The first thing he
noticed was that he was cold. There was
almost a numbness creeping into his bones and the surface he was lying on was hard. The dizzying disorientation made it difficult to concentrate, but he realized his arms were stretched out to his
sides and he uncurled his fists to brush his finger pads against it. Concrete… yes, I’m pretty sure it’s cement I’m lying on.
Slowly other senses
came to life, and he smelled a dank, musty smell that reminded him of a place either long abandoned, or a cave… maybe a cellar. He strained to hear, and he thought he caught the sound of some kind of metal softly banging into something
hard enough to emit a slight clanging sound.
The eyes were a
different matter. He was sure they were
open, yes, I’m blinking, but there was only a dim light that let him see through a dark fog. Gradually, other things began to occur to him, and he tried to raise his hands to rub his eyes to clear
them, but they refused to cooperate. No, my
muscles are working. My wrists are tied down
to something. He pulled with his strong
arms, but they barely moved.
He tried to clear
his fuzzy mind to think. Have I been in
an accident? Is that girl… Julie, something… is she here? Shit,
what if Harriet finds out? How long have
I been here? Sam did a mental scan of his
body. Nothing hurt, but maybe they had
given him something for pain. As time passed by,
exactly how much time he was not sure, an accident seemed unlikely. He tried to think back
to the last thing he remembered. The
office and the Phiston contract… Julie laughing with me over the meeting… I called Harriet
to tell her I was working late on the completed contract… Julie’s apartment and having
sex withher. Did we have sex? He remembered her straddling his lap.
As he became more
conscious, several uncomfortable facts about his situation bombarded him and caused the dizzying headache to turn into a painful throb. His ankles had some kind of straps on them that were holding them spread apart and locked in place. Now fully awake, he
became anxious as the full measure of his current status
became clearer. He realized he was naked and
lying on a concrete floor with his hands and ankles spread and bound, and he could not see. At last he tried to call out, and his voice came out raspy and hoarse.
“Hello? Hello, is anyone there?” God, I’m thirsty. It felt as though the inside of
his throat had been scraped with something, and it was swollen and sore.
“Mr. Sturgis, I see
that you are awake.” The voice had a
slight echo, and he thought it might be coming from a loudspeaker.
He tried to search
for the sound with his unfocused eyes, and that was the first indication he had that there was a strap around his neck as well, like some
kind of collar. It was hooked to the floor beneath
him, and offered minimal movement. “Where the hell am
I?” he demanded, and the voice of authority that usually caused
his employees to quake, came out as a feeble croak.
“You are in Section
Nine, Training Room Three. Someone will
be with you shortly,” the woman’s voice echoed.
He heard the click
of some switch, and he guessed that it had been the speaker being turned off. “Hey… hey… what the fuck are
you talking about?” He winced at the
pain in his throat. “Who the hell are you? I demand you release me, now.” He finally silenced when no further responses echoed a reply and his yelling was hurting so badly
that he felt like he was swallowing glass. His eyes
seemed to be adjusting, and he was relieved tobegin to see a light haze around the edges of the fog.
In a comfortable
office in the center of the training hub, a woman ran a French
tipped manicured nail down the ridges of her cut crystal rocks glass. The ice clinked as she took a small sip of the single malt. After she looked on the monitor in the corner at the man spread on the floor, and had assured herself it was Samuel’s raspy voice
she had heard through the speaker she said, “You guarantee he will not be found?”