More than the caught voices, more than the tape hiss amplified to sleep inducing levels, Fay fell hardest for the recorded electric hum of the asylum's subterranean power system. Even when it clipped out all signal, the buzz was intoxicating. She remembered the feeling, laying there on the steel floor, the hum of machines around her, knowing the troubled voices two stories overhead. She could still smell the tape recorder lying next to her, hear the quiet whirr of its motors distinguished from the environment.
Back on Halo Street, Fay ensured the tape deck was set to loop. She opened the window and curled up on the leather bench beneath it, mixing the hum from what felt like another world with the district outside.