Within only a few minutes, Officer Heynes and Enez were on the prison floor of the building, with Enez being escorted to what would be her prison cell for maybe half an hour at most. Now that it occurred to her, she hadn’t realized to ask the officer how long her prison sentence was supposed to be. Six months? Six years? Could have been anywhere between. And now would be an awkward time to ask for that clarification.

The two of them came up to what amounted to a re-ception desk, with a thoroughly bored-looking guard sitting be-hind it. But he seemed to light up considerably upon laying his eyes on Enez. “Quite a catch you’re bringing in today, Mister Heynes,” he blurted out.

Enez’s eyes widened. “Excuse you,” she hollered. “That is very inappropriate coming from a prison guard.”

The guard didn’t seem interested in acknowledging her comment or apologizing. “Welcome to the real world, honey,” he muttered in response.

“Who’s your boss? I wanna have a chat with him before I get locked in.”

“’Fraid you’re out of luck. He’s on vacation.”

“Then give me his phone number.”

“Alright, let’s calm down,” Officer Heynes butted in. As much as she hated it, Enez had to admit he had a point. No use causing a scene here. She let her gaze drift to the floor and sighed in frustration.

The guard was more composed in his reaction, as if he was used to getting away with being a sexist pig. He continued in an official-sounding tone: “Well, anyway, case number?”

Officer Heynes recited it like a machine. “JH-912893.”

The guard tapped on a holographic keyboard for a mo-ment, evidently looking for the information in question, then spoke when he found it. “Ah, yep, there it is. Enez Harady, 23 years old, charged with forgery, sabotage and playing assistant in a murder. Warranted for arrest.” He looked Enez over, as if appraising her, then asked Officer Heynes: “You good with let-ting me escort her to her cell?”

Yeah, right. I’m not going anywhere with you, asshole.

“Probably best if I take her.” A point that Enez could not argue against.

Neither could the guard, judging by how he simply put his hands up in the air and then motioned for Officer Heynes to go ahead and escort Enez into her cell. The handcuffs fell off Enez’s wrist as she stepped into her cubicle.

Before locking Enez in her cell, he muttered a set of in-structions to her: “Don’t start moving as soon as I lock the door. Give me at least ten minutes to get my own gears turning. Once you’re out, head for the emergency exit and take the stairs down to ground floor.”

Enez nodded and recited: “Ten minutes, emergency exit, ground floor. Got it.”

Producing a confirmatory nod of his own, Officer Heynes – or Josh, now that Enez remembered his first name – locked the cell door and said: “Good luck.”

“Likewise,” she replied as the officer took his leave.

She scanned every inch of the prison cell with her eyes, taking account of the furniture and tiniest details therein, anything that would help her break out and put her part of the plan in motion. She had plenty of time to figure it out.

Her eyes happened upon a security camera in the corner. She smiled and waved to it. For a second, she wondered if she could climb up and rip it off the wall, but the thing was too high for her to reach it even if she jumped. And the dull, white walls had no convenient crevices to use as handholds.

She studied the lock for a moment, then moved on to study the bed. It looked old-fashioned with its metallic tube framing, but that was where the impression of antiquity stopped – it had no rust on it. She crouched down and looked at the legs, gripping one with her hand and jiggling it ever so slightly to find out if the bed was bolted down to the floor. The way the bed moved and creaked with her hand movements told her it wasn’t. She was starting to come up with an idea.

She looked at her other hand – her cybernetic hand. Yeah. That’s going to work. Just need to wait for Josh. Is it okay to call him by his first name?

She heard foosteps in the corridor. She quickly stood back up and put her hands behind her back, doing her best to look inconspicuous as a guard – a different one – came up to her cell. The guard stared at her for a moment, grunting and returning to his position shortly.

Enez sat down on the bed for what she figured was about ten minutes, then stood up again and steeled her nerves. It was time to work her magic. She crouched down by the bed and grabbed one of its legs, hoping that whoever was in charge of keeping an eye on the camera feeds had fallen asleep.

She lifted the bed leg and placed her other hand under it. Can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s okay, though. It’s a cybernetic finger. Breaking it off isn’t going to hurt.

Convincing herself so didn’t ease the pain as she slammed the bed leg down and broke one of her cybernetic fingers off. But she managed to keep herself from screaming.

Then she moved over to the lock, peeling off a piece of the shielding of the detached finger and using it as an impro-vised screwdriver with which she unscrewed the PCB cover. For what’s supposed to be a highly guarded, high-tech prison, these locks sure are easy to fiddle with.

She heard footsteps again. Guards coming over to check on her, no doubt. If she wanted to get out, she needed to do it fast. Panic slowly took over as she did her best to peel off some of the wiring in the broken-off finger. She quickly concluded she didn’t have enough time.

With a hasty motion, she smacked the exposed ends of the electrical cables in her severed finger into the main PCB of the lock. To her surprise, it worked. The lock shut down with a hiss, emitting a puff of smoke from the short-circuited PCB and letting the prison cell door swing open.

Enez dashed out of the cell and scanned her surround-ings quickly, trying to find a sign that’d tell her which way the emergency exit was. When she did, she wasted no time setting foot towards her next objective.

“Freeze!” echoed the shouts of the guards behind her.