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.