When I went back upstairs to shower, the CO at the entrance, a man named Rohde, seemed to react oddly. He looked at me, then got on the phone. I had to wait five minutes before he let me in, and then it was only when two other CO’s joined him. I wondered if they had somehow monitored my conversation with Morrell and were going to put me on report, but Rohde watched me go past the guard station without saying anything. Still, he seemed to have an air of suppressed excitement about him, and he was joined behind the double–glass walls by the other two men. The video cameras were trained on the shower rooms as well as all other common areas, but I had already figured out which shower head cut the camera angle so that it could only catch me if I stood directly under it. If he’d called his buddies for a peep show, I figured I knew how to avoid providing it.

I was jumped almost before I got into the shower room. Two women, one from the front, one from the rear. Rohde’s manner had put me on guard, otherwise they might have destroyed me. I dropped my supplies and towel and kicked, all in one motion. I was lucky; my foot caught the woman in front square on the patella, and she grunted and backed away.

The one behind me had my left shoulder in a steel grip. She was pulling me toward her. I gasped—she had something sharp that sliced across my right shoulder. I hooked my feet around her ankles and used her own force to catapult her forward. The wet floor made it hard to get a purchase and I slipped and fell with her. I chopped across her right wrist before she could recover and forced her to let go of her weapon.

The one I’d kicked was closing in on me. I rolled over on the moldy floor and got up into a crouch. She flung herself at me before I could kick the weapon away. She had her hands around my neck. I held on to her shoulders for leverage and swung both knees into her stomach. She squawked in pain and let go of me.

The woman with the weapon was behind me again. I was winded; I’d already been working out for an hour and didn’t know how much longer I could keep fighting. When she lunged at me I ducked. It was the wet floor that did the rest. She lost her footing, scrabbled to gain it, and careened so hard against the concrete wall that she stunned herself. Her partner saw her fall and suddenly shouted for help.

The guards appeared so fast I knew they must have been on their way as soon as the woman knocked herself out.

“She jumped me! She jumped Celia, too, and knocked her out!”