The clipped footsteps that echoed down the corridor leading to the lone cell on the bottom floor of the prison were measured and precise, as regular as the mechanical tick of a time bomb counting down the seconds until doom into the silence.

Four. Three. Two. One.

Never hurried. Never slow. Never a single alteration in pace over all the years the slight, stooped man with silver hair and dead eyes had visited. Just that slow, rehearsed, bride-down-the-aisle-wedding-march approach, joyless and inevitable as death.

Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.

The woman lying in wait for the man with the precise footsteps couldn’t stop the bitter smile that curved the outer corner of her lips. Thursday again, she thought. Nothing if not predictable.

His appearance was the only way she knew which day of the week it was. No clocks or calendars decorated the walls—nothing, in fact, decorated the walls—but once at the beginning of her incarceration, he’d let it slip on his way out that he’d be back to see her next Thursday. From then on she hadn’t needed a calendar to tell her what the day was; she had one in her head.

Today marked the thirteen hundredth Thursday she’d spent in this cell.

From the simple cot that folded down from the wall, she rose to a sitting position and thrust her bare feet into a pair of cotton slippers. Her plain white shift was of the same material, and had no zipper or even a single button. It was one piece, sleeveless, and fell just above her knees. Her captors had never even given her underwear, and she still couldn’t decide if they thought she might somehow be able to use a bra and panties as weapons, if it was a psychological tactic designed to make her feel vulnerable, or if it was simply spite.

Her gut voted for spite.

She folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and inhaled. Listening. Scenting the air. Even three state-of-the-art airlocks and a perfectly seamless lead box couldn’t contain every single atom of nitrogen and oxygen, and a few was all she needed.

Sweat. A stronger odor of smoke than usual. Stress pheromones, sickly sweet like overripe fruit.

Hmm. Doctor Evil’s agitated today.

She hoped someone close to him had died. Painfully.

She lowered herself to the floor and began to do pushups, partly because it was her routine to exercise upon awakening, but mostly because she knew Dr. Evil absolutely hated to be forced to wait for her heart rate to return to normal before he could perform his unwelcome task.

By the time he’d passed through the final airlock and entered her cell, she was up to thirty-six. He stopped and waited by the door, silently watching, as she continued from thirty-seven to one hundred, counting aloud because that really annoyed him, too.

He wasn’t the only one watching. She was always watched, monitored by camera and audio, her every move recorded. She’d long ago become accustomed to it; all sense of modesty had fled along with her sanity, and she didn’t mind that they watched when she ate and slept and showered, watched when she went to the toilet, watched when she cleaned the blood from her thighs when she had her period because tampons had been refused. She even let them watch when she touched herself in bed, because an orgasm was the single thing of luxury or pleasure in her life. And she hoped whoever was watching was disgusted by it, and by her.

It was a small sort of rebellion, but it was all she had.

When she was done with her pushups, she rose and faced the man.

He didn’t look pleased, which was no surprise. The surprise was that he was empty-handed.

He waited for her to speak. When she didn’t he said, “No exam today, madam.”

He always called her that. He was an evil little fucker, but she had to admit, his manners were impeccable.

She stayed silent, enjoying the look of irritation that flickered over his face. No doubt he’d hoped she’d weep with joy, or thank him, or even have the decency to look relieved.

Instead she kept her expression as bland as her cotton shift, and waited. She’d become an expert at that, and knew that almost anything you needed to know could be determined by watching, waiting, and keeping your mouth shut.

In her mind, she imagined crushing his sternum with her teeth, ripping his heart from his chest, and devouring the still-pumping organ while he looked on in helpless horror. It brought a faint smile to her face.

“This way, please.” He gestured to the airlock. The door slid open with a near-silent siss of pressurized air, and her flat expression vanished along with her determination not to speak.

“Out? Why? What’s happening?”

Dr. Evil said, “The Chairman has sent for you,” and she knew from both his tone and the spike in his heartbeat what a bad idea he thought it.

Explains all the extra cigarettes he’s smoked in the last few hours. She wondered just how long and how vigorously he’d argued against allowing their most valuable prisoner out of her cell.

But what did the Chairman want? Why, after all these years, would he summon her?

This was one case where waiting and watching wouldn’t help; she’d have to go and find out.

But first a bit of fun.

Faster than he could move or scream or even blink, she crossed the room and was at his side, smiling. “Well, we don’t want to keep the Chairman waiting, do we?” she breathed into his face, and gently laid her hand on his arm. Beneath his starched lab coat, it shook.

“Harm me and you only harm yourself, you know that, madam,” said Dr. Evil, his eyes wide and terrified, his voice doing no better than his arm. In fact, his whole body was shaking.

How many years had it been since she’d attacked him? She didn’t remember exactly; a decade at least. Maybe two. With the collar someone had fitted around her throat when she’d been unconscious when first brought to this facility, she couldn’t Shift, and therefore was far less of a threat, but she still had her speed and her strength, which had been enough to beat him bloody on more than one occasion.

So long ago, though. He probably thought since she was past fifty now and had been docile as a lamb for years, all the fight had been leached out of her. He probably thought the memory of what they did to her when she acted out or disobeyed had weakened her will, that perhaps the all-too-vivid recollections of billy clubs and stun guns and high-voltage electrodes against her temples had been an effective deterrent.

Wrong.

“I know,” she said lightly, “but at least this time it will be worth it.” She placed her hands on either side of his head.

It took only a single sharp twist, and it was done. Dr. Evil slid to the floor, tongue protruding, eyes still wide and terrified.

His shaking, however, had stopped.

Twenty-five years of needles, poking, and invasive examinations by this man, ended with a flick of her wrists. Wondering who they’d send as a replacement, she calmly went and sat on the bed.

A disembodied male voice came over an invisible speaker. “Subject. Lie face down on the floor and put your hands behind your back.”

Subject. Not prisoner or citizen or even her own name. Subject was meant to remind her that she was property, a thing owned by people more powerful than she, a lowly peasant beholden to a sovereign under the theory of the divine right of kings.

She wasn’t a peasant, though. She was a Queen, no matter what they called her.

She did as she was told. In a few moments, through the airlocks filed a team of hulking men with rifles. Dressed in combat black, they wore face shields, gloves, and boots, so not a single inch of skin was visible. Not even their eyes were visible behind the mirrored shields.