by Mark Henwick
Arms. Change.
He bent down and studied the IV drip, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. He made sure the tap was open and the needle was in my vein. Then he shrugged and turned back to his cart with the replacement drugs.
Arms.
I could see him looking at the drugs and forms again. He shook his head. Took a couple of the ampoules and put them in his pocket.
I couldn’t kill him. He wasn’t one of the one who had kidnapped me. He didn’t want to give me too much sedative. He was willing to go against a doctor’s orders.
But I had to change.
The wolf moved sluggishly in the depths of my mind, confused.
The flesh on my arms felt as if it was bubbling. My fingers felt bigger and softer. I couldn’t move my head to look, but I tried to follow it in my mind: the pads forming, the nails hardening, curving into claws. The wrists shrinking.
I pulled. My paws squeezed through the grip of the straps. The shock of that sensation stopped the change with my left hand still only halfway out. I had to clear my mind and start again. Slowly the rippling grew until I felt the changes and pulled my hand clear.
Everything felt so slow and heavy, but the arms went back to being human arms.
Now legs.
Too late; he was turning. He hung the new IV bag on the stand.
I wanted to snatch at him.
Wait, wait.
I lay still until he bent to check the catheter in my arm. Then I grabbed him, twisted him around and held him against me in a choke hold.
He couldn’t shout but he sure struggled hard. The restraints worked in my favor. He would’ve been able to lift me alone, but not with a gurney effectively strapped to my back. He tried desperately to get a loose finger on my hand to pry it open, but I hadn’t left any where he could get a grip. I squeezed harder on his neck until I got my message through—stop fighting if you want to breathe.
When his hands stopped scrabbling at mine, I tore the catheter out of my arm.
He fought again as I ripped the Velcro webbing open and pulled the metal jaw braces from my mouth. I just squeezed harder. I didn’t want to strangle him, but I couldn’t let him get free. The endotracheal tube came out next.
“You keep struggling and I’m gonna break your freaking neck,” I croaked.
He stopped. I could imagine him trying to figure the best way out of this. Talk the crazy down? Not while I was choking him. Struggle some more? Same problem.
I eased the pressure a fraction.
“You’re sick,” he gasped. “We’re only trying to help you.”
“Yeah. Got that, bozo. Including kidnapping me off the street.”
That puzzled him a bit, while I loosened the chest strap.
“My name is Ian.”
Oooh. They had him well trained. Make personal contact with your kidnapper. Make them see you as a person. Tell them your name.
“You’ll understand I can’t really say that I’m pleased to meet you, Ian.”
My voice was ragged and still sounded off. There was something in my ears which I’d have to get out when I could spare a hand from more urgent tasks. In the meantime, humor wasn’t what he’d expected from a crazy who was meant to be tranked out of her head. That gave me time to work the hip strap loose.
“I’m not crazy,” I said. “I’ve been kidnapped, and all you’re doing is helping him.”
“That’s…” he stopped.
“Yeah. Crazy. I know. You see my problem here?”
I had the chest strap off. The big challenge was going to be getting vertical without giving him an opportunity to get away.
My legs rippled and I stealthily pulled them up and free of the ankle restraints. They changed back.
“Look, I can call the director. We can get this settled right away.”
“I think I’d rather get it settled, including the lawsuits for wrongful imprisonment, once I’m outside the building.”
“You’ll never get out,” he blurted without thinking.
“That, Ian, is where you’re wrong.”
I tensed. He knew enough about the position he was in to think I might be about to kill him. He instinctively tried to get up. I pushed up with him. The straps were loosened enough, I rose with him, still holding his neck.
We surged clear of the gurney. My vision went gray and I had to bite my tongue to keep conscious. The pain helped.
I will not pass out.
Then I trapped his foot, curled him around and slammed him down against the side of the gurney.
While he was getting his breath back, I was tying his hands with the endotracheal tube and then gagging him with metal braces, tied in place with the IV tube.
Stage one. Between adrenaline and elethesine, I probably was crazy now, and that wouldn’t exactly help me get out of here. I pulled the buzzing earplugs out and sighed with relief.
What next? I didn’t want to play the hostage game. Too slow, too many ways to go wrong.
Which left impersonation and improvisation.
First things first. I was buck naked.
I stripped Ian’s shoes, socks and pants off. He struggled, but it didn’t do him any good. I left him his underwear. I wasn’t that desperate. None of it fit, but I stuffed latex gloves from the dispenser in the shoes and pinned the blue trousers up with paper clips from his clipboard.
Getting his smock was going to be more of a problem. I had nothing in the way of handy weapons to threaten him with.
I swung him up on the gurney, making sure he could see how easily I moved him. He let me, then fought a bit as he realized I was going to strap him down.
I had to punch him hard, which served as an introduction to the next step.
“Ian, I have no intention of hurting you any more than I have to, but I am getting out of here.” I paused while his breathing eased and he got his wind back for a second time. “Now, I’m going to take the tubing off and strap you down. If you think you can take me, half strapped in as you are, then you better be prepared for some serious pain. I could always dose you up with drugs first. Do you hear me?”
He nodded jerkily. His eyes went to the IV bag. I had no idea how I would administer it, but he didn’t look as if he liked the idea.
I pulled his smock up and back over his shoulders. He looked frightened, but he didn’t try anything while I tightened the chest strap. I got one wrist half fastened in the straps and then removed the scavenge tube.
The fight seemed to have left him after the last punch. He let me fix him in place and change the tubing restraints for the webbing that had gagged me. Done.
I put the smock on. It smelled of him, but that was the least of my problems. It’d have to do. I took one of the easy release fasteners on the IV drip and used it to tie my hair back.
His glasses had fallen on the floor. I picked them up and perched them on the top of my head. Anything to distract from my appearance. I really wanted one of those facemasks, but there was nothing else in the room, other than from a thin blanket which I used to cover him.
I found his pen on the floor and took an empty form from the clipboard.
At the top of the page it stated in bold letters: Aurora Regional Center. Great. I was in the Max, Colorado’s most secure institute for the criminally insane.
The patient’s name was Crystal Vincent. The signatures were illegible, but apparently I had been committed by a court order.
I kept the forms.
I scrawled ‘Problem with restraints - moved patient to E-15 to await transfer’ on the back of a spare prescription form and left it on the cart. It might buy me an extra couple of minutes. Anything that might help.
I unlocked the gurney’s wheel with a bit of a fumble and patted his cheek as I swiveled it around. “That’s a good boy, Ian. Try and look crazy for me.”
I hoped he appreciated the irony.
The corridor was wide and yellow and empty.
At the end, there was one of those helpful maps that tell you how to get out of the buildin
g in a hurry. Right next to it was the fire alarm itself. It was tempting, but it was a last resort. I would have hated to be responsible for any genuinely insane criminals escaping, and anyway, the security procedures during an alarm would probably make it harder to get out.
The building was laid out in a huge tic-tac-toe shape with a central exercise area. I was on the east corridor. It looked as if the elevators were on the west side, but there were fire escape stairs in the corners.
I needed to do the circuit and see what looked best.
As I came out of the corridor, a nurse passed by. I looked down at my clipboard and pushed.
Don’t notice me. Just routine.
I pushed us into the north corridor. Through the doors at the end was the central area. The fire escape stairs had alarms. The elevator it would have to be.
Then where? Somewhere in the building would be a locker room where staff changed. That’d be good to get to. The pocket of the smock held Ian’s ID card with a magnetic strip, so I hoped that might get me there and into his locker. Some outdoor clothes and a car would be handy.
I was almost at the door to the west section when someone came through from the other side. Administrator type. He frowned, but held the door open as I waved my ID.
“You shouldn’t be moving a patient alone,” he said.
“I know,” I said humbly. “Debby’s gone home sick and the doctor wanted him moved right away.”
“And for goodness sake, it’s against regs to leave your glasses on your head.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” I folded them and slid them into a pocket.
The man looked down at Ian’s wildly distorting face, rolled his eyes and I was through.
There were elevators clustered around a central column, a security station with one sleepy guard, and a staff break room with the lights off.
Time to ditch my prop.
I wheeled the gurney into the break room.
I held up the ampoules he had pocketed where he could see them. “Thanks for that. You’re okay. And neither of us is crazy,” I said to him. “But only one of us is in restraints. Relax. They’ll probably let you out eventually.”
I left him in there.
“Just been reamed out for pushing him by myself,” I mumbled at the guard. “Gotta get help. He’ll be okay in there for a couple of minutes.”
The guard grunted, not bothering to look up.
The elevator seemed to take forever to arrive.
When it came, there was no convenient labeling to tell me where to go. It was time for guesswork.
Six options. We were on third. Basement would be cars. First floor should be locker rooms. Maybe second or top would be offices and consulting rooms.
I hit the button for the first floor and hoped. If I could find Ian’s locker, maybe he had a car in the basement. We were still a good long way away from Christmas, but hey, I was due an early present.
The first floor was mixed. There were offices, but there were also locker rooms and showers. That much was good. They were segregated. Not so good.
I barged into the men’s locker room as if I belonged. I could always claim I’d gotten distracted.
The place was empty.
I’d gotten lucky on shift times but less so on Ian. I knew which was his locker—his ID had the number printed on it. But inside, his cycling helmet and florescent Lycra gear mocked me.
There was another ID for main gate security, which I took, along with his cycling jacket and a chocolate bar.
I left him his glasses.
There was no point hanging around here, especially in the men’s locker room. On this level the stairs were open. I ignored the elevators and ran down the steps into the basement.
I was short on planning, but something would occur to me.
Maybe someone had left their keys in their car.
I burst into the empty parking garage, automatic ceiling lights coming on as I moved in.
Where to start looking? Which side felt luckier?
As it turned out, neither side. The silence was shattered by an alarm.
Crap. Time up.
Bollards began to rise out of the floor on the ramp exiting the garage and beyond them, sheet metal shutters started to come down.
I sprinted forward and rolled under the shutter.
The top of the ramp was half covered in snow despite the efforts of someone to shovel the worst away. It was falling heavily, and the wind was pushing it up in drifts.
There were lights coming on across the grounds, but between the snow and the dark, I wasn’t getting worried yet. Unless I ran straight into a patrol, I had a few minutes more.
I discounted the main entrance. If the alarm hadn’t gone off it might have been an easy way out, but not now. I’d get out all right, but I could end up killing someone to do it. The fence would be better.
I ran across the open ground. They’d be able to track the marks I was making in the snow, but I planned to be long gone by then.
Across the perimeter road, the fence was chain link, about ten feet tall, with inward-leaning barbed wire. It looked formidable, but within the first week of training in Ops 4-10, they’d had us climbing worse. My real problem was if there were sensors on it, but I didn’t have time to check. I wasn’t going to be on it very long anyway.
I was not at my best, and it was slippery underfoot. My leap would have had my old army squad hooting with laughter, but it got me up. I grabbed the angled stanchion used to hold the barbed wire at the top, swung my body up and did a sort of sideways pole-vault over, falling into the unmarked snow outside. Shouts came from the direction of the buildings; they’d found my tracks, but I bet myself none of them could vault the fence and I was certain none of them could keep up with me running for any length of time.
I guessed that was stage two completed. I was feeling much better. I needed a shower to scrub the top layer of skin off, but I had to push that aside.
It was time to get away and start settling scores.
Chapter 63
TUESDAY
The Aurora Regional Center was out on the east side of town, hidden away next to Buck airfield.
Rom’s garage wasn’t that far away, but I wasn’t looking for a place to hide, and I didn’t want to involve him anyway.
I wanted to confront my sister and then I wanted to chase down the rogue and kill him. Or her. Part of my brain not involved in escape had been kicking scenarios around, puzzling out the problem. Was Noble the rogue? Or had the rogue simply taken on Noble’s appearance, the way he had Alex’s, in order access to the Center? I didn’t see how the rogue could be Noble—there was still the issue with the size of the rogue’s wolf form. But insane asylums were Noble’s territory. If the rogue were someone else, why bother to take me there at all? Why not just take me to his or her hideout? Did he need access to drugs? Or was it to implicate Noble?
The rogue had fooled me too many times. I could no longer trust anything I thought I knew.
It was a little after midnight, so officially Tuesday morning. It was dark, and even near streetlights, I could barely see twenty yards in the heavy snow. I could have had every policeman in the city looking for me and still walked along the roads without worry. Or without worry of capture. Freezing to death was a problem.
The wind was howling down from the north, whipping snow horizontally. And thanks to the forecast failure, the road crews had obviously been overwhelmed and the roads were quickly becoming blocked. Good for escaping mental prisoners.
It was only a dozen miles to my sister’s house, and I wanted to make sure the drugs had worked themselves out of my body. So I found Mississippi Avenue—long, straight, wide, heading in exactly the right direction and practically empty of cars. With lots of side roads and paths off it, just in case.
I started running.
Even with the snow, and wearing shoes that were too big for me, I still reckoned I’d be there in a couple of hours, maybe less. My sister was going to get a very early
morning wakeup.
Well over an hour later I passed Garland Park, visible only because of the tennis court fencing that stood out from the banks of snow. The snowfall had gotten heavier and the wind stronger. My ETA was creeping up all the time, but on the other side of the park, I scrambled down onto the Cherry Creek running trail and felt I was on the home straight.
The sheer amount of snow had slowed me some, but the sunken running track was slightly sheltered and easier going.
The cold was fine. Running at that pace for that length of time would have overheated my body if it were warmer.
The trail took a detour around the Country Club. I ignored the deviation; I jumped the fences and ran straight across the silent golf course.
On the other side, I didn’t bother getting back on the trail. Emerson Street was only a block away, made strange by the huge mounds along the sides of the road that were buried cars. The snow had drifted up against the trees lining the sidewalk, and I slowed to a trot, breaking fresh tracks down the middle of the road.
I knew where Kath lived, but I’d never been invited there. It was Taylor’s house, a pretty little bungalow on a pretty, tree-lined street. Not where she wanted her sister visiting.
After a block, I had to wade through the sidewalks to check a house number, and when I got back to the road, an SUV was inching its way slowly from the far end. I snatched myself back from the beam of the headlights, but the driver didn’t seem to have noticed me.
I cursed and moved cautiously along the sidewalk.
The SUV stopped roughly where I anticipated Taylor’s house was.
Crap. I hid and watched, but I was cooling down too quickly to wait around long. My hands and feet had gone from cold and painful to numb.
There were no streetlights in that stretch, but a porch light came on and showed me a tall man, bulky in a ski jacket, checking house numbers just like I had.
My heart stopped. It was Alex.
Or it looked like Alex.
Whether I made a sound, or he sensed me some other way, his head turned.
“Amber?” he said.
Suddenly, he was running toward me, forcing the deep snow aside.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Stay back. Just stay back.”