I cannot even begin to tell you how busy my life has been the last two weeks, and will continue to be until the school year ends. Because, my goodness, at my homeschool/highschool, they do not give a flying buttress about how many projects other teachers have assigned over finals and such. Plus, I'm failing Chemistry, but that's nothing new. I've also been working hard nannying and being a hostess four days a week in addition to school, so things have been kind of hectic because I'm trying to afford a $1,000 trip that I have to pay for myself.

So, I'm sorry this chapter is a little belated. I might not be able to update for another two weeks until school ends, but I've been trying really hard to keep it coming!

In other news, I went to go see The Hunger Games again with my friend Lee and it was really fun! I'm so buying the movie when it comes out. The soundtrack is also really cool. I wrote a song inspired by SixBillionSecrets dot com and performed it for my Literature class for a project. If anyone wants, I could maybe post the lyrics in the next chapter.

Anyway, I'd like to thank all of my lovely and amazing reviewers this week: FlyOnFan14, JealousMindsThinkAlike, The Wolf Who Walks Alone, BlackVenom, Miss Mushroom (Necicitas ayuda con tu espanol? Puedo te ayuda si tengas preguntas. Espanol no es muy dificil si vas a practicar ;), Pancakes-For-You, and CallMeSoldier! I love you all so much! You all make writing worthwhile. The world could use more people like yourselves. If you send me good reviews, I'll make sure to message you back :)

If anyone had found out what had happened between him and Max that night, that he had even shed a tear, it would certainly have been all over the Institute that their number one had gone soft. Because, on the outside, Marius was callous and terrifying. That was just it, though – that Ari wasn't him. That Ari was an effect of the drugs he was forced to take. They literally drew blood from his arm every night to test and make sure that he was popping the pills. And it he wasn't, he would be severely punished in some of the worst ways imaginable.

Ari felt different now. He was completely lucid at that moment, strolling through the large building complex like he owned it, and he was thinking, something he hadn't been able to do in a very long time. Usually, his mind was clogged with emotions decided upon by the medications he had to take, but now, it was clear as the surface of a tranquil lake. So now he was able to feel, he was pissed. In fact, "pissed" wouldn't even cover the emotions he was experiencing. He had been forced to take advantage of Max, and he had been so full of drugs that he hadn't even known he was doing it.

Ari was so focused on being angry that he didn't realize when ter Borcht stepped in front of him waving a clipboard – probably to knock him out of the daze his mind was being consumed by.

"Marius, ah jou alright?" the whitecoat asked him, though there was no feeling of concern in his dark, dead eyes.

Ari's yellow stare focused in on the doctor. His pupils dilated, like those of a wolf staring down its prey.

"Yes, sir," he found himself saying, automatically snapping back into military-like jargon, trying to be that cold-blooded killer the doctor was familiar with. The one he had created. "I was heading to the barracks to catch some sleep. Sir."

Ter Borcht checked the ugly old-man watch hooked around his wrist and frowned to himself, his triple double chin folding over itself, "Jes, but, wif all due respect, icht is seven en de mourning. Jou should be aht fairst meal."

It was? Well, time sure flew fast. He concocted a quick lie.

"Poker ran overtime last night. Played a few extra rounds. It won't happen again, sir."

"Vat do jou trade?" ter Borcht asked, seeming confused and a little suspicious already as if he couldn't imagine the Erasers would huddle behind small tables with fistfuls of playing cards.

Ari didn't even think for a second. "Rations, sir," he said, and with a horrible sharp-toothed smile. "Occasionally digits."

That last part wasn't entirely a lie. He did know for a fact that a few of the other Erasers had lost fingers to over-confident bets. The others were stupid brickheads, in his opinion. They weren't genetically programmed to perform as flawlessly as he had been. Ari was one of their greatest successes, aside from Max, whom the Institute finally had back in custody.

This, he admitted bitterly, was probably why they were trying to breed him with her.

The overweight scientist watched Ari for a few more seconds before dismissing him to mealtime. Ari saluted him and kept on walking in the direction of the barracks until ter Borcht was completely out of sight. When he rounded a corner, he immediately began looking for weak spots in the ceiling where his large body might be able to crawl up into. He had seen in some of the few films he had watched in his life that people sometimes escaped prisons through the air vent system, but for whatever reason, to him, it didn't seem plausible. They could quite easily collapse under his weight. Plus, the Institute would probably have some security over that, seeing as most of the experiments would try and escape if they ever had the chance.

He had to give Max that chance.

He also knew that he should probably find a map of the Institute's sewer system, or get copies of different guards' ID passes in order to smuggle himself and Max out of the high security detectors near the front doors. To his knowledge, there were no doors leading to the outside other than the main ones in all three of the buildings. There were also no windows anywhere except for the long paneled on stretching down the entire face of the middle building and the ones way too little for any living being to get through. It was little-known knowledge that the third building's security was by far the weakest. This was due to the general lack of experiments being held in that general area. And the third building was attached to the middle and first by a couple of different hallways. If they were going to get out, it would be best to try through there.

For the first time in Ari's life, he was excited about something. A genuine excitement not produced out of the influence of drugs. This would be his chance to prove that the Itex didn't own him. They had created him, they had tortured him, they brainwashed him, and they were going to pay for it. Dearly. Maybe his escape could inspire the other experiments to revolt. There were enough of them that they could easily take control of the labs. They had abilities normal humans did not have. They could do it, they could.

His mind kept circling around all of these ideas while he strode through the hallways of the Institute, Building #2. Nobody was here this early in the morning, and they didn't have to report to their places until eight. That gave him an hour. His feet carried him across the cold linoleum towards the office he knew Dr. Gunther-Haagan resided in. He hoped the door wasn't locked and mentally kicked himself for not trying to find out earlier, because he probably could have found a key.

The darkly stained wood of the door was cool to the touch, as was the door handle he turned slightly before it gave him the indication it was not moving anywhere. He swore under his breath and desperately searched his pockets for anything he could use to break open the bolt. He had a long knife strapped under his pants to one of his shins, but that was it.

Frustrated, he punched the door as hard as he could, because that would be the more reasonable alternative to staying calm, feeling his blood pressure rising until he could see extra hair sprouting from his muscular arms and long. Razor sharp claws erect from his fingertips. Morphing used to hurt a lot when he was younger, but the pain had ceased to a certain extent since to where he just got all tingly. Sodden, his yellow predator eyes zeroed in on his huge, ugly hands.

Something inside of his head moved, and on instinct without even thinking, he raised one to touch the doorknob once again. He morphed back in surprise as the handle turned and opened without him even touching it.

Ari hardly had the humanity to think about how weird that was, but he stumbled into the Director's office on his awkwardly formed feet. He supposed he should be looking for a file. Of some sort, containing a map of the sewer system and the collective air conditioning shafts all throughout the buildings. It was a chore to have to look through everything in the office, and every second he became more and more paranoid that someone was going to walk in on him, that he would have to quickly make up some sort of adequate response as to what the hell he was doing in there.

The more he looked, the more he became sure that there was no way out of there. He couldn't find anything. Where would documents like that even reside? Next to the maintenance stuff, or the construction papers? He had no idea.

He looked desperately around his general vicinity. He remembered seeing a large fan on the side of the building that might be attached to the air conditioning veneration system. I may have been part of the one that got rid of hot air, but that could be very dangerous considering he didn't have any suppositions as to how warm it could grow to be. And if he got Max through the sewer system, he didn't know where they would get out to. They could be trapped there forever and never find a way out in the darkness. The fan might be their best bet, providing his weight didn't break the shafts.

His his searching fingertips finally met a different, older looking stack of papers in the back of the Director's more abandoned looking files, under his desk in a big pile. It was blue, and sort of faded and torn at the edges, with evidence of liquid damage from a coffee spill. It unfolded crinkily as Ari lay it out on the desk, hunched over, examining it with his enhanced predator vision. It was a map of the entire Institute, so intricate that he hardly knew where to start looking. There was everything from electrical circuits to light movement, to an incineration pipe that made several stops in several different places before it finally exited out the roof of Building #3.

The clock mounted on the wall behind him clicked every movement of the second hand. He glanced at it for a minute and realized that it was way later in the day than he would like it to be, and that the Director would probably be showing up in the next quarter hour or so.

Damn.

He folded the large map up and slid it into the waistband of his pants. They wouldn't see it there, would they? The office was still in order, he had made sure of that, and the things on the desk of the Director were still OCDically straight and placed exactly. If anything would have been out of place, he would know about it and maybe raise an alarm. Ari hated to think what would happen to him if they looked back at the security camera tapes and saw him sneaking around. Then he might end up in the incinerator.

Ten minutes later, Marius was way on the other side of the building, pretending that he had overslept and was likewise late for breakfast. His yellow eyes shined brightly, the map feeling heavy against his side.

The other Erasers were all clad in their military-like uniforms, standing in line with metal bowls grasped between their brutish hands like they were prized possessions. A overweight woman was scooping handfuls of raw meat into them sparingly, making sure that everyone had only enough so they didn't, like, eat one another.

A few heads turned as he shoved his way to the front – one to the perks to being an Alpha. He was the leader, and the others were supposed let him do whatever he wanted. The new breed of Erasers were younger than him by at least one year, making all of them of age three or less. Ari didn't quite understand how the Institute aged all the Erasers so fast, but he imagined there was some sort of chemicals or steroids involved. Not that he really cared.

"Double portion," he said to the woman, trying to stay in character. He hadn't taken any of his regular pills in the last twenty-four hours, so he really had to watch himself.

Her eyes flashed worriedly at the sight of him. Tall, muscular, scarred. Handsome, too, but that wasn't her concern. He was bigger in stature than the others, so she didn't question him and dropped to scoops of rancid meat into his dish. Like dogs, he thought.

Each of them had a number, and they had to use the same bowl every day that was etched with their serial.

"Hey, Merry!" one of the Erasers, Locke, called to him from across the dining hall.

He badass-nodded in the other's direction and followed to where he and Locke had sat every single day since they had been released from the poorly-labeled "nursery". There were a few others that sat at the table, but Ari didn't really find them interesting at all. That was why Locke was Beta.

Before he sat down, Ari hit Locke as hard as he could in the middle of his back. Locke yelped in surprise and growled while the Alpha positioned himself in the seat directly across from him on the cheap metal bench.

"Don't call me Merry again," he said pleasantly.

Locke nodded. There was something about him that Ari had always found comforting, or as comforting as a giant brute with half his face mauled off could ever get. He smiled crookedly, his damaged face crinkling to reveal his large canine teeth. "Heard you scored with that avian chick yesterday."

The meat inside Ari's mouth suddenly soured. He spit it out into his bowl again as raw emotions cracked his soul in two. He tried not to let it show, but Locke knew him better than that. "Not so fun?" he asked.

Ari shook his head. "I was drugged. I don't remember any of it."

"That's a pity."

He felt like kindly shoving a fork through his friend's good eye, but decided against it. He was trying to outgrow that sort of thing.

Ari changed the subject, but the image in his mind of Locke with a fork sticking out of his face didn't leave his mental screen.

"What do you think it's like out there?" Ari asked him, as he looked at the crude light coming out the only small window in the room, which was lit with white lights – much like the rest of the Institute.

Locke' blue eyes showed mild astonishment.

"What do you mean, out there?" he asked, like Ari had somehow had completely lost his marbles.

But Ari wasn't messing around, and something in his voice caught Locke's attention. Marius chewed on a particularly tough piece of meat thoroughly attractively and rolled his eyes at his friend's reaction, "You know what I mean, asswipe, out there out there."

It surprised him to get this sort of response out of Locke. Locke was the toughest of the tough of all the Erasers, excluding him. They had grown up together, always fighting for the bigger shares of food, picking on the littler pups, and establishing their dominance before they could talk. Even though they were only four years old, it seemed like their existence had dragged on for much longer than that. Being inside the Institute had that sort of effect on you. What was more, the whitecoats had brainwashed all of them, teaching them that the outside world was a dangerous place. That if anyone knew about their extraordinary abilities, they would be killed. Ari knew better than that – he'd been out of the Institute on several different missions to kill important people in different places. But Locke had never set foot outside the concrete prison. They wanted a backup in case Ari managed to get himself killed. Ari knew Locke wanted that privilege. It was kind of a twisted friendship they had, if you could even call it that.

Given his background, it was easy to understand Locke's emotions when the subject of escape was brought up.

"They'll kill us," he said a little too toughly, picking the last bit of meat off of a piece of bone. "You know that. We wouldn't make it."

Ari felt like slapping him across the face. "Listen, we are killing machines. What could stand in our way? Flimsy little humans with pistols? Those new cheaply built breeds of Erasers? I don't think so."

Anger rising, Locke lowered his voice. "Look, we're not leaving the Institute. End of discussion. There's a life here for us, and there's not one out there. It's as simple as that."

"It's not as simple as that, they're using us. Can't you see?"

"Hey, don't freak out, I'm just saying it's better for us here."

"Are you scared? Is that it?"

"Are you calling me a coward?"

"I was forced to do things last night that I didn't want to do! I raped a girl I didn't want to rape. It's all a sick game, Lockehart. It's all part of their sick little game. We should get out of here. We could do it."

His friend shook his head like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Marius, I've known you a long time, but I think you've got a something not working right up there. It's not safe in the outside world, and you are going to get yourself killed trying to obtain a glimpse of it."

Ari just stared at him. "What are you?"

Locke cleared his place and stuffed the last scrap of meal in his jowls, and left without taking a second glance. "Idiot," he muttered.

Staring at the metal table beneath him, Ari clenched his fists so hard that blood started to pool beneath his ragged fingernails as he started to morph. He was in better control of it than when he was younger, so with a few deep breaths, he was able to phase back and focus on the task that lay ahead of him. He was going to get Max out, and it had to be soon, and he was going to do it without the help of his best friend.

A lump in his arm indicated where a tracking device was located just under the skin. It had to be replaced every few years because his white blood cells were far more aggressive than any of a human adult and would shut it down quicker than any other immune system of other mutants grown in the lab. It could easily be gauged out, he imagined with a pocketknife or something.

He refused to be part of this sport. He was not a chess piece, but an individual. Not an animal waiting to get gunned down. Not an avatar, but a person. He could think, he had feelings. That meant something, didn't it? That counted. Ari hardly knew anything about the world above, but he knew that these scientists needed to be brought to light. There had to be someone out there that thought this was wrong. All of this. Children should not be modified and made to run on treadmills until they died of exhaustion.

No, they needed to be punished, and he had to make sure of that.

That night, all Max could think about while she lay on the mattress next to the wall in her crude cell was the reality which could await her in the future. She had no doubt she was going to escape. She would not lose hope in Fang, and she knew that he would come for her no matter if it meant he was going to die in the process of setting her free. And the night – morning? – before was when Ari had held her hand and promised her he would help her get out. She had no doubt he meant it when he said he would. There was something in those eyes of his which cemented his words, something that changed in his face that made her really believe he would. After all, he probably knew the Institute inside and out, backwards and forwards. Better than she ever had. If Fang wouldn't pull through, she could almost be certain that Ari would.

The other thing her mind kept going towards was the possibility she could be pregnant. First, the idea of it scared her so badly that her stomach tightened uncomfortably whenever it cropped up into her subconscious again. It was like she was in limbo, forever staring at the grey ceiling and wondering, searching, and wishing. Wishing this wasn't so. Wishing she was back in the cabin with Lou, Fang, Iggy, and El. Wishing what had happened the other night hadn't, and that she wouldn't be carrying the child of an Eraser. She didn't know what she would do if that happened. It would probably eat its way out of her abdomen if it had to, and dear Lord, that would be painful.

But then she started thinking about what her life might be like if the child was born normal. Would she be able to be a mom? Was she even the mom type? She imagined that Fang would kill her if he found out she was pregnant and it wasn't, you know, wasn't his. Not that she and Fang had anything going on, – because they didn't – but Max could be certain that if anyone touched her in any provocative way, he, weirdly, would want to make sure it wasn't anybody he didn't know, and wasn't Iggy. It was a very abstract and confusing emotion he had towards the school and what they could do to Max. Fang always had her back, and she knew he would lay down his own life in an instant if it meant saving hers. And she would do the same for him in a heartbeat. This is what friends did, was it not? She wondered what normal kids her age were like and what their ties would be towards the people they cared about. Probably not anywhere near hers.

What if they child was Ari's? She didn't want to think what Fang would do then. She remembered the last thing that she saw before being abducted was Fang being sliced open with claws, and then shot in what she thought was his heart by this same creature that was now trying to help her escape. What would he do?

"Oh my God, I think we might finally be in Nevada," El said tiredly as she was still strapped around Iggy's midsection. He had his arms around her, probably to make sure she didn't fall out of the sky, and whooped as they passed what looked like a large sign on the ground below them.

Fang squinted. "Welcome to…Nevada," he read in monotone. They'd been in the air for a very long time, and his eyes were starting to droop with exhaustion.

Iggy was smiling, though he couldn't see anything of what was going on. "How long until we reach Death Valley? Not more than a day, right?"

Unzipping his windbreaker because of the heat, Fang made a face. "Probably not. We're really close, though."

There was a moment of silence as they all studied the red dirt so far below them. Off in the distance, a couple of buzzards were circling something that had died, or was about to die. Fang hoped it wasn't some sort of foreshadowing of their demise in the next twenty-four hours.

Around two-o-clock in the afternoon, they took a break for lunch and for some much-needed sleep. They supposed it would be safer to try and get into the Institute by cover of night, so Fang had suggested they tried to modify their sleep cycles accordingly. The three of them took turns taking half our naps before they got up again and searched behind a McDonald's for food that may have been discarded. There was a quite a bounty of stale burgers and slightly outdated salads. Iggy even managed to get his hands on an apple pie. When the sun started to set, Fang looked pointedly at Iggy and Ella and said, "Okay, we need a place for you to hide. I think I saw some caves a while back..."

"Wait - you're leaving us behind?" Iggy gawked mildly. "Uh, I don't think so."

El wasn't looking much happier, but Fang knew what he had to do. He had to go in alone. It was too dangerous for Ella, who'd never fought anything in her life, and Iggy, who was blind as a bat.

Fang said nothing, and neither did they, but he thought they understood well enough.

This was a battle he had to fight alone.

Intense cliffhangers are intense. The next chapter should be fairly long and intricate, so I may take a little longer than usual. Plus I have finals coming up and lots of projects I need to get done before the 11th of next month, so I may not be able to update for two weeks. I'm sorry! I'm also going to be gone at a retreat from the May 20th to the 2nd of June. I'll still try and write, but won't be able to update at all.

But please review and tell me what you thought! Who should get Max out of the Institute? Ari or Fang? I have so many trips up my sleeve it's insane. Prepare to be entertained :)

So, yeah, review please!

~Steph