Antoine was quick to protest. "B-but, Princess! My list! Eet eez shorter zan ze others!"
Sally had wondered whether he'd complain about that. He didn't have a shorter list because she didn't think the coyote could do his share of the work. Rather, his list was short so he could get back here, to the tent. "Remember what I said, Antoine," she replied, "Bookshire will need you here as soon as possible. That's why you've got a smaller list."
Antoine continued to frown, but seemed reasonably mollified.
Beside them, the tent was up. Bookshire Draftwood, Knothole's doctor, finished looking through the supplies he'd brought and directed his comrades to move a drop-leaf table into the tent. As they did so, he followed, carrying a big pack of wound dressings.
"Okay," Sally said with a heavy sigh. "Are we all ready?"
The rest of the group nodded at her.
"Then let's do it to it!" they made their hand signs and turned in the direction of Robotropolis.
xXx
Rotor padded along the corridor that led to the solitary confinement area, clutching his instructions tightly. It was his job to get the people out of here. Sally had decided that his gentle nature would make the ordeal easier.
In fact, she'd almost given Antoine the task. But the walrus had finally been the one asked to do it when Sonic described one of the captives. In the communal confinement room, along with a family of colobus monkeys, there was a rhinoceros. Bulky, threatening and intense, Sonic had immediately noted the potential for trouble there. He had suggested Rotor for the job, deeming him strong enough to cope with a frightened, potentially violent rhino.
He decided to deal with the individual cells first. looking into the nearest monitor, he saw a rounded shape outlined by infrared light. A smooth carapace gave way to a wrinkled neck and head, which was held dispairingly in similarly-textured arms. The turtle! It was the old lady!
Rotor set to work right away. Using a small electromagnetic gadget, he disrupted the door's locking mechanism. He opened the door and the turtle looked up in alarm.
She weakly tried to recoil, and Rotor, initially primed to speak, was struck dumb by her condition. The skin hung loose on her arms; her eye sockets were dark and sunken. She looked so tired, the alarm barely registered on her face, and as she tried to rise she stumbled.
"Hey, look, it's okay. I'm here to get you out," he said gently. She whimpered.
Rotor decided to take the initiative and approached her. Before he got too close, he extended a hand for her to take. Shakily, she took it and he pulled her up. She squealed and shrank back, wobbling on her feet and clutching her arm.
"Oh man, I'm sorry," the walrus said, feeling suddenly guilty. "Are you hurt?"
"Arthritis," the turtle croaked.
"Oh... I'm sorry," he repeated and put an arm, instead, across the back of her shoulders. "It's okay, I'll get you somewhere more comfortable. Come with me." She whimpered again and weakly tried to resist him. He paused for her to make a decision on whether to trust him or not, and when she relented, walked her outside.
"There are more people here," he said when they got past the doorway. He took her to the wall so she would have support. "I'll be right back."
The old turtle nodded, then coughed drily. "Do you have any water?" she asked quietly and then coughed again.
"No, I'm sorry. But there's a medical bay just outside Robotropolis, you'll be able to get water there."
He inspected the monitor of the other single room. His notes indicated the presence of a 30-something male wolf. He squinted at the infra-red image, trying to work out whether he could see the shape of a wolf on the bed. The sheets were crumpled; maybe he was in there? No movement came; Rotor decided to enter.
From the moment he opened the door he could see the bed was empty, but, disbelieving, he walked in anyway and inspected the sheets. Nobody there. He looked around, at the entrance, at the space he suddenly felt was too empty. I'm too late for this guy, he realised. Sadly, he walked out again.
He was about to approach the multi room when he heard a scraping sound behind him. He whipped around, expecting a robot attack, but saw instead the turtle, slumped on the floor. He rushed over.
"Are you okay?" he asked, worried. Her head lolled; she only looked half-conscious. She struggled to make eye contact with him, then sobbed.
"I'm so hungry!" she wailed, although the sound came out as a rasp. "So thirsty..." Rotor realised he'd have to move quickly.
"Okay, just bear with me. Please," he begged. "I gotta get these guys out first."
Rotor checked the monitor, and suddenly understood how effective the soundproofing for these cells was. The occupants of this cell, thankfully, were still there. But there was a drama unfolding inside, one he couldn't hear. The easiest prisoners to see were a colobus monkey and four offspring. The children were cowering against the wall, trying to shrink as far away as possible from the final occupant - a very large, very angry, rhinoceros.
He was thrashing about, clearly incensed by something. The colobus childrens' parent (who Rotor couldn't quite tell was mother or father), was trembling but trying to keep the rhino away from the children. He (or she) felt for the wall, ears keenly angled at the rhino, and edged away from the children. The parent shouted something and the rhino whirled to catch up.
Rotor had seen enough. He unlocked the door and strode in. A loud hissing assaulted his ears and he glanced into the top right corner. There was the source: a speaker, churning out an endless whitenoise like the crashing at the foot of a waterfall. I'm gonna get these guys outta here right now, he determined.
xXx
Bunnie looked at the doors. She and Antoine were charged with helping the prisoners on level 7, and this was where it started. She had more work to do here than the coyote. Which was just as well - he was trembling beside her, whimpering slightly with fear.
"Ah, come on, Sugartwan!" she hissed, "We ain't gonna help these guys by shakin'!"
"I am ze most terribly sorry, Madamoiselle," Antoine mumbled, and tried to straighten himself. Then his shakes returned and he could only offer her an apologetic smile. Bunnie sighed.
"Go on," she tutted, "The sooner y'all get started, the sooner y'all get outta here." Antoine took a preparative breath and strode away, with false confidence, down to the opposite end of the hallway.
Bunnie watched him go and hoped this operation would run smoothly. Then she carefully opened the nearest cell door so as not to frighten its inhabitant. As she pushed it out of her line of sight, the strong legs of a kangaroo were revealed. The rabbit entered to approach the prisoner.
On her previous visit, Bunnie had noted the kangaroo as merely drowsy. Then, the marsupial hadn't looked to be in any particular pain. But now Bunnie saw the situation had worsened, and become much clearer. She still couldn't tell what was wrong with the older female, but whatever had been done to her was clearly very painful. The kangaroo was clutching her abdomen, her breathing light and fast, and Bunnie thought she knew the problem. Women in labour breathed like this, didn't they? Was this woman having a premature birth, brought on by stress? Bunnie assumed so.
"Hello ma'am," she said gently. The kangaroo looked in her direction. She was sweating slightly. "Are you..." Bunnie's sentence trailed off; it seemed pretty obvious that the kangaroo was pregnant, for her belly was swollen. But wait a minute, she thought, Kangaroos don't give birth. Not like this! She paused a moment, nonplussed.
"Oh, help me," the kangaroo pleaded. "I can't stand it..."
"What's wrong?" Bunnie asked, approaching her and touching the 'roo's arm. "What is it?"
"I can't... I have to-" her sentence was cut off by a groan of agony.
Bunnie tried a different approach. "Did Robotnik do this to you?"
The 'roo nodded slightly, then tried, through short pants of breath, to speak again. "Don't know what... he did, but... I can't... use... the toilet."
"...Oh." Oh, gross. Just what's he done?
The kangaroo sobbed afresh and Bunnie decided to leave her there, where she seemed to be as comfortable as she could get. "Right. Ah'm gonna spring the others out, and then I'll come back and get ya, 'kay?" she asked. The 'roo nodded and Bunnie walked out to free more prisoners.
She briefly looked down the end, where Antoine was busy concentrating on the words of a wildebeeste, who seemed to be talking at high speed. And gesticulating so quickly it shocked her. What on earth..? Before the situation drew her in, she set to work freeing the next inmate.
The next one she came to was a rabbit. The notes reminded her of this one: he had an attachment on his arm, although the nature of it hadn't been clear before. As she gently opened the door, saying, "H'lo?" she wondered what she'd find on closer inspection.
"Oh, hi," came his reply. And then, when he saw her, a more appreciative "Hi!"
Grateful for a light moment in this nightmare, she giggled and said, "Hey there! Ah thought you might need a rescue! Is everything okay?" she continued, indicating the attachment on his arm.
"You don't look so bad yourself," he commented when he saw Bunnie's limbs. Bunnie couldn't help but flinch. "Oh, look, I'm sorry," the buck said hurriedly, "I didn't think it was a sore point."
"Uh, yeah. It's..." she looked at her robotic arm for a moment, suddenly resentful of its presence. "...It's nothin'. D'you know what that is you got there?"
Thankfully her companion seemed easier about his artificial addition than she, and he offered it to her to see. "I don't know what it is," he shrugged. "It's monitoring something though. See?"
He was right. There was a small screen on the top of the attachment, and on it was a list of medical-sounding words with numbers next to them. The numbers seemed always to be changing, but the list went:
Adrenaline
ACTH
Aldosterone
Angiotensin
ADH
Calcitonin...
"Hormones?" Bunnie suggested.
"I think so," the buck replied.
Bunnie looked toward the door and pondered for a moment. Then she turned back to him. "Are you okay apart from this?"
"Yeah!" then he seemed to realise he'd sounded over-keen and blushed slightly. "Uh... yeah, I'm okay. Why?"
"Come outside, wait in the corridor. Ah've got more people to help."
xXx
Sonic and Sally looked as if they were ignoring eachother, but in fact were working deftly together, smoothly working as a team to free the Rock Beach Freedom Fighters.
Except there seemed to be little of the fighter left in any of these people. Sally walked into a cell and looked at the inmate. A sea-lion, only around 12, was strapped to a table. Electrodes were attached under the nails on his hands and feet. Each of his digits had small burn marks; his teeth chattered; lines of salt traced a course down the sides of his muzzle, long-since dried. He was trembling.
"Hi," she said, as much to drag him out of his apparent stupor as to open the conversation.
His head turned slowly in her direction. His breath shuddered. "Help me," the young marine animal said simply.
Sally said nothing more, and took hold of his wrist. Inspecting the electrodes for a moment, she began a conversation to distract him from the pain extracting them would cause.
"Are you one of the Rock Beach Freedom Fighters?"
The sea lion sniffed. "No. Where's Hunter?"
Sally took hold of the first electrode and prepared to pull it as he answered. "What species is he?"
"He's a frog-Ooowww!" He tried to pull his hand away, but she held firm.
"It's okay, honey. Just keep talking to me. He's down here too. We'll get him out, I promise." She pulled another and instantly regretted it as the sea lion began to cry and wrenched his hand away. Okay, take it a little slower. "I'm sorry. Trust me, sweetheart. I'll be more careful."
He haltingly offered his hand again. "Atta boy. Hunter's here too, in one of these rooms. I've got a friend here, and he's freeing people too." She noted that his wrist relaxed, and pulled another electrode. He gasped.
xXx
Sonic heard the echoey sound of Sally's voice mixed with that of an immature boy, who he knew from their list to be a sea lion. He guessed from the calm (if occasionally pained) exchange that things were going okay there. Which was just as well: he had a problem.
The aged bat, an old guy with a wrinkled but kindly face, lay in front of him. His wings hung uselessly from his back, their weight supported by the ground. He was quite clearly dead. The corpse was beginning to smell, but wasn't too bad yet. There was only one thing Sonic could do here: he carefully unclipped the bat's cloak from around his neck, draped it over the body. Then he turned and walked away, and pulled the door closed.
Next door, a lioness sat curiously in the middle of the floor. At first, Sonic thought she was in some kind of meditative posture, but as he got closer he saw the truth. Her fingers were swollen, the fur thin with the degree of inflammation, the skin pink. Her head hung, jaw slack and mouth open. Her feet were in a similar condition to her hands. Sonic wondered for a moment whether she too was dead.
"Ma'am?" he asked tentatively. "Yo. Ma'am, you awake?"
She groaned and tried to lift her head, but seemed too weak. He knelt beside her and carefully raised her head with his hands. She struggled, settled so that her jaw remained open and looked imploringly into his eyes. He saw desolation there, and a quick look into her mouth revealed why: she had no teeth. Her gums were ragged. They've been pulled. Geez, he thought with a shudder.
"I'm gonna help you, okay?" he said.
Her eyes crinkled; unsurprisingly, she didn't try to speak.
"Can you stand?"
"Nngh."
Was that a yes or a no? he wondered. With the situation they were in, he decided to try and help the lioness to her feet.
"Hnngh..! HhhhNNNNNNGGHH!" she protested, and wobbled onto the heels of her feet. He supported her.
"Okay, cool. Can you take a step for me?"
She didn't respond for a few seconds and Sonic began to wonder whether she was simply refusing to move. Then she gingerly moved one leg forward, trying to balance on the heel of her rear leg. With another throaty gurgle of agony, she took a very small step.
Oh, man. This is not cool, Sonic thought.
xXx
Antoine led the way out of Robotropolis via a secondary junkyard that, helpfully, tended to remain unguarded. Remaining at the head of the group, however, was proving impossible - the wildebeeste he'd rescued was doing everything at twice the speed of a normal person. He kept sprinting ahead, then looking back impatiently, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.
The piebald stallion on the other hand was much slower. Blinded by Robotnik's experiment, he had no choice but to walk slowly, guided by the coyote. But he was strong, and for that Antoine was grateful. "Be careful monsieur," he commented as the ground receded steeply before them, "zere is a sloping 'ere," they slowed down so the horse could negotiate the next few steps with tentative shuffles of his hooves.
Antoine's third charge hadn't been as lucky. The gorilla, barely alive, had told Antoine to go, to leave him to his fate. Antoine had desperately wanted to take him along, but hadn't had the heart to force the ape, whose strength had been fading before his outraged eyes.
For the gorilla's arms had been amputated. This man, Antoine knew, was the operation-partner of the penguin Bunnie would be rescuing. He hoped both hen and doe were all right.
He looked ahead; the wildebeeste, although still twitching with impatience, was starting to tire. As the antelope shifted, Antoine saw the medical bay coming into view behind him.
That was where Antoine's real test lay.
xXx
The shadows stretched over the hillside. Old and tattered leaves hung from the trees, slightly dull with pollution but still alive. The evening was too cold for the insects, who huddled dying or preparing for hibernation, in myriad nooks and crannies in the Great Forest. Just for now, all was peaceful for Antoine.
Well, it was peaceful compared to how it was going to be. Antoine saw the golden glow of evening and heard the rustle of the Forest through the exit of the tent. For now, he was bound to remain inside. Large wads of blotting paper lay crumpled at his feet, soaked with saline fluid. Between them, he and Bookshire had almost succeeded in removing the tank from the horse, and although the resulting visage wasn't pretty, it certainly looked more natural.
Dr. Draftwood moved his scalpel carefully and nicked at the last of the flesh holding the stallion's visor in place. As it came free, the horse gulped with shock, but said little. Now all that remained was for the doctor to dress the raw flesh. Bookshire began to work on this.
Antoine glanced outside and bolted upright: Bunnie was approaching with her shipment of prisoners. "Bookshire?"
"Yes, Antoine?"
"Bunnie." There was no further need to explain; they both knew what to do. Antoine headed out of the tent and up the hill to assess Bunnie's group. The rabbit was almost physically supporting a kangaroo, while a buck rabbit helped a penguin with absurdly bulky arms in a similar fashion. The hen appeared to be in an almost-stupor, and the buck struggled to help her. The marsupial, however, appeared to be in the greater pain. It appears, Antoine thought, That the kangaroo will need help first. Nevertheless he approached to ascertain what the problem was.
"Antoine, this is Doris," Bunnie said before Antoine could open his mouth to speak. "Some kind of intestinal block. She needs help now."
"Oui oui, Bunnie," the coyote confirmed and dashed back down the hill. By the time he got to the tent he was panting, but managed to splutter, "Bookshire, we 'ave a female kangaroo to be incoming wiz an in-testicle blocking."
Bookshire looked curiously at him and then said, "Intestinal blockage?"
"Zis is what I said," Antoine said between gulps of air.
Bookshire sighed and stood, helping the horse to his feet and guiding him to the resting bay. Antoine sprinted back up the hill to assess the rest of the group and help with the penguin. As he put an arm around her shoulders, he wondered how hectic it would be when Rotor, Sonic and Sally turned up.
TO BE CONTINUED...
