The Scarred She-Wolf

I came back to consciousness groggily, my deep sleep peeling off in pieces as I checked in with each part of my body—muscles, bones, nerves.

Cocooned in the half trance between dreaming and waking, I stayed still, craving the chemical void that had cradled me. It felt cleaner than this reality, where pain had edges and names.

Sometimes I thought I’d grown addicted to the nothingness. An anesthesia junkie without the high, only the reprieve.

It was too quiet. There was no comfortable hum of machines, not even the static murmur of voices through glass. I opened my eyes. The room was too dark as well. No flicker of LEDs, no gleam of the clock—and that thing was radioactive at night.

This place was dead.

I moved, slow and stiff, pushing myself upright. The tug in my back confirmed it: stitches. I pressed on the sore spot gently. An incision. Clean and dry. No blood. No leaks.

Knowing every inch of this room by heart, I grabbed the water bottle with a straw and drank deeply. Black shapes and shadows slid into place in my mind, and by the time I set the bottle back down, I’d oriented myself in the darkness.

The faint light coming in from under the door helped, too. It also let me catch my reflection in the observation glass.

My hair had grown to right below my shoulders. They hadn’t shaved it this time, not since the last time they’d opened my skull.

Lucky me.

I loved my hair; it was thick and black and slightly wild.

My face was paler than usual, which made the green of my eyes seem to glow, even in this stifling gloom. They were the kind of green that the staff here described as “unnatural,” “a sign of the monster inside.”

It was another reminder that I needed to be contained, studied, kept in this fishbowl that had become my life for how many years now.

Since the incident.

My eyes closed the moment it flashed through my mind.

Footsteps—fast, panicked, running this way—ripped me out of the nightmare of that memory.

Swinging my legs off the bed, I stood. The dizziness was manageable; that was good. That meant I could fight if I had to.

The glass door slid open. And a body slipped through.

“Come on,” she hissed. “We have to go. Now.”

“What?” My voice was hoarse, a stranger’s voice.

“Willow, the power’s out. They’re blind. If you want to live, we go now.”

Her posture deflated slightly, but then she squared up, set her jaw, and said, “Willow, I’ve known you for nearly six years, seen everything they’ve done to you. They’ve made you believe that you’re a monster. But trust me, you’re not.

I gaped at her. None of what she’d said made sense. Why would they raise me, educate me, and tend to my wounds just to kill me? Sure, they’d studied me, but that was only so they could find a way to cure me, to make me better.

Wasn’t it?

Nurse Amy looked at me with pity in her eyes—a look I’d seen too often, on too many faces.

I hated that look.

She reached out, and I flinched, but she took hold of my hands and squeezed. “Willow. They’ve lied to you about everything,” she said. “And, you’re not the only one like you. There are others.”

A gasp escaped my lips as her words drove the air from my lungs.

No. She was lying, had to be. Because if she wasn’t, it’d mean my whole life was based on a fiction someone had written in my file and passed off as truth. She had to be the liar, not them. But I couldn’t detect deception in her eyes—though, how could I be sure?

My mind was getting all jumbled, so I shook my head to clear it.

Nurse Amy continued, “I’m telling you the truth, Willow. I’ve seen them, living out there in the world among other people, peaceful and happy and not hurting anyone.” She squeezed my hands, and I met her gaze. “Please, Willow. I’ll show you. Come with me.”

I wanted to believe her, I truly did. I was desperate to live outside these walls, but not at the cost of another innocent person’s life.

Suddenly finding a middle ground, I said, “I’ll come with you, if you bring my suppression meds.”

Nurse Amy let out a breath, smiled, and nodded. “Deal.”

In an instant, something cracked inside me. The urgency of the moment hit, and I started pulling wires from my arms.

She helped me, stripping off the monitor patches from my chest before shoving a bag into my hands. “Clothes. Hurry.” She nodded toward the observation window. “I’ll go grab those meds.” She darted into the other room as I pulled off my gown.

In the bag were sweatpants and an oversized tee. No bare-assed escape for me, thank goodness.

I dressed fast, ignoring the throb in my lower back. Then I followed Nurse Amy out of the room that had been my home since I’d turned fourteen.

Since I’d killed that boy five years ago.

We slipped into the dark hallway. All was eerily quiet. Not even the hum of a backup generator broke the dead silence—only our footsteps and the sound of my heart trying to punch through my ribs.

When we reached a stairway, down we went, hanging onto the railing, one step at a time. Each footfall was a needle in my back, but I kept moving. Down, down, down, seemingly into the bowels of the building.

At the bottom, a dark open space waited, one that I wasn’t expecting to see. It was the main entrance, with turnstiles on the left and an elevator bank on the right.

We made for the exit beyond the turnstiles, which didn’t give way. We dropped and crawled under one on all fours.

Pain flared up my spine—the stitches a hot brand on the lower left. I bit it down and kept going.

Nurse Amy bolted toward the big glass doors. But when she reached them, she shifted to the left wall, where she slammed her palm on a round red button with purpose. She glanced back at me and waved urgently for me to hurry.

As soon as I saw the outside world, I could almost smell it, a tang in the air.

She struggled with the door, trying to slide one open, but it didn’t budge. I joined her, putting my shoulder to the cold surface.

The stitches pulled, my wound throbbed, but finally the door shifted. I pushed harder, suppressing the pain, and it inched open.

Nurse Amy slid out immediately. Taking a moment to judge the gap, I maneuvered my head through first, my torso next with a twist and a turn, and lastly my lower body, ignoring the burning sensation from my incision.

Once outside, I stopped to absorb my surroundings. The fresh air was intoxicating, and the starry sky, which bathed everything in silver, overwhelmed me with its vastness. As I stared up at it, a sudden wave of dizziness nearly sent me to the ground.

But Nurse Amy’s frantic whisper brought me back to the moment. “Run, Willow. This way!” She grabbed my hand, but before I could take a step, I heard it: boots pounding the pavement, getting closer.

She pulled me in the opposite direction of the noise, and we sprinted toward the tree line two hundred fifty yards away.

I hobbled more than ran—the painkillers not enough for this kind of activity so soon after a procedure, and my bare feet not used to anything but a cold tiled floor. But I kept up, not looking back.

The first shot cracked like a thunderclap. I stumbled. She pulled harder.

Another one tore through the air, closer. I sped up. Her hand slipped out of mine.

Skidding to a halt, I spun. Nurse Amy was on the ground beside me, curled around her middle. Blood bloomed under her shirt, a sick flower.

“No, no, no!” I dropped to my knees, grabbing for her.

“You’ve got to get away, Willow,” she panted, and shoved something cold, hard, and light into the pocket of my sweatpants. “Run! Through those woods. To the highway. Don’t stop.”

I looked into her eyes just when the last flicker of light went out. She sagged against the earth, and for a second, I couldn’t move.

Until a bullet whizzed past my ear, and the sounds of boots once again spurred me into action.

And then, I did what she’d told me.

I ran.