S.H.H.A.

T-Rex and Trash Pandas

Pale orange and pink sunlight faded away into the darkening sky, leaving behind millions of specks of light shining across the dark blue plain. A beautiful night to sit beneath the stars. Unfortunately, I could barely see it through the tiny windows way up above my head. Only starlight made its way through the dusted windows onto the concrete floor down below where I paced.

After a long afternoon of convincing the terribly suspicious lady, what was her name? Michelle? Rochelle? Who knows? Probably Pudding, who was hoarding the papers with the lady's name on them. Maybe I should have paid more attention, but useless details like those served little purpose most of the time for my position on the team.

Anyway, after convincing Ro-Michelle to let us stay the night at her warehouse, we found ourselves waiting in the boring-est building in the entire city of Wellington. I would have rather stayed at Ro-Michelle's arguing that maybe bringing the item this thief wanted so bad to her house wasn't the smartest idea she ever made. Seriously, she was a scientist, shouldn't she have had at least enough brain cells to realize that?

Being in the boring-est building in Wellington, there wasn't all that much to be amused with. At some point, we started a game of I Spy. With grey walls, shelves, floors, and boxes making up the entire room, our options were a little limited. "I spy with my little eye something..." Pudding's hazel eyes gazed around the dark room. They glanced at me before darting away suspiciously. "Blue."

"Misha's eyes," replied Echo instantly as she leaned back over a box. Her short black hair hung towards the floor, and her eyes were lightly shut. If it weren't for the fact that I blamed her for everything, I wouldn't have blamed her. Sleeping the night away was becoming incredibly tempting. "You've already done that one twice, plus I did it once too. Can't we be a little more creative?"

Pudding huffed and replied, "Well, we're running out of options and your eyes are closed." Indeed, every color had turned grey or black ever since the sun set. The sooner something else would come in, preferably something we could arrest and finish our mission with, the better for my ever-shortening sanity- whatever I had left of it.

The black-haired girl raised her hand in the air lazily. "I have a suggestion. How about we play the animal game where you say an animal that starts with the last letter of the animal before you. You can use extinct animals and mystical creatures too."

"Okay. I'll start," I stopped pacing and replied. The game actually sounded sort of interesting, but watching a good fight always won the amusement factor. With a smirk that they couldn't see, I said my animal, "T-rex."

Echo fell quiet for a few moments, thinking of an animal that started with "X". After a few brief moments of me waiting with anticipation, she turned her head to face Pudding and said, "Well what are you waiting for? You've got X."

"We're going clockwise," she replied with her lips tipping down into a frown. Ohh, bonus! I thought to myself, The competition is in Pudding's favor. "It's your turn now."

Their bickering continued, like littermates fighting over a mouse. I leaned against the solid metal door, watching with a grin they couldn't see in the dark- or at least I hoped they couldn't see. However, my enjoyment was abruptly halted when my ears picked up the quiet sound of nails scratching on metal.

Is there something scratching on the door? was my first thought as I pushed my ear onto the cool metal, willing my human ears to work at least half as well as my cat ears.

"Since when have we gone clockwise!" whisper-shouted Echo. The scraping noise paused as if the producer of it had heard. Quietly as possible, I pushed away from the door and stepped back, cursing under my breath as my sneakers squeaked on the concrete ground. Isn't SNEAKer supposed to mean something?