“How many days, Papa?” asked Elara. She was seven, with her mother’s dark, serious eyes and her father’s stubborn chin. She sat on the single cot, tracing a finger over a crack in the floor.
The room was a cube of beige concrete, twelve feet in each direction. There was no window, only a single, seamless sheet of metal for a door. The air was recycled, tasting faintly of metal and the faint, sweet smell of the apple the father had saved from breakfast. father and daughter in a sealed room
Leo put the screwdriver down. He had expected “Is Mommy coming back?” or “Why can’t we open the door?” But she asked for the sky. He looked at the blank ceiling. “How many days, Papa