The Boy who Circled Time

The white lights, lingering above, glared through dirty glass of their bulbs, flooding the grey single tables, the grey food, and the grey floor below awash, seemingly revealing all. The spoons were grey, the plates were grey, and the chairs were grey. Everything was grey.The engineer's eyes were grey, his standard issue shirt and trousers were grey, and a few grey hairs sat in the overgrown ,bushy ginger cloud which lay atop his head. His sallow skin, once tanned and always flushing red, now held a grey hue. The bags under his eyes, however, were a staunch black.His head hung downwards, single-mindedly scooping the grey mush of his lunch into his mouth, swallowing without tasting and without thinking. He watched all the blobs of different shades of grey, from the strained corners of his eyes, ignoring the burn, documenting them in his mind to analyse later.The central food hall of one of the North Western Sýnnefa military research facility was near si

Every night at 20:00, the same two guards waited at the west block dorms to scan the same ID cards to allow the same individual prisoners into their identical rooms for the night. They would then patrol the area until midnight, taking the first shift.The engineer looked at his shoes as he walked, right hand in his pocket, before widening his eyes, freezing. He used his left hand to check his other pocket and found nothing, swallowing back nothing, throat dry. He checked the pockets of his trousers and found nothing again, shaking and sweating. The guard, hand stretched out, ready to take his ID card, stood, impassively, shoulders relaxed.The other guard was sharp, extremely angular, and had a long, stretched neck, bulging with nerves, and veins. He towered over the engineer, forcing him to gaze into the abyss of the black visor, stark against the vision of greys which made up the walls, floors, and uniforms of all the people."Could you confirm your identity?"

When he awoke, Red_Two found himself shivering, laying down on his stomach, on a soft, albeit cold, bed. He didn't feel a blanket over him, and he could feel a cold breeze on his feet, but not his legs. Without opening his eyes, he slowly inched his right hand towards his torso. He felt the intersection of two lines of bandages. An engulfing warmth surrounded his hand, and moved it back to his side.He was alive. Red_Two blinked his eyes open slowly, looking down at his pillow."I know you're awake," an unknown voice rang, slightly high pitched, light and cheery, definitively male, and speaking in English."I'm awake," Red_Two replied, voice slightly raspy, turning his head towards the right, in direction of the voice. He was on a bed with white pillows and sheets, with a bedside cabinet and chair next to him.On that chair was a man with an average build, matching his own, in a lilac shirt and dark blue trousers - part of a matching suit with the shiny,

"Should I kill you?" echoed Red_Two's hollow voice, as Emmet strolled the room with breakfast, balancing a tray of two porridge bowls and spoons on one arm. Despite the entire night of tranquiliser induced sleep, Red_Two looked exhausted, pulling himself out of the blanket shroud he had made himself, like life itself was a taxing effort.Emmet laughed, then smiled brightly at him, shutting the door, filing away the comment to analyse later, during his mandatory nanobot project shift.He twirled around to place the tray on the table. "I didn't know what fruit you liked, so I put a little bit of everything in here, then added honey to sweeten the pot, and get your blood sugar levels up," Emmet explained cheerily, bouncing over to pull the curtains open, flicking open the window to let the morning sea breeze run amok.Red_Two shivered and pulled himself under the blanket hoping to shield himself from the cold wind, and the world. Emmet turned back to him and watche

When Doctor Johnstone arrived to fix the damage of the hug, she first glared at Emmet, accusing and without saying a word. This time, Emmet was sure that she was going make good on her prior threats to put laxatives in his coffee.Doctor Johnstone had resewn the torn stitches on Red_Two's upper back and then tightened the bandages to the point of restricting his movement, pulled out his IV and had conducted her tests, silently, unreactive to any of the duo's attempts to stutter out apologies.The whole process took twenty minutes. Twenty long, awkward, silent minutes where not even the howling wind outside dared to disturb her.Red_Two looked down, despondent at upsetting her. She had moved him back to his original position whenever he shifted to alleviate the pain of his cramping legs, unrepenting, regardless of his apologetic expression.Emmet sat still on his chair, with his own legs crossed in solitude for the full twenty minutes, taking every opportu