CELLS A2 AND A3

"A… little higher..." Durango grunted, holding Sabrina on his shoulders. With every breath he got another whiff of the mildew two inches in front of him. He tried to look up, feeling his own neck screaming at him, blood rushing to all the painful parts of his body that refused to mend, shivering every time his chest brushed against the shower wall. "Squeeze my head twice if you're there." His head was pressed on both sides by her ankles. He visually traced a line from her crotch to the diameter of her stomach to her rips poking out from her black and white patched skin. "G'head."

Her body shook and her tail swished back and forth and she vigorously wiped all of their food on the window sill. A foul smell blew in with a gust of wind. Durango exhaled, waiting patiently. "I've seen them in the city before. It's dark all the time so they're out at all hours. Scavenging, right? They're wily bastards, but the smog makes 'em slow. We can grab one."

Her movement slowed down.

"Come on, it'll be fun, yeah? They don't go too far into the city, but hell, it's worth a try. You done? Two squeezes." She flexed her legs again. "All right, grab the bars for a second, I'm going to step out from under you." He let go of her ankles and stepped back. He reached up and got both hands around her waist, just below her bottom ribs, his fingers almost meeting in the middle. "Right, let go."

Sabrina slid away from the wall and he guided her down, his hands sliding up and brushing her chest, palms landing firmly in her armpits as her feet touched the floor.

"Smells awful. They love it. They'll come in, and we'll have something to eat." His nose touched the back of her head, and he breathed in deep. The foul smell went away. He finally released her. She turned to face him, showing her swollen cheeks, dried blood caked around her lips, dark circles under her eyes. "Tristan… he has a way of killing our will to live, doesn't he?" He admired their handiwork, the pool of rotten fruit at the top streaking down to meet his own along the wall, trailing down to the bathroom floor. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Ah well. Everything we need to survive is right here." He pointed at his temple. "… Except for food. Food would be nice. You know, real food." He motioned to the wall with an arm around her shoulder, and when it came back down it was on her right breast.

He didn't know why he couldn't move it. He didn't know why she didn't move it for him. But every second that passed, he felt less and less ashamed of leaving it there.

"… Good thing those bars aren't electrified, huh? That would… suck slightly more."

Sabrina had patches of fur on her stomach but above that, it was relatively untouched. He closed his fingers and moved his hand up, brushing back what was left of her fur.

"I should shut my trap. I'll give them ideas."

Flesh raised between his index finger and his middle finger. He clamped down on it. Her chest moved faster, more air coming in and out of her nose. She always made sure to keep her lips tightly closed. Fear was in her eyes, almost hidden under the half closed eyelids.

"Electricity. That's what I got. Pierced me with all kinds of wires. Couldn't see through all the cords." He grabbed her wrist with his free arm and pressed her hand against his stomach. "See?"

Her fingers burrowed to the skin where she felt the entry holes, still forming scabs around his damp wounds. She moved deeper, carefully, where the inner meat was charred.

"Fucked us pretty hard, didn't he? Those two years we had to ourselves… No war, no fighting… God, that was tough. Lingering death, it's humiliating, isn't it? Pathetic… slow… no honor in it. I can't feel anything. Whenever someone died, and we had to spend hours at their side, waiting for them to pass… That was the only time I wanted our war back. I missed it. And those nights, I couldn't sleep because I was so angry. I wanted it all to make sense again."

He faltered. She hadn't resisted, but she might have if she could still speak. She couldn't deny that it felt good but she couldn't go along with it. And neither could he.

Durango sighed, letting go of her. "Don't tell Tristan."

"Tell Tristan what?"

He came into the bathroom as they turned to the exit, standing on both legs this time, giving Sabrina a curt nod. She blew by him, head lowered.

Durango cast him a dishonest smile. "Ohhhh, this is awkward."

Tristan looked hardly well enough to stay upright. His anger made it worse. "What in the hell were you two doing in here?"

Durango didn't lose his smug expression. "Thirsty?"

Tristan briefly looked at the shower spout. Embarrassed, he stayed at the door and mumbled, "Don't trust it."

"I know, I know. Best to leave the girls alone, huh? I personally don't get it. Mopey, mopey, mopey. Why are they so fucking sad all the time?"

"Drawing a complete blank."

"You having fun yet?"

"Fuck you, Durango. Fuck you." Tristan dropped to his knees mid-sentence, his clouded eyes pointing at him from underneath his hairline, red scars and wounds still masking the rest of his expression.

"Yeah right, fuck me, fuck me… I'm not helping you to your goddamn feet this time. You can return to being the smug saint when your traitor friend returns and actually does something useful. Meanwhile I'm sick and tired of sitting around doing nothing. I don't know what your fucking deal is."

Tristan's head rolled back, banging against the toilet. He didn't notice. "Stupid… just… stupid…"

"Yeah yeah yeah…" Durango turned away, looking back to the food smeared on the wall and window. It calmed him. "You don't believe me, grim, but this will work. And if it doesn't… well, wait a bit and we'll have something to eat anyway."

A faint scratching silenced the bathroom. Two red eyes floated at the bottom of the window bars and a second later the full creature slithered in. A jet black rodent, a rat, dripping foam from its mouth, its claws scratching unbearably along the wall. Tristan was aghast, so surprised that the scheme had actually worked that he had forgotten his irrational phobia of the bathroom and had leaned in closer.

It followed the path of rotten food down the wall, carefully, one oil-covered paw at a time. Finally the rat reached the bottom and pressed its nose on the trail, to the motherload by the drain. Durango didn't move a muscle. He even managed to strangle the growling of his stomach.

And suddenly, the rodent stopped, as if it were nearsighted and only then noticed the two of them watching. It lowered its head and seemed to sneer at them before whipping around and tearing off in the direction that it came.

"NO!" Durango dived with both hands outstretched and caught it on the wall by the very last centimeter of its tail. He used the freer hand to get a firmer grip. He pried the rat away from the wall and slammed it down on the floor.

A flash of light blinded both of them as the rat came apart, puffs of smoke and flame sending burnt hair and blackened gears all about the bathroom. Durango shielded his face and cried out in surprise, knocking Tristan back to his instincts, reacting by twisting the shower knobs to full power.

Tristan stared in shock as cold water fell on them both and doused the flames. "He… he didn't shut it off-"

"Mother FUCKER!" Durango appeared to have recovered, with only mild scratches covering his face.

Meanwhile, Tristan was still staring at the stream of water, unaware that he was freezing. "I assumed that… Huh. I was wrong. It seemed like the next logical-"

"Oh, who gives a shit," Durango moaned, slamming the back of his head against the wall. "That little fucker told me he was going to do it too."

"But-"

"No, grim, no! He's fucking with our expectations! He knew that you'd assume about the water, that I'd believe it, and the next thing I'd do after trying to fuck Sabrina would be to find ourselves some fucking FOOD!" With that he picked up the remains of the rat and chucked it out of the bathroom, gripping it tight enough to imbed the gears in his palm. "Well I'm done with this. They win."

Tristan shook his head. "They don't win until we're dead."

"You sure about that?" Durango got on his knees and shuffled to where Tristan was standing, desperation in his voice increasing. "See, you've been holding out for an end other than death, escape or whatever, am I right? At first I thought that was different from wanting to escape but we were both on the same page. Winning isn't surviving long enough to get out of here, don't you think? Like squeezing blood out of a stone after awhile, ha. Listen, listen, what if the only way to win is to beat him to the punch just this once?"

"I don't know-"

"Bullshit!" He yelled through clenched, yellowed teeth. "You've thought about it. See, the only thing is, to do it, we need someone else's help. Dunno if you've noticed, but our options here are somewhat limited."

Tristan stared back at him, growing increasingly frightened. He felt the walls closing in and Durango's eyes burning into his own.

"Oh for fuck's sake, do I have to spell it out for you!" Durango crawled over to the toilet. "It's been clogged for a long damn time. If we hurry, we can finish before he flushes it by remote or-"

"No, no no no no no." Tristan finally understood. "I'm not doing this…" But he couldn't leave.

Here the tears finally came. There were no sobs or further hysterics but there was plenty of water. "Please."

Tristan thought about what this would mean, what this would actually entail…

"Please…"

And he couldn't bring himself to care what happened anymore. "Lower your head."

Durango did as he was told, obediently leaning, like he was receiving absolution.

"Put your arms behind your back." He waited. Then Tristan positioned himself over him, using his legs to pin down the arms and using his weight to pin Durango to the seat. He put both hands on the back of Durango's head, tightly gripping the hair. "Don't struggle."

That was impossible.

This scenario felt too familiar.

Once it started it would be downright cruel to stop. He pushed Durango's head down, and stopped worrying about his arm strength when he realized that Durango would have even less neck and back strength. There was trouble immediately. Durango sucked in water but soon he'd run out of depth, and there was no way to refill the bowl. Tristan put all of his weight down on the body under him, regretting not placing his neck directly over the lip of the bowl, where he could crush the windpipe instead of merely forcing the head down. The stench was overpowering. He kept the pressure on, feeling a giving of inner bodily structure, eventually, a break. Here is where Durango began to really fight it, managing to pry his arms loose of Tristan's legs and push up on the bowl, trying to free himself.

"NO! NO!" He had to finish it, no, no, he couldn't stop. He pushed the head further down, with everything he had, and the will to survive continued on and on and on until it winked out. His arms slackened. His body slackened.

Tristan noticed after awhile that he was still holding the head under, just in case. And he didn't even think about it. Like riding a bike.

"You're too late," he whispered to himself. No joy in this. None at all.

Another body to add to the other bathroom, along with Holly and Shirk and Bowman and Simon. Bodies that would never leave, like the dreams they all kept having, or better still the occupants of A1, resurfacing cloudy and murky with eyes that glowed through the dense fog and seemed so real that Tristan couldn't look away from the glass as he heard noises behind him like they were the ones making them, and they weren't really reflections. He remembered them dead, and yet they were in the exact same position, every nightmare, watching him sleep.

And sleeping close to them was still surprisingly easy.

It had been over for a long time. Tristan stood to his feet, feeling woozy, the weight of the task ahead wearing on him. He wondered if he should even bother, and was sickened that he felt that way, and even more sickened by how weak he had been. He had given in.

They had both been wrong. Robotnik wins when they begin doing his job for him, when they begin making it easy for him.

And he thought he would have confidence in every decision he would ever make. He had been kidding himself.

In spite of it accomplishing nothing, Tristan began to cry.

And that's when the doors to all of the cells opened.