There was a moment while running when everything reduced down to muscle and sinew and the relentless pounding of feet. In that moment, the world fell away. Mind and spirit grew light and burdens disappeared, until it felt like she was soaring high above herself.

The feeling was addictive.  Amy couldn't imagine starting the day without a run.

"I'm thinking we should go for twelve miles today." Stepping out of the bathroom, she spoke too loudly, calling out across the room while tying her hair back in a ponytail.

"Damn, girl." Katie glanced up from her stretching. Irritation was on her voice and in her eyes. "I'm already struggling to keep up."

"You're the one who wanted to train with me."

"Well, that was before I found out you were Super Girl. You're killing me here."

She gave Katie a big grin as she set up across from her and mirrored the side to side lunges her friend was doing. Amy really didn't need to loosen up the muscles on her inner thighs. She didn't need to limber up any of her muscles. Unlike Katie, she was always ready run. Sometimes it felt as though she could leap out of bed in the middle of the night straight into a sprint.

"How about we meet in the middle at eleven?" Amy suggested.

The frown only deepened on Katie's face and Amy's smile turned into a giggle. Through her hazel eyes the other girl was sending her a secret message which undercut her irritation. Katie was overly melodramatic about everything but after all the time they had spent together, Amy had learned the hidden wavelength that carried her real meaning and emotions. In their private, silent language, Amy sensed the pride her friend was feeling. Whatever discomfort it might mean, she was happy that Amy was finally the one suggesting an extension of the workout.

"Fine." Katie switched to her arm swings. "But no gloating when you have picked me up off the floor."

"Speaking of picking-up: how did things go with Ryan?" The end of the question was lost in a high pitched squeal as Amy was unable to control her excitement or the pleasure she felt with her teasing. She had spent all of yesterday morning bugging Katie about asking this guy  out, and she had been just waiting for an opening to start needling her about it and find out how the date went.

Of course, Katie hadn't really picked-up Ryan. She was too shy to do more than make eyes at him for the past month. Amy couldn't understand her. When they were together Katie was as confident as a mountain lion but around men, she was as skittish as a deer. But that only made the teasing more tempting.

Katie threw back her head and shook it. "Oh, don't bring that up."

"What happened? Now you have to tell me."

"Long story short: he showed up wearing a Spiderman T-shirt."

"So?"

"So, I want someone who's sophisticated."

"You were grabbing a cup of coffee not going to the opera. Sounds to me like you're just looking for an excuse not to like him, so you don't risk getting hurt."

"Look who's the little psychoanalyst. Mrs. Tan would be proud. Can we just drop it and run." Katie grabbed the remote and switched the music on.

"Taylor Swift again?"

Katie stepped onto the treadmill and punched the new program in, while Amy did the same beside her.

"I love this album," Katie said.

"We know," a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. "If you don't give it a rest, I might have to accidentally erase it from the library."

"Hey, Emily." Amy lifted her head to address the speaker in the ceiling, even though she knew the woman was sitting just on the other side of the vanity mirror in front of her. "Glad to have you with us this morning. Too bad there are only two machines or you could join us."

"No way." Emily's voice shot back over the intercom. "Raising a seven year-old eliminates all need for exercise."

"How is Aaron?"

"Great. After his judo practice tomorrow, we're going down to Tombstone for the day. Gotta love weekends. TGIF, baby!"

"How'd he do on that math test?"

"He blew it out of the water. That kids smarter than I ever fucking was." There was a short pause before Emily realized her slip. "Oops. I guess that's another dollar to the swear jar."

"You should have enough to get that Ferrari by now," Katie said directly to her own reflection and then turned to Amy. "I thought you wanted to run not gab."

"I can do both." Amy hit the green button and the treadmill began to move. Her first few steps were just to keep her on the matt, but soon she was taking long strides, her shoes hitting hard against the rubber belt. Left then right. Left then right.

The jumble of thoughts began to separate and quiet themselves one by one.

It was Friday, March 18th. Amy made sure to say this to herself like she did every morning. It was too easy to lose track in here. Up above, on the surface, day turned to night and seasons came and went, but half a mile underground, every day was always the same. The temperature never changed. The lights came on and off at the same time. The routine lent itself to amnesia. But Amy knew she couldn't let the moon catch her by surprise. It was important not to forget the date.

The next full moon wasn't until Wednesday but she'd begin to feel its pull sooner. Even after four years without seeing her and all those tons of rock and dirt between them, the moon never let her go. It never let her forget.

***

Just by the annoying way the buzzer was being pressed, Emily knew that it was Paulson at the door.

Her shift was supposed to have ended five minutes ago but she would keep him locked out of the Observation Center until Amy finished dressing. The girl had just stepped out of the shower and still hadn't put a shirt on. She walked across her bedroom drying her pale gold hair in only her jeans. With Amy growing up in front of her eyes, Emily found herself becoming increasingly protective of her.

There had always been something creepy about the twenty-four hour watch on her, but as she matured it had crossed the line into pervy territory. Particularly when there were fat, old men like Paulson sitting alone in a room spying on her behind one-way glass.

It was tempting to think that things had been easier when Amy had been younger. But that would require a lot of forgetting. The younger girl had been a terrifying force. At one time, Emily wasn't able to be in the same room with her without trembling. There was too much about Amy that was unknown and uncontrolled. At the tender age of twelve, she had been death incarnate.

Back then, Emily would have never believed it if someone had told her that one day she'd think of Amy as a daughter—no not a daughter, more of a little sister. Whichever it was, Emily thought of her as family.

Amy flung the towel into the hamper and pulled a loose, white tank top out of her bureau. She shrugged into it and glanced in the mirror, adjusting the straps. The decal across her chest featured a simple black line drawing of a river bank and some pine trees with a red disk of a sun overhead.

Satisfied with the way she looked, Amy switched on the TV and a Beyoncé video started to play.

It was all closed-circuit down here. Every show and movie was burned onto a hard drive and played on continuous loops. Amy's favorite was the music video channel. Emily had no idea how many times the girl had watched the same repetitive stream. It would be nice if they got her something new to watch, but some asshole government official had decreed that Amy shouldn't see anything produced after she was captured. For Amy Westgate, the world was frozen on the seventh of April, 2012.

Amy never complained about it. Perhaps she didn't know that there was anything new to see or read.

Emily hit the switch and unlocked the door. Eric Paulson's annoying buzzing was quickly replaced by the even more annoying man himself.

"What the hell? Did you have a nice nap? I've been waiting out there for a goddamn hour."

Emily strode past him. "Fuck you. It wasn't even ten minutes. Try not to stink up the place."

He stuck his pink swinish head out the door and shouted after her. "Hey! I'll report you for harassment."

Emily flipped him the finger and turned the corner, nearly running into Katie Wexler.

"Are you giving Paulson a hard time again?"

"More like, that Eggman's existence is giving everyone else a hard time."

The girl abandoned the direction she was headed in and fell in line beside Emily. Katie had cleaned up since her work out with Amy. She must have used the decontamination area to shower. Her curly chestnut hair was still slightly damp and her teenybopper workout gear had been replaced with a neat skirt and blazer.

"No kidding," Katie said. "Like, I took the elevator with him yesterday and he was chewing his gum so loud it sounded like someone was walking through a swamp."

"And that face he makes when he's chewing." Emily dropped the right side of her mouth and rocked her head back and forth. She may have been imitating Paulson or a lobotomy patient.

Katie made an L with her thumb and forefinger and pressed it to her forehead. "What a loser."

Emily picked up her pace. Did she really just do that? Where the hell had they found this girl? She was twenty-five years old but sometimes acted like she was still in her teens. I guess that's what makes her a good play-date for Amy.

"Are you going on a job interview?" Emily gestured at her getup, all too aware of how much of a slob she looked next to her in yoga pants and a sweatshirt.

Fashion hadn't been a priority when the alarm woke her up.

"Huh? Oh. No." Katie adjusted the collar of her jacket as though the mention of her outfit had put it in disarray. "I have a meeting with Mr. Wiley later. Have to go over Amy's stats."

"Anything wrong?" The concern in her own voice surprised her. Was she worried there was something wrong with Amy? Or was she worried about this little, bouncy thing meeting with Maxwell?

"No. It's just like a routine status thing."

"Status of what?"

"Her physical condition." The answer felt like it contained the omission of the word, "Silly." Spoken, the word would have made her tone sound friendly. Without it, she sounded angry.

"I am her personal trainer after all. Who else would they ask about her health?"

Gee, I don't know maybe her personal doctor. Emily bit her lip and kept silent. The combination of getting up before dawn and not seeing Aaron off to school had left her cranky. The early shift was a rough one. She shouldn't take it out on her friends. Not when she had so few of them.

Outside of The Music Box, she barely spoke to anyone besides Aaron and his nanny. Even with all of Emily's training, there was far too much about her life that she had to keep secret. The simplest of conversations often required complex mental gymnastics. It was better to keep relationships with outsiders to a minimum.

Down in these gray, metal corridors, with their low ceilings and flickering fluorescent lights, it was easier. There wasn't so much to hide. Although, there were always things to hide. There were secrets that Emily couldn't even reveal to the secret keepers.

Passing the door leading to the labs, Katie bumping shoulders with her in a way that reminded Emily of high school. Or rather, it reminded her of movies about cliques of popular girls. Emily hadn't stuck around high school long enough to find out if she was popular or not.

"Just between us girls," Katie said confidentially. "Is it just me or is Mr. Wiley kind of cute?"

"It's just you, sweetheart." Emily pulled away from her and took the corridor heading to the elevators. "Gotta run. I need to get groceries before picking Aaron up. See you, Monday."

The unwanted jealousy in her gut soured her already dark mood.

Fuck Katie and her school girl crushes. And fuck Maxwell Wiley.

***

The old man perched goat-like in his chair. The yellow dress shirt was nearly the same hue as his skin. A green sweater hung in loose folds like the skin on the gnarled hands, clutching at the handle of his cane.

"Well, cloning is still several years away. Although a definite possibility—I think." His thick French accent added a bite to each word as though they were produced from chewing and not talking. "Marjorie and I are very excited about the prospect. Having a subject who is so nearly human is a bit of a loophole, as one might say. She is a unique way of sidestepping the whole ethical conundrum of human cloning. N'est pas?"

Maxwell Wiley smiled as he leaned back in his chair. There was something oddly comforting about talking to Dr. Proulx. The little man was quite charming even though he fit the mad scientist role to a tee. He was much more pleasant to chat with than his wife, who had the ability to talk for hours straight without ever taking a breath.

The two French Canadians had been brought in to fill the genetics position as part of the new regime, when Crandall took over Project LARS. They arrived like matching salt and pepper shakers carved to look like an elderly couple. They were nearly identical, except he had a shock of white hair on his chin and a completely bald head and she had a helmet of sculpted white hair and a mostly bald face. When he first saw them, Maxwell guessed that they were both less than five feet tall and at least a-hundred-and-twenty years-old.

Pierre and Marjorie had been working with a military contractor and volunteered for the assignment, unlike the first round of recruits, who had been brought on through extortion. The research they had been working on was too classified for Maxwell's clearance but there had been enough hints to suggest that it must have been something ghoulish.

This surprising talk of cloning only strengthened that assumption.

"I believe you were asked to determine if offspring would carry the lycanthropic gene," Maxwell said.

Pierre Proulx ran his fingers through the thick tuft on his chin. "Sure. Sure. But you see, without isolation of those genes, it is unclear what would occur in natural heredity. It would require experimentation. Cloning is much better."

"Better? I don't see how."

"The results are much more certain. And quicker to produce. You see, should we try and have LARS create an offspring there is the natural uncertainty of breeding. Conception could work the first time or it could take hundreds of attempts—although it is the attempts that make life interesting. Huh?"

The old man gave a lecherous, gapped tooth smile. Maxwell nodded with a frown and a touch of nausea. Proulx was much too grandfatherly for talk of sex to be anything but disturbing.

"There's in vitro, of course. But there are no guarantees there either. Then there's the question of if she'll carry to term? So many variables. If she were to turn into a lycanthrope, it may terminate the pregnancy. And would we even want the specimen to carry the child and develop emotional attachments? Then, could a human surrogate support one of this species? No, no, no. It is all a big gamble. And then, what? We wait until the child is matured to find out if it works or not?"

"I think it was intended as a hypothetical question not a practical one."

"Bah. I have worked with these government types for thirty years.There are no hypothetical questions." Proulx leaned his cane against his knee and animated his speech with his free hands. "Could you create a dog that doesn't feel pain? Oh really, yes. Well then, you might as well go ahead and do it? What about a dolphin that can metabolize explosives? Oh really, yes? Well then..."

"I think I get the point."

Pierre made a squawking noise and rubbed his nose. "Cloning is the answer they want, believe me. At least we know what the outcome would be if successful. Some of those old boys might prefer a male loup garou for their army but times are changing. And when she is in beast form, male or female, it doesn't make much difference." He flapped his bony hand about as though dismissing all further questions. "Anyway, I will write it all up in a report. I'll try not to make too many promises. Wiggle room never hurts. But I'll give them enough to make them very happy. I know what I'm doing." His fingers stopped their fluttering and tapped confidently against his chest.

Maybe he was right. The status quo wasn't getting much respect at the Agency. Perhaps it was time to give them the promise of something big to chew on.

"Well Pierre, I admit. This isn't what I was expecting, but I'll mention it to Crandall and the good work you're doing when I see him this afternoon."

Roger Crandall had summoned him back to the Domestic Threat Assessment Agency's office in Philadelphia for a last minute progress meeting. The imperious bastard had left Maxwell scrambling to touch base with everyone and get a complete up to date picture of Amy's status. Dropping this bombshell on the sector chief might finally make him take the project seriously for once.

Maxwell took his leave of Dr. Proulx and wandered back to his office through the tight, narrow corridors of the converted bomb shelter. Over the years, he had learned coping mechanisms for his claustrophobia. He had trained himself to navigate the close confines of the bunker without panic attacks, but there was always that subtle feeling, like a killer's hands pressed gently to his throat.

Some days were better than other. Today was a good day.

Or it was up until the moment he spotted Emily Kendrick waiting by the elevators. At the sight of her, the hallway seemed to constrict, the walls pressing in on him. Maxwell considered turning back, but he refused to appear timid. He continued toward her without breaking stride.

"Oh," she said when she saw him. Her hand brushed back the muss of her dark red hair that used to smell of tropical flowers and cascade across the pillow in long lustrous strands.

Maxwell drew on his reserves of strength and picked a good natured smile to wear. "Good morning. Shift over?"

"Yup." The elevator's heavy steel door slid up and Emily slipped in. "Well, I should be going."

Maxwell was continuing on his way when she added, "Um, Aaron liked the gift you sent. He's hardly stopped playing with it."

The smile withered on his face as he turned back to her. "How is he?" The question came out so small and weak it was almost swallowed up by the sound of the air circulators.

"He's good." She nodded, her lips tight. "He's real good. You should take him to a game or something sometime. He'd like that."

Maxwell stood there for a second, trying to master himself. He was a man for whom showing genuine emotion was on par with public nudity.

The elevator door began to slide down.

"Yes, I'll make arrangements soon." Instead of goodbye, he simply said, "Ms. Kendrick," with a slight bow of his head.

"Mr.Wiley," Emily said with the same formal stiffness.

***

Author's Note (Aug. 14, 2015):

So here we go, again.

Please let me know what you thought of this very first installment. And if you enjoyed it, please take the time to vote.

Unfortunately this first grouping might make the chapter seem like it centers around Emily and Maxwell's relationship, but this is a very Amy-centric chapter over all. The very next scene will return to her POV. Although, you will be seeing many of the characters from Book One before it is done.

And if you're wondering about the four year gap from Book One...  I really wanted Amy to be older for the events of this book. Also, now I have four years of material to use for flashbacks.

On the Music: I will still be putting a song at the end of each chapter as I did with Book One. But I was listening to this song when I worked out the first scene of Amy running and it was such a big inspiration, I felt I had to include it as a bonus.

P.S. I have created a cast listing (in order of mention) a a bit of cheat-sheet in case you're having a problem placing a name. In terms of a real casting list, I have started working on something on The Image Film List.  I'll let you know when I have something worth sharing.