❝I don't do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? No point wishing you could change it.❞
Elissa Bardot-Gray was never the one to be classified as a "rule breaker". She had a high-rankin...
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TODAY, SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT. In the seven-hundred and twenty-one days that she'd been locked in here, nothing ever changed—there had always been a routine, a system, that her life revolved around, that kept her sane.
After all, some would go crazy staring at the same four walls. They were a constant reminder that she would never be free, that this was now her home, until the very end. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes after the lights went out, she felt as if the walls were moving, constricting around her, the space around her shrinking, getting tighter, the air getting thicker until she could no longer breath.
Often the silence was so profound, so deep, that all she could hear was the never-ending ringing in her ears. Sometimes, if she stilled her movements and kept her breathing shallow, it felt like she was not in the room at all, that she'd simply evaporated into thin air. The only thing keeping her there was her awareness. She would hum to herself, to break the endless void, to remind herself that she was still there, breathing and alive—that she hadn't turned into a ghost within these walls.
She didn't know if it was any consolation when she found that she was still breathing.
Time was something she had plenty of. Every minute, every second seemed to drag on for an eternity, while at the same time all blurring into one. She kept to her routine every day, to keep the boredom at bay, to keep track of the days, as a way to stay sane because it was all too easy for one to lose their mind in the Skybox.
In the beginning, she had days where all she could do was cry, wishing things went back to the way they'd been before—before things had turned so very, very wrong. She now knew it was childish to wish of such things. For the longest time she had so many regrets, but now, with such little time left, she had to let go of her regrets and live what life she had left.
She would be here until she turned eighteen—the day that she would be old enough to be executed for her crimes. It wasn't so far away now, she would be eighteen in one week, and then her time as a prison would be over, she would be free.
She was one of the many prisoners on the Ark, and due to her crime, she and the others were to be taken out of their cells at the age of eighteen, escorted to a restricted area on the Ark and Floated. She had to admit, being Floated was probably the quickest and cleanest way to die. She wasn't dreading her death, she'd had over seven-hundred days to come to terms with her fate. When she committed her crime, she knew exactly what she was doing, even bared a nasty scar and she needed to be punished for her crimes.
It was the freedom she looked forward to the most. That soon she would no longer have to spend her days in this cell. She only prayed that the Council would allow her to see Jupiter one last time before they floated her. The thought gave her hope, it kept her going, gave her the energy to continue her day-in and day-out routine. Nothing would change.
