[b]CDC Center, Ft. Leonard Wood, MO
Third Floor[/b]

The fifth day with no sound, no contact. Petra was becoming extremely paranoid and had taken to scheming in her composition notebook. Getting out of here had never been so important to her in these nine months as it had been in the past few days. She wasn't eating regularly, was OVER exercising, never dressed in anything more than a sports bra, shorts, and socks and was spending too much time and energy thinking about what she would do when she got out – who'd she see, the answers she'd obtain, the people she'd bring to justice for locking her up in this place and causing her all of this mental anguish. Her stress level was high, to say the least.

She was laying belly-down on the floor scribbling notes when she heard a click, the only sound she'd heard in what felt to her like a lifetime. What could it have been though, and where did it come from? She sat up and rubbed her palms over her face and her eyes. Dark circles indicated she had lost a bit of sleep. She ran her hands through her hair to detangle it a bit while standing up. She looked around at all of the appliances and even to the bathroom thinking that's where the sound originated. It wasn't until a few minutes later she put two and two together. It was the sound of a door unlocking! How could she mistake that? Her eyes widened and her mouth turned up into a wide grin, the first one she'd had in a while. She was excited to finally get an answer as to why she'd had no contact.

She didn't hesitate from bounding over and swung the door open as quick as she could! With the rooms totally soundproof, how was she to know about what was going on out in the hallway? She had just barely gotten her head out to take a glance when a shot ricocheted down toward her end of the hallway. Instinct and past experience meant there was no way she wouldn't recognize that sound. Just as quickly as her head popped out past the door frame, it popped back in and she was quickly on all fours with her right hand over her head for cover.

Her breathe became more labored and intense as she sat trying to make sense of what had just happened. She tried to calm herself down and was a few seconds later able to focus on the other sounds she was hearing. The hallway was the perfect amplifier, and she could hear an obvious scuffle going on. Still on all fours, she peeked her eyes past the frame in the direction of the noise to see two men fighting. Her situation had gone from relative peace to sheer confusion.

This was all getting quite shocking for her. A few moments later one of the guys, who looked like he might have been some kind of guard, got taken down. Hard. She shook her head from side to side and closed her eyes tight. When she opened them back up there was someone else in the hallway with... a bow and arrow?!

By now her adrenaline was pumping, instinct was starting to take over, and there was no time to think, only to react. She had just seen one person die. Was she really going to watch a second killing? Was there even enough time to stop it? Before she realized it, she was back up and headed to the book shelf. She grabbed the biggest, heaviest book she could find, which ended up being a random seven hundred page, hard back novel. She ran back out and this time all the way into the hallway. Luckily, with her room being almost all the way at the opposite end of the action in the hallway, she was put in a good position to be effective, and probably hadn't been heard scuffling around yet since she only had socks on her feet.

Much like someone would toss the shot in shot put (minus any spinning), she turned her body slightly to the right, firmly planted her feet, and twisted her torso to the right. Her right hand was locked and loaded with the book, right arm all the way up, elbow past her ear. She used her left arm, out in front of her now, to get the momentum going, twisted back and vaulted the book in the direction of the guy with the bow. If she had aimed it as well as she thought, it would hit him square in the back of the head, effectively distracting him and maybe even stunning him enough to make him accidentally drop the weapon.

If it missed and he turned to shoot at her, she'd probably have just enough time to escape back into her room, but for now she stood there watching the book fly toward the other end of the hallway almost in slow motion. Nothing else existed in her world except the book. She had to stay at least to see if it hit...