It snowed all weekend and into the following week. By Wednesday, there was at least two feet of fluffy white powder surrounding the campus, hanging down from the twisted spires in heavy curtains, making the gargoyles seem just slightly less menacing.

Exactly as Max had predicted on Friday, the school declared a snow day - the academic advisors were unable to drive in to teach their classes - so the patrons would take all of the girls cross country skiing instead. Get out in the cold, brisk air and enjoy some snow day exercise. Certainly the girls weren’t going to get a choice in how they spent a school day.

“God, why couldn’t they just relent and let us wear regular pants today?” Cat complained as she pulled a second pair of woolen tights up over her knees. They all had to go cross country skiing in several feet of snow in skirts? No way that wasn’t in some way intentional.

The house patron banged loudly on the door to the girls’ shared room. They heard a shril, “TWO MINUTES” echo down the hall. Cat hoped she didn’t get frostbite.

::::

The sun sparkled off the snow for as far as Cat could see. Her eyes burned in the bright break of sunlight. She could see clouds in the distance, looming behind St. Jospeh’s across the lake, but the further she stared at the horizon, the more snow blind she became. A tear streaked down her cheek and she wiped it away, turned and continued in line behind the rest of her housemates and their cadre of patrons.

The patrons seemed oddly… gleeful to be out skiing across the campus. Cat wondered how often they were allowed time “off” from their usual duties of keeping a watchful eye of anywhere between 1 and 21 girls at a time. Probably not very much. Maybe this counted as a day off for them. Maybe they’d be a little less stern and strict than usual.

“Why are we going to the woods?” A voice from somewhere behind Cat called out. The girl was right - they had been making a roundabout path closer and closer to the edge of the woods. The towering pines that buffeted the perimeter looked like chocolate marshmallows they were so dark and weighed down with snow.

Cat felt her heart rate pick up, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the exertion of the exercise. She remembered what was in those woods, what she had narrowly escaped, what she had seen below.

“Max!” She tried to call out to her friend as inconspicuously as possible, but the girl following Max was following much too close behind her and when Max heard Cat call her name, she stopped, the too-close girl crashing into her and the two of them going down into the powder in a tangle of poles, legs and skis.

“Oh, mother fuck…” from seemingly nowhere, a patron was over the two girls and brandished a rod down against the back of Max’s neck. “Mother FUCKER!” She cried out without even thinking, the curse echoing across the rolling hill. The sound of the cracking rod also echoed across the snow.

Cat quickly popped out of her own skis and rushed over to the tangled girls to help a hand. She grabbed Max’s poles away and pushed one down into the pin holding her boot into place. A leg kicked free and, unfortunately, into the ribs of the girl that Max had been entangled with. There was a dull crunch noise followed by a painful shriek from the girl. Somehow, Max popped her second foot pin out of place and hopped up and away, out to the side.

The patron made a big fuss over the girl who was still stuck tangled in her own skis and Cat and Max slowly removed themselves from the scene, retreating slightly into the nearby tree line. The rest of the girls had continued on forward. Cat looked back behind her shoulder from the scene where they had just left and the girl was coughing up blood onto the white snow.

“Holy shit, Max,” Cat grabbed her friend’s arm, “What the fuck did you do to her?”

“Oh. God fuck damnit,” Max cursed, and pulled Cat - lurching forward into the trees. “I swear I just don’t even know my own strength anymore, Cat. The dean keeps giving me these mysterious injections and…” she paused as if she was deciding if she should continue and she shrugged and continued on, “I think it might be steroids, but I honestly have no clue. They hurt like hell when he sticks the needle in my ass, but hot damn, they make me feel invincible for at least 48 hours.”

“The rest of the time?” Cat asked.

“I don’t know my own strength,” Max replied, taking one last glance behind the two of them as a patron and girl began to slowly make their way back in the direction from which they had come.

“Anyway,” Max veered off the path from the ski tracks the rest of their housemates had left in their wake, “Probably best we separate from the group. Rumor has it this is all actually just a long exercise route on the way to a winter assessment.”

Cat froze in her tracks. Winter assessment?! Surely she wouldn’t be expected to participate after her sexual education class last Friday. Absolutely nothing had changed in the state of her genitalia between then and now, other than maybe right now it was about to become hypothermic.

“There’s an entrance to the tunnels in the woods and those ski tracks are headed in exactly the direction I would take to access the main health center within the tunnels,” Max explained. “There’s also an entrance further up ahead this way, and I think we can skirt the group if we hurry.” No wonder she was practically running.

“Health center?” Cat asked, grasping on to a phrase she had heard the dean use at the end of her ordeal in his attic. There WAS a health center?!

“Basically, I guess. It’s a functional hospital, to be sure. Anything that goes catastrophically wrong at St. Mary’s or St. Joseph’s, it’s the closest medical care within life saving distance. They have a rotating team of doctors that come in to teach, depending on the subject matter. They do surgeries. Can do an x-ray or MRI. A lot of upperclassmen work or intern doing things that you’d get taken care of at the hospital or a doctor’s office,” Max explained. “It’s also a bit barbaric, I think. I haven’t been subjected to anything… hopefully ever, but I’ve heard of some crazy rumors…”

“Like what?”

”Oh Cat, I don’t know if I can subject you to all the details that I’m privy to,” Max countered, cryptically.

“Anything I need to be worried about? Or you?”

Max laughed, “You? Absolutely not. You’re safe, baby girl. Me? Well, that’s another story, but no, I don’t think even I need to worry about some of the more bizarre surgical experiments I’ve heard rumored.”

Cat REALLY didn’t like the sound of that cryptic comment either.

“Ok my little snow bunny, I need you to walk around aimlessly a little bit here” Max said stopping short in front of… nothing. They’d reached a clearing of towering cedars. The scene was beautiful, but the surroundings were foreign and a little frightening. Cat had no idea where they were, which way might be the direction back towards campus, or where there might be an endless drop off into a black and cavernous ravine.

“What?”

“Walk around in a few circles or something. Big. Wide. Make it look like we got lost or something - walk around in a big circle so it will hopefully look like we just headed back out the way we came.”

Duh. Of course. The snow. It’s not like they had been covering their tracks. It would look mighty suspicious if their footprints just led off into…where would they lead off into? Cat only saw trees and snow. She began to step off and start to walk a large loop around the clearing of trees. Max walked off in the opposite direction to what appeared to be a berm.

“Over here when you’re done!” Max waved from where she stood.

Cat finished her wide loop and came to stand by Max. It wasn’t a berm at all - it just looked that way on account of the heavy snowfall. Tucked behind a drift of snow was a door, locked with an electronic keyfob.

“How do you KNOW these things?!” Cat asked wide eyed as Max retrieved the key from under her clothing and held it against the lock. The door clicked and maneuvered open, the drift of snow falling into the space of a stairwell leading down into darkness.

“I’m really excelling in my studies,” Max replied proudly as she began to walk down the stairs into the tunnels.

::::

Cat could hear a faint chatter of female voices from somewhere in the distance. They seemed to be walking further and further away from them, so Cat felt confident that they probably - hopefully - weren’t about to be caught.

Max pulled Cat along. She seemed to know exactly where she was going at all times which left Cat completely baffled. The tunnels were maze after endless, confusing maze as far as she was concerned. If she was separated from Max, she was helplessly lost, without a doubt.

The sound of a heavy door slamming closed stopped Max dead in her tracks. Cat ran into her abruptly and bit back her yelp of surprise.

“Quiet!” Max hissed in a bare whisper. She seemed alarmed, incredibly tense, maybe even terrified. Cat was immediately filled with dread.

“Is someone coming?” Cat whispered back, just as Max silently choked and pressed her body backwards into Cat, sending the two of them back into the wall.

“Fuck, it’s the dean,” Max whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Maxine?” The dean’s voice called out, confused, not quite angry, but definitely not kind. Suspicious.

“Fuck,” she breathed out in a long sigh.

“Who do you have with you?” The voice down the hall asked, getting closer by the second, the sound of his heavy feet echoing with each step.

“Are we in trouble?” Cat breathed, but she knew the answer. Of course they were. They had skipped out on winter assessment. She hated to think of what her penalty for that might be.

“Catherine?” His voice changed instantly.

She peeked out from behind Max’s shoulder and squeaked out a timid, “Sir?” She felt Max’s shoulders shake under the palm of her hands. Was Max laughing at her?

”Shouldn’t you both be at winter assessment?” He asked as he approached the two of them. Lowered his glasses and assessed each of them sternly.

”Molly gave us each a pass,” Max replied, effortlessly, “Since we’re both in private class with you. She seemed to think it would just be a waste of our time and the physician’s since you know us both so…” she swallowed hard, “intimately.”

The dean scrutinized Max’s face with an intensity that made Cat’s belly flip. She had no idea what the dean had put Max through - or, at least not the extent of it - but she wouldn’t, couldn’t, dare to level down such a stare with the dean in the way he was currently doing with Max.

“Sounds like I might need to have a talk with Molly later,” the dean said thoughtfully as he turned his attention towards Cat. “You didn’t encounter the boys out and about on your ski trip, did you? I heard they were also headed out for an excursion today.”

“No, sir,” Cat replied. She wished they had. Max still hadn’t given up any further details or information about how she might rendezvous with August again.

The dean chuckled, “That should make Friday easier for you both then.” Cat’s heart froze at that particular promise of what could possibly be in store for her two days from now.

“Maybe we can try a five,” Max winked at him. Cat looked at her incredulously, then felt her stomach recoil at the look the dean gave her back.

“We can try a six right now if you want to go to room ten,” he said sternly. Max narrowed her brows and a look of disgust fell over her face. Cat swore for a moment that she might actually spit in his eye.

”No thank you. Sir.” She said flatly, then grabbed Cat’s hand in her own.

“You ladies get back to your room,” the dean said. “We’ll discuss this further on Friday. Both of you.”