ALEXIS

Nobody—not even as strong an individual as Princess Sally—could survive for this long with zero nutrition and minimal water. At the very least, she would have died of dehydration by now. Yet the princess was still alive. It was medically perplexing; Alexis was at a complete loss for an explanation.

Then last week she found the puncture marks on Sally's arm: small and barely detectable on the surface of her skin underneath the fur. Upon closer inspection, there also appeared to be mild bruising. Alexis knew that these marks couldn't have been from an IV; long-term intravenous feeding would be devastating to a patient's veins and cause irreparable damage. Rather, she theorized that somebody was injecting her with something at nighttime. But what?

Regardless, the evidence was clear—Robotnik was deliberately keeping the princess alive. There weren't any incisions in her stomach, so it was likely that Sally was given artificial nutrition through a feeding tube in her mouth or nose. If that was the case, this twisted game could continue for months longer. Even years.

Since their living conditions were gradually declining, however, Alexis highly doubted that. On the bed across from her, Tails was bundled in blankets, facing the glass wall of the empty cell beside them. He was asleep. It was getting darker outside, so she expected the inevitable anesthesia any time now. She missed the heat. And warm showers. And eating fruit that wasn't rotten. At least they were alive, though—even if the point of their survival was growing ever distant.

Knife.

She'd shaken the thought of it from her mind countless times… yet it was obviously placed in their cell with intricate purpose. It was anything but a normal paring knife. Though small, the blade was surgically sharp with wicked, serrated edges. In Alexis's expert hand, it would be effortless to sever a major artery and grant instant relief to anybody in that cell.

She was holding the knife now, lightly pressing the tip of it against the inside of her left wrist. She'd seen enough attempted suicides to know that it was absolutely necessary to cut deep enough to sever the radial artery. Wrist-cutting was an inefficient suicide method, anyway; nine out of ten Mobians who tried only ended up damaging their wrist tendons beyond repair or paralyzing their own hands (and usually made the mistake of cutting horizontally instead of vertically). Besides, to do the job correctly she'd need to soak her wrists in warm water to reduce clotting and increase the blood flow—in which case, she missed her chance over a week ago when Robotnik shut their water-heater off.

A cut to the throat, on the other hand, would be much more efficient. Even if she didn't slice all the way to the carotid artery or jugular vein, she would likely cut the trachea and choke to death on her own blood. But slashing her own throat would be complicated; it would require a mirror (no problem there) and a lot of willpower, since it would doubtlessly hurt like hell.

No, she couldn't kill herself—if nothing else, because it would leave Tails alone and defenseless. She couldn't do that to him. And there was certainly no way she could ever bring herself to kill a child, even to put him out of his misery. Even if he consented to it.

Princess Sally, however, was another case entirely. She was already doomed. Contrary to popular fiction, Alexis knew that less than half of all comatose patients ever woke up, and even fewer actually made full recoveries. It was pointless to stand aside and watch her suffer. Tails was already asleep; she could finish it now and blame Robotnik in the morning. He never had to know.

She was holding the edge of the knife blade against Sally's neck, just underneath her jaw. Carefully, she tilted the princess's head back, fully exposing her throat, and held the knife vertically between her thumb and index finger, like a pencil. With her other hand, she pressed solidly against Sally's forehead.

The princess was so beautiful. Recently, Alexis noted that her fur was always soft and clean—her hair styled, her clothing immaculate. No doubt, Robotnik was having her bathed and groomed while Alexis and Tails were asleep. This woman alone, this pathetic, comatose Mobian, was pampered nightly while the rest of them endured cold showers and inedible food. Just in front of her, Alexis glimpsed her own reflection: a portrait of herself at the very lowest point in her life, thin from malnutrition, scraggly, exhausted. Yet she commanded the power of life and death between her fingers. One stroke was all it would take.

No. This was exactly what Robotnik wanted. The setup—the remarkable coincidences. It was all part of his elaborate design. She'd be damned if she was going to play along.

Moments later, she hurled the knife out of the bathroom window. When she climbed into her bunk, she was asleep before she pulled the covers up.

Alexis awoke to a horrifying scream. It was Tails.

As she stumbled out of her bunk, the first thing she noticed was that her bed linens were missing. Then she noticed the blood.

"Oh god…"

One of his tails had been amputated. The knife that she'd disposed of last night was now resting in a puddle of the kid's blood on the floor. His severed tail was nowhere to be found. She scrambled to find something to stop the bleeding, but there was nothing—all of the bed linens had been removed. She hugged the boy as he trembled violently, now cold and silent with shock. "I'm so sorry," she cried, holding him furiously, "I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry…"

The bleeding gradually stopped on its own after several hours, but not before making a gruesome mess of their cell. On the bed across from them, Princess Sally was reclined comfortably on her bare mattress, hands folded on her stomach. After Tails had fallen asleep on his own, bloodstained mattress, Alexis collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably until the anesthesia came again.