I was sitting in the den at home - home home, Connecticut home. Not school home. So I was sitting in the den, watching the late night, post-SNL broadcast when it turned to dance. It wasn't just one kind of dance, either, but all dance. Not explicitly, of course, but it was aware of its span.
Anyone who's seen Dirty Dancing is familiar with that style of close dance, always in unison, usually in contact, never actually giving in to the powerful, sexual energy coursing through and around you and your partner, because, frankly, it's sexier. This was after a cabaret bit, before they switched to middle eastern and African dance (and eventually went onward to burlesque).
But I was watching the contact, the physical and mental, the awareness of what they were doing and just how close they were to each other, but what they would never do. They were two reporters for the segment, taught by the leads themselves (or perhaps the choreographers? Either way, those two could dance.) and obviously a little self conscious. They began with no idea of what they were doing and the woman remarked, when the male lead was behind her, that she was married.
Then they reached the "finale." The two stood at opposite ends of the stage and approached each other, touched, slipped into one anothers' hands while remaining outside the arms, at arms' length. Their bodies - their cores - found one another and they moved as they had been taught, his hand sliding sensuously down her arm and slipping to the small of her back, supporting her as she leaned over and whipped herself around.
And then they were face to back, his chest behind her, against her, their pelvises touching or, at least, very close. His arm was around her waist, his hand on her abdomen, on her belly, gently, barely touching it. It was as though he encompassed her, but wasn't truly in contact with her, yet her head was beside his as if she had leaned back into him, her face to the sky.
The leads looked on and I swore I saw in their faces, only for a moment, the realization flash in their minds of how they must look, of what it stirred in people to observe that and what must have been going through those dancers' minds.
People are sensuous. Is that how it goes? An object, an act, can be sensual because it evokes the senses, but the people themselves are sensuous because they have their senses provoked, drawn upon.
Yes. I think that's it. Humans are sensuous. People are humans. Your family and your friends are people. They feel both physically and emotionally, possibly spiritually as well.
Be aware of that. Please.
Subscribe To Kiori
Posts
All Comments
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Day 14: All caught up
As he pulled the handle and opened the door, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Don looking at him, eyes bubbling over with confusion and worry, but it was Megan who spoke.
“Jack… What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
The words stung. They were so matter of fact. I would expect that from a child, Megan, not you, they said with their tone. You should know.
“That doesn’t mean it’s right, Jack.”
Zach, now, joining in to keep him from making what they saw as a mistake. Could they see it any other way? He wondered. What if they were in the same position?
“Jack. Dawn would never forgive me. I could never forgive me.”
Back, full circle, to Don. Uncertainty in his mind for the first time, tumbling through his memories of the past week, the trials he – no, they – had been through and, after all of that, they wanted him to experience more hardship? More loss?
No. Not this time. He brushed Don’s hand from his shoulder and burst from the car, only to gag and fall backward as the hand caught the neck of his shirt and dragged him down. He slipped from it and started around the car, only to feel his stomach lurch forward as he was turned and slammed against the side of the van, neck held by his much larger elder. What had before been confusion had resolved into anger – furious, righteous anger.
“The hell, boy! You think it’ll do us any good to lose you, too? She’s gone and it hurts, and it should hurt! That’s how you know you still care, but charging in, thinking you’re invincible… When you get a break like this once, it doesn’t come again. Throwing it away, Jack? Really? That’s how you want this to end?”
Even with one arm, the man far outweighed him and, besides that, simply overpowered him. He could barely breathe, much less speak, but he grunted in protest. Eventually, when he started to physically scrabble at his neck in desperation, Don eased up enough for him to talk.
“She’s my mom and you… You’re dating her! You’re a heartless fuck is what you are! You think you’re tough, but most of all you think you’re smart, think you’re smart enough to take what you’re given when you’re given it, but that’s now how it works, Don!
“We all saw that when the bombs hit, that we have to take what we’re given and run with it until we get more, or else we’re just going to end where we started, but you’re going to throw her and me and Zach and Megan away! One day we’re going to be the ones who are too dangerous to help.”
They were both breathing hard, as though their scuffle had been physical, but the fire had siphoned from Don’s eyes and, it seemed if you looked at him, into Jack’s. The van tilted back to rest, centered on its frame, as Don backed off and Jack stood up. He was still wary of his elder, lids narrow around blue eyes.
“Are you gonna try to stop me again?”
Don shook his head. Jack turned back to the car, peeked in through the driver-side window.
“How ‘bout you two?”
Same.
“All right. Good.”
He pulled the pistol from his belt and checked the cartridge, made sure it was solidly in the handle of the gun and flicked off the safety.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, odds are I’m not coming back out. If that’s what happens… Follow Don’s lead. He’ll decide what you do.”
“You don’t want our help?”
He looked at her over his shoulder, then down at the ground.
“No. This is mine to do.”
He left before any of them could respond, ducked low beneath the window-frames and disappeared into the house.
They counted first the seconds, then the minutes as the house remained silent and stationary. Two passed, then three and four. It had soon been five minutes, but the three of them continued to sit in the van, watching the door. Cold sweat flooded their skin, pushing it out, making it clammy and soft. They didn’t have to wait for long.
Three flashes, punctuated by an equal number of loud cracks and a scream preceded Dawn, dashing from the house with Jack fast on her heels. One side of her face was covered in red and Jack’s shirt was stained with what could only be blood. Don threw open the passenger’s door as Megan and Zach opened the back and welcomed Dawn in, ushering her across them as Jack jumped into shotgun and fired two more shots at the doorway, bullets cracking the frame and scaring the suit back inside, only his hand and the gun therein peeking out.
“What’re you waiting for? Drive!”
Don hit the gas, launching the car from its standstill as inertia threw them back. They turned the corner as a black Lincoln burst from behind their row house, charging after them as they sought the highway.
The back door was unlocked. This should have been a blaring danger klaxon, but Jack went in regardless, gun at the ready out in front as he turned a corner into the kitchen. Two men in monkey suits stood alongside his mother, one on either side of the kitchen chair within which she sat. She was not tied down and they were facing away from him, but one of them had a gun to her head and both were watching the front door, waiting for someone to come in that way. He tightened his grip on the pistol and, just as he started to go in, whipped it around as he spun, bottom of the handle coming just short of a third agent’s chin, the man’s head snapping back. He fell into the wall and grunted, whistled sharply just as Jack swung again, but he ducked and came up behind the young man, caught his extended arm and pulled it out to the side, pushed on the joint of his shoulder and rolled it forward, spinning him around and slamming him into the floor.
He could feel footsteps vibrating through the hardwood, knew they were coming from the kitchen, and only hoped that the distance was short enough; he jerked his head up, driving the back of it into the base of the agent’s chin. He rolled the suddenly-limp form off of his back and stood up, rubbing the back of his head for the second time that day.
He came through the entryway while Jack was still picking up his gun. His leg moved quickly, and it was all Jack could do to throw himself out of the way as the ball of the agent’s foot arced in and grazed his cheek, rough sole scratching his flesh and spinning him to the ground. He held onto the gun, though, and had it aimed as he caught himself with his free hand and kept himself upright. The suit didn’t stop; he jerked to the side and pushed off from the wall, driving his momentum down at Jack away from the gun, but Jack never fired. He swiped to his side with the weapon, bringing it down on the back of the man’s head as he came in for the kill. Blood shot from a burst blood vessel on the back of his bald skull and the man fell unconscious. Or dead. Either way, Jack didn’t have much sympathy left for him.
He went around to the front of the kitchen quickly but quietly, catching the third agent with his back turned. The look on his mother’s face as he raised the pistol, fired into the suit’s head… He didn’t have time to worry about whether she approved, what she thought of him. The agent’s body fell without any manner of decorum, tumbling freely to the ground with only the external input of the kitchen table and the momentum imparted by the bullet to guide it. His mother stared at him, blood coating half of her face crimson awful, mouth open, scream silent in her throat. They would have heard the shot, they’d be coming through the front door in just a moment whywasshestillsittingthere!
“Go!”
She responded immediately, standing and running from the kitchen with him behind her, firing two wild shots at the men who came through the door after them, forcing them aside. The light greeted them harshly – outside felt so exposed as they made their mad dash to the car.
And now she was screaming. She was screaming and she wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t tell her to do it, his voice as hung as hers had been earlier. He wanted to yell it, “Quiet! Quiet! Shut up I was only doing what I had to do!” but he wasn’t sure it was true and… God, was he really? No, he did was he had to do to ensure her survival, to make sure she wouldn’t be used against him and… And he did love her. She was his mother; of course he loved her.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!”
He hadn’t meant to say the words so harshly, but his voice was hoarse, barely escaping his tongue and his lips, a desperate croak, but it cut her off for just a moment.
“Mom, I… I did what I had to do, okay? He had a gun to your head!”
She wasn’t shouting anymore, just breathing heavily as he cried, as he dropped his gun to the car floor and pressed his face into the headrest, gripped the shoulders of his seat as though they were all that anchored him to his world. He sobbed loudly, audibly, not understanding why it had happened, why she’d had to confront him why she’d seen him like… Like…
A monster! She had looked at him like he was a monster!
“Jack… What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
The words stung. They were so matter of fact. I would expect that from a child, Megan, not you, they said with their tone. You should know.
“That doesn’t mean it’s right, Jack.”
Zach, now, joining in to keep him from making what they saw as a mistake. Could they see it any other way? He wondered. What if they were in the same position?
“Jack. Dawn would never forgive me. I could never forgive me.”
Back, full circle, to Don. Uncertainty in his mind for the first time, tumbling through his memories of the past week, the trials he – no, they – had been through and, after all of that, they wanted him to experience more hardship? More loss?
No. Not this time. He brushed Don’s hand from his shoulder and burst from the car, only to gag and fall backward as the hand caught the neck of his shirt and dragged him down. He slipped from it and started around the car, only to feel his stomach lurch forward as he was turned and slammed against the side of the van, neck held by his much larger elder. What had before been confusion had resolved into anger – furious, righteous anger.
“The hell, boy! You think it’ll do us any good to lose you, too? She’s gone and it hurts, and it should hurt! That’s how you know you still care, but charging in, thinking you’re invincible… When you get a break like this once, it doesn’t come again. Throwing it away, Jack? Really? That’s how you want this to end?”
Even with one arm, the man far outweighed him and, besides that, simply overpowered him. He could barely breathe, much less speak, but he grunted in protest. Eventually, when he started to physically scrabble at his neck in desperation, Don eased up enough for him to talk.
“She’s my mom and you… You’re dating her! You’re a heartless fuck is what you are! You think you’re tough, but most of all you think you’re smart, think you’re smart enough to take what you’re given when you’re given it, but that’s now how it works, Don!
“We all saw that when the bombs hit, that we have to take what we’re given and run with it until we get more, or else we’re just going to end where we started, but you’re going to throw her and me and Zach and Megan away! One day we’re going to be the ones who are too dangerous to help.”
They were both breathing hard, as though their scuffle had been physical, but the fire had siphoned from Don’s eyes and, it seemed if you looked at him, into Jack’s. The van tilted back to rest, centered on its frame, as Don backed off and Jack stood up. He was still wary of his elder, lids narrow around blue eyes.
“Are you gonna try to stop me again?”
Don shook his head. Jack turned back to the car, peeked in through the driver-side window.
“How ‘bout you two?”
Same.
“All right. Good.”
He pulled the pistol from his belt and checked the cartridge, made sure it was solidly in the handle of the gun and flicked off the safety.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, odds are I’m not coming back out. If that’s what happens… Follow Don’s lead. He’ll decide what you do.”
“You don’t want our help?”
He looked at her over his shoulder, then down at the ground.
“No. This is mine to do.”
He left before any of them could respond, ducked low beneath the window-frames and disappeared into the house.
They counted first the seconds, then the minutes as the house remained silent and stationary. Two passed, then three and four. It had soon been five minutes, but the three of them continued to sit in the van, watching the door. Cold sweat flooded their skin, pushing it out, making it clammy and soft. They didn’t have to wait for long.
Three flashes, punctuated by an equal number of loud cracks and a scream preceded Dawn, dashing from the house with Jack fast on her heels. One side of her face was covered in red and Jack’s shirt was stained with what could only be blood. Don threw open the passenger’s door as Megan and Zach opened the back and welcomed Dawn in, ushering her across them as Jack jumped into shotgun and fired two more shots at the doorway, bullets cracking the frame and scaring the suit back inside, only his hand and the gun therein peeking out.
“What’re you waiting for? Drive!”
Don hit the gas, launching the car from its standstill as inertia threw them back. They turned the corner as a black Lincoln burst from behind their row house, charging after them as they sought the highway.
The back door was unlocked. This should have been a blaring danger klaxon, but Jack went in regardless, gun at the ready out in front as he turned a corner into the kitchen. Two men in monkey suits stood alongside his mother, one on either side of the kitchen chair within which she sat. She was not tied down and they were facing away from him, but one of them had a gun to her head and both were watching the front door, waiting for someone to come in that way. He tightened his grip on the pistol and, just as he started to go in, whipped it around as he spun, bottom of the handle coming just short of a third agent’s chin, the man’s head snapping back. He fell into the wall and grunted, whistled sharply just as Jack swung again, but he ducked and came up behind the young man, caught his extended arm and pulled it out to the side, pushed on the joint of his shoulder and rolled it forward, spinning him around and slamming him into the floor.
He could feel footsteps vibrating through the hardwood, knew they were coming from the kitchen, and only hoped that the distance was short enough; he jerked his head up, driving the back of it into the base of the agent’s chin. He rolled the suddenly-limp form off of his back and stood up, rubbing the back of his head for the second time that day.
He came through the entryway while Jack was still picking up his gun. His leg moved quickly, and it was all Jack could do to throw himself out of the way as the ball of the agent’s foot arced in and grazed his cheek, rough sole scratching his flesh and spinning him to the ground. He held onto the gun, though, and had it aimed as he caught himself with his free hand and kept himself upright. The suit didn’t stop; he jerked to the side and pushed off from the wall, driving his momentum down at Jack away from the gun, but Jack never fired. He swiped to his side with the weapon, bringing it down on the back of the man’s head as he came in for the kill. Blood shot from a burst blood vessel on the back of his bald skull and the man fell unconscious. Or dead. Either way, Jack didn’t have much sympathy left for him.
He went around to the front of the kitchen quickly but quietly, catching the third agent with his back turned. The look on his mother’s face as he raised the pistol, fired into the suit’s head… He didn’t have time to worry about whether she approved, what she thought of him. The agent’s body fell without any manner of decorum, tumbling freely to the ground with only the external input of the kitchen table and the momentum imparted by the bullet to guide it. His mother stared at him, blood coating half of her face crimson awful, mouth open, scream silent in her throat. They would have heard the shot, they’d be coming through the front door in just a moment whywasshestillsittingthere!
“Go!”
She responded immediately, standing and running from the kitchen with him behind her, firing two wild shots at the men who came through the door after them, forcing them aside. The light greeted them harshly – outside felt so exposed as they made their mad dash to the car.
And now she was screaming. She was screaming and she wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t tell her to do it, his voice as hung as hers had been earlier. He wanted to yell it, “Quiet! Quiet! Shut up I was only doing what I had to do!” but he wasn’t sure it was true and… God, was he really? No, he did was he had to do to ensure her survival, to make sure she wouldn’t be used against him and… And he did love her. She was his mother; of course he loved her.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!”
He hadn’t meant to say the words so harshly, but his voice was hoarse, barely escaping his tongue and his lips, a desperate croak, but it cut her off for just a moment.
“Mom, I… I did what I had to do, okay? He had a gun to your head!”
She wasn’t shouting anymore, just breathing heavily as he cried, as he dropped his gun to the car floor and pressed his face into the headrest, gripped the shoulders of his seat as though they were all that anchored him to his world. He sobbed loudly, audibly, not understanding why it had happened, why she’d had to confront him why she’d seen him like… Like…
A monster! She had looked at him like he was a monster!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Massive update: Days 11, 12 and 13
Still, if they had taken down room numbers, there had to be some system for identifying which was which. They would just have to figure it out and, let’s be frank, how hard could that really be if their operation thus far was any indication? Except for the fact that they had led the survivors, unsuspecting in some lapse of judgment, to one place and brutally interrogated them for almost a week…
Jack’s head hit the keyboard, then again as he slammed his forehead into the desk in frustration. The key imprints would look hilarious in a few minutes, he was sure, but he just needed to feel something right then. Maybe it was memorized, mnemonic of some kind that they all had down. If that was the case, the list was really no help to them. Erring on the side of caution, Jack looked up Don’s and Zach’s information and printed it out. Maybe they could take a hostage and interrogate him for a change, get the system out that way. He wasn’t too hopeful.
Megan seemed to be looking to him expectantly as they jogged through the halls, taking turn after turn with the vicious energy of one with a purpose. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was a façade, that he was as lost as she was and really just wanted to get out, but felt obligated to run around in circles in hopes that they would stumble across Zach, Don, or any of the other survivors. Maybe one of the gas station attendants. Really, now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any other survivors - none that he had met, anyway, as the lot of them hadn’t made any attempts to get in contact. They would have to be here, too, and that was a thought that drove him on, down hallways he couldn’t distinguish from each other and doors as non-descript as the walls in which they sat.
After a few minutes, however, it became apparent that this was not a viable solution. The halls were barren and every second wasted could be bringing them a step closer to capture, a step away from their escape. A step, a single step down a long expanse of tile, white and brilliant, wholly unremarkable and each indistinguishable from the next. How did anyone navigate this place?
Hell, who the fuck built this place? It made no sense in any way, shape or form. It was so non-descript that it became unique, uniquely devoid of distinguishing characteristics, so bland that it was exceptional! He didn’t even want to consider the type of depraved mind behind this kind of construction, he just wanted to… To… To hit something!
No. Not with Megan there. He couldn’t give away his lack of a plan, could he? She was depending on him. At least… He felt that way. He didn’t know if it was true, but… No, enough of playing the macho meat-head. Time to own up. He came to a stop and, in a moment, she, too, was still, head cocked to the side and eyebrows lowered. Quizzical. That was what the look was called.
“I…” beginning was the hardest part, “I… Have no idea where we are.”
She spat a curse at the floor, then looked at him.
“Well, that makes two of us.”
She ran a hand through her hair, twirled a lock of it around her finger and pulled it straight, then let it bounce back.
“Where do we go from here, Jack?”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t even vocalize an answer. He backed himself against the wall, sweat running from pores all over his body into week-old clothes, clothes too good for this crap, sweat from too much exertion, too much running… No. It wasn’t running. It was fleeing. They were on the lam - on the lam with only their wits, a gun and a security officer’s key card.
The key card! He looked at it, the gibberish printed on its face, and turned it over in his hand. There was more, but he took a moment and looked closer, observed the sequences of letters and numbers, seemingly so random, and… Gave up. No matter how long he looked at them, they weren’t going to resolve into anything and, if they did, the odds of it being useful were slim.
While he had been toying with their key, Megan had perused the data sheet, looking for any clues as to where they could find Don and her brother. The list was dense, filled with more information on the two of them than she would have thought possible. Looking at that last column, though, seeing that room number… She snatched the key card from Jack’s fingers, drawing a yelp of surprise and a raised eyebrow. She ignored him, staring intently at the card, the numbers and letters resolving before her into some sort of pattern almost…
“The Fibonacci sequence.”
Jack stared blankly at her.
“Fabo? The guy from those romance novels?”
She reached past him, smacked him on the back of the head.
“Fibonacci! Each number is the sum of the previous two in the sequence. One, one, two, three, five, eight, etcetera.”
She pointed to the card, ran her finger along the lines of numbers and letters.
“They’re representing it in hexadecimal. Base 16. ‘0’ through ‘F.’”
Jack scratched his head, convinced that, no matter how hard she tried to explain it, the concept would remain lost to him. If it could help them find the others, though, he was willing to trust her.
Who was he kidding? He was willing to trust her anyway.
“All right. So it’s the Fibo-whatsis sequence. What does that tell us, other than that our captors are lonely virgins?”
“Hey! Well, if it’s sequential, and these room numbers correspond to parts of the code on this card, it’s possible that the card can tell us what room we’re at.”
“And how,” he said, voice barely on the edge of calm, “can it do that?”
She turned to the door behind them, inserted the card and removed it quickly, held it up before the now-lit light above the card slot. It penetrated the card, the translucent slip, except for one, small section. A room number. They scribbled it down with a pen they found in the resulting lab and compared few rooms around it, getting an idea of the pattern, the layout of the complex. Zach and Don’s section was only a few halls away, after that, and another door. The grizzled manual laborer, Dawn’s boyfriend, looked up from his bed as the door slid open. Beneath him, beside the bed on the floor, was the body of another security officer, neck twisted almost fully around to face them. Don had bruises along his neck and his shirt was torn, lacerations all down his side, and his right arm was clearly broken, bent backward at the elbow.
“What happened?”
He grunted.
“I think that’s obvious. Most people like keeping their necks intact, but I was a little more insistent.”
“Ah.”
He lurched to his feet, arm cradled in its fellow, and lumbered over to them.
“Door closed before I could get out. Closed on my arm. Lucky I got it out when I did.”
“Do you need, like, a splint? Anything?”
“That would be ideal, yeah.”
They stopped off a few doors down and picked up Zach, who was literally twiddling his thumbs when they arrived, and, with him, brought Don to one of the labs where they were able to fashion a slightly-better-than-crude splint out of two sheets of plastic and a lot of medical tape. It would hold – at least until they were out of the complex. “Out” was becoming an increasingly difficult proposition. The greater number of people, not that they would have left without any one of them, meant that stealth would be impossible. They would have to depend on the good graces of their protector… Whomever that was.
“Seriously, who let you out?”
It was only the third time Zach had asked, but Jack was already tired of hearing it.
“I don’t know, okay? Neither of us does? There was a message carved into my desk.”
“And mine was painted onto the bulb of my lamp.”
“But, since it wasn’t either of you, we don’t know who helped us or even if we can depend on that aid going forward. It could just be a test or an elaborate trap.”
“Or it could be your mom.”
Don smacked Zach upside the head.
“Don’t talk about her that way, ‘less you want my foot so hard in your ass that shittin’ will take a dig crew and a crane.”
Zach swallowed and kept silent. The four explored the bowels of the facility with the urgency of a rat in a maze, their cheese at the end of the maze, their carrot dangling just out of reach.
But humans aren’t rats. Nor are they horses, limited to running forward, blindly chasing their goal. Humans are not limited to linear thought: they can move outside the maze, reach out and grab the carrot ahead, lay down and submit, but never actually give up.
Jack was versatile, as were Don, Megan and even, yes, Zach. If the rules said that they had to proceed from where they were to the exit, if there was even the smallest possibility that they were being siphoned further into a trap the closer they went to the end of their maze, then they would find another way.
No, not another way. A way beyond a way.
A memory from science class in middle school: the mouse in the maze, searching for its prize, stretched and caught the lip of a wall, drew itself onto the cardboard and strode along the top of the maze to the food. It had ruined the experiment, but it had been a surprising flash of insight from a mouse. If something with that little brainpower could do it, certainly they could, as well. It wouldn’t be physical, not necessarily, but they could do it.
The next room they entered—the number already low enough that they had to be getting close to the exit—was what had once been a security checkpoint, now oddly abandoned. Something stank and the four were aware, but they still didn’t have the physical tools they needed to break the game. There had to be something, anything they had forgotten or simply left behind, not realizing its potential effectiveness.
Guns were out. Besides, Jack already had one from the guard who’d found him. If they got into a firefight, especially in the big, open front bay, they would be lost for sure, anyway. Trained security versus four people, most of whom had never shot a gun, and Jack wasn’t sure video games counted. Metal detectors and guard booths with bulletproof windows… This gave them an idea.
The guards rushed into the security checkpoint, guns out and at the ready, called by the blaring alarm system. Unauthorized entry could be tragic, especially now, with the subjects all gathered under one roof. So much sensitive information milling around in one place… It was no wonder the lot of them was on edge, that their response was so immediate and intense. No less than a dozen poured through the doorway into the security checkpoint, only to find an empty room, devoid of the guards who were stationed there and the source of the disturbance. They spread out wordlessly, searching for anyone hiding behind the booths and, then, within them.
They started at the sound of the other door, the one leading deeper into the facility, sliding open. Their guns were ahead of them and pointing at a taller man, maybe about six feet in height, with his helmet on, visor obscuring his eyes. He looked reasonably familiar, though, with his recently-trimmed beard and confident stride. The ID badge he flashed put them at ease, their guns returning to the holsters from which they’d come.
“Report.”
The officer shifted a bit, his stoic face, frozen in a non-committal smile or frown, twitched, but none of them seemed to pay it mind.
“Sir, I was called into the subject pens, sir.”
“What set off the alarm?”
“Sir, that would be me, sir. I was in a hurry and… Er… I forgot to shut off the metal detector… Sir.”
“Are you aware, private, that you are a member of a very elite, very exclusive, very sensitive government operation?”
The security officer swallowed audibly, but didn’t otherwise move.
“You are an integral part of this operation, soldier, and if you are not able to perform your duties to an acceptable degree then I am authorized to shoot you where you stand do I make myself clear?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Good. I will not tolerate the same mistake twice, private.”
“Sir, no sir!”
“Everyone! Back to your posts!”
There were low-key snickers abound directed at the recently berated private as everyone cleared out of the security checkpoint and returned to their designated duties. The private, alone once more, took off his helmet and surveyed the guard room with his blue eyes. He opened the door to the cell block and motioned toward himself as he stepped into the room. He was joined in short order by Zach, Don and Megan.
“They suspect anything?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think so, anyway. Doesn’t really matter, does it? If they want us, they’ve got us.”
Don shrugged.
“True enough. Shall we?”
The others nodded and proceeded to the door, Zach fidgeting with his uniform collar.
“Would you stop that?”
He continued to twist it first one way, then the other.
“Hey! Let’s see how comfortable you are when it’s your turn to wear a dead guy’s clothes!”
“If you don’t stop screwing around you’re going to find out what it’s like to be that dead guy firsthand!”
Don’s words drew the blood from Zach’s naturally pale face. Frightened, he looked like a sickly ghost. The older man smacked him on the back with his good hand, pushing him forward, and he and Megan followed Jack and Zach out into the base’s entryway.
It immediately became clear why the rest of the facility was empty. On the day they had arrived, it had been busy, sure, but the bustling workers had been spread out and engaged with other things. Now the cavernous interior garage felt almost claustrophobic with everyone was standing in one, large pack in the center. Thankfully, their attention was focused elsewhere, rather than on the newcomers.
They had thought to make out as two guards tasked with taking their prisoners—subjects—to an off-site facility, or just hoping that the uniforms would be enough to avoid any questions as to their intentions. That was now neither possible nor necessary. Four was too many to sneak by, though. Someone would see them. The two in guard gear, Zach and Jack, approached the throng as Megan and Don darted from vehicle to crate, objects left where they lay by laborers who had stopped mid-motion to attend… What kind of a meeting was this, anyway?
Jack tried to get a view over the heads of the crowd, but could see nothing other than row after row of helmets and hardhats. He could hear the voice, though, echoing back to him through the acoustically atrocious auditorium. It was harsh, stinging and, try as he might, he couldn’t make out what it was saying. They ducked their heads and squeezed forward through the crowd until the sound was legible and, far though they still were from the source of the voice, they could see that it was not in fact a person, but a speaker system with a satellite uplink.
The owner of the voice was, presumably, far far away.
“… These subjects are our last chance to right our wrongs. If even one among them has potentially seen… I do not think I need to continue this train of thought. You know what your responsibilities are. Fulfill them or, heavens help us, it will not be only my head on which the weight falls.”
Don and Megan had made it to the exit, but were fidgeting with a side door, a control panel beside it that was overloaded with unmarked buttons.
“Is there anything in this place that isn’t purposely obtuse?”
She spat a curse, but Don was growing impatient.
“We’ve been as careful as we can be, lass. At this point we need to do something or we won’t get the chance to even try.”
She nodded and hit a switch then, when nothing obvious happened, hit another.
And another.
The sound of steel protesting against the gears that moved it, the magnets that pulled it, rang through the entrance plaza, too loud and too obvious to be ignored. The voice barked an order, but neither she nor Don could hear it from where they stood. The door in front of them slid open and they burst through, the larger man’s splinted arm colliding with the surprised guard’s chin, knocking him back and down. As his body tumbled down the steep side of the mountain, Don and Megan turned to the tire-beaten path up to the government base and fully realized, for the first time, the magnitude of their predicament.
“It’s going to be a long way down.”
“Think… Think we should have grabbed a car?”
The answer to their question came careening out of the garage, crashing through tightly packed powder with a cold, wet, white spray. The driver window rolled down as the door locks clicked open. Jack’s face, visor up over his head, greeted them.
“Get in!”
The attention span of government employees, thought Jack, was woefully underrated. As it turned out, their security, military and engineering staffs were very good at sticking an objective through to its end. For example, this most recent distraction, the doors opening when they weren’t scheduled to do so and two of their subjects attempting to escape… This saw immediate repercussions.
Jack and Zach were left standing in the center of a rapidly emptying garage as the throng around them pulsed then split, spreading off to the various defensive stations where they would get likely extremely nasty accoutrements with which to detain or dismember the rogue subjects. The wayward youths needed a vehicle.
It was a Humvee. Standard, military-issue troop transport vehicle, if by troop transport one meant “four dudes and a chain-gun.” They happened to be three dudes and a dudette, but, somehow, Jack didn’t think the car would be too discriminating. It was American, after all. It also had a very large, very shiny chain-gun.
This made is very American.
All it would have needed to be the most American symbol of the military Jack had ever seen would be a tri-color paint job. Red, white and blue. With red and white stripes. And stars. And some blue.
They hopped in and immediately realized that, as with most petroleum powered coaches, this one required a key for ignition. Normally required a key. Zach had a screwdriver and a bobby pin. Jack had not known it was possible to hijack a military vehicle with a screwdriver and a bobby pin, but he wagered that, in the middle of an intense battle, if one needed to maneuver or retreat and didn’t want to idle, fast easy startup was an outright necessity.
The engine roared and the car shot forward, crates and empty boxes flying wild, scattering in the air and striking the ground in broken heaps of balsa and plywood. The few items left over in them cracked and shattered, non-descript supplies for an equally non-descript organization, and the car’s wheels screeched against the rough foundation of the entrance plaza before pushing them forward, soldiers scrambling out of the way as Jack whipped the wheel around and slammed the brake, the back of the Humvee swinging about to reorient the duo toward the exit. The gas pedal crushed the floor of the cabin, Jack’s foot leaden, his arms out straight and eyes alert as automatic gunfire opened up from all angles, barrels spitting rapid-fire death as their vehicle became a figurative blur, weaving behind support struts and shipping crates of corrugated steel. A shot cracked the rear windshield, three of its fellows following in quick succession and leaving a trail of expanding holes, each larger than the last as the whole of the glass lost integrity and shattered.
Jack jerked the wheel to the side, spinning away from the bead, and flipped the transmission into reverse, snaking back and forth in a seemingly random pattern, gunfire flying wild, bullets flailing impotently at the air where he and Zach had once been and, soon, simply providing a screen of reference for the Humvee’s path through the garage. He turned it once more as they reached the door, a rocket propelled grenade soaring by and exploding red-light brilliant in the sky above as they flew from the gate and crashed to a halt in the snow before Megan and Don. The other two refugees piled in and the car started back down the mountain. As it tore through forest and white-dusted dirt path alike, its occupants bouncing in their seats, the full enormity of the situation began to sink in. They were on the run. From the government.
“We’re on the run, guys. From the government.”
Leave it to Zach to vocalize what everyone was already thinking.
“That’s why we’re going to have to be careful. Plan ahead a little. Flying by the seats of our pants has only worked so far because we caught them unaware, or it seems like we did, but it’s very possible that, right now, they’re letting us do this.”
Don’s comment drew murmured assent and so he continued.
“Our next step, then, should be getting the people close to us out of harm’s way.”
Jack kept his eyes ahead, but his eyebrow twitched and his arms tensed up.
“You mean…”
“Dawn.”
“Mom.”
Don nodded.
“Yeah. Her first.”
“And then my sister.”
Zach and Megan jerked upright and stared wide-eyed at him, even Don betraying his surprise with a quick snort.
“Dawn I can understand, boy… Jack. But why your sister? Why drag her into this?”
The thrum of a rotor overhead betrayed the helicopter on their tail, soldiers keeping watch from its open sides with guns at the ready. Jack swerved off road and the Humvee tackled the sharp decline.
“If we don’t, they will.”
He spun the wheel to avoid a tree and shot off at an angle, gunfire melting the snow behind them.
“And if they do, they’ll use her against us.”
The Humvee bounded along, tires barely holding to the slick ground, their momentum tossing them to and fro in the air. Jack was absolutely depending on the legendary hardiness of the vehicle to keep them intact and alive.
“Who are they, though? Why do they have so much power? I thought you said our first priority was figuring this stuff out!”
His attention remained focused ahead, eyes fixated on the world beyond the windshield, so it was Zach’s voice that answered her question.
“They’re looking for a survivor. One of them saw… Something. The voice didn’t specify, but, apparently, it has something to do with something they did.”
He would recall later, in a moment of respite, how her face had blanched just then, how she had covered her mouth and turned her gaze out the window, head bobbing with the motion of the car beneath them as it attempted to evade pursuit. It would be then that he would ask her the question with the answer he most feared, but now, in the heat of the moment, the daring escape from captivity, he was otherwise occupied and his brain glossed over it, wrote it off as the trauma of the situation working overtime on her nerves.
They weathered the mountain, thankful for the trees and the snow both, obscuring them enough that the helicopter and its payload of personnel had proven incapable of hitting them with any urgent damage - dings and scratches and superficial bullet holes the limit of their success. But now they were on the open road in New Hampshire, without cover to hide behind and with a massive chopper on their tail.
“We’ve got to use the chain-gun.”
They’d been hoping to avoid it, but they all knew it would be impossible. Ahead, far in the distance – too far for them to go unscathed – was a tunnel. If they could get in there, they might be able to lose the helicopter. It was a risk to put someone on the gun, exposed like that, but it was definite, if they didn’t, that all of them would be killed and, hey, if Zach was volunteering…
“All right,” Jack tried to zig-zag, but the tires had already taken a lot and had trouble getting the necessary traction on the slick road, “but do you know how to work one?”
Zach was already halfway out of his seat and to the back of the Humvee.
“Does it make a difference?”
Guess not, thought Jack. A few seconds later, tense seconds of waiting for Zach to scream and fall in a heap of bullet holes and blood, the thrum of a heavy machine gun barrel spinning, spitting rapid bursts of molten lead, drowned out the distant sound of small arms fire. Jack looked over his shoulder for only a second, just long enough to see the chopper fall back, hear Zach’s sustained battle-cry – barely audible above the chain-gun’s clamor – and turned back ahead as they entered the tunnel, the guns stopped and silence, except for the bumping and jostling of their Humvee’s frame, overtook them.
He was relieved, for the first time in his living memory, to be in a tunnel. Of course, it wasn’t just your average, everyday overpass above them. No, the mountain would adequately protect them from the helicopter’s pursuit and the land vehicles would be too far behind them to prove any threat at all.
A few miles later, the tunnel coughed them up into the cold, New Hampshire sun and they rolled into the distance.
“Next stop, priceless antiques, fragile china, bullpens and Connecti- Ow!”
Zach rubbed the back of his head as Megan whistled and rolled her eyes to the sky.
The farther they went from New Hampshire, the safer they felt. Each minute they traveled opened up any number of paths they could take, making the inevitable manhunt that much more difficult for their pursuers. As they approached their destination, however, they knew that all of those paths would converge and, frankly, there was only one possible destination for them, anyway. They’d had to ditch the Humvee for something a smidgen more… Civilian. It turned out that most gas stations didn’t take kindly to military-equipped Humvees pulling into their pump lanes. Battle-damaged ones doubly so. Something about squeezing into the undersized Civic wrought a sense of déjà vu, but there was no energy in them for laughter. It was a long drive after an already long day, Don would need medical attention, eventually, and a more permanent splint. Connecticut couldn’t come soon enough.
They switched cars at the border, jacking a van from a used car lot – no one cares what happens to used car salesmen, after all – and were soon in downtown Stratford. Dawn was at the hospital.
She had to be.
But when they arrived, keeping Don in the car so that they wouldn’t be detained (his injury would have to wait until they had Jack’s sister), they were informed that she hadn’t been in for the past two days.
“What do you mean she hasn’t been coming into work?”
Jack was furious, and rightfully so. It wasn’t like his mom to leave the hospital behind. Even after the bombs had hit, she didn’t stop going into work, but… She had been in a bad state of mind. It was possible that their “summons” by the government, their disappearance, had been enough to break her.
He hoped it was just that and not the alternative. If they had already gotten to her…
No. No time to think about that. Had to keep moving, had to get out of there and back to the house.
He’d never driven so fast in his life. Even in the van, its engine protesting against his harsh treatment, he screamed down urban by-ways on his way to a destination he was no longer certain he wanted to reach, but he wasn’t going to give himself the luxury of thinking about it. Mulling it over wasn’t going to change the truth of the matter.
As he made the final turn onto their street, his heart sank into his stomach, a leaden weight, a pit sitting heavy on his conscience. He recognized the cars – Lincolns with tinted windows – and the outfits of the people out front. It was too late, but…
No. If they were still there, so was she. It was the only conclusion that made any sense and, if she was there – if it was even possible that she was there – he wasn’t going to run away. Not without her.
He drove down the block only slightly above the speed limit, normal behavior so as not to draw attention, and turned left at the next intersection, looping around to the back of their house.
Jack’s head hit the keyboard, then again as he slammed his forehead into the desk in frustration. The key imprints would look hilarious in a few minutes, he was sure, but he just needed to feel something right then. Maybe it was memorized, mnemonic of some kind that they all had down. If that was the case, the list was really no help to them. Erring on the side of caution, Jack looked up Don’s and Zach’s information and printed it out. Maybe they could take a hostage and interrogate him for a change, get the system out that way. He wasn’t too hopeful.
Megan seemed to be looking to him expectantly as they jogged through the halls, taking turn after turn with the vicious energy of one with a purpose. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was a façade, that he was as lost as she was and really just wanted to get out, but felt obligated to run around in circles in hopes that they would stumble across Zach, Don, or any of the other survivors. Maybe one of the gas station attendants. Really, now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any other survivors - none that he had met, anyway, as the lot of them hadn’t made any attempts to get in contact. They would have to be here, too, and that was a thought that drove him on, down hallways he couldn’t distinguish from each other and doors as non-descript as the walls in which they sat.
After a few minutes, however, it became apparent that this was not a viable solution. The halls were barren and every second wasted could be bringing them a step closer to capture, a step away from their escape. A step, a single step down a long expanse of tile, white and brilliant, wholly unremarkable and each indistinguishable from the next. How did anyone navigate this place?
Hell, who the fuck built this place? It made no sense in any way, shape or form. It was so non-descript that it became unique, uniquely devoid of distinguishing characteristics, so bland that it was exceptional! He didn’t even want to consider the type of depraved mind behind this kind of construction, he just wanted to… To… To hit something!
No. Not with Megan there. He couldn’t give away his lack of a plan, could he? She was depending on him. At least… He felt that way. He didn’t know if it was true, but… No, enough of playing the macho meat-head. Time to own up. He came to a stop and, in a moment, she, too, was still, head cocked to the side and eyebrows lowered. Quizzical. That was what the look was called.
“I…” beginning was the hardest part, “I… Have no idea where we are.”
She spat a curse at the floor, then looked at him.
“Well, that makes two of us.”
She ran a hand through her hair, twirled a lock of it around her finger and pulled it straight, then let it bounce back.
“Where do we go from here, Jack?”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t even vocalize an answer. He backed himself against the wall, sweat running from pores all over his body into week-old clothes, clothes too good for this crap, sweat from too much exertion, too much running… No. It wasn’t running. It was fleeing. They were on the lam - on the lam with only their wits, a gun and a security officer’s key card.
The key card! He looked at it, the gibberish printed on its face, and turned it over in his hand. There was more, but he took a moment and looked closer, observed the sequences of letters and numbers, seemingly so random, and… Gave up. No matter how long he looked at them, they weren’t going to resolve into anything and, if they did, the odds of it being useful were slim.
While he had been toying with their key, Megan had perused the data sheet, looking for any clues as to where they could find Don and her brother. The list was dense, filled with more information on the two of them than she would have thought possible. Looking at that last column, though, seeing that room number… She snatched the key card from Jack’s fingers, drawing a yelp of surprise and a raised eyebrow. She ignored him, staring intently at the card, the numbers and letters resolving before her into some sort of pattern almost…
“The Fibonacci sequence.”
Jack stared blankly at her.
“Fabo? The guy from those romance novels?”
She reached past him, smacked him on the back of the head.
“Fibonacci! Each number is the sum of the previous two in the sequence. One, one, two, three, five, eight, etcetera.”
She pointed to the card, ran her finger along the lines of numbers and letters.
“They’re representing it in hexadecimal. Base 16. ‘0’ through ‘F.’”
Jack scratched his head, convinced that, no matter how hard she tried to explain it, the concept would remain lost to him. If it could help them find the others, though, he was willing to trust her.
Who was he kidding? He was willing to trust her anyway.
“All right. So it’s the Fibo-whatsis sequence. What does that tell us, other than that our captors are lonely virgins?”
“Hey! Well, if it’s sequential, and these room numbers correspond to parts of the code on this card, it’s possible that the card can tell us what room we’re at.”
“And how,” he said, voice barely on the edge of calm, “can it do that?”
She turned to the door behind them, inserted the card and removed it quickly, held it up before the now-lit light above the card slot. It penetrated the card, the translucent slip, except for one, small section. A room number. They scribbled it down with a pen they found in the resulting lab and compared few rooms around it, getting an idea of the pattern, the layout of the complex. Zach and Don’s section was only a few halls away, after that, and another door. The grizzled manual laborer, Dawn’s boyfriend, looked up from his bed as the door slid open. Beneath him, beside the bed on the floor, was the body of another security officer, neck twisted almost fully around to face them. Don had bruises along his neck and his shirt was torn, lacerations all down his side, and his right arm was clearly broken, bent backward at the elbow.
“What happened?”
He grunted.
“I think that’s obvious. Most people like keeping their necks intact, but I was a little more insistent.”
“Ah.”
He lurched to his feet, arm cradled in its fellow, and lumbered over to them.
“Door closed before I could get out. Closed on my arm. Lucky I got it out when I did.”
“Do you need, like, a splint? Anything?”
“That would be ideal, yeah.”
They stopped off a few doors down and picked up Zach, who was literally twiddling his thumbs when they arrived, and, with him, brought Don to one of the labs where they were able to fashion a slightly-better-than-crude splint out of two sheets of plastic and a lot of medical tape. It would hold – at least until they were out of the complex. “Out” was becoming an increasingly difficult proposition. The greater number of people, not that they would have left without any one of them, meant that stealth would be impossible. They would have to depend on the good graces of their protector… Whomever that was.
“Seriously, who let you out?”
It was only the third time Zach had asked, but Jack was already tired of hearing it.
“I don’t know, okay? Neither of us does? There was a message carved into my desk.”
“And mine was painted onto the bulb of my lamp.”
“But, since it wasn’t either of you, we don’t know who helped us or even if we can depend on that aid going forward. It could just be a test or an elaborate trap.”
“Or it could be your mom.”
Don smacked Zach upside the head.
“Don’t talk about her that way, ‘less you want my foot so hard in your ass that shittin’ will take a dig crew and a crane.”
Zach swallowed and kept silent. The four explored the bowels of the facility with the urgency of a rat in a maze, their cheese at the end of the maze, their carrot dangling just out of reach.
But humans aren’t rats. Nor are they horses, limited to running forward, blindly chasing their goal. Humans are not limited to linear thought: they can move outside the maze, reach out and grab the carrot ahead, lay down and submit, but never actually give up.
Jack was versatile, as were Don, Megan and even, yes, Zach. If the rules said that they had to proceed from where they were to the exit, if there was even the smallest possibility that they were being siphoned further into a trap the closer they went to the end of their maze, then they would find another way.
No, not another way. A way beyond a way.
A memory from science class in middle school: the mouse in the maze, searching for its prize, stretched and caught the lip of a wall, drew itself onto the cardboard and strode along the top of the maze to the food. It had ruined the experiment, but it had been a surprising flash of insight from a mouse. If something with that little brainpower could do it, certainly they could, as well. It wouldn’t be physical, not necessarily, but they could do it.
The next room they entered—the number already low enough that they had to be getting close to the exit—was what had once been a security checkpoint, now oddly abandoned. Something stank and the four were aware, but they still didn’t have the physical tools they needed to break the game. There had to be something, anything they had forgotten or simply left behind, not realizing its potential effectiveness.
Guns were out. Besides, Jack already had one from the guard who’d found him. If they got into a firefight, especially in the big, open front bay, they would be lost for sure, anyway. Trained security versus four people, most of whom had never shot a gun, and Jack wasn’t sure video games counted. Metal detectors and guard booths with bulletproof windows… This gave them an idea.
The guards rushed into the security checkpoint, guns out and at the ready, called by the blaring alarm system. Unauthorized entry could be tragic, especially now, with the subjects all gathered under one roof. So much sensitive information milling around in one place… It was no wonder the lot of them was on edge, that their response was so immediate and intense. No less than a dozen poured through the doorway into the security checkpoint, only to find an empty room, devoid of the guards who were stationed there and the source of the disturbance. They spread out wordlessly, searching for anyone hiding behind the booths and, then, within them.
They started at the sound of the other door, the one leading deeper into the facility, sliding open. Their guns were ahead of them and pointing at a taller man, maybe about six feet in height, with his helmet on, visor obscuring his eyes. He looked reasonably familiar, though, with his recently-trimmed beard and confident stride. The ID badge he flashed put them at ease, their guns returning to the holsters from which they’d come.
“Report.”
The officer shifted a bit, his stoic face, frozen in a non-committal smile or frown, twitched, but none of them seemed to pay it mind.
“Sir, I was called into the subject pens, sir.”
“What set off the alarm?”
“Sir, that would be me, sir. I was in a hurry and… Er… I forgot to shut off the metal detector… Sir.”
“Are you aware, private, that you are a member of a very elite, very exclusive, very sensitive government operation?”
The security officer swallowed audibly, but didn’t otherwise move.
“You are an integral part of this operation, soldier, and if you are not able to perform your duties to an acceptable degree then I am authorized to shoot you where you stand do I make myself clear?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Good. I will not tolerate the same mistake twice, private.”
“Sir, no sir!”
“Everyone! Back to your posts!”
There were low-key snickers abound directed at the recently berated private as everyone cleared out of the security checkpoint and returned to their designated duties. The private, alone once more, took off his helmet and surveyed the guard room with his blue eyes. He opened the door to the cell block and motioned toward himself as he stepped into the room. He was joined in short order by Zach, Don and Megan.
“They suspect anything?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think so, anyway. Doesn’t really matter, does it? If they want us, they’ve got us.”
Don shrugged.
“True enough. Shall we?”
The others nodded and proceeded to the door, Zach fidgeting with his uniform collar.
“Would you stop that?”
He continued to twist it first one way, then the other.
“Hey! Let’s see how comfortable you are when it’s your turn to wear a dead guy’s clothes!”
“If you don’t stop screwing around you’re going to find out what it’s like to be that dead guy firsthand!”
Don’s words drew the blood from Zach’s naturally pale face. Frightened, he looked like a sickly ghost. The older man smacked him on the back with his good hand, pushing him forward, and he and Megan followed Jack and Zach out into the base’s entryway.
It immediately became clear why the rest of the facility was empty. On the day they had arrived, it had been busy, sure, but the bustling workers had been spread out and engaged with other things. Now the cavernous interior garage felt almost claustrophobic with everyone was standing in one, large pack in the center. Thankfully, their attention was focused elsewhere, rather than on the newcomers.
They had thought to make out as two guards tasked with taking their prisoners—subjects—to an off-site facility, or just hoping that the uniforms would be enough to avoid any questions as to their intentions. That was now neither possible nor necessary. Four was too many to sneak by, though. Someone would see them. The two in guard gear, Zach and Jack, approached the throng as Megan and Don darted from vehicle to crate, objects left where they lay by laborers who had stopped mid-motion to attend… What kind of a meeting was this, anyway?
Jack tried to get a view over the heads of the crowd, but could see nothing other than row after row of helmets and hardhats. He could hear the voice, though, echoing back to him through the acoustically atrocious auditorium. It was harsh, stinging and, try as he might, he couldn’t make out what it was saying. They ducked their heads and squeezed forward through the crowd until the sound was legible and, far though they still were from the source of the voice, they could see that it was not in fact a person, but a speaker system with a satellite uplink.
The owner of the voice was, presumably, far far away.
“… These subjects are our last chance to right our wrongs. If even one among them has potentially seen… I do not think I need to continue this train of thought. You know what your responsibilities are. Fulfill them or, heavens help us, it will not be only my head on which the weight falls.”
Don and Megan had made it to the exit, but were fidgeting with a side door, a control panel beside it that was overloaded with unmarked buttons.
“Is there anything in this place that isn’t purposely obtuse?”
She spat a curse, but Don was growing impatient.
“We’ve been as careful as we can be, lass. At this point we need to do something or we won’t get the chance to even try.”
She nodded and hit a switch then, when nothing obvious happened, hit another.
And another.
The sound of steel protesting against the gears that moved it, the magnets that pulled it, rang through the entrance plaza, too loud and too obvious to be ignored. The voice barked an order, but neither she nor Don could hear it from where they stood. The door in front of them slid open and they burst through, the larger man’s splinted arm colliding with the surprised guard’s chin, knocking him back and down. As his body tumbled down the steep side of the mountain, Don and Megan turned to the tire-beaten path up to the government base and fully realized, for the first time, the magnitude of their predicament.
“It’s going to be a long way down.”
“Think… Think we should have grabbed a car?”
The answer to their question came careening out of the garage, crashing through tightly packed powder with a cold, wet, white spray. The driver window rolled down as the door locks clicked open. Jack’s face, visor up over his head, greeted them.
“Get in!”
The attention span of government employees, thought Jack, was woefully underrated. As it turned out, their security, military and engineering staffs were very good at sticking an objective through to its end. For example, this most recent distraction, the doors opening when they weren’t scheduled to do so and two of their subjects attempting to escape… This saw immediate repercussions.
Jack and Zach were left standing in the center of a rapidly emptying garage as the throng around them pulsed then split, spreading off to the various defensive stations where they would get likely extremely nasty accoutrements with which to detain or dismember the rogue subjects. The wayward youths needed a vehicle.
It was a Humvee. Standard, military-issue troop transport vehicle, if by troop transport one meant “four dudes and a chain-gun.” They happened to be three dudes and a dudette, but, somehow, Jack didn’t think the car would be too discriminating. It was American, after all. It also had a very large, very shiny chain-gun.
This made is very American.
All it would have needed to be the most American symbol of the military Jack had ever seen would be a tri-color paint job. Red, white and blue. With red and white stripes. And stars. And some blue.
They hopped in and immediately realized that, as with most petroleum powered coaches, this one required a key for ignition. Normally required a key. Zach had a screwdriver and a bobby pin. Jack had not known it was possible to hijack a military vehicle with a screwdriver and a bobby pin, but he wagered that, in the middle of an intense battle, if one needed to maneuver or retreat and didn’t want to idle, fast easy startup was an outright necessity.
The engine roared and the car shot forward, crates and empty boxes flying wild, scattering in the air and striking the ground in broken heaps of balsa and plywood. The few items left over in them cracked and shattered, non-descript supplies for an equally non-descript organization, and the car’s wheels screeched against the rough foundation of the entrance plaza before pushing them forward, soldiers scrambling out of the way as Jack whipped the wheel around and slammed the brake, the back of the Humvee swinging about to reorient the duo toward the exit. The gas pedal crushed the floor of the cabin, Jack’s foot leaden, his arms out straight and eyes alert as automatic gunfire opened up from all angles, barrels spitting rapid-fire death as their vehicle became a figurative blur, weaving behind support struts and shipping crates of corrugated steel. A shot cracked the rear windshield, three of its fellows following in quick succession and leaving a trail of expanding holes, each larger than the last as the whole of the glass lost integrity and shattered.
Jack jerked the wheel to the side, spinning away from the bead, and flipped the transmission into reverse, snaking back and forth in a seemingly random pattern, gunfire flying wild, bullets flailing impotently at the air where he and Zach had once been and, soon, simply providing a screen of reference for the Humvee’s path through the garage. He turned it once more as they reached the door, a rocket propelled grenade soaring by and exploding red-light brilliant in the sky above as they flew from the gate and crashed to a halt in the snow before Megan and Don. The other two refugees piled in and the car started back down the mountain. As it tore through forest and white-dusted dirt path alike, its occupants bouncing in their seats, the full enormity of the situation began to sink in. They were on the run. From the government.
“We’re on the run, guys. From the government.”
Leave it to Zach to vocalize what everyone was already thinking.
“That’s why we’re going to have to be careful. Plan ahead a little. Flying by the seats of our pants has only worked so far because we caught them unaware, or it seems like we did, but it’s very possible that, right now, they’re letting us do this.”
Don’s comment drew murmured assent and so he continued.
“Our next step, then, should be getting the people close to us out of harm’s way.”
Jack kept his eyes ahead, but his eyebrow twitched and his arms tensed up.
“You mean…”
“Dawn.”
“Mom.”
Don nodded.
“Yeah. Her first.”
“And then my sister.”
Zach and Megan jerked upright and stared wide-eyed at him, even Don betraying his surprise with a quick snort.
“Dawn I can understand, boy… Jack. But why your sister? Why drag her into this?”
The thrum of a rotor overhead betrayed the helicopter on their tail, soldiers keeping watch from its open sides with guns at the ready. Jack swerved off road and the Humvee tackled the sharp decline.
“If we don’t, they will.”
He spun the wheel to avoid a tree and shot off at an angle, gunfire melting the snow behind them.
“And if they do, they’ll use her against us.”
The Humvee bounded along, tires barely holding to the slick ground, their momentum tossing them to and fro in the air. Jack was absolutely depending on the legendary hardiness of the vehicle to keep them intact and alive.
“Who are they, though? Why do they have so much power? I thought you said our first priority was figuring this stuff out!”
His attention remained focused ahead, eyes fixated on the world beyond the windshield, so it was Zach’s voice that answered her question.
“They’re looking for a survivor. One of them saw… Something. The voice didn’t specify, but, apparently, it has something to do with something they did.”
He would recall later, in a moment of respite, how her face had blanched just then, how she had covered her mouth and turned her gaze out the window, head bobbing with the motion of the car beneath them as it attempted to evade pursuit. It would be then that he would ask her the question with the answer he most feared, but now, in the heat of the moment, the daring escape from captivity, he was otherwise occupied and his brain glossed over it, wrote it off as the trauma of the situation working overtime on her nerves.
They weathered the mountain, thankful for the trees and the snow both, obscuring them enough that the helicopter and its payload of personnel had proven incapable of hitting them with any urgent damage - dings and scratches and superficial bullet holes the limit of their success. But now they were on the open road in New Hampshire, without cover to hide behind and with a massive chopper on their tail.
“We’ve got to use the chain-gun.”
They’d been hoping to avoid it, but they all knew it would be impossible. Ahead, far in the distance – too far for them to go unscathed – was a tunnel. If they could get in there, they might be able to lose the helicopter. It was a risk to put someone on the gun, exposed like that, but it was definite, if they didn’t, that all of them would be killed and, hey, if Zach was volunteering…
“All right,” Jack tried to zig-zag, but the tires had already taken a lot and had trouble getting the necessary traction on the slick road, “but do you know how to work one?”
Zach was already halfway out of his seat and to the back of the Humvee.
“Does it make a difference?”
Guess not, thought Jack. A few seconds later, tense seconds of waiting for Zach to scream and fall in a heap of bullet holes and blood, the thrum of a heavy machine gun barrel spinning, spitting rapid bursts of molten lead, drowned out the distant sound of small arms fire. Jack looked over his shoulder for only a second, just long enough to see the chopper fall back, hear Zach’s sustained battle-cry – barely audible above the chain-gun’s clamor – and turned back ahead as they entered the tunnel, the guns stopped and silence, except for the bumping and jostling of their Humvee’s frame, overtook them.
He was relieved, for the first time in his living memory, to be in a tunnel. Of course, it wasn’t just your average, everyday overpass above them. No, the mountain would adequately protect them from the helicopter’s pursuit and the land vehicles would be too far behind them to prove any threat at all.
A few miles later, the tunnel coughed them up into the cold, New Hampshire sun and they rolled into the distance.
“Next stop, priceless antiques, fragile china, bullpens and Connecti- Ow!”
Zach rubbed the back of his head as Megan whistled and rolled her eyes to the sky.
The farther they went from New Hampshire, the safer they felt. Each minute they traveled opened up any number of paths they could take, making the inevitable manhunt that much more difficult for their pursuers. As they approached their destination, however, they knew that all of those paths would converge and, frankly, there was only one possible destination for them, anyway. They’d had to ditch the Humvee for something a smidgen more… Civilian. It turned out that most gas stations didn’t take kindly to military-equipped Humvees pulling into their pump lanes. Battle-damaged ones doubly so. Something about squeezing into the undersized Civic wrought a sense of déjà vu, but there was no energy in them for laughter. It was a long drive after an already long day, Don would need medical attention, eventually, and a more permanent splint. Connecticut couldn’t come soon enough.
They switched cars at the border, jacking a van from a used car lot – no one cares what happens to used car salesmen, after all – and were soon in downtown Stratford. Dawn was at the hospital.
She had to be.
But when they arrived, keeping Don in the car so that they wouldn’t be detained (his injury would have to wait until they had Jack’s sister), they were informed that she hadn’t been in for the past two days.
“What do you mean she hasn’t been coming into work?”
Jack was furious, and rightfully so. It wasn’t like his mom to leave the hospital behind. Even after the bombs had hit, she didn’t stop going into work, but… She had been in a bad state of mind. It was possible that their “summons” by the government, their disappearance, had been enough to break her.
He hoped it was just that and not the alternative. If they had already gotten to her…
No. No time to think about that. Had to keep moving, had to get out of there and back to the house.
He’d never driven so fast in his life. Even in the van, its engine protesting against his harsh treatment, he screamed down urban by-ways on his way to a destination he was no longer certain he wanted to reach, but he wasn’t going to give himself the luxury of thinking about it. Mulling it over wasn’t going to change the truth of the matter.
As he made the final turn onto their street, his heart sank into his stomach, a leaden weight, a pit sitting heavy on his conscience. He recognized the cars – Lincolns with tinted windows – and the outfits of the people out front. It was too late, but…
No. If they were still there, so was she. It was the only conclusion that made any sense and, if she was there – if it was even possible that she was there – he wasn’t going to run away. Not without her.
He drove down the block only slightly above the speed limit, normal behavior so as not to draw attention, and turned left at the next intersection, looping around to the back of their house.
Note: Not dead, not quitting
I just fell behind for a day and am waiting until I catch up to put up a massive block of text.
For those keeping score at home, I should have reached 21,667 by now. I'm at 20,558.
I'll catch up.
For those keeping score at home, I should have reached 21,667 by now. I'm at 20,558.
I'll catch up.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Day 10: Nothing witty to say. Except for this, if you consider self-reference hilarious
There was nothing for him in this direction. He would have to head back and look for something better, another way out or something to get the door open. He had just begun his trek back through the halls when he heard footsteps around the corner and snapped to the wall, gun out and safety off in an instant. He waited, listening, counting the steps and gauging their volume as they approached, wild and unmeasured, either in a hurry or…
Or not a member of the security detail. That glimmer of hope swelled within him, his guard breaking and allowing it through. He turned the corner as the steps grew loudest and threw an arm out, hand coiling around a thin neck and driving it around into the wall, trapping the attached woman against it.
“Megan?”
She looked like she was about to spit venom, her face red from exertion, anger or both.
“Err… Sorry.”
He flipped the safety back on and returned the gun to his waist, then let her go and back off. His head spun and his ear rung as her palm collided with his cheek.
“The fuck, Jack!”
“I said I was sorry! What more do you want from me?”
Her breathing, ragged and hurried, began to calm. She leaned backward, into he wall, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. It stuck to her forehead in defiance of her wishes. Her eyes were still seething, though, fire beneath he surface, deep within her pupils. Vengeful flames of “what the fuck were you thinking” and “if you ever do that again I will castrate you with a dull, rusty spoon.”
Jack did not want to be castrated. He just wanted to be home.
“Let’s go home, Megan. Let’s get out of here.”
“How?”
That was the operative question, the one he’d been afraid to ask because, as it stood, he didn’t have an answer. He’d hoped that whomever he found would have such an insight, but that was a moot point. He should have checked the guard more thoroughly. He had been rushed. He hadn’t had a chance.
“Dammit. I bet the guard had a key card or something, too. Identification, whatever. Something to get us out of here.”
Something besides anger flashed through Megan’s eyes. She slid a hand into her pocket and, when it appeared again, it held a thin, translucent card, apparently made of plastic. It had writing on it, but in unintelligible arrangements of what was presumably some sort of code, likely to be interpreted by a very specific computer. Perhaps that computer was at the entrance. He couldn’t help himself lunging forward again, hugging Megan tight as he mumbled “thank you” over and again into her ear. She laughed, a light, floaty sound, and pushed him off of her.
“Settle down a little, at least until we know if it works.”
They rushed back to the front of the square, the doorway out of the cellblock, and held the card up in front of a red light at its side, apparently a laser reader of some kind. Its lens spun and shifted, altering the shape and size of the opening and the light issued thereof, centering in on a small portion of the gibberish on the card. It had, apparently, found the segment it sought, because the light faded and the doors slid open, groaning in protest as they moved apart and allowed Jack and Megan to slip through. Here, though they had never, to their knowledge, seen the hallway before in their lives, they felt a sense of déjà vu, the cold grasp of unwelcome memory. Here, they realized, the doors before them led to only one type of room: The interrogation chambers.
They recoiled, not so much in fear as in disgust. It confirmed, for Jack, that his experience had not been a unique one and, for that, he was relieved, ashamed that he was relieved, and sorry that anyone else had been subjected to that terror. It was the least pleasant image of a naked Megan his mind had ever held and he was quick to block it, hoping that neither of them, or Don or Zach, would ever be exposed to that again.
No, he didn’t want to hope. He wanted to make sure. He wanted to make damn sure.
“Megan.”
She turned to face him, eyes barely restraining tears. Looking into that face, seeing those eyes and the lips beneath, vibrating, quaking in an attempt to keep her quiet, he was no longer sure what he was going to say, what he was able to say, but his mouth opened regardless and he felt the words leaving him, spoken, but as new to his ears as to hers.
“We’ll make them pay. We’ll fight them with every last breath in our bodies because, with them around, able to do this to anyone they choose, neither us nor any of our loved ones are safe. No one is safe. We can change that.”
He breathed, regained his composure, felt her staring at him.
“But to do that, first we need answers. We need to know who we’re dealing with, on what scale.”
She nodded, silent, then put her hand out. He took it and they shook, drawing strength from each other.
No, not drawing.
Pooling. Pushing it together for them to share, compounding their individual ability, their individual strength.
They needed to make a decision. They needed to make it fast, before the inevitable swarms of guards rushed in or the gas started pumping or… Jack didn’t know what it would be, but he was sure that here was some measure in place to keep them from escaping. Best not to find out what.
Left, down the hallway, off toward who-knew-what. They turned at the corner, walls so white they were almost blue wreaking havoc on his sense of direction, sending splitting pain to the center of his skull, a shooting numbness that was dull, but so confined that it was pointed when contrasted to the rest of his thoughts. He knew that, eventually, they would have to pick a door, and could tell that Megan was aware of that as well. She was growing impatient and, frankly, so was he, but there was so much potential that the next turn might provide a sign, an indication, anything that would distinguish the next hallway from the one it followed.
And there was risk. Risk that any door they entered could be a gateway into a trap, a hellish portal with no way out. But he was beginning to realize – had been realizing since the moment the bomb had hit – that life was nothing without risk. You took chances and, if you got burned, you recovered; if you hit the storm, you weathered it. Life, after all… Was it anything but risk?
He stopped, Megan taking a few steps past him before she caught herself and turned to face him, then looked over at the door between them. It was indistinguishable from any of the others along the wall, and it wasn’t so much a gut feeling. He just felt that he needed to do something, to take some kind of action or he was going to go insane. There were so many unanswered questions. Why was the government interested in them? Who within the government had taken them from their homes? Who had set them free? For that matter, when had the message been carved into his desk and where were the other survivors, Don and Zach included?
Too much on his mind to waste time running down empty hallways when the answers could be just beyond a door, any of the slabs of hydraulic-controlled metal lining the wall. He held out his hand, motioning with his fingers and Megan gave him the keycard, the ID card, whatever it was, it had worked before, maybe it would get them through now. There was no light, but the wall beside the door had a slot with an unlit bulb above it, recessed into the wall. He fed the card to the slot and waited, anticipating the blare of rejection and the return of their purloined card.
The slot did spit out their card, but the light above it lit up, a yellowish-green, and the door split down its center, the two halves quickly sliding into the walls on either side of the opening. Inside was a lab. At least, Jack assumed it was a lab, mostly because it possessed the varied accoutrements he associated with the labs at the hospital, computers and test tubes full of liquids of various colors and opacities. He avoided looking at the red ones in particular, not because blood disturbed him anymore, but the thought that said blood might have come from him while he wasn’t aware of its extraction… That was an unsettling thought. Violating. He shivered and continued in, deeper into what was, it turned out, a very shallow room. Megan stood in he doorway, keeping watch of the hallway, ready to inform him if anyone came into view, and to hold the door open. It would probably open again, from the inside, but that wasn’t a chance he wanted to take after the events in the cellblock.
A computer had been left on, screen alight with row after row of data, and Jack thanked whatever deity was concerned with him that the user had never set a screensaver or, for that matter, a password on his terminal. Between that and the universal mouse/keyboard combination, he was soon on his way to deciphering just what he was seeing.
Names. Names and birthdates, addresses and spouses. Siblings and schools and jobs, all in a neat chart that still managed to stagger him with its sheer density. He was sure he was in there, and Megan, too, but that meant that Don and Zach would be in the database. He hoped they had gotten out, but, if they hadn’t, the last column seemed like a list of room numbers, though that did little to help since, as far as he could tell, the rooms were unmarked.
Or not a member of the security detail. That glimmer of hope swelled within him, his guard breaking and allowing it through. He turned the corner as the steps grew loudest and threw an arm out, hand coiling around a thin neck and driving it around into the wall, trapping the attached woman against it.
“Megan?”
She looked like she was about to spit venom, her face red from exertion, anger or both.
“Err… Sorry.”
He flipped the safety back on and returned the gun to his waist, then let her go and back off. His head spun and his ear rung as her palm collided with his cheek.
“The fuck, Jack!”
“I said I was sorry! What more do you want from me?”
Her breathing, ragged and hurried, began to calm. She leaned backward, into he wall, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. It stuck to her forehead in defiance of her wishes. Her eyes were still seething, though, fire beneath he surface, deep within her pupils. Vengeful flames of “what the fuck were you thinking” and “if you ever do that again I will castrate you with a dull, rusty spoon.”
Jack did not want to be castrated. He just wanted to be home.
“Let’s go home, Megan. Let’s get out of here.”
“How?”
That was the operative question, the one he’d been afraid to ask because, as it stood, he didn’t have an answer. He’d hoped that whomever he found would have such an insight, but that was a moot point. He should have checked the guard more thoroughly. He had been rushed. He hadn’t had a chance.
“Dammit. I bet the guard had a key card or something, too. Identification, whatever. Something to get us out of here.”
Something besides anger flashed through Megan’s eyes. She slid a hand into her pocket and, when it appeared again, it held a thin, translucent card, apparently made of plastic. It had writing on it, but in unintelligible arrangements of what was presumably some sort of code, likely to be interpreted by a very specific computer. Perhaps that computer was at the entrance. He couldn’t help himself lunging forward again, hugging Megan tight as he mumbled “thank you” over and again into her ear. She laughed, a light, floaty sound, and pushed him off of her.
“Settle down a little, at least until we know if it works.”
They rushed back to the front of the square, the doorway out of the cellblock, and held the card up in front of a red light at its side, apparently a laser reader of some kind. Its lens spun and shifted, altering the shape and size of the opening and the light issued thereof, centering in on a small portion of the gibberish on the card. It had, apparently, found the segment it sought, because the light faded and the doors slid open, groaning in protest as they moved apart and allowed Jack and Megan to slip through. Here, though they had never, to their knowledge, seen the hallway before in their lives, they felt a sense of déjà vu, the cold grasp of unwelcome memory. Here, they realized, the doors before them led to only one type of room: The interrogation chambers.
They recoiled, not so much in fear as in disgust. It confirmed, for Jack, that his experience had not been a unique one and, for that, he was relieved, ashamed that he was relieved, and sorry that anyone else had been subjected to that terror. It was the least pleasant image of a naked Megan his mind had ever held and he was quick to block it, hoping that neither of them, or Don or Zach, would ever be exposed to that again.
No, he didn’t want to hope. He wanted to make sure. He wanted to make damn sure.
“Megan.”
She turned to face him, eyes barely restraining tears. Looking into that face, seeing those eyes and the lips beneath, vibrating, quaking in an attempt to keep her quiet, he was no longer sure what he was going to say, what he was able to say, but his mouth opened regardless and he felt the words leaving him, spoken, but as new to his ears as to hers.
“We’ll make them pay. We’ll fight them with every last breath in our bodies because, with them around, able to do this to anyone they choose, neither us nor any of our loved ones are safe. No one is safe. We can change that.”
He breathed, regained his composure, felt her staring at him.
“But to do that, first we need answers. We need to know who we’re dealing with, on what scale.”
She nodded, silent, then put her hand out. He took it and they shook, drawing strength from each other.
No, not drawing.
Pooling. Pushing it together for them to share, compounding their individual ability, their individual strength.
They needed to make a decision. They needed to make it fast, before the inevitable swarms of guards rushed in or the gas started pumping or… Jack didn’t know what it would be, but he was sure that here was some measure in place to keep them from escaping. Best not to find out what.
Left, down the hallway, off toward who-knew-what. They turned at the corner, walls so white they were almost blue wreaking havoc on his sense of direction, sending splitting pain to the center of his skull, a shooting numbness that was dull, but so confined that it was pointed when contrasted to the rest of his thoughts. He knew that, eventually, they would have to pick a door, and could tell that Megan was aware of that as well. She was growing impatient and, frankly, so was he, but there was so much potential that the next turn might provide a sign, an indication, anything that would distinguish the next hallway from the one it followed.
And there was risk. Risk that any door they entered could be a gateway into a trap, a hellish portal with no way out. But he was beginning to realize – had been realizing since the moment the bomb had hit – that life was nothing without risk. You took chances and, if you got burned, you recovered; if you hit the storm, you weathered it. Life, after all… Was it anything but risk?
He stopped, Megan taking a few steps past him before she caught herself and turned to face him, then looked over at the door between them. It was indistinguishable from any of the others along the wall, and it wasn’t so much a gut feeling. He just felt that he needed to do something, to take some kind of action or he was going to go insane. There were so many unanswered questions. Why was the government interested in them? Who within the government had taken them from their homes? Who had set them free? For that matter, when had the message been carved into his desk and where were the other survivors, Don and Zach included?
Too much on his mind to waste time running down empty hallways when the answers could be just beyond a door, any of the slabs of hydraulic-controlled metal lining the wall. He held out his hand, motioning with his fingers and Megan gave him the keycard, the ID card, whatever it was, it had worked before, maybe it would get them through now. There was no light, but the wall beside the door had a slot with an unlit bulb above it, recessed into the wall. He fed the card to the slot and waited, anticipating the blare of rejection and the return of their purloined card.
The slot did spit out their card, but the light above it lit up, a yellowish-green, and the door split down its center, the two halves quickly sliding into the walls on either side of the opening. Inside was a lab. At least, Jack assumed it was a lab, mostly because it possessed the varied accoutrements he associated with the labs at the hospital, computers and test tubes full of liquids of various colors and opacities. He avoided looking at the red ones in particular, not because blood disturbed him anymore, but the thought that said blood might have come from him while he wasn’t aware of its extraction… That was an unsettling thought. Violating. He shivered and continued in, deeper into what was, it turned out, a very shallow room. Megan stood in he doorway, keeping watch of the hallway, ready to inform him if anyone came into view, and to hold the door open. It would probably open again, from the inside, but that wasn’t a chance he wanted to take after the events in the cellblock.
A computer had been left on, screen alight with row after row of data, and Jack thanked whatever deity was concerned with him that the user had never set a screensaver or, for that matter, a password on his terminal. Between that and the universal mouse/keyboard combination, he was soon on his way to deciphering just what he was seeing.
Names. Names and birthdates, addresses and spouses. Siblings and schools and jobs, all in a neat chart that still managed to stagger him with its sheer density. He was sure he was in there, and Megan, too, but that meant that Don and Zach would be in the database. He hoped they had gotten out, but, if they hadn’t, the last column seemed like a list of room numbers, though that did little to help since, as far as he could tell, the rooms were unmarked.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Day 9: My knees hurt... Fuck you, mister chair
He stood in his boxers, their fabric clinging unbidden to his legs, drawn by the saline-saturated liquid pouring from his skin. He weighed his options, dignity versus demise, and the former came up a distant second. The trunks, too, were doffed into the pile of clothes, completing them. Steam issued from it, the rapidly drying mass of fabric, but Jack was still sweating. He started toward the lights, hoping to shatter enough to lower the temperature, but even a few steps closer intensified their effect dramatically.
Defeated, he lay down and waited for his body to run out of liquid, for the steam to start rising from him and reduce him to a dried husk. The voice returned, still pleasant, but unintelligible, scrambled by the warmth and the state of his brain. Then it barked something and the lights shut off, the heat was sucked out through holes in the walls where there had been lights before, and Jack was able to catch his breath, sit up and start his brain working again.
“So, Mr. Penn, are we feeling a bit more… Forthcoming?”
Jack glared up at the camera, but there was little fire left in his eyes. He nodded, then blinked as a glass of clear liquid was inserted through one of the new-formed vents. It was cold, with ice cubes, and had little odor.
“It’s water, Mr. Penn. Tap water, I’m afraid, but still water.”
He drank it so fast that his teeth rang afterward, the jarring cold setting them alight with blissful agony.
“Now, our first question. Where are you from?”
“Stamford, Connecticut. I’d lived there with my parents my whole life.”
“And your sister?”
“… Yeah.”
“Don’t lie to us, Mr. Penn, and most definitely do not try to keep anything from us. This is merely the litmus test before we ask the really hard questions, just so we know how far we can trust you.”
Jack recoiled, but remained silent. Just who were these people? The government, they claimed, but that did little to single out anything from the alphabet soup of shady, federal organizations. He found himself thinking of Agent Mulder, of the X-Files, always trying to find his proof, repeating his mantra, “The truth is out there.” The thought brought a smirk to his face.
The person behind the camera didn’t notice or, if he did notice, didn’t care. Another glass of water was offered through the wall and Jack took it, sipping at it slowly this time.
“Where were you when the bomb hit?”
The image of the refrigerator’s shelves, so distant now, flashed into his mind as he closed his eyes, aided by the ghost forever burned into his vision.
“Home. In the kitchen.”
“Home is-“
“You know where my home is. Was.”
He could almost hear a sharp intake of breath. Good. Throw them a little off-balance. Keep them on their toes. Make them uncomfortable so they slip up and reveal something, something they shouldn’t.
“What did you see, Mr. Penn?”
“The fridge. I was getting food – a snack – and something threw me forward, I hit my head,” he felt the scar, “and blacked out.”
“How long were you unconscious?”
“Don’t know.”
They asked him some more questions, but it was unclear what their purpose was. It was all clerical stuff, just where he’d gone and what he’d done to survive after the bomb hit, who he’d met. He kept his answers curt and to the point, revealing the bare minimum of information. He wasn’t hiding anything, nor did he even think he had anything to hide, but he still felt uncomfortable giving them the impression that he would be “easy.” It was something in the way they were conducting this whole operation, something that stank.
“One final question, for today.”
He groaned at the prospect of more sessions like this, but waited patiently, gathering up his clothes as he did and slipping back into them.
“Before the bomb hit Stamford, did you notice anything unusual?”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah. We were out of grape jelly.”
The lights buzzed, energy flickering along their filaments as they began to warm up.
“Do not play games with us, Mr. Penn. Once more: Did you see anything strange?”
“No. I was looking at the refrigerator the whole time.”
“Very well, then. Until tomorrow.”
The speaker clicked, a minor measure of feedback as they switched off the microphone. Jack was left alone in the silent, empty room as the lights dimmed. The darkness wasn’t so unnerving as the silence, but he stood stoic nonetheless. Best to look as comfortable in his skin as possible.
Something sweet hit his nostrils and he began to feel faint and dizzy. He fell forward, blacking out just before he struck the ground.
The cell he awoke in was not the interrogation room. This was a relief. It was, in contrast, dark, but… Maybe cell had been a misnomer. It was a comfortable room, with a twin bed and a chair, with arms no less, at a simple desk. Yes, simplicity was the name of the game and, though it was dimly lit at the moment, there was a switch that could only, he assumed, go to the ceiling lamp overhead. The existing light, then, must have come from elsewhere, he thought. His attention was drawn to the desk, where a small light had been left on, neck angled so that the bulb bounced its light off the back of the desk and into the wall. It drew Jack’s eyes to the wood grain surface of the desk. Buried within the surface, through the laminate, was a message scratched so thin that it was no wonder the overseers hadn’t noticed it:
T – 5D 1900
Well, he assumed it was a message, but it didn’t make much sense just then. It could have been a production code or a model number, but those weren’t typically carved into the surface of the item in question and, if it was one of those, why had someone taken such pains to draw his attention to it? Unless it was all just a coincidence that the light had been left at that angle? He puzzled over it idly as he lay in bed later that night, the lights off and the irradiated hands of the clock glowering at him from across the room, over the door. He watched them tick and, before long, felt sleep overtake him.
The next few days were tiresome repetition, many of the same questions intermingled with only a few new ones. They might have been checking him, making sure his answers held up day after day, trying to catch him in a lie. After a grueling session of question and answer, he was knocked out and awoke in his room, a hot plate of food on his desk. He would eat, turn out the lights, then think as he drifted off.
On the fifth such day, after a particularly grueling interrogation, he lay awake with the lights on, wanting to clear his head and think, try to figure out what they were after. He didn’t notice that anything was amiss, at first. It was only when his bed shifted and creaked that he felt the rumbling, heard the muffled voices – urgent tones – beyond the door. He stood up and started over to the wall, hoping he could catch something if he put his ear to it, when the door slid open and a guard rushed in, grabbed him by the wrist and jerked him around so that his arm was pinned to his back.
“Move!”
He started walking, glancing at the clock as they approached the doorway. Seven in the evening.
7:00 PM.
1900 hours.
Five days. T – 5D. T-minus five days, 1900 hours.
Before he even realized what he was doing, he had already moved. His weight flew back, slamming the back of his skull into the guard’s face with an audible crunch of snapping cartilage. He could smell blood, not just running from the broken nose, but stirring around in his own head from the impact, but he maintained enough of his composure to drop when he felt his arm go free, spun around and grabbed both of the padded legs by the shins near the ankles, jerked them back and out from under their owner, who tumbled down, head bouncing off the corner of the bed’s frame.
He had a gun. Jack took it and slipped it into his waistband, grabbed the guard’s baton, and ran out into the hallway just as the door — apparently on a timed mechanism — slid shut behind him.
The hall was well-lit by long, fluorescent tubes along the ceiling. It was devoid of activity and, for that reason alone, already sent a chill down his spine. Had no one else been given such a message? He strode up and down the hallway for a bit, trying each of the doors, but none of them would open. It seemed that the facility, or at least this section of it, was on lockdown. Not wanting to waste his chance, Jack chose a direction and ran off down the hall, turned right at the first intersection and found himself staring at another, identical hallway. Inwardly, he ground. Outwardly, he set his face and proceeded down the corridor, marking the corner of each intersection with a small scratch in the paint as he went.
It was five minutes and a lot of walking before he realized that the hallways all formed a square broken up by rows of connected cells. He smacked his forehead, broke off a bitter laugh before it could get any momentum and strode up to the exit, only to be denied access to the door. Cursing, he spun around and slumped down against the wall, breathing a dejected sigh.
Defeated, he lay down and waited for his body to run out of liquid, for the steam to start rising from him and reduce him to a dried husk. The voice returned, still pleasant, but unintelligible, scrambled by the warmth and the state of his brain. Then it barked something and the lights shut off, the heat was sucked out through holes in the walls where there had been lights before, and Jack was able to catch his breath, sit up and start his brain working again.
“So, Mr. Penn, are we feeling a bit more… Forthcoming?”
Jack glared up at the camera, but there was little fire left in his eyes. He nodded, then blinked as a glass of clear liquid was inserted through one of the new-formed vents. It was cold, with ice cubes, and had little odor.
“It’s water, Mr. Penn. Tap water, I’m afraid, but still water.”
He drank it so fast that his teeth rang afterward, the jarring cold setting them alight with blissful agony.
“Now, our first question. Where are you from?”
“Stamford, Connecticut. I’d lived there with my parents my whole life.”
“And your sister?”
“… Yeah.”
“Don’t lie to us, Mr. Penn, and most definitely do not try to keep anything from us. This is merely the litmus test before we ask the really hard questions, just so we know how far we can trust you.”
Jack recoiled, but remained silent. Just who were these people? The government, they claimed, but that did little to single out anything from the alphabet soup of shady, federal organizations. He found himself thinking of Agent Mulder, of the X-Files, always trying to find his proof, repeating his mantra, “The truth is out there.” The thought brought a smirk to his face.
The person behind the camera didn’t notice or, if he did notice, didn’t care. Another glass of water was offered through the wall and Jack took it, sipping at it slowly this time.
“Where were you when the bomb hit?”
The image of the refrigerator’s shelves, so distant now, flashed into his mind as he closed his eyes, aided by the ghost forever burned into his vision.
“Home. In the kitchen.”
“Home is-“
“You know where my home is. Was.”
He could almost hear a sharp intake of breath. Good. Throw them a little off-balance. Keep them on their toes. Make them uncomfortable so they slip up and reveal something, something they shouldn’t.
“What did you see, Mr. Penn?”
“The fridge. I was getting food – a snack – and something threw me forward, I hit my head,” he felt the scar, “and blacked out.”
“How long were you unconscious?”
“Don’t know.”
They asked him some more questions, but it was unclear what their purpose was. It was all clerical stuff, just where he’d gone and what he’d done to survive after the bomb hit, who he’d met. He kept his answers curt and to the point, revealing the bare minimum of information. He wasn’t hiding anything, nor did he even think he had anything to hide, but he still felt uncomfortable giving them the impression that he would be “easy.” It was something in the way they were conducting this whole operation, something that stank.
“One final question, for today.”
He groaned at the prospect of more sessions like this, but waited patiently, gathering up his clothes as he did and slipping back into them.
“Before the bomb hit Stamford, did you notice anything unusual?”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah. We were out of grape jelly.”
The lights buzzed, energy flickering along their filaments as they began to warm up.
“Do not play games with us, Mr. Penn. Once more: Did you see anything strange?”
“No. I was looking at the refrigerator the whole time.”
“Very well, then. Until tomorrow.”
The speaker clicked, a minor measure of feedback as they switched off the microphone. Jack was left alone in the silent, empty room as the lights dimmed. The darkness wasn’t so unnerving as the silence, but he stood stoic nonetheless. Best to look as comfortable in his skin as possible.
Something sweet hit his nostrils and he began to feel faint and dizzy. He fell forward, blacking out just before he struck the ground.
The cell he awoke in was not the interrogation room. This was a relief. It was, in contrast, dark, but… Maybe cell had been a misnomer. It was a comfortable room, with a twin bed and a chair, with arms no less, at a simple desk. Yes, simplicity was the name of the game and, though it was dimly lit at the moment, there was a switch that could only, he assumed, go to the ceiling lamp overhead. The existing light, then, must have come from elsewhere, he thought. His attention was drawn to the desk, where a small light had been left on, neck angled so that the bulb bounced its light off the back of the desk and into the wall. It drew Jack’s eyes to the wood grain surface of the desk. Buried within the surface, through the laminate, was a message scratched so thin that it was no wonder the overseers hadn’t noticed it:
T – 5D 1900
Well, he assumed it was a message, but it didn’t make much sense just then. It could have been a production code or a model number, but those weren’t typically carved into the surface of the item in question and, if it was one of those, why had someone taken such pains to draw his attention to it? Unless it was all just a coincidence that the light had been left at that angle? He puzzled over it idly as he lay in bed later that night, the lights off and the irradiated hands of the clock glowering at him from across the room, over the door. He watched them tick and, before long, felt sleep overtake him.
The next few days were tiresome repetition, many of the same questions intermingled with only a few new ones. They might have been checking him, making sure his answers held up day after day, trying to catch him in a lie. After a grueling session of question and answer, he was knocked out and awoke in his room, a hot plate of food on his desk. He would eat, turn out the lights, then think as he drifted off.
On the fifth such day, after a particularly grueling interrogation, he lay awake with the lights on, wanting to clear his head and think, try to figure out what they were after. He didn’t notice that anything was amiss, at first. It was only when his bed shifted and creaked that he felt the rumbling, heard the muffled voices – urgent tones – beyond the door. He stood up and started over to the wall, hoping he could catch something if he put his ear to it, when the door slid open and a guard rushed in, grabbed him by the wrist and jerked him around so that his arm was pinned to his back.
“Move!”
He started walking, glancing at the clock as they approached the doorway. Seven in the evening.
7:00 PM.
1900 hours.
Five days. T – 5D. T-minus five days, 1900 hours.
Before he even realized what he was doing, he had already moved. His weight flew back, slamming the back of his skull into the guard’s face with an audible crunch of snapping cartilage. He could smell blood, not just running from the broken nose, but stirring around in his own head from the impact, but he maintained enough of his composure to drop when he felt his arm go free, spun around and grabbed both of the padded legs by the shins near the ankles, jerked them back and out from under their owner, who tumbled down, head bouncing off the corner of the bed’s frame.
He had a gun. Jack took it and slipped it into his waistband, grabbed the guard’s baton, and ran out into the hallway just as the door — apparently on a timed mechanism — slid shut behind him.
The hall was well-lit by long, fluorescent tubes along the ceiling. It was devoid of activity and, for that reason alone, already sent a chill down his spine. Had no one else been given such a message? He strode up and down the hallway for a bit, trying each of the doors, but none of them would open. It seemed that the facility, or at least this section of it, was on lockdown. Not wanting to waste his chance, Jack chose a direction and ran off down the hall, turned right at the first intersection and found himself staring at another, identical hallway. Inwardly, he ground. Outwardly, he set his face and proceeded down the corridor, marking the corner of each intersection with a small scratch in the paint as he went.
It was five minutes and a lot of walking before he realized that the hallways all formed a square broken up by rows of connected cells. He smacked his forehead, broke off a bitter laugh before it could get any momentum and strode up to the exit, only to be denied access to the door. Cursing, he spun around and slumped down against the wall, breathing a dejected sigh.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Writing potentially postponed over loss of chair
Typing while standing is not fun.
Also, my ass hurts.
EDIT: Solution found for typing. Ass still hurts.
Also, my ass hurts.
EDIT: Solution found for typing. Ass still hurts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)