Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
While I am asking these questions, I am being pushed firmly back into the room, and the door is being shut in my face. This time, I hear it lock.
Oh, no.
I should probably be more worried. I might actually be more worried. Sometimes you don’t actually know how worried you are about something until a lot later, I’ve noticed. Sometimes, you think you’re fine, and then six months later you start twitching and can’t stop for two years. Maybe this is one of those kinds of fine.
Hard to say.
I pace around the room, noticing that I might not be quite as unscathed as I hoped. My bones are protesting, all the way to the marrow. They’re sort of aching in ways I didn’t know bones could hurt. Like I’ve been punched very specifically on the inside only.
Was I in some kind of accident? Where’s Gray? Does he know I’m here? Is he the reason I’m here? Did he betray me somehow? He is a filthy arsonist I barely know, after all. You meet a guy, he burns your life’s work to ashes, then turns into a wolf and you think that’s all he’s going to get up to, but maybe then he also gets you incarcerated in some kind of medical facility?
There are too many questions and no answers and no visual cues. The floor is white tile, and the walls are just plain sheetrock with plaster and paint, and the door is… yep, still locked.
I try the handle, jiggling it to see if I’m just doing it wrong. I push and then I pull, to see if that’s the problem. It’s not.
You have to check, though.
I start to think about ways out. Maybe there’s a handy Mission: Impossible-style air vent? I do find a vent, but I could only go through it if I were the size of a small cat, or maybe a large rat. That’s the only other entrance or exit to the room besides the door.
Or… is it?
I’m not in construction, but I watched a reel once where a dog fell through a wall by mistake while playing. I start tapping the wall, listening for spots that feel more hollow, and others that have a more solid sound. I am not trying to hurl myself into a chunk of wood.
Once I think I’ve worked out where the studs are, I throw myself at the sheetrock next to the door. I use all my strength, figuring I’ll either get out, or maim myself trying. I’m in a hospital-type place either way.
The wall crumbles like an outdated social norm, and in seconds I am back inside the hallway. Also white. Also very little in the way of decoration. The white gown they put me in doesn’t give me much in the way of gravitas, but I remind myself who I am.
I am Calista Hart. I am an important woman, and when I want to get out of a secret laboratory where I am being held against my will for reasons that have not yet been made clear to me, I escape.
I walk briskly through the halls, looking for an exit sign. They’re legally required, and most places, even illicit laboratories holding heiresses hostage have usually been built by a contractor who knows it’s not worth the fines to not have the proper safety signage in place.
I have friends who have suffered the consequences of inadvertently trapping people in a maze with no out sign when they tried to pioneer a new kind of open office concept where actually all the cubicles went floor to ceiling. It was deemed a fire hazard, and was terrible for productivity because the employees were always getting lost. Some of them worked out interesting ways to navigate the maze, Hansel and Gretel style, but using paperclips or similar.
I don’t find a door to the outside, but I do find a big glass observation window that looks into some kind of clean laboratory. All the workers are wearing big blue hairnets and puffy suits, the kind you wear when whatever you are touching is something that absolutely should not be touched.
I’m wondering how afraid I should be. This doesn’t feel good, but also surely Gray wouldn’t let anything very terrible happen to me.
Where is Gray? Third time I’ve asked myself that, and third time there’s been no obvious answer.
Gray
“Let me out!”
I don’t know that anybody has ever said those three words and had their captor decide to actually let them go, but it’s a reflex to say it anyway.
I was getting the better of Karl until he pulled a stun gun out of his pocket and shoved it into my neck. A hundred thousand volts to the dome is pretty effective at destroying resistance.
I passed out the second time he used it.
And I woke up down here, in the dungeon my father denies he has.