A Future Sooner than Tomorrow

Today is Red

Red Hood and Kal reach the red room quicker than Kal would have liked. Hood presses a code into the side panel of the door, his body blocking Kal from seeing the code. He opens the door and waves Kal in. Kal steps inside reluctantly. There are two things that stand out to him about the red room.

One, the immmediate effect on his body. Suddenly, gravity is a force on his body that weighs him down, making his shoulders droop and his legs stumble slightly. He rest a hand on the wall. Kal feels tired, like exhaustion has made its way into his very bloodstream. The door clicks shut behind him as Hood enters.

Two, the inside of the red room is different than what Kal had been expecting.

Admittedly, he had been expecting a pseudo-medival torture chamber turned modern; thick, metal chains dangling from the ceiling, a cinderblock cut in half with two holes for hands and a lock on the side, maybe an iron maiden of some sort. He had even expected some gouges in the walls like a wild animal had thrown itself for freedom.

But no, the red room is decidedly less torture chamber and more a messy den. There are blankets and throws tossed on the floor in piles, two queen matresses side by side on the floor with a sagging beanbag either end like a makeshift couch. There's ragged plushies as well and having been ripped and resewn, it's difficult to tell what they were before.

Red Hood sits down on one of the matress, his back to a beanbag. He seems content to let Kal inspect the room for now and Kal refuses to pass the chance up despite how much he really wants to take a nap.

The room smells like a decontamination shower. A faint chemical smell, sort of sharp like sanitizer.

Kal looks down. Each plush has four limbs and a big, bulbous head. Kneeling down, he picks up one of them. This one is mostly black with a pale patch and a line on across it horizontally. Two protrussions like horns on either side as well.

It can't be, Kal thinks.

He starts picking them up at random.

Blue, red and yellow with a stylised S across the body.

Blue, red and yellow again except with a rectangle of black felt attached to the head.

Plush dolls of the Justice League.

"Why would you have these in here?" Kal asks. He drops the plushie he's currently holding. He can't think of a reason any holding cell would contain plushies of all things.

"I didn't decorate in here," Hood shrugs and watches as Kal picks up a blanket. The blacket is soft, made of stretchy material.

There's bloodstains on it. There's bloodstains on most of the things in here.

Skeptically, Kal sniffs the blanket. It doesn't smell of blood. If anything, the sanitisation smell is stronger on the more stained items.

"Why bother putting things in here if they're going to get ruined?" Kal asks. The blood is more in line with what he had expected. But with how thoroughly everything has been cleaned, he's surprised there's stains at all.

He supposes the blankets must have been left long enough for the blood to dry completely before anyone cleaned them.

"Comfort, probably," Hood replies.

"Comfort?"

"Nobody is here because they want to be. And for however long they need to be in here, they may as well be comfortable," Hood pats the beanbag behind him. It sounds like coarse sand.

"However long they need to be?" Kal stands back up. He crosses the piles on blankets and sits on the neighboring matress.

Not a holding cell then. Maybe a detention area rather? Although wouldn't deprivation be the point then?