by Farley Dunn
They also visited the Stamford Suites Grill, just for hotel guests, and were introduced to Ted Charles, the restaurant manager, smartly suited in formal black with a red tie. He boasted a wide smile, but one eye seemed to develop a tic when Gunther asked him how his day was going and whether he’d had many guests in for lunch.
They stopped by Kang Song’s office, but Bom So-hye, Song’s secretary, her hair a whirl of pink cotton candy, said she regretted that Miss Kang was out for the afternoon, but she would be glad to let her know they had stopped by on their tour.
Once more in the elevator, Marisa specifically asked about Nelson Tutu, telling Gunther that Ms. Sunchaser had mentioned that he kept up with the Tower’s itinerant workers.
Gunther smiled at the question. “I believe you mean temporary workers. Yes, that is in Mr. Tutu’s job description. Workers at the tower are only considered temporary until they have completed their training and probationary hours. Normally that would be about six weeks. It is unusual for anyone to remain under Mr. Tutu’s umbrella of influence after that. I’m sure he would be glad to schedule you in a visit, but it will need to be another day. Would you like me to set that up once you three are on your own? I can approve your visit with Ms. Sunchaser once she has concluded her business with Mr. Rodheimer.”
“Can I think about it?” Her eyes said that six weeks wasn’t very long against the two years her sister had been missing.
“Of course. We’ve reached the pool.” The elevator doors opened, Gunther removed his passkey, and they stepped into a marbled foyer that sparkled with reflected light from the pool just through the glass doors ahead of them. To their left, a twenties-something man in a polo and shorts with canvas shoes in the ever-present Corona colors sat on a tall, modern stool at a glass reception desk. His tight hair was cut in a row-like pattern to imitate harshly braided hair. “Ah, Kofi. I’ll leave our guests with you.”
“Certainly, Mr. Diehl.” The man stood respectfully and waited for further instructions.
“Let me introduce you to Kofi Mandela, the best pool boy in the Tower.”
“The only one,” Kofi inserted with a grin.
“And therefore, the best.” Gunther and Kofi seemed to enjoy one another’s banter. “Kofi has your suits and a towel for each of you. Enjoy the pool as long as you like. Feel free to explore afterwards using your passkeys. You can drop them off with Charity at the reception desk as you leave. Are there any questions?”
“You mentioned a map?” Garik heard his voice turn the sentence into a question, a silly boy thing.
“Kofi, you have the maps for our visitors?” Gunther was all warmth and friendliness.
“As you requested, Mr. Diehl. With their suits.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then. I have enjoyed our tour. If you should decide later to apply for a position, mention my name, and I’ll be happy to expedite your application.”
Gunther returned to his elevator, and Kofi had three sets of kit waiting in the changing rooms. It was only minutes before they were in the pool, with Garik so excited that he broke the smooth water into a million fractured bits with the biggest cannonball he could manage.
BACK IN the elevator, with Kevin’s hair as neat as always and Marisa’s mostly dry, Garik looked up to see his reflection in the smoked overhead mirror. His tight bun was long gone. The pool had turned his hair into a brown torrent of a waterfall bursting from his scalp in a wild twist of curls. Kevin had his map in his hands.
“There’s a lot of this I’ve never seen. The inhouse laundry.” He looked up and laughed. “Who would want to see that?”
“Someone with dirty clothes?” Garik felt in his pocket and produced his passkey. He stepped toward the elevator panel. “Which floor?”
“Let me try mine.” Marisa smiled innocently.
“Okay,” Garik agreed, and he held out his hand. “I’ll insert it.”
“I think I have to. Sorry, Gari.” Marisa placed her thumb on the screen, pushed the passkey into the slot, and the entire access panel lit up.
“That’s not, um, right.” The light on Kevin’s face changed as the door silently swished shut and caught him at an angle that revealed his astonishment. He looked at his key and back to the panel.
“I guess I got lucky.” Marisa’s eyes were wide with innocence. “I don’t think I need to see anything else. You two, you can stay, but I think I’ll head back to the flower shop. Father is probably overwhelmed with orders today.”
“Kevin, I’ve also seen enough. Thank you for getting us in past the guards.” Garik grinned. His mind was full of Corona Tower. He had learned it was just a place. Fancy for the richies, sure, but nothing especially mysterious, and everyone he had met had been especially friendly. That he hadn’t expected.
“I’m just glad I was able to get you guys inside.” Kevin grinned. “Do you want to do it again sometime?’
“Apply for another job? No.” Marisa had already tapped the lobby icon, and the panel by the door now showed a green L. The elevator door dinged and opened.
“I mean the pool and seeing all the stuff. We didn’t even make it to the gym. They have every kind of workout equipment.” He punched Garik on the shoulder. “You would love it.”
“It has been fun, but I don’t really belong here.” Looking out into the atrium past Gunther’s vacant desk, he was reminded of the difference between his life and the one the patrons of this hotel lived.
“As long as you leave it cleaner than when you came, these people are all right.” They moved toward the lobby. Charity was helping a mother with two small children. Choi Bak was loading their luggage onto a cart. He smiled and pretended to tweak one of the children’s ears, and the mother laughed. The father was exiting the elevator with a roll-on case and two garment bags, and he seemed to be struggling getting through the door. “Anyway, think about it.”
“I have.” Marisa had a fresh look of determination on her face. “I’m sorry, Kevin. You, especially, Garik. I hope I don’t get either of you in trouble.”
“Trouble?” Garik’s heart pounded. He knew Marisa. “What are you—”
She didn’t wait. She walked rapidly toward the open elevator as if to help the gentleman, and then she stepped inside.
“Your passkey,” Kevin called.
She held it up, smiled, and reached for the control panel. Garik burst into a sprint, falling through the door just before it closed.
“What are you doing, Garik?” Marisa slapped him on the shoulder before helping him to stand.
“Your sister.” He grinned and rubbed his hip. He had hit the floor hard. His shoulder? Marisa could hit him anytime. “You forget I’m your best friend. If you’re looking for her, I’m going, too.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble, and this might get us in deep, like, bad trouble.” Her eyes were moist, and she pointed. “Look.”
“What?” He glanced to the elevator’s control panel, and his eyes went wide. It didn’t show just the food court and the lobby. There were forty floors and five basement levels. A green light was blinking, and a neutral voice intoned, “Palm scanner access granted two hours forty-six minutes ago. New access approval required in fourteen minutes.”
“See what I mean?”
“It’s okay. Gunther said our passkeys wouldn’t take us anywhere we aren’t supposed to go. It just means our visit is about up.” He shrugged.
“It’s not mine. It’s Ms. Sunchaser’s. I switched them.”
“Oh, Marisa.” Garik felt his stomach turn over. He tried to come up with a quick solution. “We can turn it in and pretend we didn’t know.”
“No! I’m finding Marina!” She reached past him and hit the Basement 5 icon, and the elevator floor fell from beneath them.
GARIK FULLY expected a SWAT team to be surrounding the elevator door when it opened. Boris Lindemann was endowed with prescience. And Garik and Marisa were about to be locked up and hauled away to the Bay City Police Department for breaking and entering, or
at least entering the part of the building that was OFF LIMITS TO THEM.
Arik would never let him live this down.
His initial apprehension evaporated into nothing. The doors opened, and cool, impersonal light flooded the elevator. There was no one waiting on them. Not a gun, no SWAT officers, not even Gunther Diehl with a kindly, “I believe you’ve taken a wrong turn. This way, please. Let me show you to the exit.”
Instead, there were vast corridors filled with cages with concrete walls and stainless bars or glass fronts. Light rippling across the floor in front of many of them suggested water. Marisa stepped forward first, looking back at Garik, then took his hand and pulled him into the vast space. The ceilings were twenty feet away, and catwalks above their heads doubled the space.
“Gari, these cages are filled with animals.” Marisa touched the front of one. The creature inside mewled at her, reaching out a foot that was more palm than paw. She moved to the next, then the next. “What is going on? Look at these. They are all deformed.”
Garik saw the deformities, but he saw more. Many of them were easily identifiable as cats, dogs, bats, even underwater creatures, such as jellyfish and squid. Others wore expressions he had seen before, in his mirror on a bad morning, when Arik was disgusted with him, or in the moments when Irina despaired of Arik’s shenanigans and reached the point of giving up. Many crawled, swam, or clung to the fronts of their cages, reaching out to them as they walked by.
He didn’t want to be here, to see this, to be part of this. It couldn’t be real, not in Bay City, not under the feet of the people who were living out such ordinary lives right over their heads.
They were several turns in when a voice yelled, “Hey, you!” They turned to see a technician in a white coat pushing a cart loaded with food buckets. He shoved the cart aside roughly, and one bucket crashed to the floor, sending food everywhere, initiating a discordant ruckus from the nearby cages. He tapped his watch with one finger, talking into it as he walked quickly their direction.
“Run,” Marisa hissed.
“Not without you.” Garik grabbed her hand, and together they ducked around the end of an aisle, darted past three rows of stainless-fronted cages, and knelt, facing each other and breathing hard. “What now?”
Marisa held out the passkey. She grinned. “Back to the lobby?”
Garik didn’t get to answer. An alarm sounded, setting the rest of the cages to howling, yelling, splashing, or whatever each occupant did. Pounding feet echoed, felt more than heard over the ear-splitting commotion.
“Go,” he mouthed to her. She took off, and he turned, prepared to follow, when something hit him. As if in slow motion, he became the villain in a Batman comic, caught by the arms of a BolaWrap, and he tumbled to the floor. At first, he pictured himself getting up and hopping after Marisa. She would help him remove the lines from around his feet, and they could exit the elevator as if nothing had happened, leave Corona Tower and be free.
Then, his head hit the concrete floor a second time, and he fell into the depths of a blackness he was certain would never end.
― 12 ―
GARIK’S EYES opened to a world of white with a bright light in the center. It was too bright for his eyes to focus on.
“It’s true,” he thought he whispered. He didn’t hear his voice, and that was odd. The white light was odder.
“No,” he moaned. He was dead, and Heaven was a real place. And Marisa wasn’t here to share it with him.
Marisa! He remembered the alarm sounding, telling her to run, and then . . . and then what?
He blinked, and the white light coalesced into an overhead fixture. A simple bulb in a simple glass fixture. It even had a metal band surrounding the glass where it attached to the ceiling. Listening closely, he heard the light buzz slightly, as though the ballast in the fixture was well used, and it would soon need replaced.
Like today, Garik thought. I need a do-over.
He tried to stand and couldn’t. Not even lift an arm. He looked to his side, then his feet, tugged harder, and realized he was strapped to a . . . hospital bed? Around him he saw white, unadorned walls, and a door with a small wire-reinforced glass window and a silver lever for a handle.
“Anybody?” This time he knew his voice worked. He called louder, “Hey, I’m in here. Where are you?”
“One moment, Mr. Shayk. Be patient.”
The voice came from nowhere. Garik looked around, hoping to see someone through the reinforced window in the door, but without luck. He noticed a white grille in the wall beside the door, with a small, gray button. A speaker. Surely a microphone, too, and he bet there was a camera somewhere in there.
Metal sounded against metal, the sound reminding him of a deadbolt thumping back into its housing. The door lever twisted, and the door opened a fraction, nearly closed again, then pushed wider. He heard someone say, “I’ve got this one. He’s fully strapped down. I’m not worried.” Then the door swung wide, and a medium-size woman walked in, neither old nor young, with neutral brown hair and little makeup.
“Where am I?” Garik watched her reach behind his head. He tried to see but couldn’t bend his neck that far back.
“Where you wanted to be, Mr. Shayk, and we’re so glad to have you join us.” She stepped back and smiled, and her face softened. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Leah Fortinier. You’ve also asked me that every time you’ve woken.”
“Can you unstrap me?” He tugged his arms, the straps on his wrists refusing to move.
“That would not be wise. We have removed most of that hair. I do apologize for that.” She chuckled and touched his head. “It was beautiful, but it would only get in the way.”
He turned his head back and forth, letting his scalp rub against the pillow, not believing they had cut his hair! They had no right! His heart pounded, and he began to thrash his arms and kick his legs, screaming, “Let me out of here!”
“We’ve done this before. You know it doesn’t get us anywhere. Okay, my young friend. Back to beddie-bye land once more.” She pulled out a syringe and wiped his arm with a moistened pad.
“No,” Garik whispered. Then louder, until he was yelling, “No, no, no!”
Then the needle pierced his skin, and the bright light in the center of the ceiling washed every problem away.
GARIK REMEMBERED a hazy vision of a medium-size woman who was neither young nor old. He recalled more clearly the needle.
He shifted his head, and yes, his hair was still gone. It was now bristly against the pillow. He could lift his arms this time, but when he did, people on either side of him caught his wrists.
“Now, now. Lie still. We’ve had too many episodes already, and Mr. Rodheimer wants to move this forward. Leave your arms right here.” The woman. The . . . nurse? He couldn’t remember her name.
“What’s going on?” He remembered the needle. He left his arms where they put them. “Move what forward?”
“You can open your eyes.” Chuckles, and a man’s voice. “You are very lucky, you know. We have applicants from numerous countries all over the world vying for inclusion in our research program. You’ve been shunted right to the top.”
“Who are you?” This time when he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the empty white room. He looked down to see himself in a hospital gown, with medical machines surrounding the bed. More hulked against the walls. Double doors with the upper parts finished in the same wire-reinforced glass completed the picture.
“Dr. Jamie.” The name Jimenez on the man’s lab coat suggested Jamie was his first name. “I’ll be with you throughout today’s procedure, and if this goes well, we’ll be seeing each other quite often. How’s that?”
“What procedure?” Garik didn’t like being in this room, he didn’t like his hair being messed with, and he definitely didn’t like the sound of the word procedure.
“Not to worry.” The doctor patted his arm warmly. He looked across to someone Garik couldn’t see. “Leah, how’s the DNA ma
terial coming along? How much longer until it’s fully at body temperature?”
“Another ten minutes, Dr. Jamie.” The needle voice. Leah. Fortinier, Garik seemed to recall.
“Thank you. Now, Mr. Shayk, do you want to know what you’re going to become?”
“An adult?” Become? He already was. He jerked his legs. They were strapped to the bed. That was when he realized he was on an operating gurney.
“True, true, but more. So much more.” Jimenez’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
“What was in those cages?” Garik remembered the stainless-steel bars, the man with the cart, and telling Marisa to run.
“Ah, that. We’ve explained this before. Alas, the sleepy medicine tends to mess with short-term memory. Not the best experience for you to learn about us. It was unfortunate for you to start your time with us there, but no matter. You won’t have to see that again—”
“Explained before? Leah, I think it was, said something like that. How long have I been here?” He thought of Marisa. Run. What had happened to her? Did she know where he was? Was anyone looking for him?
“We needed time to extract your DNA, and it’s not simple splicing two different DNA strands into one distinct and completely new structure. The failure rate for that is quite high, but once we reach success, we move forward!” He clasped one hand into an excited fist. “We are now ready for you to move forward. This will need to drip for a while. Nurse?”
She handed him a needle attached to a short IV tube with a cut-off valve, and he lifted Garik’s arm, gripped it tightly, and inserted it.
One of the doors burst open, and three men walked in. The first was in military attire, solid, white-haired, with a firm step and a straight back. The next two were dressed as civilians. Jimenez pressed a pad to Garik’s arm and stepped back, putting his hands behind his back respectfully. The nurse also fell silent.
