Tasìa cursed her own ineptitude. She leaned against the wall of a holding cell they called the Cistern. A toilet, a faucet and washbasin, and a long metal bench that doubled as a cot, were her only company.

The latter proved to be chilly when pressed against her naked fanny. So, she preferred standing.

Tasìa suspired and reflected on her predicament.

After she, accompanied by the two large-set guards that comprised the affectionately monikered Goon Squad, crossed through the secure doors of an office complex, she was handed over to a pair of female guards. They stripped her down and checked her every orifice thoroughly.

One of the women opened a hatch while the other guard directed Tasìa to climb down a ladder into the cell below.

When she made it to the bottom, fifteen feet down, one guard yelled, "make yourself comfortable. The Lieutenant won't be back until Monday morning to see you."

Tasìa looked back into the woman's smiling face with her teeth clenched and bared; she raised her arm in a fist and smacked the inside of her elbow with her other hand.

The guard chuckled at the obscene gesture.

"So rude of you, little one. To think, all of the duty officers back at the dorm call you Sweet Tasìa," she answered back as she cranked the ladder up into the ceiling.

Now, Tasìa stood naked and cold while regretting every move she had played out so far. Her actions only accomplished getting her in here and in a more vulnerable position than she had been before.

Should have never come back here. I had hours I could have used to explore alternative routes down in the aqueduct support tunnels before they ever trained their sights to search down there.

She let her sense of prudence get the best of her. Her father instilled in her a core set of survival precepts. One was to be wary of comfort zones, and the false sense of security they provided.

Her caution was her comfort zone. It made her question her own finely tuned intuitions.

Now she was stuck here until Monday.

General Kutuzova would have to leave without her.

Stupid, mousy little me.

It then occurred to her - this was exactly how they wanted her to feel.

Every factor in her current environment served that purpose: the oubliette design of the dirty little holding cell made one feel caged like an animal, along with the coldness, the dampness, the foul mildew and urine smell, and the forced nudity.

It was all designed to make a prisoner feel vulnerable and pitiful before they were interrogated.

Even here in this cell of utter futility, her father's words made the most perfect sense.

Always find the most optimum means. Disregard how anyone else defines it.

What did she have in her own advantage?

First, they would leave her alone for nearly twenty-one hours. Only breakfast was served in the Cistern.

Isolation, hunger, coldness, dampness, ungodly smells. It was designed to break you.

The treatment was excused as policy because no one could be subjected to the conditions of the interrogation cells for more than forty-eight hours without regulatory oversight kicking in.

For the typical, fragile ego bound person who wound up in these circumstances that was more than enough time to break them.

A quick glance told her two other things worked in her favor. The cement blocks were even more porous than those of the gym walls she had climbed previously.

Her other advantage, the clay, used for the bricks in the floor dividers, was soft and malleable enough for her to reshape.

Tasìa squatted down to study the brick more carefully. Several pieces had been chipped off already. She deemed they were not too soft for her purpose.

She grew excited as she rubbed her thumb along the grain.

Tasìa looked up at the trapdoor. The lock mechanism appeared to be a simple one. It all depended on the density of the tumbler rollers whether her plan would work or not.

The ladder folded up along the ceiling between a set of rails built into it that faced the East wall. After she climbed up the ruddy wall with no trouble, her back faced the ladder.

Tasìa limbered her muscles by pushing her body up against the wall and stretching her back outwardly for two dozen seconds.

She then gripped the wall with her fingers, pulled her legs tightly bent in against her chest. Tasìa thrust out with all of her strength; she twisted around in mid-air just before she grabbed the ladder sides.

Her maneuver successfully pushed the ladder out of the rail holds. She gripped the ladder tight as she rode it down.

Now that the ladder was in place, Tasìa jumped off. She bent back down and she sorted through the brick fragments. She picked out the four most even and flat ones.

With them in hand, Tasìa climbed back up the ladder.

She tried one fragment, as thin as a toothpick, and she poked at the tumblers.

She counted seven of them in a space of two and a quarter inches. It would be a tight fit to carve the grooves correctly given the material she was using. Fortunately, the shape of the tumblers was uniform which made her calculation of groove spacing easy once she sorted out the seven tumbler positions.

At the top of the ladder, Tasìa slid her fingers along the inside of the rail niche.

Inside, the metal was rough and unvarnished. It would do well enough for a surface to whittle and polish the clay-work key, but no light could get inside the niche.

She would have to make the key as slowly as her patience would allow.

As she worked at the key, she noticed the trapdoor vibrated, subtly. Tasìa placed her fingers along the surface of the door.

Someone was walking in the suite of rooms and corridors above her.

There were only the two female guards as far as she was aware in the hold complex.

A corridor led to a second set of offices, but she caught no indication of activity when she passed by them earlier.

It was a Saturday, with the typical light staffing of a weekend; it was likely no one else was back there.

The vibrations gave her a surprising amount of intuited information. She could surmise the path, direction, velocity, as well as the distance of the person in motion accurately enough to make use of the data provided.

Of the two guards, it was the heavyset lady who did not bother to speak to Tasìa that walked around above. She stomped in the uneven pattern of one who had nerve damage in her foot.

She was also going to the bathroom to pee.

Tasìa suspected the guard would follow a regular schedule in her habits.

Tasìa made a note to keep a tab of their movement to figure out the pattern of their routines to exploit later.

She got back to filing a key.

The first two attempts failed, but she learned from her mistakes. Tasìa found the straight layered grain fragments did not hold up well enough, structurally.

She climbed back down the steps. Tasìa knew where she needed to look. Using her naked heel with several carefully placed kicks, Tasìa broke off a corner piece.

She picked up three fragments to examine by rubbing her thumb along their lengths. The grain skewed in evenly crossed lines. At the elongated ends were long beveled cross-hatch grainéd insets.

Perfect.

Just over two hours of being locked up in the Cistern, Tasìa had her key.