“Yeah. The food here sucks, so I thought I’d go out for lunch,” Lanie said, her snark launching before her brain had time to engage. The room she was in now was cavernous. It was cluttered with old, rusting machinery and conveyor lines—apparently the production floor of a defunct factory.

  “That’s a shame, then. All you’ll be getting is another knuckle sandwich,” Cycle Leathers said as he stepped forward. His stance was wide, and his hands were up, but loose. He was ready for her to bolt, and, Lanie judged, better trained in hand-to-hand than she was. Fighting had never been her strength. Jorge had taught her a few basic moves and urged her to learn more, but she’d always been confident in her ability to avoid confrontation. She was regretting that choice now.

  Fists pounded on the door behind her, and she heard Dark Suit’s voice, muffled, as he called out, “Cole! She’s escaped! Get us out of here! Cole!”

  Cycle Leathers—Cole—called back, never taking his eyes off of Lanie, “Yeah, I know, gimmie a minute. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  The open center aisle of the room was lit by a workshop drop-light at the end of a long extension cord. That left the rest of the room dark and full of shadows where the machinery blocked the light. Her captors had set up a card table and some camp chairs under the drop light. A large opening in the far wall led into another room. The remains of a roll-up warehouse door drooped at a precarious angle from the top of the doorway. The room beyond was lit by indirect, dusty sunlight, and that meant there was a way out. She just had to get there.

  There hadn’t been time for her to get used to her new abilities, to find the extent and limits of what she could do now. She did know that she could jump a lot higher than she used to, and she was pretty sure she could move faster, too. Cole was moving in, and she didn’t have time to plot a route out. She would have to wing it.

  She crouched like she was getting ready to fight, making her stance look even more clumsy than it was. This would work better if Cole was overconfident. Judging by the predatory gleam in his eyes, that wasn’t going to be hard. He lunged, his fist driving for her face like a piston, but Lanie wasn’t there anymore.

  Lanie jumped. Up, and a little forward, just enough to use his shoulder as a springboard. Her foot pushed him off-balance and propelled her up the side of one of the defunct machines. She grabbed onto a rusty protrusion and pulled herself up, glancing back only briefly to see what she had hoped to see. She hadn’t intended to knock him down or hurt him; she’d done something even better. She’d pissed him off. Now he wasn’t thinking. Instead of opening the cell door and getting backup, he came after her, roaring like a bee-stung bull. Three men chasing her would have been tricky. One she could deal with.

  Jumping from broken machine to rusty conveyor line to the top of some forgotten piece of equipment in near total darkness should have been impossible, but now… now it was merely tricky. She could see just fine, and her body felt like it had been upgraded from a hatchback to a sports car. She wasn’t performing superhuman feats by any means, but, if she had to guess, she would say she was a lot closer to an Olympics-level athlete than she ever thought she could be.

  Cole followed at floor level, juking between machinery and vaulting over debris in his path. He wasn’t as far behind as Lanie thought he should be. When he casually shoved a forklift out of his way, Lanie realized that she might have miscalculated. If she had this nifty new game screen and had gotten stronger and faster, wasn’t it possible that they had it, too? Maybe that’s why they’d been after that stone. She filed the idea away to examine later, when she didn’t have a raging psychopath out for her blood.

  She jumped again, and just as she landed, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and her instincts screamed at her that there was DANGER! She didn’t think, she just dove to the side of the machine and into the shadows below. Just as she moved, she heard the crack of a gunshot and felt a hot buzz past her cheek. The gunshot echoed through the cavernous, concrete room, knocking a flurry of rust and dust loose to dance in the air. Her heart pounding, Lanie pressed herself back into a crevice where a conveyor belt came out of one side of the machine she had just leapt from.

  He’d shot at her. The son of a bitch had shot at her. How could she have been so stupid? She’d known they had guns; she’d been marched off the train with Dark Suit’s pistol pressed into her back. Cole had even flashed his at her. Of course, they would shoot at her. She suddenly felt nauseous.

  She pulled in a big lungful of air and let it out slowly, forcing herself to think things through. Cole had to stay focused on her. If he lost her, he’d go back and let out the other two, and things would get much harder. She just had to be careful never to give him a clear shot. The tricky part would be getting through the door. Once she was in the doorway, her silhouette would make a clear target against the better-lit outer room. The gun had to go.

  Stepping quietly out of her niche, Lanie shuddered as cobwebs brushed against her face. She could see the factory floor, even with the machines looming around her and blocking the sparse light from the single lamp. It was covered in grime and flakes of rust and old paint, and the occasional rusty bolt or piece of crumbled brick. Her new ability to see in the dark let her avoid the debris and move in near silence, but the man stalking her didn’t have that advantage. Metal bounced against concrete as his foot sent something skittering away. He was farther away than she’d thought, but not by much.

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  She pictured the man in her mind as he’d been on the train when he’d sat down across from her and flashed his pistol, held under his jacket to keep it out of sight of the other passengers. The gun, an automatic, had been in his right hand. Guns had never been a big part of her life, and she didn’t know much about them, not enough to identify the weapon at a glance. ‘How many bullets does an automatic hold? Nine? Thirteen? Damn, I should have paid more attention to Jorge’s stories,’ she thought.

  She listened, moved, and paused to listen again. He was prowling down an aisle between the machines, heading for the place where she’d dropped down. Moving with care, she found an alcove between two machines that he would have to pass and ducked into it to wait. She picked up a loose bolt and tossed it lightly back towards where she’d landed, using the sound to pull Cole in the right direction.

  Her heart thundered in her chest. A direct fight with her pursuer was a risk. The man had moved a forklift that had to weigh close to a ton. He had to have been pulling his punches earlier. Now, if he landed a blow, she probably wouldn’t survive. Speed would be her only hope. The seconds seemed to stretch out into small eternities as his footsteps moved closer.

  Eventually, he came close enough that she could smell the leather of his jacket. She saw the gun in his outstretched right hand before she could see the rest of him, but that’s what she’d been waiting for. She reached out of the dark alcove, and with her right hand, she grabbed the gun. With her left hand, she grabbed Cole’s wrist and pressed her fingers into the spot that Jorge had shown her, the one that would make his grip loosen. She’d practiced the move with Jorge, and even used it a couple of times on grabby assholes in bars, but never in a real fight. Pressing on the nerve, she twisted the gun away from herself and towards the weakest part of Cole’s grip: his thumb.

  Cole was strong and experienced, but to Lanie’s surprise, he wasn’t as fast as she was. He turned toward her, his left fist coming across in a powerful punch, but Lanie saw it coming and jerked her head to the side. She heard metal groan and crumple as Cole’s fist slammed into the frame of the machine, denting it. Lanie let herself drop. The full weight of her body was suddenly pulling down on a hand that was braced for a sideways struggle. The sudden change of direction broke Cole’s already loosened grip, and the gun dropped away. Lanie kicked it, sending it skittering away under the machinery.

  Cole’s booted foot came flying towards her head, and Lanie rolled. Another foot, stomping down at her face, barely missed. It hit the ground with enough force to chip the old concrete floor. Shards of concrete flew, and one sliced across her cheek. Lanie kept rolling. Cole roared as she disappeared under one of the machines.

  She rolled out into the next aisle, scrambled over a conveyor belt, and found herself back in the central corridor. The drop-light and card table were only a few feet from where she emerged. Her backpack was there, its contents spread out over the table. She grabbed it and scooped her belongings back into it, pausing only long enough to ensure that her passport was there. Anything else could be replaced.

  Cole was swearing and yelling threats, his voice growing closer. Fists pounded against the cell door as his partners made muffled demands to be released. There was nothing between her and the exit.

  Lanie ran.

  She nearly flew through the old factory, through the doorway with the sagging roll-up door, and into an open loading-dock area. She barely glanced at the room as she sped through it, making a beeline for an open dock door. If her heart hadn’t been thundering with fear, if she hadn’t been expecting a bullet in her back at any moment, she would have found her new speed exhilarating. She’d never run so fast in her life.

  The sunlight outside was bright after the darkness of the factory. After jumping down from the dock door to the crumbling, overgrown asphalt, Lanie had to pause and let her eyes adjust. A bang and shout from behind her spurred her back to her mad dash. She crossed the lot and vaulted over a sagging wooden fence. The alley she landed in was strewn with garbage and broken pallets, but she didn’t let the detritus slow her down. She kept running, making turns blindly, just wanting to put as much distance between herself and her captors as she could.

  This was an old city with newer sections tacked on. The juxtaposition of old and new made her feel like she was unstuck in time, medieval and modern anachronisms all jumbled together. Narrow cobbled alleys opened onto modern macadam streets packed with cars. Another turn took her into a narrow dirt passage lined with colorful stalls selling fruit, vibrant pottery, and knockoff designer purses.

  Lanie slowed and tried to blend into the crowd of shoppers in the makeshift souk, but, rather than anonymity, she found the people around her shying back and eying her with a mixture of concern and alarm. A stall selling sunglasses and bright scarves provided a mirror, and a glance at her reflection told her why. Her face was still bruised from the beating she’d received. A trail of blood ran down her right cheek from a slice there. Her clothes were covered with dust and cobwebs, and her hair was a wild tangle. Her wig was gone. The sweater she’d pulled on in the train lavatory was torn and starting to unravel. She was a mess.

  A quick rummage through her bag, and she sighed with relief. Tucked into the back of her passport was a prepaid traveler’s debit card, and it was still there, held in place by a paper clip. The Visa logo on the card was enough to overcome the language barrier with the merchant, and she was able to purchase a green scarf and a pair of oversized sunglasses. Another stall provided an embroidered blouse and a flimsy broomstick skirt. Purchases in hand, she slipped between two stalls into another narrow alleyway, out of sight of the shopping crowd.