She looked left, then right down the empty corridor. Her raw skin was starting to tingle. She stood on tender feet and began limping forward. When her jailer took her to the organic cells they usually went left. So she went right.

She passed cell after cell, each of them protected by opaque filters. There was no way to turn them off unless she had the proper organic code. They would be tailored to specific individuals. Until she had the ability to shift and recode her blood to match those codes, she could not help them.

Inaya stumbled to the end of the hall. There was a solid door here, no filter. She stood on her toes and peered into the next hall. It was empty. Just a large reception room.

She yanked on the handle. It was locked.

“God be merciful,” she muttered. She saw there was a faceplate beside the door. Like the others, it would require someone with the correct blood code to get through.

She swore and turned back the way she had come. There had to be water somewhere. She minced back the other way, toward the interrogation rooms. Her heart beat a little faster.

There’s no one here, she reminded herself, but without knowing what had become of everyone, she couldn’t say when they would return. What if it was just some emergency that required their assistance? Or the facility was in lockdown? What if they were due back any moment?

The scarabs that previously covered the doors of occupied cells were gone. Every cell door was open. She peered into each of them, looking for a discarded glass or bulb of water. Found nothing. They were all empty.

All but the last cell.

In the last cell, she found a man.

He was sprawled on the floor. If there was any blood, the organics would have eaten it all. She recognized the crimson robe and black cowl of God’s Angels. There was a table at the center of the room, like the room she had stood in when they presented the letters.

On the table was a clear water pitcher, nearly empty, and one half-empty glass.

She paused in the doorway. It occurred to her that this may all just be some elaborately concocted scheme to get her to further incriminate herself. Or maybe the water was poisoned, and that’s what killed the man? She had not run an underground organization for nearly five years by being stupid.

But the insanity of that—of staging a riot, and a prison lockdown, all to get her to definitively declare who they already knew she was seemed a little mad even to her. Her thirst won out over caution.

Inaya ran to the table, circling as far away from the man as possible. She drank straight from the pitcher. The water was lukewarm at best, and tasted as if it had been sitting a good long while.