Bellātor | BELLAMY BLAKE

one

ᴏɴᴇ : ᴛʜᴇ sᴋʏ ʙᴏx
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Clara raises her knuckles to the wall and knocks in a series with short pauses and long pauses between each knock. She rests her left ear against the wall and strains to hear a response.

Just as she is about to give up and resume being bored in her cell, she feels small vibrations against her ear as someone knocks on the their side of the wall. She concentrates on the beats of the knocks, mentally spelling the word. When the knocks cease, she puts the letters together in her mind and smiles.

Since getting arrested and thrown into the Sky Box at sixteen last year, Clara has only been able to communicate with Rez through morse code. It's something she taught him out of boredom when they were in Factory Station. The two were best friends, but they never had a use for morse code since they weren't even in the same classes at school, Rez being two years younger than Clara. However, now that they have neighboring cells, they communicate with knocks daily. If Rez's cell was not next door to Clara's, she'd definitely would have gone crazy in the year since they've been locked up.

On the Ark, the space station that orbits around a radiation-soaked earth, every crime is punishable by death. Those who are under eighteen are put into the Sky Box to await their deaths that inevitably come on their eighteenth birthday. Those who are older than eighteen are executed by being sent out into space without any protection, more popularly known as floating. With Clara's eighteenth birthday fast approaching in the next month, her fears of being sent out into the void multiplies with every passing day. Rez is only fifteen, so he is more worried about Clara's execution than his own for now. When they get a glimpse of each other during meal times, Rez flashes Clara goofy expressions to make her smile to distract her from her nearing demise.

The silent conversation between Clara and Rez on each side of the wall is far from the depressing topic of floating. Rez says a joke from his side of the wall by knocking on the metal surface. He pauses for an unnecessarily long time for dramatic effect before saying the punch line, which has Clara laughing for the first time in a few days. It's moments like these that make her time in the Sky Box not majorly suck.

Clara is about respond when her cell door slams open, the loud clang of the metal door hitting the wall starting her.

Two male guards, one short and stocky and the other tall and frail, emerge from the hall. They both have their electric batons out, prepared if Clara does not cooperate.

"Prisoner 462, face the wall," the short guard commands in monotone.

Clara frantically gives the wall a few warning knocks before standing up straight and keeping her dark brown eyes trained on the wall. Visits from guards are not unusual, they usually come in once every two weeks for inspection. Clara's cell is always checked before Rez's, so she alerts him every time. Something about today feels off, though. Although her sense of time in the Sky Box is warped, it still seems like only a few days ago their cells were inspected. 

When the tall guard sets a black box on the small table beside Clara's bed, she comes to the realization that it truly isn't an inspection after all.

"What's going on?" She asks, mouth dry and heart thumping wildly.

"Quiet," the short guard demands, effectively shutting Clara up.

She glances out of the corner of her eye and watches as the lanky one opens the box, taking out a metal wrist band with needles sticking out. When the guards approach Clara, she quickly averts her eyes and returns her frightened stare to the wall in front of her.