A/N: Hello, hello, hello! My lovely, lovely readers. It's been a very long time, for you and me both. Call it laziness or the mother of all writers blocks, but I just couldn't seem to get any inspiration for writing this chapter. It's only taken me seven long months but I've finally produced something that isn't total shite. So be nice and enjoy ( and don't crusify me in the reveiws... I'M SORRY!) XX

Big thankyou to everyone who reveiwed... this really wouldn't be here if it wern't for all of you, so thankyou again!


It feels like the air has been sucked out of the room. For all I know, it could have. I've had panic attacks before, but this is the mother of all panic attacks. Max! My Max, is standing only a few feet away from me. I want to yell, to cry out with joy. To pull her close to me, and never let go. To whisper in her ear that I'll never leave her again. That everything will be okay.

And then I feel the wolf inside me, howling to get out. I feel like I've been thrown in the middle of an ice lake, and I'm drowning again. The icy cold clamps around my heart and I force myself to look away from the bars. I set my cold mask back into place, and pace to the back of the cell and sit.

I'll never allow myself to hurt her or any of them, I think solemnly to myself.

"Max! You made it!" I hear Nudge cheer. I resist the urge to look up. What's the point, I can't see them anyway.

"I lead to please. Did you guys have any trouble getting though?" Max asks, her smooth voice seeming almost unreal to my heightened wolf hearing.

"Nope. It was really awesome. We just walked right in, blew one hell of a hole out of their hallway… and Iggy got spear tackled by a two hundred pound Eraser," Nudge exclaims cheerily.

"Hey!" yells Iggy indignantly.

"All in all it was pretty smooth," she finishes, sounding just as proud as I remember she can be.

"You could almost say it was like… Bond," Iggy thought out loud, a clear smirk in his voice.

"James Bond!" Gazzy, Angel and Total call calls out in unison. I hear Max groan under her breath and hold back a snort of laughter. I glance up at Pup and he gives me a strange look and mouths 'James Bond?' I shrug and make a mental memo to bring the kid up to speed on the world of popular culture.

"Right… um, Maximum thanks for the rescue mission and all, but ah, a little help with the whole prisoner, cell thing?" comes the whiny voice of the black haired experiment, Echo, from his cell. Who was he to call her Maximum? Jeb is the only one who ever calls her by her full name. Is he too good to call her Max like the rest of us? Why did he even know her?

I frown. Why is this bothering me so much?

"Right, hold on a minute." She shuffles her feet and there's a clunk of metal and then hinges swinging. "Buttons buttons, who's got the… Aha!"

"Alright, now I see a whole lot of buttons but none of them are big, red or labeled 'PUSH THIS ONE'. I've got a big gut feeling that if I randomly start pressing things, an alarm's going to sound somewhere. Ig, you got an opinion on this one?" Max calls out to him.

"Yeah. Is there a series of switches labeled one to whatever?"

"They're not labeled but yeah, there's one… two…there's eight switches," Max calls back.

"Try the forth closest to the door."

"Well, I was thinking I'd just switch them all-" Max starts to say, when Iggy (and much to my dislike) Echo both shout out their disagreement. I roll my eyes, feeling a growl rumbling in my throat. I am really starting to detest this guy.

"And why, prey tell, can't I do that?" Max asks, sounding perplex.

"Because, there's three or four Erasers back there looking to sink their teeth into us big time," Echo mumbles to her apprehensively.

"Yeah sure. Like I'd actually want to bite you, you greasy vulture," Amity spits out, and I glance up at her as she starts to pace around her cell.

"Who knows what you'd want to-"

"Ookaayyy…So going with plan A then? I'm opening four!" Max interrupts loudly as Amity and Kith growl out furiously. Suddenly, there's a clank of a door and a creak followed by footsteps.

"What the hell is- SECURITY BREACH! SECURITY BR- oof!" there is a thump and another set of foot steps running away from us.

Max swears and another door slams somewhere near where she is standing in the control room. Suddenly, the sirens begin blaring over head again and I stand up quickly from the cell bench. Footsteps, Max's, echo through the prison as she reenters the hall.

"Crap! Okay, plan B. Listen up, dog-boys! We let you out, fight us now, we beet the crap out of you and we all get caught. Or… you help us escape, we get out of this hole… and then we whoop your arse. What dya say?" Max calls out urgently, walking down the aisle and straight into my line of vision.

My breath hitches up in my throat and my heart pounds in my ear like nothing I've ever felt before. I feel as if the hole inside by cold heart is filling with the very sight of her. She is more dazzling than I could ever imagine.

I try to think back to the countless dreams I'd had of her, and realize that they never even came close to the magnificence of her beauty. As she stands there waiting for a reply, I do the only thing I can think about doing.

"Max," I say quietly, and step forward. Slowly, oh so slowly, her breathtaking eyes turn to me and open wide in surprise. My heart skips a beat. Or two. Her brow scrunches up as if she doesn't recognize me. My eyes widen as I realize she doesn't, and I feel as if my heart is about to be ripped to shreds.

"Do we know each other?"