Coach grunts, his glasses falling over his lumpy nose that has clearly been broken more than once. “Three seconds slower.” 
  “Yeah, and last time was my personal best, so,” I tell him, treading water. He just grunts again. The man is impossible to impress. 
  “When I was a marine-” 
  “Yeah, we know, you got dropped seventy feet from a fighter jet into the ocean, you fought off a dozen sharks, etcetera. We’ve heard it all,” I snap. He glares at me, and I glare back, matching his gaze. Neither of us look away, not wanting to surrender, until Omar comes to the rescue. Non ducor duco, as my mother likes to tell me.
  “What was my time, Coach?” he asks, pushing me to the side. I let it slide, but if it was anyone else, I’d bite their head off. Obviously, Omar knows this, and he looks very smug about it. I turn away with a roll of my eyes, and as I’m turning, I see a figure walking out of the locker room. 
  I squint and wish I had glasses, ‘cause I can’t see crap. All I can make out is that the person is likely female, based on the mass of curly hair upon their head, and quite tall. Not as tall as my dad, who is a Russian giant, but tall. I don’t recognize her, and I know everyone. Before she opens the door, she turns and meets my eyes from across the cavernous room, and I swear she smirks. Who are you and what are you doing here?  
 
                                                          *** 
 

  Omar shakes his head. “I don’t think you saw some shadowy figure out to get us. Just because you haven’t seen her before doesn’t mean she doesn’t go here.” He’s lying across my small bed in my small dorm that I share with Krystal, who is probably out with her boyfriend somewhere, which means I get to lay on her bed. Our room is exactly what you would imagine a military school dorm to be like; white, mostly empty, small beds (more like cots, if we’re being honest), and a framed picture of George Washington. I put that last one up to mock Krystal, but she seemed to actually appreciate it, so now I kind of regret it. In addition to our GW picture, I taped up some pictures of friends from back home and drawings of mine.   
  I let out a massive sigh and put my hands over my eyes. “Maybe she’s not necessarily out to get us. But don’t you think it’s a little strange that she was coming out of the locker room during swim? No one goes in there at that time except for the team, and she looked older, and I swear to God she turned around and looked directly at me.” 
  Omar is silent for a moment, twisting a curl around his finger. “Don’t do that, your hair will lose its shape,” I admonish, tossing a pillow at him. He sticks his tongue out at me. 
  “Okay.” 
  “Okay?” 
  “I believe you.” A whoosh of air escapes me. I’m more relieved than I expected, but that goes away when he says, “I believe you thought you saw her look at you, but-” 
  I groan.  
  He sits up and holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, Ysabel, but you might be delirious after all that swimming.” He sounds serious, but when I remove the pillow to look at him, he’s grinning. I can’t help but grin back.  
  “Maybe you’re right,” I concede. Omar lets out a whoop and I point a finger at him. “Don’t get a big head.” He puts his fingers by his head and mimes it blowing up. “Let’s go eat. I’m famished.” 
  “Do you not have snacks hidden in here?” 
  “You know that’s against the rules,” I reply with an eyebrow waggle. He raises his eyebrows and gives me a look. “Okay, I do have snacks in here, but they’re for emergencies.” 
  Omar sighs and stands. “Fine. To the cafeteria we go, like low life peasants.” 
  I’m about to make a snappy comeback when I notice something on my pillow. A small piece of paper with something written on it. 
  Behind the gym. Midnight. Come alone.  
  “Calligraphy? No one uses calligraphy,” I scoff, making Omar laugh. “Do you believe me about the creepy lady now?” 
  His hand runs through his curls and glances over at me, judging how serious I am, which is very. “I’m still not convinced.” 
  “You’re impossible.” 
  “And you’re egotistical.” 
  “Well, you’re dumb.” 
  “Oh really? Dumb? How mature of you.” 
  “Yeah well-”  
  Our squabbling is interrupted by the power going out. And naturally, it just has to be winter, so it’s already dark outside even though it’s barely five thirty. Omar immediately latches onto my side and whimpers. I hear faint shouts as others in the dorms fumble around, probably looking for a phone or something, and then realizing we don’t have our phones, because this is practically prison. “Omar, can you let go?” I ask, trying to pry him off. His fear of the dark can be debilitating.  
  “Please don’t,” he whispers back. There’s not an ounce of sarcasm. I stop trying to push him away and instead wrap an arm around him, feeling his breath shudder. Even though he’s a few inches taller than me, he bends his head down so it’s against my shoulder.  
  “Okay.” I awkwardly pet his short curls, and slowly walk toward my nightstand, Omar in tow. I slip my hand into the drawer and take my dagger and throwing knives, hooking them onto my belt and out of sight. Omar grabs the flashlight and points it at the ceiling so that it bathes the room in light. He regrets that almost immediately.  
  Omar pushes me behind him as I scream. Honestly, I did not expect anyone to be crawling out of my closet. She is tall, much taller than me, and have a pile of curls on top of her head. There's a manic glint in her eyes that I don't appreciate. My heart nearly jumps out of my chest, which I didn’t think was medically possible, yet here we are. I unleash a list of expletives and try to restart my heart. “Do you believe me now?” I shout at Omar. He nods wordlessly, and when I try to edge around him, he puts a hand out to stop me. I roll my eyes but respect his decision. When someone guards you, have their back. I glance over my shoulder, but we’re nearly up against the wall, so there’s no way anyone could sneak up behind me. Unless they crawl out of the freaking wall.  
  “I just have one question – who in the wide world of baby Jesus are you and why are you in my room?” I ask, poking my head out from behind Omar, who’s brandishing the flashlight like a weapon. The woman slowly rises, and Omar points the light directly at her head, nearly blinding her. She seems rather calm, and even puts her hands up. I inch out from behind Omar. 
  “My name is Fili – no, not like the horse, it’s short for Filomena,” she says when I open my mouth to ask that exact question. I narrow my eyes. “And I’m here because we need you. We need your help.” 
  “Who’s we? Do you have a multi-personality disorder or something? If so, this relationship may need a bit of adjusting,” I warn.  
  “Not everyone is trying to date you, Ysabel Ivani.” 
  “What a shame for them,” I say with a toss of my short hair. 
  “So, what do you want?” Omar repeats. Even in the low light I can see how tense he is.  
  “Stay calm,” I whisper to him, briefly patting his shoulder. That seems to make it worse.  
  “Like I said, we need Ysabel’s help. You, however, we don’t need you.” And then little miss Filomena whips out a freaking gun and aims it at Omar. Before she can shoot, I step in front of him, done with respecting his poor life decision of guarding me.  
  Omar lets out a little yelp and tries to get in front of me, the flashlight beam bouncing like crazy. “Ysabel, I can’t let you get hurt.”  
  I spin around so I’m facing him and grab his shoulders. “If you move from behind me, I will hurt you much worse than this girl ever could. She needs me, she won’t shoot me. Don’t you dare move, or so God help me.” I guess I must be intimidating, or he remembers all the lessons about covering each other, because Omar nods. I turn back around to face Fili, making sure most of my body covers Omar so that she can’t get a clear shot. “Shoot him, and I’ll kill you.” 
  Fili shrugs. “Unfortunately, I don’t have to bring you in alive.” 
  I cross my arms and heave a sigh. “I really don’t like people telling me what to do, y’know. Non ducor duco.”  

                                                               ***

 
  The next thing I know I wake up with a massive headache, my hands tied behind my back, and it’s extremely dark. I hear someone tossing and turning near me, and I flinch away. I slide my hands down to my jeans’ waistband. Predictably, they took my knives. Did they take Omar? What they didn’t take is the ring my mom gave me for my birthday, which has a place for a tiny knife to pop out. Her mother gave it to her, just in case she was attacked. Apparently Italy was very dangerous when she lived there. I always thought it was the mafia.
  As I’m sawing through the rope on my hands, I look around, trying to see something, anything. But it’s pitch black. Where am I? We don’t seem to be moving, so I’m probably not in a car of any sort, but you never know. I hear stifled crying somewhere in the room with me, and I saw at the rope faster. It comes off suspiciously easily. I stand up and feel around the space, discovering that I’m in a very small room with cold walls and a stone floor. There’s nothing else in here except for... 
  “Who’s there?” a voice whispers. 
  “Omar!”  
  “Ysabel?” 
  My eyes have adjusted to the dark enough that I can see a thin stream of light coming in from under a door, it looks like, and Omar is a shadowy shape lying on the ground. “Yeah, it’s me.” I bend down to sit next to him and my head throbs. I put my hand to it and feel a bump on my lower skull. Must've gotten thumped.  
  “I can’t see,” he says, his voice hoarse and wobbly. I wrap my arms around him, and he buries his head in my shoulder. “It’s so dark. Where are we?” 
  I shake my head. “I don’t know. We’ll get out of here... probably.”  
  “How comforting.”  
  I end up spending the next hour trying to pick the lock. Omar found a bobby pin tucked in his pocket from the days of his long curls. Speaking of which, my little friend is hovering over my shoulder. “Jesus, you’re supposed to be going into the military, and you’re scared of the dark?” I say, only half joking. I can practically feel his eye roll.  
  Non ducor duco. My mom’s motto.  
  He doesn’t respond, but he does give a little cheer when the lock clicks open. And oh boy, I’m really tired of lights revealing things I don’t want to see. We stumble into bright light, squinting. Omar looks like he wants to kiss the overhead lights. We’re in a lab of sorts, and it seems that we just emerged from a large closet. Seems like a metaphor for something. There are people spread out on tables, arranged carefully, with tubes attached to each, and a screen displaying their vitals. I guess they’re not dead. Everything is cold and sterile.  
  I clap a hand over my mouth when I recognize the people lying on the tables. They’re students that graduated last year. Even a few that graduated the year before, I see as I walk to the far side of the room. It’s not too big, maybe twenty-five feet across, but it’s bigger than I’d like, given it’s a room full of bodies. The door on the far side of the room opens, a man walking in, and I fall into a crouch between the tables. Omar squeaks a bit as he drops next to me. 
  “Well, well, well, I see you’ve come to join our little army,” the man says, looking at us both.  
  “Ysabel, non ducor duco.” My mother appears behind him, a smile on her face, her eyes glazed over. 
  It dawns on me. Brainwashing.