A.N.— Here's chapter 16! I hope you enjoy! :D

Chapter 16: Free Shadows

Pedro fishes through his backpack quietly. He finds a paperclip and unbends it before looking at the shape of the keyhole and trying to recreate the shape with the little metal piece. Then he sticks it in the lock and tries to turn it. "Pescado*..." Pedro mutters as the clip is too flimsy and doesn't unlock the cuffs. He then goes back to his bag and gets out one of Adriana's knives.

"Now, I've heard of criminals breaking out of their cells like this...Let's see how easy it is with a cuff…" He whispers and jams the tip of the blade into the lock. He wiggles the knife some but to no avail. "Apparently harder than it sounds, gran…" He sighs and puts the knife away.

Pedro then looks at his gun thoughtfully and then at the cuffs and Adriana. "Maybe I could...Nah…" He says and shakes his head. "It would be too loud...Unless of course I...Yes! That could work!" He says and nods with a wide smile. "Dangerous, but it probably would work!" Pedro then gets out a set of noise canceling headphones from his backpack as he thinks he so could have used these during all of Adriana's complaining. Carefully, Pedro puts the headphones over Adriana's earholes.

"Mafananah…" Adriana murmurs incoherently in her sleep and turns her head a little. Pedro gives a small sigh in relief as he sees that she is still sleeping. He then takes out and loads his small gun.

"Well, guess it'll have to work the first try…" He mumbles as he sees that this is his last bullet. Pedro then holds the gun in his right flipper and aims it at the center of the lock of the cuff. 'Where's Bobby when you need him?' He thinks with wry amusement. 'Though, he would completely disagree with what I'm doing now anyhow...' He then takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger. Pedro afterwards looks nervously around for any sign of predators he might have attracted with the gunshot. So far he luckily sees none. He then looks at the still amazingly asleep Adriana and smiles some.

Pedro gently removes the cuffs from both of their flippers and then gently rubs his left flipper. He puts the now worthless cuffs to the side next to Adriana and gets out the map and Adriana's knives. He marks exactly where they are on the map with a purple pen and outlines the best route through and out of the rainforest towards Spain, since that is where he guesses she wants to go back to. He jots a quick note on the corner of the map explaining exactly what the marks mean and rolls it back up. He lays this and all but one of the knives beside Adriana, too. He has decided that since he is now weaponless from using his last bullet on the cuffs, that he will 'borrow' one of Adriana's many knives for just in case purposes.

He then takes out the pretty, peach-colored blossom from a pocket of the backpack. He looks at Adriana and carefully takes the headphones back off of her. He then places the flower gently in her feathers with a smile. "I'm going to miss you…" He whispers. "As irritating and psychopathic as you are...I'm going to miss you…" Pedro then gently kisses her cheek and gets up. He leaves everything but his computer, keys, phone, borrowed knife, and empty gun beside Adriana. With one last look back at her sleeping form, Pedro starts sliding in the dark, without a flashlight or map, towards Base R.

Adriana stretches a bit with her eyes still closed and yawns before waking up. She looks over to where Pedro ought to be and is surprised to not see him. "Wah?!" She exclaims and looks around. She sees that she is able to move both of her flippers now without the hindering resistance of a flipper-cuff. "Wah?" She repeats. "Pedrrrrro?" She says softer, almost silently. She looks around and sees the cuffs with the hole through the lock, picks them up softly, and looks at them.

"He freed me?" She whispers, shocked. "He's not turning me in?" She looks at the cuffs and then sees her knives all laid neatly out beside the backpack with the rolled up map. Gently, she picks up the map that she has been thinking of stealing and unrolls it. "He even marked the quickest and safest way back to Spain…" Adriana then picks up the backpack. It still has some food and water rations…

And Pedro's wallet.

She smirks a little and shakes her head a little. "Well...I bet he'll be missing this…" She says with a small laugh. "And maybe a some cash from his bank accounts, too...Ha!" She then takes his driver's license out of the wallet and looks at it. "Pedro Fernandez Juarez Mateo...Wow at the z's." She mutters. She now looks curiously at the pictures in the wallet. "That dude and chick from the boat…" She goes to the next picture. "No sé* who that girl is...Does he actually have a noiva*? I thought he was single…" She frowns some and looks at this picture a little longer before flipping to the last picture. "And again, I don't know who this guy is...Though he really makes Pedrrrrrro look like a shrimp, size wise."

Adriana now looks through the other things of the wallet. She finds a security clearance card for penguin military bases, a few boring gift cards, and a couple hundred bucks worth of different currencies. She takes out the cash and security clearance card with a smirk. "Since, apparently he doesn't need any of this anymore…" She puts the card and cash away with her own money and drops the wallet back into the backpack. She then picks up her knives from the ground and put them away in their assorted holsters. "Well, darn it!" She mutters as she sees that her favorite knife is missing. "That irritating cop! He stole my knife!" She frowns as she stands up. "I'm sooooo going to have to go get that back from him. That's just uncool…" She growls and shakes her head, as she does this, the flower that Pedro had placed in her feathers falls out and lands on the ground by her feet. She stops and looks at it for a moment.

Then, she picks it softly up and sits back down again. "Una flor*?" She mumbles and looks it over with a small smile and starts picking petals off of it. "Él ama me.*..Él no me ama*…" She mutters as she picks the petals and lets them drop to the forest floor one by one. "Él ama me…" She whispers with a small smile as the last petal is plucked from the flower. She just looks at this last petal for a few minutes before softly shaking her head with a small and silent sigh and dropping the rest of the flower and standing up. She puts the backpack over her shoulder and starts towards the address on Pedro's license.

Pedro soon slides up to Base R and reaches behind him for his wallet to pull out his clearence card, but soon discovers that he has left his wallet with the backpack. "Oh Cuzco...That's not bueno…" He mutters, shocked and rubs his flipper over his face with a groan. "That means that she has my whole freaking wallet...Ugh…" He then takes out his phone with a grimace. 'I hope Bobby's in today...' He thinks as he dials his friend's number. It is not long until Bob answers.

"Bob Garrison." Bob answers his cell as he stands by his locker.

"Bobby, it's Ro, I, ehm, need you to let me into the base…" Pedro says quickly and slightly embarrassed.

Bob frowns a bit. "Why may I ask, Ro?" He asks.

"Well…" Pedro says. "I lost my clearance card and my wallet…"

"How the grilled kipper did you manage that, Ro?!" Bob exclaims, amazed that his friend could have done something so stupid as lose his wallet.

"I don't know!" He lies in reply, knowing perfectly well how he had managed to lose and leave the wallet. His head had been in the clouds, not in what he was doing like it ought to have been. "Look, Bobby, I've had a bad day and I already know it's just going to get worse…" He says quieter into the cell phone. "Can you, please, just let me into the base?"

Bob looks at his phone thoughtfully and nods some. "Sure, pal, I'll be there in just a moment…" He says and then hangs up. He shuts his locker and slides over to the base door and opens it for Pedro. "Where's your prisoner? That Shadow Sombrero or whoever?" He asks.

"La Sombra you mean?"

"Yeah, him." Bob asks, seriously.

"Gone." Pedro says. "He knocked me out, picked the lock, and escaped." He lies and feels really guilty about lying to his best friend.

"Really?" Bob says, his eyes narrowing as he can tell by Pedro's face that he is lying. He crosses his flippers and looks at him.

Pedro is silent for a moment and then looks at Bob. "I'll tell you about it at the bar later, Bobby…" He says with a sigh, looking down again. "I first need to go tell Commander Harold that La Sombra got away…" He then waddles past Bob and composes himself before stopping and knocking at his boss's office door. 'And hope I don't get fired...' He silently adds to himself.

Translations:

*Pescado — fish

*No sé — I don't know

*Novia — girlfriend

*Una flor — a flower

*Él ama me — he loves me

*Él no me ama — he loves me not