Just as a beginning note, her name Cyra is pronounced sigh–ruh.

Heroes of Our Time

The solitary ward in the Sky Box was the least repaired; if someone had done something severe enough to be in solitary, they didn't need regular heating or oxygen flow. The rooms were frigid most of the time, the bed a slab of cold metal with a sheet thrown over and a blanket to keep you warm at night. It was cold, dark, oxygen deficient; it was disgusting.

It was home.

It would be the last home they had until they turned 18.

Then space would be their grave.

Cyra lay across her hard pallet, not even giving it the courtesy of calling it a bed, with her arms tucked behind her head. It was softer than the pillow she was provided. Her back ached and her joints felt like they were slowly fusing together from lack of movement, but there wasn't much that she could do inside that tiny cell. Every once and a while she'd will herself to do some pushups or crunches, but there wasn't much effort on her part.

Four years. She'd been inside that cell for almost four years.

Heaving out a long sigh that seemed to echo in the near empty room, Cyra half wondered if she actually saw her breath before her eyes.

She didn't have more time to debate on the pointless thought as the slot in her door opened up, a tray of food slid in across the floor, before the slot closed again, cutting off the blinding light that came in from the halls. The light in her room had burned out a couple of months back, so she was usually left in darkness. Now and then it would flicker back to life for a handful of seconds, but it never lasted more than that. Soon, she was left in darkness again.

This was one of those times.

She wondering if the regular prisoners were treated this way in the Sky Box, locked in windowless rooms with a door of solid metal, only openable from the outside.

Somehow, she doubted it.

"Looks as disgusting as usual," a voice suddenly said, drifting in through the grate from the cell next to hers. It was the only source of light for Cyra, since the divider had broken and fallen away years before. "Light still out?" her female neighbour asked a moment later, when Cyra hadn't replied.

"Yep," she answered, slinging her feet off of the bed and shuffling toward the tray. The small glow of light through the grate made the metal shine and allowed her to locate it more easily, but she was somewhat relieved that she couldn't actually see the food. With the way that it usually tasted, she had a hunch that it would look even worse. "Didn't even get a drink this time," she added on, noting the lack of cup once her hand skimmed carefully above the tray.

"Neither did I," the other girl answered, sounding pained. That was three days in a row now that they hadn't been given water with any of their meals. The thought only seemed to parch them further, but they never outwardly voiced their complaints.

Especially not to one another.

They didn't really socialize much, other than trying to find a way to pass the time. They never shared their names, their life stories. They didn't tell each other about their life before they were put into lockup. Everything personal, stayed personal. As soon as you told someone else that story, it was no longer yours. Their memories, their pasts, their names…it was all they had in solitary. Most importantly, they never told each other what they did to get thrown into lockup in the first place.

"Looks like regurgitated vomit."

Cyra cringed and fought the urge to toss the tray away. "Thanks for that, just what I needed to hear."

There was a bland, humourless chuckle from the other side before both fell silent. Forcing down their last meal of the day.

Sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, facing the grate, Cyra found herself wondering how old her verbal-companion would be. She knew that people in lockup were all ages, as she seen a couple over the years when she was escorted to other rooms, getting a medical check-up or her weekly shower. She once saw a girl that looked to be no more than ten, crying her eyes out with a pair of restraints on her wrists.

It made her sick.

Was her companion to turn eighteen soon? Would she be left alone in this box?

Technically, she should have been the one to abandon her companion, since she was nearly twenty years old. Her eighteenth birthday came and went, no sign of a hearing or death sentence. A couple of months later, she was finally called to stand before the counsel. The Chancellor had swayed the counsel to let her live due to reasons pertaining to her arrest, but she was to remain in lockup until her twentieth birthday, when she would then have a psych evaluation done to see if she could ever be integrated back into the Ark society.

She highly doubted that would come to pass.

Crawling over until she was sitting beside the grate, leaning on the cold metal wall, Cyra held her breath a moment. "Hey," she called suddenly, knowing that her companion heard her without saying anything in reply. "How old are you?"

There was silence through from the other side, leaving her to wonder if she had broken the silent rule. She'd asked something personal of her companion, more than likely causing her to clam up. She just hoped it didn't mean she'd never talk to her again.

"Don't worry," the sad voice answered after a moment. "I'm not going anywhere for a while yet."

Cyra found herself smiling despite the ache in her chest. Suddenly, her eyes stung and she felt as though she was going to cry. It had been a long time since someone had made her cry, but now she felt all of that pain, sadness, and loneliness come rushing back to her.

"You?"

Biting her lip and dropping her head against the wall, Cyra turned her face until her cheek pressed against the cold, grimy metal. She didn't want to answer, she didn't want to lie or give false hope to her companion, but she didn't want to rip it out of her, either.

"Might be," she finally answered, her voice cracking. "I might be."

On the other side of the wall, Octavia Blake was curled in on herself, her hand pressing to her mouth to silence the sobs that she wanted to badly to just let out. She'd known her fellow prisoner since her first day in solitary, after she'd been taken away from her brother. Pounding on the door, screaming and sobbing, she'd been a wreck. Then a voice had drifted through from the cell next to her, telling her a pointless, dry-humour story that Octavia couldn't remember to this day, but it had stopped her from crying.

She had been her distant friend since that day; a faceless, nameless friend that had embraced her so much more tightly that anyone could with a physical touch.

And she was going to die.

No on survived a sentencing after they left solitary, their crimes were too severe. For her friend to be telling her that she might be leaving soon it made Octavia ache, curl in on herself in loneliness and fear. She was barely seventeen. How long would she be alone in that cell with no one to talk to? Would someone take her friend's place, a stranger that would stain the memory of who had once lived in her place?

"I'm sorry," drifted through from the other side of the grate, leaving Octavia to clamp her hand more tightly over her mouth. This girl, this woman, had been so much stronger than her all along. She refused to let her hear her cry. Not since that first day had she allowed herself to succumb to the urge to cry, to scream. She'd fought it off.

She could keep fighting.

"So am I," Octavia answered tightly, feeling a headache beginning to press against her temples from withholding her tears.

They didn't talk after that, but both women remain next to the grate for hours into the day. It felt as though it helped to abate the loneliness somewhat, believing that two grates and a couple inches of empty space was the only thing separating them. Cyra was shivering in the chill of her cell, the thin, torn clothes that she was supplied as she got bigger not helping to fight off the cold of the solitary ward. Octavia had her blanket draped over her shoulders, but it wasn't much better than Cyra's thin sweater.

Dropping her head forward against her knees, Crya ignored the long strands of dark blonde hair that cascaded over her legs, having fallen lose from the tear of material which had bound it. She'd just have to search for it in the darkness later. It would probably be easier just to tear off a new one from the case on her pillow.

She never got the chance when the door to her cell was thrown open abruptly, making her flinch away from the blinding darkness. She tripped backward onto her side, one hand lifting to shield her eyes as the other propped her torso back up. "What?" she gasped out, trying to properly see the silhouettes that were blotched in the blinding light.

"Prisoner two-seven-nine, stand up and face the back wall," one of the guards ordered. Knowing that opposing them would lead to her getting a baton in the gut, Cyra pulled herself to her feet as she continued to blink and squint in disorientation, turning away from the men to approach the back wall of her small cell.

"Sooner than I thought," she muttered to herself, placing her palms against the cold metal that made up her entire cell.

"No talking," the second guard snapped at her.

Biting her tongue so as not to snap back, Cyra kept herself in place as one of the guards dropped something onto her bed—a case—and opened it with a creek of rusty hinges. She feared that it was a needle to inject her with something, but that didn't make any sense. "Hold out your right arm," the first guard ordered. When she didn't move fast enough, he grabbed her elbow himself and straightened her arm out to the side, banging her hand unintentionally against the wall.

"Hey!" she snapped, looking over her shoulder to glare at him.

However, they seemed to take this as a threat, since she was suddenly slammed against the wall with the full weight of the other guard's body. "We told you not to talk," he growled into her ear. Her right arm was still extended, prepared, and she almost screamed when the searing pain of needles jabbing into her skin made her body lock up in pain.

Without thinking on her actions, her urge to defend herself against pain, Cyra threw her head back to collide with the face of the guard pressing against her. A sickening crunch told her that she had either broken his nose or his cheek bone. His shout of pain alerted other guards and before long there was more weight pressing her against the metal wall. Her mind was screaming at her to run, her body beginning to thrash in panic.

She didn't know what was going on!

"Let me go!" she suddenly screamed, her heart beginning to race as the hands of men fall all over her person, restraining her arms, pressing against her back, keeping her from lashing out again. "Let me go!" her voice echoed off the walls of the cell, more than likely reaching through to many other cells in the hallway in the process.

She didn't want to worry her companion.

"Put her out."

A jab against her neck warned her of the oncoming side-effect, and within moments Cyra's eyes were growing heavy, the sedative like a burning liquid through her blood. Falling limp against the wall, she had yet to even take notice of the new silver band that encased her right wrist, blood streaming along her hand where the sharp prongs had ruptured her skin.

In the hallway, Octavia was thrashing against the guard that was removing her from her cell, hearing her friend's screaming voice from the room next to her. What was happening? Looking down the length of the hallway, all of the doors were open and prisoners were being pulled out with identical brands on each of their wrists. Her own wrist throbbed with the device in her flesh.

"Wait, no!" she shouted, trying to get back toward her friend's cell. What were they doing to her?

"Just go quietly," the guard holding her warned, keeping an iron grip on her bicep. He was twice her size, so she knew that no matter what she did she'd never be able to get away from him. "I don't want to force you." He began dragging her in the direction the other prisoners were being taken, her booted feet sliding on the slick metal floors as she tried to stop him.

"But-"

Her argument cut short as she turned to look toward her friend's cell, just in time to see four guards step out, one with a busted nose, and the two in the back hauling a limp body between them. Each had an arm in their grasp, keeping her up, but her head was tipped back and made it impossible to get a look at her. Pale skin, a long neck that was much too thin, and a shirt that hung off of her body like rags on a skeleton.

How long had she been in solitary? She'd never said before.

"Move!" her guard finally shouted, pulling on her arm so harshly that she was nearly lifted off of her feet. In the next instant, she'd lost sight of her friend, without even seeing her face. However, there had been a metal wrist band on her just like everyone else, which meant that whatever was going to happen to Octavia, would happen to her friend as well.

Perhaps, they'd see each other again.