As Victoria left Tasìa alone, she stripped off the rest of her garments. Tasìa peeked into a shower stall. There was a plastic netting beneath the nozzle.

A perfect place to hang her guns. She was not going to let those get out of her sight.

Tasìa switched the empty chamber of her .357 out and loaded a moonclip. She replaced the magazine in her .32 with the last full clip.

She frowned. Like everything else on her body, the guns and holsters possessed a sticky film on their surface.

With a paper washcloth, pre-soaked in sanitizer cream, that she took from the dispenser at the lavatory door, Tasìa wiped her equipment down.

Satisfied, she placed the holsters under the water nozzle.

The fanny pack and the NeoPalm PA, she lay down on a bench beside the shower curtain.

A small Amerindian woman entered the lavatory. She appraised Tasìa's body with unselfconscious abandon for a moment before she realized what she was doing and she looked away.

Tasìa smiled to herself. She recognized that same stare whenever someone got a good look at her body for the first time.

Tasìa had the wiry muscularity of a female martial artist with none of the collagen assisted softness that made so many ballerinas and gymnasts lovely and feminine to an appreciative pair of eyes.

Hers was a hard-body, instead. It made an impression.

Tasìa gave the woman a friendly smile, and she shuffled over to shake her hand.

"You must be Tasìa," the woman stated. "I'm Della. Victoria sent me to retrieve your clothes. I brought you a few towels, a washcloth, shampoo, and body soap."

Della gave the bag with the items over to Tasìa.

"Gracias, mi amiga."

Della excused herself before leaving.

Just before Tasìa could hop into the shower, Heloïste's Personal Assistant began to hum and flash a blue light. A text message appeared.

'- Where are you? Have you made it out, okay? I heard a lot of gunfire.

It was Felicité. The Argentinian was worried for her. Tasìa smiled at the concern.

I am mostly okay, Tasìa texted back. It has been a struggle every step of the way as I make my way out of here.

Now, I'm held up down in the cellars of the SIU amongst the Disappeared. Still trying to figure my way out of here.

- Jesus, Felicité answered back. Then you will still need this. I decrypted the facility maps with a bunch of useful schemata attached. Including the containment area of the SIU cellars.

This is not the containment area, Felicité. It is a Ward for political prisoners.

- Oh.

Seconds later, Felicité continued.

- There is an area listed as a supply depot. It is connected to the Westside vents by a 32-foot vertical drop. Oddly enough, for a storage area, it contains plumbing for a fully equipped lavatory. You must be there.

I am.

- Tasìa, the containment area is a floor below you. Besides the vertical duct upward, the only path out of there for you is an elevator. I assume if you are down there, amongst the Disappeared, the ductwork must have proven more troublesome to cross this time.

Correct, my friend. That it was. Gremlins. I had to get the hell out of there.

- Then you have no choice, Tasìa. I hate to say it, but you will have to make your way through the containment area.

Tasìa studied the maps and the accompanying electronic, duct, and pipework schematics.

She glanced into the shower stall, and she studied the ceramic tiles that lined the wall beneath and above the nozzle. Felicité actually missed that potential route downward.

There was also something else that she needed to do before she took that shower. Tasìa felt around her work trousers and she grabbed the last grenade from her belt clip.

Tasìa wrapped a towel around her body, so when she ventured out of the lavatory she would not scare any of the other girls like she did Della.

Felicité, are you still there?

- So long as you still need me.

To this reply, Tasìa wanted to respond with something a little cheeky but she reined it in. With an escape in progress to tend to, she kept it to business.

Felicité, I have something that is going to help your case in front of the HRC. Victoria Lóa-Chónatta is a prisoner down here amongst the Disappeared.

Stolen novel; please report.

- No fucking way, Tasìa. She's alive? Felicité followed her response with another message.

How is she? I just can't imagine . . .

After the proud and politically dominant Lóa family refused to negotiate, Victoria's captors released several videotapes that shocked all of South America. Victoria was assaulted sadistically in those videos and was not spared any indecency to her person.

Tasìa did not watch them. She saw the one clip in the news broadcast and that was enough to turn her stomach. It showed Victoria's face in tortured pose, with her mouth silently repeating the words.

Just kill me, already.

Tasìa shook her head violently. It was political theater all along designed to force her family into cooperating with the Salvage.

Whoever authorized it, deserved to die. Whoever was a member of the crew that carried out the nasty deed deserved to have their dicks cut off.

She had to meditate a moment to keep from hyperventilating. For Tasìa, it was personal.

- Tasìa. Felicité continued with her text. Be sure to get a DNA sample from Lóa-Chónatta. The Human Rights Commission will want proof. If you get the sample and my thumb drive to them, I will owe you big.

Tasìa answered back with faux modesty.

't twas nothing.

- Tasìa. I've got to go. I will be indisposed for an hour. I will check up on you, then. Ok?

Tasìa answered back.

Peace out, until then.

As she stood by the elevators, Tasìa examined the doors.

How am I going to do this?

Tasìa plucked two bobby pins out from behind the unadorned hairpin that kept her feathering side bangs in place.

A quip from another action-comedy movie came to her mind as she held the two pins up. She voiced it out loud.

"You should have never let me keep these, Elgar. Now you will have to die!"

"Tasìa, how are you holding up? Are you all right?"

Victoria stood behind her with a look of concern on her face. Tasìa's own face flushed red as she admonished herself to keep her goofiness in check.

Villains don't have a fucking goofy side, Luv.

That voice, in Green-eyed Elise's own words, echoed in Tasìa's inner-mind.

"Forgive me, madam. I'm just being childish and stupid."

"It's quite fine, Ms. del Alma-Gris. Even before I was kidnapped, I had no sense of humor. It is just how I am, and I'm afraid it appears strange to me when I see it displayed by others.

"What are you doing, by the way?"

Tasìa was bending one of the bobby pins to hold the catch on the grenade.

"I'm making a little trap to delay the special operations spooks when they get down here."

She worked the other pin set against the first in counter pressure.

Once completed, she laid the grenade down tightly against the door catch. She squeezed the little bump on the top of the first bobby pin into the door and its connector rail.

When the door opened, it would relieve pressure from the bobby pin, causing it to snap and release the catch on the grenade.

"Does that actually work," Victoria asked.

"I play with bobby pins in my cell all the time out of boredom. I've gotten really good at this kind of construction."

When Tasìa stood up she spoke again.

"Victoria? If you have a free moment could you follow me back to the lavatory?"

Tasìa opened up her fanny pack.

"I need to take a DNA sample from you. Take out one of those gloves. Open up that gauze packet, there. Squish it inside your mouth, and then place it inside that glove and tie it."

"What are you going to do with that?"

"I'm going to the Human Rights Commission with it and I'm going to tell them that you are here."

"Do you know how many pots that would stir? As an escaped prisoner, do you know how exposed you would be? Why are you doing this?"

As Victoria asked her this, the former President's voice grew exasperated.

The response surprised Tasìa, but it shouldn't have. If anyone deserved to be distrustful and jaded of anyone else's intentions it was this woman who stood before her.

She would not believe any claim of altruistic righteousness that Tasìa made. Tasìa decided to try a different tact.

"I have a friend back at Ward Nueve that I everything to. I hope to use your DNA as leverage to get her out of there."

"Well, I appreciate your honesty, Tasìa. I will give you that sample."

Ironic enough, as much as she wanted to help Felicité, her simple desire to right this wrong was closer to the truth.

Tasìa was almost finished with her shower when the special operations team announced over the PA that they were coming to retrieve Tasìa.

Tasìa tisked at this advanced warning. They must really think in their big, brawny naïve hearts that they had her cornered.

Amateurs. Amateurs. Amateurs.

"All residents of Ward Once, be advised. In exactly five minutes you will be thoroughly searched by an advanced team. Lay down with your faces turned to your pillows, your bodies facing your mattresses, and your hands together behind your necks.

"Any other position, or any movement on your part will be regarded as hostile, and will be met with lethal force."

As the message repeated itself, there was a mad scramble about the dorm rooms.

Tasìa dried herself with a towel as she stood beside the bench near the shower stall. Della peeked into the lavatory. Upon seeing Tasìa, she walked over and handed Tasìa a netted bag with her clothes in it.

"I'm afraid they are still damp."

"Not your fault, of course. Thank you for your kindness, Della."

"Good luck."

Della hurried out.

Tasìa got dressed, quickly. She took out her .357, aimed it at the tiles beneath the nozzle at their cross-joiners. She emptied her clip going down the line in a vertical fashion.

Women screamed from the dorms at the sound of the shots. She had to ignore them though it did give her a tinge of guilt to frighten them so.

The tiles along the vertical incision she made were in a greatly weakened condition. She loosened them even further by stomping against them with her boot.

Tasìa got on her hands and knees in the shower stall. She cleared out the remaining broken tiles.

The pipework ran down to the Containment area below. There was enough room in the space between the pipes for her slight little figure to fit.

She heard the grenade pop off. The buzz of the radios blared cascades of ugly feedback as their Commander screamed into his mike.

She must had got him with the trap dead on.

Tasìa climbed into the wall recess, grabbed a hold of a pipe, and she pushed herself down.

"Follow me down here, motherfuckers. I double-dog dare you."

Even Tasìa questioned her own sanity at this point.

There was a good reason that the Manifested were isolated and contained wherever possible.