Author's Note: Please leave feedback. This is my first multi-chapter piece and I'm feeling that I should not continue because so few people have given their opinions. I realize it started out kind of slow, but it's picking up the pace now. Things are about to get exciting ...

The next interrogation session was relatively tame, no harder than the last one. The "torture" mostly consisted of him rubbing alcohol and iodine into my old wounds as roughly as he could every time I didn't answer a question. It hurt, but it was bearable. Besides, I was glad for the antiseptic. Maybe I'd get a few bandages out of the deal as well. Hey, a girl can dream. Other than that, he was mostly using the small-town police interrogation techniques: wobbly chair, A/C turned down, bright lights that flickered on and off, and, of course, lots of yelling and getting in my personal space. No problem. And he wasn't really very good at it anyway; he'd probably learned most of it from cop shows and the Internet. Under any other circumstances, it would have almost been cute.

They took Hand away as soon as they'd dumped me back in my cell, and I waited, listening. She didn't scream, as she had the first time, but I could hear cruel laughter and whimpering. At least she knew enough not to say anything. It's dangerous, opening your mouth during an interrogation, because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to close it again. Even a scathing insult can too easily turn into locations and contacts and codes. I'd seen it happen once before, on a mission in Zurich. My partner had been a rookie who'd seen too many James Bond movies. Tried to cover up the fact that he was quaking in his boots by talking back to the guys interrogating him. And then talking back had just become talking, and talking had become talking about the mission, and the other agents involved, and what we all planned to do. I'd been yelling at him the whole time to stop, to keep his mouth shut, that he was going to get everyone else killed, but anytime he stopped talking, they would wave a needle or a jumper cable in his face, and he'd start spilling his guts again. That whole incident was tucked away with several others in a mental file folder labeled "unmitigated disasters." I had a feeling that I'd be adding this mission to that file soon enough.

Hours later, they brought Hand back, tossing her unceremoniously onto the concrete floor. She was bleeding; some of her old wounds had opened up, and a dark yellow bruise was beginning to form on her cheek. The door slammed shut behind her with a dull clunk. She lay there for a minute, stunned. Then we heard hurried footsteps approaching our cell. I tensed. No. They couldn't be coming for me again, not this soon. But the footsteps only pushed a water bottle and two granola bars through the slot in the door and left. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Mentally, I chastised myself for it. Since when was I scared of some loser racketeer and his penny-ante "torture"?

"Dinner is served," Hand said sarcastically, pushing herself upright and unwrapping one of the bars.

"Wait!" I shouted. Hadn't this woman had any training? Or read your basic spy novel for that matter? "It could be drugged. The water too. Check it for puncture marks and take a very small bite, then wait ten minutes to see if you start feeling sick."

"Are you kidding? I'm starving."

"You can hold out another ten minutes," I said, trying and failing to keep the hard edge out of my voice.

"Fine, Agent Bitch," she retorted, taking a nibble of the granola bar. I grabbed the water bottle before she could and checked the seal, which was still intact, then examined it for needle marks. Finding none, I took a small sip and screwed the cap back on before I could guzzle the whole thing. Between blood loss and not having had any fluids all day, I was severely dehydrated.

"Has it been ten minutes yet?" Hand asked, two minutes later.

"Two."

After another four minutes, Hand said, "Screw it." Before I could stop her, she'd eaten the rest of the granola bar and drunk half the water.

"Hey!" I snatched the water bottle from her hand, spilling some of it in the process. Damn. "Do you have any idea what's at stake here? If there's sodium thiopental in that, you'll be spilling your guts to them in thirty seconds. You're putting every operation you've ever been a part of in danger. Agents could die because you couldn't wait five minutes to eat." This was definitely going in the unmitigated disasters file.

"Not all of us can be as tough as the Cavalry, May," she said viciously.

I shot to my feet, ignoring the head rush. "Don't you ever call me that!" I yelled. "If that word ever leaves your mouth again, so help me, I will save them the trouble of killing you!"

She looked up at me, startled by my outburst, but not chastened. "Bit sensitive, are we?"

"About that, yes," I said, trying and failing to keep the edge out of my voice. I counted to ten in Japanese, Swahili, and my native Mandarin. I didn't need more escalations.

"Well, too bad," she retorted. Then, looking down at her leg, "Damn it, why won't this stop bleeding?" She pressed her hand over a particular deep and nasty-looking cut on her calf.

"Here." I pulled off a scrap of my pants that was hanging on by a thread anyway. Soaked in isopropyl from my interrogation earlier, it was the closest thing we had to a sterile dressing. Cautiously, as though approaching a wounded animal, I walked over to Hand.

"Let me see," I said gently, gesturing to the cut. She removed her hand and allowed me to apply the makeshift bandage to the wound, hissing in pain as I did so. "Just keep the pressure on it."

"Thank you," she said, after a minute. I nodded shortly. Then she asked, "How are you so on top of all this?"

"I've had a little experience," I told her slowly. "Though since this is your first time in enemy hands, I'd recommend you just fall back on your resistance training." She gave me a blank look, and a horrible thought occurred to me. "You have had resistance training, haven't you?"

"…some," she replied hesitantly.

"How much is some?"

"More than none. A little."

I bit my lip and thought back to the curriculum at the Academy of Operations. She'd have had basic SERE courses, but unless you go into either black ops or field ops, you don't need to take any other classes.

"The in and out of it is don't tell them anything," I said, giving her the Cliff's notes. "Don't even open your mouth. Once you start talking, you won't be able to stop. Especially after it gets physical. And when that happens, just …" Here I didn't know what to say. Basic interrogation resistance classes were mostly lecture; they never did tap-outs or simulations. She had no framework, nothing to build on. It was a miracle she'd held out this long. "Try to think about something nice to distract yourself, like your home or your family or a pet or just your favorite ice cream," I said. It sounded lame, but it was all I could think of.

Hand sat there, looking slightly stricken. Her eyes were unfocused. "Rocky Road," she said quietly.

"Huh?"

"My favorite ice cream. Rocky Road. What's yours?"

I furrowed my brow. The new Melinda didn't eat ice cream, or any sort of "fun" food, for that matter. I just went with the old Melinda's favorite, "Moose Tracks."

"Moose Tracks?" she asked, her eyes focusing. "There's seriously an ice cream called Moose Tracks? I've never heard of it."

"Oh, it's delicious," I said, remembering the old Melinda's mother taking her to Ben and Jerry's after getting shots at the doctor's office. "It's vanilla ice cream with crushed peanut butter cups and fudge in it."

"Wow. First thing I'm going to do after we get out of here is try some." Her face sobered, and she looked me right in the eye. "We are going to get out of here, aren't we?"

"Of course," I replied, though I had my doubts, especially if the food and water did turn out to be drugged. Although, my ten minutes had elapsed, and Hand wasn't showing any negative symptoms from the entire bar she'd eaten. Figuring it was safe, I picked up the other bar and cautiously unwrapped it. It was practically sawdust, and it tasted good, so good. The water was warm and stale and the best I'd ever had. I closed my eyes in pleasure.

Not feeling the need to speak after that, I stared at the slot in the door, idly wondering if my cat could fit through it. She was a feisty little bastard; I'd give her that, but even she had her limits. Still, I'd once found her wedged between the stove and the refrigerator in my kitchen. What she was doing there, I will never know.

"We're probably not going to get fed again, you know," Hand told me.

"I know that."

"Then why are you staring at the door?"

"Just trying to figure out if Parachute could fit through the slot," I said.

"Who's Parachute?"

"My cat." Though lately, she'd been more the neighbor's kid's cat, what with all the time I spent in the field.

She raised an eyebrow. "You have a cat?"

"Yeah. What, you have me figured for a dog person?"

"No, I just … well, you're a bit of a legend these days." She shifted uncomfortably and ran a hand through her matted hair.

"And legends can't have cats." I really hoped this conversation wasn't going where I thought it was going.

"That's not what I meant."

"I don't care what you meant," I said. "This isn't productive. We need to figure out how to get out of here." It was an abrupt segue, but then, I'm an abrupt person.

"We could ambush the guards when they come by," she suggested. "Between the two of us, we could probably take them."

I highly doubted it. We were underfed and dehydrated, and they had about a hundred pounds on each of us. We would have to get lucky, and I don't like relying on luck. Of course, if we had some sort of weapon … an idea began coming together in my mind. It wouldn't be easy, and in all fairness it was only half an idea at this point, but it was something.

"Care to share with the rest of the class?" Victoria asked. I looked up. I really didn't want to tell her until I had more than half an idea, but I had the feeling that if I didn't say anything, she'd just keep talking until Judgment Day.

"We need a weapon," I said.

"Well, in case you missed it, the guards don't carry any," Hand pointed out. "Probably so we can't steal them."

"He does," I stated. We both knew who I meant. While we weren't watching, even saying his name had become taboo.

Victoria looked down at her bloody, shredded sleeve, no doubt shuddering at the memory of what had done that to her. "So we steal one of his …"

I nodded. "I'll do it. Now shut up and let me think." Hand obediently shut her trap, though I had my doubts about how long it would stay shut.

Normally I'm less of a planner and more of a doer, but this situation required forethought, especially since I had a junior agent tagging along. I started going through scenarios, just spitballing, playing out the permutations.

There were a lot of permutations.

Most of them involved us getting killed.

The ones that didn't usually involved even worse outcomes.

Still, thinking back to Zurich and Sarajevo, I couldn't just wait around and do nothing. The first thing any SERE course teaches you is that if you're going to make your move, you have to make it soon, before you're incapacitated by starvation or injuries. We were already at less than a hundred per cent; it had been sloppy of me to delay even this long. Waiting for an opportunity to fall into your lap is a rookie mistake.

Stealth wasn't an option; there were too many unknowns. We were going to have to fight our way out. Distasteful as I find brute force, I knew it was the only option. Next time they interrogated me, I would steal a weapon, kill Bodho and his guards, take their keys, and free Hand. It wasn't too far from the interrogation room to our cell, so I could probably get to her before someone sounded the alarm. But what then? I briefly considered taking his blowtorch and trying to get out the window in the cell, but it was too narrow even for my slender frame. That left the long way. We were definitely underground, so we were going to have to find a way to the surface. We could disable or kill anyone we ran into along the way, then steal a truck or whatever kind of vehicle we could find, and make our way back to the mobile base.

But there were so many ways for it to go wrong, and I couldn't possibly plan for all of them. Even if I were on my own, it would be difficult. With Hand tagging along, it would be next to impossible.

But we had to try.