From the Introduction:
This prison is a truly dark place. Its atmosphere heavy with despair. Built from concrete and steel there is nothing to offer any comfort to be found anywhere within its walls. Not a single window allows even the briefest glimpse of the world beyond either.
The cells are simple affairs. Nine rectangular rooms on each floor, separated by a narrow walkway and two rows of stainless steel bars from the shaft of the central elevator. No cell holds even a single piece of furniture. The small drain at the cells center is their only feature. Nothing but the convicted and the drab prison garb they wear enters a cell, but of those any cell may house up to ten, at bad times even more. Only the most dangerous prisoners are kept in solitary confinement.
For the better part of the day the cells lie in darkness. Usually only once per day when the guards pass through on their circuit to hose down the inmates with water from the central pipe and to hand out their meager rations of dry sliced bread is it that light falls on the forlorn souls vegetating in these cells.
No visitors, no walks in the courtyard and no sick bay to provide any relief or diversion. Not even any new inmates will be herded into a cell while any on a given floor are still alive. And none of the prisoners are expected to leave this prison alive. If you end up behind these bars you were sentenced for life, not that anyone survives for long in here.
All the while the citizens outside celebrate their king for abolishing capital punishment while still keeping dangerous criminals locked up, well away from them and their lives. None off them even guessing at the inhumane conditions behind the thick concrete walls. And even if they asked no one would tell them. Least of all the grim guards.
