The Princess Race

Line Is An Alligator

    Phenom and I walked to our cell in complete silence, which was good because I didn't want to talk to him at the moment. He knew practically everything that happened that day, even if he wasn't there. That creeped me out a lot, so I didn't speak.

    Once we went up the stairs and into our cell, I looked for the item that Line said she had left for me. I quickly noticed two items on my pillow, a green dog collar, and a silver ring. I picked up the ring and put it on... nothing felt different.

    I picked up the collar, "Phenom, do you want this on? It's from Line."

    The coyote nodded and I strapped the collar around his neck.

    "Do you feel anything different? I don't." Phenom said as he gazed out of the small window of the cell.

    "No, nothing. Maybe it only feels different in certain situations." I said with a shrug.

    "All you filthy dogs to the bottom floor for evening roll call!" A voice shouted a little too loudly on a microphone.

    "The schedule seems to have each period a little too short... don't you think?" I asked Phenom who was already making his way out of the cell.

    "I concur." He said as I walked beside him down the stairs, "I wish they had made free-time a fragment longer, and made roll call not as often. The itinerary dictated that there are two roll calls, one morning and one evening. This is the evening one."

    We quickly made our way down and joined the crowd of prisoners in the cafeteria. The officers began rattling off names and another officer replied by saying if they were present or not. I remembered that Kid had disappeared, I was curious to see what they would do.

    "Dexis Roxten." An officer called out.

    Phenom cringed beside me and I remembered him saying that only the Princes were allowed to say their last names.

    "Hospitalized." Another officer replied.

    They called out more and more names until they got to Kid. His name was called out, there was a long silence before an officer said that he wasn't present.

    "All prisoners report to their cells at once. Lockdown." A voice boomed over the microphone.

    All the prisoners split at once and ran to the stairs, pushing each other out of the way. Phenom and I ran as fast as we could, turns out we were the first inmates up the stairs. We made a sharp right and slid into our cell, the door slamming shut and locking behind us. I sat down on the bed in the corner and Phenom jumped up and sat down next to me.

    "Curious to see what they're going to do when they realize Kid is gone." Phenom whispered.

    "Yeah, same here." I said quietly.

    After about thirty minutes of sitting in our cell, all the lights went out. We were left in darkness, besides the flames that each officer held in their hand. I silently prayed that Lynx and Prince Dexis were okay.

    I heard something scratch at the window, like claws on cement. Phenom trotted over to the window and looked out. He blinked multiple times before smiling, "Salutations Kid..."

    I stood up and walked over to where Phenom was. What I saw made me gasp. It was a cat-like creature with a long neck, pointy black ears, bright blue eyes, sharp teeth, and red hair atop its head. It had the black legs of a bird with the sharpest claws I had ever seen. It wore a strange looking white collar, its orange fur with red stripes shone out against the grey wall that it dug its claws into, holding on for dear life. Its tail was long and black, it also had twelve spikes on it and the tip of it was shaped like an arrowhead.