Clean, quiet, and fully staffed. Nothing about it looks like what it is.
The Installation, 202716:9
Fluorescent white and grey, safety yellow markings, one color of warmth that should not be there.
The floor is poured, sealed, and mopped on a schedule taped to the wall by the door: grey concrete under fluorescent light, with lines painted in safety yellow marking where a cart goes and where a person stands. A whiteboard by the entrance lists a rotation in ordinary handwriting. A clipboard hangs under it on a string.
Further in, a row of enclosures runs the length of the building, each one numbered, each one ventilated, each one holding a child of the Bound. This is where they are kept, and where the essence in their blood is drawn out of them and put to use. There is nothing dramatic about how it is done. It happens on a schedule, carried out by people who clocked in on time.
Past the enclosures there is a break area with a kettle, a coffee ring on a table nobody has wiped this week, and a calendar with a birthday circled in red. The only warm color anywhere in the building comes from something that has no business being warm, and everything else about the place is exactly as ordinary as a workplace should be.