★ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ★

Smell. The first sense that worked when Sabine arrived in her new destination was her sense of smell. She smelled grime and filth layered over a strong odor of urine and feces. Taste. She could taste the stale air and the saliva flooding her mouth until it dribbled over her lips. Feel. She felt a stiff, scratchy material rubbing against the exposed skin on her arms and legs. Hear. Sabine could hear the screams and cries of people of all ages; their whispered pleas and prayers almost as deafening.

Before Sabine could open her eyes to fulfill the last sense, she felt something deep within her soul: familiarity. She recognized the smells, the tastes, the feelings, and the sounds. She had experienced all of these not too long ago, back when she had been a prisoner...back when she had been trapped in Natzweiler-Struthof.

Sabine really didn't want to look around at her surroundings, but she knew that she had to eventually. She would still be in that damned place even if she couldn't see it. Back in Paris she had told herself she was ready and she had thought that meant ready for anything, but was she ready for this? She wouldn't know until she opened her eyes.

Sabine's eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks as one-by-one she slowly opened her eyes. She stared up at the familiar hunk of dull gray metal that held the bunk above her and traced her fingers along the scratches she had made with a loose bolt. Each scratch represented a day she had been in the camp and there were many; too many for her to sit there and recount.

Sabine rolled her weary body off the cot and placed her feet on the dirt ground. She unfurled her fingers and glanced down at the crumpled matchbox in her palm. Even though it didn't seem like she could lose them, Sabine decided to tuck the matchbox under the stiff mattress to keep them and herself safe. They were contraband within the camp and if anybody caught her with them it would mean serious trouble.

After hiding the matches, Sabine knew that her next task would have to be finding a tattered uniform to replace her yellow floral-printed dress and to ditch the black buckled shoes on her feet. Even in their dirty, sweat-stained state, she knew that if she walked around the camp in them that she would be an immediate target for Nazi officers. Nobody was allowed to have real clothes in the camp, nobody was allowed to have an identity.

It was a little harder to come by, but eventually Sabine found a uniform to slip into and she once more disappeared into the background. Once she had changed, she could feel her tattoo throbbing on her forearm. In a sea of identical uniforms, it was strange how the ink that had been stamped into her skin to strip away her individuality was now the most unique thing about her.

Sabine's next fear was that the Nazi officers who had chased her down in the forest what felt like eons ago would recognize her as an attempted escapee and punish her for her malfeasance. She didn't know how much time had passed since she last resided in the camp, or if any time had passed at all since the matches didn't seem to care about linear time. Sabine had to hope that the Nazis' view of Jewish people as insects pervaded enough that they'd overlook her in the crowd; after all, cockroaches all looked the same.

Sabine wandered carefully around the camp, taking any and every chance to hide within crowds whenever a Nazi officer loomed inside her view. Her skin was already a setback, as black people were a minority within the camps and the light brown color painted all over her body set her apart from the rest. She had received extra lashes and punishments for this simple fact alone.

In the midst of finding her way around, Sabine caught sight of someone familiar in her peripheral vision and her feet planted to their spot. Roughly twenty feet to her right, Sabine recognized one of the boys that had attempted to escape the camp with her and the other kids. The boy's muddy brown hair clung to his sweat-stained face as he dug a large hole into the earth and his slick muscles gleaned under the daunting sun.

Sabine pulled her feet from gravity's strong grasp and made her way over towards the boy. She picked up a shovel along the way and began working on the hole next to him so as not to draw suspicion from watchful Nazi guards. Conversing with others, especially when it interrupted work, was punishable by painful lashes.

Sabine struggled to remember the boy's name as she moved dirt around and eventually resolved to get his attention through other means. "Psst, hey, behind you," Sabine said quietly enough so that only herself and the boy would hear. Her back was faced to him but she got the feeling that he had heard her.

"I recognize you," the boy responded between grunts as he moved a particularly heavy load topside. "I saw you walking over here. You were part of the group that tried to escape."

"So were you," Sabine reminded him. "What happened?"

There was a long pause before the boy began to speak again, "What do you think? I got caught."

Sabine stopped shoveling for a moment to contemplate how to proceed, but her break was spotted by a Nazi guard and he yelled at her in a string of German curses to get back to work. Sabine began digging at almost inhuman speeds until the Nazi's attention was brought elsewhere. "Why aren't you dead? Why did they let you live?" she asked when she felt safe to speak once more.

"Because I ratted," the boy answered point-blank. "After they caught me, I told them about the second wave of runners."

Sabine felt a pool of sweat build on her forehead and it wasn't from the hard work. Her and Lena and been a part of the second wave of runners...this boy was the reason why the Nazis had caught up to them, why Lena was dead...No. Sabine stopped herself once her thoughts returned to Lena's death. Maybe she hadn't been the one to shoot and kill Lena, but her cowardice was just as responsible for what happened to Lena as this boy's was.

Sabine felt herself revisiting the events leading up to the escape as they played out in her mind. During that time, it had been almost a year since she had arrived at Natzweiler-Struthof and six months since she had lost her mother and sisters. Sabine had kept mostly to herself after their deaths until that fateful day when Lena approached her...

Sabine had woken up that morning to a jagged piece of paper crammed under her pillow. She read it underneath the ratty blanket covering her bed and found the following cryptic message:

Four days. Second transition. Destroy after reading.

Sabine reread the message over and over until it was imprinted in her brain but she still didn't understand what it meant. Was it some sort of secret code? Who had given it to her and why? Sabine looked over both shoulders before ripping up the note and shoving the shredded pieces into her mouth. She choked the mulchy lump down her throat, nearly gagging the entire time, before going about with her day.

After a series of degrading shouts and threats from Nazi officers announced throughout the camp, Sabine lined up with the rest of her work group. To aid with the war effort, the camp had been expediting labor to temporary work sites located in nearby mines and quarries. At these locations, Sabine and the other prisoners were forced to build weaponry and plane parts for the German military.

Sabine had been part of a group that was constructing machine guns and Luger pistols in a quarry six miles from the concentration camp. As part of the Nazis extended torture, herself and the other prisoners were forced to hike through the bitter terrain of the surrounding French forest day in and day out, regardless of the weather. On more than one occasion, they had been marched under the towering trees during ferocious thunderstorms, taunted by lightning that crawled across the sky and clapped at their heels.

On the trek towards the quarry that day, Sabine was jolted when she felt a jab in her left side and was about to turn to look at the suspect when a voice directed her otherwise. "Keep your head forward."

"Who are you?" Sabine asked hesitantly, but received no answer. She was forced to try to discern the mystery person's identity based on the voice alone. From what Sabine could tell, the voice belonged to a Polish girl a little older than her. Even though Natzweiler-Struthof was located in France and French was the main language spoken in the camp, it was a mixing pot of different nationalities and Sabine had developed an ear for accents.

"Did you get my note?" the girl asked.

"That was you? What does it mean?" Sabine blurted, to which she received another sharp jab.

"Yes or no."

"Hey hey!" a shout cut through their conversation and both girls looked to see a Nazi officer making his way through the crowd towards them. Sabine froze to her spot in fear until he veered last second and grabbed a man twenty feet behind them. "Food does not come with, you dirty pig!"

Sabine watched in horror and pity as the Nazi officer threw the man onto the ground and began kicking him in his face and stomach until he dropped the piece of bread into the dirt. The surrounding prisoners formed a ring around the event and stood helplessly as the man's blood pooled at their feet.

"Nobody helps him or they will receive the same punishment!" the Nazi officer announced to the crowd. He then knelt next to the man and stared him deep into his water-filled eyes. "You are still expected in the quarry and if you fall even a step behind I will shoot you."

The Nazi officer fired a shot from his pistol off into the air to get the herd moving again, and from then on out they enforced a faster speed to make up for the time they had lost. Sabine cautioned a glance back to see how the man was faring and felt her heart fall at the sight of him staggering behind. He was trying his hardest to stay with the crowd but there were only a few people behind him and they were keeping a quick speed so that the Nazis wouldn't think they were trying to help him.

As Sabine brought her head back forward, she found the culprit of her sore side and the owner of the voice: Lena. Sabine had seen Lena in her work group a few times before and had even worked right beside her on occasion, but they had never spoken a word to each other until today. At the time, Sabine hadn't known her name, but she knew that Lena had a reputation for being a survivor.

"Yes," Sabine answered Lena's question after the situation had calmed down and the Nazis were once more distracted with herding their cattle.

"Good," Lena responded quickly and quietly after. "Are you in?"

Sabine didn't want to say more than she needed to out of fear that Lena would jab her once more or that a Nazi officer would catch her conversing, but she needed more information. "In what? I don't understand."

Sabine tried to keep her focus forward while she waited for Lena's response but she struggled not to look back at the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl. Lena had a narrow nose and intense eyes that could cut through metal. Her cheekbones protruded from her face and Sabine could tell that they had always been a prominent feature, despite the shriveled state Lena's body had sunken into from starvation. Compared to Sabine's soft, round features, Lena looked like a very sharp girl.

"We're going to escape," Lena began to explain. She kept her sentences short and took long pauses between them to prevent the likelihood of an officer catching her. "In four days. During transition to the quarry. There will be two waves. One wave on the way to the quarry. One wave on the way back from the quarry. The waves will run into the forest on the wave leader's signal."

"But won't the Nazis be more alert during the second wave?"

"They underestimate us. They think we're too scared of them to even attempt escape. That is exactly why they won't see it coming."

Sabine mulled Lena's answer over. Part of Sabine doubted Lena's confidence in the plan but part of her also understood how little the Nazis thought of them. "And what wave would I be in?"

"Second. With me." Lena's voice still contained the same conviction as when she was explaining the plan. Her answer scared Sabine, but she found comfort in Lena's confidence. Why would Lena risk her life in the second wave if she didn't believe that they would be as successful as the first? When Sabine's silence became overwhelming, Lena spoke again. "Think about it. We need the numbers. The more people that run, the more that get away. They can't catch us all."

Sabine remained silent until they had almost reached the quarry as she contemplated whether to join Lena in her escape plan. She had nothing left in the camp for her...but she also had nothing left in the real world either. Her whole family was dead and she was nearly there herself. The concentration camp had turned her into an empty, soulless husk that looked and acted like a person, but wasn't quite the real thing.

The quarry was just looming into sight when the attention of the marching prisoners was jolted to the back of the line by an echoing gunshot and an ear-piercing scream. Sabine tried to see over the heads of the curious onlookers but she already knew what she would find. When the Nazis had started to usher the group forward again, Sabine was finally able to see that one person had been left behind: the man who had smuggled the food.

His lifeless body laid distorted in the dirt with a halo of blood growing around his head. Sabine was used to seeing dead bodies, the camp was filled with death, but she found herself struggling to look upon the pained face of this man. His mouth was stretched open in an eternal scream and his eyes stared up towards the darkening sky. What had he done to deserve this? Stolen food because he was hungry? How was this a fair and just punishment?

Sabine felt an anger boiling inside her and she turned to look at Lena who was still walking beside her with a glare of fierce determination. The two words she spoke carried an immeasurable weight:

"I'm in."

★ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ★