Alive

All the suffering, all the work, all the heartache — it all comes down to this final episode. In the final episode, Em and the Birthday Children face life and death, freedom … or eternal imprisonment.

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The Birthday Children fought the Grownups, and now Em has taken Matilda captive. She is forcing Matilda to reveal the location of the shuttle, the only way to escape the Xolotl. In this, the second-to-last episode of this serialized Audiobook, Em and her friends find out if there is a way to escape, or if they will be trapped here forever.

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Em has had enough. No more being hunted, no more threats of being erased. She has rallied the Birthday Children to march on the Garden, ready to attack the Grownups on sight. She is going to find her people a way out of the Xolotl, and by Tlaloc, she will not let anyone or anything stop her.

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In the last episode, Em discovered her true purpose in life — to be a receptacle for a much older version of herself, a 1,000-year-old monster that created Em to be overwitten. Em refuses to be a victim, and she refuses to be erased. In this episode, she must rally the Birthday Children to face this horrifying reality, and prepare to fight back.

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In the last episode, Em found out the true nature of the inescapable dungeon that has held her and the Birthday Children. Brewer — the Grownup who claims Em murdered him — revealed this shocking information, leaving Em stunned beyond comprehension. Now, Em and the others try to come to grips with a shattering new reality.

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In a quest to find a weapon that can defeat the monsters who took Bello, Em has led her friends to a place that Bishop and Gaston discovered earlier — the place where Bishop found the spear. Those three, along with Aramovsky and El Saffani, opened a strange door in the floor and are descending down a long ladder, into the darkness, into the unknown.

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The Birthday Children wound up right back where they started. While some wonder if supernatural forces are involved, Em chooses to focus on what she can actually control — finding a weapon that will help her people defeat the Grownups. That new pursuit is about to leader down a nightmare path that will make everything she has seen this far seem innocent by comparison.

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Somehow, the Birthday Children have wound up exactly where they started. In front of Em, a mystery — the coffin room she and her friends woke up in, the same room they walked away from. How can they be back? And is there any chance for escape?

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A rest, a brief peace, a critical break from the never ending stress — all of that evaporated in the last episode when something grabbed Bello and dragged her into the Garden’s underbrush. Now, Em must react — but can she save her friend?

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The Birthday Children have reached the Garden, but at such a cost. In this episode, the tension between Em and Aramovsky comes to a head. Is Aramovsky looking out for the spiritual well-being of the group, or is trying to discredit Em as leader and push her out?

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