Reflex (16 page)

Meters?

They kept pouring water on the plate, to keep the floor from catching on fire. Davy was sorry to see the resulting weld looked quite solid.

Miss Minchin turned off the box and put it in the hallway.

"We'll just go get the plywood now?" the workman said, half telling, half asking.

Miss Minchin nodded. Then, to Davy's surprise, as soon as they'd left she took a key from her pocket and unlocked the padlocks on his wrist restraints using the same small key.

He eyed the key thoughtfully.

She said, "Don't even think about it. You'd be in convulsions before you could get it into the first lock."

With the cuffs off, his wrists showed raw and red, almost scaly. He rubbed them carefully, resisting the urge to scratch until he bled. Miss Minchin backed away to one side, clear of the chains, and said, "In the box."

He didn't wait for the warning cough, jumping immediately. He braced, from habit, for the pull of the chains on his wrists, but they weren't there anymore and he fell over backward, his feet jerked out from under him.

Miss Minchin laughed.

Davy sat up gingerly, keeping his face impassive, but he could feel his ears heat up. He checked the border, out of curiosity. He was indeed "in the box."

Miss Minchin coiled the now unused chains and wrist restraints, and tossed them through the hole into the other room. After a moment, the workmen came back with a sheet of half-inch plywood, which they fastened to the wall over the broken Sheetrock, anchoring it to the studs with two-inch screws.

"You want us to clean up this stuff, Ma'am?" They indicated the broken Sheetrock scattered on the floor.

"No."

They nodded and left.

Miss Minchin tore the mask off her face. She turned to the mirror. "Let him out."

Davy tested the edge of the field, then stepped out. His arms felt unnaturally light without the chains. Still, the chains on his ankles pulled as heavily as ever on his legs.
And on my spirit.
He touched the scar on his chest.
But the real chains lie here.

Miss Minchin said, "Better see if you can reach the bathroom."

He found that he could sit on the toilet if his legs were extended. He tried the shower. "I won't be able to stand in the tub." The chains were too short. They'd measured into the tub but hadn't accounted for the angle up and down over its edge.

Miss Minchin came to the door and looked. "Take baths. Let your legs hang over the edge." She went back to the door. As she went out she said, "It's your own fault. Tantrums, you know."

She hadn't said, "Clean up this mess," but that seemed the implication. On his new shortened leash, he couldn't walk up to most of the walls but he could reach them. Since they'd removed the wrist restraints, he could get down on his hands and knees and stretch out to pick up the chunks of Sheetrock.

While he was piling them together he found the screw, one of the two-inch Sheetrock screws that they'd used to fasten down the plywood. It was up against one of the pieces of Sheetrock and half-buried in Sheetrock dust.

He palmed it and continued to clean up. While the mop bucket was filling, he used the toilet, then slipped the screw into the toilet paper roll, with his scraps of paper.

Unfortunately, it looked too large to get into the key holes on the padlocks of the ankle restraints, but he would check, in the night.

They put him in the box ten times before supper, then several times through the night, on some random basis. He wondered how they decided. Did a computer program tell them, using some random number generator? Or was it scheduled weeks in advance? Or did they just wait until he was fully asleep, to maximize his confusion and thoroughly disrupt his rest?

He pictured them behind the mirror. Sometimes he imagined them watching intently, some savage smile lingering on their lips, laughing each time they sent him to the box, drinking his misery with eager eyes. His other image was much worse—a man not even watching, bored, reading some magazine or book, and only reaching out to poke the switch when some timer went off. Then, glancing briefly through the window to make sure he was actually in the box, before turning back to his book. Oh, yeah—and yawning.

This second image chilled him because he thought it more likely. How could someone do this to another human without mentally placing him in the category of "thing" first? Passion implied involvement. He suspected Miss Minchin of some form of involvement. But the others?

Under the covers, in the night, he tried the screw on the padlocks of the ankle restraints but his earlier suspicion was correct. It was too thick.

It was sharp, though. For one bleak moment he thought about using it to pop his jugulars, covers pulled up to his chin. They wouldn't find out until they put him in the box or noticed the blood dripping under the mattress. It wasn't a serious thought, though.

Not yet.

Of more serious consideration was a bit of surgery, on his chest or lower neck, to see if he could disable the device.
With a sharp screw, no antiseptics, and no anesthetic. Sounds like fun to me!

He shoved the screw beneath his pillow and turned. A mattress coil creaked as he shifted his weight.

Hmmm. There are other things that can be torn by a sharp screw.

He didn't rip the cloth cover of the mattress. He was pretty sure what he wanted to do would take a lot longer than one night, and he would need to conceal the effort. So, his first session he settled for painstakingly opening the bottom seam of his mattress, near the corner next to the wall. Left alone, the weight of the mattress held it closed. With the fitted bottom sheet in place, it was undetectable.

Unless they look.

He left the screw tucked inside the mattress.

An hour later, after two turns in the box, he resumed his work. His goal was the wire from a coil spring—one of the interior coils to avoid a detectable sag in the edge. It took him the rest of the night to cut his way between two border coils and through the pocket of one of the interior coils. The fabric didn't rip, even when he'd started a good hole with the screw. He had to saw, roughly, with the threads, then tug, then saw some more.

Everything was one-handed, as he had to work without apparent movement, lying on his stomach, face buried in the pillow, only one arm over the edge of the bed.

Then they put him in the box and he nearly tore open his arm pulling it out between the coils as he jumped. Another time he didn't let go of the screw and nearly dropped it on the floor in the box. He sat on the floor quickly, back to the mirror, and hid it between the stainless steel band and the inner padding of his ankle restraints.

By morning, he had the coil completely exposed, but the tops and bottom of the spring were fastened to the wire frame by crimped metal clips and they eluded his initial efforts to wrench it free.

He left the screw inside the mattress and gave up for that night. This time, he was ready for sleep.

After breakfast, Miss Minchin entered the room. She was dragging a chain that went around the edge of the door and she carried a pair of felt slippers and a heavy bathrobe.

"In the box."

He complied immediately, from choice—not reflex. He wanted to give her an impression of cooperation for the moment.

She walked forward and stopped five feet from the edge. "Lie down—stick your feet out to me."

He did, keeping his upper chest inside the green tape. She unlocked his left ankle restraint but, instead of removing it, she switched chains, locking the padlock to the new chain that ran out the door. Then she unlocked the right ankle, but this time she completely removed the restraint, dropping it on the floor and leaving the small padlock beside it, still open.

She straightened back up and took a radio from her pocket—not the plastic box she'd had before, but a scrambled handheld transceiver. "We're ready here. You?"

"Switching on. On," said a voice from the radio.

She slid the bathrobe and the slippers across to Davy. "Come on, boy. Walkies."

He scrambled to his feet staring at her.

She walked to the door, then paused. "Well, I suppose you can stay here if you want."

He threw on the robe and tested the border. They were broadcasting a larger signal, apparently, for there was no warning tingle at the green tape or the yellow. He pushed his feet into the slightly large slippers and walked forward, coiling the chain as he went.

It felt very odd, going through the door—surprisingly difficult.

He'd been expecting some sort of institutional setting—some sort of clinic, but the hallway was clearly not that. It was manorial—old and elegant. Carved or molded accents decorated wainscoted walls. There were small dark, satin-finished side tables adorned with bowls of fresh flowers. At the far end of the hall there was an actual window, framed by heavy drapes, where bright sunlight puddled on the thick carpet and made his eyes tear.

The outside.

The chain ran the other direction, away from the window, and ended, Davy saw, just down the hall. A heavy furniture hand-truck stood there and strapped to it was an upright cylinder, one and a half feet across and two feet high. He took a step closer and saw that it was concrete cast in an iron pipe. The end of the chain was secured to a U-bolt projecting from the cement.

Miss Minchin led him toward it. "You'll need to push this along."

Davy eyed it and tried to remember how much concrete weighed per cubic foot. The pipe itself was at least a half-inch in thickness, a significant weight even without the concrete. He tried to tilt the dolly back on its wheels but didn't succeed until he'd braced one foot and leaned far back. The little plate on the back of the dolly said it was rated to 700 pounds, but the way it creaked, he strongly suspected it was overloaded. He balanced it carefully, looping the coil of chain he'd been gathering over his arm.

If I jumped, I bet it would come with me—all seven hundred pounds.
He remembered moving entire loaded bookshelves—not huge ones, but weighty enough—and once a small refrigerator when he and Millie had purchased the condo in Stillwater.

And where would I be, then? Flopping on the floor and vomiting? Perhaps going into cardiac arrest? And when I try to jump back "in the box" I won't have the coordination to bring the weight with me.

He looked at Miss Minchin and raised an eyebrow.

She pointed down the hall, the direction he was facing. "There's an elevator."

They passed a door on the right and Davy made himself ignore it. The doorway was in the right place to lead to the observation room on the other side of the mirror.

The elevator was on the left, at the end of the hall, wood-paneled doors, wood-paneled interior, a cut glass insert, a small mirror. There was barely room for Miss Minchin, Davy,
and
the handcart. Miss Minchin took the opportunity to stand a little closer than necessary. Davy found his body reacting to her warmth and scent.

He shuddered.

Remember Cox. Remember she put a bullet in his head and she'd do the same to me if they ever decide I won't cooperate.

The elevator controls showed four levels, basement through third. They were apparently on the third floor now, for Ms. Minchin had pressed One and they'd passed another floor. They exited into another, taller hallway—grander—opening on a hotel-lobby-sized living room, a parlor, and a large, formal dining room with runway table.

Miss Minchin diverted him down a smaller hallway, to his right, and they passed a large kitchen, a laundry room with multiple washers, dryers, and a heavy duty commercial ironing station.

This is somebody's grand house
—a
mansion, really.

"Servants' day off?"

Miss Minchin didn't respond and he concluded that they'd cleared them out before bringing him through.

At the end of the smaller hallway there was an exterior door, white with rows and rows of four-inch beveled glass panes, and beyond that, a porch overlooking a walled expanse of brown grass bisected by a walkway that ran straight across to a cast iron gate in the far wall. An undulating border of evergreen plants ran beneath the walls and a dry stone fountain decorated the corner. The air was cold but the sun was up and the walls blocked what wind there was. Davy took a moment to tie the robe shut.

"To your right," Miss Minchin said, from behind him.

There was a wheelchair ramp, running down beside the building, then turning into a down-sloping path that curved through winter-mulched flower beds where the barest tips of early tulips or irises were poking up through the straw. The hand truck wanted to run away on the slope and it took all of Davy's concentration to keep it under control. This curving path rejoined the main walk back near the porch.

Miss Minchin led him to the center of the yard.

"There." Miss Minchin pointed. Someone had dug a hole beside the walk, roughly the size of the cylinder. She stepped up beside Davy and tilted the hand truck forward. The cylinder bounced down hard on its base, then fell forward with a thud that could be felt through the ground. She rolled the cylinder until its end was over the mouth of the hole, then pushed down with most of her weight, to tip it on into the hole.

She had to pull her foot back quickly to avoid getting it caught when the cylinder dropped, but she managed, just in time.

Too bad.

He swore at himself.
I should've jumped to the Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center.
If any one place could've kept him alive and figured out what was causing his convulsions, it would be them. Now, cylinder down in the hole, there'd be no moving it.

Miss Minchin wheeled the hand truck back toward the porch and dropped it on the brown grass just short of the steps.

Well, maybe I would've survived.

Davy took a deep breath and blinked.
The sea?
There was a whiff of salt air and the more pungent odor of low tide. As if to confirm it, he heard the cry of a single seagull,
lonely and haunting solo and raucous in company.
He thought back to the workman's accent.
Martha's Vineyard?