The prison

[ACMI: Stillness of Light]

As it turned out, Joules's prison was more than just a single cell. After "School time" was finished, she was allowed out of it.

The room directly outside her cell could be called "The yard." As she stepped into it, she winced slightly at the bright light. There was an empty sky above her, and she felt a gust of wind. She even heard birdsong, coming from somewhere beyond the four walls.

Even so, she knew something was wrong here. The sky didn't look right. She managed to figure out what it was as she walked around. It was just a massive screen. Like the sort she'd heard was used in district 22. The wind and birdsong were being piped in from a set of vents near the tops of the walls. Joule took note of those, they could probably pump in other gasses too.

The yard was about five meters across in total. On the opposite side of the room from her cell, there was an elevator. She quickly moved over to examine it but it didn't have any buttons, just a reader for a keycard.

…Hmm. Instinct was telling her that a keycard reader wouldn't stop her, but she couldn't figure out how. She decided to ask.

"Lumen, did I used to have some sort of electromaster ability?"

In a few moments, the shadow responded.

"Yes, it wasn't as advanced as GV's was, but you could hack things. You hacked his laptop once to see what he was investigating."

She didn't have any memories related to that, but it just made her more uncomfortable. That was another part of her ability that had been lost thanks to the brain damage. Well, not entirely.

"Lumen, could you do anything about using my power? If we could hack this, we might be able to escape."

She needed to describe the situation to Lumen (apparently the shadow didn't have access to her senses, not properly anyway). Once she got it across though, Lumen sounded unsure.

"I don't know. I don't really understand the situation that well either. Plus, I don't want to hurt you by mistake."

Joule nodded and turned away, keeping the card reader in mind as she went to examine the other two doors on the other walls of the yard. When she saw the first room, she started to legitimately wonder about who'd gone through all the effort to set this up.

The room to the left of her cell was what appeared to be a karaoke room, she'd been to things like this every so often with her friends. The idea that one was here and now was… concerning. It implied that this entire cell had been built for her, and likely a while ago too. This cell couldn't have been built recently. Someone had been planning this for a long time.

The far door from there led into a smaller room. This one looked like some sort of practise area of some form. There was a large monitor on the wall that currently reflected the room like a mirror, the only reason Joule knew it wasn't a mirror was because the reflections were wrong. Or rather they were the right way round. If she raised her right arm, her reflection did the same instead of mirroring her by raising the left one.

This room had a chair facing the monitor. She considered sitting in it, but decided against it. Things were just too strange right now.

Returning to the yard, Joule looked up to see clouds pass by on the screen. Were those the real sky? Or just something simulated. Really she couldn't even know the current time for real. She only knew it was "After school" because there had both been an announcement (By a generic male voice) and by the clock on her cell wall.

They could have kept her unconscious for a while, and just set whenever she woke up to be the morning. The sky she was looking at, if simulated, would just be part of the same illusion. Running down that road would encourage her to doubt everything though, and that was a level of paranoia she knew wasn't healthy.

From what she could tell, this was a gilded cage, a prison designed to hold her, while not putting her under too much stress. A songbird in a cage.

"Are you doing okay?" Lumen's voice came to her suddenly, spooking her a little bit.

Joule nodded when she calmed down and sat on the floor of the yard (which was made of the same stuff that roads in academy city were.)

"I'm… I'm good."

"I don't need my abilities to tell that's a lie." Lumen sighed "Come on Joule, what is it?"

Joule buried her head between her knees "I'm trapped, and as far as I can tell, they intend to keep me that way for a while."

"Well, we'll just need to wait for GV to track us down." Lumen tried to suggest. That didn't make Joule feel any better though.

"No, I won't be a burden to him like that!" Looking up, she eyed the card reader again "I'm going to figure out my powers again, and then I'm breaking out!"

Lumen gave her a feeling of both worry and warmth. "I'll support you all the way, just stay safe."

Her electromaster abilities were what she needed now, though she had no idea where to start with them.

"Do you have any ideas, Lumen?"

Lumen gave her a mental head shake "I'm currently working to try and untangle your brain. If I come across the method you could use to hack the door, I'll bring it up."

Joule nodded, it was the best she could probably do.

In her mind it became a race. Would she figure out how to free herself first, or would GV and her friends find and rescue her first. There weren't any other outcomes in her heart.

She just lay down in the yard area, looking up at the fake sky.

"They could have at least given me grass." Joule muttered, the darkness in her head clearing. If she was going to be held in a gilded cage, she would certainly complain that it wasn't gilded enough. She would try to be the most annoying prisoner they could hope for while she waited for Lumen to find her a way out.

End of chapter.

There, I found something interesting for Joule to do despite the fact that she's locked in a prison.

To be specific, while Joule is effectively a normal Esper now, she is specifically a Telepath. Her ability to manipulate waves (in this case, electricity) was part of her Adept power.