Would they do that this close to ending everything? Would they be coming now to tie her loose ends up?

The creaks continued. Someone was walking.

Please, God, she prayed. Let him just be going to the bathroom.

Propelled by the thought of the Hulk and his partner Sergiev showing up at her door before she was fully ready, Zoe leaped to her feet No longer caring if she had stripped everything she wanted out of the server, she pressed the power button and turned the PC off. For a brief hysterical instant, she thought that this was perhaps the first time she had turned off Windows 95 before it was safe. In the next few minutes, she’d be doing a lot of things before they were safe.

With the PC’s power off, Zoe worked the hard drive’s data and power cables off and pulled the drive out It was the width and thickness of a paperback novel, only shorter. It fit snugly in the right back pocket of her pants.

The room above was quiet.

“The time is the time, sweetheart,” Zoe said aloud. Even if the men were not coming for her, there was no reason to delay the countdown sequence she had rehearsed over and over in her head since the escape plan had sprung fully developed into her head the night before.

Stopping for just a moment, she bowed her head. “God,” she prayed aloud, “this is your plan; I could never have thought of it Please help me do it right” She opened her eyes. Then with her face tilted upward, she added, “Please.”

Up above, she heard the toilet flush and the water cascading down the thick black drainpipe that ran down the corner of her room. Bathroom. That was a good sign, she thought

Zoe ran on automatic now, taking each step just as she had planned. First she moved the computer and its monitor to the floor and swept the desk clean. Then, she folded the thin lumpy mattress in thirds and placed it at one end of the desk.

Next, she grabbed the pieces of the disassembled bed and used the last of the bedsheet strips to fasten the pieces into an ankle-high trip snare. Struggling to keep her hands steady, Zoe grabbed the remaining piece of the bed, a metal leg with a long screw welded to it that had been used to attach it to the frame with a wing nut. She set it on the desk, then carefully untied the sheet rope that suspended the now-electrified metal grid.

With her heart hurtling through her chest like a runaway train, Zoe wiped her palms, then climbed up on the desk.

“Please help me,” she prayed again. “I can’t do this by myself.”

Then with a deep breath of determination, she picked up the bed leg and swung it at the nearest fire sprinkler head. The impact filled her cell with a resonant metallic clanging that immediately brought shouts from the room above. This was not what she had imagined in her head.