Chapter 23
The administrator had just sat down at the luncheon. He was surrounded by the executive staff in a large conference room on the ground floor. When the alert was announced, he knew immediately who was involved. Suddenly getting to his feet, he excused himself and quickly left the room. No one had ever escaped from the facility. Outside of the staff, the only way out was through the incinerator. And a lockdown had never before been issued. Even the elevators and stairwells were armed with key card entry stations. Movement on each unit was restricted to everyone but those with special access. The administrator swiped his badge at the nearest elevator and went down to the fourth underground floor. Upon leaving the elevator, he walked quickly to the unit where Edward had been placed. By this time, security was combing the entire facility -- even the above-ground floors. Everyone he passed gave him a wide birth. The expression on his face clearly indicated his level of anger. He walked through the double doors of the unit and rounded the corner. Upon approaching the room that Edward was supposed to occupy, he looked down at Frank’s body. His head was still lodged in the stainless steel window frame as the rest of his body lay in a pool of blood and glass fragments.
“What the fuck happened!?” he yelled.
The nurse who was rendered unconscious by Edward’s attack had just risen to her feet.
“Nurse!” he yelled.
He pointed at her demandingly.
“Get your ass out here!”
The nurse was terrified as her eyes began to well up with tears. She carefully stepped out of the room, around the quickly clotting pool of blood that had minutes before been coursing through Frank’s body.
“Sir…I’m sorry. It happened so quickly,” she said. The administrator’s rage came to the surface as he suddenly grabbed the nurse by the throat and pinned her against the door frame.
“What did I fucking tell you?!” he yelled.
The nurse’s face turned red as she began choking.
“What were you supposed to do if he gave you a hard time?! Huh?! What was it?!”
The nurse was beginning to lose consciousness as her limbs started to become limp. He put enough pressure around her neck that he began to feel the cartilage rings of her throat against his palm. He saw her eyes dilate as she lost consciousness and letting her go, watched as she crumpled to the floor. The administrator turned to the rest of the staff with a look of rage none of them had ever seen.
“Someone better fuckin’ tell me what happened!” Only one person was able to muster the courage to speak.
“Sir,” a nurse began. “By the time we got here, Mr. Drake was gone. We’ve initiated a facility lockdown and we will find him.”
A security team arrived on the unit. They were armed with low voltage tasers – just powerful enough to stun someone without causing lasting disability. He glared at the security staff in a state of rage.
“What the fuck are you looking at?! Find him!”
He ordered the security team to search the entire floor while the staff searched the unit.
“And someone clean this up!” he yelled, as he pointed down to Frank’s body. By this time, the unconscious nurse had taken an involuntary gasp. Her color began to return as another nurse approached her with a portable oxygen tank and a face mask.
This was a rare event. No one had ever escaped from the facility. Occasionally, there would be a problem restraining someone. But that’s what sedatives were for. Later, the staff would secretly blame the administrator for Edward’s escape. New arrivals were always transferred to their beds under sedation to minimize the risk of escape. The staff came to the conclusion that the administrator simply needed someone to torture and chose Edward. As he stormed off the unit to return to the luncheon, a nurse called out to him.
“Sir, what do you want us to do about Frank?”
Without so much as looking back, the administrator immediately ordered that Frank’s body be incinerated.
“And I want to be told the instant that motherfucker is found!”
As far as the administrator was concerned, the facility was his and he took Edward’s escape personally. And everyone knew that bad things would happen once Edward was found. Finding him was a certainty. It was just a matter of time.