As stated previously, Roger had a Mara unit stationed outside the door. The moment Sarah burst out of her cell, the woman grabbed the child by one arm, dragging her back to her little prison.

Sarah spun around and tore a square of flesh off that synthetic limb, revealing metal, wires, circuitry and flashing diodes.

"Stop!" the robot cried. "What are you doing!"

Sarah ignored her, ripping a microchip from a circuit board, replacing it with some other rough hewn device.

The moment the device clicked into the socket, Mara's hand let go, and Sarah escaped.

The android tried to remove the object, but doing so created a feedback loop. When she touched her fingers to the object, an expression of confusion crossed her features, and she fell backwards on the floor like a toppled department store mannequin.

Sarah shut and locked her cell behind her, with the prone form of Mr. Shattuck still inside.

As I stared at the frozen android on the floor, it occurred to me that Sarah had been planning this for weeks. Sometime before Hissandra's attack, she had dismantled a game controller, then complained about it not working as she hid the parts. Roger hadn't thought twice about replacing it.

Conveniently for Sarah, he also lost video of these mischievous activities.

Equally convenient: Her access to the educational database happened to be unrestricted, so much that I would often catch her studying diagrams of androids, or maps of the base and surrounding countryside.

The fact that I got so much attention from the researchers, and she so little, gave Sarah a considerable amount of free time, time in which to build her device.

And now she was gone.

I stared at the body locked in the cell next to me.

At first, I thought Roger was dead. But then he coughed several times and curled up in a ball. "They just had to put in a flu bug."

Putting his weight on the glass wall, Roger staggered to his feet, making a call on his phone. "Camestres and Datisi, come catch your brat. She's gotten out."

He pressed his fists against the glass, fogging it up as he glared at me. "Bet your brain scans look pretty fucking interesting right now." Roger shivered. "Probably stumbled across your (God condemned) humor lobes."

He sneezed, wiped his runny nose. "How long?"

I just stared, not comprehending.

"How long!" he yelled.

"How long what?"

He gave me a tired look, like I knew exactly what he meant, and was playing dumb. "How long have you been planning this little escape of yours? How long have you been distracting us from your little friend?"

"I don't know. You're the one with the camera. You tell me."

"Still. You must have helped her plan the whole thing."

I shook my head. "If she had any plans, she didn't tell me about them."

"Sure," he said with heavy skepticism. "She figured all that stuff out on her own, and you weren't using telepathy at all."

"As your associate said, `Telepathy is pseudoscience.' I can only assure you I had nothing to do with her plan. You might not believe it, Mr. Shattuck, but my Lord teaches me to love my enemy. In fact, the book of Romans—"

"Shut up. I don't want to hear that bullshit. Your friend gave me the (God cursed) AIDS virus. A fucking incurable disease! Who the fuck injects someone with an incurable disease!"

No words needed to be said in response. I communicated my answer with just a look.

He grabbed a notebook from the girl's cot, slapping it against the glass for me to see. "And what the hell is this!"

I squinted at the paper. Just a single line, written in our new Ss'sik'chtokiwij script: `So long, Paul. Let me know when you get tired of those chains. Hos. 4:6.'

"What's it say?"

I didn't answer quick enough, so Roger shouted the question.

I cleared my throat. "All it says is goodbye, and I'm a fool for not joining her."

Roger crumpled the note and threw it away. "Where's she going?"

I didn't answer, so he beat on the wall with his fist. "Where!"

"I wish I knew. It's not safe out there."

Humorless laugh. "Is that a fact."

I didn't think it worthwhile to answer.

Roger let his arms drop to his sides, slumping his shoulder against a wall.

He turned his back to me and slid to the floor, sobbing softly. "God. I always knew I'd die sometime, but never in a million years would I have guessed it would be like this!"

I kept quiet. With these violent mood swings, I couldn't be sure when he'd stop being maudlin.

Roger let out a bitter laugh. "You know, I always loved E.T. I know, it's total bullshit, right? But the idea! The idea of hanging out with a real life living breathing alien!"

He stretched out his legs, taking on the posture of a seated rag doll, head downcast. "That's really why I came out here. Sure, the pay is nice, probably better when I get back to earth, but the possibility of encountering a real live alien intelligence! That's what I really lived for."

He sighed. "I wanted something different. Extraterrestrial life should show us that intelligent life is more common than we think, that it can appear anywhere in the galaxy. If the alien culture has a language, and a philosophy, it should show that mythologies, like Christianity, are constructs, evolving to sophisticated forms out of baser aboriginal beliefs."

"Sorry to disappoint you." Then, quoting C.S. Lewis, I added, "Christianity is the only mythology that is actually true."

"What did you believe before someone proselytized you?"

I shrugged. "`Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die.' And by `eat', I mean human flesh."

That didn't seem to surprise him one bit. "What happens when you run out of people?"

"I do quite fine with hamburger and synthetic bacon."

Roger broke into a coughing fit. "What did they put in this shit? T.B.?"

He hit himself in the head. "God, I'm such an idiot! I let her study blueprints and everything! Right under my fucking nose!"

Roger swore and banged his fist on the wall.

He sighed, knocked his head against the glass a few times, let out a barking laugh. "Maybe there is a God. Maybe all of this is like the ultimate practical joke. He's up in heaven right now, getting His jollies at my expense."

I opened my mouth to protest, but at that precise moment, a short labcoated figure approached the cell. "Why Mr. Shattuck! What ever are you doing in there?"

"I'm in quarantine, all right? The little bitch shot me with Super AIDS and ran off!"

Craig chuckled. "You are aware that AIDS can only be transmitted via the transfer of bodily fluids?"

"Then by all means come in, you smug son of a bitch," Roger growled. "I think if I time it right, I can spit in your mouth."

"You seem bitter, Mr. Shattuck."

"I've just contracted a fatal immunodisease, so if you're looking for a happy song and dance routine, you can go fuck yourself."

Craig opened the cell door. "We're still searching for the girl. Whenever you're finished moaning, you can get up off the floor and come help."

Roger got up off the floor all right, but his first act as a free man: Punch Craig in the face.

"Better?" Craig groaned as he held his bloody nose.

"Much, thank you. (Asshole)."

The two exited the prison, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Unlike Saint Paul, I had no one to write to from my prison. I knitted a comforter.

Later, when the two briefly returned from a fruitless search, I got fed. Craig (albeit with a nosebleed) showed me Schindler's List, to study my brain activity.

During their subsequent search attempts, I unraveled the mystery of the Rubik's Cube, an electronic game called Lights Out, and I studied a child's earth geography modules.

At the end of the day, Roger leaned against my cell door. "It's all a big joke, isn't it?"

I stared, uncertain how to respond.

"Don't answer that."

He walked away.

I didn't see Roger again until the fifth day of the following week.

By then, the man looked miserable. Bloodshot eyes, pale skin, perpetual trembling shivers requiring the use of a heavy mantle of blankets.

"I know it allegedly stimulates appetite," Craig said as the two entered my jail. "But cannabis is on the horticulture banned list. The mandatory health screening is supposed to weed out all contagious diseases before they reach the colony so we can avoid desperate explorations in expensive or questionable medical therapies."

"Questionable!" Roger laughed. "I can show you at least a dozen major hospitals that have successfully employed the use of medical marijuana to treat cancer and AIDS patients, and paperwork documenting the drug's positive effects in thousands of test subjects."

"Yes, yes. Very convincing, but it's out of my hands. Take it up with Weyland Yutani."

Sighing, the heavily bundled figure approached my cell. "Ernie, I think you, of all...things, will find this story particularly interesting. After all, it is, how we say, biblical. You see, back in bible times somewhere, ancient Jerusalem was laid siege by some army or another, Persians, or Greeks, or Romans, something like that.

"Anyway, the invading force surrounded the city, and just camped out there for, I don't know, something like an entire month. They blocked the roads, pretty much choked all their food supply avenues, basically making it impossible for them to feed themselves. After awhile, the people inside began to starve. They got so hungry that they cooked and ate their own children."

"That's horrible! Why are you telling me this?"

"Your little friend is still hiding away somewhere in our air system. I wonder what she's going to eat once we close off her food supply routes?"

"I don't know. Are you trying to threaten me?"

He frowned. "That depends. Are you going to help us capture the girl, or not?"

"What do you want from me? I don't know where she is, and I can't leave my cell. You can threaten all you want, but it's not going to make me know something I don't."

Roger sighed and shook his head. "No way. Unh-uh. There's no way in hell I'm opening that cell."

Craig stepped into the room, speaking to Roger in a low mutter. "There may be a slight hiccup in this plan of yours."

Anger edged into Roger's voice. "What kind of hiccup?"

"This Sarah clone...her special enhancement is a highly developed immune system. Think about how vast and exotic that makes her menu."

Whispering a prayer for God to condemn `it,' Roger threw down his blankets, opening the door to my cell.

Resting peacefully on the floor, I had not been prepared to receive a swift kick to the head.

"Roger!" Craig scolded. "What the devil—"

"I'm testing his pain centers! "I hope you're getting all this!" Roger punched me in the face.

"I forgive you, my brother."

"Oh yeah?" He hit me again, and again. "How about this? You like this? I'll give you another! You bullshit alien phony! Fucking human in an alien body! Go back to the indigenous culture you're supposed to have!"

He struck me until pain registered beneath my exoskeleton, and he stood hunched over, gasping and panting with his palms on his knees. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Here I am, beating the shit out of you, and you're not raising a damn finger to stop me!"

I answered, "I have not yet begun to fight."