She loved water. She could live in the cool liquid. The water felt soothing against her burning skin. In the open air, she felt as if her skin dried out and she was cracking into a million pieces. She often looked down at her hands and arms to make certain it wasn’t true, but in spite of the smoothness of her skin, she still felt that way. The one environment she found extremely hostile to her was the desert. Whitney had sent her there several times to record its effects on her, and she hadn’t done well. A flaw, he called it.

The soldier was at the top of the tank now, peering down into the water. She knew each tank had soldiers looking into it. If they sent someone down into the water, she might really be in trouble, but it appeared as if the soldier was just going to sit at the edge to ensure no one had gone in and was underwater. Once it was dark, the soldiers should have completed their search and she should be able to slip up to the surface and get air.

Right now she was basking in the fact that the water was helping to control the temperature rising in her from the virus. Whitney had injected her every time she left the compound where she was held, to ensure she would return. She’d always managed to complete her mission in the time frame given to her, so she had no idea how fast-acting the virus was. The water definitely made her feel better, but she didn’t feel good at all. Her muscles ached. Cramped. Never a good thing when trying to be still at the bottom of a water tank with soldiers on the lookout above her.

Night fell rapidly. She knew the guards were still there on the roof and that worried her. She had to be able to climb down the side of the building, and she couldn’t even get out of the tank as long as the guard was above her. She also needed air. She’d risked blowing a few bubbles but that wasn’t going to sustain her much longer. She needed to get to the surface and leave before weakness began to hit. She had been certain the soldier would leave the tank after the first hour, but he seemed determined to hold his position. She was nearly at her max for staying submerged.

Bellisia refused to panic. That way lay disaster. She had to get air and then find a way to slip past the guard so she could climb down the building, get to the van waiting for her and get the antidote. She detached from the wall and began to drift up toward the surface, careful not to disturb the water. Again, she used patience in spite of the urgent demands her lungs were making on her.

After what seemed an eternity, she reached the surface. Tilting her head so only her lips broke the surface, she drew in air. Relief coursed through her. Air had never tasted so good. She hung there, still and part of the water so that even though the guard was looking right at her, he saw nothing but water shimmering.

A flurry of activity drew the guard’s attention and she attached herself to the side of the tank and began to climb up toward the very top. She was only half out of the water when the shouted orders penetrated. They wanted hooks dragged through the containers to make certain no one was hiding in them with air tanks. So many soldiers tromped up onto the roof that she felt the vibrations right through the container. Spotlights went on, illuminating the entire roof and all six containers. Worse, soldiers surrounded each one, and more climbed up to the top to stand on the platforms.

Bellisia sank slowly back into the water, clinging to the wall as she did so, her heart pounding unnaturally. She’d never experienced her heart beating so hard. It felt as if it would come right out of her chest, and she wasn’t really that fearful – yet. Her temperature was climbing at an alarming rate. She was hot and even the cool water couldn’t alleviate the terrible heat rising inside of her. Her skin hurt. Every muscle in her body ached, not just ached but felt twisted into tight knots. She began to shiver, so much so she couldn’t control it. That wasn’t conducive to hiding in a spotlight surrounded by the enemy.

She stayed up near the very top of the tank, just beneath the water line, attached to the wall, and made herself as small and as flat as possible. There was always the possibility that she could die on a mission. That was part of the… adrenaline rush. It was always about pitting her skills against an enemy. If she wasn’t good enough, if she made a mistake, that was on her. But this… Peter Whitney had deliberately injected her with a killer virus in order to ensure she always returned to him. He was willing to risk her dying a painful death to prove his point.

He owned them. All of them. Each and every girl he took out of an orphanage and experimented on. Some died. That didn’t matter to him. None of them mattered to him. Only the science. Only the soldiers he developed piggybacking on the research he’d conducted on the girls. Children with no childhood. No loving parents. She hadn’t understood what that meant until she’d been out in the world and realized the majority of people didn’t live as she did.

All of the girls had discussed trying to break free before Whitney added them to his disgusting program to give him more babies to experiment on. The thought of leaving the only life they’d ever known was terrifying. But this – leaving her to die in a foreign country because she was late through no fault of her own. She had the information Whitney needed, but because he’d insisted on injecting her with a killer virus before she went on her mission, she might never get that information to him. He liked playing God. He was willing to lose one of them in order to scare the others into compliance.

Something hit the water hard, startling her. She nearly jerked off the wall, blinking in protest against the bright lights shining into the tank. Her sanctuary was no longer that. The environment had gone from cool, dark water – a place of safety – to one of overwhelmingly intense brilliant light illuminating the water nearly to the bottom of the tank. A giant hook dragged viciously along the floor, and she shuddered in reaction.

A second hook entered the water with an ominous splash as the first was pulled back up. The next few minutes were a nightmare as the tank was thoroughly searched with hooks along the bottom. Had a diver with scuba gear been hiding there, he would have been torn to pieces.

She let her breath out as they pulled the hooks back up to the top. They would leave soon and she could make the climb out of the tank and across the roof. Already she could tell she was weaker, but she knew she could still climb down the side of the building and get to the van where Whitney’s supersoldiers waited to administer the antidote to the poisonous virus, reducing it to a mere illness instead of something lethal.

The hook plunged back into the water, startling her. She nearly detached from the wall as the iron dragged up the side of the tank while a second hook entered the water. This was… bad. She had nowhere to go. If she moved fast to avoid the hook, she would be spotted. If she didn’t, the hook could tear her apart. Either way, she was dead.

The sound, magnified underwater, was horrendous on her ears. She wanted to cover them against the terrible scraping and grinding as the point of the hook dug into the side of the tank. She watched it come closer and closer as it crawled up from the bottom. The other hook came up almost beside it, covering more territory as they ripped long gouges in the wall.

She tried to time letting go of the wall so neither hook would brush against her body and signal to the men on the other end that there was something other than wall. She pushed off gently and slid between the two chains, trying to swim slowly so that movement wouldn’t catch eyes. She stroked her arms with powerful pulls to take her down, still hugging the wall as best she could below the hooks. If she could just attach herself on the path already taken, she’d have a good chance of riding this latest threat out.