On the forty fifth morning of her stay in Sylvergate prison the world trembled. At least that's what it felt like to Wilona Larksen. It was the shouting that first awoke her. She had jerked upright, confusion quickly filling her sleep blurred mind and then a familiar fear gripped a hold. The narrow cell which smelled of limestone, piss and despair was still the same as it had been the night before. She let out a shaky sigh, it wasn't the first time that Wilona had woken in a panic, sure that she would open her eyes to a scene of falling rubble and a collapsing ceiling. It took her a few moments to settle her pounding heartbeat and shaky hands. She cocked her head, listening for the noises that had originally awoken her, or maybe she had only imagined it—it wouldn't have been the first time. No, there it was again! The distanced cry of people’s raised voices. This was strange. While the violent shaking was typical in the prison, from the prisoners footsteps as they were moved across the chambers; she had never heard them vocalise like this before.

Wilona threw herself towards the bars of her cell, only to be met with the teeth of a guard's baton, right to the teeth. She recoils, her mouth throbbing, a coppery taste seeping in through her gums.

"Hey!" She yells, though the space behind the bars have gone dark, officers moving with such stealth that the crack of baton against flesh is the only contact she has. "What's going on over there!"

A baton presses its way through the gap and jabs into her stomach, winding her. "Stay inside, girlie. It's a routine movement."

Wilona slumped back against the far wall of her cell, wrapping herself in the thin wool blanket. It wasn't routine, and she knew this, but she wasn't about to risk any more time in the Hole. She sat and waited for mealtime, escorted form her cell by two masked officers, both wielding guns half their size. She finds a seat in the middle of the mess-hall, unadvised if you want to keep all your facial features where they are, highly advised for gossip.

She poked around at her plate. A couple identifiable fried bugs, which she had grown quite fond of on account of the fact they were the only thing with a semblance of flavour and texture in the meals. Next to it, a pile of mushrooms, and a scoop of moss-meal, all crops that can be cultivated in low light, all locally sourced from the caves a mile out form here. Wilona had done her service there when she first arrived. It was back-breaking, slimy, musty work. She had been thankful to be moved to the mines last year. She only had two years left on her sentence. She was only a petty theif, but in here, none of that mattered. There was criminal, and there was officer, and no one was friends with anybody.

The woman next to her nudged her roughly. "Hey, Larksen. You hear what was going on las' night?" She was a broad woman, hands gnarled and voice rough. Wilona recognised her as Violet Garrison, famed high-profile thief.

Wilona tried to darken her voice and puff her chest out. "Yeah. Sounded like screamin'."

"I heard they're going to execution," Violet whispered.

Wilona felt her blood go to ice in her veins. Death penalty had been abolished for years, and this underground system was the newest development in shoving prisoners way where the general population didn't have to think about them. "But that...they can't...it's illegal!" She whisper-shouted.

Violet turned to her then, cracking the shell of a beetle between her teeth with a punctuating crackle. "I know."