“I don’t want to die down here. Why can’t we get out?”
Sam recognized that both were suffering from fatigue, hunger, and thirst. She understood that Gary, as well as herself were in dire straits. Something had to happen soon or Gary’s fear would come true. She wondered if that was why the guards were no longer chasing them. Had they been deliberately herded into a tunnel of no return? Were they now on the wrong side of the wall and soon to bump into the missing copper miners? She didn’t want to believe it but it was very likely.
Mostly she wondered where her dad was. He came to help them once, why not again. Recognizing that he was their only hope, as if in prayer to God, she softly uttered,
“Dad, where are you. I still need your help.”
As if it came from a whisper right into her ear, she heard her dad’s soft voice.
“I am here honey. I have not abandoned you. It’s very difficult for me to come to you this way but I’m trying my best.”
She snapped around looking for him but all she saw was Gary beside her. He noticed her quick movement and said,
“What’s the matter? Did you see something?”
“No, I heard something. Didn’t you just hear my dad talking to me?”
He reasoned that she must be as tired as he was and obviously hearing things.
She heard her dad again but this time from a distance. Looking in that direction she saw an arm sticking out of the side of the tunnel and then all of him appeared. He came to them, squatted down, and said to her.
“I can get you out of here but you have to trust me.”
He looked deep into his daughter’s wide eyes and asked,
“Do you trust me Sam?”
There was optimism and sincerity in her reply. Of course she trusted her dad.
“Yes dad, of course. I thought you were mad at me for coming here when you told me never to. I thought you were never coming back.”
This time Gary not only saw her dad but heard every word as well. When he stood up, so did Sam and Gary. Gordy said to them both,
“Now listen and trust me. Where we are going is only dangerous if you think you will be harmed. If you trust that I would never lead you into danger and believe that you will not be hurt, then nothing can happen to you. If you get scared, just close your eyes and pretend you are walking on a sunny beach, okay.”
Sam understood and Gary, trying to sound brave said,
“I’m very good at pretending.”
Gordy smiled at him and said,
“Good. That will really help. Now hold hands and follow me. Do not go anywhere else but right behind me. You have to promise me that.”
Both nodded.
Gordy reached for his daughter’s hand and with her other hand she took Gary’s. After only a few minutes of being led through another maze of tunnels, Gordy stopped, turned to them and said,
“Remember, you promised to do as I say. Together all three of us are going to take one more step and I will jump forward. While still holding hands you have to do the same.”
Both nodded.
He voiced one more final warning.
“Don’t let go of each other’s hand.”
Both shook their heads. He then took one more step and jumped forward. Like a dancer in a conga line, Sam and Gary also leapt forward. It was as if jumping into water from the edge of the pool except it was into the solid rock floor of the tunnel. In a splash, they were gone.
Wherever they now were, they were still holding hands. This new tunnel seemed normal enough, straight and narrow. The best thing about it, it was leading upward and as Gary saw it, up to safety. He was just mostly glad that they were in a normal tunnel for once. That all changed when from somewhere up ahead they heard pounding footsteps and somebody yelling.
“They came down this way.”
Gary looked past Sam and saw three guards bearing down on them really fast. That was when he suddenly realized they were not in a normal tunnel.
The guards were running at them up on the ceiling, upside down. He heard Sam’s dad once again utter those reassuring words,
“It’s okay, trust me.”
That was hard to do when seeing the whites of their eyes coming at them fast. The lead guard came to a grinding halt right above them. The other two slammed on the brakes almost bumping into him. He paused, listened, and said,
“Did you hear that? I heard somebody say, ‘trust me’.”
Both looked at their leader as if he were crazy.
Then, like before, it happened again. Gary looked up and saw them running right past them as if they were not even there. When they had disappeared far back in the tunnel where they had just been, he turned to Sam and said,
“That was odd. How could they be running on the ceiling like that?”
Sam had it figured out and said,
“I think we are the ones on the ceiling and they were on the floor.”
Chapter 36
Because of all the impossible things that had happened to them, falling through solid stone, walking on ceilings and tortured with unbearable pain, what little was left of Gary’s rational mind had now joined up with the most active part of his brain, where his vivid imagination lived. He was now no longer sure what was real and what he might have imagined. In his fantasy games, he was always in control and everything always turned out for the better. He never added to his imagination the pain of exhaustion and hunger. Now, the only connection he had with reality was that Sam still holding tight to his hand. For the longest time they had walked through dimly lit tunnels without the guidance of Sam’s dad. After the jump into goodness knows what, he had disappeared. Sam remembered what he had said earlier, that it was difficult for him to stay in the tunnels.
Without realizing it, eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness of wherever they now were. Gary did not know how it happened. Fact of the matter was he did not know how any of it happened. Suddenly, as if a flashbulb had just exploded in his eyes a painful white light blinded him. While blinded and his free hand to his throbbing eyes he heard Sam wrench in pain. Because of that, he understood this was not just his imagination. This was real pain and really happening to them.
Just as his eyes were adjusting to the light, but not quite yet, he heard crackling sounds as if surrounded by snapping electricity. He thought he might be standing in the middle of a tremendous electrical storm. When all the floating white circles in his eyes had faded and he could see properly, he quickly discovered that he was standing in the middle of a great electrical storm. It was like standing in the middle of a plasma ball with fingers of colorful zapping electrical bolts firing into his body. His first response was to react in pain but he quickly realized there was none. Mesmerized, he watched as the flittering bolts seemed to be only playing with him. Turning to Sam, he said
“Sam, look at this.”
However, another sight captivated Sam. He saw her standing rigid as if frozen in fear. Looking in her direction, he too was stunned to disbelief.
In the middle of the floor, or as Gary saw it, in the middle of the plasma ball, as if suspended in mid-air held in place by zapping electrical bolts was a girl about his age. Large amounts of the zapping lightning bolts were smashing into her body holding her suspended like that. The majority of the bolts were striking her head. Sam, oblivious to the shooting fingers striking her, walked up to the impossible sight and although disbelieving it, uttered the name,
“Amina? Amina is that you?”
Gary had never met Amina Green but now knew who she was. This was what happened to her and would have happened to them if they had passed the test back in the torture laboratory. As Sam took closer steps to the suspended Amina, she wondered if she was even alive. But she had to be, she heard her pleading voice in the attic. She had to be alive, or at least not dead. Sam again said,
“Amina, I’m here. We promised to look after each other. I’m here to rescue you.”
Amina did not move, could not move. Inside Sam’s head, sh
e heard a most terrifying and loud tortuous scream and then an audible word echoed,
“Run!”
Gary did not receive the mental warning. Filled with curiosity and oblivious to the danger, he slowly looked around the large room. What he saw there forced him to question what was real and what was not. Was he really seeing this, or could he simply make it disappear with the blink of an eye. He blinked but the impossibility was still there when he opened them. Just beside Amina, were two boys also suspended in mid-air and held aloft by electrical wires attached to their heads. They looked as if two men hung by the neck except it was by the wires coming out of their heads.
Although he did not know it, he had just located and discovered what happened to the two missing boys, Alexander Graham and Robert Ellsworth. Like a lightning bolt to his forehead he was jolted back by an explosive boy’s voice in his head,
“Run!”
Although this time by a different boy’s voice, he heard it again.
“Run!”
Confused, thinking that it was Sam yelling at him, he looked to her. Despite the room filled with crackling bolts of electrical fingers, she ignored the danger and inched closer to Amina. Gary heard her say,
“I promised I would come for you. I’ll get you out of here.”
The dire warning echoed in her head again,
“Run Sam, run!”
Oblivious to the danger, Sam reached up to grab Amina’s leg to pull her down. However, even on her tip toes she could not reach and so turned to Gary and commanded,
“Come and help me pull her down.”
Gary however was more attentive to the warnings from the two dangling boys and so instead of coming over to help, said
“I think we should run.”
She yelled back at him,
“No, we have to rescue her. I promised I would.”
Five scientists in an enclosed room were intently looking at their monitors and readouts. The one chewing gum saw an abnormal reading on his monitor and instantly attacked the computer trying to correct it. One of the female scientists was at the printer trying to make sense of the data spitting out at her. Suddenly another one slammed his coffee down and ran to the control panel. What was once a room filled with only feverish clicking of computer keys and printers suddenly became a conflict of confused scientists voicing concerns and disbelief at what the computers were indicating.
While other scientist had their noses pressed onto monitor screens and fingers in a blur, the one chewing gum ran over to the large glass wall and looked down into the room with the plasma ball. He couldn’t believe his eyes and yelled,
“What the hell?”
He then turned to the others and screamed,
“Turn the relays off. Turn them off!”
Not believing that there was a legitimate reason to disconnect the experiment and disrupt their effort to access a synchronised frequency, the female turned and demanded,
“What? No, it’s just a power surge. I can control it from here.”
Another, not seeing the danger, looked up from his monitor and also objected,
“We almost have a match. If we turn it off now we will lose everything.”
Undeterred regarding damage to the experiment, he pointed and yelled,
“Look down there.”
Everybody ran to the window and saw two kids standing in the plasma room. The woman said,
“They must be the two we were alerted to watch out for.”
The one chewing gum asked,
“How the hell did they get in there?”
Another said,
“If we don’t turn it off they will die.”
The woman in charge was not as sympathetic.
“But if we do, we will be put back months of testing and millions of dollars. They know too much. The Director will only order them killed anyway. I say we continue and let them die.”
Thinking that she might be right, that the kids were doomed no matter what, the one chewing gum pondered the consequences. It was clear that he was changing his mind. He asked,
“Can we recover the frequencies they disrupted?”
The woman nodded and said,
“Yes, I just need a minute. But if we turn it off to pull them out of there, we will lose everything.”
“If we turn it off and rescue them, how long before we can get the connection back?”
It was a slow answer.
“We were lucky with this one, probably never.”
Although it was not in his nature to kill children, this would be millions of dollars down the drain and months of work. He shook his head and sadly sad,
“Okay, I guess they die then. Increase the power.”
Suddenly something happened to make the floating Amina snap as stiff as a board. The wires attached to her head danced and spun her around in wild circles. Sam had to jump back or be hit by her erratic mid-air dancing. Again, in her head she heard Amina scream the dire warning.
“Run Sam, run!”
Gary was not excluded from the warning to escape. Both the boys started to convulse and dance as if from above a drunken puppeteer was pulling strings. He too heard both boys shoot mental commends into his head,
“Run! Run for your life!”
Both Sam and Gary had to hold hands to their ears to muffle the clamour of three people screaming at them to run. It didn’t help because the screaming was in their heads.
Sam refused to heed the warning. It was a struggle but she fought the tremendous pain and tried to get closer to Amina. She was determined to fulfill her promise and save her friend. It was a ‘blood sister’ promise. Suddenly Gary got brave. He understood the impossibility of a rescue and pulled Sam back. As she struggled to break from of his grip, he yelled,
“You can’t do it.”
“Let me go. I have to.”
“No Sam, if we die here nothing will change. If we run, we can come back for them. We know where they are, we can come back.”
Sam went limp and almost collapsed. She knew Gary was right. Despondently she looked up at Amina and made another solemn promise.
“I’ll come back for you.”
“Run!”
A warning to run was easy. Where to run was the hard part. They didn’t even know how they got into this terrible room. The woman up in the control room and looking down at them understood what they wanted to do, escape. There was only one door out of the chamber. Knowing that they would eventually run to it, she snapped an order.
“Turn the lab so the door leads to the crystal cave.”
One scientist objected.
“But that will kill them too.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
The technician programed the whole plasma room to turn like a rotating restaurant. Without Sam and Gary aware that the laboratory was slowly turning, they eventually saw the door come into view and ran for it. Sam shouted,
“That has to be the way we got in. Come on, we can escape that way.”
However, the door was locked. No matter how hard she pulled on the handle, it would not budge. The technician turned to the woman and said,
“The door is now in position.”
“Good. Unlock it.”
Suddenly the door swung open and both quickly ran through it. The woman turned to the one chewing gum and said,
“Contact Warric and report what happened. Be sure to mention that they are now in the Crystal cave and dead.”
Chapter 37
Sheriff Walter Cornwall was in his office busy pounding keys on his new computer. The computers had been massively upgraded but Walter had not. He was not yet accustomed to the new programs and it was frustrating him. More times than not his right hand automatically moved over for the mouse only to discover that it was not there. ‘Touch screens’ were in and Walter was still out. Not getting the information he wanted, in frustration he looked through his large office window and into the precinct. What he was really looking for was help.
The onl
y Deputy in the precinct was the rookie Isaac Rutherford sitting at his desk. Walter had to admire the computer skills of his rookie. His fingers were a blur as they danced over the keys. He certainly was not having any trouble with the new touchscreen. Although Walter knew what he had to do, he didn’t want to admit that he had to. He pushed away from the desk and walked out of his office. Slowly approaching Isaac, he tried to make the conversation sound casual.
“What are you up to rookie?”
Isaac looked up at his boss, smiled and in jest asked,
“What? Are you keeping an eye on me now?”
Walter, in all sincerity said,
“No, I’m pretty sure you are past the watching stage by now.”
Appeased, Isaac pointed to the screen and explained what he was doing.
“You asked me to reopen the missing children file. I managed to garner more information from my interviews with the parents. There was a connection between all three children. All three were in mental distress, hearing voices and subconsciously writing strange mathematical equations on the walls of their bedroom. The one called Amina Green even wrote those things on her ceiling.”
Walter asked,
“How the hell did she manage that?”
“Anything short of a ladder, I have no Idea.”
The Factory Page 21