Katie couldn't believe her eyes. She almost unconsciously moved to get closer but stopped herself before the guard noticed her. She walked backwards slowly to make sure she would be fully out of their sight and hid herself behind the wall, heart pounding.

'Why is the Princess here?' She thought to herself as she tried to calm down her pacing heart from almost being seen.

After getting back her calm demeanor, she peeked over to where the Princess was again to clarify that she wasn't just seeing things before. Katie felt confused why the Princess was in the hidden kingdom and locked up but hope slowly filled her heart. If the Princess was here then there was a possibility many others who'd gone missing a while ago, like her family and Shiro, were also here.

It wasn't right for her to be thinking about other things when the Princess was in a cell, miserable, but she couldn't help herself from hoping. To not get distracted from her mission, she snapped herself back to reality and tried to make sense of why the Princess could be here and locked up.

'Zarkon and Honerva want revenge on King Alfor and Altea?' She thought of a possibility and then shook her head, 'To blackmail Altea?'

There were too many possibilities of why the Princess was locked up so Katie decided to leave those thoughts for later to discuss with the others and find a way out for the Princess and her.

Katie sighed heavily to herself when she realized Mark and her would be at a disadvantage if they took the Princess with them. With the importance of the Princess, guards would chase them down and they all would end up not getting out. It just seemed too dangerous with the odds not being in their favor if they broke her out. Katie didn't want to leave the poor Princess behind but she didn't want to be captured by the galra. 

It was a tough decision but Katie decided to not try to break the Princess out. 

She heard sounds of metal armor clacking so she peeked her head out again and saw that the main guard in front of her cell was starting to fall asleep. She waited until the guard was fully asleep before carefully walking out from behind the wall to talk to the Princess.

She looked so much different from what Katie remembered. She had rags on that were starting to become dark from all the dust, her white hair no longer glossy, and her pretty blue eyes had lost all their brightness. She was hugging her knees to her chest, staring at the mossy wall with dull eyes when Katie approached her slowly.

"Princess..?" She whispered softly, making sure to keep her distance from the sleeping guard. The Princess's head snapped up with wide eyes at the familiar title that she hadn't heard in months. Only then, Katie could see how exhausted she looked with the unusually pale skin, bags under her eyes, and her sunken cheeks. She looked like she had been starved.

"Oh gosh, Princess." Katie whispered in pity as her brows furrowed from seeing her in the miserable state.

"Who are you? Why are you calling me that?" The Princess asked in a wary tone as she backed up away from her and Katie realized she still had the galra armor on. She slowly took her helmet off and watched the Princess's expression turn from skeptical to recognition.

"You! You're the boy-" She started with wide eyes but when the sleeping guard shifted his position, she clamped her mouth shut in fear. When she was sure the guard was still asleep, she continued whispering, "Did you come alone?"

Katie shook her head and hope filled the Princess's eyes but then faded again when she noticed Katie's grim expression. 

"You're not here to rescue me, are you?" She said with a bitter smile and Katie's heart filled with guilt at seeing the usual bubbly and bright Princess like this.

"I'm sorry to say that you're right." Katie said, looking down, feeling ashamed of herself. "But I know your location now. When Kei- the Prince comes back, we can get you out."

At first the Princess seemed thrilled by the news but then looked down at her feet, deflated.

"And when would that be?" She asked quietly and Katie pressed her lips together, not sure either.

"Soon. Right now, my companion and I are just here to collect information." Katie said and then started talking fast when she heard noise from around the corner, "after confirming what we see,  we can break you out without the Prince's help." 

"Really?" She asked in a soft hopeful voice and Katie nodded as she put the helmet back on to cover her face.

"Don't give up until then, I promise we'll be back for you." Katie said quickly as the footsteps got louder from around the corner.

"You should go now or you might end up being here like me." The Princess said in a rushed tone as she furrowed her brows. Katie nodded grimly before running back up to the hallways right as patrolling guards came out from the corner.

She let out a huge sigh of relief and jumped when she saw a guard coming towards her. Katie was expecting the worst but sighed in relief again when she heard Mark's voice coming out of the guard.

"Where did you go?" He asked, sounding worried and Katie was about to tell him what she saw when he interrupted her. 

"Nevermind, tell me later. I found the area we were looking for." He said as he nodded towards an open door that was down the hall. 

She held her breath as she followed him down the hallway. The Princess's news would have to wait for a little bit longer. She entered the room and immediately smelled ink and paper, scrunching her nose from the strong smell. They were in the right location for sure.

"Split up, the right document should be somewhere around here." Mark said to her as they both took off their helmets and she nodded as she went the direction Mark was not going in.

They both searched for what felt like hours through all the 1,000 documents of the room until Katie encountered on a piece of file with a familiar name. It wasn't the document they were looking for but she couldn't just skip it when she saw Shiro's name on it.

"Experiment 42, Shirogane Takashi." She mumbled out loud as she read off the paper with furrowed brows, "Human and extremely strong. Drugging him seems to calm him down. He resist the gift we give him firmly but is slowly starting to give up after spending time in the mind breaking simulators."

She couldn't bear to read further as she looked at the long lists of punishment and torture Shiro went through. Her vision became blurry from tears in her eyes as she forced herself to put the paper down.

 This was as much as saying he was dead. There was no way he could survive through all the pain they gave him here.

"Pidge?" Mark called out to her, stopping his search when he realized something was wrong with her. When she didn't answer from hearing her fake name, he tried calling her by her real name, "Katie?"

"Hm?" She hummed out, turning up to look at Mark and felt a tear come down her cheek. She wiped it quickly and tried to ignore the look of confusion she got from Mark.

"What is it? Are you okay?" He asked, giving her a concerned look and she nodded her head as she shoved the document of Shiro in the armor.

"Yeah, we should hurry up." She said, swallowing her sorrow in as she tried to continue the search like before. "We don't have much time." 

Mark gave her one last glance, his lips pressed together in worry but knew she was right. He would just have to ask her later when they got out of the kingdom safely. 

After a few more long minutes of searching, Katie felt herself hesitating to look into the contents. She was afraid she would see her brother or father's name in the papers and read their torture. Thankfully, she didn't need to look further when Mark made a small sound of accomplishment.

"I got it!" He said as he pulled out a document from a stacked dozen. 

He opened it as Katie moved closer to see the contents and they both saw pictures of galra inside. However, they didn't have much time to see the paper when they heard footsteps coming their way. They looked at each other, panicked, before shoving their helmets back on their heads and hiding the document in their armor pockets.

A big galra came into the room, unhelmeted and his eyes widened a little in surprise when he saw Mark and Katie standing there stiffly.

"What are you two doing here?" He asked as he moved towards them in long strides, towering over both of them.

"A commander sent us here to check for something." Mark said immediately, his voice not showing any fear or hesitation. Katie nodded him as she tried not to show fear.

"Both of you?" The galra asked back, his face skeptical and they both fell quiet.

"There was a loud sound coming from this hallway so we were both sent to check every room." Katie spoke up, trying not to have a shaky voice, "We both met in this room after searching every  other room."

"What was the cause of the sound?" The galra asked, a little less interested now as he moved past them to get to the documents. Katie hoped that he would not notice anything was missing.

"It must've been a raccoon who sneaked in, we didn't find anything." Mark said again, his lie completely believable.

"Well then, your work here is done isn't it?" The galra said, turning to them one last time, his face bored, "go back to your positions."

They both nodded, bowing their head low to show respect and rushed out of the room. Mark let out a sigh of relief and Katie put a hand on her chest to calm her heart down. They almost got caught.

"Phew, that was scary." Katie said as they started making their way out of the castle.

"I know, it's a good thing we could lie on the spot." Mark said as he stretched his arms above his head. 

"Now we just need to get out."

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A/N

First update of 2022! 

Happy New Year everyone!! 🥳

First of all, I would apologize again for the lack of updating last month. I promise I'll stop with  the excuses and update on time whenever I can. If I'm busy on that day and can't update then I'll make sure to alert you guys.

Anyways thank you for sticking with me until now and I hope this year will be great for all of you. Any New Years resolutions? Feel free to leave them in the comments 🥰

I hope you have a good day!

-Silver💜