“Shit!” Zoe muttered. She swung again and this time, the leg glanced off the pipe and slid out of her sweat-soaked palms. Above her, shouts of alarm were louder and louder.

Fighting the panic that rose in a choking flood from her belly Zoe scrambled down from the desk, making the sheet rope fast to a drawer pull while she retrieved the bed leg. Frantically, she got back on the desk and, using two hands, swung at the sprinkler head with all her might. She had been aiming at the small melting fuse that heat normally triggered. But this time, the metal leg connected with the base, snapping the whole sprinkler head off.

Her reward was a torrent of water that instantly covered the floor of the tiny room. Then, one of the sweetest sounds that Zoe had ever heard: the ringing of the industrial warehouse’s fire bell, triggered by the drop in sprinkler pipe pressure. Relief flooded through her body. She had had no idea if the sprinklers were operational or if they were connected to an alarm as was the standard in the United States.

“Thank you, God!”

Zoe wondered for an instant how long it took for Zurich firemen to get to alarms. No matter what it was, it wouldn’t be fast enough for her. Above her, the sounds of general confusion mingled with the fire alarm—shouts, confusion.

Calmly, Zoe turned off the light and waited. In the darkness, sounds came to her more clearly now. The sound of the broken sprinkler head took on a deeper tone as the water level rose in the room. After what seemed like a lifetime lived in slow motion, shouts came from the hallway outside her cell. She recognized the angry voices of the Hulk and Sergiev. An instant later the lock rattled, the door flew open, and the two men appeared. Dim light filtered through the door from a distant lowwattage bulb at the far end of the corridor. The dim yellow illumination painted the scene in shadows and low-contrast silhouettes. Water ran into the hallway.

Zoe pressed herself flat against the shadows of the wall and let go of the rope sheet. The Hulk heard the sound. He looked up and raised a hand toward the grid. An instant later, the big man bellowed with a pain that seemed to come from the very bowels of his soul. A loud, low electrical hum filled the room. Arcs broke the darkness like camera flashes. The big man stumbled forward, then fell as his feet tangled with the ankle snare she had set.

Behind him, Sergiev’s momentum carried him forward into the water. He dropped his gun and began to convulse even before reaching his fallen comrade as the lethal current ran free in the water that had gathered on the floor. Zoe stood there for eternity, her heart caught by the low moans of pain that went so far beyond mere words in conveying the depth of their pain. Zoe was horrified as she stood up in the shadows and watched the two men writhe on the floor. Suddenly the Hulk fell silent and his twitching seemed to lose purpose. Sergiev managed to get to his knees and turned toward the door, but the electrical current was relentless and a moment later, he fell face first into the water. Like the Hulk, he lost his voice and control over his muscles.