It's been four days. Four days, just 345600 seconds, give or take, since they installed a camera in the tiny space that makes up my cell. I don't understand it. The camera is always there, blinking at me, in my peripheral vision, constantly reminding me that its here. My watcher. Reminding me I am never alone, not here, never here. Its as plain a brand as the one between my shoulders. But it hasn't done anything, not that I expected the camera to do anything. Life has just gone on like normal, if you can even call this sorry excuse of existence life. The guards still march by on their daily torture walks, innocent victims are still dragged down the halls, their screams piercing the air. And I have been here, fairly un-bothered, except for the small meals that are pushed in the door every day.

         It really puzzles me.

         I suppose it shouldn't. I mean, puzzlement and pain seems to be a motto around here. But with the great spells of dizziness I have been having recently, on top of the new camera and scarily unscathed body, my nerves have been extremely short.

         The waves of dizziness I've been experiencing are like nothing I've ever felt before. Sure, I have been dizzy before. In fact, I'm almost constantly dizzy and lightheaded, both due to constant blood loss and lack of proper nutrition. But these spells... they're like nothing I have ever even heard about before. I not only feel dizzy and lightheaded, but sometimes I will lose control of my body, for however brief moments, and my vision will go completely dark, and then I'll wake up on the cool floor after who-knows-how-long.

         Maybe I should feel frightened, fear for my life. Isn't that what sane, rational people would do? But I wasn't sane or rational. The fact of the matter is; I wasn't frightened. Not even slightly. I actually... craved the darkness, for some strange reason. I liked the feeling of losing control of my body, just letting it do whatever for those brief moments. So that I didn't have to feel anything anymore. It was just me, my subconscious mind, and blank, soothing darkness.

         Maybe I wasn't going crazy. Maybe I already was.

         That wasn't all that I felt during those days, though. Sometimes, I seemed to have slightly more acute senses. Like the time I heard the impossible and located that tiny camera. There were other incidents like that. I experienced the same heightened sense of hearing two other times, once when I heard the dripping of water that I realized wasn't coming from my cell, but from the one down the hall from mine, and another when I was jolted awake with a nearly deafening roar in my ears. It took me until the sound faded to realize that the roar was just the electricity, rushing through their pipes like normal, and yet, for that brief moment, the sound was strangely enhanced. And then there was one time, after a partially brutal fainting scene, when I opened my eyes and could have sworn saw through the ceiling to the pipes and wires above. But it was gone when I blinked, leaving me to believe I might just have been dreaming that particular incident. Dream or not, it freaked me out. The entire "heightened senses" thing freaked me out, and every day I had more and more questions, the most searing one happening to be what did they do to me?

         Luckily, I'm pushed from those gloomy thoughts when the echoing sound of boots reaches my ears from down the hall. I lift my head from the cot and try to get my eyes to focus on my cell door. Among the boot stomps, faint grunting and thrashing can be heard. Which isn't surprising, considering where I was. I was just about to lay my head back down when the thrashing and grunting reached a peek, the sound coming from right outside my cell door, and among the boots and thrashing came the sound of a cell door being opened. This had me rushing to sit up straight, expecting the heavy concrete of the cell door to swing open at any moment. When it didn't, I slowly lowering my feet to the ground. The boots echoed again briefly as the guards moved, then came the sound of muffled grunts and a dull thud, followed by the scraping close of a cell door then marching boot clanks as the guards walked away.

         And then suddenly, a small but strong voice rang out, "Let me out of here! Where am I? Let me out!"

         I pushed my weak body to its feet and scuffled towards the door. Making sure to stay a safe enough distance back so that I wouldn't be seen, I peeked through the bars. In the cell across from mine peeked a small face. All I saw was wild red hair and wide frightened eyes before I quickly drew back. Well, that was new. They had placed a new guinea pig in the cell across from mine, a cell that had been unoccupied since the girl before, the one that had given me the completely vague warning during my first few days, had never returned to her cell. It had been empty for almost 4 years now. Why did they suddenly decide to fill it now, after all these years?

         I scoffed. Another question that would probably never get an answer.

         The girl, who before had been repeatedly throwing herself against the cell door and screaming for someone to let her out, suddenly grows quiet. "H...hello? Is there someone there?"

         I quickly drew in my breath. I had forgotten that the empty cells amplify sound, making something as soft as a simple scoff echo in the silence. I freeze in place, barely daring to even breath, silently wishing for the girl to forget any sound, to go back to her desperate attempts to get out. I didn't want to talk to her, someone as new as she who didn't yet know the horrors of this place. I didn't want to have to tell her. I didn't want to be the girl that dashes hope, but I also didn't want to claim everything was alright when it wasn't. This scenario reminded me far to much of my own first experience. But now, I was the one across the hall. The bringer of doom. The dasher of hope.

         The broken one.

         No. I wouldn't accept that. I wasn't broken. I would never break. I swore it then and I'll swear it now. I would never let these shallow walls and mindless zombies break me.

         So with that, I took a deep breath and stepped back up to the cell door.

         The girl that peered back at me through the bars of her cell door had to be short, because only the top half of her head and face was visible. From what I could see, though, she was young. At the very most 13, with wide hazel eyes and a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her hair was bright red, shining brightly in the light illuminating from her cell, and stuck up all over crazily. For a second, all I could do was stare at her hair, watching the way it caught the light and reflected it dully back, and think, so that's what hairs suppose to look like... Which was an absolutely crazy thing to think about, so I shook my head to clear that thought away, and looked back at the girls face. A pang went through my body as I did, leaving my head reeling and one odd thought racing through my brain. I know her... The eyes and crazy hair, even the freckles on her nose... its all so familiar...

         But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

         But apparently I wasn't the only one that recognized the other. The girls eyes had widened, showing a full circle of white around her iris, and her mouth, if I could have seen it, was undoubtedly touching the floor. But that was nothing compared to the girls voice, so full of shock, fear, and... was that... excitement? "River?"

         "Umm..." I said, unease rippling through my body. "Do I know you?"

         "River, it's me!" The girl exclaimed, her eyes now definitely filled with excitement. "Jordan!"

         When this statement didn't get an immediate reaction from me except for a raising of my brows, the girl swallowed audibly, and slowly terror and disbelief dawned in her eyes. "It's me... Your sister."