#empty echoes

He heard the sound of the cell next to his own's heavy door opening, and then a cry as someone was harshly flung inside. The door closed, quickly followed by a turning of a key and the clicking of a lock. A single sob.

How curious. That cell had been empty for ages.

Desperate for something to distract him from the dripping, he crawled over to the tiny little window, far too weak to even consider standing, it's bars as thick as his hand, and peered through them into the other cell. It was as dark as his own, a near pitch black, but unlike all the other time's he'd peered passed the bars, he could make out someone in the middle of the room, lying curled on the floor. He couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but from the ragged breathing, it was safe to assume they were alive.

For now, anyway.

He was silent for a long moment, watching the small figure tremble in the darkness, lying on his stomach with his face right up against the cold bars. At least ten minutes passed. Perhaps twenty. "Who're you, then?"

The person jumped, and he was startled to hear a loud ticking abruptly filling the air, like a broken clock. They twisted around to face him, glowing yellow eyes staring at the wall for a moment, before going down to the tiny window on the floor. He blinked. It was a rather familiar looking nindroid.

"Zane?"

Zane stared at him for a long moment, his entire body trembling, much to his surprise. He wondered what they could have done to him to have achieved such a reaction, from a Ninja, no less. "I-I am Echo. Zane is m-my older brother."

He blinked again, face morphing into a look of surprise. "I never knew he had a brother."

"We only discovered this recently."

"Huh." A beat of silence. "How'd you end up here, Echo?"

"I was playing." the nindroid said, the ticking slowly becoming quieter, "And they threw me into a truck."

"Ah."

They descended into silence again. Echo laid down on his side, curling up, although he never tore his eyes from the window. The dripping continued.

"Who are you?"

He took a moment to answer. "A friend."

"You hesitated."

"I'm not the best person to be friends with." More dripping. He was tempted to bang his head against the bars. Maybe he'd die again if he did it hard enough.

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