That hope lasted one day. Iris and I both got it bad the next. By the end of it, we were both physically on our hands and knees dragging ourselves into the cells. Every part of me was sore, but the hot spots included my ribs and my left leg; one look at my calf and my torso rose bile in my throat. My face hurt too, but without mirrors, I had no idea what it looked like.

As I laid there, defeat hit me in the chest with a pang. I had tried planning an escape many times over the months, but none of the ideas resulted in getting everyone out, and there was no way I could live with myself if I left even one of them here to suffer.

My brain was getting foggier, but I still held onto my name, and Xavier's face. Once in a while an image of May or August would slip through, or Emerald and her kids. It was enough to know I still had myself, even though I couldn't remember my pack's name, or the way mountains looked. Kallie helped, remembering what I told her once in every detail. If I needed a reminder that my name was April, not Aralia, she told me. Because of the stories I told her during our cleaning duties, I was able to hang on a little longer to the pieces of myself that were drifting away.

It had to be something in the air, or something in the needles they poked us with that made us forget, kept our minds fuzzy. I could only pray that it would come back to us once we were out in the fresh air.

The next time I cleaned, I noticed the snow that had piled up against the basement hopper windows recently was gone, and it was my only indication of how long it had been. I could guess maybe March, April even? I wasn't familiar enough with the area to know how long winter lasted here. All I could do was guess.

I wondered if I had been presumed dead yet.

The school might have even posted a whole news article on my disappearance! That would be wild if all my professors thought I was dead, but I managed to get out and show up to school next semester. The looks that would be on their faces!

I sighed, leaning against the cell wall, wishing it would happen. Preferably sooner than later! I thought with a glare up to the ceiling, imagining I was staring right into Selene's eyes. Eventually I slumped back and let my eyes flutter closed.

Something woke me, but I wasn't sure what. Blinking, I lifted my head from the concrete, feeling every stiff bone in my body as I tried to move and make sense of what was happening.

Wait. I thought, still slightly out of it. If it's April, I'm spending my twentieth birthday trapped under the ground in a five-by-five cube of bars. Well ain't life a bitch.

Bang! The door flew open, startling all of us to our feet. We shrunk back instinctively, expecting Ian, or some other horror here to retrieve one of us. Instead, a wolf stood in the doorway, the pelt as black as midnight and eyes as blue as the ocean. It's coat was bristling, common from the aftermath of a fight, but it looked utterly awestruck at what it had stumbled upon: eight, skeleton-like girls in a range of ages standing behind metal bars.

With the door wide open, sounds floated in: screams, howls, snarls, yells. The sound of a battle. Someone had found us; a whole pack by the sound of it!

I threw myself forward, clutching the bars between thin fingers, "get us out! Please!"

Following my lead, the other girls copied me, reaching for the wolf with their arms. After a moment, it snapped from its daze and cleared the steps to my gate. With a growl, it latched onto the padlock with its jaws, but nothing happened. It would break a tooth before it ever popped the lock off the gate.

Two wolves barreled through the doorway in a tangle of teeth, fur, and claws, and knocking the black wolf aside. A loud, echoing clang rang throughout the room as the writhing forms smacked into the bars. Shocked, they broke apart and shook their heads to clear them from the impact. The girls watched in silence as one of the new wolves — I recognized Jacob immediately— made eye contact with the black wolf. With a snarl, he leaped, slashing forward with outstretched paws and sending all three of them into a frenzy that rolled its way out the door again.

"No!" Ivy screeched as they disappeared down the hall. "Now what?"

"April, can you fit?" Iris asked.

"Huh?"

She gestured to the bars in front of me, and finally noticed the bars had bent from the fighting wolves' impact. Stepping forward, I reached through, holding in a breath as I placed one foot on the other side of the bars. My body followed; I was free! If that had happened around my arrival, I wouldn't have been able to fit. Starving had actually helped me today.

"Keys!" Kallie called, her face pressed between the bars as close as she could get to me.

"Where?" I had never seen Ian put the keys anywhere around the room. He always carried them with him.

"I don't know."

I met her eyes, and for the first time in a long time, they were bright and alive in the excitement and hope of finally leaving this place. "I'll be back," I told her. "I promise you."

Turning on my heels, I raced away, flying down the hall with more speed than I ever had even on the track. Yowls screamed through the cracked windows above me, choppy from the distance between them. I opened every door in that hall, scouring it for the keys that might be hanging on the wall somewhere. I was empty handed every time.

After the last one, I rounded the corner towards the ability rooms, nearly slipping in something as I went. Catching my balance, my eyes darted to the floor to see my feet were standing in a red, sticky puddle of blood. Ian's blood.

The man was face down on the floor, not moving, and not breathing. "Maybe luck is real." I whispered to myself. "Or karma." With a rush, I crouched down and started digging through each of his pockets in search for a key, any key. Finally, as I went for the inside pocket of his jacket, my fingertips collided with a cool, sharp metal. "Yes!" I snatched it and ran, back down the hall to the cells.

The hall remained empty, and the door was still wide open. No one else had come down to check on us, no one else had found us.

I leapt through the door, and everyone cheered as I got to work. I started with Iris's, and then Maple's, and Sage's. They stepped through their gates slowly, as if they each couldn't believe it had worked. I smiled at them, and they showed joy for the first time since I met them.

"Thank you, April." Sage said, wrapping her arms around me in a tight embrace. "You really have saved us."

A tear jerked from my eye, splashing my cheek. "Listen to me, you run, and you don't stop running until you can't run any more. Get as far away from here as you can in one go, okay?"

The three of them nodded, and Iris wrapped an arm around Sage's shoulder, pulling her from me. "We'll stick together, we'll be safe."

"Then what?" Maple asked, lifting a hand to wipe the tears from her chin.

Iris looked at me expectantly, and I remembered she hadn't seen the world since she was Sage's age. "Find a pack," I told them, "a pack that will take you in and help you find your families. Not all of them are bad like this one, I can promise you you'll find a good one."

I turned to start working on Kalmia's lock, but Iris grabbed my hand, "which pack is yours?"

I clutched her hand, "just remember Alpha Black."

She repeated the name and I nodded with a smile, letting her go so I could free the others. The name of my old pack had left my brain, but I remembered Xavier and that would have to be enough for all of us.

The second the padlock fell, Kallie flew into my arms. I hugged her tight, kissing the top of her head before putting her on her feet. "Run with them Kallie."

Instantly, her little hand gripped my tattered shirt. "I'm staying with you."

I didn't argue, just let her remain attached to me as I freed Tulip, Rue, and Ivy. Rue and Ivy embraced each other the second they stepped out. Tulip grabbed my hand, showing the most affection I had ever received from her.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I'm going to find my family." And then she ran off into the hallway, not even waiting for anyone to go with her.

I turned to the other two, "did you hear what I told Iris?"

Ivy nodded. "We'll run, and we won't look back. We'll find a pack and tell them about Alpha Black."

I grinned, "and if you remember your families, I want you to go to them first. They're more important; always."

Tears started free flowing from Rue's brown eyes, and furiously wiped them away. Ivy tugged on her hand, and they ran off to the stairs, on their way to freedom.

Crouching down to meet Kallie's height, I gripped both her hands in mine. "You're staying with me?"

Her little fingers tightened around mine, "I'm staying with you."

"Let's go," I tugged her forward towards the door, ready to run. But the second I stepped into the light, a brown wolf appeared, stalking the hallways. He didn't look like one of the rescuers.

Inhaling sharply, I jerked us back into the shadows, lifting Kallie up and holding her tight against my body. Her little limbs went rigid, holding as still as possible, I wasn't even sure she was breathing.

We stood there like that for long, again using moments until I tested our safety. The hall was empty. "C'mon!" I whispered. Her hand stayed locked in mine and we started down the hall to the stairs. But reaching the top, we found the door to be stuck. The handle turned, so it couldn't be locked, but it wouldn't budge.

"Now what?" Kallie whimpered.

Without a word, I pulled her back down the stairs, and to the hallway. "Think we can get through there?" I pointed to the window.

Her grin was the only answer I needed. Gripped her tiny hips in my hands, I hoisted her up until she could grab onto the window ledge, they I pushed her up the rest of the way as she crawled through. Kneeling on the grass, she turned around and poked her head back through.

"Now what are you gonna do?" She yelled over the screeches and howls going on outside.

The window was higher up on the wall than where my head stopped, but it wasn't too high for my hands to grab the ledge. However, while I could grab it, I didn't have any strength left to be able to pull my body weight up through the window. My legs kicked against the wall, but my feet slipped against the plaster, and I didn't end up very far.

"You'll need a chair!" Kallie called, pointing to the room behind me.

I rushed in, grabbing the closest chair and dragging it back out, but it was heavier than I remembered. Finally, I managed to get it across the hall and under the window.

"Hurry!"

"I'm trying!" Stepping on the bench part, I heaved myself up, and it gave me a couple feet of height. Enough that I could reach through the window and sink my fingers into the dirt as leverage to pull myself through.

Gasping, I rolled across the ground, my chest raising and falling rapidly as I fought for stability. I opened my eyes to see Kallie standing above me.

"We gotta go!" Her eyes flicked up and mine followed. A few wolves had us in their sights, and I wasn't about to find out if they were good or evil.

Scrambling to my feet, I wrapped a hand around my friend's arm and we made a break for the forest. It was still several yards away, and I was so weak I wasn't sure if I could save us. Pushing with all the strength I had left, I lengthened my strides, lifting Kallie off the ground and swinging her onto my back so her little legs didn't have to fight so hard to keep up. I tried to shift, but the form wouldn't come; the last time I shifted was under the doctor's commands, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had something in the cells that blocked the brain signals that initiated the transitions.

So I ran on foot. I ran until it was dark out and I couldn't see clearly anymore from the exhaustion clouding my brain, until the weight of Kallie's body was too much, until my legs gave out and we went crashing to the floor, until . . .