The Survivors/Fading

## Prologue

The lights were always the scariest.

Bright, unnatural, tinted blue in color...how they longed to see the crisp, warm golden sunlight at dawn again. To feel the flood of hot sunlight smile on their coats again, to feel the solid earth and soft grass on their paws...to be alive and free again.

But they did not get to feel it again. They only felt the coldness. The frigid and nothingness of steel-floored cages, the coolness of fans, the stench of hundreds of other feline bodies. In their prison, they could see no sunlight, it was nothing but bare stone walls, and the faces of their miserable neighbors. Most of all, they felt agony, hatred, and longing...and hopelessness. *Definitely* hopelessness.

The beds were horrible. They were horrible because no proper bedding existed: they were stuck in slippery steel cages that were freezing at night, and smelled absolutely horrible. That was probably because they had no place to make dirt, and were stuck doing it right there and then. Cages were rarely cleaned, only when a cat died, or when the smell was too hard for the twolegs to bear. Not like the twolegs spent too much time there anyways: they were only in their briefly to snag a cat for testing, or carry out another dead body, or occasionally checked on those who had been experimented on.

If they were kind enough, the 'nice' twolegs woud let some of the cats out, but mainly because they wanted *more* cats to experiment on. What easier way than to get more kittens right there in your lab? Don't even have to go out and look for them! It was madness.

Sometimes, fights would break out, too. Hearts were broken as loved ones died, or as loved ones were expecting kittens. They knew what would happen to the kittens. They'd never grow up racing through the grass, or making their very first kill.

All they would know was pain.

## Chapter 1

Stiff, that was how he felt. His entire body was sobbing in agony, his muscles didn't even feel like working. Was he dying? No, just very, very beaten... Unsteady on his limbs, Swamp struggled to his paws, only to slip and fall back onto the cold steel floor with a loud thud. How could these cats stand?! Things were slowly starting to make sense for Swamp -- he knew immediately that he had been captured. But why, why had they taken them here? What was going to happen?

It smelled horrible. No longer bothering to struggle onto his paws, the bruised tomcat called out: "...Mom? Dad? Shore? Enero? Sicily....?" No response, at least not yet. Where they hear? Had they...made it? Swamp's heart began to race as if he'd just run through the entire city, and fear grew cold in his broad chest. He called out for them once more, and heard movement in the cage beside him.

"...Mh...keep it down, Swamp...need sleep..."

His hope suddenly returned, and so did a bit of his strength. After a lot of flopping, Swamp managed to sit up, growing eager and alert.

"Enero, it's you, you're ok!! Where's everyone else?"

"...Here, I'm assuming...? Mom and dad're across from each other. Sicily is on my other side, and Shore...sh-she's not doing too good, Swamp..." Enero allowed himself to trail off, and Swamp could hear him shift nervously in his slippery kennel. "...we haven't heard anything from her yet. Sh-She could be...dead, for all we know...." Swamp had never heard Enero speak so weakly.

It had been a few days, as Enero explained. Kekoa seemed to be going insane. As Enero explained, Ysolt and Kekoa were across from each other, and they hadn't been able to even touch in days. The twolegs frequently let Ysolt out to exercise, likely because they thought she was insane and needed to...vent some of that anger. They also wanted kittens from her, Swamp didn't know why. They let her out with the toms, and the toms liked her fire. But she beat all of them up, and now seemed to be the 'dominant' one out of all the hundreds of cats. Go mom!

Sicily and Enero were let out as well, but not Swamp and Shore, since they'd only recently waken up. Enero complained that Sicily didn't even bother with his family members. He didn't talk with them, he only talked with this pretty black she-cat: Athena. Apparently, there was talk that Athena was originally meant for showing because of her strength and health, but the twolegs bought her for whatever reason. She wasn't treated any differently, but they did want kittens from her, too. Still, Swamp didn't understand why.

Athena had been their longer, and was the top out of all of the cats. They all feared her and her power, and would bend to her every will. And Sicily?

Oh, he really, *really* liked her.

And just like that: he abandoned his family for his dream-lady. According to Enero, Sicily and Athena got along really well. He found it stupid, though. Sicily was only *six moons* old, he didn't understand love, even if he said he did! Shore, Swamp, and Enero all agreed that love was dumb, and gross.

There was movement at the door. In came a twoleg, and all of the cats rose to their paws eagerly. The twoleg wore gloves, clearly for their own protection. It opened doors and let various cats out, including Swamp and his family, although they still didn't let Kekoa out. This resulted in the colorpointed tom snarling and screeching in anger, only wanting to reunite with his family.

As soon as Swamp's paws hit the ground, he bolted towards Sicily to greet him, but he immediately swerved away. "Sicily...?" Swamp awkwardly echoed, watching as his brother instead trotted over to a massive, muscular she-cat. *So that's Athena*? The pointed tabby tom asked himself, watching as Athena greeted him affecionately with a bump against the head. Swamp huffed in anger.

"Stupid, isn't it? And to think...Sicily is the entire cause of this. And he can't even bother to say 'hi'." Enero grumbled as he approached Swamp's side, ears flattened and nose wrinkled in disgust. "Pitiful...I can hardly bear to call him brother anymore...." He shook his head slowly, before switching his attention elsewhere. "Let's go find mom, she'll be overjoyed to see that you're awake."

Swamp followed Enero with his ears perked curiously, nervously swerving away from all of the cats. In the corner of his eye, he saw a heavily pregnant queen, along with a queen nursing a very young litter. The pregnant cat didn't look too good: she seemed....very, very ill. In fact, a lot of the cats he saw seemed that way. But it wasn't...normal. Not the typical sickness from the closeness of hundreds of bodies, nor was it the sickness from laying in poo all day.

Something was horribly wrong.

"Hey, mom, Swamp's awake!" Enero chirped happily, approaching Ysolt with a few swift strides. With a loving purr, Ysolt greeted her fluffy son with a quick nuzzle, before she pulled Swamp close.

"Oh, thank the stars you're ok...has Shore gotten up yet?" She glanced between her sons with a hopeful yet concerned twinkle in her bright blue eyes. Enero looked down shamefully before taking in a deep breath, and shaking his broad head slowly.

"...No mom, I'm sorry...she's not up yet."

WIP