by Steven James
Someone came hurrying out of Berringer Hall and jogged toward the gym, but it wasn’t Daniel, just another kid who was hustling to get to the first session.
So, okay. Even if Daniel had just accidentally slept in, he needed to get his butt over here.
Kyle didn’t like his next thought, but neither could he shake it: There’s no exit ramp on the road to insanity. Maybe he went off the cliff.
He did his best to put that idea out of his mind as he headed for the dorm to check his friend’s room.
Malcolm was on level B1 of the center getting things ready for the orientation when the call came through.
Even though he was underground, special routers allowed him to receive it. He thought it might be Sam, but surprisingly, Senator Amundsen’s name came up on the screen.
“Senator?”
“Petra was taken.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Friday night. It happened on Friday. I’ve tried to contact Sam but haven’t been able to. I finally decided I needed to call someone. I thought I’d reach out to you. They said no police, no FBI, but you’re a freelancer, right? So you’re—”
“No, it’s good that you did. What’s her condition? Do you know if she’s alright?”
“As far as I know, yes. Her kidnappers recorded a video with their demands. I’ll send it to you. We can talk again after you’ve seen it.”
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“So the police don’t know? You’re certain of that?”
“The people who took her told me they’d kill her if I contacted the authorities. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
“Alright, forward everything you have to me. I’ll take a look. And don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
Kyle knocked on Daniel’s door.
“Bro, it’s eight thirty.”
Silence.
“Dan?”
He tried the doorknob, found it unlocked. Swung the door open.
“You in here?”
With the lights off and the shades drawn, only a vague smudge of daylight made it into the room. The light from the hallway wasn’t enough for Kyle to tell if Daniel was there or not, so he felt the wall for the light switch.
Found it.
Flicked it on.
Daniel’s bed was neatly made. His basketball shoes waited beside it. A leather-bound journal sat on the desk next to his wallet.
But he was gone.
After verifying that he wasn’t in the closet or the bathroom, Kyle glanced around for Daniel’s phone, but didn’t see it.
Hoping for some sort of clue about what had happened, he opened Daniel’s journal and found that the last two entries were all about death and blood and the loss of hope. The handwriting became scratchy and almost indecipherable at the end, as if he’d lost his train of thought and descended into scribbled madness.
Kyle phoned Nicole. “You guys need to get over here.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Daniel. He’s gone.”
“What? Where?”
“I don’t know. I’m in his room right now, here at the dorm, but I can’t find him.”
Though the girls weren’t allowed in here, Kyle figured that most everyone was at the gym anyway and they should be alright. “I want you and Mia to come over, help see if we can figure out where he might be.”
“We’ll be right there.”
After hanging up, Kyle searched the room more carefully and finally located Daniel’s phone under his bed.
The texts from this morning were there, along with a couple from Nicole last night telling Daniel goodnight. All of them were marked as unread.
The last one that’d been opened was from about half an hour after they’d dropped Daniel off here. It simply read: Answer this call, Daniel.
Kyle checked the recent calls.
It didn’t appear that anyone had contacted his friend after that.
The last outgoing call was to Daniel’s mom when he’d phoned her after they arrived at Sue Ellen’s house.
While Kyle waited for the girls, he carefully examined Daniel’s email and social media posts for any hint about where he might be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dr. Adrian Waxford walked out the back door of the Estoria Inn toward the forest.
Half a dozen cars of the workers currently at the facility sat in the shaded parking area nearby.
He hiked past them toward the maintenance building, and then continued to his favorite overlook near the perimeter fence that ran along the edge of the property.
From there, he could see through the trees and make out the next mountain over, the one that lay just beyond Little Bear Creek—which, with the recent rains they’d been having, wasn’t really so little or even much of a creek right now. More of a river at flood stage.
He glanced back at the Estoria.
Stout poison ivy vines and unrelenting kudzu climbed nearly the entire eastern wall of the hotel, giving the old place an aura of mystery.
They’d renovated the building’s interior but left the outside untouched.
The tales about this place being haunted might have attracted some curiosity seekers in the past, but even those stories had mostly faded from the collective consciousness of the area over the last two decades.
People said that a murder had occurred in room 113.
Adrian didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but it was one of the reasons he’d chosen that room for the killer from Wisconsin. It just seemed fitting that a murderer of children should be in the most lurid room in the hotel.
Staring out across the valley again, Adrian tapped the screen of his satellite phone to put the video call through.
A few seconds later, the face of General Vanessa Gibbons appeared.
“I had a message to return your call,” Adrian said.
“I’m coming down there,” she replied in her clipped, efficient, military-esque manner. “I want you to show me around the facility.”
“I can send you my latest reports. They should be enough to—”
“Adrian, our oversight committee has invested a substantial number of taxpayer dollars into this project and we’ve given you carte blanche to do as you see fit. However, this week I need to report back to them and they’re going to be asking me some very direct, very probing questions about your progress, especially regarding this new drug you’ve been telling us about. Additionally, as I told you last month, one of the senators has been snooping around where he doesn’t belong, and that concerns us—especially this close to our next budget meeting.”
“Don’t worry about the senator. I have a feeling that’ll all blow over.”
“We can’t make policy decisions based on feelings. We need facts.”
“I’ve made some significant strides recently. In fact, I have a new subject that we’ll be able to track from start to finish. I’m almost ready to try out the Telpatine on him. Just give me a few more weeks to—”
“That’s not soon enough. The committee members are pressuring me for answers now. The only way I can feel confident fielding their questions is if I verify things in person. How far are you from the Knoxville airport?”
“It’ll depend on traffic, but plan on at least a ninety-minute drive.”
“I’ll contact you with the details concerning my arrival after I confirm my flight.”
“Do you need someone to pick you up?”
“I’ll rent a car.”
“Alright, I’ll make sure the main gate is open for you. I look forward to—”
But she hung up before he could finish.
So, then.
Admittedly, this put a bit of a wrinkle in his plan.
There were aspects of his research that he had not included in his reports, aspects that would be best kept confidential.
However, things could still move forward, especially if Henrik was able to deliver Zacharias before the general’s a
rrival.
The renovations on the fourth floor weren’t complete, so General Gibbons would have no need to tour that level. They could keep Zacharias up there until tonight’s nine o’clock deadline.
Adrian pocketed his phone, returned to the Estoria, and told his assistants to prepare one of the rooms on the fourth floor.
Then, he went to finish the dosage calculations for the first human trial of Telpatine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
9:00 A.M.
12 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE
The girls texted Kyle that they were at the dorm and he slipped outside to let them in.
Back in the room, he showed them Daniel’s phone. “The last text he opened said for him to answer a call, but there’s no record that anyone contacted him after that. It’s like he just vanished after he read that text.”
“Yeah, vanished without his phone.” Nicole pointed to the desk. “Or his wallet.”
“And look at this.” Kyle pointed out the unfocused, disjointed writing in Daniel’s journal.
“He did some weird journaling like that last winter too, remember? And now he’s having his blurs again. This is not good.”
Footsteps in the hall caught their attention. Kyle opened the door slightly, peered out, and then ducked his head back in.
“Quick—hide.”
“Who is it?” Mia asked.
“The guy who checked Daniel in last night, the residence hall director. He might have seen you two come in.”
Mia scrambled under the bed and Nicole disappeared into the closet.
Kyle snapped off the lights, dove under the covers, and drew them up to his chin just as the door opened.
When the lights clicked on, he groaned and rolled to his side. “Hey!”
The director consulted a clipboard. “Daniel Byers?”
“Yeah.”
“Buddy, you’re late. They started practice over in the field house half an hour ago.”
“What?” Kyle pretended to be shocked. “What are you doing here?”
“Room inspection.”
Kyle groaned again but did not climb out of bed. “A little privacy?”
The guy backed into the hallway again, shutting the door behind him.
Kyle waited a few moments, then stood and told the girls, “Okay. The coast is clear.”
Mia emerged from under the bed.
Nicole stepped out of the closet. “We need to tell someone he’s missing.”
“Who?” Kyle asked. “If we call his parents, they’ll just worry about him and there’s nothing they can really do about it from Wisconsin anyway.”
“The cops? Or campus security, maybe?”
But Mia shook her head. “We don’t even know that he didn’t just go for a walk or something and then lost track of time.”
“I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Alright,” Kyle said. “But before contacting campus security, let’s have a look around, check the student center, the cafeteria, see if we can track him down. Maybe I just missed him earlier and he made it into the field house.”
“His basketball shoes are still here,” Nicole pointed out.
“Well, I should check just to be sure.”
“Alright, then I’ll get the cafeteria.”
Mia was staring out the window at the broad, sweeping campus. “I guess that leaves me with the student center. Let’s meet back as soon as we can at that fountain over by the library.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Last night is fuzzy.
It’s as if my memory is wandering through a thick fog and every once in a while something solid, something tangible appears, but then the mist covers it again and it’s gone.
I remember returning to the dorm and sorting through the pictures from my mom.
Grandpa as a child.
Christmas photos of the family.
A picture from when I was five, just before he died.
Then there’s the flicker of a memory about a phone call.
And then something about an SUV and—
Oh, yes
The driver.
Malcolm Zacharias.
Yes.
He texted you. He called you. He’s the one who brought you here.
I sit up in bed and look around.
Nope. Definitely not in Berringer Hall anymore.
It might be a hotel room, but it’s pretty Spartan. No wall hangings. No windows.
No TV.
No phone.
When I get out of bed, I see that I’m still wearing the clothes I had on last night when I returned to the dorm after leaving Sue Ellen’s place.
Other than my shoulder sling, which is lying on the dresser near the door, I don’t see anything else that belongs to me.
My shoulder is aching, so I gently ease my arm into the sling.
I wish I had some of the pain meds, but I don’t see them anywhere. When I check in the dresser, I come up empty on the medication but find that the drawers are stocked with clothes that all look my size.
Weird.
And a little creepy.
Curiously, there’s a mini fridge in the corner, and when I open it, I discover that it’s filled only with bottled water and green apples.
It makes me think of forbidden fruit and fairy tales with choices that have deadly consequences, and I decide that, even though I’m hungry, I’ll pass on the apples.
And the water too. Just to be safe.
I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep or what time it is.
There’s no closet, just that door beside the dresser.
I try the knob.
It’s unlocked.
An empty, cream-colored hallway stretches out in both directions. There aren’t any windows, but the series of recessed fluorescent lights beside the ceiling offers a soft, ethereal glow.
As I walk forward it’s almost like I’m entering a dream.
Maybe you are.
Maybe this is all just a blur.
If it is, it would be my most elaborate one yet.
But I can’t dismiss that possibility.
It’s too bad that I don’t have a phone with me so I could record things and see if they’re real.
However, blur or not, I need to figure out what all this is about.
A low, steady hum comes from the lights, but other than that, the hallway is quiet. I don’t see any vents, but the air conditioning is cranked up almost high enough to make me shiver.
A security camera stares down at me from across the hall.
As I go left, it swivels, following my movement.
Maybe it’s wired to a motion sensor—but it’s also possible that someone is on the other end, manually controlling it, watching me.
The floor is tiled with geometric shapes that appear random, but when I study them more closely, I realize that there are ten different ones, and that each represents a number from zero to nine.
There are also other symbols that obviously correspond to mathematical operations. Together, their arrangement on the floor forms elaborate equations.
Whoever designed this place had to be a math genius—although, why anyone would put so much work into a floor’s layout is beyond me.
I walk to another door, about forty feet away.
A camera identical to the one outside the room I came from picks me up as I approach it and tracks me as I try twisting the doorknob.
Locked.
Although for a couple seconds I’m tempted to call out to see if anyone’s in there, honestly, I’m glad for the chance to have a look around before whoever’s monitoring me through those cameras comes to find me.
For the next ten minutes or so, I explore the maze of hallways, mentally mapping them out, using the geometric shapes and the equations they represent to get my bearings so that, even though the intersecting hallways are confusing, I’m able to keep myself oriented.
Finally, I meet up with a T that I haven’t come to before.
I’m debating wh
ich way to go when I hear a door bang shut somewhere out of sight around the bend on the left.
Sharp-sounding footsteps approach me.
I figure I’ll get more answers talking to whoever this is than I will wandering around these halls.
However, I have no idea if the person will be happy to see me or not, so I brace myself for a possible fight, tightening my one good hand into a fist.
The stride is quick and firm.
Coming closer.
I wait, becoming more tense—but also more directed and focused—with every passing second.
At last, a man comes into view and stops when he sees me.
Malcolm Zacharias.
Though last night is still hazy, he looks just like I remember him from when we met in December: mid-thirties; straight dark hair; a piercing, intelligent gaze.
He’s wearing blue jeans and a black turtleneck.
A scar he didn’t have in the winter trails across his cheek.
“Daniel.”
“What’s going on here, Mr. Zacharias? What do you want from me?”
“It’s time for you to meet the others—and we’re going to be working pretty closely together. How about we just go by first names from here on out. You can call me Malcolm.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“I know you must have a lot of questions,” he tells me as he leads me down the hall.
“Why don’t I remember last night?”
“I gave you a slight hypnotic.”
“You drugged me?”
“I took certain steps to ensure plausible deniability for you.”
“Plausible denia—what is this about?”
“Trust me, we’re going to get you the answers you’re looking for.”
“Where’s my phone?”
“I returned it to your dorm room for you.”
A single elevator lies before us, the silver doors standing in stark contrast to the blank, monotonous walls surrounding them.
I study the patterns on the floor, visualize them mathematically, and commit this location to memory so I can find it again if I need to. “What is this place?”
“A training center. I’d show you around more, but time is of the essence.”
We arrive at the elevator and he presses the “Down” button.
