Bea tries to muster a smile as she approaches the cell of Prisoner 011.
“Luca? Are you in there? It’s time for your final projection…”
“Yes ma’am, I’m here!” Luca peeps his head around the door to his cell, before stepping out fully and adjusting his straitjacket. “Should we get going?” He sounded too chipper for someone about to go into a projection, but perhaps he was simply putting on a brave face.
“Yes, please.” The boy almost gets a chuckle out of her, but her mild amusement at his cheery demeanor is heavily outweighed by the memory of his past two projections, and the lingering dread of whatever secrets could be hiding in his third. “Is there anything else you’d like to… tell us, before we start?”
Luca frowns a little, thinking and considering carefully… is there anything he can think of that would be important?
“I don’t think so…” Although Bea’s apprehension clearly is making him a little more nervous, and he silently reaches toward her like he wants to grip onto her sleeve. “I just wanna say sorry, if it’s uh… bad?”
“Ha… it’s not really your fault if it is bad, right? We’re the ones intruding, after all…” Bea chews on her lip as she starts to move towards the projection chamber– if he wants to cling to someone, it doesn’t seem like she’ll stop him. “I just hope this round will be the last of it.”
—
Again, Bea shoos you away so the chosen prisoner can be guided down the long hallway alone. By now it’s clear this walk is the only thing the wardens are so particular about keeping the prisoner alone for. Once they reach the courtroom, they don’t bother to keep you away as they set the prisoner up in the burnt chair as properly as they can. Perhaps it’s not worth the effort. Perhaps how you behave in the projections is a test in itself.
Regardless of their motives, a few of you make the trek yourselves today, finding the hallway only marginally less lonely with your company. The walls still seem stifling, the unnatural murmurs pressing in on you tighter. Sometimes you swear you glimpse a face or beckoning arm in the wall. Just tricks of the light.
But the courtroom is wide open, if barren, and there’s not much else to be uncomfortable about until the prisoner of the day is secured in place. A strange…—machine? Somehow enough of it remains in shadow to obscure any useful details—emerges from the wall to hover around the prisoner’s head, then everything but you and the wardens is swallowed by utter darkness. There’s a low murmur somewhere behind you.
It only lasts a moment, though. Once the shadow subsides, you find yourself seemingly somewhere else…
