by Sam Sisavath
“I know where I came from.”
“I’m not talking about a place. I’m talking about who.”
“Tell me, Quinn, what do you know about your parents?” he had asked her the last time.
“You were adopted,” Hofheinz said before she could reply.
This time it was Quinn’s turn to keep quiet.
“I pored over your background after our last encounter,” Hofheinz continued. “You never knew your parents. A paper box showed up at a church’s front doorsteps when you were just an infant, along with a piece of paper that had your name written on it. ‘Quinn.’ No last name.”
She remained silent even though she could feel the anger growing…
“And that’s pretty much all anyone knows about your past,” Hofheinz said, undeterred by her silence. “There was a fire at the orphanage where you were raised. It destroyed all of your records, along with everyone else’s. But even before that, you were involved in an accident at the age of ten that left you unable to remember most of your childhood up to that point. A concussion that caused memory loss, according to the doctors, and you essentially had to start all over again from age ten onward. Those medical files, also very conveniently, disappeared when the hospital’s computers became infected with malware.”
He looked over at her and smiled, except there was nothing pleasant about it.
“Why,” Hofheinz said, “if I weren’t the honest type, I’d almost think someone was intentionally trying to obfuscate your past.”
What the hell are you talking about, you crazy sonofabitch? she thought, but not all that far in the back of her mind were Ben’s last words to her:
“I told myself I did it to protect you, but maybe…I don’t know. Maybe I did it to protect myself a little bit, too.”
What didn’t you tell me, Ben? What did you keep from me all these years?
But she didn’t give voice to those thoughts because it would only confirm—or at least, lend credence—to Hofheinz’s theory. The man was clearly fishing for a response from her and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, even if it was killing her to keep quiet.
Hofheinz got tired of waiting for a response and turned back to the monitor. “When you were twelve, you ran away from the orphanage. I guess you were tired of waiting for a family to take a chance on you. I don’t blame you. No one likes being constantly rejected. I know I don’t.” He paused briefly, seemed to squint at something on the computer, before continuing: “And then you met Ben Foster. He crossed your path during an FBI investigation into a criminal ring using street urchins to commit crimes. Homeless, family-less, and history-less kids like you. For some reason, maybe because he had lost his own daughter years earlier—the reason for his failed marriage, perhaps?—he latched onto you, and vice versa.”
Hofheinz leaned back from the monitor and turned his full attention to her.
“And now here you are, Quinn Turner. An FBI special agent. Well, a former FBI special agent, anyway. That must have been quite a thrilling day when you graduated from Quantico. He was there, I assumed. Of course he would be. It must have been like watching his own daughter graduate. He did, after all, pay your way through school, all the way up to college, and called in every favor he had to get you into the academy.”
“So you know how to read. Congratulations,” Quinn said as calmly as she could muster. She wanted to spit other words out at him, but she didn’t. He was waiting for it—he wanted it—and she refused to give it to him. It was an insignificant victory, but it might be the only one she got for a long while.
He chuckled before something on the computer screen made him turn back to it. “Oh.”
Oh? What the hell does oh mean?
“What is it?” she asked, unable to stop herself.
He glanced over at her, then back to the monitor.
“Goddammit, what’s on the screen?” she asked.
“You,” Hofheinz said.
“What do you mean, me?”
One corner of his mouth tugged upward into a grin. “I was right about you, Quinn. Someone has been a very, very bad girl.”
He snatched up the tablet and turned around and pulled open the door, giving her a glimpse of the hallway on the other side. She saw white (of course) walls and very little else before Hofheinz closed the door behind him.
“Hofheinz!” she shouted. “Hofheinz!”
Nothing. The door remained shut.
And she was suddenly all alone inside the rom.
Quinn would have slumped back against the chair in frustration if she could. Instead, she stared across the room at the monitor sticking out of the wall. It was easier than straining her eyes to get a look at…not very much else around her. Hofheinz had left the computer on, but despite the screen being turned away from her (I bet he did that on purpose, the bastard), she thought she could (just barely) make out white and green letterings and what could have been...pictures? Whatever it was, it had sent Hofheinz running out of here excited.
“I was right about you, Quinn,” he had said. “Someone has been a very, very bad girl.”
Someone? she thought. Who is someone?
Was he talking about her? No, that didn’t make any sense.
Then who, if not her? Who else was involved in this?
Xiao? No. He hadn’t bothered to even bring up her name, if he knew who she was at all. Hofheinz struck her as someone with a very limited field of interest, and right now that was her. The thought made her shiver again.
So if it wasn’t Xiao and he hadn’t been referring to her, then who was the other possible “bad girl?”
She sighed, the frustration taking its toll on her mentally. At least there was no pain in any part of her body, not even any lingering aches from all the bumps and bruises she’d taken the last few days. She didn’t know if that was because of the chair or—
What else could it be? It had to be the chair. This thing was…she couldn’t even describe it.
Quinn closed her eyes and the relief was almost instantaneous. Maybe it was the culminating fatigue of everything she had been through, or maybe it was just being able to finally sit down, but sleep came easily and she had no strength to fight it.
“Quinn.”
Someone was whispering her name. She’d heard it before, back at the hospital when the faceless men first came for her. It was the same voice, she was sure of it, and like that first time there was a sense of familiarity to it, as if it had always been with her.
“Wake up, Quinn.”
It was persistent, and she found it difficult to ignore so she could go back to sleep. She tried to chase it away, but it wouldn’t obey. Instead it seemed to get stronger, more urgent.
“It’s time to wake up. Remember what I taught you.”
Taught her? No one had taught her anything. She’d had to learn it all by herself, experiencing all the pain and misery as she tried to make her way in the world. Every now and then when the gods smiled down on her, there was some happiness to remind her it wasn’t all bad, but those times were far and few.
“It’s time to go.”
Go? Go where? She wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t want to go anyway. There was something so soothing, so comfortable about the chair—the way it embraced her, conformed itself to her body as if it were created solely for the purpose of pleasing her.
“But you have to wake up first.”
She couldn’t shoo away the voice, but she could ignore it. Maybe. She pushed it into the back of her mind and let herself be lulled back to sleep, float back to the welcoming embrace of unfathomably soft clouds—
“Wake up, Quinn!”
Her eyes snapped open—wide—and she gasped for breath.
She searched for the voice (Okay, I’m awake; now what?) but it wasn’t there anymore. She knew it was gone almost right away, even if she didn’t have a clue how she knew.
The room. She was still in the white room.
Goddammit.
The monitor was wh
ere she last saw it, hanging off the wall mount in front of her. And just behind it was the outline of the door—her way out of here. If only she could reach it. If only she could get up from this damn chair.
She remembered the slight jolt of electricity—not enough to hurt, just startle—when Hofheinz was scanning her earlier. And that was exactly what it had been, she was sure of it now. Like some kind of hospital equipment except…ridiculously more comfortable. The chair was clearly capable of more than just being sat on; it was some kind of multifunctioning device. What else could it do? And did she really want to find out?
Her mouth was dry for some reason, and Quinn worked saliva around to chase away the cotton taste. There was a slight humming in her right ear—no, not just her right, but in both ears. She hadn’t detected it earlier when she was awake the first time, but now, without Hofheinz’s annoying voice to occupy her attention, she could just detect it running in the background. Some kind of power source, maybe.
No one had come into the room since Hofheinz left, since she gave in to the chair. The monitor was still (mostly) turned away from her, but she had a better feel for the size of the place—fifteen by twenty, longer than it was wide. Bigger than an average bedroom, with plenty of space to move around.
She focused on the door. There, behind the monitor. But in order to get to it, she had to get out of the chair first.
She sighed.
Back to square one, she thought, when there was a click! just before the door opened in front of her.
Her body tightened as a figure (Not Hofheinz!) stood in the open doorway and looked in, as if to make sure the room was empty. The extra second or two allowed Quinn to get a better glimpse of the hallway outside—brightly lit with clean white walls, and no signs of any kind of activity. It didn’t look like any FBI or government building she had ever been in. In fact, it didn’t look like any building she had ever been in at all.
Quinn knew she was looking at a woman—the hips and shoulders gave it away—even if she couldn’t see the face, because there was no face. The woman was using the same device that Porter had told her about, and that knowledge took away not only the mystery, but the fear that she had felt back at the hospital and in the alley.
As soon as the woman stepped inside the room, she immediately turned to the computer that Hofheinz had been preoccupied with earlier.
“Who are you?” Quinn asked.
The faceless woman didn’t answer her and instead began tapping on the touchscreen.
“Hey,” Quinn said. Then, when the woman still didn’t respond and continued silently working on the monitor, “Hey!”
This time the woman stopped tapping momentarily to glance over.
“Where am I?” Quinn asked anyway. “Where’s Hofheinz? Where’s Porter?”
Quinn didn’t actually expect answers and the woman didn’t disappoint, turning back to the computer and continued…doing whatever she had come in here to do.
“Is he dead?” Quinn asked. “Porter. Is he dead?”
The woman kept working.
“Hey,” Quinn said. “I’m talking to you. What—”
The woman stopped what she was doing and looked over. “I’ve sabotaged access to the security cameras, but it won’t be long before someone shows up who can fix it. I’m sorry, but this is the best I can do. The rest is up to you.”
“Wait, what? Who are you?”
“Hofheinz will be back soon. You need to be gone before he does, or you’ll never leave this place.”
“Who—” Quinn started to ask, but the woman had already turned toward the door. “Hey, don’t go!”
The door clicked shut after the woman just as Quinn leaned forward and shouted after her, “Come back here!”
It took her some time—Two seconds? Five?—before she realized what she had done.
She had leaned forward in the chair!
It took another ten full seconds before she could fully process the consequences of that.
She had moved!
Then her legs were touching the floor and pressing down even as she rose from the chair and took one step forward, and found herself standing straight up.
“Oh,” Quinn whispered.
Chapter 25
It was a trick. A game that Hofheinz was playing with her. Maybe she was still sitting in the chair, sleeping, and all of this was in her mind. After all, what did she know about the chair? It was a machine, and it could do things—impossible things—that normal chairs couldn’t.
“There are a lot of things that exist that you couldn’t possibly imagine,” Porter had said. “That’s what makes the Rhim so dangerous. That’s what makes them so lethal to their enemies.”
And Hofheinz was probably sadistic enough to enjoy this kind of mental torture just for a laugh. In another life she imagined the man working under Josef Mengele—or maybe he might have been Herr Mengele himself.
Except she had been standing for the last minute, and no one had come into the room to force her back into the chair.
The door remained closed, and there was just her slightly labored breathing (why was her pulse racing?) and the ever-present quiet hum in the background. (A generator? If not a generator, then what?) Her senses were heightened to the point where she could count every raised heartbeat as if they were gunshots.
This is real. I’m not still in the chair. This is real.
She looked back at the object just to make sure. Her first impressions of it had been correct—it was solid metal that reflected back the ceiling lights and shouldn’t have been the slightest bit comfortable, and yet it had been. Very, very much so. The smooth silver armrests were warm to the touch and not the electric cold that their appearance hinted at. And it was solid. Very, very solid.
So why had it felt so good when she was sitting on it?
Think about that later. Remember what the woman said?
“Hofheinz will be back soon. You need to be gone before he does, or you’ll never leave this place.”
Whoever she had been, the woman had done this. She’d freed Quinn from the chair. The hows and whys didn’t matter—at least, not right now.
She was free!
Quinn hurried to the only other piece of equipment in the place besides the chair. It stuck out from the wall on a slim metal bracket. The monitor itself was nothing special, but it wasn’t what it was made of that interested her—it was what was on it that sent her almost running across the room. What was on that screen that had made Hofheinz leave like a kid running down the stairs on Christmas day?
She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t a simple computer rendering of the chair and a flashing prompt that read RELEASE in green letters.
“This is the best I can do. The rest is up to you,” the woman had said.
The rest? The rest of what?
Escape. She was talking about escape.
Quinn wished the woman had said more—wished she had known the right questions to ask in the little time they had together before the faceless woman left. Of course, whether the woman would have answered was another matter. Quinn got the sense that she was scared, that she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
“I’ve sabotaged access to the security cameras, but it won’t be long before someone shows up who can fix it. I’m sorry, but this is the best I can do. The rest is up to you.”
She stared at the monitor, trying to figure it out. Had the woman replaced whatever it was Hofheinz had seen that sent him running out of here with a new screen? She had been doing something to the computer for at least thirty seconds before she finally addressed Quinn. It would make sense that whatever Hofheinz had been looking at and what the woman had searched for would be two different things—the result of the scan by the chair and the controls to release her.
Quinn gave the screen a tentative push with one finger, and when nothing happened, she pressed harder. When there was still no reaction she tried flicking sideways, then up and down the way she had seen Hof
heinz, then the woman, do earlier. Except the screen never changed and continued to show the chair and the blinking RELEASE in green letters.
“Shit.”
She tapped the monitor with her entire hand, more out of frustration than anything. When that didn’t seem to have an effect and the screen remained unchanged, she hit it again—this time with a balled fist.
Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.
RELEASE stared back at her.
She hit it a third time, even harder than the last two, and the screen shook and the metal bracket trembled slightly, but the same screen continued to mock her.
“Right. Like you expected that to actually work.”
Quinn sighed and would have laughed if she weren’t so frustrated. Did she really think hitting it would do anything?
Maybe a swift kick might work, she thought even as she stared at her own reflection on the screen.
She hadn’t noticed it before when she was in the chair, but she was still wearing the same clothes from Mary’s house—the shirt and pants that belonged to the absent Laura. Soot and smoke (and some blood) clung to the various parts of the fabric, which was wrinkled and stained in other places from the events of the warehouse. The only thing missing were her shoes—she was barefoot. How had she not noticed that before?
Quinn glanced around her, but there was nothing in the room that even hinted at being a possible weapon. The all-in-one computer/monitor and its keyboard were the only things that even came close, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to make it out of here with only a keyboard at her side. The black metal bracket that fastened the computer to the wall had some potential, but she was probably giving herself too much credit to think she could pry that thing loose with just her bare hands.
“Hofheinz will be back soon,” the faceless woman had said. “You need to be gone before he does, or you’ll never leave this place.”
Quinn abandoned the monitor and walked the short distance to the door. It had a simple lever handle that was colored white (Of course) so it blended in with its surroundings. She didn’t see anything that looked like a lock of any type. She had expected something more elaborate or at least a little more security-conscious.