Ezra sat behind the desk in the glass office, observed by a soldier sitting on a stool at the end of a long aisle, on the opposite side. She was in his direct line of sight, on purpose, she supposed. When she glanced up at him, in his hazmat suit, nervous hands clutched together, she wondered if he was in fact watching her or shitting himself half to death, having been given the 'watch the Dr' assignment in that deathly lab.

Earlier, as they'd donned their suits, helped by a few clumsy hands, he'd looked pale and kept asking her, and others, whether it was actually safe to be in there, just weeks after the outbreak.

Thus, she liked to imagine he was shitting himself half to death or asleep, rather than watching her like a hawk. If only. It was an uncomfortable feeling, not knowing which, the watched or the watchee. Besides testing the equipment, there was something else on her agenda for the day, and it was delicate—if not dangerous—in its nature. I have to test the leash. That had been her driving thought this morning. She needed to figure out how close she was being watched, or how closely they were monitoring her exact activities. And how much of it reaches the higher-ups?

So that late afternoon, after having barely scratched the surface when it came to running routine checks on the equipment—some were new even to her, so she required access to their manuals—Ezra watched the soldier curiously. She hadn't seen him move from his perch on the stool in hours. Please be asleep. I only need a few minutes alone... At which point she could imagine Shaki calling 'reckless' if she were here. Her sister would warn her, 'Keep your head down, buy some time, and use that head of yours to come up with an escape plan.'

I don't even know where I am. Ezra walked to the next aisle—not that she had any intention of starting on those gear today—to see if the soldier's head would follow her movement, all the while imagining a conversation with her logical sister. In Shaki's books, what she was about to do was foolhardy. 'Seriously? You're going to test how serious they are about their security? These people who abducted you in the middle of the night and possibly staged a murder scene?'

"I have to try," Ezra mumbled soundlessly to herself, aware that the headset she wore was a two-way device to communicate with her guard easily. I need to find a way to warn the world... if I fail to do what I have to do, I need to find a way to get the word out, 'Get Out'.

'But risking your life now? Is that wise? You don't even know what they were cooking up in that lab,' Shaki would have said, with a scowl on her face, and suddenly, Ezra missed that little brat violently that it hurt her chest. I have to see you again. I have to do this... to save you and Dad...

I'm just setting up an encrypted, hidden folder on their server if I can. Test the degree of monitoring... I can't secretly save the world if they know everything I get up to, can I? Ezra pretended to be inspecting the first station in case the soldier was watching her. And I can't believe of all the people, I'm pretending to have this conversation with you...

Imaginary Shaki scoffed. 'Cause you miss me, dumb-dumb. And I'm the coder in the family, not you... what if you fail?'

"What if I pass?" For a moment, she'd forgotten about the headset and was startled when she noticed a slight movement from the corner of her eyes. Shit.

"Everything all right, Doctor?" his voice was groggy. Just her luck. She'd woken the bloke when it was the one thing she'd been hoping for.

Ezra nearly dropped the pipette in her gloved hand. "Uh, yes, everything is fine, soldier... I was just talking to myself that the rest will have to wait until tomorrow." Soldier? Really? I called him Soldier. She was just glad she was quite far away from him, and in a suit of her own, that he wouldn't see the crimson colour of her cheeks.

"So we can go?" He stood up from the stool.

"No," not yet! I haven't done the thing I wanted. Ezra shook her head, quickly putting the pipette back on the bench. "I mean, no, not yet. I just have to tie up the day..."

"The what?"

She turned around, lifting her arms in an exaggerated shrug. "You guys want me to enter daily logs! Unless you've changed your mind about it? In which case, we can go."

"Uhhh, no, no. Do what you got to do, Doctor." He sat back down on his stool.

"Thanks." With her heart beating a mile a minute, Ezra headed for the glass office, or a fish tank as she referred to it. That's what it felt like being in there, the lone clownfish in a giant aquarium. Exposed.

"It's Millen, by the way." Her headphones crackled as she booted up the ancient PC on the desk. It too needed an upgrade, but she supposed whatever else was in the storage Captain Rai pilfered, it wouldn't have the latest on the market. She couldn't ever recall seeing a solid monitor in her life.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"My name, ma'am. You can call me Millen. I'm assigned your detail so we'll be working closely from now on."

Great. Ezra bit her lip. This was not good news to her, no matter how perky Millen sounded. One man observing her over many days would notice things out of the ordinary. Different men, different days? Now they wouldn't know much of her routine. "Excellent," she tried to keep her voice neutral. "I won't be too long, Millen."

"Take your time, ma'am."

I wish I could. She dropped into the chair and waited for the machine to come to life.

'You're going ahead with it, aren't you?' Shaki's voice, which she craved to hear in real life, beat at her again. 'This is madness, sis. Why can't you use the laptop Rai gave you? You think few know about it, so why not do all the double-crossing, world-saving things on it?' Shaki would have been huffing, arms folded, with an obnoxious tilt of her head.

Ezra remained quiet, going about her task at hand. Test the measure of their monitoring.

'Wait. You think they gave it to you on the sly, to give you a false sense of security, but it's the very device they'll monitor, more than the accessible lab computer. But any idiot with half a brain can fish out an encrypted folder in a shared server, sis. I taught you this... when you wanted to work off the books on a few projects without that baldy boss of yours cluing in...'

Well, he's dead. Ezra pouted and opened up a new document, just in case Millen felt inclined to walk into her office and check what she was doing. Or in case there was a hidden camera in the room, with a vantage point, straight at the screen.

Besides, most people don't see what's right under their noses, remember? It was one of the first things Dad taught us about safety. She moved the screen, pretending to adjust it to her height, and hoped that the new angle obscured any clear sight of the screen.

'What if they catch you?'

Ezra's hands froze over the keyboard briefly. Then I'm dead meat. And so are you. So is everybody, if this thing ever gets out...

'Ezzie. I don't want you to do this. Keep your head down and find a way out.'

There's no out, babe. Ezra's eyes glistened with tears at the realisation that it was true. Whether the world thought she was alive or dead, it didn't matter. Now that she was here, she knew it was true. She'd never get out. Not alive anyway.

Suddenly, another, more catastrophic thought barged into her mind as she tried to recall all that Shaki had taught her about setting up a hidden, encrypted file in a secure server, one she could access from any device on the network, a file only she could open. What if the outbreak in the lab wasn't an accident? What if it was their way of tying 'loose ends'?

The thought caused ripples of goosebumps and she eyed the soldier, sitting there, with an obvious line of sight. "Millen?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

Ezra hesitated briefly before she plunged into another one of her 'dumb ideas.'

"It could take Captain Rai days to get all that research and data to me... and since you and I are the ones facing this lab every day from now on, just like you, I want to know it's safe to be here. So I was hoping you'd help me out."

"I have orders to give you any assistance you require, ma'am."

Good. "Could you tell me anything you know about the outbreak here and how it happened?"

Thus, while she conversed with Millen and kept him busy—the poor bloke in the end knew as much as she did—Ezra started her task.

If someone asked her about the file she created, she would know how close she was being watched. And if caught, she planned to lie and say she was thinking of data security, that she did not want anyone reading her analysis of Archer's research and jumping to conclusions before she could piece together the whole thing and come up with a plan. She'd simply say she didn't want to pull an Archer and kill them all before they had a handle on the pathogen they required for Project Rescue.

If this works...

'If this works, then what? What are you going to have achieved?'

Then I'll use it to hide evidence of what's happening here and get it out.

"Dr Mayur." Her headphone crackled with a gravelly voice. The soldier. He was sleepy. "Are you done yet?"

Ezra froze for a moment. He doesn't know what I'm doing, does he? "Almost," she chimed, hoping he'd chalk her delayed response to the distance between them. "I'm just doing the log for the day... If someone even reads these things. Why? Is there something the matter?"

"Umm," she heard the hesitation in his voice. "I need to use the restroom soon."

"Copy." She stared at him over the computer screen. "Give me ten."

After a beat of silence, he responded. "Yes, ma'am. You don't mind if I pace a little, do you?"

"No. Go ahead. I'll try to be quick," she added, hoping his current predicament would keep him sufficiently distracted.

And Ezra typed furiously, trying to recall all that Shaki had taught her. Here goes...