Her heart beat faster in anticipation; not a good, exciting feeling, but a dark and foreboding one. They'd garnered the information. They'd conferred and planned. Now was the time to get in the middle of the action. And this time it was to witness torture victims. She shuddered.

Bunnie crept along the corridor apprehensively. To the left and right, prison cells lay empty, but she could smell Mobians further down. There were voices too. Distressed voices. Mingled in with the sound came the rhythmic dripping of water on metal. The lights above lit the way balefully, not terribly bright, but light enough.

She was close to the prisoners now. The low buzz of pained Mobians and that curious dripping sounded sharper, more clearly defined. Time to start checking rooms, the rabbit thought. To one side was a room and she looked in through the small, barred window: empty. The opposite one was the same, so she walked a few steps further. Then she checked the next.

It was occupied! A female raccoon lay on a bed, strapped down, face-up. She looked like she'd been crying, for the area around her eyes was soaking wet. She stared at the ceiling with an intensity that unnerved Bunnie. The cyborg kept as quiet as possible; this was a recon, not a rescue mission. Alerting torture victims of her presence only to leave them here would do more harm than good, Bunnie judged.

A metal contraption stood over the raccoon like a hangman's frame. Except, rather than supporting a rope, it was steadily fed by a large water bottle. Bunnie watched as the water ran from the bottle down a long needle, reached the end... and fell. The water hit the raccoon's forehead with a metallic clunk. Bunnie was surprised at the hardness of the sound and her first reaction was to think, You're a Robian? But you've still got fur! Robotnik's made realistic robots?

Then she looked back up at the frame and saw that she'd been wrong. Pointing obliquely away from the first needle was a second. Water ran along that one too. Another pair of drips came... dangled... fell, and clunked. Although the raccoon's body was in the way, Bunnie strongly suspected the other water drip had fallen onto some kind of upturned bucket or something else noisy. That's what she'd heard, she decided.

Bunnie flinched away from the door in disgust; Robotnik was a monster! Before the torture scene angered her too much, Bunnie took a pencil and paper and scrawled, 'Room 22: raccoon, female, mid-40's, water torture'. She moved on.

In the room to the right there was a beaver. Again, female, but this time much younger. The beaver was free to move, but clearly wasn't prepared to take the chance of doing so. She huddled on her bed, crammed tightly into the corner, her broad tail pulled defensively up. All around her scuttled robotic spiders.

Bunnie instinctively assessed the beaver as being on high mental alert and ducked out of view. A few seconds later she heard the female call, "Is there somebody there?" Bunnie held her breath and didn't reply. She felt incredibly cruel doing so, but she didn't want to be seen. "Help! Please!" the beaver called again, but it was a desperate sound, one borne more of the need to escape than conviction of having spotted Bunnie. The rabbit continued to wait, and when it became apparent the beaver had given up hoping for rescue, she ducked under the level of the window and moved on.

Next door to the raccoon Bunnie saw a frog. He crouched side-on to the door, on the balls of his feet. His knees touched the wall, as did his forehead. A robot of some kind stood behind him; it was roughly Mobian-shaped from the waist up, with two mobile arms tipped with mean-looking clamps. From the waist down it was one solid trunk.

The frog grimaced constantly and trembled as he maintained the position. He moved his arms briefly, apparently needing the break, but the robot instantly clamped around his wrists and pulled them back into position. The frog groaned.

Room after room continued in this way. Further down Bunnie found an ageing bat with a heavy mask over his face, which he scrabbled at weakly. In another, a bird who had been entirely plucked, and lay shivering and hissing with pain in the middle of the floor. The scenes went on and on this way and Bunnie, feeling guiltier and guiltier for leaving them, noted the prisoners she had found.

xXx

Sonic stood in the middle of the prison area he'd been asked to check. The room was circular with eight doors, each leading to a cell. Behind him, the corridor led away; ahead of him was a larger room. He decided to check the one to his left first.

The room was entirely dark, although he was able to see in, thanks to an infra-red image on a screen set into the wall. He wasn't sure what he could see in there at first, but as he squinted at the image, it became clearer.

A grey, plush snow leopard stood against the wall. Chaperoned by a robot attached to the floor by a single, broad central post, she appeared unable to move. Her legs trembled slightly and Sonic suspected she'd been there a long time. She looked distressed. Why wouldn't she be? Sonic scolded himself. His jaw set irritably, he moved onto the next cell before the urge to intervene took over.

A pig - around the same age as Sonic - sat clumsily near the wall of the next room. A hood covered his head, strapped around his neck. As Sonic watched the grainy image, the pig spasmed and shook his head. He called something, but the hood and the wall between them muffled it. He seemed to try and swipe at something. Sonic had seen something like this before. Hallucinating, he thought. Poor guy.

His spirits sinking, Sonic paused to note down these two prisoners. He wondered who was in the large cell.

xXx

That evening Sally sat in silence, grateful to be surrounded by her friends. She, Sonic and Bunnie had been to Robotropolis to check on the positions and conditions of the new prisoners, and the experience had drained them all. Now they had returned and it was time to tell Antoine and Rotor what they had seen.

The walrus and coyote had remained in Knothole as agreed, and as a result looked as if they still had energy. Rotor, as ever, seemed sensitive to their weariness. "So what did you see, guys?" he prompted gently. Before answering, Sally looked to Sonic and Bunnie; they looked as spent as she felt. After a while, Sally gathered herself to speak:

"It was tough." she said, and ran her hand through her hair to try and rub some life into her scalp. "Really tough. Robotnik's doing experiments on people down there." She rummaged in her rucksack and pulled out some notes. "I found eight prisoners. How many did you guys get?"

Sonic had already fished out his own notes and now ran his finger down the list, counting as he went. "Nine," he said, and looked to Bunnie.

"Eight."

Rotor did a quick spot of mental arithmetic. "Twenty-six," he said. "Well, you got all of them. That's a good start! Right?" But however positive Rotor tried to be, Sally found it hard to share his enthusiasm.

Bunnie rubbed her eyes. "Ah saw some nasty stuff down there. Ah think we should tally up what's happened to who as soon as possible."

And, haltingly, she began to recount the state in which she'd found her allotment of prisoners...

TO BE CONTINUED...