Empty Restraint Chamber

They circled the chair as though it could answer, leather straps hanging loose like tired tongues, seat still warm—evidence clinging to silence. The static hum from the walls gnawed at calm; overhead panels pulsed their low teal glow, rhythmic and cold, swallowing questions whole. One clutched a clipboard, scribbling shapes no eye should trust, while another barked signals toward a console sprouting wires like roots feeding some inscrutable hunger. A third raised the sensor rod, swinging, scanning, doubting the air. Scan-repeat-glance-curse-adjust-scan. Betrayal tasted faint in the recycled oxygen, metallic and bitter on their thin lips. They thought they controlled the cycle, yet here is absence again, mocking every metric. The speech bubble hovers, blunt and final: WHERE VOJTA? Their query echoes through the sealed shell, and still no trace, only the chair whispering that he left too quietly, or too fast, or not at all. He remains unfound, a breach in their grid of certainty.