(Geez, its been a really long time since I actually touched this. Well, time waits for no man, so might as well see where things continue from here.)
For practical purposes, the two cells were actually one conjoined cell, with a glass wall separating it into two distinct sides.
A disheveled black-haired boy with blue eyes that long had the light sapped out of them lies on one side, staring up at a blank white ceiling with nothing indicating conscious thought. His lanky limbs splay out of his cot like wet noodles, lying limp and turgid by his sides. On the other side, an equally disheveled ginger, face filled with more freckles than a sea urchin has spines, plays around with his fingers, scratches away at whatever bits of dead skin he can find. His body is filled with ugly, crimson rashes from having worn away at every last patch he could find, but he finds it hard to care. It gives him some stimulation, though he barely feels any pain whenever he tries opening up a dried wound anymore.
They had long forgotten what time of day it was. There was no clock to find, no sun to follow along its path, just the constant, blaring light of the LCD bulbs up above, that never wavered or dimmed. The only real way they had to tell time was the food rations that were slipped in through the slit ad specific, regimented hours. They were always the same three things: a bowl of moist porridge for breakfast, a single fruit with some beef jerky and salad for lunch, and some weird, pasty pink thing that was probably meant to be chicken for dinner. They always ate them without a single word and let the ache in their stomach give them an approximate guess of what time of day it was supposed to be. Otherwise, they slept when they felt tired, and they woke up whenever they felt like it.
This was all that life in the cells had to offer. There was nothing to hear but their own thoughts, nothing to touch but their own bodies, nothing to feel except the padded white walls closing in on them bit by bit with every pulse of their heartbeat. The only real solace that they had was the fact that there was an opening in the glass wall where sound could come through, allowing the two inmates to talk to one another whenever they pleased. Of course, there was only so much to talk about when your entire world was just one. single. solitary. cell.
"Danny." the ginger asks.
"Hm?"
"Do you remember how we got here?"
"...is that a trick question?"
"Answer it."
"...no."
"Neither do I. Fucked up, isn't it."
"Does it matter?"
"I don't know. I want it to."
Another silent pause of many settles over them. So much has already been said between them that its almost maddening. Their walls had been worn down to the point of being tiny, discarded pebbles left on the side of the road. Every last secret, every last want and desire had already been revealed and dissected several times over. There was absolutely nothing left to dig through, but they still needed to have something to talk about. Otherwise, they would lose themselves to... lose themselves to....
Before the silence could consume them entirely, Franz blurts out an impromptu thought:
"Do you think there's someone out there who misses us?"
"If we're here, then they already wrote us off as good as dead."
"...you'd think they'd at least kill us."
"They already pushed their luck keeping us here for life."
"But what we did had to be real bad if we ended up here, right? So, why not just do it?"
"...waiting for us to come of age, I guess." Danny would start shedding tears, but his reservoir had long run empty. His ducts were dried-out, calcified pricks at the corners of his eyes now, and they would be for as long as he lived.
"...that's fucked up."
"Yeah..."
Before another silence could come and smother them with the weight of their solitude, a sudden burst of light appears from the corner of Danny's room, before exploding int o brilliant array of colors. Both boys screech in pure surprise and terror, trying to cover their eyes from the overwhelming stimulation heading towards them all at once.
When the light finally cleared, they slowly parted their eyes to see a strange grey rectangle resting just under Danny's sink. It has all kinds of strange colorful buttons and doodads on it that neither boy could even hope to recognize. For several minutes, the two stare completely transfixed at the strange device. In the static dullness of the cell, it was like an oasis in an endless desert.
"...t-the hell is that?" Franz asks, his voice raspy from having gone an octave higher than it was used to.
"I dunno. It's... a thing."
"A thing?"
"Yeah." Danny slowly approaches the unknown object like a deer or a rabbit, waiting to see whether it would pounce or try biting him. "That's... good, right. It's something."
"Yeah. Something's good." Owlishly, Franz approaches the glass wall with hobbling, graceless steps, planting his face firmly against it. "Wanna see what it is?"
Neither of them needed to say anything to know the answer. Danny picks up the strange-looking device and plays around with it, finding that it's:
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