One-handed, already winded, I fumbled at my jacket pocket for the smoke bombs I’d borrowed from the lieutenant. There were only three of them, but one should be enough, right? The smoke affected a Minister, so theoretically it would affect a manikin. Even if the smoke didn’t do anything to the manikin, the light certainly would. I’d blinded one with my flashlight before.

I fumbled with the little ring doohickey on the bomb. I wasn’t actually positive how these things worked. I pulled the ring loose, right?

The ring came loose in my hand. I had no idea how long before it blew up, or if it would blow up, and what it would do to my hand, so I tossed it away wildly behind me. I heard something clatter on the floor, not quite in time with the clatter of manikin’s claws, and then nothing happened.

A dud, or I’d screwed up. I was just reaching for the second bomb when the first went off.

Light flashed through the hall as brilliant and as swift as lightning. It was lucky I had my back to the bomb, and that my running speed had taken me some distance away, or I would’ve been blinded. I heard the manikin let out a shrill cry of outrage, but when I glanced back, in my wavering flashlight beam I saw her still gaining. The bomb hadn’t taken her out.

She’d probably been too far from it to have any effect. I reached for the second grenade.

This time I knew how to work it, though I wished I’d thought to count the seconds on the last one. I wasn’t sure if my timing was right, and when I lobbed it back at her, the metal struck her in the shoulder. She knocked it aside and it crashed harmlessly against a far wall. I was already running again by the time it went off; we were too far, again.

I slipped the third bomb into my hand. This one was my last chance: if I failed to knock the manikin out with this grenade, then I’d have no defense against it, and it would tear me apart with its weird metal nails. No pressure, right?

I couldn’t quite figure out how long I should give the bomb to detonate. I couldn’t be quite sure how far behind me the manikin was. I clutched the grenade in my hand, not daring to pull the pin, and counted, and counted, and ran. The space was too dark for me to plan a path before one opened up before me; I went where the gleam of my flashlight reached the furthest, deeper into the labyrinth, but no matter how fast I ran that thing was always at my heels.

And then the beam of my flashlight struck the solid denial of a bare wall.

It came on me suddenly. I didn’t have time to stop, but crashed into the wall. The grenade dropped from my hands, pin and all. I caught myself upright, turned left, turned right. My flashlight beam bounced off unbroken metal to my right and my left.