My thoughts are interrupted by Cole. “How’d you do that?” he says.

“Preemptive strike,” I say simply, my voice muffled through my hands.

“No. I mean, where’d you learn to fight like that?” he persists.

“I told you I know how to fight.”

“But where’d you learn it?”

“My father taught me,” I say, opening my hands and raising my head. Tawni is still holding me, and where it had felt good a second earlier, it now feels weird, I think because it is such a public place and Cole is watching. I give her an awkward look and she seems to get the message and releases me, but continues sitting close to me, which is fine.

Cole is looking at me with those strong eyes of his. Clearly he is perplexed by me. Now I feel like the puzzle. But I’m not really. It is simple: my father was taught how to fight by his father, my grandfather, and he taught me. Growing up, he never let me rest on the fact that I am a girl. Not in the world we live in. He said everyone will need to know how to fight eventually given what is coming. I’m not sure what he meant by that.

I was a good student and loved our training sessions together. He was hard on me, but I didn’t mind. I just knew I wanted to spend time with him and it was as good a way as any to do it. I remember the day he told me I was ready. I didn’t understand. He said he had taught me everything I needed to know. I didn’t feel ready.

My father is not a violent man. He told me never to use what he taught me except to defend myself or others. Never be the initiator, never the aggressor. Including my most recent fight in the Pen, I’ve only fought three times in my life, outside of training. I haven’t lost yet, unless you include the skirmish with the man-giant that Cole pulled me out of. But I don’t, that was hardly fair.

Although I had a good teacher in my father, he said I have a natural talent for fighting. I would tell him I got it from him, but he always countered that I inherited my talent from my mom. I never understood that. My mom is the least violent person I know. With the exception of the night she was taken, I have never seen her so much as lift a foot to squash a bug. When I asked her about it, she just shook her head and said, “Your father has a big mouth sometimes, Adele. He’s the fighter, not me.” Like my grandmother, my mom is not a natural liar, so I could tell there was something she was holding back, but I never had a chance to find out what.

Cole looks like he is about to ask me another question about my fighting, but I wave him off with a hand. “I’d really rather not talk about it right now,” I say. I am glad when he doesn’t push it any further.

To his credit, he doesn’t so much as mention fighting the rest of the afternoon, or the evening for that matter. The last day in the Pen seems to sprout wings and fly away. I think it is because I can’t wait to get out of this dump.

Night falls. Not that it makes things look any different. Outside the Pen it is still the dull gray that it always is. Inside the Pen it is still fluorescent white, painfully bright in most areas. Tawni and I walk to our cells for what I hope will be the last time. After a quick and knowing sideways glance, we push through our respective doors. As I close it, I insert the plastic square between the bolt and its hole.

Ten minutes later the speaker announces lights out and I hear the lock click. It sounds different than most nights—not the hollow click announcing my nightly imprisonment, but a duller thwap! that confirms the plastic has done its job.

The waiting is painful—each fifteen-minute interval drags on until I am straining to hear the clap of the guard’s footsteps on the gray-painted stone floor. By the third guard, it feels like an hour has passed since the last guard clipped past my cell. That’s when I start worrying.

At first it is just a nagging voice in my head that says something isn’t right. But soon it becomes a shouting that says that the guard’s patrol pattern has been altered, that someone knows about our attempted breakout, that even now they are handcuffing the wayward guard who took our money. Perhaps it is already past midnight. Perhaps the fence is still charged and ready to shock us into oblivion when we touch it. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I try to think about my family to take my mind off of my nerves. I desperately want to see them again. For the past few months I have done my best to forget them, letting their smiles fade from my memory like a hunting bat drifting into the gloom. Elsey, with her contagious optimism and proper way of speaking. My mom, with the heart of a lion and an abundance of compassion. My dad, the fighter, quick to smile, slow to anger. My rock, my hero.

The fourth guard comes. Eleven o’clock—if the patrol pattern hasn’t changed. My mind is relentless, and soon my heart joins in the fun, hammering in my chest, striving to pound its way through my bones and skin. But I am handling it. Barely.

Until my lungs decide to join the party.

My breaths start coming in ragged heaves, short and choppy, until I am gasping for breath. It is like my whole body—all its parts, internal organs, and nerve endings—decide to mutiny at the exact same time.

That’s when I lose count. I can’t remember if the last guard I heard was the fourth or the fifth. I am thinking fifth, but I can’t be sure. When the seventh—or is it the sixth?—guard goes by, I know I have to play it conservative. This is one time I can’t be late.

So I block out all my kooky, mutinying body parts and start counting. I put every last ounce of concentration and brain power into keeping count, maintaining a steady rhythm, treating the act of counting like it is the most complicated math problem.

Right on six hundred, I pull my door open and step into the dim hallway. Ten seconds pass and Tawni still hasn’t emerged. I think I must be too early. It is probably eleven-forty and the next guard will be coming soon—the guard that should have triggered my counting. But then I have a very bad thought. What if I am too late? What if I missed two guards passing and it is really twelve-ten now? What if Cole and Tawni waited for me, and when I didn’t come, carried on the plan without me?

Tawni’s door creaks open, and like a shadow, she emerges. I take a deep breath and approach her. “You count slow!” I hiss.

She raises her wrist, displaying the digital numbers on a wristwatch. 11:55. “Sorry, I forgot I had this,” she whispers. “I guess you got excited and counted too fast.”

I don’t know why the twelve o’clock guard chooses to come down the hall at that moment. It’s possible he is just bored, choosing to start his circuitous route through the complex a few minutes early to pass the time. Or perhaps Tawni’s watch is slow, as well as my counting. Maybe he is right on time. Whatever the case, all of a sudden he is here and we have nowhere to hide.

When he sees us standing in front of our cells, he stops, looking confused. He rubs his eyes, as if he thinks the shadows are playing tricks on him.

We run.

It doesn’t take him long to realize we are real. He opens fire on us with the big gun he is hefting. Yeah, he actually shoots at the backs of two defenseless teenage girls who are inside a secure facility, presumably for the petty crime of breaking curfew. I don’t know where the Pen hires these psychos from, but I make a mental note to write a letter to the government about them. The same government that abducted my parents. Yeah right, like they are going to listen to me.

At first I don’t realize what is happening. As I flee, I feel a weird rush of air burst past one of my ears, and then see a spark to my right when something glances off the wall. It isn’t until we reach the end of the hall and I see the bullet holes that I know for sure that we are being shot at. I know, it should be obvious, what with the thundering booms from the dude’s rifle, but I have never been shot at before, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to.