by Rowan Massey
When I ran and jumped onto the bed, bouncing twice before landing, I groaned at how amazing it felt. I closed my eyes and exhaustion hit me. Kicking my shoes off, I pulled the blanket down and buried my head in one of the pillows. I was in fucking heaven. Nando’s wool blanket was nothing compared to all the fluff. The only thing better would be dancing later, but for now, it was all about sleep, and it came to me easy.
A knocking sound.
I was immediately awake, but had a split second of confusion. I was being smothered in warm softness. Nothing smelled familiar. Things came together, and I scooted to the edge of the giant bed and went over to the door straightening my clothes. I felt embarrassed, anxious that I was there by some kind of wild mistake and was about to be yelled at and thrown out.
Opening the door, I expected to see Avi, but it was London. His eyes went to my head. I didn’t have my beanie on and my scars and messy hair were making a fool of me. I went back in and found the hat in the tangled sheets.
“Nice nap?” London asked.
“Um, yeah. For sure.” I put the hat on and started fixing the bed, not sure if I was supposed to leave it messy.
“Don’t bother with that,” he said, waving me towards him. “Avi has some ideas for Atul’s fielder project. We have resources here that he doesn’t have in Emporium. What do you say we turn you into a lab rat for a little bit?”
“Oh, okay.” I rubbed my hands on my jeans and looked at my pack. I didn’t really want to leave it, but I would. “Can I have some lunch first?”
“Of course, kid. Let’s go foraging.”
I didn’t know what foraging meant, but I followed him to the kitchen, where there was no lady anymore, and he looked into the fridge while I found the pantry and took in all the food. I didn’t recognize any of the brands, but it was probably all delicious.
London dug out loads of foods to make a sandwich with, and made me one that was so fat I could barely bite it. The pickles kept falling out. Once I’d scarfed that down along with some tea, we headed down the elevator, which still make me feel weird, and went to a different lab from the first. It was on the fifty-second floor. It wasn’t a big, open space like the other lab. London took me down halls that were like a maze, passing people in lab coats and others who were soldiers.
“This is where we do medical trials,” London told me when we got to a double door that said “Radiology”. “We’re going to do a brain scan on you. It’s easy. All you have to do is lay still.”
The machine was a big, white donut-shaped thing with a hard bed that moved me so that my head was inside it. I stayed still for a long time, listening to the banging and loud humming the thing made. It was weird, but boring, and I was glad when it was over.
Next, in another room, London had me take my shirt off so he could stick a lot of colored wires to my skin, then he put a plastic mask over my nose and mouth. It was attached to a crinkled hose. I didn’t ask what it was all for, since I wouldn’t understand a word of it anyway. Avi came in, and they watched me run on a treadmill with all that crazy stuff hanging off of me. I had to tell them three times I couldn’t run anymore before Avi let London turn it off. I stepped down with wobbly legs and sweaty skin, feeling like shit. The sandwich in my gut felt like a rock.
“You’ll be fine, little man,” Avi said, rubbing my arm. “All in the name of science! Now I know your absolute limits and a lot of other things.”
I wished he would stop touching me so much. My mind wasn’t holding up to all the things that had happened in one day. I wanted to call the doc, text Nando, and dance.
London helped me over to a chair, and I appreciated it. My brain thought I was still on the treadmill, and I felt like the floor was supposed to be moving.
“How am I going to dance? I’m beat,” I worried out loud. Sitting with my head in my hands, I felt the need to take my drug and refresh my mind.
“Well,” Avi said, chuckling, “you’ll be happy to hear you’ll be doing that in bed.”
“What?” I looked up at him. He couldn’t be serious. I needed to be under the open sky. “I can’t do that. I need to go out to that park out there.”
“Central Park?” London said. “That would be illegal, sweetie. The fielders here have to stay up in Harlem. We’re going to keep you safer than that in the loft. I’ll show you how we look at your brain activity. It will be kind of cool.”
“Extremely cool,” Avi interrupted. “Doc will feel like an idiot for not thinking of it himself.”
“I don’t know,” I said, not liking how things were going. “Let me call Doc and ask him first. I need to call Doc.”
They both stood there and looked at me for a second, Avi narrowing his eyes at me like I was a bug, and London smiling at me like he pitied me. Doc hadn’t said anything about all the testing they wanted to do, and I wasn’t a fan of it. If he told me to do what they said, I would, but if he said I could decide, I wasn’t going to.
“Where’s your phone?” Avi asked me. “Is it up in the loft?”
“Yeah. In my pack.”
“You don’t need it. You can use the phones down here. Call him after your trip, kiddo.”
What? What phones did he mean? Before I could ask, he was talking to London.
“Clear your schedule for the rest of Wally’s stay. I want to do this right, not with all these other patients taking up everyone’s focus. Everything else gets dropped.”
“Are we going to try the, uh…”
“Of course!” Avi said loudly. “We only have him for a few days. Hop to!”
“Alright, alright,” London said, pulling on his ear. He looked at me, and I thought he was about to apologize for all the lab rat bullshit, but he only turned away and left me with Avi.
“I really have to call Doc before I do anything else,” I told him. “He’s my boss, so…”
“Don’t you worry,” he said, smiling. “Good old Doc will call you. You don’t need to call him. He knows you’re being taken care of. Come on, you need a nice hot bath, then you can have your fielders. Sound good?”
I sighed, really wanting to call home, but I nodded. He took all the sticky wire pads off my chest and back, and I got dressed.
Following him up to the loft, I listened to him tell silly jokes, trying to cheer me up, but I was ready to dance, and had just been told I had to do it inside while my brain was being stared at. It wasn’t right. It was disrespectful to the trip. I knew Doc wouldn’t ask me to do something like that. I just hoped there would be a big window to make it less wrong.
Chapter Fifteen
The Sardana brothers were big on keeping me clean. Avi filled the big bathtub, which took forever, and told me to relax in it until the water got cold. He gave me a remote inside a waterproof bag, and when I pressed the power button, I expected something to happen to the water, but a TV came down right out of the ceiling.
“Holy shit!”
Avi laughed and clapped me on the back.
“Enjoy, kid. See you in a while,” he said, and left the room.
I stripped down and stepped in. The water was extremely hot, and I winced until my legs got used to it, then sat very carefully, not wanting to scorch my junk. There were a ton of channels. I could have swam around in the tub if I’d known how. I tried to float, remembering doing that when I was really little, and eventually pulled it off while I watched cartoons.
By the time the water started to cool, I’d scrubbed myself and had been in the water for an hour and a half. My whole body was still sore, but the heat had helped while it lasted.
Out in the bedroom, I got dressed. The sun was setting outside the window, and I was starting to feel the stress of the day in a way that told me it was time to dance.
But I had to call Doc, and still wanted to talk to Nando. I reached into the side pocket of my pack for the phone, then the other side. It wasn’t there. I sucked in a breath, already knowing what happened to it, but I searched all over the pack anyway. The tablet was gone too.
And my train and bus tickets had been stolen along with them.
“Fuck!” I yelled, and threw the pack onto the bed. My toothbrush and toothpaste fell out, and I didn’t care. “Fucking fuck!”
I was in trouble. I had to get to a phone. But no, it wouldn’t make any difference. I didn’t have the doc’s number memorized.
Why in the hell had he sent me to this place? Had he known what they would do? I should have listened to Spitz.
I ran to the dirty clothes in the bathroom and felt around in the jeans pockets. My chest relaxed when I found the money Avi had given me. All I had to do was get the hell out of the building.
But I needed my drug soon. I would die on the train without it. I hurried back to my pack but knew I wouldn’t find the bottle of pills. It was gone. They were trying to trap me.
Thank god they had forgotten about the money. At least I had that. I put it in my pocket. London had said fielders had to stay in Harlem, so I had to escape the tower and figure out where that was by asking people on the street. After stuffing everything I had in my pack, I went to the door and turned the doorknob slowly. My boots were heavy, but the floor was carpeted. I tiptoed down the hall hardly making a sound.
In the big living room, Avi was sitting in an armchair with a laptop on his lap. He was facing my left, and the door was on the right, but there was no way I could sneak past. I stepped back into the hall and tried to think. The place was big. It had to have some kind of back door.
Stairs.
There had to be stairs somewhere.
I headed for to the opposite end of the hall where I could see more window. When I got to each door, I tried it, but two were locked, and another was a closet. My heart was pounding in my chest so hard it hurt. My limbs ached, and I hated everything about my entire day. When I got close to the window, I sucked in a breath. It was raining. Water was being whipped across the glass by the wind. I wouldn’t get far in the wet and cold.
Covering my face with my hands, I tried to breathe and move past what the pain and stress was doing to me. I had to think of something. Water dripped over my fingers and cooled in the air, and I didn’t want to think about what it was. I pretended to myself it was a leak in the ceiling.
“Wally?”
I spun around. Avi was at the other end of the hall, far from me, but still scary. He pretended to be fun and nice, but he was a dick. I didn’t want him anywhere near me.
“You stole my shit,” I said. “Give it the fuck back.”
He laughed, making me want to charge at him and smack that grin off his face.
“Come on, little man, don’t be so paranoid. I just plugged them in for you. They’re right in here.” He nodded his head towards the living room and turned his back on me, going out of sight.
The rain and wind howling at my back, I stood there wondering if he was telling the truth. Either way, I had to find out.
He was standing at the window, rocking on his heels, watching the storm. My phone and tablet were on a side table, plugged in like he’d said. I hurried over and picked up the phone, dialing Doc right away, but there was no ringing.
“Is there bad reception?” Avi asked.
I ignored him, unplugged the phone, and took it over by the window. There were no bars.
“Well, that’s no good,” he said, as if he were talking to a child. “Sometimes the tower goes down. Let’s go see if London is ready for you downstairs. You can use the land line from there. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Yeah, right. But what else was I supposed to do? I followed him to the elevator, and once we were inside, he didn’t try to entertain me with jokes. He stood against the wall, casually looking up at the lit numbers above the doors.
“Why did you take my fielders?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t want you to take them before we could get you in the EEG. Besides, we don’t want you taking those tonight. You can take the ones Atul sent with your delivery.”
“What?” I tensed. No more crazy batches. That was what Doc had told me. “No, I want the normal ones. I’m supposed to take what Doc gave me.”
“Well,” Avi said with a sigh, “that man doesn’t always know what he wants, but I think he sent you and that batch together for a reason.”
I stared at the side of his face. He wouldn’t look at me. That meant he was lying.
We were getting close to the fifty-second floor, and I tried to imagine what would happen if I refused to get off the elevator. I could insist on going to the ground floor, then go out and survive the rain the way I always had, and hope Harlem was less than a couple hours away. But no, that wasn’t what Spitz or Fiona would do. Going out there would be more dangerous than staying and doing what Avi wanted. Even if I called Doc and he wanted me to have a say, I wouldn’t have any choice as long as I was in Avi’s kingdom.
With that realization, the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors slid open. Avi walked out ahead of me, then turned, waiting for me to follow. The doors automatically tried to shut, but he swung out a hand and kept them open. He wasn’t trying to give me any shit anymore. His eyes were dead and threatening.
“Don’t make it harder than it needs to be,” he said.
His low voice made my stomach feel weak. Slowly, I pushed away from the wall and left the elevator.
There was nobody left on the floor. Half the lights had been turned off, and it was quiet. The only sounds were of his perfect leather shoes and my dirty boots on the white floor. My body was a mix of pain, weakness, and now nausea that went to my throat. I started shaking my head and backing up, about make a run for it, when a door opened ahead of us, and a cart came out of it, followed by London, who was pushing it.
“Give him a hand, will you?” Avi said.
I stepped ahead of him to take the cart with two big bins on it. London was pulling a thing on wheels with a computer, a bunch of wires, and a pole with what looked like some kind of light on it. I caught London’s eye, and his forehead creased, but we said nothing. We were all silent on the way back up to the loft. London led the way back to my room, and I pushed the cart back to where I started with a sense that I might never leave. Avi kept going down the hall and left me with London.
When he picked up a bin and dumped a bunch of leather straps and white ropes onto the bed, I knew immediately what they were for. I couldn’t be kicking around and falling. They would tie me up. London started attaching straps to ropes. Nightmare images of being held still when I should be dancing under the sky went through my mind and made me feel a little crazy.
“Oh, sweetie,” London said when he looked up from what he was doing. He came over to me with his arms out and took me gently by the shoulders. I was pulled over to a cushy chair in the corner. After I sat, he bent to one knee and looked me in the eye.
“Have you been crying?” he asked, pushing his long hair behind his ears.
I shook my head.
“Okay, look…” He took a deep breath and glanced behind him at Avi, who had come in with a small bag and some kind of thing with metal poles. “I don’t think this is fair either. Atul wouldn’t like it. He’s more ethical. I know that, and you know that. But right now, we’re in Avi’s world. Understand? This is one night for you. One night. You can do this. I will personally put you on that train in two days. That’s a promise.”
His eyes were worried, honest, and determined. I managed to give him a quick nod, even though I just wanted to scream.
“I don’t feel right. I need to dance,” I said. “And I want the normal stuff Doc gave me, not whatever was in that box.”
“I know you do, but Avi is in charge, not me. I’ll ask him.” He started to stand up, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“He already said no.”
London frowned, but said nothing for a moment.
“I’ll get you through this,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you for a second, Wally, not once we start. Even if it means I have to piss in a bottle.”
/> I didn’t know if that was supposed to get a smile out of me, but it didn’t, even if it was comforting.
“Let’s get it over with,” I mumbled.
He gave me a serious nod, and stood.
The poles were a stand that unfolded. Avi was putting a camera on top of it, aimed at me.
“You’re taking pictures of me? Why?”
“Video,” Avi said. “So that we can watch everything again and see if we find anything interesting.”
Staying in the chair, I let London get me ready. He put a cap on my head that covered my ears and cheeks. It was strapped under my chin and wires came off of every inch of it. After he had set it up with the computer, flashed a light in my eyes, and asked me to blow on a piece of paper to make it flutter, he said it was ready, but now he was sticking wires to my chest, this time keeping my shirt on. I was going to be half machine by the time he was done.
Avi came close with the straps and rope. Together, it took them forever to tie everything around the bottom and back of the chair, strapping my wrists and ankles. Avi jerked on them to test them, jostling me.
“How are we going to keep his head still?” London asked.
I wished Avi would get away from me. I closed my eyes, trying not to think about what they might do to keep my head from tilting back and trying to look at the sky.
“I’ll put a couple pillows behind his back so that he’ll have room to move his head,” Avi said. “It shouldn’t make any difference if he moves around a little. He’s ready.”
Avi motioned for London to follow him. Telling me to sit and relax, they left me alone for a few minutes. They were probably plotting things they didn’t want me to know about. I wanted to trust London, but he was too obedient.
I tested the straps on my arms and legs. They were thick and wide, soft on the inside, so I wasn’t worried it would hurt me if I tried to move a lot while I was tripping. They’d made it tight, but London had checked everything and loosened one on my ankle that felt like it might put my foot to sleep.
