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Over the course of the next couple days leading up to the escape, Lena had found every opportunity to talk to Sabine. At first, their conversations consisted solely of the plan, but eventually they led to more personal matters. Sabine learned that Natzweiler-Struthof was the second concentration camp Lena had been sent to. Lena had initially been sent to Dachau with her family two years prior; she made it out but her family had not. 

Sabine learned that Lena's motivation for escaping Natzweiler-Struthof came from her experience in Dachau. After Lena had lost her family, she developed a plan to escape the camp with a small group of six other kids. They had made it about a mile before the Nazis finally tracked them down and shot everyone except Lena and another girl, both of whom were able to find a hiding spot before the Nazis had caught up. 

At first Lena and the other girl had stuck together, but on a particularly frigid fall night, Lena awoke to find the girl's stiff body frozen next to her. From there on out, Lena was on her own. She found a way to get her hands on a razor blade and scratched out the numbers on her forearm so that she wouldn't be caught, but luck wasn't on her side. After a trip to a store in a rural German town, somebody had seen the strangely placed scar and reported her to the Gestapo. 

The Gestapo considered killing Lena on the spot, but Natzweiler-Struthof was in need of prisoners for their work camps and they decided to send her there with the intention that she'd be worked to death. So far, they had failed. Sabine could still see the spark of fire in Lena's chestnut eyes and it was burning brighter than ever. 

When the sun had finally risen on the day of the plan, Sabine was terrified. She could feel her limbs trembling from the moment she rose from her bed all the way through when she lined up with her work group. Sabine immediately spotted Lena in the crowd, along with a few other kids she recognized that were involved in the plan. They looked so confident, so courageous, while Sabine worried that everyone could see the fear painted on her face.

With each step that Sabine took towards the quarry, she could feel the gravity increasing. Every possible scenario played over and over in her head and she saw herself dying in most of them. It wasn't too late, she could choose not to run. She could stay behind and work until the camp claimed her or the war was over. But would that just be prolonging her death? Essentially it came down to one question: did she want to die now, or die later?

They were about half way to the quarry when the call came. It was a sharp whistle that could almost be mistaken for a bird but those in the first wave had been listening for it and took off as soon as the first decibel hit the air. Lena had never given Sabine specific information about the plan in case the Nazis caught on and interrogated her, but Sabine counted almost twenty kids hightailing it through the trees, including the blonde boy she would later run into back at the camp.

As soon as the kids had taken off, the Nazis were on their heels. It had taken them a moment to shake off the shock of what just happened and to coordinate who would stay behind with the rest, but their well-fed and fit bodies closed the gap on the famished runners fairly quickly. The only thing that saved some of the runners was that they all took off in different directions and there were more of them than Nazis who chased after. The forest operated as an even playing ground for both sides, as both were equally inexperienced with the terrain. 

The runners quickly disappeared from Sabine's sight as they zig-zagged between the trees, but resounding gunshots alerted the crowd to their locations soon enough. Sabine and the others were pushed along by the other Nazi officers so she couldn't tell how many runners were brought back or if any were even brought back at all. What would the results of her wave look like? Would she be one that got away or would she be another gunshot?

Sabine had hoped that their work in the quarry would pass as slowly as possible but it did just the opposite. It felt like the blink of an eye between the time that they entered the quarry and the time that they left it, and walking out into the sunshine Sabine still had no idea what she was going to do. Would she run? Would she stay? She wouldn't know until the moment came. 

"Ready?" Lena whispered, her sudden appearance unnerving Sabine and nearly sending her sky-high. "It's almost time." 

Sabine elected not to answer, partly because she couldn't move her mouth or even find the words to say, but Lena's presence at her side remained overwhelming. It wasn't a particularly hot spring day, but Sabine's skin felt slick with a layer of her own sweat and she continued to drown in it until the telltale signal echoed through the air. This time it wasn't a whistle, but a shout. 

Sabine felt her legs stiffen into tree trunks at the sound of the call but she didn't have time to decide her next action before she felt a hand grip tightly onto hers. Before she knew it, it was too late to go back. She was being pulled through the trees at an almost inhuman speed with Lena's hand wrapped tightly around hers. Part of her wanted to yank away and run back to the group, but she knew she'd be shot on sight. As far as the Nazis were concerned, she was now a traitor. 

And from there, the rest was history. 

"What happened to you? Did you wimp out?" the blonde boy asked as he continued to shovel dirt. 

His voice grounded Sabine back in her current reality but she felt her face flush hot from the question. "No, I escaped. I got away."

"That didn't last long," the boy laughed.

"What are you talking about? I was gone for weeks..." Sabine argued, but she felt her voice trail off. 

"Weeks?" the boy scoffed. "The escape was three days ago."

Sabine took a step back to refocus. She knew that the matches had an ability to take her through time but it felt surreal to be only be three days away from when it all started. It almost made her wonder if everything she had experienced was all part of some strange, elaborate dream. They had taken her through so much. It hadn't all been easy, but they had taught her more about herself and even saved her life on more than one occasion. 

The more Sabine lingered on the thought of the matches the more it lit a new idea within her that sent her shovel clattering to the ground and her feet racing back towards her bunk. Sabine finally understood her purpose, she finally understood what the matches had brought her here to do. Maybe this had been why they chose her from the start. She was going to do what she couldn't in the beginning: she was going to save people. She had seen what the end of the war looked like and she wanted to do her part to ensure that several other people could see it with their own eyes as well. 

Sabine was going to use the matchbox to help others escape the camp and this time they would be successful because the Nazis couldn't follow them wherever they went. Admittedly, she still wasn't entirely sure how the matches worked. They had transported Sabine whether or not she threw the match, held the match, or even lit the match, but something deep within her told her that everything would work itself out. 

Of course Sabine also needed to figure out the logistics of how many people she'd be able to help escape, who she'd be able to help escape, and when and where they would escape, but first she needed to get her hands on the matches. Once Sabine made it back to her bunk, she casually slipped her hand under the mattress and felt around for the box. When she didn't immediately feel the rough cardboard, her heart skipped a couple beats.

Sabine checked her surroundings a couple more times before lifting the mattress and peeking underneath. She blinked her eyes several times to ensure that what she was seeing was in fact reality: the matches were gone. At that moment, Sabine's racing mind and heart didn't care about possible onlookers and she tossed the mattress aside with a strength she almost didn't recognize. 

Sabine scoured the cot and ripped through all her bedding three times over but she still could not find the matches. What had happened to them? Had somebody taken them? Had the Nazi guards found them? Sabine felt her eyes brimming with tears as she contemplated what had happened to the matchbox and what she would do next. The matches had been giving her bravery while she was back in the camp because she knew she had a way out, but now it was looking like she might be a permanent prisoner again and this terrified her. 

"Looking for something?" a gruff voice came from behind her. Sabine turned on her heel to find three Nazi officers standing before her. The officer in the middle was holding the matchbox for Sabine to see and wore a smug smile on his face. Sabine elected to remain quiet because she knew that no matter how she answered, she would still be in serious trouble. "It is against the rules to have any personal belongings in the camp. Naughty, naughty," the middle officer tsked. 

Sabine stood her ground but she could feel her knees quivering. How could she possibly get out of this situation? Her only chance at survival and saving the camp was in the hands of the enemy. Sabine watched helplessly as two of the officers approached her and the last thing she saw before everything went black was the back of one of their hands.

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