Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cameron had ordered a complete physical for me, one that in the outside world only a VIP patient would have rated. After that, he had me brought to a room that was clearly used for interrogations. The walls were padded, the table and chairs were bolted to the floor and a large shackle ring was affixed to the table for handcuffs to ease through. It was all done in depressing gray. No windows, the door was steel and locked behind him. It was cold inside, the temperature just this side of uncomfortable especially if all you were wearing was a gown and pull-on slipper socks. Mine were gray and matched the walls. I was afraid to raise my temperature thinking that his instruments would record my returning abilities. The room made me depressed and I slumped in defeat.
Cameron entered, placed a laptop on the table and opened it. The glow from the screen was the brightest thing in the room. “Good evening, Lakan.”
“Is it evening? You people don’t have clocks around here. I don’t know what day it is or what time,” I complained.
“Answer my questions and I’ll answer yours,” he said and opened a site. For the next two hours, he ran me through personality and perception tests, an IQ test, behavioral analysis and every other examination out there geared to finding out how I thought, felt, rationalized and coped with the daily stress and life of a human. When we finished, he checked the time on his computer and looked astounded.
“Holy Jesus.”
“Didn’t know you were religious, doctor,” I said exhausted from the extensive rounds of testing. Mental tests could be just as taxing as physical ones.
“I’m not, Lakan but you just finished ten hours of testing in two and you passed 100% on those that scored that way. Your IQ is off the charts. If you had been enrolled in a gifted program on the East Coast you’d be winning a Nobel Prize in science right now.”
“But I'm not smart enough to stay out of your custody," I retorted.
He laughed and it was cold. “Well, Lakan you are only fourteen years old and led a sheltered life at your great-grandfather's. And I've had twenty years to learn spook tricks.”
“How many tracking bugs did you implant in me?” I was curious and halfway didn’t believe he would answer.
“Four besides the one on your heart. Just how did you have that removed?”
“I thought it away,” I answered flippantly.
“I think not. You had surgical scars on you when I saw you last and I saw the doctor’s report,” he came back.
“There wasn’t any surgery,” I said flatly.
“Really? Because when we threatened to pull Dr. Rivers’ license, he caved,” Cameron stated.
“Dr. who?”
“It doesn’t matter, Lakan. He’s not going to be a problem anymore,” he promised. I was silent, I knew it most likely meant that Dr. Rivers was dead.
“So, what are the other four? I heard you say something about my blood being tagged?”
“As I’m sure you’re aware, Lakan your blood is tagged with a radioisotope that can be picked up by any satellite. There is another in your skull that was put in during the surgery to save your life after the car accident but it hasn’t been active these last five years and can’t be removed without major brain surgery. Another is implanted inside the bone marrow of your femur. I won’t tell you which one but it also cannot be removed without taking part of the bone with it. Suffice to say, you wouldn’t be walking on it. The last one is in your neck attached to your spinal cord. That’s why you can’t walk, it’s been programmed to interfere with the signals from your brain to your leg muscles and nerves.”
“I was working on something like that for paraplegics at Director Hamilton’s,” I said slowly.
He smiled broadly. “Oh Lakan, the discoveries I found in your room and on your computer! The irony is – your creations to help cripples recover is also keeping you a prisoner.” I tried to lunge for him but he stepped back nimbly and I fell out of the chair to land at his feet. I banged my elbows, hip, and knees but he didn’t offer to help me get up. He left me lying there while he finished making notes and I desperately tried to influence his mind. Finally, he closed the lid with a snap, went to the door and called the orderly into the room. It was Blue and he picked me up by my armpits and put me back in the wheelchair. His fingers grazed the bleeding abrasions on my knees. I saw his cheeks clench but he said nothing as Cameron told him to return me to my room. The doctor stayed behind.
It was a short ride back down the hall but Blue passed the door to what I guessed was my room and continued to another further on. He pushed the door open with his back and wheeled me in backward to an exam room where he lifted me onto a table. Turning his back to me, he set out gauze 4 x 4’s, scrub and Band-Aids. He was gentle as he cleaned off the scrapes and treated them.
“What’s your name, Blue?” I asked carefully.
“Brian Blue, actually,” he grunted as he concentrated on what he was doing. The stuff stung but it was a minor ache compared to say – the bone marrow aspiration and the spinal tap.
“I guess I can call you Blue, then.” I sucked in my breath as he washed off the blood on my knees.
“What happened?” He asked me.
“I tried to deck him. Missed and fell out of the chair,” I admitted.
He stopped and gaped at me. “You tried to hit Dr. Cameron?”
“Well yeah. He’s a dick and an asshole,” I defended.
“He can also have you dissected and not wait for you to be dead when he does it.”
“I’m worth more alive than dead,” I said gloomily.
He finished smoothing the large Band-Aid on my knee. “What’s your name?”
“Lakan Strongbow.”
“Your real name?”
“That is my real name. My mother was Lakota Sioux.”
“No shit? I thought you were some relation of CIA Director Sarah Hamilton?”
“She’s supposed to be my grandmother,” I admitted candidly. I went on to explain but he held his hands up.
“Don’t tell me anymore, I don’t have the clearance for this shit,” he said.
“Will you help me escape?”
“Are you nuts? Do you know where you are? Besides, he fixed it so you can’t walk. You going to crawl out of here on your hands and knees or do you fly?” He stared at his wound care. “You hurt anywhere else? I can give you some pain meds.”
“Just take me back to my room,” I said. He did, stopping just short of Rachel’s door. I put my hand on the glass and tried to reach her but her thoughts were barred from me. I knew Blue wasn’t sympathetic enough to let me talk to her. He helped me back into bed. I turned my back to him, pulled the covers up and forced myself to sleep so I could dream of her.
*****
Rachel was sitting on the big chunk of quartz that resembled a roughly cut yellow diamond. Her long hair was down and braided into four plaits, not the traditional two. She wore a red shirt and blue jeans when I had been expecting tanned and beaded buckskins. On her feet were moccasins and white bobby socks. She wiggled her toes.
“Don’t look at me. I wouldn’t have picked these socks and shoes, it’s your dream.” She jumped down to stand next to me, I seemed insubstantial somehow. “You figure out a way to escape yet?” She asked me.
I walked around and studied the dreamscape we were occupying. There were elements of the Nutcracker Suite with tin soldiers holding back the gloomy trees, faint images of sugarplum fairies holding bows and arrows, and the huge crystal sitting in the middle of a sandy clearing. It was wound around with Christmas garland and red ribbons. I couldn’t see any sky overhead; it just faded into a dull mist. In that darkness, I heard soft and eerie rustlings, the hoot of an owl and the thumping beat of a nervous heart.
“You’re frightened and worried, Lakan. Me, too. That nasty man Chase has threatened me and some of the things he wants to do are just… if I was a warrior, I would show him about torture.”
“I planted a suggestion or two in the Senator’s mind,” I said. “He supposed to come back and help me but I don’t know if it’s strong enough to override his plans for me.”
“And those were?” she prompted.
“He has access to where it is I’m being held. From what I can see and read about it’s the super-max lab in D.C. called the Complex, run by a joint committee of the NIA and NSA.”
“And how do you plan on leaving this SuperMaxx prison?” She climbed back on the crystal which reformed under her like a chaise lounge. I crawled up and joined her. Curiously, her flesh had the same hard, cool consistency as the rock.
“He was bringing handcuff keys and his access card. Clothes from his secretary but that was before I found out Cameron had re-programmed my own nervous system to be paralyzed,” I said unhappily. “I think he’s done something to my brain, too. I can’t quite grasp his thoughts like I did with the others. I can’t find the door to the spirit realm, either.”
“You can’t walk?”
“No. The minute I try to stand, all feeling goes and my legs just won’t hold me. I’ve tried to bypass the obstruction but I can’t reach my own nerve center.”
“When are you going to initiate this escape?” she asked.
“You’ll be the first to know,” I said. “Do you think you can try to bring me in now?”
She grabbed my hand and concentrated. The door appeared floating above our heads and both of us could hear the growling, snarling, claw-scratching of the Soul Hunters behind it.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to open the door,” I said shakily. As soon as the words left my mouth, a mournful howling picked up with an eagerness that let me know I was definitely on something’s menu.
“Rachel, you go through, they’re not interested in you.”
“Yeah, right. Besides, I can’t hold the door open and pass through without your help, Lakan,” she denied.
“Can we open the door, let them pass into this world and trap them here while we race through theirs?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know if they can leave the Spirit Realm, I don’t think letting monsters into our real world is a good idea. What if they attacked and killed people in our world? How would we stop them? How would you prevent them from finding and killing you here?”
The door cracked as something huge hit it a resounding blow. Rachel screamed and jerked me by the hand blowing my concentration. We were catapulted out of the dream world and back into the waking one. I woke to find myself in my room belted in with restraints and an orderly seated in a chair this side of the door. It wasn’t Blue or the other, Red. This one was clearly a guard with muscles the size of beer kegs and a brain to match. He possessed no curiosity and in fact, had so little going on inside his head that it left me nothing to work with or influence.
I had no way of knowing how much time had passed while I was in the dream state. It could have been the same night or days later. One thing I did know, my thoughts were sluggish and my reactions diminished. Which meant I was back on Thorazine.
“You awake?” the orderly asked in a voice that surprised me. It was soft, beautifully modulated and cultured. Which only went to show that no one should be judged on first appearances.
“Yes,” I managed but it was an effort to speak.
“Just listen,” he said without moving his lips and he told me what to do.