Catalina walked along the corridors, yawning. She’d memorized the route by now, so her mind was mostly occupied with figuring out how to conceal the bite on her shoulder if a nurse did ask her to put on a hospital gown. A sudden fit of modesty that required her to change in a bathroom? Careful handling of the gown and her shirt to make sure the nurse never saw her shoulder?
To Catalina’s relief and amusement, once she got to the medical testing rooms, she was settled in front of a computer, had electrodes attached to her head, and was told to play Grand Theft Auto 5.
She snickered. “Seriously?”
“It’s a solid test for certain reflexes, skills, and problem-solving abilities,” Dr. Elihu replied condescendingly. “But I’m hardly going to stand over your shoulder and watch you giggle your way through hours of virtual mayhem.”
He turned to a medical technician. “Run her for five hours. She gets a ten-minute break every half hour for the first two hours. Next three hours, run her without a break, to measure her responses under fatigue.”
“Yes, doctor,” said the technician.
Dr. Elihu swept out, taking three of the guards with him. The remaining three stayed in the room, their tranquilizer guns held ready.
As if I’d try to jump three armed men, Catalina thought. I may be brave, but I’m not stupid.
She turned to the screen, wondering if Shane played video games. Probably he either loved them and was a world-class player, or they bored him because he was too good at them and they weren’t challenging. Though even if they did bore him, she bet he’d be glad to have them now. Even Donkey Kong would be preferable to one more day locked up alone.
“Play the game, Mendez,” the technician ordered. She clicked a stop-watch. “Now.”
Catalina began to play. She’d just blown up a bank vault when she heard a loud crack behind her. Another crack sounded as she turned around.
Shane was in the room. Two of the guards were down on the floor, and the third was swinging his gun to bear on Shane. The technician was starting to open her mouth to scream.
Catalina jumped up and clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth, stifling her yell. The technician struggled with her, but Catalina held her tight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shane snatch the tranquilizer gun from the last guard’s hand, then punch him in the jaw. The guard dropped.
Shane turned, fast as lightning but so gracefully that it almost seemed to be in slow motion, and fired the tranquilizer gun at the technician. The woman went limp in Catalina’s arms. Instinctively, Catalina caught her, then lowered her to the floor.
Then Shane and Catalina were the only ones standing, with four bodies on the floor and a bunch of bank robbers yelling on a computer screen. The entire fight had taken only seconds.
“Good work.” Shane wasn’t even breathing hard. He pointed to the technician. “Get into her clothes.”
Catalina scrambled to strip out of her own clothing and into the technician’s scrubs. The woman was taller and slimmer than her, but she squeezed into the scrubs. Shane was doing the same with the tallest guard’s clothes, and also not finding them a good fit.
Catalina tried to roll up the technician’s pants, but they kept flopping down. She finally took a pair of shears from a medical kit and cut them off at the ankles so they wouldn’t trip her.
“Pass me that kit,” Shane said.
Catalina handed it to him. He dumped ou
t the contents, then rolled up their discarded clothes and stuck them in it.
“It might be cold outside,” he explained. “I don’t know where we are. I know I said I’ve been here before, but I meant that I’ve been to a base like this one. I’m pretty sure it’s not literally the same one.”
Catalina had resisted the urge to quiz him, but she couldn’t stand it any more. “How in the world did you get here?”
“I told you I can sneak up on people,” Shane replied, trying to wedge his feet into the guard’s shoes. “I’m not invisible— people will see me if they look for me, and I show up on video— but they won’t notice me if they’re not looking. I walked out of the bathroom when your back was turned, lay on my cot, and pulled a blanket over myself. So long as everyone believed I was in the bathroom and didn’t wonder, ‘What if he’s actually on the bed?’ they’d just think they saw rumpled sheets. Once you all turned to go out, I followed you out the door.”
“No way!” Catalina laughed, realizing how neatly he’d set it all up. “I can’t believe you convinced me that you liked smelling my hair.”
“I do like smelling your hair. But you had to actually believe I was in the shower. One glance anywhere else would have ruined the whole thing.” Shane gave up on the guard’s shoes and put his own back on. “Well, hopefully no one will notice my feet. People usually aren’t very observant. Did you notice if there’s any water bottles in here?”
Catalina pointed. “In that cupboard.”
He stuffed as many bottles as he could fit into the kit, laid two tranquilizer guns on top, and handed her the kit. “You carry this. If I start shooting, back me up. You take the easy shots, I’ll take the hard ones. Don’t fire in my direction, even if it looks easy. I move pretty fast, and if I get hit by friendly fire, it’s all over.”
“Okay.”
Shane rummaged through the unconscious guards’ pockets until he found a lighter and a Swiss Army knife, which he put in his own pocket. “All right. We’ve got everything we need to survive.”