A/N: This entire chapter is being told in flashback, when the Jellicles first arrived at their prison camp.
Upon first arriving at KooKooIn Camp, the Jellicles were assembled into lines. Guards surrounded them, heavily armed. Most of the Jellicles had never even seen a gun before, and now had no less than 15 pointed directly at them. The children were scared, the adults were angry. A teenage girl stood crying silently. A young man rather awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder, but offered no words to console her. After all, what could he say? Certainly not that everything 'will be alright'.
A sudden bang startled everyone in the room. A guard walked through, tapping a wooden cane on the linoleum floor as he stepped. He walked between the two lines of Jellicles confidently, and waited until all eyes were on him before speaking.
"Welcome, Freaks," he smiled unpleasantly. "You all know why you here. You are all going to be here for a very long time," he paused, then smacked his cane into the leg of a teenage boy, who stifled a cry, "If you are lucky, anyway. Those of you who try to escape will be shot. Those of you try to attack a guard will be shot. Basically, if you break the rules, we will not hesitate to shoot you. The State values the lives of people like us," he gestured to the guards stationed around the room, "A lot more than they value your lives, unfortunately for you. We wouldn't even need to pretend that we killed you in self-defense."
A middle-aged woman standing with her children looked furious at these words. On closer inspection, she also looked frightened as she subconsciously pulled the three adolescents closer to her.
"I am Davis and I am the Head Guard. I run this place, and if any of you put a foot out of line you will be answering to me," he looked at a young girl standing with two teenage boys and crouched down in front of her, looking almost sympathetic. "And you can be assured, sweetheart, I will not go easy on you because you are young. You are all animals and deserve to be treated as such. You will live by my routine. You will sleep when I tell you to. Shortly you will be divided and taken to your bunks. Lights out at ten. You wake up at 7. Your days will be made up of labor and selected recreational activities, but you'll find out more about that later."
A door opened and a tall dark haired man stepped into the room. He wore a white coat, as if he were a scientist. Davis acknowledged him with a nod.
"This is the resident doctor, James Fraser. He will be inspecting you all now," with that, Davis began to walk out of the room. He stopped in front of heavily pregnant young woman. He shook his head at her and made a disapproving noise, as if she should have known better than to reproduce. Her head was down, not looking at him, so he grabbed her chin and forcefully tilted her head up. On the expectant mother's left, a man's arm jerked. Davis smirked at the man.
"You'll do well to keep your emotions in check."
With that, he left the room.
Doctor Fraser stood in the middle of the room.
"Change into your true forms," he ordered. No one moved, though all the Jellicles looked around warily, as if to see whether anyone else would. Everyone was too scared to move. Fraser rolled his eyes, and then nodded to a guard, who pushed a lone young man into the middle of the room, and pointed a gun at his face. Several Jellicles cried out.
"I don't like repeating myself," Fraser informed the room. The young man with the gun in his face swallowed nervously, and then closed his eyes. His features changed, and fur grew, changing him into a mostly cream tom with rust and grey colored markings, though it was quite difficult to tell as he was still wearing the grey prison suit that every Jellicle in the room had to wear.
"Your name?" Fraser asked the tom.
"Scott Maguire," he stammered.
"No, not that name," Fraser snapped, getting impatient.
"Plato," he blurted his name out hurriedly.
"Get back in line," Fraser spoke coldly. As the tom scrambled away, the doctor looked around and realized everyone else was still in their human forms. "I believe you were given an order," his tone was threatening. Suddenly the room was filled with oversized feline creatures, all looking slightly odd with their grey suits still on over the top of their feline bodies.
Fraser waited until everyone was changed before speaking again.
"Now, you have already been assigned rooms, you have been grouped together alphabetically in groups of four," he pulled a piece of paper out of his coat, and read over it briefly, then pointed at a queen at the end of one of the lines.
"Name," he barked.
"Tantomile," she replied calmly.
"Cell 8," he replied. He then pointed to the pregnant woman, who was now a sleek brown queen.
"Cassandra," she mumbled quietly, the man on her left put a hand on her shoulder.
"Cell 2," he replied. He moved to the tom on the left of the pregnant queen, the one whom Davis had warned before leaving. He was almost identical to Tantomile.
"Coricopat," he spoke.
"Cell 3."
And so on all the Jellicles were assigned rooms. Younger ones cried when they realized they would be separated from other members of their families. Most of the families were ripped completely apart.
Fraser addressed the room again.
"I will now be doing a brief examination of all of you," he looked around briefly, considering. "Females first." He walked towards a door on the opposite side of the room to which he had come in. "Follow me."
No one dared to disobey as the females left the males and followed Fraser out of the room. Young Sillabub, however, cried very much at being separated from her brothers. A mother walking with her own daughter put an arm around the crying girl as they were the last to leave the room. They were joined by more armed guards as they walked into another bare room, this one smaller than the last.
Fraser walked around the room, casually looking the females up and down, one by one.
He walked over to a young queen who was all white, and touched her face softly. She jerked back, terrified. Fraser smirked.
"I wonder, are you white all over?" He asked as he gestured to the grey suit she was wearing. She didn't reply. Fraser recalled that this was the same queen who hadn't spoken her name when they had been divided into their cell groups. A black tom had said her name for her. Fraser looked at the list. "Victoria," he stated. Again, she didn't reply. "Don't you talk?" He demanded, before shoving his hand inside the grey suit, ripping the buttons off the front in doing so. Again, Victoria didn't make any sound, but the horrified and frightened look on her face was so upsetting to look as she struggled uselessly against the doctor that a queen on the other side of the room spoke.
"Leave her alone!" She cried. Fraser turned around, seeing for the first time a beautiful black and gold queen. She was quite young. On her right, a similar patterned queen who was red looked at her worryingly, and pulled her back into line. A cruel smile lined Fraser's face.
"Yes, I think I might," with that he left Victoria, who was now crying silently. He stalked over to the gold queen. "And what is your name?" He asked.
"Demeter," she replied. She looked as if she severely regretted speaking out, but her voice was steady. He considered her for a moment before speaking again.
"If any of you move without permission you will assuredly pay the consequences," he addressed the room. Everyone looked around, a bit confused as to why he was saying this. Without warning, he grabbed Demeter roughly by the arm, and pulled her out of the room. She only had enough time to cry out in surprise.
"No!" a young dark queen who again had a similar pattern to Demeter cried out and stepped forward. The red queen who had been standing next to Demeter pulled her back and hugged her as the younger one cried.
"No moving," a guard spoke unnecessarily. The room of females stood silently, for what seemed like an eternity. They didn't want to think about what was happening to Demeter, but prayed she would come out of the room alive. After a certain time, another guard walked into the room.
"You are to go to your cells now," he spoke loudly, then held the door open for the queens to leave the room.
"What about our sister?" the red queen spoke to one of the guards, still with her arm around the younger queen.
"That's not your concern," was all he said, before roughly pushing her out of the room. Upon arriving at the cells, the females found the males were already there. The red queen looked furious as she realized this.
"They weren't examined," she nearly growled.
"We weren't either," the younger one replied. "We were just…" she trailed off.
"We didn't need to be examined, Jemima!" the red queen. "No one did! He just brought us girls into their so he could just do that, to Demeter. That sick bastard!" She was nearly in tears. Jemima didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. The females were one by one put into their cells, and Jemima was split up from her older sister, Bombalurina.
Jemima was put into Cell 5 with two older queens and a young black tom. The cell was tiny, less than four meters squared. All that occupied it was two bunk beds. Currently, the two queens were sharing one, while the tom sat on the bottom bunk of the other.
Jemima didn't even realize that she still had tears running down her face until one of the queens came up to her.
"That was your sister, wasn't it?" she asked hesitantly. The tom looked up, confused. He obviously didn't know what had happened. Jemima nodded, then straightened her shoulders and wiped her eyes.
"She'll be alright. Demeter is strong," she spoke. Another thought struck her. "I'm proud of her, actually. She was really brave," she smiled brokenly. "Stupid, though. But she couldn't have let it happen to the white one."
At the mention of the white queen, the young man spoke.
"Victoria?" he asked, standing up from the bunk from where he had been sitting. "Is she alright?" his voice was panicked.
The other older lady nodded, and explained to him what had happened in a very quiet voice. They learned from the tom, who was her brother, that Victoria was mute. After that, lights were out. Anyone caught out of bed would be in trouble. As the two queens got into the bunk, the tom looked at Jemima.
"I'm Mistoffelees," he spoke, holding out his hand. Jemima smiled weakly and shook his hand.
"Jemima," she replied. "I would say nice to meet you…" she trailed off. He nodded, and then turned to the bunk.
"Do you want the top or bottom bunk?" He asked somewhat awkwardly. Jemima smiled.
Hours after the lights had been turned off, Demeter was brought to her cell, crying silently. Bruises marked her face and her grey suit was torn, as if slashed with knives.
In the darkness she found her way to her bunk, finding a bottom one had been left free for her. But she couldn't sleep. All she could do was cry, as she tried desperately to forget what had happened. She wanted her sisters. She knew Bombalurina would be in the next cell over, and the Jemima would be two cells down on the other side. She hoped they were all okay.
She heard rustling above her, and then a body was moving out of the top bunk.
"Demeter?" a teenage queen asked hesitantly. She had obviously heard Demeter crying.
"I'm alright," Demeter whispered, her voice choked up, before bursting into tears again. The queen crawled into bed with Demeter, and hugged her. "You'll get in trouble if you're out of bed," Demeter spoke after a time.
"It's alright. They can't see in the dark like we can. As long as they don't hear me, they won't know I'm out of bed," the girl whispered back. Demeter didn't reply, just continued to cry in the arms of someone who she had never even met before. But she later learnt her young comforter's name was Electra.