Prologue-Year 2910

Darkness consumes the cold cell. Water drips slowly down from the ceiling, forming a murky puddle of the damp dirt ground. The room holds no sounds besides the constant drip, and, every now and then, someone shuffles, trying to find warmth within their death. A soft whimper, a shush from someone else, and the cell falls silent again, the drip seeming daunting.

The silence is broken. A door opens many feet away, and a bulky man shuffles through the cold hall, his whistle holding no comfort to those inhabited, as he circles a pair of keys in his pudgy fingers. He stops suddenly, his fat face facing the second to last cell in the room, and he grins wickedly as he lifts the keys up to the door. Things start to come to life, for movement is heard, and dark, red eyes can be seen through the bars as they try to hide in the shadows. Someone growls, trying to force the living away from her claimed area, but it's useless, as they all cram to the back along with her. The door opens with a creak, and the man glances around the dark cell, as if he can see. His fingers encircle the keys firmly, and they clatter slightly at his fingers light movement by his side. Squinting into nothingness, he suddenly sees something, and with determined steps, walks into the back of the room.

Murmurs are heard within as the man makes his way further and further back, and stops at the end of the cell, watching the wavering red eyes glance up at him with fear, and then look down. Only one pair of eyes stare up at him, however. The eyes are cold, full of hatred, and the man grins. He knows who would be that stubborn; who would still look up at him with an unfaltering gaze. She had the power to be able to look at everyone with determination running through her, and yet, to not allow anyone to be able to break through her walls.

Only two people in her life had ever managed to find her. And the man knew no one else would be able to break her down. She was a mystery, a puzzle piece to this whole mess, but she was one who would never fully fit correctly.

And that was why he enjoyed torturing her and her baby the most. Because she was so dang stubborn.

With a simple shrug of his broad shoulders, she knew she was being called forth, but she stood still, her back straight and stiff, like an iron board. This only made the man smirk, as he reached for her bony form. She attempted an attack, shielding her child in her arms as she did so, but she was too weak, and he easily grabbed her arm, and dragged her out of the room. Screaming intensely, mostly out of anger, the women fought for the right to stay as she was, but her frail form wouldn't allow it, and she soon gave in, telling herself only to hold her shaking baby closer to her. With a sharp yank, the man continued pulling her along the dark, long hallway, his intentions for her not being in this room.

Reaching the large double doors, he paused only long enough to type a code into the key pad by the door, which doesn't go unnoticed to the women, and her eyes follow his fat fingers as they press button after button until the doors open, and the man moves forward.

'4VFO57JV4…' she muses, as he continues walking.

Again, the women struggles, making the man holding her stop in his tracks and let out a sigh before he turns to her. His eyes hold no amusement any longer as he turns his gaze to the whimpering bundle of rags the women carries. Without a word, he reaches for the blankets, and before the women can stop him, he pulls out by the head a small, under nourished baby, who immediately starts crying. Lifting a hand, the man slaps the screaming babe, and the women starts yelling as she reaches for her week old child, tears shimmering in her blood red eyes. Again, the baby is whacked, and then shaken slightly.

"Stop it, please, stop it!" The women stops reaching, realizing that it might just mean the baby will get slapped again. The man has by this time released his grip on her, so as to harm the baby more, and he knows she won't run, for she loves her child too much. He looks down at her weak form which lies on the dirt, covered only by mere rags, and his smile chills her as he roughly shoves the baby into her arms.

"Get up." With a quick nod, the women stands, and she sways, for she hasn't stood properly for days, not wanting to feel any pain. Biting her lip to hold back a cry, she stumbles after the man's retreating form, down the long corridor.

Minutes drag by, and suddenly the plump man stops, and he turns to the women behind him. By instinct, he presses in the key pad's code for the nearby door, and it swings open, revealing a sickening smell. Crinkling his nose, the guard waves at the door, and the women steps through uncertainly. Immediately someone reaches into her arms and takes her child away. With a desperate cry, she again reaches for the child, but is quickly shoved to the other side of the room by a third man, his face hidden by an unnecessary mask and goggles. Fear for herself suddenly can be found in her own eyes, for the first time since this whole ordeal started.

She hears her baby let out a paroxysm of screams on the other side of the room, and she only vaguely hears her own as the man jams a sharp needle into her sick yellow skin. Another needle finds her, and the same process repeats itself over and over, until, rather suddenly, it all ends. The first guard comes back to her, his face a mask, and he forcefully leads her shaking body back into her cell, where she does not see her baby.

Panic floods her system. This couldn't be happening to her; she already lost two loved ones before. But just as tears are about to pour out from her eyelids, the doors open again, and someone throws a small bundle into the cell, as if it were a rag doll. Realizing what's being thrown, the women miraculously catches the child just before she hits the cold, wet, pavement floor, and holds the crying baby close to herself, ignoring the irked glances from her other cell mates as she rocks it slowly on the ground. She hums a tune her mother used to sing her, hoping to calm the child further.

It was quiet.

The wide, dark hallway were bare of any living thing, bare of any movement, and bare of any breathable air. The only thing in the hall, were dying light bulbs-which were blinking nervously-, chipped white paint on the walls, and many, many doors, which led to various rooms. Some of these doors led to a person's death. Others led to a second way towards death. Still, more led to a third way to perish.

Only one door, at the end of the long, blank, hallway, led to life.

The silence broke slowly, and movement cautiously risked itself free, as one door at the opposite end of the life giving door, opened. Musky air clung to the vast space within the hall as the door opened just enough to reveal something that was alive.

A young hedgehog woman stepped into the dark corridor, her eyes scanning for any other movement besides herself. Her dark blue spines were long, and dirty, clammy to the touch, for it had been years since her originally straight spines had been revealed underneath the knots and tangles. Her face looked normal enough; two ears, one nose, one mouth, but her eyes were different, for they were a dark, murderess red in color. The rags she wore indicated a struggle for life, as did her colorful bruises and scratches that covered most of her body. In her arms, a bundle of rags whimpered softly, revealing a small, under nourished baby.

Slowly, the young women crept down the hall, her blood eyes jumping around anxiously, searching for danger. She knew something would happen eventually. She knew someone or something would try and stop her from her escape. Few had ever escaped this deadly building, and those that had were usually recaptured.

And as the women tip-toed her way to the life-giving door, her thoughts repeated themselves over and over, reminding her of what she was doing and why, proving to herself that she had everything figured out, that she could escape, that she had to. She wanted her baby daughter to have a prosperous life, not a life slowly killing you.

She stopped suddenly, and closed her eyes, demanding them not to release tears. Tears were useless here. Memories flooded her previous thoughts of escape enough to force her to concentrate on nothing else, if only for a moment.

With a sharp intake, she forced herself not to break down into memories quiet yet. She needed to escape successfully first before her thoughts could consume her. Slowly, the weary hedgehog opened her dark eyes, staring at the mocking door only 100 yards away from her. When had it become reality, to stand this close to life, without a guard with her?

"I am Friska," she murmured, as she took a step forward. She clutched the child in her arms closer to herself. "And tonight, we're going to escape."

The tile floor beneath her feet suddenly fell in from her extra weight, and Friska winced as alarms wailed in her ears. Cursing, she flew off like a deer, her feet hardly touching the ground as she continued her pursuit for life, not only 75 yards away from her. Voices besides the crying baby's sounded in Friska's ears, and traveled up to her alarmed brain. She knew they were the guards' voices.

50 yards away.

The voices suddenly turned into guards themselves, as they raced towards her in all directions. Doors everywhere, on every side, opened and closed, feet trampled across the dark yellow tile, and chaos appeared to rein, when suddenly, Friska realized that she was only 25 yards away, and she effortlessly pushed through the trained soldiers, how she would never know. Her ears burned as the angry shouting increased, her legs pushed themselves to the limits, and her head throbbed as she tried to penetrate through her brain's confusion. The tile wasn't supposed to sink in there. She had studied it months ago. But she knew she didn't have time to figure out her mistake, as she moved aside from the approaching soldiers.

'Some trained soldiers they are,' she figured. 'They're losing to a weakling in body and spirit.'

A hand, a guard's hand, brushed her arm, and suddenly she felt that she was eating her own words as it made a grab for her, and managed to push her down to the ground. Dazed, she hardly noticed the pain in her bruised side, and could barely hear her child scream as a soldier aimed for the both of them with his gun. Trained dogs growled at the heels of the soldiers, their teeth bared, ready for a fight if either baby or women would try anything funny. A circle of the soldiers circled around the two hedgehogs, their glares covered by their protective yet unnecessary masks, supposedly on to keep them from catching a disease from their work. Friska breathed hard, catching her breath as she skimmed every single soldier and dog, looking for some sort of weakness, if any at all, in just one soldier or dog.

She didn't find anything, and she sat there, on the cold ground, fearing her life, wondering if it had already been over the moment she was born. Her life flashed before her eyes in a second, as she saw her mother rocking her as a baby and cuddling her, and telling her everything would be alright. She saw the baby smile up at her for the first time, the only time she was aware of, and she saw the recent time her baby had been separated from her, for tests, not even a week ago.

Her eyes grew cold, a lump formed in her throat, and her heart turned to stone as she protectively hugged the baby. A brown and black dog, one who was obviously young and still needed training, lunged at her for the small movement, barking savagely as she rolled aside, grabbed onto a soldier's gun, and pulled the trigger before the soldiers even had time to react. A deafening boom sounded in the hall, and chaos resumed as the women managed to stand, bolted towards the door, opened it, and closed it behind her.

She didn't have time to marvel at the landscape, even though it was her first time ever to venture outside. White flakes of various sizes trickled down from the dark, grey sky, covering the thousands of hills in a thick, beautiful and undisturbed, unwrinkled blanket of white. The land seemed at peace and calm, all except the misfit; the women. As she ran through the once perfect white, her whole body instantly chilled by the now angry white flakes. The door behind her opened, she could hear it as the guards and their dogs either ran towards her on feet, or hopped into some hovering vehicle and pursued her that way. Another gun shot ran out, zooming past her dark spines, causing the baby, who had mostly been quiet up until now, to start a full new set of tears. Friska took a chance to search for some form of safety as she continued running, but, by now the white had thickened enough that she could hardly see in front of her. Again, fear ceased her. There wasn't a place to hide, and she couldn't run away forever, she'd eventually be caught.

'It's already over, it has been,' she thought, her face pain stricken.

Suddenly stopping, the women looked like she had just given up, when she closed her eyes, murmured something softly under her chilled breath, and disappeared.

She had never attempted it before, so when she managed to reappear somewhere completely different a minute later, she just about fainted from pure relief. Who would've thought, that she would manage to escape from the exact power the guards had given her?

'Not them, apparently.'

Looking up, the women was quickly memorized by the tiny flakes that continued floating down from the dark sky, and the women grinned, her first genuine smile ever since her baby had been born. The land rolled on and on, as far as her eyes could see, except, one thing blocked the hills.

A house.

It was a small, comfortable looking home, and smoke climbed slowly from the chimney, forming a small little cloud. All the lights remained off in the house, except for one, on the side of the little home. Looking down at the small baby in her arms, Friska suddenly debated if she should make a life for herself first, before the baby lived with her. Because, what if her life she was to live from now on would never suit her young child?

With a trembling lip, she knew she had to give up her child.

'Don't cry,' her brain whispered. 'Crying never solves anything.'

Reaching the front door the women quickly gave her child one last squeeze, a kiss on her cold cheek, and then she lay the baby down on the buried "Welcome" mat, although all she saw were the white flakes. She closed her eyes, allowing only a single tear to fall before she knocked on the hard wooden door, and then, ran off, her footsteps quickly being covered by the increasing snow as she retreated further and further from her only comfort; her baby.

'One day, Friska, you will escape,' she heard her mother say. Friska smiled to herself.

'Guess what, Mother?' she thought. The door behind her opened. She kept walking, knowing she wouldn't be seen in the flurry of white. 'I did escape.'

I hate to break the epic beginning with an author's note, but I feel I have some explaining to do...You see, I was going to wait and get this story all worked out in my mind before I published it, but, ha, now you know how terribly impatient I am, even with my own brain. So, here we are, with the first chapter of my 'famous' Kyler, only, as I'm sure you can tell by now, this is definitally I rewrite, like so many of my other stories. And as my profile explains, this story, will not be the end of the beloved girl and her story. Because, well, this will be become a series...or at least we all hope. Anyway, I'm tired of rambling! You guys can do the talking from now on lol.

~Ksonic~