A/N: Hello, you beautiful readers! Thanks for the response to the previous chapter! I'm shot for ideas at the moment, so send me a prompt or two. I'll see what I can make of it.

Facility Gamma

Amestris-Drachma Border

1937 Hours

The man leaned down, cut the bindings around her wrists and ankles, and left. Riza stared at the pistol for a while after that. The burns on her back throbbed, a deep, pulsing pain.

Slowly, her mind clawed its way back to reality. A spark of hope, previously all but extinguished, came back to life. She put her hands against the floor and pushed. Sweat beaded on her face and she grit her teeth as the burns and various other assorted wounds made their presence known as well. Her body resisted any change made to its present position, but her mind told it to move move move!

Riza pushed herself up on to her hands and knees, then managed to bring her right leg forward into a kneeling position. She remained there for a little bit, trying to let the pain subside a bit and wiping the sweat off her face. When most of her injuries had ceased hurting, going from agony to simply searing, she reached forward and took the pistol. She let it settle into her hand, feeling its weight and balance. It wasn't hers, but it was a gun. She'd take it.

She eased her way into a crouching position, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet. Riza spied the bottle of water and grabbed for it. Almost a third of the liquid went down her throat before she remembered to breath. Warm though it was, it was hard to care after weeks of food and water deprivation.

She wiped her mouth off and enjoyed the sensation of water moistening her parched throat. The liquid helped revive her a bit more, bringing her alertness and higher thought processes back online. It even dulled the pain a little bit, if only in her head.

She drank slowly now, so as not to let the sudden influx of water overwhelm her body. It was tempting to pour it down her back, so as to soothe the burns a bit, but for all she knew it would just make them worse. She resisted the temptation. Riza took advantage of her time, planning out an escape.

She'd have to procure some cold weather equipment. That would be easily done. The sentry had left his coat on the chair when the alarm sounded, too hurried to put it back on. The hat was there too. The combination of the two would probably buy her a few extra seconds as other soldiers tried to determine whether or not she was friend or foe.

From what she remembered of world geography, courtesy of some mandatory academy classes, the land between Amestris and Drachma was a featureless wasteland, a few forests, and more featureless wasteland. The peaks of the Briggs mountain range created an impenetrable border. There was no getting around them, excluding backtracking deeper into Drachman territory.

"I need a vehicle." Riza spoke to herself, mostly to assure herself that she could still produce sounds consisting of things other than screaming. Her voice cracked. The water still hadn't fully revived her vocal chords. "A map and a compass." A compass was no use without a map, and vice versa as well. Without either, she would be driving in circles.

The last of the water disappeared from the bottle. Riza tossed it aside and ejected the magazine of the pistol. She held it up to her eyes, turning it at various angles to check for defects or anything that would keep the gun from firing. Hate the fact though she might, Riza had to admit that the Drachmans made their guns well. The quality of workmanship on the magazine was better than many Amestrian ones she'd seen.

Riza slapped the magazine back in and racked back the slide, slowly. The familiar motion finally brought her mind fully to the present and into combat mode, as well as sending more redundant alerts to her brain that something was seriously wrong with her back. Supporting herself with the concrete wall, she stood up, wincing at every twinge, joint crack, and stab of pain.

Her mysterious benefactor had been so kind as to close the main door behind him, affording her some privacy. She pushed aside the cell door; leaned on it, really, as her arm could not muster the strength to move the heavy bars. Riza put on the coat and hat, recoiling slightly when the smell of unwashed soldier hit her nose.

She patted down the coat, finding a couple more magazines and a grenade tucked into its pockets. A lighter and cigarettes too. A memory of Havoc laughing, cigarette between his fingers and lighter beside him, sitting at his desk in a sunny office. A sad smile graced her features at the memory.

Riza readied the gun and prepared to step out into the corridor. One way or another, she'd be seeing her team again. Just imagining the look on Roy's face would be all the motivation she'd need.

Facility Gamma

Amestris-Drachma Border

1945 Hours

When his day started, private Alexiy Dragovich did not expect the alarms to sound. Nor did he expect them to sound while he was in the bathroom. Finishing up, he sprinted to his muster station, frantically adjusting his uniform, pulling on his helmet, and unslinging his rifle. So distracted was he that he failed to notice the leg sticking out into the corridor in front of him.

"Waagh!" The rifle went flying, sliding several meters down the corridor. Alexiy went sprawling face first, grunting as the air went out of him. Before he could get back up and see what tripped him, a knee pressed into the small of his back. His eyes widened, and he tried to turn his head around to see who it was. That option was taken away when a hand pushed his face further into the ground and a pistol was placed against the back of his head.

"Don't move." A female voice? But there weren't any women on base, except for the prisoner…

He felt a hand searching through his uniform coat and pack, taking out all the ammunition, weapons, and everything else in his pockets. There went his regulation compass, binoculars, mapbook, codebook, ration packs and canteen. "Where is the vehicle bay?"

"Hmmph!" He grunted a response into the floor. His attacker let out an exasperated sigh and turned his head to the side, pistol still against his temple. "Identify yourself! You are trespassing on official property and have assaulted a Drachman soldier!" He shouted the first thing that came to mind, the phrase drilled into his head by endless hours of political doctrine and protocol briefings.

She leaned down and hissed in his ear. "You aren't in a position to argue. Keep the noise down and don't try anything." He felt his knife, pistol and grenades disappear as well, the utility belt holding them tossed a safe distance away. If he could just stall a little bit more, his CO would notice his absence and send a search party. And then…

He blustered, trying to gain time. "I'm not telling you anything! You… you aren't getting away with this!"

"Shut up." Alexiy reacquainted his face with the concrete. Above him, Riza quickly ran through all the half-assed 5-minute contingency plans her frankly not-quite-all-in-there mind had developed for a situation such as this one. She discarded most of them as soon as she thought of them. No… no… I don't even have that with me, what was I thinking?... no… of course not… ah! "Stay down, don't make a noise." She reached behind her, groping around for the discarded utility belt. After a few seconds of blind searching, Riza grasped the leather strap and pulled it towards her. She quickly found the handle of a knife, yanked it out of its pocket, and held it beside the man's head. "You know what this is, don't you?"

Alexiy began sweating. This crazy bitch was actually going to kill him! "I-I don't know what you mean-"

"Talk. Now." His head was suddenly yanked up, the blade of the knife at his throat. Alexiy's continued existence suddenly seemed very much uncertain.

Now, Alexiy wasn't a coward. He might have been drafted from a small town out in the ass-end of the tundra, the ass-end of a region considered the ass-end of a country considered the ass-end of the world, but that didn't mean he wasn't patriotic. As a matter of fact, he was extremely grateful to the army for getting him out of that frozen wasteland. Growing up and surviving out there also meant that he had no small amount of badassery available to him. He could no doubt ensure that his attacker died in a brutal and graphic fashion.

There was one small problem with that plan, however. It had to do with the sharpened piece of tempered stainless steel occupying the space near his jugular. You see, if he tried to turn the tables on the woman, she would certainly die. But he would too, and Alexiy had no desire to become a posthumous Hero of the Drachman people. The shiny gold medal would be nice, as would the extra compensation paid to his family, but he wanted to be around to enjoy it as well.

The words spilled out of his mouth. "It's that way! Near the main hall! The really big door! Please don't kill me…" He gestured with his chin, trying not to let the knife poke into his throat.

Riza pressed the knife a little harder into his neck. A small trail of blood ran down. "Are you lying to me? I don't appreciate being lied to, especially not now."

"No! It's true! Really, I swear!" The tone of voice was just desperate enough that Riza could believe it. She withdrew the knife, grabbed the back of his head, and drove it into the ground.

"Gah!" He definitely wasn't expecting that. By the time his head stopped bouncing, he was out cold facedown on the floor. Riza took her knee off his back and stood up, stretching out a few muscle kinks. She held up her pistol and prepared to move, but a thought occurred to her. She reached down and picked up the utility belt, wrapping it around her own waist. It wouldn't hurt to have another piece of the costume, and the extra supplies it carried would be welcome. She finished adjusting the strap, drew her pistol, and moved out, supporting herself with the wall.

Main Hall

Facility Gamma

Amestris-Drachma Border

2005 Hours

A group of soldiers milled about inside the hall. The air was filled with lighthearted chatter, but underneath the surface there was tension thick enough to cut with a dull butter knife.

Near one door, a corporal and his group of men were trying to figure out exactly what the hell was happening. Nobody had come on the PA to brief the troops, nobody had come to them to give them orders. The only officers they'd seen were, at the most, lieutenants just as clueless if not more so.

"Hey, bet you fifty rubles that this is just a false alarm."

"I'll take that bet and raise you a hundred." The two shook on the deal and gave their money to a third soldier to hold. The corporal looked over disapprovingly but otherwise did nothing about it. In fact, he himself had 150 rubles riding on it being a false alarm, not that he would let anyone know. Looking around, he thought he saw something outside the door in the hallway. Upon closer inspection though, there was nothing.

Riza whipped her head back around the doorway, heart pounding. She regretted taking a peak. If her escape plan seemed difficult to pull off before, it was downright impossible now. "Okay, think." She checked the options available to her. Grenades, pistol, and alchemy. The knife didn't count because, as far as options went, it was suicidal. Grenades? Maybe, but she only had three and the number of bodies in the room might absorb all the shrapnel before they could take everyone out. After that, she'd have to use her pistol. 28 rounds of 9mm versus a group of pissed off soldiers armed with rifles and submachine guns? The Academy taught Riza how to evaluate the odds of a situation and she did not like this one.

The only viable option left to her was alchemy, and she didn't think she had the strength to pull off something large enough to be useful. Her lungs and muscles burned just from the 60 meters she'd walked to get to this point. All the way Riza had felt certain that someone must have heard her labored breathing and would be coming to investigate. And at that point, with her body still in terrible shape, she would die an ignominious and anticlimactic death.

She shifted position unconsciously, easing up the pressure on her back. Those burns were going to take quite a while to heal. In fact, they still hurt like hell. The adrenaline still circulating in her bloodstream would let her ignore them for a little while longer, but she needed medical care before they became incapacitating.

If a transmutation was to work, it was going to have to be big and flashy. Riza wanted to avoid killing anyone if possible.

"And who are you?" Her head whipped around. She almost sprang backwards, but caught herself when she realized doing so would have meant leaving her cover. Her heart pounded as she stared at the newcomer pointing a shotgun at her. "I said, who might you be?"

Riza couldn't answer. Her body had frozen up; she couldn't believe it was all about to end here. Had all her efforts been for nothing?

"Hold on a second." The stranger leaned in closer and got a good look at her face. "Holy shit. You're the prisoner!" Riza squeezed her eyes shut and anticipated a shotgun blast to the face at any moment.

"Dammit. Come with me! Quietly!" Huh? Before she could respond, the man took hold of her arm, yanked her to her feet, and was dragging her down the corridor. Riza gasped in pain as the movement strained her injuries.

"In here!" He threw open a door, pushed her in, came in himself and locked it behind him. "God! What are you thinking, trying to take on a room full of enemies? Has our training really degraded that much in 3 years?"

"What? Wh-who are you?" Unconsciously, her hand began to stray towards the knife on her utility belt.

"I see your knife. Don't think I don't." The man seemed distracted as he spoke, as if the weapon was barely worth his attention. He ran his hands through his hair, eyes flicking back and forth but staring at nothing. If there were enough space in the tiny broom closet Riza felt sure that he would be pacing.

"Shit. Shit. Alright. So. Here's the deal. You just messed up all my plans. Goddammit. It's okay, I can still salvage something from this." He turned and pressed his ear to the door, listening intently. "Okay. Hallway's clear. Look, I know you've been through hell, but you need to listen to me right now."

"Wait." He turned around in exasperation.

"Now wha-" A pistol aimed directly at his forehead.

"Answers. Now. Before I trust anything you say." He sighed and lifted an eyebrow, as if to say 'really?'

"Seriously? You're going to do this now? Alright, here's the thirty second version. Petrov, Dimitri, PD1992034, AMI. Got it?"

"Petrov?" Riza thought for a second, pistol still pointed at his head. "Where have I heard that name before?"

He looked confused for a second, then nodded in realization. "You might have heard the soldiers talking about me. Said I seemed like a spook?"

"Yes. You're a spy?"

"I'm AMI." He said in a voice that sounded like he'd said this a thousand times before. "Being spook like is our business. Now, are you going to take that pistol away or what?" Realizing where her hand was, Riza quickly lowered the gun, blushing a bit with embarrassment. "Good. Now, listen up."

"You just blew my escape plan. I was going to hijack one of those trucks and get back to the border. You're going to slow me down. You probably will get me killed. You most likely will die." He sighed and rubbed his temples, as if what he was about to say pained him. "However, mission directives direct me to assist any Amestrian personnel I might come across. Military intelligence. Hah. That's a damn good oxymoron." He motioned towards her pistol.

"You're not too hurt to use that, are you?" Riza shook her head, still a little bewildered by the speed of events and a little insulted by the man implying she was currently useless. Still, her odds of living were better working with him and he hadn't tried to kill or torture her yet. She'd play along.

"So what should I do?"

"Run in there and absorb all the bullets. While they reload, I'll make my escape." She stared at him. "No, not really. I was planning on just walking through there with this uniform. But, now that you're with me, we have more than a few grenades between us. Stealth's not possible anymore, but explosions are." He paused as a pair of footsteps passed by. "That's the first patrol. They'll be combing through the entire base soon. We need to move quickly before someone checks in here." He held up a finger and listened to the door for another minute or so, letting another pair go by.

"Ready?"

"I guess?"

Sometimes the end comes quietly. Sometimes it advertises itself. In this case the end came with the soft ping of pins being pulled from grenades.

The soldiers gathering for a sweep patrol barely had time to look down and choose which curse words to use. They were then promptly shredded by shrapnel. Their bodies absorbed and slowed the flying metal projectiles, allowing those behind them to escape lightly wounded.

They didn't last long, though. A shotgun blast tore into one, while pistol fire downed another and wounded one.

Getting their act together, the survivors dove behind cover, firing blindly at the doorway and filling the air with smell of cordite and the sound of tinkling shell casings. Unfortunately for them, their onetime comrade Dimitri Petrov, Amestrian Military Intelligence deep cover operative, knew how to drop and crawl.

He made his way over to a couple of supply crates, crouching behind them while bullets pockmarked the wall. When the hail of lead subsided, leaving a gunpowder stench in the air while the remaining soldiers reloaded, he popped out of cover, hurled another grenade, and motioned for Riza to join him.

"We need to clear them out before the rest of the patrols get back here. Someone will have heard the explosions and gunshots so they'll be here soon." He motioned to a crate partway across the room. "Get over there. Now."

Riza was in no position to question his commands. He knew the place better, the people better, and probably knew which tactics to use here. Also, her brain was now being re-clouded by adrenaline rush, fatigue, and pain. He was thinking clearly.

She got up and ran over to the box. Halfway she started drawing fire. Her energy-deprived mind decided bullets were bad and dove the last few meters. Petrov took the opportunity to blow away the last few defenders, who stood up in order to aim.

"Sorry. Somebody had to draw fire, and it wasn't going to be me." He ran by her and pulled open the door to the vehicle bay. Before going through, he looked back at her, huddling behind a box, and frowned. "Well? Aren't you coming?"

"Right. One second." She growled with the pain and clutched the burn on her left shoulder. That was going to ruin her aim. "Coming."

They found themselves in the wide open spaces of the vehicle bay. A blast of cold air greeted them, mostly unfelt because of the thick coats they had on. Nobody was present and guarding the vehicles; they were all gone to their muster stations.

Petrov pulled open the door to a truck, got in, and started hotwiring it, muttering to himself the whole time. Riza sat down on the running board, unsure of what to do. She checked her weapons and ignored the her injuries, helped by the fact that the her face was freezing off, allowing her to ignore everything else.

"Hey! Over here! They're with the vehicles!"

"Ah, shit. Hold them off!" Petrov slammed the door shut to give himself more cover, leaving Riza to hold off the hoard.

"What?! Hey!" He was already gone, under the dashboard twisting wires together. Riza jumped off the running board and ran to the doorway, just in time to avoid being shot. "Dammit!"

She reached one hand around the doorway to fire a few shots from her pistol. "Not even nice enough to pass me the shotgun, huh?" Riza tried to aim, but with one hand gripping her shoulder she found the task rather difficult. "Gah, I can't do anything!"

The bullets pouring in from the door struck anything and everything. A bottle of vodka, a box of spare parts, a stack of tires, they were all perforated. Riza barely noticed, understandable seeing as how busy she was trying not to die.

"Hey! I said hold them off! I can't do my job while this truck is getting shot up!" Riza glared in the direction of the voice, whose owner she'd decided was an asshole. She backed up further from the door, bumping into a vodka bottle standing on a shelf.

"Hold on." There was vodka. Vodka was liquid. She could draw with liquid. A wry smile emerged on her face. Now she had options, undignified though drawing with alcohol might be. She popped open the bottle and got to work, ignoring the fact that alcohol was covering her hands.

Petrov finished up the last wiring just as blue lightning lit up the vehicle pool. "What the shit?!" He pulled out from under the dashboard, and peered out the windshield. Where there had been a doorway previously, there was now a solid rock wall. "What the shit?"

He heard a voice from the back of the truck. "Drive! Drive! Drive!" He pulled open the flap in the back of the driver's cabin. There sat the woman, clutching a badly burned hand and shouting at him to get going.

"The hell?" Petrov didn't argue with her. He slammed the stick into reverse, hit the gas, and blew out of the room and into the snow outside. The wheels spun, snow flew into the air, and he sped off, finally heading back to Amestris.

A/N: Thank you for reading this! Somehow this chapter spiraled into a 3k+ word montrosity. As always, constructive criticism please! If you liked, drop a follow, fave, or review! For all of you who've already done so, here's a cookie.

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