Loosing Her Number »ᴄɵᴍᴘᴌᴇтᴇ«

THREE

THREE

I swore she cried louder and louder with every passing minute. The other's had tried to talk the new female, a lynx, Number 42, into quietening, but it just made her sob even more.

"I don't think I can take much more of this," the jaguar said from her kennel. She was sitting cross-legged, covering her ears with her hands. Admittedly, I was surprised that the jaguar hadn't already snapped at the new lynx for all her bawling.

Rubbing my face with my hands, I knew I was close to doing what the jaguar wanted to do. Anything to stop her crying echo throughout the room.

To focus on something else since neither jaguar, nor I could reach the new, bawling lynx, I looked for Number 14, a hawk. Spotting her opposite, but a row down and over from me, I called her number.

She was sitting much like the jaguar was, but she looked at me when I called her with a look that said she couldn't take much more either. But my reason for calling her was because she'd been taken by the scientists earlier.

"Did you get any information from them earlier?" I asked.

I could see that she was thinking, and I was glad to see that the majority of the room had stopped paying attention to the crying lynx, and had focused on the hawk and myself. Hopefully, less attention might make her quieter. Besides, I really did want to know if she'd found anything out.

"They said that the raven will be pleased with the results that they've got from you," the hawk told the room. "They also said that they'll probably no longer need us if you do well in the ring."

Fear spun in the room then. Because, "probably no longer need us" meant that they'll all be put down. It made me wonder what I was. And how would I be better than all the others in the room?

"Any thing else?" the jaguar snapped, clearly not liking the answer the hawk had given. "Anything useful?"

The hawk sent a glare in the direction of the jaguar, not that the jaguar saw it, they were on the same side, and the hawk was on the row below and several over to the jaguar. But she did continue. "There's no fighting tonight..." then she lifted her head skywards, eyes closed, as though it would help her remember. "The raven will be coming tomorrow... There's a party and most the guards will be there tonight instead of here... Oh! And the dragons are fighting again."

I grinned at her when she looked at me, making her grin in return.

"We'll make our move tonight," I told them.

"Uh... insane shifter girl," the jaguar raised a brow at me. "We have no plan."

I shrugged. "We'll make it up as we go. Obviously since MIC––"

"MIC?"

"––Man In Charge, the raven – will be here tomorrow, and since they've found something on me, I'm guessing that they'll try something with me again today. And with most the guards gone to guard the party..."

"You can attack, since the spider's venom doesn't work with you." the jaguar grinned, in a cat-ate-the-canary way. It was kind of creepy.

"Yeah, but they're moving us," said the new female.

The room turned to look at her. And I smiled internally when my theory had worked. She'd gotten louder at the start, but then she'd clearly realised that she wasn't the most important thing around here and then she'd calmed herself down.

"Before they carried me in here," she continued. "I heard someone say that they were going to move us because the metal dragons are getting closer and closer."