Work Text:
Floor Manager Zinska Sano’s cell didn’t have a door. It didn’t need one. Zinska could take one step out of his cell whenever he wanted. Exactly one step. Some of his cellmates had taken that step, in fact, over Zinska’s many years at Narkina. Two amps of electricity to the heart was hardly painless, but compared to neverending sentences and hours of brutal labor… well. The tunqstoid steel floors hummed softly, a gentle, menacing reminder. There’s only ever been one way out of the Narkina 5 Detention Facility.
Hot floors, the guards called them, when they unfeelingly flicked them on at their clean, white control desks. They’d lean back in their soft chairs, kick their heavy insulated boots onto the edge of the desk, and casually switch the floors off and on. Cold floors, when it was time for Zinska to march his shift to the work floor. Hot floors, when it was time to stay in the cells. Or when it was time to punish someone.
Zinska looked at his bedside clock. 128. The number of days left in his sentence. It would go up again soon, he knew. He had never made it below 100 before some new policy extended his time at Narkina. He scowled, turning away from the clock. Only newbies and fools check their sentences. He’d learned a long time ago not to even think about the number. That’s how he became Floor Manager. That’s how he survived.
The intercom crackled to life. The men across the hall sat up, irritated at being awoken in the middle of the night.
A familiar voice came from the hall speakers, but not the one Zinska was expecting.
“My name is Kino Loy. I’m the day shift manager on level 5.”
Zinska got up, alert. How had Kino gotten on the intercom?
“I’m speaking to you from the command center, on level 8. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.”
Zinska frowned. A prison break? Surely that was suicide! No one left Narkina.
“How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us,” Kino continued, steady voice broken only by the crackling of the intercom. By then, everyone in the hall was looking to Zinska. Their Floor Manager.
“We have deactivated all the floors in the facility,” Kino’s voice rang out again.
He looked down the hall. Rows upon rows of boys, eyes wide. Not daring to hope. Not daring to test the floor. When Zinska had first climbed his way to Floor Manager, he’d hoped to be kinder than his predecessor. He knew better than that, now. Narkina doesn’t tolerate kindness.
“All floors are cold.”
There’s only ever been one way out of the Narkina 5 Detention Facility. Shift Manager Zinska Sano stepped out of his cell.