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She didn’t think she’d have the place all to herself. She thought that perhaps they’d put her with someone else, someone she could talk to; maybe even someone she knows. Most of the people she knows end up here anyway, at some point, and Genil said they’d put her in a cell with three other people when they’d arrested her. But she’s alone. Oh, she can hear the others on her level, of course - the walls are just thin enough to allow muffled sounds through, and there’s shouting, sometimes, though she can never make out words - but apart from that it’s only her thoughts, her body, and silence.
No meditation, no chanting, no praying, is what they told her when she was processed. The list goes on, of course. The contents of her pockets and bag were carefully sealed into white containers and labelled, and she watched as they did that. You’ll get them back, the Cardassian said warmly once everything had been taken away. She nodded. It felt strange without her earring.
She’s never been here before, but she’s heard others speak of this place. A friend who was ordained with her once said that she’d met a prylar from a neighbouring monastery here during one of her stays. That was the last anyone saw of him, as far as she knows, and she wonders if he’s still here somewhere, in the smoother than smooth walls, or in the bright white light that never fully switches off, even when the prisoners are supposed to sleep.
She’s hungry and she can’t remember when she last ate - Ranjen Ullip gave her a packed lunch before she left the monastery but she doesn’t think she ate it. The thought of it rotting, buried somewhere on a Cardassian shelf, is terrible because it could make her laugh, and if she starts laughing now she’s not sure she’ll be able to stop before her belly splits open.
Her purple coat is folded neatly beside her on the bunk. It’s warm in here, like it is in all buildings designed for Cardassian use, and she took it off almost immediately after the cell door locked behind her. Now, she feels the fabric with the palm of her hand; feels the pattern of it, the rough stitching offering some grip in this total sensation of slipping. She doesn’t yet know where they’ll send her, whether she’s going to be let go with a warning or sent elsewhere, but they’ll take her clothes soon, too.
There is no story, only scenes, crudely cut out of whatever fabric should have been woven in that place. She walks, slowly, and the soles of her shoes make no noise on the hard floor. She lies on the bunk using her coat as a pillow and recites scripture in silence, gets to verse twelve hundred and seventy six of Aklon’s Sixth Prophecy before her memory fails her. Once she tries to tell herself stories and finds that she can’t think of any.
After the first dimming of the lights she is given food by a Cardassian she doesn’t recognise. Half of it is rotten. She says the Blessing for the meal at dawn and eats what she can, and they come and collect the leftovers soon after. There is no way for her to speak to the others and she doesn’t try to.
Sometimes, when she’s lying down, her head barely cushioned by her coat, she can hear noises in the corridor outside her door, footsteps, voices, and a clicking noise she doesn’t know how to parse. It doesn’t seem to be regular, although it’s hard to tell without a clock or a window; all she knows is that she never hears it at meal times. It’s a cold, brilliant sound, small to her ears but big enough to be heard through the cell door; it comes and goes, and sometimes it’s closer. It isn’t the lock on the door. The lock makes a mechanical whirring sound.
A new verse of Aklon’s Sixth comes to her mind and she receives it as a gift from outside, wherever that may be. The walls are smooth under her fingertips and she walks sometimes, reciting one word with every step, and she’s careful not to move her lips as each verse transforms under her tongue. Careful, too, when she has to use the toilet.
The nights become cold and she puts her coat back on to sleep. Sleep - it doesn’t come easy: not because of the ever-glowing ceiling light, but because she can’t find it in her to sleep. Instead she meditates, and indeed, the Cardassians can’t tell the difference. The times when they barge in to wake her up are completely random.
Time doesn’t stop, or even slow. Instead it moves further away, blurring just at the edge of her sight, as though she’s become unable to correctly assert distances between objects and can’t tell where it is when she tries to grab it. Sometimes it’s more like an eel, quick and soft, teasing the back of her hand in its flight, and she doesn’t wade after it: there is no sense in moving further when she is certain that there is no change to be found in any direction.
She becomes impatient, and her legs become painful, restless, and she’s afraid now that they will start running against her will when there is nowhere to run to but the wall of this cube they’re in. She ponders asking for time outside in the courtyard when the next meal is brought, imagines herself asking the question, picks each word very carefully so that the rhythm of each sentence is agreeable; the Cardassian’s replies are curt but not completely devoid of melody, and she is granted an hour in the grey spring sun. The courtyard is much bigger than she thought; one end of it, the furthest from where she was told to stay, doesn’t even have a wall. She can see down into the city, where the market is being held, and she can smell the plush, warm scent of fresh ikri buns and yamok sauce and fruit. Weeds grow in the interstices between the flagstones under her feet.
The lights dim, and her sleep is light. She’s woken up by that clicking sound again, and immediately her ears sharpen and she listens furiously. There are no voices and no footsteps. Whatever makes that sound must be floating down the corridor, touching no surface whatsoever but still producing that clear, hollow sound; half-there and half-not, a monstrous apparition like she’s never borne witness to before. A giant severed hand, outstretched, as though asking for something, demanding it, and she lies very still on her back so that she won’t be heard, so that it won’t stop by her door. It can’t be her - it mustn’t be.
She walks, a straight line now instead of the circles she used to do. The texts swell.
She’s had to fold her coat over once more because it smells. When sleep takes her she lies on her back and she wakes up the same, and the pain from it is sometimes barely tolerable; she stretches, then, and tries to walk through it.
She doesn’t know why she eventually stops walking - if it’s because of the pain, or the exhaustion, or because she simply doesn’t want to anymore. They didn’t tell her she wasn’t allowed to walk but it seems too big a task now, too much to ask of herself. She hears the clicking noise more often now, too - during the meals, during the day, and once it starts while she’s pissing and she can’t hold it and pisses right through it, and she stares at the door until she’s done. She has to slide her hands under her thighs afterwards: her fingers have gone ice cold.
She plays games with herself. Boredom, between those walls, is not that different, and she welcomes any distraction - anything to pull her from the tepid stillness of thought she can’t help but wallow in. Ranjen Ygris used to keep herself busy with exercise, the stern voice of the novices’ superior reminds her; and she wonders exactly how long Ranjen Ygris exercised before she sank back onto her bunk and just waited. When a Cardassian comes to bring food she drinks in every second of it, watches every step he takes beyond the threshold of the cell door because those are the only times she isn’t alone in here, and when he’s gone and all that’s left from his presence is the tray with stinking rotten food on it she says the blessing for the meal and wonders what he is eating, back where he is.
They come in one night and drag her to the office where she was first processed. Nothing has changed, she thinks, but then she didn’t really pay attention when she was first brought in. The same Cardassian, the one who spoke warmly back then, is sitting behind the desk, stylus in hand - busy.
“Adami Winn.” He blandly reads off a PADD. “You’re being transferred to the Jori-Fughas Detention Center to await sentencing.”
She’s been wearing her coat at night again lately and she thanks the Prophets for it as she wraps herself tighter in it, ignoring the smell. The two guards who woke her stand close behind her.
“That’s in the Eastern Province”, she says - and the grain in her voice startles her.
The Cardassian looks up. One of his nails ticks a rhythm against the stylus he’s holding.
“It is.”
There is a question in there but she isn’t expected to answer - she wasn’t expected to say anything at all.
“Your family will be notified”, he says to the PADD. “The date of your sentencing hearing has not yet been set. The transport leaves now.”
She stands up and the guards take a step forward, and the Cardassian behind the desk turns to another PADD on his desk. They take her down the corridor she passed on her way in and it’s empty, empty of everything, and the walls here are smooth too, she doesn’t need to touch them to know. She thinks of the prylar from the neighbouring monastery and wonders if they share this moment; if he, too, was walked down this hall, if he, too, had the weight of two Cardassian soldiers in his back. The bright light from the ceiling reflects on the floor like moonshine on the tip of a wave and the cold water pools around her ankle as she walks, deeper and deeper - until the ocean swallows her whole.