When the helicopter landed at the fortress, Dumb Vinci was waiting.

“Is it done?”

She nodded.

Dumb Vinci grinned, revealing a mouth full of broken and missing teeth. “Good. I’ll tell Jigsaw. Let’s get inside.”

She and Dumb Vinci rushed through the snow to the fortress. The wind was cold and vicious. It bit at her bare skin and she nearly knocked the goon down to get inside. Once there she excused herself and raced down the hallway to Jigsaw’s enormous lab. The door was locked so she hurried up the flight of stairs and into the observation room that held his jigsaw puzzle pieces. Looking through the window to the lab below, she saw the satellite dish, still aimed toward the sky. It was attached to solar panels resting on short tables scattered about the room. Clearly, Dr. Badawi had been smarter than Dr. Lunich and had given Jigsaw instructions on how to build her supercharged power source.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” a voice said from behind her. She spun around to find Jigsaw, Dumb Vinci, and twenty hulking goons.

“Yes,” she said. “Amazing.”

Jigsaw smiled. “Putting the world back together takes some very beautiful and powerful tools, Mindy. My machine is perfect in both form and function, and I owe its existence in no small part to you. If it wasn’t for your hard work, I could not have assembled the minds and tools to put all this together. The new world owes you a major debt.”

“So you’re saying I’m to blame for all the people you are going to kill,” the Hyena said.

“Oh, you say it like it’s a bad thing. Mindy, don’t think of it as destroying the world. Think of it as putting it back together. It’s broken and we’re going to glue the pieces back together. In the beginning of our arrangement all I had was my satellite dish. I could use it to move major islands around, but I had no control. I might latch on to Greenland. I might hit the Galapagos. It was very random. Then you brought me Dr. Lunich and his amazing machine. The tractor beam is a marvel, and with a little adaptation I supersized it so that it now links to my satellite dish. This allows me to drag an entire continent wherever I want it. For years all my work seemed hopeless. How can you fix the entire world if you can’t power the machine that puts it all together? That’s when I read about the marvelous Dr. Badawi’s solar panels. Now I have everything I need to put my jigsaw puzzle together.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” the Hyena said. “I never wanted to be a mass murderer.”

“Harsh!” Dr. Jigsaw cried. His feelings seemed to be hurt.

“I was hoping you would want to witness it, but I guess I was wrong.”

The goons cracked their knuckles and grinned eagerly.

“Getting rid of me is not going to be as easy as it looks.”

Unfortunately, it was. The Hyena was completely humiliated as the goons hoisted her down the hall. They carried her into a strange, painfully cold room. It had no floor other than the sheet of ice the fortress was built upon. In the center of the ice was a hole big enough for a large man to slide through into the water below.

“This is my little fishing hole,” Jigsaw said. “I come in here to think, and every once in a while I cast a line and do some fishing. I don’t catch many fish, though. Actually, none. The water is deadly cold—about twenty degrees below zero. The average fish can’t live in such temperatures. In fact, the average man can survive only about ten minutes in this water until his lungs begin to freeze and oxygen can no longer move through them. I suppose a young girl will last considerably less time. Oh, Mindy, I had such high hopes for you. I was going to give you a small part of Australia to rule as your kingdom.”

“That’s what they all say,” the Hyena said.

“Drop her in.”

The goons tossed her into the hole and she slipped under the water. She felt as if a million tiny ice daggers were ripping her flesh to shreds, and it took all of her concentration just to force herself back to the surface. Once she could breathe again, she gasped and shivered.

“Oh, look, we caught one,” Jigsaw said. “Oh, I think she’s too small. Toss her back.”

One of the goons hoisted a block of ice off the ground. It was the exact same shape as the hole. He dropped it down just as the Hyena filled her lungs and forced herself under the water.

She reached up and pounded on the ice, but it was too thick to crack. In a panic, she swam away. She had no idea in which direction she was going, but she knew that moving would keep her alive a little longer. With each stroke she felt the ice above her for openings and looked ahead for any sign of light. Maybe if she swam out from under the fortress, she’d find thinner ice. But her fingers and toes were already feeling numb, and her arms and legs were getting heavy.

She continued her frantic swim until she saw a shimmering light above. She pounded on the ice with her fist, but it had no effect. What could she do? Then it dawned on her. She reached down, unzipped one of her new black boots, and pulled it off her foot. She thrust the sharp heel into the ice. A chunk drifted down to the abyss below. She struck again in the same place. Another chunk, this one much bigger, floated past her face. She hit the ice with all her strength again and again. She was wondering how much longer she could keep going when the last strike caused a crack. She pushed with every ounce of strength and found herself bobbing to the surface. Gasping, she dragged herself out of the water and fell into a coughing fit.

She had to get warm! She got to her feet and spotted the empty black helicopter. Hobbling toward it with her boot in her hand, she climbed inside and started the engines. A blast of warm air filled the cabin as she put on the headset and flipped on the propellers. She found a blanket behind the pilot’s seat and wrapped herself in it. Then she eased the throttle back and the chopper was in the air.

“This little fish got away, Jigsaw,” the Hyena said to herself.

She looked down at the boot in her hand. Its heel was gone, probably stuck back in the broken sheet of ice that had almost been her coffin. She wondered if anyone would notice if she started killing people while wearing sneakers.

Agent Brand paced the room. His jaw was set like stone and his eyes were flashing. Jackson could tell his efforts to take a more “positive tone” had come to a screeching halt. Ms. Holiday watched him with growing anxiety.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We had an unforeseen incident,” Ruby answered.

“You burned Dr. Munoz’s house to the ground on his daughter’s birthday,” Brand said.

“Actually, the fire was started by the robots,” Matilda said.

“Robots shaped like piñatas,” Flinch said.

“OK, see, they were taken by surprise,” Ms. Holiday said.

“On the bright side, Jackson saved his life,” Duncan said.

Jackson beamed with pride. “The Hyena showed up,” Jackson said. “It was the same girl who snatched Dr. Badawi in Cairo.”

“So, Jackson, how did you get close enough to see this Hyena?” Ms. Holiday said. Brand was still pacing. Jackson smiled. “I was protecting Munoz.”

“You were told to observe!” Brand shouted.

Flinch cleared his throat and gave a twist to the knob on his harness. “I told him to stay with the doctor.”

“And who told you to take him to see the doctor?”

Ruby stood up. “I did.”

“And look what happened,” Brand said as he slammed his cane on the desk.

Heathcliff shook his head in disgust. “There’s no one to blame but Braceface. He made a tremendous amount of mistakes and he didn’t follow orders. He’s not one of us. He’s never going to be one of us.”