A/N I don't know why, exactly, but this was one of the hardest chapters for me to write so far. *shrugs* Hope you enjoy it!

So let's review the situation: the already emotionally- and physically-battered group was standing in the grounds of the all-too-occupied School, Ratchet had been incapacitated by something we couldn't even hear, let alone fight, and we were facing a bloodthirsty mutant wolf-man (plus his buddies, if the sounds coming from the hall behind him were anything to go by) who had caught us completely unawares and off-guard.

Yeah… Rock on.

'So, Not-Ari, how've you been? They treating you well here? Keeping your kibble topped up nicely?' I asked conversationally, all the while keeping my muscles tense, looking for an opportunity to make a move. His lip curled at my words, but there was still a gleam of sadistic satisfaction in his yellow eyes.

'Go ahead and taunt me, Maxie,' he sneered, 'but don't think you're getting out of this. You're completely surrounded.'

I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise, looking over both shoulders in an exaggerated sweep of the empty space in back of us, then spread my hands sheepishly and threw a condescending smile at him.

'Did they ever actually teach what that word means?' I spoke slowly, like you do when you're trying to explain something to a child. 'Because it kinda looks to me like you've got the wrong idea.'

Not-Ari gave a low, chilling snigger, then clapped his huge paws together, the sound bouncing off the valley walls. Suddenly a row of people appeared on the roof above us; children, all wearing black helmets fitted with small metal devices.

'Meet Generation 77.31,' Not-Ari said casually. 'Interesting bunch, really. All cloned from a single embryo. Not very lively, but they're hooked up to some pretty nifty lasers and can track speeds surpassing 900 miles per hour.' He bared his teeth at me delightedly. 'Think your little track-runner can outrace that?'

I looked sideways at Star. Her jaw was clenched and I knew we were thinking the same thought: No. No, she couldn't. Not-Ari interpreted our silence correctly and gave a gravelly laugh, fixing his gaze on Star.

'You'd be in pieces before you'd made it three steps. And that goes for anyone who fancies causing trouble, which is why you're all gonna come with me now.' He frowned a little and sighed, crossing his thick arms over his chest and turning back to look at one of the mutts standing behind him. 'You know, there's something about things being so easy that takes the fun out of it all.' Tutting slightly, he moved forwards out of the doorway and round back of us, his groupies following him until there were enough of them to herd us through the entrance and into the corridor beyond. Ratchet, barely able to stand by this point, was grabbed roughly by the arm and pulled along, his feet catching on the floor as he moved. His hands were still clamped over his headphones, and his whole body was hunched over in pain.

'What's happening to him?' Gazzy asked as we were pushed along, his voice tight and scared.

Not-Ari gave him an extra shove in the small of the back, making him lurch forwards.

'We couldn't have him listening in on all of our important conversations, now could we?' he said. 'A high-frequency signal is piped through every room in the place. Too high for anyone with normal hearing to pick up on-' He stuck his snout into Ratchet's face and grinned maliciously. '-but you're not normal, are you?'

'So it's like a dog whistle,' I established.

'Something like that,' he replied, raising his eyebrows in smug satisfaction.

I turned my head to look at him as we walked, arranging my face into a puzzled expression.

'How come you can't hear it, then?'

Despite the situation we were in, my words got a few snorts from the group. The smile dropped from Not-Ari's face and he snarled, pulling back a paw the size of a baseball mitt and whacking me across the face; I felt his claws slice over my cheek, blood spraying as my head was snapped sideways and I staggered into Iggy slightly. The group around me jumped at the attack, training their eyes on the drama even as they carried on walking, ready to fight if that was what it came to. Recovering my balance, I clenched my hands up into fists, about to return fire, but something caught my eye: behind us, those Gen 77.31 kids were striding smoothly along, their laser whatsits trained on me. Scowling, I took a deep breath in through my nose and fixed my stare forwards, pulling the sleeve of my jacket over my hand to press against my cheek in an attempt to stem the blood flow. I winced as the material grazed roughly over the cuts. Damn, they're actually kinda deep – definitely going to scar.

We continued moving, being driven deeper and deeper into the School through winding hallways and heavy metal doors. The Erasers around us slowed as we reached a wider corridor with large observation windows along its length, forcing us to slow down with them and take in what was happening in the rooms we were going past. My insides clenched and I could feel myself starting to shake, my heart thumping in my ears and fresh blood flowing down the side of my face as my hand fell slack. Surrounding us were scenes from our childhoods, our nightmares; medical theatres and examination rooms, gym equipment and physiological monitors and surgeon's trays. I felt like running to a corner and curling up in a ball as I was assaulted by a barrage of flashbacks:

My earliest memory, sitting in a dog crate and watching a small figure being carried out of the room, too young to understand, too young to be worried when they were never brought back…

Being tied face-down to a metal table and left there, alone in the darkness until the people in the white masks and blue gloves came along to cut into my spine…

Stinging pain in my arm when the stone-faced woman injected that clear liquid into me, the one that always made me go all floppy and unable to fight them…

The sight of Iggy's face, his eyes scarred and paler than they used to be, the first time his bandages came off and he realised he was blind…

The small, blonde bundle that was thrust into my cage two years before Jeb helped us escape…

Crying out as I was forced to run, run for hours on a treadmill, feeling like I was about to throw up or pass out or die, or die, or die, just please let me die…

I looked around at the others, and they all seemed to be having just as bad a time of it as I was: Holden had wrapped his arms tightly around his body, as if trying to protect the parts of him that had been cut into over and over again; Nudge looked completely vacant, her brown eyes staring blankly at the windows we were passing, but her hands were trembling as they hung by her sides; Kate was keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the ground, her face screwed up so that she couldn't see what was going on around her; Fang's face was pale, his jaw taut and fists clenched. Only Dylan didn't seem haunted by it all. His eyes held sorrow as he took in the scenes within the rooms, but there was no suffering of his own there. Of course, I thought. He was Dr Gunther-Hagen's Golden Boy. He never got experimented on. He doesn't know.

As we neared the end of the hallway, the rooms changed from small experimentation labs to larger arenas. In one, sturdy-looking children stood in lines facing large blocks of stone, and as we watched, each gave a synchronised jerk of the head and the blocks flew backwards into the wall. In another, Erasers were attacking human-shaped mannequins, ravaging the stuffed bodies with razor-sharp teeth and claws.

'Our training rooms,' Not-Ari said smugly, gesturing towards the final room of the hallway, in which more Gen 77 kids were being lectured on the downfall of the unaltered human race. We reached the end of the corridor, being pushed through a set of double doors and into a large room with multiple other doors positioned around the walls, each bearing a number to the side of the frame; rows of flat-bed trolleys and individual gurneys were lined up at the back of the room, waiting for the next cage or person to be loaded up and wheeled to whatever torture the wretched thing would be facing.

The Erasers forced us into the middle of the room, then Not-Ari slammed his fist against a small button on the wall beside the door we'd just come through and pointed upwards; high on the wall there was a large pane of glass revealing an observation deck full of computers and studious-looking people in white coats.

'Twenty-four hour surveillance,' he stated. Heads lifted as a buzz sounded through the deck, and a man appeared by the window, a small microphone held to his mouth by a headset.

'Request?' His voice rang through the room, piped out of speakers set along the join between the walls and the ceiling.

'Access to Hold 13 for imprisonment of newly-captured experiments, Subjects Gen 54.6 through 10, 71.1, and 77.3, 10, 11, and 20.'

The whitecoat's fingers skimmed over the tablet computer in his hand, tapping away at the screen as he no doubt verified the information Not-Ari had given him. I watched the scene unfold in front of me, muttering as I leaned over towards Star:

'They're all a bit pole-stuck-where-the-sun-don't-shine, huh?'

She didn't smile, but gave a small sniff of laughter and quirked an eyebrow in agreement as the whitecoat started speaking again.

'Statement check was successful. Please provide evidence of identity.'

Not-Ari moved towards the door numbered 13 and lifted his arm until it was pressed against the wall at a seemingly random point, then withdrew after a few seconds and looked up at the observation deck.

'Evidence of identity accepted. Hold 13 now accessible.'

We were thrown through the metal door into a small antechamber, then past a second door into a room with a high ceiling; it was completely empty except for us, the walls almost blinding in their unbroken whiteness. The Eraser thugs followed us in, the Laser Kids still walking expressionlessly behind them, and then the door slid shut, making a sucking sound as electronic extensions glided forwards and secured it to the frame by some kind of vacuum seal. As soon as the door was closed, Ratchet stopped struggling, his face relaxing and hands dropping from his ears; he was breathing hard, looking shaken.

'Welcome back,' Not-Ari chuckled darkly. Ratchet just glared at him, too dazed to speak. 'Let me tell you a few things about your holding room. A little tour of its modifications. The walls are fitted with the same soundproofing measures as the outside walls of the building – dampening materials and noise-cancelling generators sending out destructive interference signals – so no sound gets in or out.' He spoke as if he'd read the words over and over again, committing them to memory. 'They're also lined with a mineral called lonsdaleite, the hardest material known to man. Pretty rare, but-' He shrugged smugly. '-we've got ways of getting what we want here.'

'Do you even know what you're saying?' Iggy asked patronisingly as he surveyed the Erasers, able to make out their shapes now that they were against a backdrop of white. 'It's okay if you don't understand what it all means – those were some pretty big words.'

Not-Ari growled and his fur bristled.

'I'll tell you what it means,' he said, his voice rumbling, deep and deadly, in his throat. 'It means that no one's getting out of here. This room is impossible to escape from, no matter how much weight you can lift or how fast you can run. You're trapped. I don't need to understand anything else.'

I felt fear clamp down on me as I realised that he could actually be right; it seemed as though they'd thought of everything, pinning down our strengths and finding the perfect way to counter them. He turned away and raised his arm to a spot on the wall again, the door sliding open after a few seconds to reveal the still-locked one beyond it, and Ratchet tensed as the sound that only he could hear reached through to him again. The Erasers made their way out of the room and into the antechamber, waiting for the first door to close behind them so that the second could be opened. Just before he left, Not-Ari looked back at me.

'Oh, and by the way,' he said with a dark laugh, 'you should be getting a visit soon. The General's been expecting you.' He gave me a look, and there was a strange gleam in his eyes, as though he knew something I didn't.

Then the door slid closed behind him, and we were left sitting in a silent, blank room.

Crap.

A/N Don't forget to review. The button's right there. :D