Cell: A Boy Born from Silence

  Before the cold steel bars of El-Qasr, before the hollow footsteps of broken men echoed relentlessly through the unforgiving belly of Tunisia's most feared prison, there was Aleksander—a boy born from an almost supernatural silence. His arrival into this world was marked by an absolute absence of cries, a chilling stillness that unnerved even those hardened souls who had witnessed countless births. The midwife, her breath catching in her throat, swore she saw a thin yer of frost form unexpectedly over her own trembling hands as she held him for the very first time. His mother, a visibly worn-out woman with hollow, haunted eyes and needle tracks etched like terrible scars on her arms, only whispered one chilling sentence before she turned her face away:

  “He doesn’t need to cry... the world will cry for him.”

  From the moment he first opened his pale gray eyes, Aleksander seemed utterly disconnected—not merely from other people but from the vibrant pulse of life itself. Raised in the rotten, festering alleys of Souk El Gharbi, a desote pce where even the bravest shadows seemed to fear to linger, Aleksander did not py, did not smile, and spoke only in the briefest words, only when absolutely necessary. He moved through the grimy world like winter’s ghost—detached, eerily precise, and always, always watching. Neighbors whispered nervously about him behind tightly closed doors, their voices trembling with a palpable unease. They cimed his simple stare could make hardened street dogs whimper and brutal thugs visibly hesitate, as if his gaze somehow carried the immense, crushing weight of a judgment they weren’t ready to face.

  He didn’t attend school. He didn’t need to. By the tender age of nine, Aleksander was already navigating the complex criminal underground of the city with an unsettling, unnatural ease. Not because he wanted power. Not because he hungered for wealth. No... Aleksander simply and profoundly wanted to understand. What made humans betray? What made them beg? What made them kneel? These fundamental, chilling questions drove him relentlessly, though no one around him knew it at the time. To everyone else, he was merely just another insignificant street rat destined to be chewed up and brutally spat out by the merciless, unforgiving streets of Tunis. But Aleksander wasn’t ordinary at all. He was profoundly, terrifyingly different. And undeniably dangerous.

  By seventeen, he had answered all his probing questions—primarily, and irrevocably, with blood. Entire, established gangs seemingly vanished overnight after brushing shoulders with him. Petty thieves and seasoned criminals who dared to cross his path soon found themselves crippled or simply dead. He left utterly no trace, absolutely no witnesses, and demonstrated chillingly no mercy. Yet, unlike other predators in that dark world, Aleksander operated strictly alone. He had no followers. He burned connections rather than forged them. He moved like a silent, spreading curse, silent and utterly unyielding, striking without any warning and retreating back into the deepest shadows before anyone could possibly piece together what had happened.

  They called him "Jamarid" on the brutal streets—the chilling paradox of the Frozen Fme. A name birthed from contradiction. His emotions were truly gcial, seemingly untouched by any sembnce of passion or regret, but his sudden, terrible wrath could literally melt bones. One man, his eyes wide with remembered fear, said Aleksander’s mere presence felt precisely like standing too close to dry ice—sharp, intensely biting, and utterly suffocating. Another cimed his very existence profoundly chilled the air around him, leaving a thin yer of frost on windows even in moderate temperatures and breath visibly fogging the air even in summer heat. Rumors spread like wildfire, faster than truth could ever hope to follow, but none, absolutely none, dared challenge him. Those who tried never returned.

  The authorities, against all odds, caught him just once. And that was all they needed. But not because they had somehow outsmarted him. Aleksander, for reasons unknown, simply let them. Whether it was profound boredom, a chilling curiosity, or some deeper, inscrutable purpose known only to him, the reason remained utterly unclear. All anyone knew for certain was that when the cold steel handcuffs clicked shut around his slender wrists, Aleksander didn’t resist at all. Didn’t argue. Didn’t blink. He simply stood there in perfect stillness, his pale gray eyes empty, his expression utterly unreadable, as if he already knew precisely how this particur story would end—and perhaps, how it would dramatically begin anew.

  The Prison: Fortress of the Condemned

  El-Qasr loomed like a grim, forgotten tombstone against the searing desert sky, its thick steel bars buried impossibly deep under scorched, unforgiving rock, isoted completely from the outside world and serving as a brutal home to the very worst of Tunisia’s sins. Murderers. Psychopaths. Butchers of men. Cannibals. Thieves of the very soul. Men whose names had been brutally erased from history books, repced only by terrifying legends of their cruelty whispered in the lowest, most hushed tones. It was a pce where rules were written exclusively in blood and where mercy existed only as a brutal, cruel joke.

  But even among these monsters, these husks of men, Aleksander was profoundly different.

  The very first day he entered this hell, he wore absolutely no expression. He didn’t flinch, not even a muscle, when a sharpened bde was suddenly pulled on him during the initial processing. He didn’t respond, didn’t react at all, when three hardened inmates cornered him deliberately in the dusty yard, attempting to “introduce” him to the brutal reality of prison w. Their empty threats fell utterly ft, their manufactured bravado crumbling instantly under the unnerving weight of his unblinking, pale gray stare. When one, the rgest, lunged violently, Aleksander moved—not with chaotic rage, but with astonishing, cold precision. A sharp twist of the wrist here, a calcuted, bone-breaking strike there. In less than thirty brutal seconds, all three y writhing, broken, on the ground, each ragged breath seemingly frozen mid-throat. Witnesses, their eyes wide with terror, swore the temperature dropped a noticeable ten degrees in those fleeting moments, as if the very air itself recoiled in horror from what it had just witnessed.

  Word spread like a contagion, quickly.

  “Did you see his eyes?” one notorious gang leader whispered weeks ter, his voice barely audible, a hoarse rasp above the oppressive din of the cafeteria.

  “It’s like he’s already buried us in his mind... and he’s just waiting for our bodies to catch up.”

  They quickly and fearfully called him "Ice Stone Cold." Not merely a nickname now. It was a potent, chilling warning. Nobody dared to sit next to him during the communal meals. Nobody made direct eye contact for more than a fleeting second. He didn’t ask for protection from anyone—he himself was the undisputed, terrifying threat. Even the hardened guards learned quickly to walk wide around him, their radios crackling with nervous static whenever they were forced to pass the vicinity of his cell.

  Aleksander never initiated conversation, never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary. He never reacted unless forced. But when he did finally act, the consequences rippled outwards through the entire prison like terrifying, unseen shockwaves. Cells seemed to instantly turn into silent, desote crypts. Men effectively disappeared—not physically from death, but mentally and emotionally from overwhelming, crushing fear. Some prisoners stopped eating entirely. Others refused to speak a single word. Refusing, it seemed, to even exist. All avoided Cell 96, the desote space where Aleksander resided in silence, as if it were profoundly, truly cursed.

  Yet, despite the absolute, paralyzing fear he inspired in every living soul within those walls, Aleksander remained utterly indifferent. He ate in absolute silence. Slept in absolute silence. Watched the peeling paint on the walls as if counting each minute crack, meticulously memorizing each tiny imperfection. To him, the entire prison wasn’t merely confinement—it was a crucial, silent preparation. For what, no one knew. Least of all, perhaps, Aleksander himself.

  The Incident: Dreams of Stillness

  It was during the long, oppressive third year of his sentence within El-Qasr's walls when the first truly inexplicable incident happened. Not the predictable, brutal riots. Not the twisted torture games. Those barbaric occurrences were, tragically, routine. This was something else entirely. Something far darker. Something chillingly quieter.

  It began on a night when the power abruptly went out. The entire prison instantly darkened like a vast, lightless burial site, plunging hundreds of terrified men into pitch-bck, screaming chaos. Wild, guttural screams erupted from every unseen corner, desperate fists pounded against cold steel bars, and the thick, metallic stench of pure panic filled the suffocating air. But amidst the frenzied, animal chaos, something far stranger, something deeply unsettling, began silently unfolding.

  One by one, inmates started disappearing—not physically vanishing, but fading. Not from violence or death. From an overwhelming, existential fear.

  They began refusing food and water. Refusing to speak a single word. Refusing, it seemed, to even exist. Because they’d all, somehow, started dreaming the exact same, terrifying thing.

  A cell. Starkly empty. Unbearably cold. With a man inside it, sitting in complete, unnerving stillness. Just... silently watching.

  And in each recurring, nightmarish dream, Aleksander slowly turned his head, his pale eyes fixing on them.

  Not in rage.

  Not in threat.

  But in a terrifying, silent invitation.

  As if to say:

  “Join me. Be silent. Be still. Be nothing.”

  Some inmates openly begged to be transferred to any other prison, anywhere. Others cwed frantically at their own skin, desperate, truly desperate, to escape the persistent, chilling visions haunting their sleep. Guards reported finding prisoners curled into tight fetal positions in their cells, muttering incoherently about “the man who isn’t real,” the man who shouldn't exist. Psychiatrists were reluctantly brought in, but their sessions ended abruptly, often violently, when patients began screaming uncontrolbly mid-interview, ciming they could physically feel Aleksander’s chilling presence in the very room with them.

  The Warden, a man hardened by decades of this pce, kept increasingly detailed files on Aleksander, though none of them, absolutely none, provided any rational answers.

  “In my twenty-seven years of managing this hellhole of El-Qasr, I’ve seen true demons in human skin. But never, ever have I seen the very fabric of the prison itself seem to grow cold from a single inmate’s presence. We tested for mass psychological influence. For paranormal events, however improbable. For gas leaks, even. Nothing, absolutely nothing, expins it.”

  “He doesn’t cause chaos, not in the traditional sense. He causes... an absence. A profound, terrifying emotional vacuum. Like everyone’s just silently counting down the moments until he decides we are simply unnecessary.”

  “His blood, I swear, runs like ice. It literally, visibly fogged the air when he bled during that unavoidable altercation st month. Even the hardened prison doctor left the infirmary afterwards, visibly sobbing.”

  “I have officially stopped assigning cellmates. No one survives.”

  The Newcomers: Lines Drawn in Fear

  Precisely one week before the ultimate catastrophe descended upon El-Qasr, they brought in a shipment of twenty new prisoners. Petty thieves. Desperate fighters. Even one stoic ex-soldier. And one terrified kid who, inexplicably, cried the very moment his eyes fell upon Aleksander. They grouped quickly together, a nervous pack, trying desperately to assert some form of dominance, carving imaginary territories in the dusty yard. But the very moment their eyes nded on him?

  Silence.

  The kind of absolute silence that makes the skin suddenly sweat ice.

  One of the newcomers whispered, almost involuntarily, his voice a dry rasp:

  “Why’s that guy not blinking?”

  Another replied, his voice hollow, dripping with sudden, palpable dread:

  “Because even blinking would waste energy on you.”

  They stayed far, far away. They chose the furthest, most desote corners of the yard. They invented invisible lines on the ground, marking stark, uncrossable boundaries none dared cross. But Aleksander did not move from his spot. Did not threaten. Did not care. Because something else, something far more profound, was whispering now.

  Not the prisoners.

  Not the guards.

  Not his memories.

  But something... deep inside him.

  The Pulse: A Signal Beyond Humanity

  Aleksander sat perfectly still on the cold metal bed one night. Head lowered. Eyes closed. His breathing slow, barely perceptible. Then it came.

  A single, distinct beat.

  Ping.

  Inside his silent, frozen mind.

  Not a physical sound.

  A distinct signal.

  Not from this physical world.

  A gentle, artificial voice, devoid of human warmth, followed it—detached, chillingly clinical, yet undeniably amused.

  ?Initializing... Host detected... Compatibility: 100%... Preparing access.?

  But Aleksander didn’t react at all.

  Didn’t flinch a muscle.

  He opened his eyes slowly, deliberately, and for the very first time...

  They were pale gray, yet somehow deeper now—like frozen ash, like forgotten void.

  The artificial voice paused, its tone shifting, almost... startled.

  ?...What are you??

  Aleksander blinked once, slowly.

  “I am silence.”

  Epilogue: The Smile That Froze Time

  Somewhere, deep within the cold, stone byrinth of El-Qasr, a single, piercing scream echoed impossibly through the thick, unforgiving walls.

  Not from pain.

  Not from rage.

  But from something else entirely—something far more profound and terrifying.

  Laughter.

  The chilling, disembodied ughter of a system that had finally found its perfect host...

  And had just realized, perhaps too te, it may have bitten off far, far more than it could ever hope to control.

  The artificial voice echoed into the profound, icy darkness of the prison, filled now with an undeniable, eerie amusement:

  ?This... is going to be fun.?

  And for the first time in many, many years...

  Aleksander smiled.[Prologue END...TO BE CONTINUED]