City Hunter

Chapter XIV

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Somebody was screaming.

It was nothing new, however. The same high-pitched, nails-on-a-metal-board-esqe wail that echoed through the halls every night cut into the prisoner's ears, but it didn't cause them to do so much as blink. They were used to it.

All except for one.

The teenage girl woke, her eyes bleary and confused, her ears ringing from that terrible sound. She groaned, a sharp pain in her shoulderblades and tailbone throbbing, and sat up. Her ears were ringing from the noise, and she gave them a tentative dab with dark dusky fingers, half expecting to see blood smeared all over them. 

The girl tried to stand up and felt a sharp pain somewhere on her body, but she couldn't figure out where it was. And there was something heavy on her back...

She turned around and stumbled, tripping over her own feet and crashing to the ground, her scream joining the ones already ringing through wherever she was. Her fingers groped wildly through the dim light, feeling for the strange new appendages on her back. They struck something muscled and feathery.

She had wings.

And a tail.

And as if that wasn't crazy enough, she then discovered there were feathers mixed in with her dark blond hair, forming a rigid crest on the top of her scalp, and then running down the nape of her neck to her spine, stopping at her new tail.

Humans had always wanted to fly. It was almost like a dream.

Or a nightmare.

She glanced around wildly, trying to figure out where she was. Trying to remember what had happened beforehand. But there was nothing. Almost as if her past life had been whisked out from under her.

However, she could figure out that the light was leaking out from a small door at the end of the small, cramped room she had been placed in. She crawled over to it, not trusting her legs to support the added body weight, and peered through the translucent window centered in the door. Her vision was fuzzy, but she could make out a dim hall, and similar doors placed evenly throughout it. Were there similar people in rooms past those doors, people who had been ripped out of whatever life they were living and placed here? Was the screaming person one of them?

The light illuminated her softly, and she could see that she was dressed in a small jacket, leggings, and a belt, the thin clothes cut to accomadate her new tail, wings, crest, and feathers. She tested her fist in the light, curling and uncurling it, and wondered if she could bust through the door and run away. Even the thought of attempting to open her wings filled her with dread and anticipation of pain, but she had to try. The wings were obviously meant to be flown.

Something flickered in her peripheral vision. She glanced down.

A small cat was sitting below her. Its eyes were bright green, the cerulean fur covering its body slightly shimmering. The girl blinked and stepped back, wondering if she was hallucinating. She wouldn't put it past her mind-set at this particular time.

The cat blinked slowly at her, once, twice, then stepped into the door, turning into nothing more than a blue flash as it disappeared.

So she had been hallucinating.

She sighed, slumping back. All she wanted to do was curl into the fetal position and pretend this wasn't happening. She was free. Free as a bird. Hah; the irony was brutal.

The door swung open.

The strange aqua-colored cat stepped back into her line of sight and made a slight motion with its head. Was it telling her to follow it?

The girl hesitated. All of her instincts were screaming at her to stay. But what would she gain from being trapped in a room?

She was careful not to trip over her wings and tail as she cautiously walked out.