Random Acts Part 17

"The security isn't as good as you think."

"Really."

"There's gaping holes."

"Where?"

"Everywhere."

"Well, it just so happens that you've been under surveillance for the past two weeks, and you haven't been anywhere near the project. We have pictures of you at pay phones all around the San Francisco area, which leads us to believe you've received your information by phone. It was given to you willingly by someone at the project, someone deep within the project."

I regretfully finish the last of my coffee. "This is pointless," I tell him. "I have no idea what the version of me has been doing here for the past two weeks. I only got here this morning." I reach for the thermos but he pulls it away.

"One last chance, Harrison."

"Whatever."

"Give me the name of your source."

"Even if I did know, I probably wouldn't tell you." I stare at the thermos with sadness.

Cooper stands up, taking the thermos with him. "Your loyalty is admirable," he says. "But we're going to get it out of you no matter how strong you think you are. I'm turning you back over to the FBI, and they know all the weak spots."

"I'm sure they do."

"You're really in for it, Harrison," he says, turning away. "These men are ruthless." He gives me a look.

I stare back, feeling hopeless.

Cooper walks out the door and is gone.

The guard with the square nose and the over-large chin steps in, smiling. "You didn't cooperate," he says. He and his comrades surround me, yank me up from the bench and away from the table. The first fist smashes across my face, giving a distinct, hot pain; the rest fades together in a blur of agony.

I spend the night in a cold cell with the blanket but no cot. I sleep fitfully, waking every few minutes thinking they're coming in with the fire hose. The light is bright and there's no way to turn it off, and even if I lie facing away from it, it reflects bright from the concrete walls and lights up my eyelids. I keep hoping to sleep and shift realities, but for some reason I'm stuck here. Perhaps it's because I can't get into a really deep sleep? For a while I lie there and try willing myself to move. It's useless, I'm so stiff and sore I can barely move in the mere three dimensions of the cell.

There's a metallic bang and loud clunk, and the squeal of heavy doors opening. I close my eyes and pretend I'm dead --- maybe they'll leave me alone. No such luck. I get a kick right in the middle of my back, then hands take hold of my arms and lift me painfully to my feet.

My legs don't work very well, and they have to hold me up as I stumble in between them. They take me to the room with the table and benches, and for a brief moment I hope for coffee and maybe even a meal --- I haven't seen even a crumb of food since they brought me here --- but no, I'm marched right past the table, right to the back of the room and through the door. In the room beyond, the room with the electric chair, they lock me into a standing position by putting my arms and legs in manacles, then they leave.

The chains holding my feet are short, close to the wall, while the chains holding my arms are a foot and a half long. The wall, I find, is not straight --- it angles forward --- which makes it impossible for me to lean against it. I have to stand under my own balance or hang by my arms, which is painful. This makes sense, because whoever designed it obviously didn't want to make it comfortable.

The torture is very subtle. Not only to I have to stand there and stare at an electric chair, but also a big electric clock on the wall.

Hours pa.s.s second by second, and I get to watch them pa.s.s --- the slow, deliberate movement of the second hand becomes a horrible thing. It does no good to close my eyes, because when I open them again I can't believe how little time has pa.s.sed. Five hours pa.s.s this way, and I'm to the point of pa.s.sing out when I hear footsteps.

A group of guards led by the one with the square nose and big chin enter the room with a woman. The woman cries out and rushes toward me, grabbing hold of me and hugging. It's Heather. I dip my face into her hair, kissing the top of her head. The smell of perfume and female sweat is strong. I feel a small flicker of hope, thinking she's here to get me out, but this is dashed as they pry her away from me and hold her as she struggles. This is beyond sick --- they're going to force her to watch as they torture me. But no, this isn't true either. They pull her dress off, stripping her down to her bra.s.siere and panties. Then they force her down into the electric chair and begin strapping her in.

"No!" I shout. "No! Stop this! Stop! I want to talk to Cooper!

Bring Cooper in here!"

"Shut him up," says square nose.

One of the guards obligingly steps over and lays a hard punch right into my upper stomach, and I go limp, hanging from my arms and making gasping, wheezing noises. The place I've been punched makes it hard for me to breathe. It makes it impossible to talk. I fight it, struggling to tell them to stop, but all I can do is shake my head at them and gasp.

Heather is beyond crying, she is whimpering. She's terrified. There's about twenty different straps and even a gag that goes in her mouth, and then they all step back and one of them reaches for a switch on the wall. I manage to grunt out a long, agonized "NOOO!" as the switch is thrown.

Heather's eyes bulge and her body trembles. Each one of her fingers dance with a rhythm of its own. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d keeps the switch on for fifteen seconds, then flips it off. Heather's eyes close and her head sags forward, and her lungs let out one long sigh. Jesus, she's dead. I stare at them in horror --- how can they do this? What did she ever do to them? What's worse, they're grinning.

"Filthy f.u.c.king murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" I gasp, barely able to talk.

They only glance at me for a moment, then return their gaze at her. Her head lolls about, and square nose leans forward.

"How'd you like that, sweetheart? That was the lowest setting. Do you want to try ten volts more?"

Her eyes still closed, she shakes her head. I feel relieved that she's still alive, but this relief is short-lived. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d changes a setting behind the chair and throws the switch again. I close my eyes, unwilling to watch. When it's over, there's a puddle of urine under the chair. Heather is making weak sobbing sounds.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! You f.u.c.king filth! Leave her alone!"

"You hear that?" square nose says. "Your boyfriend just told us to raise it up another ten volts!"

"No! Wait! Stop, I'll tell you my source! Stop it----!"

They jolt her again. This time I don't close my eyes. I stare, watching the electricity rape every muscle of her body, letting it burn into my memory. I promise myself that I will somehow kill each and every one of these people. No bullet through the brain, either --- but long, slow horrible deaths.

Cooper walks in on the tail end of this last jolt. His face is impa.s.sive as he stands there and waits for it to end. After this one Heather once again looks dead, so much so that Cooper reaches out and feels for a pulse in her neck. "Poor girl," he says. "Another ten volts will probably stop her heart for good."

"You treacherous b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I say to him. "You primeval f.u.c.k."

"Set it up another ten volts," Cooper says.

I wrench at the chains holding me, wishing that just once I could be Superman and pull them apart. The sad fact is I'm as weak as a sick dog. "No, Cooper . . . please. No. She has nothing to do with this."

Square nose sets the dial for another ten volts and steps back over to the switch. "If you've got something to tell me," Cooper says, "you'd better tell me now."

"Alvin Laurel." I blurt it out like a bubble, and like a bubble the name seems to float there in the air.

Cooper seems taken aback. "Alvin Laurel?"

"Alvin Laurel told me everything. He showed me the four-dimensional prism and the cube he made from straws. Everything I know I learned from him."

He thinks about it for a moment, then says, "No. You're lying.

Shock the girl."

"No! NO!" I stare helplessly as Heather is. .h.i.t harder than ever, the electricity making her eyelids flutter in such a horrible way I start sobbing, and when the current is off I call out her name. She doesn't respond, but I see her chest heaving as if she can't catch her breath. The others are watching too, curious to see if she'll survive.

Eventually she raises her head and looks at me. I can't read her look, though I imagine it's full of hatred.

Cooper turns to me. "Think she'll survive it again?"

"I told you who my contact is. If you don't believe me, then check it out yourself."

"It's not Alvin Laurel. I don't believe you."

"Then kill us both, because I don't have anything else I can tell you."

Cooper walks around the room, deep in thought. He walks around behind the electric chair, examines the power setting, then continues around and peers into Heather's face. Then he turns and walks back to me. I stare at him with dead eyes.

"Should I shock her again?" asks square nose.

Cooper looks at me for a long moment, then says, "No. Cut the poor woman loose. Stick this guy in a cell. I'll check the information out."

He spins on his heel and walks quickly out of the room, already intent on his mission.

The guards release Heather from the chair and bundle up her clothes. She has trouble standing. "Take her to the showers," square nose says. They lead her out, Heather shuffling her feet, her eyelids half covering her eyes.

"You're going to let her go, right?" I ask square nose.

"Let her go? With b.o.o.bs like that?" He laughs and follows them out.

I'm left hanging there once again, all alone with the electric chair and the clock. For some reason the clock doesn't seem so slow anymore.

Four hours pa.s.s in a daze. When they finally come for me, square nose isn't with them --- he's probably off shift by now. One of the guards wrinkles his nose as he unlocks the manacles. While hanging there I had no luxury such as a toilet.

I'm put into a cell much like the one where I was sprayed down with the fire hose --- a concrete cube with a drain in the floor, and no furniture. My only comfort is the blanket that no one had thought to take away from me. I ask the guard for water and he brings me a little paper cup full, but no more. I ask for food but no one hears me, no one comes near. Huddled by the door with the blanket, a wretched, broken prisoner, I wait.

Sleep comes, but it's a harsh, cold sleep. I have a nightmare about the electric chair, and somehow I'm both in the chair and up against the wall hanging by the manacles. It switches back and forth, depending on the whimsy of a dream's perspective. I am both a spectator and partic.i.p.ant in the electrocution. Sometimes I am myself, sometimes I am Heather. In the end I am where I actually had been, hanging from the wall in chains. The figure in the electric chair is black and charred, with slow tendrils of smoke drifting up from the arms and head.

When I awake I'm only half-awake, moving weakly to a less-uncomfortable position, peering around at the cell which hasn't changed. Thirst and hunger has become a dull ache which feels like I'd been shot in the stomach and am slowly bleeding to death. I care less and less about the world. Hours drag by and I sleep again. I dream a short, happy dream where Tom and Aaron has come to get me out of this place, but I awake and find myself still in the same cell, with the same weakness and pain.

The light embedded in the ceiling has a funny yellow tint to it, and I squint, looking at it, wondering. If only I could move through the dimensions. If only I could remember how I did it. I've seen the multi-dimensional landscape before, how come I can't see it now?

I stare for a long time, and s.p.a.ce around the light seems to bend back on itself and there's a rainbow effect in the light. That's it, I think to myself wearily. Either I'm seeing through, or I'm hallucinating. Either one is fine with me. I force my gaze away from the light, and look carefully around the prison cell. There's a moment of vertigo, and then there's an amazing shift in my perspective. The walls, floor and ceiling all pull apart from each other at the corners, leaving big gaps in between. I can see around the walls, floor, and ceiling.

I stand up, walking weakly to the nearest corner. I'm smiling. It's so absurd --- here I am, a four-dimensional creature feeling trapped in a three-dimensional room. The builders of the jail did not build in four dimensions, so here are gaping holes in a prison cell. Smiling weakly to myself, I step right through.

10. GHOSTS.

Stepping around walls feels like I'm playing a drunken game of hopscotch. I weave in and out, back and forth and around, keeping to the rear of the cells. Other prisoners look at me in astonishment as I appear in one corner of their cell and disappear into the other corner.

At last I reach a blank wall, but then duck under it and come up from the lower corner. I emerge in the middle of a long corridor, startling the h.e.l.l out of a guard. He drops his gun in his excitement, shouting at the top of his lungs, so I dive to the other side and roll under the far wall. When I come up again I'm in a deserted office, and in the corner there I find a water cooler.

Feeling dizzy and seeing spots, I stumble across the room to the rolling desk chair and use it as a walker to reach the water cooler.

There I sit down and with shaking hands pull a paper cup from the dispenser and fill it with water. I drink five cups one after the other, then sit back and feel it flowing through my body. It feels like peace.

I'm not going to die.

Outside the office door I hear footsteps run past and some indistinct shouting. I smile, then drink more water. My perception of the gaps between walls has not changed, and I doubt that it will. Like a holy man finding the voice of G.o.d while starving himself, I seemed to have snapped into a new mindset. I drink more water, then decide to leave the sanctuary to go in search of food.

I find the prison kitchen, which is deserted. The only food are the guard's lunch sacks in the refrigerator; they don't seem to feed any of the prisoners here. I pull out several lunch sacks and turn around just as a guard comes walking in. Without a word I drop to the ground and roll under the wall. On the other side is an unoccupied cell. I drop the food there and walk to the corner, stepping around and back into the kitchen behind the guard. He's slowly backing away from the spot where I'd disappeared. When he's within reach, I lean forward and s.n.a.t.c.h the pistol out of his holster. He spins around, is mouth open and his eyes wide, and he cries out in fear. I don't recognize him --- he's not one of the ones who'd tortured Heather, so I leave him alone, stepping around the corner again and into the cell with the food. There I sit and eat, not really tasting any of the sandwiches or enjoying the fruit, simply feeling it fill my stomach until I'm about to be sick.

Keeping to the back walls, I play hopscotch again through the cells, searching each one for Heather. Up and down all three floors I go, not finding any hint of her. I hope they let her go, but I'm also thinking they might have raped and killed her. I hold the guard's gun tightly in my right hand, not really knowing how to use it but determined to try. For the first time in my life my heart feels absolutely black with hatred.

The night shift goes off and the day shift begins. I spot the square-nosed, big-chinned guard as he comes in through the front door. I follow along as best I can, dodging here and there, keeping tabs occasionally as I walk between walls. I hear him mutter in disbelief when he's told there's a ghost loose within the prison. "f.u.c.king nonsense," he says. I follow along after him, waiting to catch him alone. He sits at a table with a few of the guards who are coming off shift and they eat donuts and drink coffee, all talking about the ghost.

Most of those claiming to have seen me are lying. I lean forward, interested, but one of them chokes on his coffee and points in my direction. I pull my head back before any of the others look.

I follow square nose as he makes his rounds, never catching him alone long enough to get at him. In the late morning, just before lunch, he takes part in a torture session which brings back the blackest of my memories, and for a moment I stand on a razor's edge. Like my finger poised on the trigger of my stolen pistol, I stand at the edge of the corner ready to burst into the room and use the gun. In this universe, in this reality, I don't do it. In a mult.i.tude of other realities I'm sure I did. One puff of air, one tiny sound, one atom going one direction instead of the other would have made me jump in there and kill everyone standing. In this universe I take a few deep breaths and step back, struggling to think. There has to be a more positive approach.

Tracing the wiring through the walls, I track it back to a large circuit breaker panel in a storage room. I open the panel, and using a broom handle I pry the large fire-cracker looking fuses out of their mounts. I pick these up off the floor and take them with me, returning to the torture chamber and the electric chair. As they're fiddling with the switch and the power dial in consternation, I step into their midst and throw the fuses at them. "This cruelty comes to an end. Now." Heads and guns swing around in my direction, and I step backwards out of the room. The astonished look on the face of square nose leaves me with a warm feeling, his mouth gaping open and his eyes bulging out.

They remove the hapless prisoner and take him back to his cage.

Three armed men carry the fuses back to the breaker box and plug them in. They stand around for a few moments, whispering back and forth nervously, then leave. I immediately pry the fuses out and throw them at their backs. They look down at the fuses at their feet, then up at me, and yell out in fear. They run without firing a shot.

That afternoon I finally catch square nose in a vulnerable moment.

He's standing before a urinal, alone, glancing nervously around like he knows he's being watched. I step out of the corner of the wall and walk right up to him. He's so startled he can't move. I place the barrel of the gun against his p.e.n.i.s and tense my finger on the trigger. "Where's Heather? What did you do to her?"

He struggles to talk; it takes him a moment to start, like he's stripped a few gears in his voice box. When he finally gets it in gear, it comes out in a sudden gasp. "We didn't do anything with her!"

"I don't believe you."

"I swear, it's the truth! The Man told us to let her go and he took her with him!"

"What man?"

"The Man! Charley Cooper, from the FBS . . . she went with him."

"I still don't believe you. I think you and your friends had your way with her and then murdered her. Didn't you?"

"No! No, I swear it! Ask the man yourself, he's going to be here today!"

"When?"