense to me, never has.

“Anyway, about a year before you came on, this older guy was locked up here. He’d been put up for a few months, give or take. Very uncooperative from the start, you know the type. The heroes who decide they’ll make us all work for our wages? Fair enough, I suppose. I guess he’d had enough of it one day, he bashed his head into a guard’s when they were preparing to transfer him down to the Lower Ring. I’ve never seen a black-coat get so pissed! He took the old man’s head and broke it apart against one of those walls. What an awful mess that was. At least I didn’t have to smell it.”

Jennen was somewhat impressed with Coss’s ability to eat, speak, and watch his half of the monitors all at once. More than that, though, was a prickling sense of unease that Jennen couldn’t quite make sense of.

He heard Coss chuckle beside him and saw his crooked finger slide into his vision as he jabbed it toward one of the monitors.

“Hey. You watchin’ this one?” His words were stifled by the stale roll stuffed into his mouth.“Looks pretty busy, has for the past couple hours.”

It was a moment before the words registered, And Jennen’s eyes followed Coss’s finger to screen 349. Crouched in the corner and facing away from the eye of the camera was a trembling figure. At a glance, it appeared to be a young woman, though starvation imposes a certain degree of uniformity to the interred of Tank 12. She was bent forward toward the corner of the cell, her body appearing perfectly still until Jennen noticed a peculiar scraping noise coming from the screen’s speaker.

Screen 349 was one of Jennen’s screens. He’d have to remind Coss to stay focused on his half.

“We should probably call that in,” Coss said. His voice revealed little interest in his own words; he had already turned away from screen 349, his eyes darting to another camera feed every few seconds.

Jennen murmured his assent. His hand hovered over the small red button labeled “Disturbance,” but he hesitated. Something about her unwavering focus on her task, whatever task it was that was available to her in cell 349. The typical tremors, the pleading, the bargaining, the begging; they found no purchase with her. She was different from most of the forsaken wretches that arrived at the Tank to await judgment.

He rested his index finger over the button and continued to observe her. He understood security protocol well enough to know that until he saw an infraction with his own eyes, he was well within his authority to assume that no such infraction had taken place. It was merely a whim, he assured himself. A case of morbid curiosity, and nothing more.

He refrained from pressing the button.

After what must have only been a few minutes, the girl stood up. Jennen stole a sidelong glance toward Coss, who was now fully absorbed in his own work. He leaned forward in his seat as the girl turned to face the camera. Clutched in her small hands was a simple metal meal tray from the mess hall. She must have hidden it beneath her jumper, Jennen realized. What could have possessed her to take such a risk?

She slowly made her way toward the camera. Jennen felt his body tense as she moved forward. Never before had a prisoner bothered to pay the camera any mind; after all, what difference would it make to them?

Once she crossed the length of her cell and stood just below the imposing glare of the camera, she flipped the tray so that the underside faced the lens. As she lifted it up above her head, Jennen sucked air in through his teeth. It was reflexive, and it caught Coss’s attention, prompting him to turn his attention back to Jennen and follow his eyes back to screen 349.

The girl’s left hand, as well as the majority of the underside of the tray, was covered in her blood. Upon closer inspection, her fingernails were split and broken. The bloodstains on the tray formed peculiar shapes and Jennen recognized after a moment that she’d attempted to scrawl out a message. He leaned forward and read her words:

“I AM MERIL VOSS. I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG. I FORGIVE YOU.”

Jennen sat back, feeling faint. He couldn’t understand why, exactly. Perhaps it was the knowledge that this prisoner had spent several hours and five of her fingernails to etch out such a seemingly desultory message. Perhaps it was the fact that she found these words important enough that she refused to merely speak them. Perhaps it was the last three words, words he scarcely recognized, that stung and wet his eyes.

Coss had leaned over and smashed the “Disturbance” button while Jennen was lost in new emotions. “This is Watcher S–01, reporting a grievous infraction in Cell 349. Theft and damage to property are apparent. Prisoner appears unstable, and lethal force is advised.” Screen 349 flashed red as Meril’s cell was illuminated and marked for judgment. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch; her message remained in the center of the screen.

“Sheesh, buddy,” Coss chided from his left, “it’s not like you to let your guard down like that. Good thing I’m here to pick up the slack, huh? At this rate, you’ll have to go back to training!” He chuckled good-naturedly, but the warning was clear in his words.

The next several moments passed in a haze. As the black-coats filtered into the cell, Meril was pulled violently away from the camera and thrown to the ground. The tray was picked up and tucked under an arm. The blood stains were wiped away with disinfectant. Meril was dragged out through the gate between two of the black-coats, and the cell was sealed shut behind her. Just like that, it was as if she had never occupied the cell at all.

With the prisoner’s bizarre determination no longer meeting the stare of the camera, Jennen was left to consider what it meant. More importantly, he pondered his reaction to the event. Perhaps Coss had a point, he conceded. He decided he would contact his supervisor after his shift and request additional training for himself. In his position, you could never be too careful.