The dim, swaying lights in the corridor stretched out behind me, distorting into grotesque shadows. When the rivet-covered and dark-stained iron door of the detention room slammed shut behind him, completely isolating him from the maddening noise of the brainwashing machine and Lin Weixian's disgusting, maggot-like gaze, Joe was thrown heavily by the guards like trash onto the cold, slippery floor in the corner of the lower rest area, which smelled of mold and urine.
He still maintained the look of a lost puppet with dull eyes, his body curled up stiffly, as if he had lost all support. Only when the heavy, impatient footsteps of the guard completely disappeared at the end of the corridor and were replaced by the low hum of the pipes farther away, did his body, curled up in the shadow of the dirty corner, almost imperceptibly and extremely slightly relax his muscles that were tensed to the limit.
His nerves, which had been stretched to the limit like a bowstring about to break, suddenly relaxed, which did not bring relief but an intense feeling of dizziness and exhaustion, almost crushing his remaining will. The dull pain on my back from being hit hard by a police baton, the stinging pain from the skin burned by electric shocks, the sore and swollen feeling from forcing my eyelids open, and the physiological headache left over from the brainwashing noise all came over me in waves like a tide.
He took a slow, gentle breath of the filthy air mixed with various chemical smells. Thick darkness wrapped around him like a blanket. No one could see that deep in his eyes, which had been forced open for too long and were covered with spider-web-like bloodshot and extremely sour, a ray of sharp cold light that had been forcibly suppressed, like a candle in the wind, finally lit up again, like a venomous snake that had broken free from the shackles of heavy mud, coldly and silently, with the exhaustion of surviving a calamity and a deep vigilance.
At the edge of the field of vision, the line of translucent blue text, like a cold tombstone, silently recorded the countdown:
Countdown to the arrival of Runeterra heroes: 357 days, 23 hours, 58 minutes and 07 seconds
In a dirty, cold corner that exudes an atmosphere of despair, Joe curled up like a cracked, shabby doll abandoned by the whole world. Only the weak but extremely tenacious fire of thought belonging to "Time Traveler Joe" completed its first tempering in the dirtiest and most dangerous abyss furnace in Zaun, and began its silent and extremely dangerous burning.
He was no longer "Joe."
He is subject 008.
He is number zero.
He is a prisoner and apprentice in this cold purgatory, who has just learned how to disguise himself, and carries a secret and a countdown.