One
Escape. That was her only thought. When they hurt her, when they made her do the lessons over and over again till she believed she would go mad, when they strapped her to the machine so that the woman with the cold eyes could make her scream with pure agony, the word made her hold on. Kept her from breaking. Escape. Get free.
She didn't know much of anything except what they taught her. Apart from that one word that they couldn't burn out of her mind, she was like the others. She marched with her eyes straight ahead, she slept once the lights went out, she killed when she was ordered to. But there was something about her that was wrong, that was different. They placed her in the machine countless times to try to figure it out. The cold-eyed woman was especially interested to know the answer. Maybe it was that word.
Escape.
When they came into her cell with the needles again, she finally acted on that desperate impulse. It was easy enough to snap the necks of the men in the white coats and to shoot down the black-clad enforcers with their own guns. She managed to get through the first two levels of the facility in this way. She fought past startled technicians and guards without encountering any real resistance. But, by the third level, they knew that she was coming. They waited for her by the doors with the intent to kill her on sight. More than a dozen weapons were aimed at her when she appeared. Gunfire erupted immediately.
"Report! Damn it, report!" The colonel in charge shouted in anger. He was in the main control room following the incident on the surveillance monitors when all screens suddenly blacked out. "Did those idiots take out the cameras? What the hell is happening?"
"Some kind of electrical disruption, sir."
"Then fix it!" he ordered. "I want to know what's happening!"
"Colonel Roslin? Sir!" a voice suddenly crackled out of the comm link. He recognized it as belonging to the captain of the security detail. "She got through us, sir! We're re-deploying!"
"What do you mean she got through?" he demanded. "We didn't make those things bulletproof!"
There was a long silence.
"Captain? How did she get past you and your men?" He repeated the question twice, louder each time.
"Sir -," the captain clearly sounded like he would much rather not be speaking right now. "She - the bullets seemed to just go through her, sir."
The colonel glared at everyone in the control room. "We're at condition red. No one leaves his post until we recover the subject. You!" He pointed to his communications officer. "Get me the Director."
A minute later, he was handed the phone.
"And what could possibly be important enough for you to interrupt my evening, Colonel?" The Director's cool tone grated on his nerves.
"Bad news, Ma'am," he said abruptly. "One of the templates escaped."
"Which one?" The cool voice suddenly sounded dangerous.
"It's number Eight."
The line went dead.
Colonel Roslin bit back a curse. He absolutely hated that woman.
Emma Frost was a bitch.