The door slams open awakening the man form his slumber. A platoon of guards swarm inside the room. Their leader, a decorated war veteran with scars that only tell a fraction of the horrors this man has went through, stands at the edge of the bed. He glares down onto the half-awaken man with a demeanor that seems as though he is about to kill the man.
"You are coming with me."
The man clicks his tongue and mutters to himself, "choice my ass."
The man gets on his feet and the guards escort him to his new home.
"So where are we going?"
The guards remain silent. It seems they are merely bringing the man to another room in the building. But a transfer in this special prison is no trivial matter. The man's new room is on the fourth floor on the north wing, the opposite side of the complex.
"You will be staying here from now on."
The guards leads him inside and leave.
At first glance the room looks no different. The furniture placement is the same, the bathroom placement is the same, they even hung the same exact picture next to the bathroom door. The first difference he notices is that the windows in this room do not cover the entire wall but instead they are two meters above ground with bars. There's a ladder next to the bed that lets the man climb up to the windows.
"At least they are letting me open the window and not suffocate in stale air."
When the man gets close enough to his bed, he seems that across from his bed where there used to be a couch in his old room, there's another empty bed. The man pays little attention to it. A roommate he thinks, that's going to be new. There is little to get accustomed to. There is no use in worrying what treatment awaits him in this new room. After all, he can do nothing even if they stuffed him inside an iron maiden right now he could not resist. So the man goes to his new bed and falls asleep.
It is Monday morning. Generally the man does not wake up until the caretakers come clean the room and serve him lunch. But in this new room he does not know what to expect so the man wakes up earlier than usual. After three hours or so, when he usually wakes up, his door opens.
"I thought you had school during the week."
"School's over."
"So everything up until now has been a lie?"
"You don't sound too shocked about that."
"Of course not, it was too good to be true."
"I will be staying with you from now on."
The girl puts a suitcase under the other bed. She then begins to clean this new room for the man as she had done so for him in the other room.
"You guys sure spend a lot of effort in killing a guy nowadays."
The man's interest in the girl grows heavily. Whereas before he only probed and questioned the girl because of her strange motivations, now he is interested in knowing who this girl really is and what her superiors' plans are.
"I wasn't told to kill you. They just told me to stop going to school and assigned me to this room. Besides you should know better than anyone, no one gets killed here."
Indeed, the Kaph Palace is a prison made for those who the king deems a threat but due to the status or power of the "offender" the king could not simply kill the person. Many of these prisoners has been tortured to the point where they are bedridden for the rest of their lives before Kaph was established.
"So then, my new lovely roommate, I never did get your name."
"Joan."
"Is that a lie too?"
"Does it matter?"
"Well Joan, I am Elektor."
"Oh I know who you are."
The man lets out a chuckle. "Of course you do."
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