Disclaimer: Terra Nova does not belong to me.
She refers to it as a cell for purposes of expediency. She doesn't know what else to call it. There are no bars or visible guards, but she has been taken into custody. She is locked in and deems the word appropriate in consequence. The truth is that she really has no idea where she is.
The room is small but not claustrophobia inducing (although she supposes that she might feel differently if she was the sort of person who was inclined toward claustrophobia). The lights never change - they just glow away in constant dimness being emitted from a track around the ceiling on three sides of the room. It isn't bright; it isn't dark. It's a constant twilight with slightly more shadow on the single unlit wall where the cot with its scratchy top sheet (and no blanket) resides. The temperature remains a steady slightly cool but not cold that is as unchanging as the light. There is an opaque screen in front of a corner that serves as the bathroom (which only makes her more certain that she is being watched despite the lack of visual clues to tell her where exactly the viewing apparatus might be located). There is a small table with two chairs located directly in front of the door that has neither window nor handle. The only non grey part of the wall is a population control poster featuring the standard "A Family Is Four" slogan splashed across it in an alarming shade of orange that makes it seem to glow in contrast to the semi-darkness of the rest of the room.
It's like the poster is mocking her; she is pretty certain that that is its intended purpose.
She has no idea where she is; she doesn't know where this cell is located. Everything after the population control officers pulled Zoe from her hiding place is a series of flashes of moments from which she feels removed - detached - as if she was watching them from a distance and was unable to intercede. The vehicle in which she was transported held only her - no other members of her family had been placed inside. There were no windows in it either. There weren't windows in the concrete structure in which she had been unloaded or the tiny room into which they had shoved her after pushing and pulling her through a series of hallways and staircases until her attempts at reciting the path in her head no longer made any sense.
She had fallen asleep in that first room (she wasn't sure whether through artificial means or via legitimate exhaustion) and woken in this one. She doesn't know how much time she lost in the transition. She keeps track of how many times she has tried to sleep (sometimes successfully and sometimes not), but she knows enough to know that that doesn't really tell her anything. There is a cup with which she drinks water from the small sink, but they haven't fed her any meals. There is a small tumbler containing two pills that look like they might be vitamin supplements that appeared through the slot at the bottom of the door during one of the times she dozed off, but she doesn't want to take them.
She stopped being hungry a while ago. She is sure that that means that the length of time since she has eaten is fairly significant. She is equally sure that she is in the middle of some sort of a standoff where she is intended to voluntarily take those pills. She also knows that just because she is sure that that is the only thing that makes logical sense, it doesn't mean that that is actually what is happening here.
She is the one at a disadvantage. The only thing that she truly knows is that she doesn't know anything that she needs to know to properly assess her situation.
She sits cross-legged on the bed during most of her waking time with her head leaned against the wall and her eyes closed while she lets her thoughts swirl around the knowledge that she has no idea where her little sister is.
She actually doesn't know where any of the members of her family are, but it is Zoe that she worries over most. Zoe can't take care of herself. She is too little, and she must be terrified. She was scared even before the strangers had pulled her from her hiding place (the sound of her frightened tears is what had tipped off the enforcement officers in the first place after all). Zoe hasn't any memories of ever being outside of their apartment (she was still teeny tiny when their parents brought her home from the place outside of the city where she had been born). She doesn't know what outside is like. She doesn't have any experience to help her deal with a strange place. She doesn't know how to be without someone from their family looking after her. Zoe is still practically a baby, but Maddy knows that the officers from Population Control would not have made any exceptions for her care. Their family has been separated, and she knows better than to even dream of hoping that they have left Zoe with her mother.
She doesn't know what to expect, and she knows that whoever is watching fully intends to use that against her. Maddy has been finding her way into places and information that she should not necessarily be able to access since the strings of binary that make up the background of her world's communication systems resolved themselves into discernible patterns for her back when she was eight. She has found everything that there is to find in every place there is to look about what happens to people that break the laws governing the restriction of children per family. That means she knows exactly nothing about what is going to be happening to them because there is, literally, nothing to be found.
There are no records, no reports, and no information trail about such incidents. She knows that this means that everyone who has been caught (because she is neither naive enough nor intimidated enough by population control's constant propaganda to believe that her parents are the only ones) has been wiped from the systems. It is the only explanation. They have been removed from the records. They no longer exist.
People who don't exist don't have rights. They don't get trials. They don't get to plead their cases. No one comes looking for them.
She knows that much, but she still doesn't know what that means in terms of how this will play out for any of them. They must want something. The fact that she is still here is proof enough of that, but she has no idea what that something might be.
She waits. The lights never get brighter; they never dim. The door doesn't open. The pills stay in their tumbler on the floor where she left them. The bright letters of the poster remain the only spot of actual color in her narrow little world. No sounds from outside filter in to her listening ears.
She keeps waiting.