In the fall of 1944, six-year-old Yael is sent to a Nazi concentration camp. A doctor named Geyer sorts the new arrivals into groups. For some unaccountable reason, he chooses to keep Yael alive for something called Experiment 85. Over time, Yael is given a series of painful chemical injections to alter her body chemistry: “Take all the colors and feelings and human inside. Drain, drain, drain until nothing was left. Just a ghost of a girl. A nothing shell. Progress” (9).

In 1956, 17-year-old Yael is living in Germania and hurrying home after a visit to a tattoo parlor. She now has five wolf tattoos covering the concentration camp identity numbers on her arm: “They swooped and jostled and howled up her arm, all the way to her elbow. Black and always running, striving against her skin. Babushka, Mama, Miriam, Aaron-Klaus, Vlad. Five names, five stories, five souls” (10). The experiments in the camp have left Yael with the ability to change her appearance at will. When two curfew soldiers challenge her, Yael easily answers their questions and slips out of a tricky situation. She needs these skills since she is a member of the resistance movement.