Chapter Eight – In the Cage
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Sonic’s fist met the ground, sending a swirl of dust into the air to mix with the wind. He was on his knees in the dirt before Sally’s hut, his head hanging. The sun had migrated below the horizon on his return, and Sally’s head also hung.
“I can’t believe it – Sal, I looked everywhere – even in the dammed command room, and he’s not anywhere…”
Snively fell onto his bed, face first, the memory of Sonic’s fury still in his eyes. There was a pent-up laugh in his throat, strangling him into chuckles. Behind him, Tails stared at the small human figure, wondering if Snively’s sanity had hit the fan. The muffled, choked laughter continued for a long minute, until Snively sat up with his legs over the side of his bed, and wiped the corner of an eye with his sleeve.
A rustle of fur against metal caught his attention, and Snively turned his head to stare sideways at the female fox. She was pressed up against the front of the cage again, her voluminous tails rustling behind her. He cast his gaze then upon the chest near his doorway, a smile treading across his features.
“Well, fox, if you’re to stay here you’ll have to earn your keep.”
Tails’ ears shifted forwards, and she simply rested against the bars, waiting for further explanation.
“After all, room and board doesn’t come cheap.”
The fox gave him a blank, bored look. “And…?”
Snively sniffed and leapt off his bed, and walked over towards the chest, playing at the latches. After a minute of wrestling with the dusty buckles, he pushed the cover open and sneezed in the rain of dust. Tails’ wagging settled for a while, betraying her interest.
After a furious rubbing of his irritated proboscis, Snively leaned forward, and pulled a faded garment from the chest, shaking mothballs out of it.
“See here, fox. You’ll show me a bit of what life was like before Robotnik.”
And he unravelled the garment to show a faded maroon dress, of the sort that one would find in the royal wardrobe. Tails’ eyes widened, and she stared up at the gown.
“You want – ?”
“Exactly. Put this on.” Snively bent over, offering the clothing to the caged vixen.
Tails refused it with a shake of her head. “No way! I’m a guy!”
Snively straightened up, surprise written across his features. “Yeah, and I’m a blue hedgehog! Just what is that on your chest, fur?”
“Yes!” Tails blushed brightly through her ears, flustered.
“Hah! What a nutcase! Those are mammary glands if I ever saw them.” He shoved the dress through the bars with a huff. “Look, do you want to eat or not?”
Tails growled and grabbed the dress out of Snively’s hand, her other arm across her chest, for the first time abashed. She held the pungent-smelling cloth to her stomach, giving Snively a glare.
He stared back, with an incredulous look. “Put it on. You look ridiculous naked.”
Tails’ mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Naked?! She turned a flustered back on Snively and put on the dress, almost turning somersaults in the cage to put it on properly. It took her five minutes to put on the first full-body garment she had ever worn in her life – and that was by sheer luck.
When she turned around, Snively cupped his chin in a speculative hand, and then nodded. “Much better.”
Tails felt as if her face was as red as the dress. She refused to reply, and instead settled into a seated position in the middle of the cage, nibbling on the wrist of a glove.
Snively shook his head, and then went to a keypad at the side of his door. He arranged a SWATbot escort to take Tails to the restroom and to bring a taller cage.
As a grateful Tails followed the robot to the restroom, she noted the walls and signs she passed, etching them into her mind. Behind the business of planning an escape, she wondered if Sonic had come for her yet. And, if he had, what happened? She was in the heart of Robotropolis, within the well-guarded quarters. Had he tried already to save her from this place?
Sally stirred in her sleep, a weary eye falling on Nicole on her desk. She stumbled from her covers and across the floor, and sat down on her chair, flipping open the small computer. It was a communique from Sir Charles, waiting for her acknowledgment. She hit the enter button and at back in her chair, one paw rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Good morning, Princess. I’ve had some interesting results from monitoring the network here…”
Sally yawned, shifting in her seat. “Can you rightly say ‘morning’, Charles? It’s nearly four.”
The weak camera only picked up Charles’ rocking, and not his soft laughter. “Of course, Sally. It’s never night here in the big city.”
“Anyways, let’s hear it.” She leaned forward, looking intently at her screen.
“You’ll be surprised to hear this. Snively has ordered an over-sized cage delivered to his room, and he’s been spending more time there than usual-”
“A what?”
“A cage. I’m going to investigate it as soon as my shift is over tomorrow.”
“Excellent. I’ll wait until you report back, Sir Charles, before I tell Sonic anything. He’ll just blow up again…”
“That might be wise, princess. Hopefully this is the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“Indeed.”
Tails stretched out on the floor of the new cage, groaning as she flexed her strained legs. Snively was once again snoring on his bed, filling the room with an oddly comforting sound. It was far from the same sound Sonic made in his sleep, but Tails was relieved when there was sound – any sound in the dreary room. She stood and stretched again, and slipped out of the dress, crumpling it up. Any pillow was better than no pillow.
Snively’s rhythmic snoring became Sonic’s pattern of breathing in her mind as Tails lay out on the floor for her second night, drifting off to a fitful sleep.
Sonic, however, was far from sleeping peacefully. His bed was a crumpled mess of blanket, sheets and pillow, all rotated to uncommon positions as he lay there, staring up at his dark ceiling. His failed rescue mission had Sonic in worse condition than when he had lost Aree the vagrant ram to Robotnik’s void.
Tails meant the world to Sonic, like a younger brother. Tails the vibrant, smiling, bright fox child, who always knew how to cheer Sonic up. Who always lent a helping hand, when the world was inside out. Who had been by Sonic’s side since childhood.
Sonic was a mess.
Tails found herself alone when she woke, the clock over Snively’s bed beating a slow path to one in the afternoon. She had grossly overslept her normal routine, but she found little else to do with the time in her cage. A small plate of slimy eggs and grey meat was just outside the bars of her cage, and she sat up to ingest the tasteless material.
The minutes ticked by, and Tails found herself in the same dilemma as in the day that had already trudged by. She had nearly cleaned the plate out of hunger, and it sat outside her cage, waiting for dust to settle on it like every other surface in the room. She stared at it in her boredom, then at the walls.
Tails found that squinting her eyes just so would make the clock drip off of the wall, like a dollop of honey. It would first grow into a hazy blur, then, between her eyelashes, ooze it’s way along the pallid wall. After this grew old, she tried to make the chest melt. It simply sat there in a dumb, dusty, inanimate lull. After a while, though, she found she could see print on a placard at its side, with a few words carved in the metal. The letters were nearly too dusted over to make out, but Tails imagined she read ‘Sally’ somewhere on it.
The creak of the door rousted her, and she looked up, unsurprised to find Snively entering the room, tossing his across the room to his bed. He sat down on the chest, a leg obscuring the placard from view.
“Enjoyed the lunch?”
Tails made a face. “First class cuisine you have here.” Her voice dripped sarcasm.
Snively laughed hollowly, leaning back. “Don’t remind me.” He heaved a sigh and kicked the chest, making it reverberate with a thud.
The fox wriggled her whiskers, sniffing the air. Snively was rank with coffee and slightly unwashed odours, and she could smell oil in his clothing. The minutes started to tick away again.
She got bored. “I’ve got a question for you.”
“Ask away.” Snively was staring at the wall clock again, his eyes distant.
“Why do you hang out here? With Robotnik and all, I mean?”
Another sigh. “Why not stay here?”
“Well, it’s so… nasty.”
Snively snorted briefly. “I won’t deny that. But … I have no other place to go, really.”
“Ah, sure there is. There’s umm… Knothole, for one – ” A stare from Snively silenced her.
“Yeah, right, like I’d ever go there. I’d loose my head in five seconds.”
“Well, you don’t know that for sure -”
“Uh-huh. This is the finger,” Snively held up his right index finger for Tails to see. “That started the coup of Mobotropolis. I’m a wanted traitor.”
“Oh.” Tails almost sighed in her speech, slumping back against the bars.
Snively’s eyes took on the far-off look again. “This is where I belong. I have nowhere else to go because, ” He sighed long, and looked on the clock. “Because I’m the last of my species. If you don’t count lard-factory, the line of humans ends with me in the here and now.”
“Are you serious?” Tails looked up, genuinely surprised at the news.
“Dead serious.” Snively’s eyes were empty.
“But what about everyone else…”
“They left Mobius a decade ago, on the last remaining spaceship on the planet.”
Tails listened, quietly, inwardly reflective.
“I’m very, very singular. There’s no one left.”
She was still quiet, somewhere struck by those words.
“I’m alone -”
Tails bristled at the neck. “What do you know about alone?”
Snively was snapped out of his reverie by the fox’s outburst. “What-?”
“I said, you don’t know jack about being alone.”
“What the heck do you mean? You’ve got at least twenty-odd critters back in that base of yours, last I counted.”
“Not quite.” Tails swept her hand around and grabbed her tails in a chokehold. “What do you call this? Normal? To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only fox in the world with a mutation like this. I am the only one of my kind in the world. You at least have family around.”
Snively blinked, sitting now straight on the chest.
Tails released her appendages and grasped the bars in both hands. “I know what you are.”
“Oh? What am I, then?”
“You’re the one behind bars. You’re stuck where you are, with no way out.”
Snively blinked.
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