The Chemist

She stood back and gave the decoy a once-over through half-closed eyes. It wasn’t her best work, but it did look like someone was asleep in the bed. Even if an intruder didn’t believe it was Chris, he would still have to neutralize the sleeping body before he went on to search for her.

Too tired to change into her pajamas, she just stepped out of her loose jeans. It was enough. She grabbed the fourth pillow and pulled her sleeping bag out from under the bed; they felt bulkier and heavier than usual. She dragged them into the compact bathroom, dumped them in the tub, and did the bare minimum of ablutions. No face-washing tonight, just cleaning the teeth.

The gun and the gas mask were both under the sink, hidden beneath a stack of towels. She pulled the mask over her head and tightened the straps, then clapped her palm over the filter port and inhaled through her nose to check the seal. The mask suctioned to her face just fine. It always did, but she never let familiarity or exhaustion make her skip the safety routine. She moved the gun into the wall-mounted soap dish within easy reach above the bathtub. She didn’t love the gun – she was a decent shot compared with a totally untrained civilian, but not in the same class as a professional. She needed the option, though; someday her enemies were going to figure her system out, and the people coming for her would be in gas masks, too.

Honestly, she was surprised her shtick had saved her this long.

With an unopened chemical-absorption canister tucked under her bra strap, she shuffled the two steps back into the bedroom. She knelt beside the floor vent on the right side of the bed she’d never used. The vent cover grille probably wasn’t as dusty as it should be, the grille’s top screws were only halfway in, and the bottom screws were missing altogether, but she was sure no one looking through the window would notice these details or understand what they meant if he did; Sherlock Holmes was about the only person she wasn’t worried would make an attempt on her life.

She loosened the top screws and removed the grille. A few things would be immediately obvious to anyone who looked inside the vent. One, the back of the vent was sealed off, so it was no longer functional. Two, the large white bucket and the big battery pack probably didn’t belong down there. She pried the lid off the bucket and was immediately greeted by the same chemical smell that infused the front room, so familiar she barely noted it.

She reached into the darkness behind the bucket and pulled out, first, a small, awkward contraption with a coil, metal arms, and thin wires, then a glass ampoule about the size of her finger, and, finally, a rubber cleaning glove. She positioned the solenoid – the device she’d scavenged from a discarded washing machine – so that the arms extending from it were half submerged in the colorless liquid inside the bucket. She blinked hard twice, trying to force herself into alertness; this was the delicate part. She put the glove on her right hand, then pulled the canister free from her bra strap and held it ready in her left. With the gloved hand, she carefully inserted the ampoule into the grooves she’d drilled into the metal arms for this purpose. The ampoule rested just under the surface of the acid, the white powder inside it inert and harmless. However, if the current running through the wires that were attached so tenuously atop the bed were to be interrupted, the pulse would snap the solenoid shut, and the glass would shatter. The white powder would turn into a gas that was neither inert nor harmless.

It was essentially the same arrangement that she had in the front room; the wiring was just simpler here. This trap was set only while she slept.

She replaced the glove and the vent cover and then, with a feeling that was not quite buoyant enough to be called relief, lurched back to the bathroom. The door, like the vent, might have tipped off someone as detail oriented as Mr. Holmes – the soft rubber liners around all the edges were definitely not standard. They wouldn’t entirely seal the bathroom off from the bedroom, but they would give her more time.

She half fell into the tub, a slow-motion collapse onto the puffy sleeping bag. It had taken her a while to get used to sleeping in the mask, but now she didn’t even think about it as she gratefully closed her eyes.

She shimmied herself into the down-and-nylon cocoon, squirming till the hard square of her iPad was nestled against the small of her back. It was plugged into an extension cord that got power from the front-room wiring. If the power fluctuated along that line, the iPad would vibrate. She knew from experience that it was enough to wake her, even as tired as she was tonight. She also knew that she could have the canister – still in her left hand, hugged tight against her chest like a child’s teddy bear – unsealed and screwed into place on the gas mask in less than three seconds, despite being half awake, in the dark, and holding her breath. She’d practiced so many times, and then she’d proved herself during the three emergencies that had not been practice. She’d survived. Her system worked.

Exhausted as she was, she had to let her mind tick over the evils of her day before it would let her be unconscious. It felt horrible – like phantom-limb pain, not connected to any actual piece of her body, just there anyway – knowing they’d found her again. She wasn’t satisfied with her e-mail response, either. She’d come up with the plan too impulsively to be sure of it. And it required her to act more quickly than she’d like.

She knew the theory – sometimes, if you ran headlong at the guy holding the gun, you could catch him off guard. Flight was always her favorite move, but she didn’t see a way out of the alternative this time. Maybe tomorrow, after her tired brain had rebooted.