Once they got back up to the speed limit, Farrow kept pushing the topic.

"Alik, I've never seen you get sick before."

"I've never been sick before."

"Well?"

"It's not a big deal, Farrow. I just need to take a break every ninety minutes or so."

"So it's the scene on scene that causes disorientation?"

"It's the moving scene on moving scene that's the problem."

"Makes sense. You just tell me when you're ready to go again, and we're not setting any timer. If you start to feel sick, just tell me and I'll slow it back to the speed limit. Okay?"

"Okay."

"We also need to get your stomach settled. We're coming up on Little Rock. There's bound to be a twenty-four-hour breakfast place."

"Faster we get there, the faster we can eat and get back on the road. We still have some eight hours left."

"Eight hours going the legal speed," Farrow raised a perfectly curved brow. "We've already traveled in two and a half hours what should have taken us nearly four"

"That's probably not something we should brag about in front of Mom and Theo," Alik chuckled despite himself.

Farrow imagined the look on the mild-mannered Dr. Andrews' face and started laughing.

"You have the most beautiful laugh," his blue eyes sparkled at her unabashedly.

"Yeah, we need to get some food in you quick," she scoffed.

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Deflect every time I mention how beautiful you are."

Farrow shrugged.

"Talk to me. It's going to be a while before I'm able to retro-cog. We may as well talk."

"I'll talk about anything you want..."

"Excellent, why the hang-up about your looks?"

"...except that."

Alik studied her profile as she drove. She was working her jaw by clenching and unclenching so the muscles moved angrily. She didn't wear a lot of makeup, but her long lashes could be seen thick and heavy even in the dim light of the dashboard. Her nose was beautifully shaped-straight except a small upturn at the little tip. Everything about her looked dainty and fragile, but Alik knew better.

"Tell me about life at the Facility."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm ashamed of my life there."

"It's part of what made you who you are. You probably had a lot of bad stuff happen to you there. I just want to know you better, but Farrow...nothing you say about your life then would stop me from caring about you now."

Farrow just shook her head.

"Don't you trust me?"

"Don't do that, Alik."

"Do what?"

"Try to bait me."

"Listen, Farrow. I care about you. I don't have an ounce of malicious intent going on here. I do have a sense that some really horrible stuff happened to you-that you were made to do. I'm not a trained professional, but I know talking it out will help you heal."

"How did this conversation turn to me?"

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Because I'm much more comfortable talking about you," Farrow blurted.

"But you won't even hear a compliment." His voice dropped to a whisper.

Farrow bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. They drove in silence for a while, Alik determined to keep the ball in her court.

"Please talk to me?" he pleaded softly.

Miles slipped under the car and just when Alik was about to give up hope for a serious conversation with the girl who'd captured his heart, she spoke.

Her voice was barely above a whisper, haunted in its effort to put her pain into words.

"I was left without parents at age six, young enough to be sent off to an orphanage, old enough to feel the pain of abandonment. My mother," Farrow swallowed hard and began again, "My mother was beautiful. Her hair was long and raven's wings black. She would sometimes wear it loose. It would hang in waves down the length of her back. But usually she wore it braided and up in a bun on the back of her head. She was a social worker...believe me, the irony isn't lost on me." Farrow glanced at Alik's earnest eyes.

Farrow continued with a sigh, "She would come home from a long day at court where she was an advocate for the children and collapse into our worn sofa. I would make her a glass of iced tea and she would sip it quietly. Now I know she was trying to forget the events of her traumatic day-all those children falling through cracks in the system.

"Back then, I was just a little girl desperate for her mommy's attention. I would climb on the back of the sofa and carefully pull the hairpins out of her bun, one at a time. She wore dozens to keep her wavy hair in place for her very professional job. Judges don't put up with any casualness. I thought I was very sneaky about it, but she must have known every minute what I was up to, undoing the bun and braid-a pile of hairpins growing beside me. By the time I had her hair emptied of pins, it would fall beautifully-still a little damp from the washing she had given it that morning."

Farrow smiled softly, her eyes glistened with tears her memories were coaxing from her.

"The night before my sixth birthday, we were going to the grocery store to buy eggs and flour for the cake Mommy was going to make that night. She'd spent the whole day at work, Alik, and she was tired. But she had promised me we'd make the cake that night, and I pouted until we got in the car to head out to the store, though I knew she was tired." Farrow swallowed hard, but continued.

"We were listening to a beautiful song. I didn't know it at the time, I was far too young, but it was classical music-Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' was playing repeatedly. My mother was humming with the piano's melody when our red light turned green. Mom pulled forward. Headlights glared through her side of the car. There was an earthshattering crunch. I remember hearing the windows explode." Farrow visibly shivered.

Alik wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms to soothe her sadness. But he knew she needed her space as she told her story, so he just watched and nodded sadly anytime she glanced over at him.

"I awoke in a hospital. They told me she was killed. I never got to say goodbye."

"I'm so sorry, Farrow."

She pursed her lips and blinked a tear away. "My dad had already died. He was in the US Army stationed in the Middle East when I was a baby. He never even saw the land mine that flipped his truck, killing him instantly. So I never knew him. I had no other family. As an orphan, I was sent to the state. No one wanted to foster an angry six-year-old girl, at least, not for long. By the time I was seven, Dr. Williams had somehow acquired me and two other kids from the orphanage. He brought us from California to Germany."

Farrow stopped talking abruptly. Alik knew the real story was what happened next.

"Then?"

Farrow sighed deeply before continuing.

Chapter 49 Cell #4-Sloan.

The air smelled dank, but that's not what woke her.

The sound of the laptop inches from her ear went into cooling mode-its fan began to whirl loudly. As it was an older piece of equipment, it was working hard to stay awake and functioning.

Sloan knew how it felt. She opened her blue eyes to watch it as though it were a fly on the wall. She kept waiting for it to do something of some significance, knowing she should do something about it, but not sure how to begin. Instead of coming to life, the screen went black.

She looked around the room in which she woke sprawled flat on her stomach, face first into the packed dirt ground.

Pushing up carefully, she felt her muscles argue with the attempt at movement. She felt like she'd spent the weekend at training and had performed very poorly.

Once she was finally upright, she dusted off and looked for the door so she could get out of here.

There was no door.

No windows either.

This is like a bad riddle, she thought.

I must still be asleep. She pinched her arm, trying to force herself to wake, but the room stayed the same as her skin yelled back at her for her inane tactic.

The walls looked to be made of brick, though Sloan was very sure if this was the prison she thought it was, the brick walls were much more than one layer thick. She had no way of knowing what day it was, or what time. She remembered being at the ranch house in Texas when men stormed into the room and attacked her.

Sloan forced herself to breathe, an attempt to slow her bird's wings flapping heart caged behind her ribs.

Looks as if I'm supposed to do something with the laptop. She frowned at it.

That's when she saw the scrap of paper that had been blown off to the side. She crawled to it, still unsure of her legs and turned it over. It read, "WATCH ME" in thick, black ink-all capital letters like some sort of note written by a narcissistic psycho with a God complex.

Sloan had no idea how accurately she predicted her jailor until she pressed the play button on the old laptop and watched in abject horror at the man who had her trapped like one of his rats. Now when was he going to open her cage to see if she were stupid enough to go running for the cheese?

There has to be a way out of here, Sloan breathed deliberately in through her nose and out through her mouth.

Chapter 50 Cell #3-Maze.

The silver-backed coydog whimpered softly before opening his bright-yellow eyes. It didn't matter how dark it was in the room, Maze could see well enough with his nose to know his Meg wasn't there with him. Her scent so much a part of the coyote, he would smell her in his sleep and feel safe knowing she was safe.

Maze didn't remember life before his Meg. She was always there, rubbing his ears, hugging him, using him as a pillow for her head. Maze loved everything about his girl and would do anything to be near her. She was his and he was hers. If a coydog could imprint on a human, Maze had done that with Meg from the time he was a pup.

Now Maze stood on shaky legs and paced the room, smelling every morsel of packed dirt. His heightened sense of hearing and smell gave him clues about this room that none of his metahumans could discern. Many sick people had been in this room before-using this corner to urinate and defecate, using that corner to sleep. Maze smelled stale excrement, sick people and something else that itched his nose almost painfully. If he could put words to it, it would have been arid sulfur and ashes, but all Maze was searching for was his Meg.

He kept sniffing the air, trying desperately to separate the rancid stench from foreign scents, peeling back layer upon layer of smells until he found Meg. The coyote in him felt elation and had to whip back his head to howl wistfully at the wall he knew her to be behind-somewhere. He couldn't stand it for even one more second.

Maze began digging at the packed dirt that made the floor right against the wall-Meg's wall. Time held still as he worked furiously. His front paws scrapped at the aged ground so fast, they blurred. He nuzzled his nose in the hole he was making, sniffing the dirt to help him know which way to move. Dirt flew out from behind him once he moved past the six-inch top layer of near cement-like substance.

He worked for an hour without stopping.

He didn't stop when he felt his first nail rip away, nor did he stop for the second or third.

Maze kept digging.

Desperation made him whimper as he dug.

Images of his Meg flashed in his canine mind and his devotion drove him further into the hole as he worked to find a way under the brick wall separating him from his girl.

By the end of the second hour of digging, the formerly regal-looking, fifty-five pound, coyote-German shepherd mix was completely underground with his ripped-up feet, still digging. His beautiful thick coat was crusted with the damp earth though which he was frantic to pass.

Nothing was going to stop him from getting to Meg.

No matter how much blood he left in the dirt as he worked. No matter how raw his nose was from nuzzling the unforgiving ground. No matter how sore his muscles felt.

Nothing.

Meg needed him and he would die trying to get to her.

Maze didn't know he was digging to Creed's cell first.

Maze also didn't know about the implant that could activate once he was within seven feet of the others.