Back in the present, Martha was still falling to her death. No longer a snowflake floating light and wide, she was a missile, locked and loaded with violent potential.

As the air beat against her face and whistled past her ears, she stared at the Earth speeding towards her. What would that feel like? Would it be painful – for the ground to smash her skull to pieces? Or would she die instantly? Would she remember the sensation? Enough to describe it to James like an old soldier trading war stories with another? Or would she-

"Pull, Beckett! Pull!" Nan screamed through her earpiece.

"Shit!" Martha pulled her ripcord and her body flipped upright, feet grazing the top of a banyan tree. She banked hard right to avoid a second then hard left to avoid a third before hitting the ground rougher than was her plan.

After shrugging off her parachute, Martha looked up and waited for Nan's slow descent. Though the forest was dense in places, the night was clear and the moon bright enough for her to remove her goggles.

Finally, Nan landed, pulled off her parachute and goggles, then whispered to Martha, "Why did you wait so long to pull? That was insane!"

"After we survive this, I'll teach you that too."

"No thank you."

Martha ignored the strange look Nan was giving her, held up her wrist, and activated the holographic map from her watch. Based on a combination of GPS analysis and intel from an informant working within the compound, a green, three dimensional representation of the surrounding terrain floated above the gadget. There was about a kilometer of forest before the open grounds of James' fifteen acre estate. Just beyond the edge of the forest, a red dot glowed, marking their point of entry.

"We go dark from here," Martha said. Nan nodded silently and the agents were off.

They moved as quickly and quietly as they could, over and around thick rooted trees and bushes until they reached the clearing. Martha could see the maintenance door. It was attached to a concrete structure that angled downward away from them, disappearing underground. She adjusted her watch to scan for devices emitting wifi signals and found none. The intel was right. No security cameras at the maintenance door. Pretty sloppy, James.

Martha nodded to Nan, then the pair of agents scurried the short distance to the door. Once there, Nan pulled a pen from a sleeve in her suit then held it next to the door handle. She clicked the back, activating a laser cutter at its front and traced a circle around. Martha pulled on the handle and it ripped off with a clunk!

The door opened easily. Inside, they found storage cabinets on their left and what appeared to be a control panel for the irrigation system on their right. Ahead were stairs leading down.

Martha activated the hologram from her watch again. Now relying entirely on the source's intel, the floating green map showed a staircase heading down followed by a 120 meter long corridor leading straight to the sanitation room. She nodded to Nan, toggled off the map, and the two made their way softly down the stairs.

At the bottom, they found a problem.

There was no 120 meter corridor, but a wall in their face and twin hallways leading left and right. Martha brought up the map again. It showed the same layout as before, completely at odds with reality. And then she knew.

"What does this mean?" Nan said.

"It means we've walked into a trap."

Her intel was worse than bad. It was intentional.

Kamalei Kekoa was James' head landscaper. Martha had flagged chat room activity of his that was critical of James – Kamalei had found a white mainlander bulldozing a section of forest and digging into volcanic bedrock for the sake of his tropical luxury compound repugnant. It didn't take much convincing to turn him – conspicuously little, in hindsight.

The wall in front of them had arrows pointing left and right with Hawaiian writing underneath.

"What does it say?" Nan asked.

Martha sighed. "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you understood every language."

"Nope," Martha said, shaking her head and smiling ironically. "No, I've only learned 203. Still a few hundred more to go." And of course he would know Hawaiian to be on that list.

She looked left then right. The corridors appeared identical. Then she noticed a picture plastered at the top of each corridor opening. On the right, was a picture of Godzilla; on the left, the Staypuft Marshmallow Man.

Nan started walking to the right. "Should we..."

"Wait!" Martha said, clutching Nan's arm. She moved cautiously toward the Godzilla corridor then stuck her hand out toward its opening. The tips of her fingers prickled slightly from an electric charge in the air. She stepped back, then took a bobby pin from the back of her hair and tossed it into the corridor. Upon connecting with the metal floor, the pin shot in the air, propelled by an explosion of electricity. It fell and jumped again and again, sparks raining upward like a perverse firework display.

Martha turned to the opposite corridor and the picture of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. I get it... My coat. Real cute, James. "This is the way."

"Wait. How can you be certain?" Nan asked, her voice unsteady.

"I don't know Nan, can't it just be a hunch?" Martha snapped. Nan's brow furrowed and her eyes betrayed a fear consistent with someone having come steps from electrocuting herself. "Sorry. Here." Martha took out another bobby pin then undid the bun holding her shoulder length hair and shook it out. She tossed the pin down the left corridor and it landed without fanfare.

Martha looked at Nan. "We can still do this."

Nan let out a deep breath and nodded, then the two walked down the corridor. While the floor was metal, the walls were concrete. There were no doors or signs, just an exposed lightbulb in the ceiling every ten meters. It turned to the right, the right again and then left. Martha and Nan had no choice but to follow where it led – like rats in a maze...

Finally, they came to another T with arrows pointing left and right and Hawaiian instructions underneath. Above the left corridor, was a picture of a carton of orange juice; above the right, a carton of grape juice.

"This way," Martha said, pointing at the grape juice. She noticed two chairs sitting under the arrows and picked one of them up. "Just for kicks," she said, then walked to the orange juice corridor and tossed in the chair. Flamethrowers mounted in the floor ignited, filling the hallway with fire. Martha and Nan flinched back from the heat. "That... would have hurt," Martha understated.

Without a word, Nan picked up the other chair and threw it down the grape juice corridor eliciting only the clang of metal on metal. "Good hunch," she said, and the pair entered the hallway.

It was identical to the previous corridor in appearance and a mirror image of its path – left, left, right, then another T. As before, there were arrows, Hawaiian, and a pair of pictures framing each hallway: a chocolate chip cookie and an ice cream cone. I love a good cookie. But he never proposed to me with one...

"Ice cream cone," she said and Nan followed her without hesitation. Thankfully, there was no electrified floor or hidden flamethrowers. Unfortunately, once they were both fully in the corridor, the floor collapsed, sending them tumbling down.

It was a short fall before they hit an angled metal panel, funneling them into a chute that spit them out into another room.

They were dazed from the fall, but snapped out of it once they saw where they were. It appeared to be a break room. A refrigerator, toaster oven, coffee maker, and cabinets surrounded a long table at which sat a dozen, mostly large men in the middle of a meal. The two sides stared silently at each other for a second longer than necessary from the shock.

Then mayhem erupted.

The men got to their feet quickly, but Martha was much quicker. Unsheathing two expandable batons from her suit, she launched herself at them. The first took a swing, but she ducked, cracked his knee cap then slid under the table, cracking three more as she passed.

Nan pressed a button at her elbow and a miniature taser shot out from her sleeve. She tased the first man, still clutching his knee, and he collapsed in a heap. Another grabbed her from behind, but she was able to slip from his grasp, kick him in the stomach, then tase him to the floor as well.

Meanwhile, Martha was a tornado in black – spinning kicks and batons cracking bones and felling goon upon goon.

"Look out!" Nan screamed.

Martha heard the gunshot and felt a deep, searing pain in her shoulder. The kevlar had done its job deflecting the bullet, but the impact left a screaming wound, nonetheless. She looked to the source and saw Nan tasing the shooter. Behind her, a man lunged with a knife. Martha grabbed a plate off the table and flung it like a frisbee. It hit him in the side of his head and his body hit the floor.

Martha and Nan stared at each other, gasping for air, then at the collection of brutes on the floor, unconscious or writhing in pain.

"Are you okay?" Nan said, before racing to Martha. "Where were you hit?"

Martha rolled her shoulder and pain shot down her arm and across her back. Strangely, a gush of pleasure accompanied the injury. The odd coupling of sensations had begun early in this life. Was her brain rewiring, something akin to James' outright tolerance for drugs and alcohol? Had her dorsal posterior insula formed an unnatural connection with her hypothalamus, linking her pain receptors with the release of dopamine? No time for scientific curiosity. My altered brain is a 'next life problem.'

"I'm fine," Martha said, then wiped the poi splatter off of Nan's cheek. "Are you-"

Suddenly, a lid hanging over the chute from which they'd fallen slammed shut, the locks of the doors on either side of the room clicked, and the vents along the ceiling sealed themselves flat. Something resembling a sprinkler descended from a hole in the middle of the ceiling and began to spray gas in every direction. Well, that's not very fair...

Nan hurried to the nearest door and tried in vain to open it. "What do we do?"

Martha sighed, sat on the floor with her back to the wall, and motioned Nan to join her.

At a loss, she complied. "I don't understand."

"It's better to pass out sitting than standing." She took Nan's hand, closed her eyes, and breathed in.

Author's note:

Sneaky Jimmy Quinn!!  But he sure has a lot of faith in Martha's puzzle solving ability!

Thanks for reading!!