“Sophia’s on the loose again,” Jemma sighed. “And she’s got a gun this time.”

I looked over at her sharply, hoping to see a joke or an eye crease or even a complete lack of expression. Any of those would tell me it was a joke. 

Jemma had this terrible habit of “testing” people, as she called it, by presenting made-up crises and seeing how the people in her life could handle it. Maybe it was her way of protecting herself, or maybe it was her way of seeing if the people in her life could be trusted, or both. I don’t think it occurred to her that after a point, it actually made her somewhat untrustworthy. Not in a real fight, of course. In a real fight, she was ferocious in a way only the traumatized could muster.

Unfortunately, her face was showing emotion, and it wasn’t levity. Sophia had gotten out again, but I suppose that’s what you get when you live with a chimpanzee with an IQ of a hundred twenty. Seeing Jemma grab her jacket pushed me into getting mine. Where did Sophia get a gun? 

Have you seen that scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes where James Franco had to walk Andy Serkis around on a leash? There’s a sad, unfortunate reason for the leash. Chimpanzees aren’t often seen out of zoos, and when they are, people tend to freak out, which tends to freak Chimpanzees out. This is not something you want to have happen in general, and definitely not something you want when the chimpanzee in question is armed.

Neither Jemma nor I could stand to see Sophia on a leash. Did you get that image in your head, a second ago, of Andy Serkis with a leash around his neck, being led around by James Franco? Humiliating, right? I mean, it’s one thing if you’re doing that at the Folsom Street Fair, but another entirely when you’re just outside on a regular day. It just felt wrong, and it’s probably what moved Jemma and me to break Sophia out of the lab in the first place.

Of course, we asked Sophia if she wanted to escape first. I mean, if we’d just kidnapped her, that’d be as bad as keeping her locked up, wouldn’t it? Different set of captors, is all, maybe with marginally better food. This was in the early days of CorpLabs, and their facilities really weren’t very pleasant places. Sophia was pretty clearly in favor of leaving.

Ever seen a deer read a road sign? That’s exactly what CorpLabs was supposed to fix, to get animals to read the same signs as the local people, and follow them. I can’t imagine how this ever became legal, but I use my brain for a living, so that pretty much rules out understanding politics.

The day Jemma and I lost our senses, and our jobs, and ran away with Sophia, our lab was in New York. The City being what it is, we probably could have gotten away with just giving Sophia a SmartAnimal shirt, but we didn’t want to run the risk of being identified as lab jumpers, and besides, the laws in New York hadn’t yet caught up with what CorporateLabs were doing. In fact, very few states had, by then: Delaware and Connecticut were two of them. (To this day, in Alaska, Chimpanzees are considered game animals, which I don’t even want to think about. I mean, I’m sure protein is still hard to come by up there, even after the ice melted, but damn).

Anyhow, once we decided to lose her leash and run, we just went from state to state, trying to find a place where we felt even a little bit safe. For scientists, we’re not very good at thinking ahead.

Back to: where the hell did she get a gun? I mean, fine, she’d gotten out again, but why did she have to be armed this time?

“Jemma?”

“Yes?”

“Where did she get a gun?”

“I’m guessing she got it from the gun cabinet that I’m looking at with the open door and the missing gun.”

Jemma was good at making me feel stupid in an entertaining, and sometimes almost endearing, way.

“Wait. That cabinet’s been locked since we got here last week, yeah?”

“Yep,” she answered as she put on her boots. “You want to stand here asking questions, or should we see if we can go find the stolen chimpanzee with the stolen gun and return her to the house we’re only semi-legally staying in?”

I slipped my boots on and followed her out the door.