The Evil You Know
By Ann Morgan
Kathy Gilman carefully studied the temperature and pressure gauges in front of her. They were set to detect differences as slight as 1/10 of one degree, or one gram per square foot of pressure in the glass walled tank in front of her.
Actually, the tank wasn't entirely glass. Only the exterior surface, six inches thick was. Beneath that was six inches of pure, distilled water ice, and contained beneath that were over 500 gallons of liquid helium, in which was suspended a form she carefully avoided looking at. The combined construction of the tank was necessary. At the temperatures inside, only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, ice became nearly as strong as steel, but glass became as fragile as if it were only as thick as the coverslip on a slide, rather than six inches. The layer of ice protected the glass, moderating the temperature somewhat. It was still feindishly cold, though, and a railing a foot away from the frosted cylinder prevented anyone from accidentally touching it, which was to be avoided at all costs. Not only was the exterior of the tank cold enough to instantly freeze whatever part of your body you were careless enough to touch it with, but the sudden, drastic temperature change would very likely shatter the glass, freeing the thing within.
Perversely, she found herself staring at the frosted surface of the tank, for maybe the fiftieth time that day. It was hard to actually see the figure inside, but she had seen it often enough when the tank had been scraped free of ice for various observations that her memory supplied the details. It was a man, rather tall and thin, wearing a black suit and white shirt. A tangle of wires, tubing and cables emerged from various parts of his body, like a swarm of technological parasites. A few of these simply held him suspended in the middle of the tank, where it was coldest. Most of them, however, either monitored or tested the internal state of the frozen man.
The frozen specimen, she reminded herself. It isn't human. She had seen enough of the test results to convince herself of that. If nothing else, the fact that it was still alive, and apparently still thinking at a temperature where even molecular motion was nearly impossible would have convinced her of it's essential alien nature. Besides, she was a scientist. It wouldn't do to get attached to the specimen.
She forced herself to look down at the monitor again. The level in the tank was a tenth of an inch lower. For the sixth time that hour, she added a few more ounces of liquid helium to the tank. The loss of the fluid couldn't be avoided. They could have made the tank airtight, but then the buildup of vapor as the super-cooled liquid evaporated would have eventually built up the pressure to the point where it would have simply made the tank explode like a bomb, either releasing or killing the Tall Man. In either case, they would be screwed. If he were killed, another would take his place. And it was unlikely that he would be foolish enough to let himself be trapped like a fly in amber twice.
The liquid helium hissed as she let it into the tank. It almost sounded like it was speaking to her.
("Giiiirl")
Kathy shook her head. There was no voice in it. That had been a long lime ago. She turned the supply of helium back off and studied her monitor. The temperature read -270 degrees celcius. That was fine. So long as it stayed below -268.9, the boiling point of helium, they would all be safe.
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An hour later, to her intense relief, Kathy's shift ended. As she walked back to the small apartment where she stayed in the secret military compound designated Zeta base, she wondered why she had ever volunteered for this assignment. It had been only three weeks since she had come here (and had the highly classified nature of what it was she would be doing pounded into her head), but it sometimes seemed like a lifetime ago. Back then, she had been ambitious, and jumped at the opportunity to do something important, protecting millions of people from this other-worldy menace, even if most of them never even knew that that menace even existed. Besides which, if she did well on such an important task, she would be on the fast track to get a promotion.
That had seemed important to her too, once. Before the voices and the visions had started. If they were visions, and not memories, as she sometimes thought. Often, she thought she was going insane. She knew that insanity ran on both sides of her family. It was why she had been taken from her parents when she was only four years old and placed into foster care with the Gilman's, who later adopted her. She had grown up thinking the Gilman's were her parent's and only found out the truth when the Gilman's had shared her records with her when she was sixteen. Often, she wished that they hadn't. It would have been easier to believe that her parents were both dead, than to know that they were alive and confined to a mental hospital, so violently psychotic that they were forbidden all visitors.
When Kathy had joined the army, the application had asked if she had any close relatives who suffered from insanity. She had lied and answered 'no'. She knew that many forms of insanity were genetic, and if the army had know that she had even one schizophrenic parent, let alone two, it would ruin her chances to ever obtain such an important and trusted position as she had now. Besides which, she had never noticed any signs of insanity in herself. At least, not until she had started her current work, preserving the captivity of the Tall Man, and the voices and visions (...memories...) had started.
Sometimes she wondered whether she shouldn't tell her superiors about what she was experiencing. If she was going insane, she could present a danger to the entire project. And maybe if she could get awy from the Tall Man, whatever was happening to her would stop. She could go back to what she had been before.
(You can never go back, giiiirl.)
Kathy shivered and shook the voice out of her head. That thing in the tank was not talking to her. It was frozen. She went into her cramped bathroom and shook five sleeping pills onto her hand, before gulping them down with a glass of water. She was just tired, that was why her imagination was running away with her. She would get some sleep, and by the time her next shift came, she would be able to handle it. Everything would be just fine.
(Let me out.)
Kathy shivered under her thin blanket and slept.
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Reggie glared at the woman soldier who brought him his breakfast. He had been in this place for three weeks, and had not gotten any definite answers as to why he was being held here, or more importantly, when he was getting out. A second soldier, an angry looking man wearing camo with a rifle pointed at him stood a few yards away, making sure that he did not try to jump the woman bringing him his dinner in order to try and get out, as he had done after his first week here.
The woman soldier had a carefully neutral expression. Her face might as well have been a mask. She had a good figure, though, Reggie noticed. That was one thing that hadn't changed here. He still liked watching a good looking woman. And he got a nice view of her butt when she leaned over to place the tray of food on the table in front of him.
In retrospect, Reggie decided, accepting the offer of these government goons to help him deal with the Tall Man had been a big mistake. They had bumped into eachother in an abandoned town, shortly after Mike's, soul-mate, Elizabeth had died. At the time, Reggie had believed that the meeting was accidental. The suits he met claimed the government had known about the Tall Man for years, and offered to give Reggie a whole pile of money, plus some really neat equipment if he would help them catch him. Catch, not kill. Because if he were killed, he just came back, reincarnated or something from whatever hell-hole dimension he came from.
Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. They had eventually lured the Tall Man to a particular spot, where he had been sprayed with liquid helium, freezing him in some sort of suspend animation. But then, instead of thanking him and giving him the million dollars they had promised (with which Reggie had intended to have a really good time in Vegas), several goons had jumped on him and Mike, dragging them off to this place, whatever the hell it was.
He had only seen Mike once since he got here. Occasionally they would strap him into a wheelchair and roll him to a different area for a blood test or an X-ray. It had been one such time when he had seen Mike strapped to a bed, with an IV hooked up to him. He had been un-naturally still, as if in a coma. Reggie could only assume that the IV contained some sort of drug, keeping him asleep.
Or else they had lobotomized him. But he wouldn't let himself think about that. But he couldn't figure out why the hell they would think Mike should have to be kept unconscious and not him. Of course, they were all government assholes and probably weren't thinking straight, just following orders that came from six different people with six different (and conflicting) agendas. He should have never gotten involved with them.
"When are you going to let me and Mike out of here?" He asked the woman soldier. He asked her every time she brought him his dinner. Although he had never gotten a decent answer, he was hoping at least for a different answer. One that might contain some clue as to what was going on around here.
"Reggie." The woman gave him a phony looking smile, one that did absolutely nothing for him. "I've already explained this to you sixteen times. You've come in contact with an otherworldly creature. It's possible you might be harboring some sort of disease you caught from it. We have to keep you here under quarantine for a few more weeks until we're absolutely certain that you're not carrying any micro-organisms or parasites that could start an epidemic."
"Yeah, well a few weeks ago you told me I was just going to be here for a few days." The woman didn't respond to this. "And where the hell is Mike? Why won't you let me see him?"
"He's being held in quarantine, just like you are, but seperately. If only one of you were infected with a disease, we wouldn't want him infecting the other one, now would we. As soon as we're sure that it's safe, you'll both be released." She picked up the old tray, the one from last nights supper, gestured to her silent, rifle carrying guard, and they both left, locking the door behind them.
"Bitch" Reggie swore at the door as soon as he heard the lock click. She talked to him as if he were a baby. And everything she told him was bullshit. Apparently she didn't realize that he had caught a glimpse of Mike, and whatever it was they had done to him, it wasn't "just like him, but seperately". And if they thought he might have some sort of disease from the Tall Man's world, why weren't they taking some kind of precautions, like wearing isolation suits like you saw in movies or something.
He jabbed his fork viciously into the overcooked sausages they had given him, wishing that it were the neck of whatever bastard was responsible for locking him up here. Whoever they were, they just better hope he never got a hold of them. He'd teach them to mess with the Regman.
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Kathy woke up the next morning feeling unexplainably depressed, as if her alarm clock had interupted a sad dream that she couldn't remember. She went to the cafeteria for some breakfast, finishing it at almost exactly the same instant as Reggie finished his. She didn't enjoy it, however. She had woken up with a funny taste in her mouth, perhaps a residue of the pills she had taken the previous night, and it tainted everything she was eating. She had an extra glass of orange juice afterwards, which she sipped on as she walked through the hallways, trying to rinse the taste out of her mouth. It didn't help, however, and her gloominess increased.
It was cold that morning. At least, it felt that way to her. It shouldn't have. Zeta base was entirely underground, and except for they tank where the Tall Man was imprisoned, was kept at a constant 68 degrees. But she felt cold, as if she were outside in the winter. She shivered, tossed her empty cup in an garbage can and walked on through the corridors. They were mainly empty. The base operated on three shifts, and the ones who weren't working were either asleep, or gathered together in a few areas such as the cafeteria she had just left, or the smoking lounge.
They're afraid. She suddenly realized. They're afraid of the Tall Man. Even though he's frozen, they're still afraid, and they gather together in a few places, like children around a campfire, trying to pretend to eachother that the noise they heard out in the dark was only the wind.
The thought made her feel colder. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and kept walking. She had never thought about it before, but this whole base resembled nothing more than some kind of tomb. Not only was it buried, but it was covered on the walls, floors, and ceiling with some kind of tile meant to resemble marble or some other polished rock. The only interuptions to this motif were occasional windows into tiled rooms, and the bluish flourescent lighting.
Turning around a corner, Kathy found herself looking into darkness. She sucked in her breath, terrified for an instant before she remembered where she was. It was in the area where they were holding that man, Reggie, and the ordinary glass in his room had been replaced with the bulletproof, one way variety. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that it was not completely dark. Small nightlights lined the corridor ahead, and she could make out the silhouettes of two men standing near the window and staring at Reggie, as if he were an animal placed in a cage for their amusement.
She walked over to them, eager for some human contact. "Isn't that the guy they picked up near Perigord?" She asked, "I didn't know they were still keeping him here. I thought that they were only going to keep him here a few days, until his blood tests came back."
One of the men laughed. "That's what they told him. It's bullshit, though."
"Bullshit? Why?"
"Feeding him that line about how he might have gotten a disease from the Tall Man's planet. A human being is as about as likely to get an alien disease as they are to get Dutch Elm Disease."
"Well, if he's not carrying an infection, then why don't they let him go? It's not as if he's like that other one, Mike."
The two men glared at her. Mentioning what the Tall Man had apparently done to Mike was a tabboo subject on the base, mainly because their rigid military minds did not deal well with unprecedented situations. And whatever the Tall Man had done to Mike, it was completely outside their experience. Nobody wanted to make a decision as to what should be done with him, because if anything went wrong as a result, they would be blamed. As a result, it was quite likely that Mike would be kept in a drugged stupor for the rest of his natural life while a succession of generals and congressmen argued over what should be done with him.
Reggie, however, was an easier matter to deal with. The procedure as to what to do with people in his situation was well documented, although not in any documents that ordinary civilians had access to.
"Probably he'll have to be taken care of." One of them finally said. "I expect it'll be done in a few weeks, as soon as they get all the paperwork done."
"They'll kill him?" The two men looked uncomfortable as Kathy spoke without using the requisite euphemisms. "But he hasn't done anything."
"It doesn't matter." The taller of the two men shrugged. "They got his psychological profile the first week he was here. He's too stupid the keep his mouth shut about the Tall Man in order to keep from panicking people and to idealistic to be bought off."
I don't believe this, Kathy thought. "But, who would believe him, even if he did tell people about the Tall Man. They'd just think he was crazy."
"Maybe so, Kat." Said the shorter man. "But look at it this way. The man's an anachronism. He's a danger to society. That four barreled shotgun we took off of him has been illegal for over 50 years, but he didn't even think twice about having a thing like that. Hell, he should have been born 200 years ago. Then he could have sublimated his violent impulses by fighting the Indians."
"Kathy," The taller of the two men said somberly, "The country doesn't need men like him."
A deeper voice chuckled in her head. (Or perhaps men like him don't need their country.)
She shook her head. The Tall Man was not speaking to her. He was not. And The two men were right. They really couldn't let Reggie out of here. He was too dangerous to American society, both because of what he knew, and because of his addiction to violence.
"You're right. If we let him out of here, without the Tall Man to shoot at, he'd probably go on a rampage at the local mall in a few months or something. Or else he'd try to take over a TV station and tell people about the Tall Man. We really don't need crap like that going on. It just upsets people." The two men nodded, satisfied they were dealing with one of their own mindset. Kathy stood by them for a few more minutes before excusing herself to change into her uniform before her shift started
(At least the Ice Cream man is honest.)
Kathy ignored the voice and walked faster down the hall.
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Kathy's shift was over all too soon. She had been working only three hours, and wasn't monitoring the readings from the tank as concienciously as she liked. She kept looking up every ten seconds, convinced that the Tall Man had just moved, or was about to move. Perhaps if she pretended to look at the monitors, but really watched him out of the corner of her eye, she would catch him lifting an arm or opening his eyes.
Then his voice had started in her head again.
(Giiirl. I can hear your thoughts.)
NO! She thought furiously as she added more Helium to the tank. It didn't really need it, but she wanted to punish the figure within for making her think she was going insane. The Tall Man isn't talking to me. I'm not going crazy. I'm just tired, and my imagination is playing tricks.
(Yes, giiirl. I own you. I own everyone here.)
Liar. She thought, now convinced at least subconciously that the Tall Man, frozen as he was could somehow hear her telepathically. Perhaps his ghost or whatever had left his frozen body and was wandering this place. You don't own us. We have you trapped, and you're going to stay that way.
(Let me out, giiirl)
No! We have to keep him frozen. It's too keep the country safe. Even what they are going to do to Reggie, it's bad, but it's for the good of society.
(Who do you think you're fooling, giiirl? You do MY work here!)
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Blackness had rolled out of the tank then, like a thundercloud over a previously clear sky. It went into her eyes and lungs, and she stumbled around in it, trying to find her way out the door. Instead, when she saw light, it wasn't the hallway, it was instead the one-way window through which she had seen Reggie a few hours earlier. He was still in his chair, but instead of having his arms folded obstinately across his chest, they lay limply at his sides. Half his head was gone, and red was splashed all over the walls of the room, and the window she was looking through, as well.
Suddenly the overhead lights flicked on, dimming the view of Reggie's corpse. She heard footsteps, from farther down the hall, and turned to see who it was.
At first she couldn't make it out. They were silhouted, a black shadow against the flourescent lights, which must have been getting too much voltage, they were far too bright now. The figure stalked closer, loping like a cat after a crippled rabbit, and soon she could see who it was.
The Tall Man.
Kathy tried to turn and run, but she was paralysed in one spot, like a deer hypnotized by oncoming headlights. The Tall Man strode up to her, seized her by the throat and growled:
"Let me out, giiirl!!"
"No, I can't" She squeaked. The Tall Man was infuriated by this and pushed her against the window. Somehow, despite his fatal injury, Reggie was standing again. He was a horrible sight, the top of his head was gone, and the intelligence and humor in his eyes was gone replaced by emptiness, like that fo a congenital idiot.
Reggie looked at her in bafflement, as if wondering why her face was jammed up against the other side of the window. Then he spoke. "This is His domain."
"What are you talking about?" She asked, but didn't get a chance to find out. The Tall Man lifted her up and threw her through the inch thick glass.
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Kathy woke up on the floor of the tank room coughing. Several of her co-workers were standing over her trying to look concerned. It was hard to think of them as feeling anything, though, She never realized before what a dehumanizing effect wearing an identical uniform had on people. As if they were just interchangable objects. If one broke or needed to be discarded for whatever reason, there were plenty more. She looked around in a daze. The Tall Man was still hanging, frozen in his tank, not walking down the hallway.
"This is his domain." She murmured.
"What's that?" Asked Leutenant Lewis. "Are you all right? Did you say something?"
"I don't know." She looked around. Had it all been a dream then? "What happened?"
"You fainted." The leutenant told her. "It must have been from hardly moving at all. The blood must have gone out of your head. When you stood up, you just collapsed."
Kathy shook her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't sleep well last night."
The leutenant looked upset. "Well, why don't you go back to your quarters and lie down for the rest of the day. We'll get someone in here to replace you. We can't have you fainting like that when you need to be observing the monitors."
"Yeah, good idea." Kathy decided. She got up, embarrassed at having made a spectacle of herself, and more than a little worried. What if as a result of this fainting episode someone dug deeper into her medical history, and found out about her parents? She could lose her assignment, her rank, everything.
(Be glad you still have your life) The Tall Man mocked her as she shuffled back to her room. (That you aren't going 'to be taken care of' like the Ice Cream man.)
"Shut up" She mumbled as soon as she shut the door to her quarters, so no-one could hear her. "It's not my fault what they are doing to Reggie. And there's nothing I can do about it anyways."
(Let me out.)
"NO, I won't. I'd rather die." She sat down on her bed and held her head in her hands.
(That will happen soon enough.) The voice promised (But not before you bear witness to MY work.)
"What work?" There was no answere, but the door to her room swung open. She must have forgotten to lock it. She got up to refasten it, and heard the distinctive sound of the Tall Man's footsteps, retreating down the hall. She stuck her head out the door in time to see his black clad legs vanishing around the corner.
"Christ, this is nuts." She mumbled. She should just go back to bed, maybe take some more sleeping pills.
Kathy walked down the hall, following the path of the Tall Man.
He was standing only a few feet around the corner, holding his hand out to her. "Come girl. I want to show you my work."
Kathy looked at him for a few seconds. Then she took his hand.
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Reggie picked morosely at his lunch. More and more, he was starting to think that he was never going to get out of this place... wherever it was. Not in one peice anyway. The more he thought about it, the more their seemed to be either a surgical, or a .45 caliber lobotomy in his future. Otherwise, why would almost everything he had been told since being confined here be nothing but bullshit? He looked at the large mirror on one end of the wall. He didn't think it was there for his vanity. Probably it was oneway glass, so whoever was running this place could look in on him like an animal in a zoo.
At least he had privacy when he went to the bathroom. The mirror in the cramped room, more of a closet actually, with a toilet and a sink was simply hung up on a nail poking into the wall. Of course, there was always the possibility that there was a camera up in the ventilation duct in the bathroom ceiling. For that matter, if he really wanted to be paranoid, for all he knew, they had put some kind of radioactive substance in his food in order to track him if he did happen to escape.
A thoughtful expression came over Reggie's face. He wiped it away and becan poking his food around his plate with his fork. Looking at this room, it didn't seem as though it had been intended to be used as a prison cell. The door was only wood laminate, he could have probably knocked it down if it weren't for the fact that there was an armed guard standing right outside it, watching everything he did. But the guard couldn't see him in the bathroom, with the door closed, could he?
With his back carefully turned toward the oneway glass, Reggie took the fork from his lunch in both hands and began bending the handle back and forth, about halfway up from the tines. After about 30 seconds, the metal suddenly grew warm, and broke apart. Working slowly, pretending to drink his coffee, he slipped the broken utensil into his pocket.
Then he pushed back from the table, put a large wad of gum he had been chewing earlier back into his mouth, undid his belt a notch, and headed for the bathroom.
As soon as he got in the bathroom, he locked the door and turned on the water in the sink. What he had in mind might take a few minutes, and if anyone who was watching him thought he was simply washing up, it would give him a little more time. He stood on top of the toilet seat and took the broken fork out of his pocket. As he had hoped, the broken utensil made a fairly decent screwdriver. He started turning the four screws that held the cover of the ventilation duct into place, until three of them were out, and the fourth one was slightly loose. Quickly, he pulled on the grating, pivoting it on the remaining screw, until it slid away from the opening. Reggie flushed the toilet, climbed on top of it's tank, and pulled himself up into the shaft. The tunnel went vertically for only about a foot, and then went horizontally in two directions, as he had hoped. He lifted himself into the horizontal portion, which was about two feet square, and turned around so he was looking back down at the bathroom he had just left.
The grating was hanging by it's remaining screw, and that wasn't good. Anyone seeing that would know exactly where he had gone. He reached one arm down and brought it back into postion, then fastened it there with the gum he had been working on. From his viewpoint it looked pretty good. He could only hope that it looked undisturbed from below as well. Then he paused to get his bearings. Now, which way had he been going when he had seen Mike? He thought it was the way he was now facing, and also somewhat to the left. Hoping that his sense of direction wasn't misleading him, he began to crawl down the metal tunnel.
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The Tall Man guided Kathy down the corridors of the base, to an area she had never been to before. Come to think of it, she didn't have clearance to be in this area. She wasn't even close to having enough rank to have the kind of clearance that entering this area required. Unlike the portion of the base where she worked, there were guards posted at every corner, rather than just in a few areas, such as outside the tank room, or next to the room where Reggie was being held. However, they didn't even seem to see her or the Tall Man. Was the Tall Man hypnotizing them somehow, or was this all just a dream? And did it even matter which?
She hurried to keep up with the Tall Man's long strides. He was nearly a foot tallet than her, and didn't wait when she fell behind. Finally, they entered a room where several silver pillars lay on their sides on a long workbench. Kathy had to look at them for a moment, before recognizing them as the forks that produced the Tall Man's dimensional gateway. However, they were not giving off their characteristic eerie hum at the moment. Also, some of them had been sawn into peices, as if to study whatever components were in them. Only there were no components that she could see. The pillars were solid, like a block of wood, and the sawn surfaces revealed only polished metal.
Several scientists in white lab coats hurried about in a self important manner, like priests performing mysterious but terribly important ritual. They had soldered wires to some of the intact pillars and were studying various dials as they performed various experiments such as tapping it along it's surface with a tiny hammer, running electricity through it, and spraying it with different chemicals.
As they worked, a few of them were shouting angrily at eachother. At least, she thought they were shouting, even though their voices sounded faded, like they were hundreds of feet away.
"There has to be a way to make the damn things work!" One of them complained loudly. "If that stupid ice-cream man was able to shut them down, so there has to be a way we can start them back up. We have orders that we're to find out how, so lets do it."
Kathy shook her head in confusion. What in the world were they doing? Trying to get the dimension forks to work? But why? If they weren't working, that was all to the good. She had seen herself photographs of the place where the dimension forks led. No-one in their right mind would want anything to do with that hell.
"What are they trying to do?" She asked the Tall Man. "Do they think they can find a way to use the gates to destroy you?"
The Tall Man sneered at her, one eye squinted nearly shut. "These devices will do you no good. Your kind has no hope of ever understanding their function."
Kathy looked at him resentfully. What did he think people were? Apes whose greatest technological advance was poking a stick into a tree in order to get some termites?
"The hell with this." She decided. "I'm getting out of here. First thing tomorrow, I'm going to apply for a transfer somewhere else."
She walked back out the doors of the laboratory, intending to go back to her room. However, to her horror, there were two pairs of dimension forks in the hallway, one ten feet to her right, and the other ten feet to her left. No matter which way she went, she would have to pass through one of them. She gasped, and turned, intending to go back through the door into the laboratory. Perhaps there was another way out.
The door she had just come through was gone.
"Giiiirl." She heard the Tall Man's voice, as though he were standing invisibly next to her. "There is nowhere else."
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Reggie was covered with dust, trying not to cough as he made he way throught the interconnected maze of sheetmetal tubing. In a way, the dust was a blessing. He could see by where it had been disturbed whether he had been though a particular way or not. But it was getting hard not to cough, and he was afraid if he did, someone would hear him. As it was, they would discover he was gone sooner or later. At the best, maybe four more hours, until they brought supper into his room and discovered he was missing. At worst, they already knew he was gone and were searching for him even now.
His progress was not helped by the fact that he had gotten lost. He had headed in the direction he thought he had caught a glimpse of Mike that one time. But perhaps the ducts had turned around on themselves, or perhaps Mike had been moved elsewhere. Hell, maybe Mike was even dead. He stopped at every grating he came to in order to peer through it, hoping he would see Mike in the room or hallway below. All he saw, however, were various soldiers and other personel, either attending to their duties, socializing, or travelling on mysterious errands. Once, to his horror, he thought he had heard the distinctive sound of the Tall Man's footsteps. He had frozen where he was, not daring to make a sound. However, when the source of the footsteps came into view, it simply turned out to be a small woman with long black hair and a pale, Irish complexion, walking languidly, almost as if she were in a daze.
Reggie watched her continue down the hall, the sound of her footsteps seeming oddly incongruous with the motion of her feet. Well, maybe it was an acoustic trick caused by some particular arrangement of the hallways at this particular spot. He shook his head and continued on his search.
In about ten more minutes, he finally spotted Mike. He was still lying strapped to a bed, a needle dripping something into a vein in his hand. It looked like the same room Reggie had seen him in a few weeks ago. He wanted to drop down through the grating, but that would have been foolish. When he had seen this spot previously, there had been a guard outside the door. He would have to take care of that motherfucker first.
Reggie backed up about fifteen feet and examined the grating leading to the room next to Mikes. There was no way to quietly remove the screws from this side of it. Well, there was no help for it. He would have to use force. Slowly, he lowered one foot onto the grating and began slowly pressing, gradually putting more pressure on it until he felt something give. Quickly he lifted his foot off and wriggled the grating with one hand. Two of the screws had been pulled out, and the grating swung stiffly on the other two like a door on rusty hinges. He lowered himself back down through the opening, bending his knees so he landed lightly on the floor below.
He looked around the room he was in. It appeared to be an office of some kind. There was a desk with a computer on it, a few wooden chairs, and a file cabinet. There was also a tinted window at one end, more of the oneway glass, and he could see through it into the small hospital-like room where Mike was. Reggie looked at the other room for a few minutes. It had another one of the one-way glass panels on the wall to his left, obviously where the hallway and the armed guard were. Reggie thought for a moment, and then picked up one of the wooden chairs, moved behind the doorway, and began to scratch slowly on the walls.