Fourth day.
Which made it sound almost ceremonial. The kind of phrasing people used for wars or fasting rituals, not prison schedules.
The alarm at seven in the morning. The overhead bulb at seven in the morning. Roll call at eight, accompanied by the guard's two-minute route down the block and the standard procedural voice reading numbers in the same tone a machine would use if machines ever got bored.
Nyx stood beside Proxy at the cell door and watched the far junction during count.
Empty.
The warden had been there last night. He wasn't here this morning. Which meant the junction had reverted into being merely a junction again, grey and lit and occupied only by the corridor extending past it.
Strange how quickly a place stopped being architecture and became anticipation once a person attached themselves to it.
She logged the absence the same way she logged presences. As information.
