CELLS D2 AND D3

Charlie. Kern. Marsh. Donald. Frank, a.k.a. Sparky. Oscar. Ginger. And me, Eli. The occupants of cells D2 and D3. Stand up and take a bow.

The first week was definitely the worst. The shock of it all almost killed us. The scope of this operation. But it made sense in the end. Robotnik hated us this much.

This was his gift to Freedom Fighters everywhere.

Week two was better. The others in my cell began talking to one another, like old friends. Everyone, except for me.

A thing like this is supposed to unit us, bind us together, make us stronger. I just didn't buy it.

I suppose part of it is my fault. I didn't even try to say the right things to them. They had my name, and that suited me just fine. I didn't need new friends.

After they had introductions out of the way, they talked about escape. I think it was Charlie who suggested it first: trying to hold our breaths long enough to see where the secret door was, and go from there.

If I had been invited, I would have told them that thinking about escape was a bad thing. I would have told them that we had already lost the war.

Place a bunch of military thinkers in one room for an extended period of time and see what happens. See what they can cook up. Weigh that with how much they argue, complain, bicker, and disagree. Weigh the progress against the dispensable bullshit. Tally the score at the end.

Not only were we out-manned and outgunned, we were outthought, by a much better player. That should have been evident from the very beginning. But part of warfare mentality is never giving up, never giving in, never compromising.

You make a prison compound, a normal prison compound, you do what you can to catch those who try to escape. You find out what's going on inside with psychology. Pick out the losers of the bunch, and bargain with them. Information for protection, for food. Pay them to betray their friends, and keep them happy so they don't think twice about it. You could even send in a guard, masquerading as a prisoner, have him spy on their activities and return with progress reports. If it's necessary.

There was no need for any of it here. The guards didn't have contact with the prisoners. Our privileges were nonexistent. No exits. We were completely at his mercy. On his turf, in his created world. No room for anything but hope, hope for someone to come and rescue us.

The trick was not to get comfortable, only appreciate how good it was for the moment, ever keeping in mind that it could go bad at any time. I figured it was worth a try. The others only pretended they weren't ignoring the hopelessness. Their two favorite things to do this were talking and playing ball.

The ball… small enough to hide in an enclosed fist. Extremely bouncy, shooting around a cell like a bullet. Nearest I can tell, playing with it was supposed to make us happy. Or angry.

For a while, weeks, this was how things went. Wake up, eat, observe, shower, sleep. Routine is tough. Time passed slowly, day by day, hour by hour. Little things about our cell began bothering me. How thin the sheets were, not thick enough for the cold weather. How small the food portions were, only enough to keep us alive, not enough to sate our hunger. How the size of the cell worked against us, big enough to incite the need to explore, only to turn out being a lot smaller than it originally appeared. How we had a constant view of our neighbors, but had no effective way of communicating with them.

I was on my own, with everything. I had no one to talk to about how I was feeling, so it stayed inside of me in a nice, dark little corner.

Turned out my cellmates and I shared a lot of the same insecurities, after they had made theirs painfully vocal. Out of all of them, Ginger was the one who complained the most. But I'll get to her later.

Around the fourth week, I needed something else to break the routine. Something small that didn't involve anyone else. The idea, once it came, was surprisingly easy to execute.

Starvation.

Just to have something else to think about. I was getting used to the servings Robotnik gave us, but I figured that it could change at any time. I began chucking my second apple out the bathroom window, to remove temptation. By this time, I was practically a nonentity to my cellmates. I figured no one would notice.

But someone did notice. Kern. Turns out my attitude had really stuck in his craw, and he had been watching me. He found out what I was doing and threw a total bitch fit to Frank, saying that if I didn't want to eat, I should give my share to the one of them. Who the fuck did I think I was and so on. And Frank, good old Frank, had seniority, if you count those things.

Bears are like that. They use their size as an intimidation tool. That's why most of the great generals on Mobius were bears. And Frank a.k.a. Sparky was big, what I like to call 'one burly motherfucker,' and he usually got what he wanted.

And me, I'm a fox, so what the hell do I know. I look like half the residents of Knothole; I could be anybody. To Frank, I was just some low-level grunt who would fold immediately under pressure.

The bastard, he looked me right in the eye and told me never to do it, ever again. He had "no need for despair" in his group. If he caught me doing it, he'd tear off my skin with his bear (ha) hands.

He walked away proud, thinking he had strengthened the weakest link in the chain. All he did was force me to be more careful about how I starve myself. Flush.

Another week passed and I was thinner. My hair started falling out. Lack of protein. I didn't mind, I wasn't trying to impress these fuckers with my looks. Days were shorter as I woke up later and later. I hardly ever went to the bathroom, save for getting rid of food I wasn't eating.

It might have been despair, sure, I'll give Frank that. But he had plenty of room for it, especially with his entire flock acting artificially happy, allowing their environment to assimilate them. Oh, they talked about escape, but that's all it was. Talk is cheap shit.

Despair? At least I can look at my own reflection without flinching.

Bottom line is, I don't regret doing it. I don't think it's cowardly to kill yourself, not if you know that somewhere down the line, soon, someone else is inevitably going to wrench your life away from you. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather die on my own terms.

If those cameras truly had eyes, they would notice what I was doing. They would see that I was trying to beat Robotnik to the punch. I didn't think he would give me the satisfaction of starving to death.

One morning, we had woken up with apples and I decided that I didn't need either of them. I waited two hours before heading to the bathroom.

Another weird thing about that; what got me caught throwing the food out the window is that my cellmates hardly ever saw me piss. The toilet is right next to the door, therefore, yes, privacy is nonexistent. In theory, they turn away whenever someone does it. Apparently, they still look out of the corner of their eyes, just to make sure you're… on the up and up… normal? Functioning?

So, it required me to be clever. Keep the apples hidden until I sit down, which guarantees some turned heads. Then, quick as a flash, slip the apples in between your legs. And no one in their right mind would inspect your droppings, so you're in the clear.

Problem being, I had grown overconfident in our plumbing system. Seconds after flush and the water started rising. It kept rising. Near the top, a moment which always used to scare me as a kid. It spilled over and the water swirled down the center shower drain.

I watched until the water stopped flowing, the toilet still filled to the brim, and I exited.

As it happened, Frank had to use the D2 toilet next. He exited almost immediately, casting me a weird stare. He said, "At least you're eating."

Point is, the next morning, the toilet was fixed. No fuss, no muss, we could all use it again.

If Robotnik hadn't known what I was doing before, he knew now. And I could feel him watching me, hoping that I got comfortable trying whatever it was I was trying, hoping that I'd keep thinking I could lessen the oncoming pain, so that when it hit, I would feel the hurt worse than anyone.