The Mind Hunter

by Mir Quadri

  ‘This hospital building is very well secured’ thought Will.

  As Will finished inspecting the building and the surroundings, he rode off to the nearest Costco retail store. At the store, he bought fifty feet rope, some duct tape, a harness, a high end powerful magnet bar, electromagnetic meter, gloves, metallic rope hooks, a digital wristwatch and a bag pack. He put on the wrist watch onto his left hand and gently placed all the other stuff in the bag pack and rode straight to the hotel opposite to the hospital.

  Will parked his bike and walked into the lobby. This was a big hotel and seemed quite busy. There was a young, petite brunette at the reception. Behind her was a big banner of this hotel, Whilshire hotel.

  “Welcome to Whilshire. How can I help you?” she asked with a big, fake smile on her face.

  “Hey, I would like to get a room for the night, please?” said Will.

  “Sure thing. Do you have a reservation with us?” she asked.

  “Nope. But I am hopeful you can fit me in?” asked Will.

  “Well, let me see what we have available…” said the receptionist while looking at her computer. While she was looking through her computer, Will looked around and noticed a visiting card stand with a bunch of visiting cards in the stand. He read the phone number listed on the card. He then turned his wrist watch off from his right hand and gently placed his left hand on the kiosk. He then took out his mobile phone from his right pocket, and with his right hand still behind the kiosk block and invisible to the receptionist, dialed the hotel’s number. The phone at the reception rang.

  “Sorry, just a minute please” said the receptionist who was helping Will and turned to her left and answered the call.

  “Wilshire hotel, how may I help you?”

  Just then, Will slid his left hand further at the kiosk and flipped it over. The digital watch, which was turned off, was now being used as a mirror and Will could see the floor plan laid out on the receptionist’s screen. He looked at the layout and identified the room he wanted to be in.

  “Hello!” said the receptionist on the phone and then hung up the phone as Will pulled his left hand back.

  “Sorry about that” she said with a smile, looking at Will.

  “No problem. I was thinking if I could get room 403 on fourth floor if possible. You know, I stayed in that room before and I liked the view very much” said Will.

  The lady kept looking through the screen.

  “Ah.. Okay. You know what, that room is available. Can I see some ID?”

  Will handed over his ID. The receptionist after running some number on the screen, handed over the keys.

  “Here you go, Mr Lynchi. Welcome to Wilshire again and have a pleasant stay”

  “Thank you” said Will as he took the keys and went straight up to the elevator. He got down on the fourth floor and went to room 403. He entered the room and locked the door behind him. He took out the rope from his bag pack and tied it to the metallic hook. He then tied the bag from the other end of the rope. He took out the magnet bar and electromagnetic meter and put these on both side pockets of his jacket. He then took the rope, along with the tied bag to the huge window and opened the window. This room was located right opposite to the posterior side of the hospital. It was overlooking the common street between the two buildings — the hospital and the hotel. Will slowly started letting the rope lose outside the window to an extent that it was just about ten feet over the street. He then walked out of his room, onto the parking lot and to his bike.

  He went straight to the North end of the hospital building which was adjacent to the public park. As he rode inside the park, he saw a young couple, possibly on a date, sitting on a bench, sipping their coffee. Will went past through them, just as he turned around and looked at them. ‘This is it’ he said to himself when he raced his bike as he came close to them. At full speed, he just banged into the tree beside this bench when the girl on the bench screamed anxiously.

  After a while, Will opened his eyes and found himself fighting the bright yellow colored light wave penetrating inside his pupils.

  “Hello sir, can you hear me?” asked the lady doctor.

  “Where am I?” asked Will as he opened his eyes wide.

  “You’re at the City Center hospital, sir. You had an accident. Can you please look at me. Can you hear me well?” she asked as she tried to look into his eyes through the amplified beam of light.

  “Yes”

  “Good. I think you have a concussion but you will be fine. You may feel dizzy for a bit, but everything else looks normal. We will keep you here for the night and let you go tomorrow morning. Just rest up” said the doctor and left the room.

  Will, who was lying down on the hospital bed, looked around through his eyes. After a brief moment, he smiled.

  He got up and found himself to be in the hospital robe. He looked around for his clothes and found them shoved in a corner of a medicinal stand. This was in a general ward and there were hundreds of patients lined up beside one another with just curtains in between them. He quickly changed back into his own clothes - white shirt, blue jeans and black jacket. He then checked to see what he wanted to get in, was still there — the magnet bar. Yes, there it was, clanged into the jacket.

  He swiftly moved out of the room and into the corridor. Slowly walking in the corridor, he kept looking at the walls when he spotted the building evacuation layout. He glanced through the layout and located the room 209, which was on the second floor. He also located the storage room, which was eleventh room towards the east of the first floor where he was standing.

  He then went back to his room and looked up at the ceiling — there was an air conditioning vent right over his bed. He moved the medicinal stand closer to his bed, stood up on the bed and stepped onto the medicinal stand to get to the vent. Slowly pushing the vent cap inside he moved the cap over and pulled himself up, into the vent.

  He then crawled through the vent passing many rooms at the bottom, counting each room as he passed. He was counting to the eleventh room, which was the storage facility. At the eleventh vent, he slowly opened the cap and saw a doctor collecting some medicines. This was indeed the medical storage room. He waited for the doctor to exit the room as he peeked through the slightly lifted vent cap. As soon as the doctor walked out of the room, Will opened the vent and slowly jumped into the room through the roof.

  In the storage room, he looked through the medicines in the medicines rack and located a mild tranquilizer. He picked up three syringes and filled them with this tranquilizer. He then picked up a doctor’s coat, gloves and surgical mask from the storage cabinets.

  The storage room was highly secured. The door needed an access to enter or leave the room. There was a desk adjacent to the entrance door with a computer on it. This is where all the doctors logged all the medicinal information they took out of the storage. Will looked through the computer and located the doctors schedule roster. He opened it and saw all the schedules for nurses and doctors and the different patients that they were assigned to. He searched for Ms White and looked through her schedule. The nurse who was assigned to Ms White had just ended her shift and the next shift started at only 2 AM. Will looked at his watch which showed him 12:30 AM.

  ‘The graveyard shift nurse won’t check into Ms White before 2 AM. So I have one and half hours’ thought Will. When he got everything he needed, he quietly moved behind the cabinet that was adjacent to the other side of the entrance door and waited.

  Soon enough, another nurse walked into the door, took some medicines and logged it in the computer. Just as she walked out, before the door could close, Will put a piece of paper between the door and the electronic door lock — this way the door still remained unlocked after the nurse had left. Will then wore the doctor’s coat, put on the gloves and surgical mask and walked out of the room pretending to be a doctor. As he walked through the corridor of the first floor towards the elevator, all the nurses passing by started wishing him. One blonde nurse who
went by said “good evening doctor.”

  “Good evening” replied Will as he walked into the elevator and went to the third floor. He went to room 309, which was right above the room 209, on the third floor. These rooms were bigger, unlike the one’s on the first floor which were considered to be general wards. There was an old man lying on the bed, sleeping soundly. Will injected one tranquilizer injection into the old man’s neck, which put him into further sound sleep. He moved his bed away from the window towards the other side of the room. He then opened the window panes and realized he was right — this room was right opposite to the hotel room which he had checked into sometime ago. He spotted the rope hanging from his hotel room window and also looked through all the cars passing on the road as this was the City Center. The installed cameras on this side of the building were placed in the middle of the building, which was just above the first floor — the cameras were just below the outside window of room 209.

  Will moved back towards the door and slowly took the magnet out of his jacket and plugged it into an electric socket. He took out the electric meter from his pocket and slightly increased the power. As soon as he did that, the metallic, magnetic hook of the hanging rope started moving. The plan was to attract the hook by the magnet, however, with all the moving vehicles on this busy street, it would have been impossible to not hit any car with the hook, while the hook is moving towards the hospital window. So Will waited. He knew that there was a signal just five hundred yards from the building and all the vehicles would come to a stand still for a while. Since this was a busy street, that signal was red only for ten seconds — there was a period of vacuum for five seconds when there were no cars on the streets. Will waited for that window. This window came in every five minutes. Will looked at his watch and the time was 1:25 AM.

  ‘I am losing time, need to hurry’ thought Will. He turned on his stop watch and as soon as the watch hit five minutes, he knew that the vehicles would stop at the signal.

  Will patiently waited for his window of opportunity. The watch slowly moved to four minutes, then 4:10….4:30…4:45, Will started breathing heavily, holding the electric meter from the left hand and the meter nob from the right thumb and index finger as his heart started to race.

  As soon as the watch hit 5:00, Will turned the nob to the extreme other end. Because of the magnetic power, the hospital lights started fluctuating, and so did the cameras. At the same time, the metallic hook came flying onto the hospital room, carrying with it the bag that was tied to this rope, from the hotel room. As planned, the bag landed just above the cameras, hence not showing up in any security footage. Will immediately pulled the rope and the bag inside and turned off the magnetic field. The lights stopped fluctuating and cars started coming from the signal. All this happened in a split second.

  Will, who was panting at this point, just kneeled to the wall and slipped down on the floor.

  ‘This was so close!’ he thought. But he knew that the job wasn’t over. He looked at his watch and it showed 1:35 AM.

  “Damn” he said as he quickly removed all the stuff from the bag pack. He wore a harness around his body, tied the rope to the round pillar in the room and the other side of the harness. He then went closer to the window. The wind blew through his hair as he started sweating, the cold sweat, ran through his body. Because he was going to jump out of the window of this floor, into the window of room 209, located about ten feet under.

  With him facing the room 309 window, he slowly moved out of the window, hanging from the rope and the harness and slowly moved down by pulling his body down the rope. As he went down, he came to room 209 and pushed the window from outside. With his feet almost touching the installed cameras facing the street, he somehow managed to get in without his feet touching those cameras. The time was 1:58 AM. He quickly took out the rope and tugged the corner of the rope between the window pane — so it hung. The time was 1:59 AM. He realized that there was no time to hide and just moved to the side of the door. He took the second syringe and waited patiently.

  At around 2:02 AM, the nurse came through the corridor. The two cops were sitting outside the room, reading a magazine.

  “How are you gentlemen doing?” she asked.

  “We are good doctor. Just getting bored” replied one of the agents.

  “Well, this is my last round and then I am off. I just need to give her an injection” said the nurse.

  “You can go right ahead” said the agent.

  The nurse smiled and walked into the door. As soon as the nurse walked in, Will injected the nurse in her neck from behind with the injection. Almost instantly, the nurse became unconscious. Will took out the third syringe and injected Ms White, who was already asleep. He quickly replaced her body with the nurse’s body on the bed. He covered the nurse body fully, from head to toe, and covered her face with the respiratory mask, so people would think she was Ms White. He also tied Ms White’s hands, feet and duct taped her mouth while shoving her in one corner along with his harness.

  Will then walked out of the door, pretending to be the nurse who had walked in. He did not make any eye contact and started walking away from the room. On watching the nurse go one of the agents shouted from behind “you look in a lot of hurry to get off work dear, have a good night!”

  Will, without turning back, just waved his right hand, still panting heavily. He walked as fast as he could, as at this moment, the nurse was injected and lying in the bed, while Ms White was shoved in a corner. Will went straight to the elevator and to the third floor. As soon as the elevator door opened, he went to the rolling bed storage room, and pulled an empty rolling bed into room 309.

  He shut the door from inside, and then through the already hanging rope, went into room 209, just like he had done before, this time tying the rope around his body instead of the harness. Once he got into the room, he wore the harness around Ms White and tied her with him to the same rope, like embracing her. He then pulled out of the window and started climbing up the rope by pulling himself up. As Ms White was around his neck, the overall weight on the harness was twice the weight it was before, making it very hard for Will to pull himself up as he hung outside of the building in this windy night. As Will, with great difficulty, slowly started moving up, he felt a slight jerk in the building, like he was in a seesaw.

  “Are you kidding me!” gasped Will, while hanging by the rope, almost four hundred fifty feet from the ground, as he realized this was an earthquake. The building started jerking ferociously as people started screaming on the ground below. A couple of cars bumped into each other causing a major fire on the street as people started rushing outside the building — more eye balls on the street.

  “This is not happening” said Will as he tried to pull up faster. As the building continued to shake, Will, along with Ms White, flew in the air, to and for the building, like a pendulum, hitting the back of his head every time the pendulum retuned to the building. Amidst such jerky movements, the harness attaching both Will and Ms White, broke as Ms White slid through Will’s hands.

  “Damn it” screamed Will as he tried to get Ms White while she slipped off his hands…almost, until he grabbed her by her right hand alone. Ms White right now was just hanging in the air, with Will trying his best to hold on to her through the only part connecting him and her — their right hands.

  As the intensity of the quake increased, Will realized that Ms White was further slipping off his hands. Will quickly removed the shoe from his right feet by rubbing the shoes from the left as the shoe fell on the ground. He then put his feet in the middle of the harness just as she slipped from his hands — now, Ms White was hanging in the air and the only thing keeping her from smashing herself down to death was Will’s stuck left foot into her harness, while Will was hanging from the rope, just trying hard to keep his foot in that harness!

  After a couple of minutes, the quake slowly stopped when Will moved his feet up and got hold of the harness from his right hand and slowly pulled himsel
f up with Ms White into the room 309.

  Just as Will got into the room, he realized that he was shivering with anxiety and his lungs seemed that they could never get enough air. He got himself in control and put Ms White onto the rolling bed. He put everything into the room as it was suppose to be, put all the stuff in the bag pack and hid the bag pack within the sheet of the rolling bed. Now, dressed again as a doctor, he rolled Ms White out of the room. As he passed through the hospital corridor, he saw people running around in chaos, still recovering from the quake. He rolled the bed straight into the elevator and took the elevator to the garage. The garage had hundreds of ambulance vehicles parked. Will put Ms white in one of the vehicles hiding her underneath the couch where the doctors sit. He marked the vehicle with a stone so he could identify which vehicle he placed her into. As for him, he got into another ambulance vehicle and hid behind the driver’s seat.

  Will then took out his phone and called Sarah.

  ‘Hey. Thanks for calling. I am unable to answer your call. Please leave me your name and number. If you don’t piss me off, chances are that I may return your call. No guarantees’ said her recorded voicemail greeting.

  “Hey, Sarah, This is Will. Listen, I just wanted to thank you again for meeting me last night. I know that you were not obligated to do anything for me but you still tried to help me. This has been an extremely tough week. I feel like I am at a stage where I am falling down every morning and getting stuck into the beams of this prison called life. Seems to me that no one can reach me now and until this prison comes tumbling down, I can’t be cleansed. You know, this Friday is my birthday, and I had never planned to spend it running like this. Anyways, I really appreciate what you did for me and I just wanted to thank you again. I owe you one” said Will and hung up the call. After a brief moment, Will smiled as his plan had worked perfectly well. He knew that this would trigger Harry and everyone to storm into the hospital and eventually, help him get out.