u/Gunprofit1177

​

ACT I

The Legend of Cell #117

They say Prison Cell #117 is empty.

That’s what the paperwork claims. That’s what the prison would tell anyone on the outside if the question ever came up. An unused cell. A number that doesn’t mean anything.

Inside the walls, numbers matter.

The story always begins the same way. An inmate crosses a line bad enough that no one bothers arguing about it. Maybe he left another man broken in the infirmary. Maybe the other man never walked out at all. Maybe he was caught moving things he wasn’t supposed to move, or trying to carve a way out of a place that doesn’t let go.

Whatever the reason, the process is quiet.

No hearings. No raised voices.

Just a walk down a hallway most prisoners never see.

One night. That’s all it takes. When morning count comes around, the guards opened the door and found them dead. No screams reported. No signs of a struggle. Just a body where a living man had its last heartbeat.

After that, the story spread.

One night in Cell #117, and you don’t come back.

Once, a prisoner claimed he saw proof. He had been on cleaning duty late, mopping a forgotten stretch of corridor. He said a guard came out of the hallway that leads to #117, dragging a body behind him. No blood. No bruises. No marks at all. Just a man who wasn’t breathing anymore.

Nothing was ever said about it. The hallway was locked down. By morning, the prison moved on.

Some call Cell #117 haunted. Others say it’s cursed.

Some say it’s all a conspiracy something the wardens made up to keep inmates afraid, to keep them in line. But even the ones who believe that finish the thought the same way.

"Once you go in, you don’t come out".

The rules are understood, even if they’ve never been written down. Hurt another inmate badly enough. Kill one. Get caught trafficking drugs. Try to escape. Do something that makes the guards decide you’re no longer worth dealing with.

That’s when the number finds you.

Guards and prisoners and few nurses know about Cell #117. The outside world doesn’t. Families aren’t told. Reports stay clean. If someone disappears from the population, there’s always an official explanation ready.

Here, though, people remember.

The voice telling the story slows, grows rougher, like it’s been used too many times over too many years. The sounds of the prison bleed back in metal doors, distant shouting, the constant movement of men who can’t go anywhere.

The narrator exhales and stops.

“That’s the story,” the old inmate says, finally revealing himself as he looks at the new fish sitting across from him. “Now you know it.”

And just like that, Cell #117 isn’t just a legend anymore.

It’s a warning.

ACT II

Skeptic

For the first few days, the story doesn’t bother him.

Prisons are full of them warnings dressed up as legends, meant to scare the new ones into behaving. He’s heard worse. In his last place, stories were louder, bloodier, and usually false. Fear didn’t come from whispers there. It came from fists and shanks and men with nothing left to lose.

This prison doesn’t feel like that.

At first, he assumes it’s coincidence. New routine. New faces. Different rules. But as the days pass, something starts to stand out.

There are no real fights.

Arguments flare up sometimes voices raised, shoulders squared but they don’t finish. Someone always backs down. Someone always steps away. Even men with reputations keep themselves in check, like they’re aware of an invisible line they refuse to cross.

He watches it happen again and again.

No one explains it. No one needs to.

Curiosity gets the better of him.

He starts asking questions not directly, never all at once. A comment here. A half-joke there. Some inmates confirm the story without hesitation. Others shut down the moment the number comes up, eyes shifting, voices lowering. A few offer theories instead of facts.

One man says Cell #117 is just a hole no cameras, no records, no witnesses.

Another swears it doesn't exist, but people disappear anyway.

Someone else laughs it off, calls it a scare tactic. A conspiracy.

“Problem with that,” the man adds quietly, “is nobody ever comes back to prove it wrong.”

The guards are worse.

He mentions the number once during a routine interaction, nothing accusatory. Just curiosity. The response is immediate too sharp, too rehearsed. Conversation over. Move along. Don’t ask again.

That’s when the doubt settles in.

The strangest part isn’t the fear.

It’s the order.

This prison runs smoother than any place he’s been. Not because it’s better staffed or stricter but because the inmates do most of the work themselves. Rules are followed without being enforced. Respect is given without being demanded.

It’s like everyone understands the cost of forgetting where they are.

He thinks back to the prison he came from the noise, the chaos, the constant edge. That was where he tried to escape. That place felt alive, even when it was dangerous.

This place feels controlled.

As the weeks go on, another detail surfaces.

The legend is old. Older than most of the men repeating it. It’s been around long enough to turn into something solid, something accepted.

But in recent years?

Only two inmates have been sent to Cell #117.

That’s it.

Two names spoken quietly. No dates. No details. Just the certainty that neither one came back.

That bothers him more than if it happened every month.

It means the cell doesn’t need to be used often.

It means the threat is enough.

By the time he reaches that conclusion, his mind is already moving elsewhere.

Staying here means living under a shadow that never lifts. Whether Cell #117 is real or not, it doesn’t matter anymore. The prison has been built around it. Everyone knows the line. Everyone avoids it.

Everyone except him.

He’s tried to escape before in his old prison that's why he is there. Failed once. Learned from it.

And as he starts watching routines, guard rotations, blind spots, he knows exactly what he’s risking.

Trying to escape is one of the fastest ways to disappear into that hallway.

Still, he starts planning.

Quietly. Carefully.

ACT III

Sentence

Months passed, slow and deliberate. The fish worked in silence, his movements measured and unseen. Every day, a nail loosened, a hinge tested, a door studied. Guards’ patterns, shift rotations, blind spots he memorized them all. Every moment of patience brought him closer to one thing: freedom.

Finally, the night came. The prison was quiet, almost too quiet. He pried the last nail free, eased the door open, and slipped into the corridor beyond. Step by step, careful and silent, he moved through stairwells and hallways he had mapped in his mind for months.

The roof was in reach. Fresh air whispered promises he hadn’t felt in years. He could almost taste it.

And then hands grabbed him. Strong, unyielding, coming from the shadows he had trusted. He struggled, but it was no use. No alarms sounded. No one yelled. The response was immediate, mechanical, perfect. They didn’t speak, didn’t explain, didn’t hesitate.

Dragged down a hallway he had never seen, the lights dimmed and the walls pressed closer. Each step was measured, deliberate, filled with dread. He could hear his own heartbeat echo in the stillness.

The cell opened. He was shoved inside. Darkness swallowed him, thick and absolute.

"They say Prison Cell #117 is empty.

That’s what the paperwork claims. That’s what the prison would tell anyone on the outside if the question ever came up. An unused cell. A number that doesn’t mean anything.

Inside the walls, numbers matter.

The story always begins the same way. An inmate crosses a line bad enough that no one bothers arguing about it. Maybe he left another man broken in the infirmary. Maybe the other man never walked out at all. Maybe he was caught moving things he wasn’t supposed to move, or trying to carve a way out of a place that doesn’t let go.

Whatever the reason, the process is quiet.

No hearings. No raised voices.

Just a walk down a hallway most prisoners never see.

He was sent to Cell #117.

One night. That’s all it took. When morning count came around, the guards opened the door and found him dead. No screams reported. No signs of a struggle. Just a body where a living man had been hours earlier.

After that, the story spread.

One night in Cell #117, and you don’t come back.

Once, a prisoner claimed he saw proof. He had been on cleaning duty late, mopping a forgotten stretch of corridor. He said a guard came out of the hallway that leads to Cell #117, dragging a body behind him. No blood. No bruises. No marks at all. Just a man who wasn’t breathing anymore.

Nothing was ever said about it. The hallway was locked down. By morning, the prison moved on.

Some call Cell #117 haunted. Others say it’s cursed.

Some say it’s all a conspiracy—something the prison made up to keep inmates afraid, to keep them in line. But even the ones who believe that finish the thought the same way.

Once you go in, you don’t come out.

The rules are understood, even if they’ve never been written down. Hurt another inmate badly enough. Kill one. Get caught trafficking drugs. Try to escape. Do something that makes the guards decide you’re no longer worth dealing with.

That’s when the number finds you.

Only guards and prisoners know about Cell #117. The outside world doesn’t. Families aren’t told. Reports stay clean. If someone disappears from the population, there’s always an official explanation ready.

Inside, though, people remember.

That’s the story, now you know it.”

The black hole hung before him like a wound in the fabric of existence, round, patient, and impossibly still. It wasn’t what he had imagined. No swirling colors, no spiraling chaos. Just an absence so perfect it seemed alive.

His ship drifted at the edge of the event horizon, bathed in a dim, gray light stolen from a dying star. Instruments flickered, recalibrated, then went silent again. The onboard clock had stopped trying to measure time the moment he crossed the horizon.

He floated weightless, watching his own reflection ghost across the viewport a pale face behind the glass, eyes wide, unblinking. The suit’s oxygen counter ticked in uneven pulses, though he could no longer tell if the rhythm belonged to the machine or to his heart.

-Mission Log: Day… unknown.

-Emergence sequence successful.

-External sensors reading inconsistent photon trajectories.

-Possible exit from target zone. Awaiting confirmation.

He stopped recording. The last line echoed inside the cabin.

"Awaiting confirmation".

From whom?

The command center was billions of kilometers away assuming it still existed. The last transmission he remembered was their voice fading, repeating the same three words before everything went white:

“You’ll make history.”

He hadn’t understood what they meant.

Now, drifting in the shadow of something older than time, he wasn’t sure if they had been a promise… or a sentence.

For a long while, he simply watched. The sight was both beautiful and sickening a hole punched through reality itself. The edges shimmered like liquid glass, bending starlight into ribbons that twisted and vanished. It was motionless, yet somehow felt like it was breathing a slow, cosmic inhale.

No words had ever truly captured what this was. He had seen a thousand simulations, briefings, animations, but none had prepared him for the silence. The void didn’t roar or pulse; it simply "was".

The absence of everything, and yet the source of it all.

And then he saw it.

A ship.

Small, identical to his.

Falling toward the black hole.

He blinked hard, convinced it was a reflection, a hallucination born from weeks of radiation and isolation. But the sensors confirmed it real mass, real heat signature, same model, same markings.

He leaned closer to the viewport, squinting at the faint glimmer of the other craft’s engines. The way it moved was deliberate, purposeful not the aimless drift of debris. Someone was piloting it.

A flicker of recognition tugged at the edge of his thoughts. The way the ship rolled slightly to the port side before stabilizing it was familiar, almost "personal", like watching a gesture he’d made a thousand times before.

He whispered to himself, almost afraid to hear the sound.

“They send another one?”

His voice sounded small, fragile, a thin thread against the vast quiet that surrounded him.

He tried to hail it. Static.

No reply. The other ship kept descending, drawn toward the singularity’s edge, until its hull stretched, warped, and vanished into the black.

He stared at the spot long after it was gone. The void rippled faintly, as if something beneath its surface had moved or remembered.

He checked his coordinates again. They looped and jittered, impossible readings flickering between digits, as though the universe itself couldn’t decide where he was. He glanced down at the mission clock. It was running backward.

-Mission Log: Day… unknown.

-Coordinates unstable. Possible emergence from target zone. Awaiting command signal.

He paused before transmitting.

Who was there to hear him?

No one had ever come back from a black hole before.

He exhaled, watching the thin veil of condensation form and vanish against the visor. “Emergence,” he murmured. The word didn’t sound right. "From what? Into where?"

He leaned closer to the viewport again.

The stars on this side looked… older. Colder. Some had faded altogether, leaving only faint ghosts of light where they once burned. His eyes struggled to adjust constellations wrong, patterns distorted.

Somewhere deep in his chest, a memory flickered — of a courtroom, a verdict, a promise of redemption but it slipped away before he could hold it. Just a flash of sound and light, the echo of voices.

He shook his head, forcing the thought away. “Focus,” he muttered. “One step at a time.”

He began a systems check, running through procedures by memory. Power stable. Oxygen at fifty-two percent. Hull integrity holding. But communications… dead. The beacon refused to engage. The controls responded half a second before he touched them, as if anticipating his movements.

He frowned. “That’s not possible.”

A low vibration rippled through the hull, subtle but real the kind of tremor that travels through the bones before you hear it.

He pressed a hand against the wall. It felt warm. Alive.

He looked back at the black hole.

The event horizon shimmered faintly, like the surface of dark water under moonlight. A single pulse of light rippled outward, vanishing into the void.

It almost looked like it was "breathing him in".

He thought of the message they’d given him before launch, the final words from Mission Control.

"You’ll make history".

He’d smiled back then or tried to.

Now the words felt heavier, different. Less like hope, more like a sentence.

He closed his eyes. The hum of the ship faded into a steady rhythm, a quiet mechanical heartbeat. Time stretched, lost meaning.

He wasn’t sure if he had just emerged from the black hole, or if he was still inside it.

And somewhere beyond the veil of memory, behind the static of forgotten years, a truth waited patient and terrible for him to remember who he really was.

Returnal

The black hole hung before him like a wound in the fabric of existence, round, patient, and impossibly still. It wasn’t what he had imagined. No swirling colors, no spiraling chaos. Just an absence so perfect it seemed alive.

His ship drifted at the edge of the event horizon, bathed in a dim, gray light stolen from a dying star. Instruments flickered, recalibrated, then went silent again. The onboard clock had stopped trying to measure time the moment he crossed the horizon.

He floated weightless, watching his own reflection ghost across the viewport a pale face behind the glass, eyes wide, unblinking. The suit’s oxygen counter ticked in uneven pulses, though he could no longer tell if the rhythm belonged to the machine or to his heart.

-Mission Log: Day… unknown.

-Emergence sequence successful.

-External sensors reading inconsistent photon trajectories.

-Possible exit from target zone. Awaiting confirmation.

He stopped recording. The last line echoed inside the cabin.

"Awaiting confirmation".

From whom?

The command center was billions of kilometers away assuming it still existed. The last transmission he remembered was their voice fading, repeating the same three words before everything went white:

“You’ll make history.”

He hadn’t understood what they meant.

Now, drifting in the shadow of something older than time, he wasn’t sure if they had been a promise… or a sentence.

For a long while, he simply watched. The sight was both beautiful and sickening a hole punched through reality itself. The edges shimmered like liquid glass, bending starlight into ribbons that twisted and vanished. It was motionless, yet somehow felt like it was breathing a slow, cosmic inhale.

No words had ever truly captured what this was. He had seen a thousand simulations, briefings, animations, but none had prepared him for the silence. The void didn’t roar or pulse; it simply "was".

The absence of everything, and yet the source of it all.

And then he saw it.

A ship.

Small, identical to his.

Falling toward the black hole.

He blinked hard, convinced it was a reflection, a hallucination born from weeks of radiation and isolation. But the sensors confirmed it real mass, real heat signature, same model, same markings.

He leaned closer to the viewport, squinting at the faint glimmer of the other craft’s engines. The way it moved was deliberate, purposeful not the aimless drift of debris. Someone was piloting it.

A flicker of recognition tugged at the edge of his thoughts. The way the ship rolled slightly to the port side before stabilizing it was familiar, almost "personal", like watching a gesture he’d made a thousand times before.

He whispered to himself, almost afraid to hear the sound.

“They send another one?”

His voice sounded small, fragile, a thin thread against the vast quiet that surrounded him.

He tried to hail it. Static.

No reply. The other ship kept descending, drawn toward the singularity’s edge, until its hull stretched, warped, and vanished into the black.

He stared at the spot long after it was gone. The void rippled faintly, as if something beneath its surface had moved or remembered.

He checked his coordinates again. They looped and jittered, impossible readings flickering between digits, as though the universe itself couldn’t decide where he was. He glanced down at the mission clock. It was running backward.

-Mission Log: Day… unknown.

-Coordinates unstable. Possible emergence from target zone. Awaiting command signal.

He paused before transmitting.

Who was there to hear him?

No one had ever come back from a black hole before.

He exhaled, watching the thin veil of condensation form and vanish against the visor. “Emergence,” he murmured. The word didn’t sound right. "From what? Into where?"

He leaned closer to the viewport again.

The stars on this side looked… older. Colder. Some had faded altogether, leaving only faint ghosts of light where they once burned. His eyes struggled to adjust constellations wrong, patterns distorted.

Somewhere deep in his chest, a memory flickered of a courtroom, a verdict, a promise of redemption but it slipped away before he could hold it. Just a flash of sound and light, the echo of voices.

He shook his head, forcing the thought away. “Focus,” he muttered. “One step at a time.”

He began a systems check, running through procedures by memory. Power stable. Oxygen at fifty-two percent. Hull integrity holding. But communications… dead. The beacon refused to engage. The controls responded half a second before he touched them, as if anticipating his movements.

He frowned. “That’s not possible.”

A low vibration rippled through the hull, subtle but real the kind of tremor that travels through the bones before you hear it.

He pressed a hand against the wall. It felt warm. Alive.

He looked back at the black hole.

The event horizon shimmered faintly, like the surface of dark water under moonlight. A single pulse of light rippled outward, vanishing into the void.

It almost looked like it was "breathing him in".

He thought of the message they’d given him before launch, the final words from Mission Control.

"You’ll make history".

He’d smiled back then or tried to.

Now the words felt heavier, different. Less like hope, more like a sentence.

He closed his eyes. The hum of the ship faded into a steady rhythm, a quiet mechanical heartbeat. Time stretched, lost meaning.

He wasn’t sure if he had just emerged from the black hole, or if he was still inside it.

And somewhere beyond the veil of memory, behind the static of forgotten years, a truth waited patient and terrible for him to remember who he really was.

Returnal

​

ACT I

The Legend of Cell #117

They say Prison Cell #117 is empty.

That’s what the paperwork claims. That’s what the prison would tell anyone on the outside if the question ever came up. An unused cell. A number that doesn’t mean anything.

Inside the walls, numbers matter.

The story always begins the same way. An inmate crosses a line bad enough that no one bothers arguing about it. Maybe he left another man broken in the infirmary. Maybe the other man never walked out at all. Maybe he was caught moving things he wasn’t supposed to move, or trying to carve a way out of a place that doesn’t let go.

Whatever the reason, the process is quiet.

No hearings. No raised voices.

Just a walk down a hallway most prisoners never see.

One night. That’s all it takes. When morning count comes around, the guards opened the door and found them dead. No screams reported. No signs of a struggle. Just a body where a living man had its last heartbeat.

After that, the story spread.

One night in Cell #117, and you don’t come back.

Once, a prisoner claimed he saw proof. He had been on cleaning duty late, mopping a forgotten stretch of corridor. He said a guard came out of the hallway that leads to #117, dragging a body behind him. No blood. No bruises. No marks at all. Just a man who wasn’t breathing anymore.

Nothing was ever said about it. The hallway was locked down. By morning, the prison moved on.

Some call Cell #117 haunted. Others say it’s cursed.

Some say it’s all a conspiracy something the wardens made up to keep inmates afraid, to keep them in line. But even the ones who believe that finish the thought the same way.

"Once you go in, you don’t come out".

The rules are understood, even if they’ve never been written down. Hurt another inmate badly enough. Kill one. Get caught trafficking drugs. Try to escape. Do something that makes the guards decide you’re no longer worth dealing with.

That’s when the number finds you.

Guards and prisoners and few nurses know about Cell #117. The outside world doesn’t. Families aren’t told. Reports stay clean. If someone disappears from the population, there’s always an official explanation ready.

Here, though, people remember.

The voice telling the story slows, grows rougher, like it’s been used too many times over too many years. The sounds of the prison bleed back in metal doors, distant shouting, the constant movement of men who can’t go anywhere.

The narrator exhales and stops.

“That’s the story,” the old inmate says, finally revealing himself as he looks at the new fish sitting across from him. “Now you know it.”

And just like that, Cell #117 isn’t just a legend anymore.

It’s a warning.

ACT II

Skeptic

For the first few days, the story doesn’t bother him.

Prisons are full of them warnings dressed up as legends, meant to scare the new ones into behaving. He’s heard worse. In his last place, stories were louder, bloodier, and usually false. Fear didn’t come from whispers there. It came from fists and shanks and men with nothing left to lose.

This prison doesn’t feel like that.

At first, he assumes it’s coincidence. New routine. New faces. Different rules. But as the days pass, something starts to stand out.

There are no real fights.

Arguments flare up sometimes voices raised, shoulders squared but they don’t finish. Someone always backs down. Someone always steps away. Even men with reputations keep themselves in check, like they’re aware of an invisible line they refuse to cross.

He watches it happen again and again.

No one explains it. No one needs to.

Curiosity gets the better of him.

He starts asking questions not directly, never all at once. A comment here. A half-joke there. Some inmates confirm the story without hesitation. Others shut down the moment the number comes up, eyes shifting, voices lowering. A few offer theories instead of facts.

One man says Cell #117 is just a hole no cameras, no records, no witnesses.

Another swears it doesn't exist, but people disappear anyway.

Someone else laughs it off, calls it a scare tactic. A conspiracy.

“Problem with that,” the man adds quietly, “is nobody ever comes back to prove it wrong.”

The guards are worse.

He mentions the number once during a routine interaction, nothing accusatory. Just curiosity. The response is immediate too sharp, too rehearsed. Conversation over. Move along. Don’t ask again.

That’s when the doubt settles in.

The strangest part isn’t the fear.

It’s the order.

This prison runs smoother than any place he’s been. Not because it’s better staffed or stricter but because the inmates do most of the work themselves. Rules are followed without being enforced. Respect is given without being demanded.

It’s like everyone understands the cost of forgetting where they are.

He thinks back to the prison he came from the noise, the chaos, the constant edge. That was where he tried to escape. That place felt alive, even when it was dangerous.

This place feels controlled.

As the weeks go on, another detail surfaces.

The legend is old. Older than most of the men repeating it. It’s been around long enough to turn into something solid, something accepted.

But in recent years?

Only two inmates have been sent to Cell #117.

That’s it.

Two names spoken quietly. No dates. No details. Just the certainty that neither one came back.

That bothers him more than if it happened every month.

It means the cell doesn’t need to be used often.

It means the threat is enough.

By the time he reaches that conclusion, his mind is already moving elsewhere.

Staying here means living under a shadow that never lifts. Whether Cell #117 is real or not, it doesn’t matter anymore. The prison has been built around it. Everyone knows the line. Everyone avoids it.

Everyone except him.

He’s tried to escape before in his old prison that's why he is there. Failed once. Learned from it.

And as he starts watching routines, guard rotations, blind spots, he knows exactly what he’s risking.

Trying to escape is one of the fastest ways to disappear into that hallway.

Still, he starts planning.

Quietly. Carefully.

ACT III

Sentence

Months passed, slow and deliberate. The fish worked in silence, his movements measured and unseen. Every day, a nail loosened, a hinge tested, a door studied. Guards’ patterns, shift rotations, blind spots he memorized them all. Every moment of patience brought him closer to one thing: freedom.

Finally, the night came. The prison was quiet, almost too quiet. He pried the last nail free, eased the door open, and slipped into the corridor beyond. Step by step, careful and silent, he moved through stairwells and hallways he had mapped in his mind for months.

The roof was in reach. Fresh air whispered promises he hadn’t felt in years. He could almost taste it.

And then hands grabbed him. Strong, unyielding, coming from the shadows he had trusted. He struggled, but it was no use. No alarms sounded. No one yelled. The response was immediate, mechanical, perfect. They didn’t speak, didn’t explain, didn’t hesitate.

Dragged down a hallway he had never seen, the lights dimmed and the walls pressed closer. Each step was measured, deliberate, filled with dread. He could hear his own heartbeat echo in the stillness.

The cell opened. He was shoved inside. Darkness swallowed him, thick and absolute.

"They say Prison Cell #117 is empty.

That’s what the paperwork claims. That’s what the prison would tell anyone on the outside if the question ever came up. An unused cell. A number that doesn’t mean anything.

Inside the walls, numbers matter.

The story always begins the same way. An inmate crosses a line bad enough that no one bothers arguing about it. Maybe he left another man broken in the infirmary. Maybe the other man never walked out at all. Maybe he was caught moving things he wasn’t supposed to move, or trying to carve a way out of a place that doesn’t let go.

Whatever the reason, the process is quiet.

No hearings. No raised voices.

Just a walk down a hallway most prisoners never see.

He was sent to Cell #117.

One night. That’s all it took. When morning count came around, the guards opened the door and found him dead. No screams reported. No signs of a struggle. Just a body where a living man had been hours earlier.

After that, the story spread.

One night in Cell #117, and you don’t come back.

Once, a prisoner claimed he saw proof. He had been on cleaning duty late, mopping a forgotten stretch of corridor. He said a guard came out of the hallway that leads to Cell #117, dragging a body behind him. No blood. No bruises. No marks at all. Just a man who wasn’t breathing anymore.

Nothing was ever said about it. The hallway was locked down. By morning, the prison moved on.

Some call Cell #117 haunted. Others say it’s cursed.

Some say it’s all a conspiracy—something the prison made up to keep inmates afraid, to keep them in line. But even the ones who believe that finish the thought the same way.

Once you go in, you don’t come out.

The rules are understood, even if they’ve never been written down. Hurt another inmate badly enough. Kill one. Get caught trafficking drugs. Try to escape. Do something that makes the guards decide you’re no longer worth dealing with.

That’s when the number finds you.

Only guards and prisoners know about Cell #117. The outside world doesn’t. Families aren’t told. Reports stay clean. If someone disappears from the population, there’s always an official explanation ready.

Inside, though, people remember.

That’s the story, now you know it.”