I file that away for the future. It doesn't quite correspond with what I heard the servant woman say about the Little Mistress biting her arm, but who knows. Maybe Sophie doesn't always control her actions. Maybe she's a bit like Caitlin used to be before we came up with the right medication for her. I'll have to wait and see before I jump to conclusions. For now, it's already a great success that the two of us are talking.
"Do they leave you alone a lot?" I ask.
Sophie shrugs. "Sometimes. But even if they're away, they can always eye me."
"What?"
She points at her mechanical eye. "They can eye me. It's like a telephone inside my eye. They can talk to me and see what I see. And make me do things. Sometimes everything goes black when he does that and I wake up later. I can’t remember what happened or what I did."
I can't suppress a shudder. I thought she was lucky because she didn't wear a collar. Turns out, they've basically put the collar in her eye. I have no idea how it works, but I bet it will be a lot harder to remove than K7's collar. I can't just rip out this girl's eye.
"Could they be watching us now?" I ask carefully.
To my relief, she shakes her head. "No, I always know just before they do. I'll have about three seconds to run out of the room. It used to be without warning, but I've become better at dealing with it."
She squares her shoulders, clearly proud of her bravery.
"Well done," I praise her, and her chest gets even more puffed up. "That's very clever of you."
"I don't like it when they eye me," she admits. "But my father says it's the price of letting me see again. Everything has a price, even if it hurts to pay it."
Again, a sentence I bet she didn't come up with herself. Talking of them potentially watching us through her mechanical eye makes me realise the urgency though.
"Sophie, I need to ask you something. Do you know why I'm here?"
She cocks her head to one side, visibly confused. "Of course. You're going to be my friend."
"I'm sure that can't be the only reason?"
"It is! I told my mother that I wanted a friend and then my father took me to collect you the next day. They were really happy to bring you here, just like I was. We're going to be a family."
I try not to show her what I think of that plan. I've already got a family. I want to make her part of that family, but I'm certainly not going to join hers. I doubt her parents' reasons are as simple as she thinks. There must be more to it.
My stomach growls, interrupting my thoughts.
"You're hungry," she says knowingly. "That's good. My mother says it's important for you to be hungry. And you're supposed to scream a lot too, it helps to get rid of all the bad memories you have."
I blink at her. "Bad memories?"
"Yes. I have them too. It's hard to push them away sometimes. But she says that screaming helps. I watched you scream. You did very well."
I'm trying very hard not to react to her words. I kind of want to puke. They've totally brainwashed her. At the same time, I'm glad she didn't actually enjoy watching me suffer. She thought it was helping me. It doesn't make sense to me, but she seems to believe it. I don't want to disrupt our burgeoning relationship so I don't point it out to her that I was in agony when she watched me.
"I think your mother is wrong about being hungry," I say instead. "I'll be too weak to talk with you soon if I don't eat anything."
"But she's never wrong," Sophie protests. "My mother is always right."
Groan. "Maybe she forgot that I'm a shifter? Maybe being hungry is good for humans, but not for shifters like us. Do you like being hungry?"
She shakes her head and a look of doubt flits across her face.
"See, I don't like being hungry either. How about you get us some food and we'll have it here together? Like a picnic?"
Her eyes widen. "A real picnic? I've never had one, but I've read about those. Can we have a blanket too?"
I can't help but smile at her sudden enthusiasm. "We can put this duvet on the floor, that's even comfier than a normal blanket. You go and get the food while I prepare everything here."
She nods and runs out of the room. My smile wavers a little. I shouldn't have picnics with her. I should somehow persuade her to get both of us out of the house and make a run for it. Instead, I slowly slide out of bed and drag the duvet down onto the floor while trying hard not to put any weight on my injured ankle. Maybe it'll heal faster after I've eaten.
I sit down on the blanket and listen for any signs that Sophie got caught.
Whiskers the mouse squeaks from under the bed.
“Yes, I know. This is all one big mess.”
Chapter Six
Sophie returns with a large basket full of food. My mouth waters the instant she enters the room. It's hard to hold back from pouncing at her and ripping the basket out of her hands. Patience, kitty.
She spreads out the food on the blanket. I've never seen anything tastier. I snatch a sausage roll and stuff it into my mouth, barely chewing before swallowing. Another suffers the same fate.
"I like them too," Sophie remarks, completely unaware that I'm eating them with such enthusiasm because I'm starving. Usually, I'm not even a big fan of sausage rolls. I prefer my meat juicy and without dough to distract from its flavour. "Try the dumplings."
She doesn't have to tell me twice. Three dumplings disappear into my mouth in record time, followed by meatballs, a massive piece of cheese and a couple of cocktail tomatoes. Only once I've added a piece of apple cake to the mix do I feel sated enough to take a break from stuffing my face. My stomach feels a little too full; I'm no longer used to eating as much as I want. Once I'm out of here, I'm going to buy myself a whole suitcase full of junk food and will spend a day demolishing it.
"You should try the rhubarb pie," Sophie encourages me. "The cook made it this morning."
"In a moment. Is that your favourite?"
Her face falls. "No," she says quickly. "I don't have a favourite."
My heart clenches at the sight of her trying to follow her mother's ridiculous rules.
"It's alright," I soothe her. "You can tell me what you really think. You don't have to pretend with me. And I promise that I will do the same. We don't have to lie to each other."
"I never lie," she protests, but it's easy to see she's not telling the truth.
"Do you want a secret?" I ask to prove to her that I mean it.
She nods eagerly.
"I miss being outside."
Again, she nods. "Me too. They've not let me out of the house since we collected you. It's so boring here."
My seeds won't need much fertiliser; she might be easier to persuade than I anticipated.
"Have you thought about just going outside without your parents' permission?"
"Of course not," she protests, but her expression tells another story. Good. She's not quite as brainwashed as I'd feared. She still has some spirit left in her.
"Picnics should be done outside. This is great, but it would be much more fun in the sun. Should we do that next time? Take it all outside and sit on the grass?"
"There's no grass," she says gloomily. "I've always wanted a garden but there's no space. Too many houses around ours."
"I'm sure there's a park somewhere. And even if we have to sit on the pavement, that's more fun than in here. Right?"
Reluctantly, she nods. "Yes. It sounds like fun. We could get ice cream too. I love how ice cream melts in the sun."
I smile. "Me too. It's like lapping up milk, except that you can do it as a human without being looked at strangely."
"Yes!" she exclaims. "But when I behave too much like a cat, I have to go into the small room instead of my own room. I don't have any toys there. She makes me watch those boring films about humans until I swear that I don't want to shift."
That must be the room I saw in my dream. I'm glad it's not her permanent room. It didn't look comfy and not made for a child at all.
"Do they let y
ou shift?" I ask curiously, although I'm dreading the reply already.
"Yes, but only in the lab. They don't want me to do it without anyone watching."
"The lab?"
"It's downstairs. I have to go there for tests a lot. I've got lots of illnesses and they need to make sure that I'm not getting worse."
I grit my teeth. I bet she's not sick in the slightest. I sniff the air. No, she doesn't smell like she's ill. But I don't want to destroy every one of her illusions just now. That can wait for later when we're safe and far away from here.
"Is the lab where you got that eye?" I ask, pointing to her mechanical eye.
"No, that was before we moved here. I can't really remember what happened. My mother says I got very sick and one of my eyes stopped working, so they had to put in a new one."
"And do you believe that?" I enquire gently.
She tenses but then shakes her head ever so slightly. "They could have given me a normal eye, right? Not one that makes me do things?"
"You're right. They could have, I'm sure. That's why you can't trust everything they say. I know parents expect you to think that they're right, but they're not." At her shocked expression, I quickly add, "Not always. About some things, they're definitely right. Like that you have to eat your vegetables."
Look at me, nutritionist extraordinaire. Surely catnip counts as a vegetable, right? That way, I definitely get my five a day.
She takes a bite from the rhubarb pie, seemingly mulling over everything I've said.
"I'd like to do this outside," she says after a few minutes' silence. "The two of us, together."
"Me too." It's not a lie. I'm starting to like her, now that I understand more about her upbringing and how they've manipulated her.
"When?" she asks.
I'm speechless. Did she just offer to break me out of here? Not in so many words, but I'm sure that even she can understand that I won't be coming back here, and I won't let her return either. She's young, but she's intelligent. Suffering brings wisdom. I bet some important, wise person once said that.
"Tomorrow?" I suggest. "That way, we don't have to wait very long. And since we didn't eat all of the pie, we can finish it then."
She looks longingly at the last quarter of rhubarb pie.
"Okay," she says with a sigh. "We'll save it for tomorrow."
My heart is beating a little faster. Freedom is close. And now that I've had food, I'm feeling stronger already. If we have to confront some of the mutant guards, I may be able to fight. I wiggle my ankle. Ouch. Still not healed, but it's not as bad as before our improvised picnic.
"I've got lessons in the morning, but I can come in the afternoon. And you're not going to tell my parents, right?"
I look her straight in the eyes and shake my head. "No, I won't. Will you?"
She doesn't hesitate. "Of course not. That wouldn't make sense."
Sophie wrinkles her nose in a rather patronising way. I suppress a grin. She's going to fit in well into the Kat family. Once we're reunited with the others, I might take her to Aunt Rose, who's still looking after the twins and Little Kat. Unless things have changed while I was imprisoned here. Something could have happened to them. The Pack...
No. I push that thought away. I can't think about stuff like that. I need to focus.
Suddenly, Sophie jerks, her healthy eye going wide.
"He's about to watch," she hisses, panic spreading across her face.
"Run. I'll clean up, you just run and pretend you weren't here."
She nods, tense as a bowstring, and runs from the room as fast as she can. I hope she was right about the delay in her father seeing through her mechanical eye. If he saw her sitting with me...everything would be lost. They'd probably put me back in my prison cell, or continue whatever mindfuck games they were playing here.
Nothing I can do about it now. I clean up our picnic, taking a nibble on this and that while doing so. I pocket some of the dry foods for later and shove everything else under the bed to hide the evidence. I'm tired from all the eating. Once my duvet is back on the bed, I lie down and curl up in a comfortable position.
A crunching noise from below the bed lets me know that Whiskers has started her very own picnic.
"I may not need your help after all," I say quietly. "But stay close, just in case."
She sends me an image of her bathing in a bowl of soup, using a piece of bread as soap. Okay then. She's got one weird sense of humour. I like it. I never thought I'd become friends with a mouse, but I think Whiskers and I are on the way to something akin to friendship. The relationship is definitely past the possibility of me eating her. And that's almost friendship, right?
Now that I'm sated, tiredness is rolling over me like a pleasant wave. I should try to stay awake, but I need to recharge my batteries and there's no better way to do that than sleep.
"Watch out for me, little one. Wake me when someone approaches the room."
Whiskers peeps happily and continues munching away.
For the first time since I woke up in this room, I fall asleep naturally, without being knocked unconscious. It feels rather good.
Chapter Seven
I sleep, eat, and sleep some more. It's a pleasant change from being starved and tortured. Whiskers stays with me, either beneath the bed or on the pillow beside me, only napping when I'm awake. She's a great companion. Are all mice this intelligent? If so, I almost feel bad for all the rodents I've eaten in the past.
My inner clock is telling me that it's almost twenty-four hours since Sophie and I had our picnic. I'm starting to get a little worried. Did her parents find out about our meeting? Are they punishing her just now? Or did she change her mind?
There's nothing I can do. My ankle has fully healed overnight, so I could walk around the house, but I don't want to risk it. If some mutant guards manage to knock me out now, all my plans are for nothing. No, I need to be patient and just hope that Sophie will come soon.
To distract myself, I do some stretches, forcing my body into submission. Everything aches, but I need to get my muscles back into shape. I've lost a lot of weight and muscle mass. I doubt I was this skinny even as a child, and that says a lot. They never gave us enough food at the Pack, but at least we had the chance to go scavenging once we'd done the kills of the day. Lennox and I would meet under the bridge, our favourite hiding spot, and would share whatever food we'd managed to find. My heart hurts at the memory. I miss him so much. I miss all of them.
You never know what you have until it's taken from you. I never understood how lucky I was to have those three guys. Men who really cared for me. And I for them. Did I ever tell them how much they meant to me? I'm not sure. Once we're reunited, I'm going to tell them. I might even use the L-word. Maybe.
A sound in the distance automatically makes me go into my favourite pouncing pose. I smirk. My body hasn't forgotten everything yet. And now that I've eaten, I might be able to fight. Not the way I used to, but I should be able to defend myself. I can't get involved in a fight though. I need to conserve my energy for running away. I doubt they're just going to let me go. They'll pursue me, us, and I need stamina for that.
Footsteps are coming closer. Two people. A child and an adult. Fuck. Sophie must have been caught.
I grab the two metal forks that Sophie brought along with the picnic, and ready myself for a fight. I'm not going to let them hurt her.
Whiskers jumps down the bed and hides beneath it, but I know she's watching me. I wish I could tell her to bring a message to my family, but I know Ryker's cats would eat her before she ever got the chance.
"Stay safe," I whisper. "Look for a better home than this."
I tiptoe to the door and wait for them to enter. If I'm fast enough, I might be able to knock out the adult, but that will only work if Sophie isn't under their control. If she starts fighting me, I'm screwed. I can't hurt her.
It's hard to scent them through the closed door so it's only when they've almost reached my room that
I can get a proper reading on the adult. It's not one of Sophie's parents. I relax a little. It's not one of the grunts either; they barely have any scent, but this woman sweats so much that I want to pick my nose to get rid of the smell. The woman is nervous, very much so.
I lower my forks a little. If I'm lucky, this human is an ally rather than a foe. Sophie doesn't smell like she's under duress. For once, I might be in luck. Still, I stay next to the door so that I'll be hidden behind it when they enter the room. It's always the safest spot when trying to stay unseen long enough to assess a situation.
To my surprise, they knock on the door. How polite.
"Come in," I call out with a muffled voice so that it sounds as if I'm further inside the room.
I stop breathing when they open the door, ready to pounce if necessary. The woman enters behind Sophie, a little hesitant.
"Where is she?" the woman asks and I recognise her voice. She's the servant I heard on the first day I woke up here. The one who complained that she hadn't been allowed to wash me. Last time I regained consciousness, I'd been bathed and dressed in new clothes, so they must have changed that rule. I wonder if it was her who did that. However, I also remember her of complaining that Sophie had bitten her. That makes her a lot less trustworthy.
The girl sucks in a breath and walks around the door, following her nose. She smiles at me.
"Are we playing hide and seek?"
"Who's she?" I ask instead.
"That's Cook. She's made a picnic for us."
I frown at Sophie. "Didn't we agree not to tell anyone?"
The woman clears her throat and I realise I've not paid her any attention. I guess that's rude, but to be honest, I couldn't care less just now. In matters of life and death, politeness is a useless notion that only wastes time.
"I think I know what you're planning," the woman says, her voice shaking a little. She's afraid of me. "And I want to help. I've got a new job and today's my last day here. I have nothing to lose."
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