She had researched Cheng meticulously before she’d ever entered his world. It was a narrow, almost military world, with constant inspections and living under the surveillance of cameras and guards. Cheng didn’t trust anyone, not even his closest allies. Not his workers. Not even his guards. He had watchers observing the watchers.

Bellisia was used to such an environment. She’d grown up in one and she was familiar with it. She also knew all the ways to get around surveillance and cameras. She was a perfect mimic, blending into her environment, picking up nuances of her surroundings, the language, the idioms, the culture, and Whitney thought that was her gift. He had no idea of her other abilities, the ones far more important to the missions he sent her off on. All the girls learned to hide abilities from him. It was so much safer.

The guards reacted to the blaring siren with a rush of bodies and the sound of boots hitting the rooftop as they went into a frenzy of searching. She kept climbing, using that same slow, inch-by-inch movement. It took discipline to continue slowly instead of moving quickly, as every self-preservation cell in her body urged her to do.

She relied heavily on her ability to change color and skin texture to blend into her surroundings, but that didn’t guarantee that a sharp-eyed soldier wouldn’t spot her. The pigment cells in her skin allowed her to change color in seconds. She’d hated that at first, until she realized it gave her an advantage. Whitney needed her to be a spy. He sent her out on missions when so many of the other women had been locked up again.

She gained the top of the tank just as one of the soldiers put his boot on the ladder. Slipping into the water soundlessly, she swam to the very bottom of the tank and anchored herself to the wall, making herself as flat as possible against the side. Once again she changed color so that she blended with tank and water.

She loved water. She could live in the cool liquid. The water felt cool against her burning skin. In the open air, she felt as if her skin dried out and she was cracking into a million pieces. She often looked down at her hands and arms to make certain it wasn’t true, but in spite of the smoothness of her skin, she still felt that way. The one environment she found extremely hostile to her was the desert. Whitney had sent her there several times to record the effects on her and she hadn’t done well. A flaw, he called it.