I feel the time in the rhythm. The rhythm, with ones, twos, threes, fourths, and fifths woven in separately. It’s the perfect complex repeating rhythm. Also, if you’re not a pro-level drummer, you just can’t do it. Good news: I am a pro drummer, and I can do it. I feel the time pulling at me as soon as I speed it up over a thousand beats per minute. Of course, I’m running sixteenths, so that’s four-thousand strikes every minute. Old school humans were unable to do that at all. When I do, it's glorious. I can feel the time flowing. I knew I'd felt it before. This is what tripped the band way back when. Fucked if I know how to use it, but I win. Finally.

Oh shit, the time! I have to run upstairs before I’m late. I jump over my drums and run to the out-door. I figured out time-drumming. Fucking five weeks of work, but I did it. I’m standing in the depressurization zone, as we lose four and change pounds per square inch of pressure every minute for seventeen minutes. It gives me time to gloat silently.

Who’s the best drummer ever? That’s right: Me, bitches. Bonham can suck it. How good am I? I can manage over twelve thousand strikes per minute, a full 2kbpm pace. World record in '57 was fifteen hundred strikes in a minute. I have a tail, which gives me extra beats. I can stun anything that has ears. I can drum a person to sleep in three seconds. I can put two, sometimes three people to sleep in those three seconds. I can drum so loud I can make your ears bleed. I can see in the dark with my ears. I can do radar with a range of over three miles. I am the best thaum regenerator on this planet. I can detect lies by checking for inconsistent voices. Well, it works if their voice isn't inconsistent for some other reason. And now--now I am going to be able to tweak time. I am a drum god. I am the drum god.

Okay. Got it out of my system. I don't have to brag to anyone else. I’m pretty awesome though.

I come out of the underground to bright sun and go through my routine. I squint, I complain about the brightness, and I stretch. I make some jokes to Charlie to see if he’ll smile, and then I set out on my quarter-mile loop inside the hills, preparaing to push my sonar on full blast to scan the whole three mile radius. It takes a lot of concentration, though, so I don’t get started immediately.

Instead I appreciate the view. We’ve got three grassy rolling hills, maybe four hundred feet high, which form most of a circle and leave a depression in the center. There’s a couple curvy paths that can get in between the little circle of hills, but none with a view into the center. The outside of the hills, which I can sear with a my sound-reflection, are rather sheer and unpleasant for climbing. It’s a really nice, small defensible and hard to find area. Under one of the hills is the prison. Under another is the isolation area for new prisoners. I’d assume the third has living quarters for the “investors.” I'm pretty sure there’s always someone up on top of the hills looking for folks heading our way, but I've never taken a good look.

If it weren’t for the whole slave thing, this would be a really nice area. There is a slave thing, though, so I start in on the sonar while I run. It takes me two laps before I find them. There's six folks here. I recognize Priya, but she’s mostly a noncombatant, so there's only five to assault the nine slavers. I hope they know what they're doing. Miguel and Steve are there too. There's three people I don't recognize. And a horse.

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I have to set this up right. I run a couple more laps. As I pass by the guys outside, I ask if wind sprints mean that you can’t breathe after, or if it’s just a way for Jerry to cheat. Jerry flips me off, and I do some sprints. My hundred-yard equivalent sprints are two laps or half a mile, and I cheat a bit to get into position. Then I conspicuously do the ran-too-much thing where you bend over and gasp for air after a hard run. While nominally gasping for air, I send my message through the doors to the prisoners. “Rescuers are here. Get protected.”

Then I send a message to Piyu, “What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this. Thanks for coming.” Then I take two minutes giving a bad explanation of where all the people are, and tell her I’ll call back in another couple minutes.

I do another set of the “wind sprints,” and complain at the guys.

“There has to be an easier way to train endurance. Do you have to feel like you’re dying?”

“I don’t even know why you run,” says Sharon. “You’re faster than a cheetah. Are you a masochist, or just stupid?”

After my couple loops, a couple quips, and Jerry using his wind to slow me down a bit, I collapse again, angled in a way they can’t see my face.

“We’re coming over the hill in five minutes” is the warning I get. “Try to make sure we’ve got our best shot.”

There’s a few things I can do to prepare. I get started immediately.

"These wind sprints are kicking my ass," I say. "I'm gonna rest for a minute, and play." I sit down on the track, and pull out my khol. Seventeen seconds pass before I'm able to do the next part.

First thing is that I have to find the sentry on top of the hill. It takes me 34 seconds to do that. He’s hidden pretty well. Then I put away my drum, run another two laps, make some jokes, and start panting again. That's 92 more seconds elapsed. As I pant, I redo my drumming, and set up the binaural music to put the sentry to sleep. It’s Danny on lookout, and he looks around a little bit when he hears the music at the beginning. The sound bubble I put around him means he couldn’t have yelled even if he wanted to, but he doesn't figure out what's going on. I don’t even need to stun him before he’s down and sleeping. I’d just let him sleep, but Murphy is a bastard, and this is not a time to invoke the great man’s law. Danny is sound-bubbled, sleeping, and kept asleep by continuous binaurals. Fortunately, it's all recorded, so I don't have to keep drumming to keep it working. Forty-one more seconds gone by. It takes another 12 to get Priyanka the message that the sentry is down.

Next thing to set up is the Charlie trap. He’s probably the most dangerous one around. So I spin up a sound-trap near him. It should stun him for about a second. After the stunning sound-trap is set, I set a one-directional sound-wall in the direction that P. and company are coming from. They can hear things in our direction, but our direction can’t hear them. It takes 38 seconds to do all that. Sound trap; sound wall; next thing is a distraction. I ask Sharon about her favorite trick she’s managed by changing appearance. She laughs, and says there’s just so many.

I wasn’t looking for her answer. I was looking to record her voice. And it works just fine. I have the laugh, and “There’s just so many.” Thirty-two more seconds slid by for that part of the plan.

I’m juggling a lot of audiomancy right now. Four things going on. Glad I’m a drummer and used to managing that much. Everything is mostly set up. As my rescuers get closer, I run another couple circles in twenty-one seconds, then stop as far away from the slavers as I can.

I wait the last seventeen seconds, hoping they're precise. They are. Then everything happens at once.