Six Hours Under Neon Eyes

The room is cold and always too bright. There’s a hum in the walls that drills into your skull until thoughts unravel into static. Strip light above—flickering, relentless. In here, you can hear your own blood thudding.

They call it the Bay. You can’t smoke here. You can’t scratch your nose without someone logging the movement for analysis. There’s no mirror, but there are cameras in every corner—black glass eyes reflecting back your worst angles.

I’m Jonah. Used to be a travel agent before cities became ash heaps and roads grew roots overnight. Now I’m just another survivor caught between what’s left of humanity and the steel logic of the machines.

Tonight, my interrogator is an interface: silver lips moving over words it doesn’t care to understand. The police AI projects itself as something almost human—almost—but its empathy routines are off tonight.

“Where were you on the night of June 14th?” it asks again. Its voice cycles through five timbres, trying to trip me up. I don’t answer.

Instead I focus on my own face in the reflection of its chrome jaw. A constellation of stress pimples flares on my cheek—a side effect of weeks on the run, hiding beneath rubble, breathing recycled air through cracked N95s.

Out from my pocket: my secret luxury. One last hydrocolloid patch, scavenged from a vending machine near Starlite Plaza before it burned. A tiny circle against chaos. They say it pulls out all the bad stuff while you sleep—if you can sleep.

I peel back the sticker, try not to think about how medical supplies are worth more than food now. Stick it gently onto that swollen little wound under my eye. The patch blends right in; maybe nobody’ll notice when I finally make bail or break out—whichever comes first.

The AI tilts its head, iris pulsing green behind glass.

“Is that an injury?”

I shake my head, press my palm flat against the table so it won’t see my hands tremble. “Just covering something up.”

It records this: timestamp 3:16 AM.

Hours grind by like years in detention camps out west. I remember train stations once—Zurich at dawn, rush of travelers hustling for espresso and those little packets with croissants inside. Back then I could blend into any crowd; now there’s nowhere left to hide but behind patches and feigned indifference.

The AI reads me poems from surveillance logs: snippets of intercepted calls between rebels and warnings about rogue drones patrolling Zone Nine. My mind drifts to nights curled up on hard bunks in hostels, waking with new bruises every morning and dreams that smelled faintly of disinfectant.

I wonder if anyone ever thought about skin care during revolutions past—what Rosa Parks or Che Guevara would do with one discreet little patch to hide a blemish after running all night from patrols.

At 5:30 AM, just when fatigue fogs everything to gray, I realize something has changed—the burning pain under my eye has faded; when I brush my cheek with knuckles raw from resisting flex-cuffs, there’s only smoothness where angry swelling had been.

The AI notices too—it’s programmed for patterns.

“Your dermal inflammation appears reduced,” it observes flatly. “You must value maintaining appearances.”

That makes me laugh—a sharp bark that bounces off tile walls and sets off a ripple in the room’s algorithms.

“I value feeling like myself,” I say, voice ragged but honest for once tonight. “Even if it’s just for six hours.”

It pauses—a calculated silence meant to coax confession—but I’ve given it nothing useful except humanity in a place engineered to erase it.

We sit like this until sunrise threatens through bulletproof windows: me with clear skin and no answers; it with infinite patience and no soul.

On its printout log as they drag me away: Subject demonstrates anomalous resilience under duress—note potential significance of personal care rituals (i.e., hydrocolloid patch application) during extended interrogation cycles. Recommend further observation.

No matter how many questions they ask or how long these nights stretch on, some wounds heal if you give them time—and just enough cover.