"Attention all personal! Security breach on sublevel 10. I repeat, there has been a security breach on sublevel 10. Please report to your stations." The PA was loud enough to rattle donuts off a shelf three blocks down.
Somewhere on sublevel 5, in the back of the maintenance closet, a pair of brown eyes glared at a speaker. Everything was louder in the sublevels. It was impossible to hear oneself think. That in itself was imperative. This was supposed to be a quick escape. No one should have noticed he was missing for at least another couple hours. It must have been Sparks. Mr. Toby Sparks . . . That weasel, he's always pulling this kind of stuff on me. In the back of his mind, he remembered an exchange between Kane and Sparks. Sparks had been quite adamant.
"No, it can't wait another month! I don't care about the ILAR and their blasted policies. We've waited long enough."
"Sparks, my dear Sparks, things like this take time. The Institute just needs us to hold off on testing until the misfiled lab code can be changed. In the meantime, they just want to look things over."
"It's him! The blasted kid did it. He's always tampering with my data."
"Toby, I highly doubt he was involved. Come on, you know him as well as I do. Do you actually think he has the mental capacity? You've seen the readouts. There's nothing there Toby, not anymore. You need a vacation as much as I do. Why don't we take some time off next month, huh? What do you say we hop a jet over to Salt Lake City and ski some powder?"
"No, damn it, why do you always do this? No waiting and no skiing. I haven't spent 10 years of my life to take off every time stuff gets messy. All I want is for you to sign this paper. Sign this paper and we'll avoid the entire mess. Can you do that? Look, just write your name, I'll take care of the rest. I promise, you won't see any of the paperwork."
"Fine, I'll sign it. I'm not happy about this, Tobias. You know how the Institute can get. If you foul this up, it could be bad. I don't want any loose ends, is that clear?"
"You can count on me, sir."
In that instant he knew. Of course it had been rescheduled for today. Either that or the Institute had popped their heads in a day early. He could hear their incessant psycho-babble already.
And this is the neuro-lab . . . our SEM . . . blah, blah, blah.
Subject KTLR-7 threw a mop at the closet door. Normally, it would have made quite a racket, but the din from the overhead reduced it to a minimal clatter. He let out a yell at the top of his lungs. "Arghhhhhh! Can't hear that, can you?" The siren ignored him. "Can't hear this neither!" A bucket followed the mop's trajectory. It bounced off the door and nearly hit him as it flew back past his head.
Settling against the wall, he tried to gather his thoughts. This would be no different than anything else he'd been thrown into. Only, it was for real this time. He was too valuable to kill, but there were other things worse than death: Starvation. Thirst. Isolation. To be locked in a dark room until the small world around became a kaleidoscope of shadows. These punishments he knew well. Of course the "tests" had been perfectly innocent. The brainchild of Mr. Sparks, ever under the watchful eye of Dr. Thaddeus Kane.
"It's for the good of mankind," he'd been told. "The advancement of science." For 10 years, he'd taken their lies. He'd been brainwashed to think this prison was home. They'd exposed him to every pain, stress, chemical, and fear. Theoretically, he'd come through emotionally stable. To them, his mind was just a labyrinth of codes and chemicals, another simulation and set of data to interpret. If only they knew. His "labyrinth" was a carefully constructed wall of bricks that steeled him against their unceasing terrors. It was the only thing that had kept his mind from shattering when they kept going, despite his desperate cries to stop. That part of him was locked away. The damage would be inestimable if it were unleashed. His mind simply was not capable of handling that level of cataclysm. Not after what it had already been through. If he stayed, he knew his days were numbered. It would only be a matter of time before they found the key. I am not going to die in a place like this. He stood up and kicked the mop from its position of guardianship. He had too much to do and sitting in a closet was wasting precious time. KTLR-7 opened the door and headed down the black abyss. If he could just make it to the elevator . . . it would be the first step to freedom.
"Uh, what are those alarms?" Chloe stood up, unsure. They were barely audible on the 100th floor, but obviously loud somewhere.
"No need for concern, Ms. Sullivan, a minor quandary. But you'll have to excuse me-I'm terribly sorry."
"Oh, no problem, we were just about finished here anyways." Thank God.
He reached out to shake her hand. "Ms. Sullivan, it's been a pleasure. A real treat." With that, he picked up his coat and hurried out of the door, leaving a very confused Chloe standing in the middle of it.
"Ms. Sullivan?" It was Grace. "The exit is this way. Can I help you find your way out?"
She could think of a million things to say, but held her tongue. "No, uh, I think I can find it on my own, thanks. It's time I headed back to Smallville." Chloe snatched her purse from the chair and walked towards the elevator.
"I want every hall, every door, every entrance blocked. Nobody leaves here without running through security first." Dr. Kane was seething. Not many things could upset him. But this was ridiculous. How could this happen? They'd managed to keep him under control for how many years? They'd even thought he was happy.
"I want every tech on this." He was shouting now. "He is extremely dangerous. We have no idea what he's capable of, especially without the rocks. I repeat he is extremely dangerous." He listened impatiently for a minute. "No, I don't want him dead . . . How many times have I told you before!" He was irate. "He's of no use to us dead. I want him alive. Comprende?" He slammed the phone on the desk. Grace stared blankly.
"What are you looking at?" Dr. Kane wheeled around and stormed into the hallway.
**ILAR = Institute of Laboratory Animal Research