#data: 002

The last thing she remembered in the golden room was almost making it. 

A dark-eyed man with the grin of a wolf stepped into her dreamland, but this time she recognized him. She locked eyes with Kit Beisel and all of the air left her lungs. She ran to meet him, but the cores of his pupils glowed red-hot. They became a flash of fire and light and Cairo was thrown painfully against a wall. 

She woke up in handcuffs.

--- 

Their prison was an organized monster. Columns of rooms lined every wall, weaponed guards chaperoned the halls, but more imposing than the imagery was the noise. Chatter was an infernal dinn here, but at least the shouting meant there was life beyond her four walls. Most days were incomplete without the sounds of swearing and sobbing. It brought her home. Suddenly she was back in the chewed-out terrain of Brora F31. She was back in the death machine that was war. Because what was home, after all, if not the place you would know deaf and blind?

The familiarity was useful to her. She knew what horrors to expect here, and made no effort to postpone the inevitable. She knew that sniffling was futile, and it would only further her wardens’ irritation. So for the first few days, she was all ice. Her demeanor was completely still, completely numb. Brow together, brooding. She sat with her silence in the corner of her cell, with her arms wrapped tight against her chest, because maybe if she thought hard enough, maybe if she bit her tongue, losing Kit wouldn’t feel like a ripe gunshot inside and out. She tasted blood and tried to remember his voice. Tried to remember his rich cadence and any information that might bring him back to her. He couldn’t be dead for two reasons. One, because Kit Beisel would never do that to her. And two, because she wouldn’t what to do with herself if he did. 

For the first few days, she walked stoic and slow. Her attention wavered constantly, but her soldier brain did manage to pick up a few details. It noted that the prison was short on kitchen staff — not desperate, but short. The prison was understaffed generally, or at least her section of the prison was. The only guard that patrolled her hall rarely checked on her, but when he did, he sucked his lip and stared. And that was the catch. Cairo let him. 

In her state, she struggled to kick herself back to life. It helped that a day in, the officials put her in the kitchen. Being in front of a stove allowed her the privilege to show the prison how useful she could be for them. She cooked flavorless filth into something edible. For the first time in years, she was told, the prisoners didn’t gag when they ate. Being in front of a stove also reminded her of several things: that she was imprisoned, but not a prisoner; that she knew how to escape places like this; and that she was furious.

She stood behind the serving table, spooning thick syrup over a prisoner’s plate when another cook nudged her in the ribs. “Look,” Carmelo said and pointed at a troop of androids entering the room. His Mandarin was brightened by a thick Mantoda accent when he spoke. “Those are the robots I was telling you about. The ones the prison reprograms to work for them. They come from every star you can name, Cairo. I dare you to find two that look the same.”

Cairo brought her gaze up to Carmelo’s twinkling compound eyes, then to the droids — to the twelve speckled bodies made of metals and plastics, marching neatly to one of the tables and sitting there. Cairo saw one stumble slightly, glimpsed his face and everything stopped. Everything. “I have to go,” she breathed. “Take this.”