They were watching her. A myriad of screens lit up their faces with a blue glow. Tiny cameras were everywhere, undetectable, always watching. Dakota couldn’t get the image out of her head. Somewhere safe, those sick bastards were refusing to help her, watching like she was the animal on some documentary that is hunted by a lion.

Stealthily she crouched, laser pen her only weapon, walking with knees bent so her shoes wouldn’t squeak. She measured her breathing and tried not to sweat too much because there was only one beast that could smash a steel lab table and break through the wire enmeshed glass, and it was blind. It hunted by smell and sound. Tiny polyps along its frilled neck sprayed a paralytic on its victims so they wouldn’t run as it pounced on them. Its venom smelled of cucumbers. The lab reeked of cucumbers.

This could be why her team did not come for her.

Or the people behind the cameras could have set this all up. An exercise, a test, to see what she could do.

Well, she could live.