Isadora raised her eyes to glance up at the mammoth wall that the platform was climbing, her weary body held up by the armpits on each side with the strength of the large Enforcers that flanked her. The evening had been long, brutal questioning enacted with painful and at times torturous methods leaving her a broken woman who had given in to sharing truths that she had previously sworn to keep locked within. Strength had left her earlier in the evening when she laid upon a floor with her eyes that were sticky with dried tears seeing only the shoes of the Lieutenant Governor before her, pain becoming nothing more than an experience she could no longer react to. Emotion had also left with the departure of her strength, yet as the platform rose and she was granted a view into several of the tiny enclosures, realizing forgotten souls were tenants within, strength became momentarily resurrected. “No!” She screamed with the acceptance of realization, attempting to pull backwards from the hold the Enforcers had upon her.
The two giants that held her reinforced their grip, pulling her tighter as the platform creaked towards a stop before the awaiting cell.
“No!” Isadora screamed once more, digging her feet into the grated steel of the platform’s base in an attempt to push herself away from the cell’s opening.
Though Isadora Jamison was a large woman, to the husky Enforcers that held her tightly, it was an effortless force to toss her inwards, which they did without concern for injury or compassion. As the iron bars began to creak in a descent over the cell’s opening, a snicker could be heard from one of the two officials.
The woman known as Dora to so many in the service of shuttle operations landed upon the uneven and dirty floor of the small enclosure, a mixture of soot and crusted oils painting blackened smudges upon her face and palms. As she swung her body quickly around to face the entry she had been thrust inwards from, bars of iron closed quickly down before her releasing a frightening shudder of a vibration. She reached forward as she circled around to take two of the bars within her hands, looking outwards to where she could see the feet of the two Enforcers stepping backwards upon the platform she was on moments ago that was now slowly retracting in a symphony of creaks. The Enforcers were swallowed into the darkness quickly, leaving her alone in the tiny enclosure facing the imposing blackness of the great expanse beyond her cell door, the only beacon beyond being the flickering blue and red lights shining from the steel grated tower that framed the elevator shaft at the expanse’s center. As the creaking faded leaving a newfound silence, Dora heard her quick and deep breaths seep into the sounds around, the moans and wails of the surrounding inmates that grew into a perpetual echo while her ears adapted to the environment. Realization continued to bud within her, the continuous ringing of the echo proving that she was one of hundreds locked within the enclosures of the expanse’s wall. She turned inwards again in surreal disbelief to gaze through the blue haze of the dim outer lights to spy a single blanket curled up at the base of a small commode where crawling across its seat was the one insect that had survived the migration underground. Though Dora had always been only mildly squeamish the few times in her life she had encountered a cockroach, after an unexpected arrest and a night of brutal interrogation which ended with imprisonment within this dark place, the insect was merely the final horror to fuel the scream that she released.