If Only They Knew

Chapter 23: Animal Control

The ride to animal control was the worst! It was bumpy and shaky and it hurt. I have no idea if you remember, but at the beginning of the story, I had crashed into a mountain and hurt my arm/wing/paw. Yeah, that ride made the pain come back again. I was clutching my arm in whatever way I could with the ropes, chains, and rings on me. I was in pain in the dark truck. I could see my friends whispering to whoever was nearby in the dark. Shapeshifting would be completely useless. There was a camera in each corner, watching and recording everything, maybe even broadcasting. Besides, even if we escaped, the back was locked. It would take all of us at once to ram ourselves against the door to break it down. By the time we made one move, we would be caught, and who knows what they'll do next.
"You ok, Sylvia?" asked Alecia in a worried whisper. "Is there something wrong with your arm?"
"I'm fine," I replied, immediately acting like I was fine. "The bump just made it look like it hurt, that's all." Ok, who agrees that was the worse lie ever? It was to me.
"Look, even though you're the leader, you can admit to having pain. Did you forget we can all see in the dark? I saw you holding it in pain. Please tell me what happened."
I couldn't ignore that. She was right. "Do you remember on the day that I was captured, how I crashed into the mountain like an idiot? Well, that really hurt. It seemed fine, but this jerky hell of a truck probably brought it back. Being the leader, I feel being strong helps you guys be strong, too, not that you're not strong. It's that it helps keep all of us strong, as a group-"
"Look, we know we all have pain every once in a while, physically and mentally. If one of us is weakened and we don't know it, how does that keep the group strong?"
"She has a point," Skylar joined in. "You have to tell us if something's wrong. It's not right to hide the pain from us. We want to know if something's wrong."
"Thanks guys," I replied. When did they grow up so much? They have good points. "So you wanna know what's wrong?"
"Yes, all of us do." Dylan and Miranda had been listening and joined in. "What is it? We don't have much time, I can tell."
"The mountain crash from back home," I started, "That hurt really bad, and I tried hiding it, and you may have seen part of it before I was captured. I think something's wrong, but I have no idea what..."
"We will fix it once we get out of here," said Skylar with determination.
     The truck stopped. We knew we were about to enter animal control. We braced for the worst.
The door opened, and all we saw was a bright light, likely the sun, and a shadowy figure, which we guessed was a man. He pulled each of us out and shoved the cages onto the ground. We closed our eyes and pleased for an easy way out. Later on, a bunch of people carried our cages into the building. They opened the cages, which led to a cage right in front of us. Each of us were separated and thrown into another cage that was smaller. When I refused to move, since I barely could, I was electrocuted into my small cage. I couldn't move or see, which was weird, but I sensed my friends were in the room.
We all were in different areas and cages, but we were about to face the same punishment.