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As I programmed, I also worked on a plan for escape. If Cassandra decided not to go along, I could at least get her to stall them so I could get away. She was definitely a wild card I’d have to deal with eventually. But, first things first. How does one break out of a set of rooms with but one exit, no windows and the heating and cooling vents beyond entering or exiting? Computer life was one thing. But I surely couldn’t crawl out through the monitors.
When dinnertime arrived, at least for me, I asked Cassandra if she’d like to join me. I used familiar speak to ask. She declined.

“Don’t you eat?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said. “When I get hungry.”

“But where do you go?”

“I bring my lunch with me. In my purse.”

I looked at her oversized black suitcase kind of thing she’d stood by the door.

“They let you out of here?”

“Yes. I have a room across the hall. Guess they don’t want us getting too close together.”

She looked at me and grinned.

“For obvious reasons,” she added.

That took care of that. She ate and slept like the rest of us mortals. Good thing to know.

“How’s the Cookie Monster going?” she asked.

“Just started. But I’ve decided on the approach. All I need now is time to work out the details.” I looked around at the invisible camera to make that point to whomever was watching us at the moment.
As I ate my already prepared hot dinner, I thought about Cassie. Did she miss me? Why hadn’t I called? Had she notified her brother Patton? Were the police making inquiries? Was it snowing in North Dakota? All good questions.

I decided, for no good reason I could think of, to search my apartment. There had to be another door to the outside world of hallways and elevators around somewhere, else how could whoever was delivering my meals get them here. But as impossible as it seemed, I couldn’t find a single sign of one. Maybe entire walls opened electronically or with a ‘whoosh’ like in Star Trek on the Enterprise. Or he or she crawled out from underneath the sink or out of the toilet. I even looked under the bed to see if someone might be hiding there. Nothing.

Everything in the lab and my apartment had been painted the same drab color. No art on the walls. In fact nothing on them at all. That was probably a clue. But I couldn’t think of what kind of clue it could be. No lamps or other lights that I could see. In fact, the walls and ceiling themselves seemed to glow with a certain kind of luminescence that served to light the rooms. Lights that never waivered or turned off. A strange kind of zoo.

I ran my hands over the walls from corner to corner. No extrusions of any kind. No depressions that would give away some kind of hidden door. Somebody had gone to great trouble I designing this room. To keep people inside, well fed, and properly encouraged to work.

Tired of my science-fictionesque surrounding, I went to bed and tried to sleep. No go. For the first time, the constant light bothered me. The lack of any sound except for a very low hum. Probably the supercomputer engine. The whole place was starting to give me with willies. And claustrophobia. Caged in. Nowhere to exercise. Nowhere to go.

When morning finally arrived I wasn’t sure I’d slept or simply lay in a half sleep for several hours. Didn’t matter much. I no longer felt tired. So I drank some coffee and ate a piece of buttered toast. Considered just staying in for the day. See if I could catch whoever it was that tended my food needs and how they accessed my kitchen. Decided against that. Not in my nature.

Once out in the main room, Cassandra and I began to converse in tongues again. It must have sounded like that, since seventy percent or so of what we said had no meaning for us at all. Only the already defined key words. I actually couldn’t have remembered my lines if someone had played them back for me. Probably make for a great verbal Rorschach test.

Our coded conversations covered only those areas we felt necessary to keep secret. In other words, how to get the hell out of here. Cassandra was still reluctant. Could be they were honest and would pay her off just like her other clients had. Bigger stakes, I said. Lots more money and a lot more for these folks to lose. She finally gave enough to ask me how we could do it. With that she had me. The only way I could see it happening was for me to use my Bokator skills to take out CM on his next visit, and then make for the exits. Told her she’d be in bad shape if I left without her.

Just about the time I convinced her, the door opened and in walked CM. Christopher Masters. Or whatever his name was. Without warning I gave him a knife-hand strike directly to the jugular, catching the third vertebra of his spinal column, and down he went. He’d be out for twelve hours but, except for a nasty headache, he’d be fine otherwise.

Cassandra opened her mouth, thought better of whatever she was going to say, and off we went. Out the door and to the right. As good a direction as any other. She gasped after me, “Where are we going?”

“Beats me,” I said. “How about away from here. Will that do?”

Before she could answer I’d turned right again and we’d come upon the elevators. Twenty seconds into it. So far so good.

I pushed all the buttons I could find and luckily one of the doors opened immediately. No one in it. Lucky. I pulled her in behind me, noticing she wasn’t as weak as she pretended as I did. Once inside I pressed the button for floor three.

“Why three? Why not the lobby?”

“They’ll probably assume we’d go there. Also, the alarm will probably go off before then and someone will kill our power.”

Just as I said that, the elevator ground to a halt, just between the third and fourth floor. Luck turning bad.

“Step in my hands and up you go,” I told her as I cradled my palms into a virtual step of a ladder. She got the picture quickly and up she went, grabbing the edges of the ceiling door, and lifting herself up through it.

When she’d disappeared, I leapt up to it and pulled myself up after her. Not easy, but Bokator practice once a week has its advantages. One minute.

Once my eyes adapted to the dark, I could see a metal frame ladder attached to the wall of the elevator shaft and up I went. I didn’t have time to bark instructions, but doubted she needed them. Six feet up, I could reach over to the third-floor elevator doors and with a little bit of cajoling, pulled one of them to the side, the other moving in the opposite direction.

“Jump,” I called after her as I hit the deck of the third floor in the dimly lit corridor. She followed me. The alarm bell was now so loud I could hardly think. One and a half minutes. Too long, I thought. We’ll have to pick up some needed seconds to make it.

“The stairs,” I whispered, and we ran for our lives.

“Up or down?” she asked. A good question. They’d be expecting us in the lobby. On the other hand, up meant ultimate capture.

“Down.”

“But they’ll have that covered.”

“Custodian,” she said.

“And that would be?”

She thought about that for a second.

“Oh yeah,” she finally said, “me.”

“And when it’s not you?”

“My substitute.”

“That would be an old man, maybe sixty, with a club not a gun and who’ll recognize you and think you’re trying to catch whoever’s trying to escape.”

“Right.”

“Leave it to me.”

By then we’d reached the lobby and I opened the door not knowing what to expect, but taking my attack mode with me, ready to dive into ten men if the situation called for it.

It didn’t.

Only slightly out of breath, Cassandra ran for the desk to unlock the front doors. The old man stood up and said, “What?”

“They’re escaping,” I said, “Cassandra and I are the first to get here. We’ve got to get outside or they’re going to get away.”

“Right,” he said. But I could barely hear him. By then we were out the doors and into the New York night.

“Pick a direction,” I said.”

“What?”

“Pick a direction. Just do it.”

I looked at the sky, found the right alignment, and off we went, to the side of the building. Perfect choice. The front and back most likely had doors, while the sides would not. We hit the corner of the building and in the dim lighting there took off across the lawn toward what looked like forest. Far enough out from the city to afford this kind of property, I thought as we ran for cover.

We made it just as the outside lights came on. Extremely bright lights. We kept going. Into the dark recesses of the think evergreens. And downward toward a creek or water flow of some kind. Not a good thing, but we’d have to make it across somehow.

We took some time. As tidy as the lawn had been, the forest was filthy with broken limbs, gopher holes, and the usual trappings of leaves, pine cones, and other detritus that make up forest floors. And it was cold I noticed for the first time. We’d not prepared for our evening jaunt. We’d have to find shelter soon or find ourselves in trouble.

I grabbed Cassandra’s hand as we hit bottom, and just kept going. I’d been wrong about the water. Just a small valley that may sometimes hold snowmelt or rains water in the summer. Now it was empty, just a couple of rocks.

And up we went. I could hear plenty of action behind us. Voices, dogs. And lights, bouncing and wavering as those using them tripped over the same stuff we’d avoided.

When we reached the far side of the ravine, we came upon a street. A nice Queens style street, well lighted with side by side single-dwelling homes standing like a cavalry regiment in a slow motion march. No way to get through them

“Right or left?”

“Right,” she said.

Perfect. I could already see a tavern on the far corner lot.

“Keep at the forest line. Look back as often as possible. See any motion at all and give me a punch in the back, and into the forest we go.”

And we ran. Both severely out of breath by now, but still running as if our lives depended on it. They probably did. Not they would kill us, mind you. Not yet, anyway. They still needed both of us to finish our jobs.

She didn’t poke me. And we made it to the tavern. Which, thank God, was still open. We ran inside.

One person there. The bartender. He smiled as we entered. Finally, customers.

“You got a back way outta here?” I asked him.

“Why?”

That got him right where it hurt.

“Follow the signs to the bathrooms and you’ll find a door back there. Take you to an alley. You’re on your own from there.”

“Thanks!” I yelled.

“Good luck,” he said.

We hit the bathroom hallway quickly and nearly collided from the suddenly slippery floor, but made it over that and out into the darkness beyond the door.

And we found someone waiting for us. I could tell from the gleaming red glow of a cigarette or something akin to that being inhaled.

My first thought was to take him down, but one look into his dreamy eyes and I knew that wouldn’t be necessary. He taken enough tokes to make his even about as pleasant as could be. And we ran some more. Taking several turns through different dark alleys. Looking for somewhere, anywhere, to get warm.

We slowed down and entered a long, dark hallway that then opened out into something looking a little like an old train station lobby. Rows and rows of beds lined up in perfect order, each chained to a metal divider. I had no way to count them, but it looked on the order of at least a hundred if not more.

To our right, a young man with a goatee and long black hair tied in a ponytail, sat behind a large desk waiting for us to see him first. I got the idea and we went over to check in. He looked glum and un-reassuring to say the least. Not what I expected. But at least it was warm here.

“Need beds?” he asked.

I looked at Cassandra and for the first time saw her in a quite different light. Not because of the pale fluorescents shining down on us from a couple of stories up, but because she was still shaking from the cold. A pale almost lifeless looking little girl staring down at the floor. Had I caused this?

“What do you think?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond. Only looked up at me and waited for me to say something. What?

“How much?” I asked the guy.

“Eighty,” he said. “A piece.”

“Eighty?” I said, before I could shut my mouth up. Eighty? For a bed and a blanket for half a night in Queens. What the hell kind of hostel was this? At the same time we couldn’t go back out into the night with nothing but what we were now wearing.

“Take it or leave it,” he said.

I looked back at Cassandra, still staring blankly at the floor and now, I saw, almost shaking out of control.

“You’d better get her a fix soon, or she’s going into withdrawal.”

“What?”

Such a thing had never occurred to me. She obviously didn’t sleep or eat much, but I just hadn’t associated that with addiction. And meth, of all the things she could of chosen.

I had to get her out of there and, according to this joker, soon.

“Look. How do I do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get her a fix.”

“Need to find a dealer. Plenty of those around here. Just step out the door and one will fall on you.”

“Too cold out there,” I said.

“Need coats?” he asked.

“You have coats for sale.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Two. Big ones. For a night like this.”

He stepped back into a closet behind him, looked back at us, checking I imagined for size, and returned with two fur-like numbers that looked warm.

“Fifty bucks,” he said. “A piece.”

Why did I know that last part was coming?

I pulled out my wallet, peeled off one of the three remaining hundreds left there, and gave it to him. I then grabbed the coats, wrapped the first around Cassandra, the other around me, and we took off back outside without a word to the jerk at the counter. Cassandra had never said a word, or did she seem to want to now.

Where does one go to find a meth dealer? I asked myself. At something time in the early morning hours. In Queens, no less.

But, unbelievably, as we stepped out into the cold dark night and I turned my head left to right trying to decide which way to go, there, maybe half a city block away, was a burning ember glowing, looking all the world like a cigarette. But surely wasn’t. Not at this hour. Not in this place. No way. No how.

I put my arm around Cassandra and half carried her in that direction. If not a dealer, someone who no doubt could direct us toward one. She felt limp and her entire body seemed ready to give it all up. And she continued to shake almost convulsively.

When we reached the person who held the glowing ember, I could see his beady eyes glowing in the reflection.

“What d’ya need brother?”

“Meth,” I said, as if it were a daily occurrence.

“Form?”

What, I need to fill out a form for this?

“Mainline, smoking, pills? Name your poison.”

I looked down at Cassandra, now but a shaking mess of tics and asked her the question. She looked confused at first. This same woman who’d caught onto to my hastily thought of code back in the lab could now barely speak coherently.

“Smoke,” she said.

“Size?” he asked. I had no idea what was going on here. Size of pills? Amount of meth?

I looked at her again. Nothing.

“Regular,” I told him. Believe it or not that seemed to work.

“How many?”

“How much?” I asked.

“Fifty a pop. No less. Take it or leave it.”

“Four,” I said, and grabbed my wallet and forked over the last of my bills.

He reached into a bag he held over his shoulder, rummaged around for a second or two, and gave me the four tubes.

We made the exchange.

“Go and chase the dragon with my blessing,” he said, and promptly disappeared into the darkness.

I immediately virtually picked up Cassandra and carried her to the nearest dumpster, crawled the two of us behind it, and into the blackness we went. I sat her back against a wall, pulled out one of the cigarettes, and handed it to her.

She tried to say something then, but the words wouldn’t come out. I looked into her eyes, at least what little I could see of them. Imagined I was in there with her. And read her mind. Sort of. A match. She wanted a match. But I didn’t have one. Shit. One match short of a full house, Francis.

But I hadn’t need to worry. She tired to grab her purse and as I helped her I realized that’s where she stored hers. Just to be safe. Too bad she hadn’t stored her crystal meth in there as well. I rumbled through the mess inside and finally came up with a match. She lit it, and I watched her sitting there. Not really smoking, for it wasn’t the smoke she needed. Only the fumes. Or so I’d been told once in college.

I leaned back against the wall and that’s when I first heard it. A scratching sound. We weren’t alone. Rats. Not figuratively. Actually. Rats! And not just one, but a complete little squadron of them. Hoping we had something to eat for them. If not ourselves. I looked up at the sky and imagined how far I’d come from North Dakota. I even imagined one of those cameras in the sky staring down at me and slowly pulling up, like that scene of Tim Robbins after his escape standing in the rain with his arms out in the creek in The Shawshank Redemption. We were free. Finally. But in our case, so what?

“You okay?” I whispered to her.

“More than okay,” she said. “A lot more than okay. This is some good shit.”

“For what it cost, it should be some good shit.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I should have told you, you know? But it’s not something I’m proud of.”

“How long?”

“Have I been at it? Maybe a year. Maybe a little longer. Hard to shake, you now?”

“No. But I can imagine.”

“No you can’t,” she said, and I believed her.

“You drink?”

“Sure.”

“Only difference is the type of high and the severity of it.”

“You think alcohol isn’t addictive?”

“It is. Sure. But not to this extent.”

“The hell,” she said. “I’ve seen them in the tanks at the hospital. Worse than crystal. Believe me.”

“I may stop drinking now.”

She smiled, and I realized that my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. And my ears. The rats had scrambled into attack formation.

“Can you walk okay?”

“Right now, I could run. Why?”

“I don’t think this place is very safe.”

“What? Oh you mean the rats. Forget them. Watch this.” And she gave a sudden jerk with her body and a yell like a banshee and the sound of scattering feet filled the alley.

“Jesus. Where’d you learn that?”

“Been there, done that. As they say. Rats are just as scared of us as we them. Believe me. I know.” And she took another toke, drag, or whatever, on her tube of meth.

And then she started talking. Nonstop. First about her growing up in a dysfunctional family and all the trimmings that brought. Then about her addictive habits. And on and on. Before long I simply lost track. The faster she talked, the tireder I became. My eyelids drooped and before long I couldn’t remember being in the alley with the rats with a meth addict running from a group of Wall Street hoodlums, so far from home.

I woke to a bright white sky. All I could see. No blue, just completely white. I tried to move, but nothing seemed to work quite right. My arms and legs budged slightly, but even with the greatest of effort I couldn’t manage actual motion. Then I realized where I was.

“Well, among the living again, I see.” The voice of none other than CM. Christopher Masters. If that was his name. I was back in my windowless apartment in his multi-story building. Had it all been a dream? In couldn’t be. Too real.

“No, it wasn’t a dream, Professor Francis. It was real.”

I tried to move my mouth, but it didn’t work any better than the rest of me. Felt like my tongue was swimming around in a mouth full of molasses.

“We’ve got you well doped up with muscle relaxants, so you probably can’t speak yet. It’ll wear off in time. For now, we’re not sure we can trust you not to murder us one and all if we let you go. Heard about your martial arts exploits. Didn’t know that you were quite as good you seem to be. What kind of move did you pull on me, eh? Slept for at least twelve hours and woke with a hell of a hangover. But after that not a sign I’d ever been hit. Some magic you’ve got there.”

Thank God he stopped talking. Driving me crazy. How’d they done it? Found us. Brought us in without a fight. How as Cassandra. So many new questions. Added to all the others I couldn’t answer.

“So what are we going to do with you now. Can’t trust you not to try it again. Unless, of course, we turn to your Achilles heel. That would do it. We can’t keep you in this state of limbo for too long. Need you back to work on the project. In full support of your faculties. What to do with you, Professor Francis? You think about that for the next few hours. You won’t sleep now for a while. You’ve been out for eighteen hours. A lot a sleep for a young man such as yourself.”

Jesus. A motor mouth. Maybe my little blow to his vertebra did it. Should have hit him harder.

“I’ll leave you now. Let you think things over.” And with that I heard him leave.

And then I lay there. And lay there some more. Lot of that going around. At least I didn’t have to go to the bathroom. Slightly hungry, but no more than that. Good chance to lose some added pounds I gained recently anyway.

As I waited for the drugs to wear off, I considered how they’d caught us. Hidden as we were in a back alley. I could only come up with one answer. Cassandra. But why? I’d given her four hits of her precious meth. I had no idea how many hits she needed in a day, but even if it were only one, she’d figure out that sooner or later we’d need to go back to her dealer. CM. Why not get it over with. She’d turned us in. For her almighty habit.

My body woke up just as I’d thought it would. First my toes and fingers, then my feet and hands, and on and on. Each in turn giving me sprinkles of pain just as a sleeping leg or arm gives you as they wake up. Or a hit to the crazy bone. As so my body, thus my brain. I decided somewhere along in there to make it work. First priority. Give them what they wanted. Maybe with a surprise added in. I wasn’t sure what, but it had to have one. Something to make the entire project go up in flames after they’d let me go, or tried to kill me, or whatever. Maybe I’d put something in there and then tell them about it, making it impossible to kill me. Whatever. From now on, I’d work for my lunch.

I also decided to find the crawlspace or whatever it was that allowed them access to my apartment. My meals didn’t just appear out of thin air. Unless they’d conceived of some type of nanotechnology. And if they’d done that, why’d they need me to do this? Somewhere, a door allowed someone to get in and I was going to find it.