#e201

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.”

date & time : january 23rd, 7:00pm  location : purgatory, the kitchens status : with @robyn-kane

Cairo was never the sort of woman to do things indelicately.

Even now, standing before the mouth of Purgatory’s massive kitchen sink, the bubbles that foamed there made a delicate cushion around the dirty dishes and silverware. Any other kitchen hand would have made the soap monstrous, lathered into a mountain, threatening to drip from every edge (it’s how her blonde, pig-mouthed supervisor had shown her how). But even this was art she’d learned. The bubbles glinted in the dim light, layered atop each other, shouldered their round cousins to either side; eventually, she had a wet chrysanthemum staring back at her. Cairo pulled a bowl from her pile of filth and worked a sponge around the rim. Grey sludge softened and fell, plopped into the water, spun down the drain. 

If she was anywhere else, Cairo thought she might have been humming to herself. Even singing. She knew if she made a sound here, though, it could have been too nostalgic to bear. It would have conjured up a dangerous illusion of hope. 

So she washed her dishes — hair pinned tight against her skull, sleeves rolled high above her elbows — and tried very hard not to imagine herself in the Concord. It wasn’t long ago she’d been afforded this privilege, of privacy. At first, she thought she’d like it. You got accustomed to the endless energy of Purgatory — to everything loud, in constant motion and color even at night when nobody really slept. Not really. Perhaps a break from that would be a breath of air. Maybe she’d be able to really think. She hadn’t taken into account that this would be the first time in months she’d be alone. 

There were no devils in her ear now, no scraping plates or chatter; just the sound of her sink, filling and draining, filling and draining, her heartbeat, and her breath catching in her throat. But that was stupid! This wasn’t a time for mourning, for that raw feeling like a gutted fish.

She hadn’t lost yet. 

Right?

Cairo’s grip tightened on the sink’s metal lip. She brought an arm up to her brimming eyes and left a streak of soap there. 

The door opened and Cairo reached instinctively for a grimy spoon. What she was going to do with it was beyond her, but she turned swiftly to face her intruder, eyes aflame, spoon drawn. But when she saw Robyn, mop in hand — Robyn who had always offered her crooked smiles and tall tales but never any harm — Cairo let herself breathe and lowered the spoon. She slumped against the sink and sniffled. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I bet you’re getting really tired of me doing that... There’s a blue bucket by the wall over there. You can sit on it and tell me one of your stories. Tell me again, was it Ailea’s moon you visited? Or Brora’s?”