01

First: Selina is in an abandoned warehouse, trying to save Juan Bay, an accused drug lord older than her by about ten years and in President Millian's blacklist of notorious criminals.

The warehouse door rolls open in a noise of metal against metal. Light pours in, revealing five silhouettes at the door. Selina hisses to the man sitting beside her. "Is there any way out of here? Any other way!" she pleads. The man gives no response, frozen into place when they start speaking.

Second: The cops have completely closed off the area. One of them is her sister, who has no idea of Selina's favorite pastime: skipping class to go get killed.

"We know you're in here," Selina can hear Rhoda say. "Show yourselves immediately or we will open fire."

Despite the cold, a bead of sweat traces its way down the side of Selina's face. She kicks Juan's leg repeatedly. He does not respond. Selina hopes for both of their sakes that he hasn't pissed himself and passed out.

Next: Selina's wearing a shawl over her head, a hoodie over her shirt, and a retractable skull helmet from Halloween, open in such a way that her face is barely visible. All are from her school's lost-and-found. She's currently armed with a toy bow and three plastic arrows.

Footsteps make their way nearer to the crates Selina and Juan hide behind. Flashlights slice through the darkness. Selina knows that if they don't move now, something else is gonna slice through soon enough.

A hand clasps Selina's shoulder, making her jolt in place. The flashlights point their way, and she's dead certain the footsteps are getting nearer. The hand is Juan's, and he stares at her with a face of sudden urgency. "The tunnels!" he exclaims.

Selina grabs his wrist, and gives him a meaningful look. Even through the dark, she can see his ashen, wide-eyed face. Still, he nods.

And Last: She was supposed to be having a Physics Test today. And college professors are never forgiving when it comes to missing tests.

"Over there!" a man's voice calls out. Selina bolts across the room, dragging Juan behind her. A series of deafening shots ring out, striking their previous hiding place. They scramble to the cover of more crates, but the cops are quick to follow. More bullets rip through the air and land their marks on unsuspecting crates.

Selina doesn't bother whispering anymore. "Lead the way! Run!" she shouts over the racket. Juan speeds ahead of her, zigzagging his way to God-knows-where. A glance behind tells Selina to run faster, because the cops are gaining on them and Rhoda looks a tad too comfortable with that pistol. Selina looks down at the cheap bow in her hands and thinks, Useless!

She pulls Juan into the cover of more crates before her sister gets to aim. "We gotta shake them!" she pants as they head deeper into the warehouse. The farther from the door, the darker. The cops have probably lost sight of them, because they split up and stop shooting. The sudden silence makes Selina's head spin in anticipation.

Selina and Juan have already reached the end of the hallway. Juan falls to the ground. Selina kneels beside him, "Get up! We'll get cornered," she hisses. He doesn't listen, and seems to be fumbling with something. Selina takes out a small flashlight from her pocket and shines a weak light at his hands. He's trying to pull open a square, metal slate that looks to be the hatch of said tunnels.

"Let me help," she offers, but the man waves her away.

"I can do this!" Juan hisses through gritted teeth. "Go distract them!"

Selina tries not to think of the abundant things that could go wrong while she jogs back to where the cops are. She climbs a few crates in a different direction from where Juan is working, but not too far off. Peeking through the gaps between the crates, she sees cops down on the other side. Two of them.

She takes one of the arrows wedged between her jogging pants and underwear (no time for class) and aims for what she assumes is a cop's head. She holds on to the arrow's plastic feathers. Pulls back. Lets go.

Zippp--!

"Ow! What the--" The cop fires a bunch of stray bullets that ricochet into nowhere. A pile of crates collapses to his feet, but Selina's pile remains unscathed. Amateurs.

"What?" the other cop turns in alarm. His flashlight beams on the collapsed pile. "What happened?"

"I felt something hit my head."

This biz is improving my aim! Selina muses. She creeps away to find the other cops. Surely, they've heard the ruckus. She catches a glimpse of her sister and the other cops making their way to the scene.

"Where are they?" Rhoda says in her serious voice, guns blazing. Selina can't help but roll her eyes. Rhoda sounds just like that when she's being narrator to their little sister's pretend-games.

Selina gets a clean shot of another cop's head and fires.

"Agh!" the cop cries in a surprisingly manly voice. He doesn't waste any bullets this time, to Selina's dismay.

If she remembers correctly, pistols only have six bullets each. In all, they got thirty shots. Minus six, 'cause loose cannon guy's sure to have none left. So twenty-four shots minus approximately... eleven? That makes thirteen shots to spa--

Revolver. A revolver has six rounds. Not a pistol.

A pistol has about fifteen.

Selina nearly cries out in frustration. Rhoda's head shoots up. Selina shuts her mouth in an instant, but the direction Rhoda is heading for is not hers. It's Juan's. In a split second, Selina's brain decides to take advantage of the dark, the echoes, and the fact that the skull mask she’s wearing can distort her voice.

"You fools!" she shouts from behind her crate. Rhoda isn’t the only one who can play pretend games. The mask of her helmet is down, making her voice deeper and louder. "You're wasting your time!"

To her relief, Rhoda has paused midstep. But her heart leaps when all five cops raise their guns. Definitely the bad type of leaping. Rhoda is still facing Juan's direction, so Selina urges herself to keep talking.

"I am not only a drug lord. But ah... a terrorist!" she insists. What? she mentally kicks herself.

"What?" some of the cops say in disbelief.

"Yes!" she continues. "I have bombs all over this- this place-- this country! In Kaptan! In Laudo!" Kaptan is a prime target because it's the country's capital, and the President now lives there. Laudo is nearby, but is also a prime target because it's the President's precious hometown.

"Why are you telling us, Juan Bay? We're cops!" Rhoda retorts, aiming at random spots near the top of every crate pile.

Selina's thoughts are ripped between 'Why am I telling you?' and 'Don't stutter! Don't stutter!'

"I'm telling you because I've planted a bomb right here! In this very warehouse! It will explode in a few seconds, and you can't tell anyone about my plans!" Selina cackles in the skull’s deep voice, but deep inside, she's admonishing herself for her grammar. It's not 'you can't tell anyone'! It's 'you won't be able to tell anyone'! she thinks, because dammit, she's not illiterate! She's a college student!

Rhoda has backed off Juan, giving Selina a chance to make a run for the tunnels, but when she takes a look, Juan's nowhere to be seen. The scoundrel just took off and abandoned her. Without him as a point of reference, the tunnel hatch is hard to spot in the dark.

Selina grits her teeth. She would murder Juan herself the next time he turns up, but now's not the time. She readies her last arrow, aiming for another distraction. "Prepared to die?" she asks malevolently.

Rhoda's voice resounds. "Why would you bomb the warehouse with you in it?"

Selina bites the inside of her cheek. "... I'm a suicide bomber."

She releases the arrow, and it zooms to her sister's head. Sorry, Rhoda, she thinks. It's just that you're being too meddlesome today! But before it hits, Rhoda catches it in her fist. She breaks it into two. "Plastic," she mutters. Her head slowly rotates to the direction the arrow came from. "You must be the fugitive."

Selina's blood runs cold. She's been found out. She dives to the left as a shot explodes from Rhoda's gun. All of a sudden, a tall pile of crates collapses, threatening to crush the police in revenge for all the bullets they've shot.

"Holy--" Selina starts, but someone grabs her elbow.

"C'mon!" he says.

"Juan?"

He easily navigates his way through the dark and pulls her to the tunnel hatch. He crawls down first. Selina leaves her toy bow and brings out her flashlight. The last she sees, the cops haven't even made their way around the avalanche when Selina climbs down and slides the heavy metal slate shut.