A bird's call woke Bo from her sleep to a gray morning. She blinked, frozen by the newness of her surroundings. She hadn't heard a bird that wasn't a crow or vulture in so long that she'd forgotten just how long it was. The gray air was like looking into water compared to the harsh and orange lighting she was accustomed too. If she didn't know better, she'd think she was in a wonderful dream. However, her knee and aching body made sure she knew full well that she was cursedly awake.

Her moment of respite over, Bo shifted her position and rubbed her eyes. She'd fallen asleep with her back against the wall. Her neck felt like lead and every muscle screamed as she flexed them and tried to work out the kinks.

She glanced over to her father's cell, and saw he was just a bundle in the back of his cell. He didn't move, even when she whispered his name. Still asleep. She turned back to her knee and slowly bent it. It hurt like nothing else, but she screwed up her face and forced herself to her feet.

To warm up her muscles, Bo made circuits of her cell, trying to keep her sharp intakes of breath over her aching knee as quiet as she could. In order to keep her full weight off her knee, she gripped the iron bars of the cell, circling around back to the solid wall where she'd spent the night. Looking up, she saw a small window, barely tall enough to fit an arm through, and not wide enough to accommodate even her head. The tips of grass from outside just barely showed through the glass. Bo struck it off the meager list of possible escape routes. She'd have to take weeks, maybe even months, to carve out enough of the mortar around the bricks to make the window large enough to fit through. If the alien kept good on his promise to forget her down here, she wouldn't be able to survive that long with no food.

Going back to look out in the hallway, Bo leaned against the bars and waited for the sun to rise enough to see through the gloom on the other side of her cell door. First to come into focus was the far wall, which boasted a bulletin board that Bo hadn't noticed the day before. A few papers, faded with age, still hung to the cork, pinned in place by rusting pieces of metal. Bo leaned closer, squinting until she could pick out a few words on the closest one.

Atten i o : prisoners m st be kep secur d until transfer c b comple ed.

Bo scrunched her nose and pushed away from the bars. It was impossible to get any sense out of the papers, and her head hurt with trying. Dragging herself back to the wall, she eased to the ground and unwrapped her crimson jacket from around her knee. She gently bent her leg to try and get a better look at the damage. The bleeding looked to have generally stopped, mostly due to her jacket, but the pain was still fresh. She prodded it a few times, wishing she hadn't been stupid enough to injure herself.

"Bo!" Her father's familiar voice. Bo quickly wrapped her leg back up with her jacket, trying to pretend there was nothing to see.

"Are you all right?" her dad asked, seeing through her feeble attempts to hide her leg. "You're injured?"

"Flew off my hopper," she muttered.

Her dad shuffled to the bars that separated them, peering through the two empty cells to hers. He opened his mouth to say something more, but his words were abruptly cut short when he fell into a bought of coughing. Bo pricked to attention, the hollow and wet sound of her father's lungs jolting anxiety into her tired limbs.

"What about you, Dad? Did the alien hurt you?" she asked, hauling to her feet. She had noticed his limp arm earlier, but she wasn't sure if there were any more serious injuries she hadn't been able to see in the dark.

"My only wounds are from the wolves," he rasped. "I think one of their bites must have broken it." He nodded at his arm.

Bo scowled. "So that... thing thought it was a good idea to toss you down here?"

Her dad, seeming to not hear her, fiddled with the cuff of the sleeve on his good arm. "I was running from the wolves, thinking I'd be dead in a few minutes, when I stumbled and fell into some sort of invisible mist." His brow wrinkled and he waved his hand in front of his face, as if he could still feel the sensation. "Then there was so much green. Oh, Bo, you don't know how long it's been since I saw grass and trees this alive. It was breathtaking."

"I know," Bo said, feeling the rapture of the grounds despite the taint it now earned when she knew the owner. "It was perfect."

"I was too weak to leave, but I didn't want to anyway. It was so mild and pleasant, that I just spent the night in the garden. It wasn't until the next morning that the alien found me and brought me down here."

Bo shook her head. "I'll get you out, Dad, don't worry. We'll go home and patch up."

At the mention of home, Dad's eyes brightened and he smiled. "Is everyone all right?"

"They're perfectly fine. Just worried, since you've been gone for so long."

Dad snapped his fingers and began to pat down the front of his jacket. "I have something here for you, Bo..."

Bo laughed at the thought that her dad could think about presents at a time like this, but her mirth was short lived. From the other end of the room the door slammed open and vibrations echoed down the hall. Bo's hand flew to the guns holstered on her hips. They were in plain sight now that her jacket was around her leg. As she watched the alien approaching, she quickly tugged at the knot around her knee. Her fingers were clumsy but she finally pulled the jacket free and looped it around her waist, draping it so that her guns were hidden. She kept a hand on the lumps they made, their presence a comfort as the alien stopped between her and her father's cells.

A robot, identical to the mangled one that had taken the brunt of Bo's gunshot last night, floated to a stop in front of Bo. She wasn't sure if it was the same one that had locked her in the cell, or a new one.

"Scanning for damage," the robot said, revealing that it was, in fact, a new model from the one last night. Its tinny voice was deeper, more masculine. And now that Bo knew it was different, she saw that it was squatter, with a brown stripe on one side.

It scanned her with a bright red laser, forcing her to throw up her arm to avoid being blinded. It beeped a few times, abruptly shutting off the laser. "Abrasions to multiple areas, low energy due to lacking food sources, and multiple lacerations to the right kneecap. Otherwise, the subject is in working order."

Bo wondered why in the world the alien even cared if she was injured, when she was still surprised he had shown up at all. He had promised to let her die in the dungeon, but now it seemed he was going back on that. And for some reason, he wanted to know what her condition was.

With its job done, the robot whipped over to hover behind the alien. Bo followed it with her eyes, and then ran the length of the alien as he stood between her dad's cell and her own.

All aliens were considerably taller than humans, but this one was especially so. Bo had to tilt her neck to meet his eyes, and when she did she felt a chill run down her spine. In the full daylight, she clearly saw him for the first time. Though his gray-blue skin still glowed softly, it was almost imperceptible now that the room was filled with light. Had he been human, his build might have been considered militaristic, with a strong cleft chin and arms that barely stayed contained in the stolen Terra Preservation camo. His skull was covered in the stubble of cropped dark blonde hair, just like the militia recruits. The alien's was messily done, patchy and uneven, like he had shaved it himself. Which he probably had.

Overall, the alien could have been a normal soldier if it wasn't for the blue skin. For all they were scum from a different planet, the aliens could nearly have passed as humans. The same facial features, the same eyes. But their bloodlust gave them away as much as their glowing skin and height. 

As Bo forced herself to stare him down, a small inkling of recognition fired in her brain. Something about the alien was frustratingly familiar, though she didn't dare dwell on it too long. No doubt she was thinking of the other aliens, the ones so long ago that had... she flinched at the old memories she wanted to forget. Her mind quickly changed the track of her thoughts, returning them to the alien in front of her. He simply looked like all the rest, she told herself.

Silence stretched between them, tense and quivering. Bo clenched her jaw, daring him with her glare to speak first. He looked unperturbed, confident in his advantage. It was Bo's father that finally broke the stalemate.

"Please, sir, let her go," he said, shuffling to the front of his cell. Involuntarily, Bo's eyes broke from the alien and flew to her father. He coughed loudly, cradling his arm. Anger boiled in her stomach that the alien could just leave an injured old man in a prison. Her fists clenched and the weight of the guns on her hips itched to be used.

The alien released a long hiss of breath, and then stalked right up to the bars of her father's cell. He was so close in such a short matter of time, that Bo took a step back without meaning to. Her hand stole to her pistol, only barely stopping before she revealed her one chance at having an advantage.

The alien bared his teeth at her dad, his canines longer than a human's and the perfect weapons to tear out throats. He looked less human and more lion now; all he missed was the roar.

And that's when the pieces fell into place and she realized she did know this alien. It wasn't that she'd met him before, but rather she'd seen countless drawings of him tacked up in every town. They had been completely unfaithful in the fact that he wasn't covered in fur and he didn't look like a wolf-human hybrid, but there was enough of his true face in those drawings for her to recognize him. His face, distorted and far more animal, was the one the parents in her camp drew when they warned the children to stay out of the Dead Wood. She knew very well of the dangers of the Beast of Lyx.