Well, here's the next chappie! And happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. Anyone going shopping on Black Friday? I am, but only so I can watch people fist-fight over Tickle Me Elmos. Is it just me, or is Elmo really scary?Snow POV.

In my experiences, you only have three choices when you're facing down your nightmares: Fight, fly, or die. And we so weren't up for a fight, plus I didn't really feel like dying, thank you very much, so when the girl spread her wings, we put ours to good use. We flew like our lives depended on it. As far as we knew, they did. And the girl followed us without difficulty, no matter what we did. Even when we went full-tilt, screaming across the starry sky like rockets. That is, if rockets were grimy teenage girls with wings.

When you're flying away, you get another two options; speed or stealth. And speed was out. Normally, stealth wouldn't be such a problem at night, but when you got out in the open you could see the moon was pretty close to full and shining like a spotlight. Not to mention the gazillion stars. It would've been pretty. You know, if we had time for pretty.

We plunged into the inky-black forest on the other side of the lake, heading towards the mountains. They were Appalachians, not as big as the Rockies, but older and less pointy.

We slowed down minutely in the forest so we could dodge around the closely-packed trees. I was getting pretty scratched up by the branches all around, but I really didn't care. As long as it got the Eraser off our tail. I glanced around to see Livvie was holding her own, with this crazy-determined expression on her face. She knew what would happen if the Eraser caught up with us.

Golden Rule: When flying through a dense forest in the middle of the night at to speed, it's wise not to let your attention wander.

Like a spaz, I smacked into a branch and got the breath knocked out of me. I manage to stay in the air, but just barely, and I twisted around to see the girl was still following us. Worse, she was gaining on us.

So that meant stealth was out, too. And what did that leave of our options? Oh, yeah... Die.

Ain't life a bitch?

All witticisms aside, we were seriously in trouble. Because we couldn't go any faster without impaling ourselves on trees. "Livvie!" I yelled. She looked back at me. "Get ready to fight!"

She nodded and landed gracefully, probably just to make me feel stupid for running into a tree (It was pretty dumb). I braced myself and turned around, expecting to see death hurtling towards me with it's bloodshot eyes exuding pure hate and, like, eternal torment or something. But instead I got...

Nothing.

There was nothing in the forest behind us. I blinked hard and looked again. The only thing moving was the wind through the leaves, which rustled darkly, though not enough for something solid to be moving around in them. I whipped my head around and turned an uneasy 360. The only thing I saw was Livvie, standing stock-still and watching for... something, the way I was. "Snow...?" she said.

The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. You wouldn't need a sharp one, either. Just a little butterknife. I did another 360.

"My name is Zelda."

"What did you say?" I spun around to look at Livvie.

She looked confused. "I didn't say anything." Then Livvie frowned. "But I heard it too."

"I am fourteen years old. I'm an Eraser."

Eyes wide, I looked around yet again. "Where are you?" I said loudly.

"Show yourself!" Olivia added.

"All in good time, my friends."

That made me mad. "If you're an Eraser you're no friend of mine!" I spat. I didn't have to look at Livvie to know she was thinking the same thing.

"Why can't you people just leave us the hell alone?" she cried. I grabbed her shoulder and motioned for an up-and-away.

"Wait!" Zelda said, sounding close to desperate. "Just hear me out, okay?"

"Why should we?" Livvie asked, sounding way tough. Once again, I was amazed at her ability to remain cool in these kind of situations. I swear, we would be dead by now if it weren't for her.

"Because I'm not here to kill you!" Zelda said. "I don't work for them."

"Prove it." I growled. About twenty feet away, a girl shimmered into existence with her arms at her sides, palms facing toward us - the universal gesture for "Look, I'm not carrying a big murderous weapon".

To be honest, she looked at lot like Livvie - not enough to be sisters, but pretty close. Livvie was really tall at five feet, eleven inches; Zelda was an inch or two shorter. They both had brown hair with blond streaks, but Zelda had less, they looked like they were growing out. Livvie's eyes were browny-hazely-ish and Zelda's were gray-blue. I was the black sheep here, being kinda short for my age with vampire-pale skin, jet black hair and stormy gray eyes.

"Okay," I said, crossing my arms. "Convince us."

"I was kidnapped as a little kid, like you." Zelda said without wasting any time. "But they turned me into the first avian-lupine-human hybrid."

"I used to think that we were the good guys and the runaways were threatening the world by not following the plan - that's how I was raised to think. But I had a friend named Danny who knew what was going on was wrong." She continued. "And he tried to convince the others of that too. I told him to shut up - they didn't like to be challenged. But he didn't listen to me. If anything, he got louder about it."

Zelda took a deep breath. "And they killed him." She said, fighting back tears. "They killed my best friend - my only friend - because he got too close to the truth. They tried to make it seem like a tragic accident. 'Oh, he was over by the lab when the experiment went rogue and killed him.' But I wasn't buying it. There was another Eraser who said he saw the whole thing. Saw them kill Danny."

"But one day he went missing too. And when I tried to ask the others about it, they had no idea who I was talking about. They thought I was crazy, especially when I started to say what Danny had been saying. That's when I realized they were going to kill me too."

I glanced over at Livvie. She was staring intently at Zelda.

"I stuck around just long enough to hear about this mission; the one to come get you two back again." Zelda said. "Then I ran away. Now I'm on their hit list - so are you."

"They have a hit list?" I asked. "Just how many of us have escaped?"

"More than you'd think." Zelda replied. "Their system isn't as air-tight as it appears."

"We know there are at least six others out." Livvie said. "They rescued us."

Zelda nodded. "More than that. There are at least twelve, maybe thirteen bird-kids out right now. You met the top six most wanted."

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. "And they knew we were here - how?"

"That I don't know." Zelda said. "I wasn't supposed to be on this mission. I ran away and saw the ambush group on their way here, so I went invisible and followed them. That's when I realized they were after you and I tried to stop them."

"Just one question," Livvie said. "Why?"

Zelda looked at us. "Because I want to join you. We can take them down."

I thought. Finally, I said "Okay. But only because of two reasons: If you were going to kill us, you would've done it already. And number two, you have information we need. If we're going to take down the Institute, we need allies. You know where to find them. We're going to form a flock, so to speak."