Escape!
Darkness.
Everywhere was darkness.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep or out of it. He could hear no sounds or feel any movement, vibration or even air blowing against his face.
Perhaps he was still asleep. Or drugged? Or dead?
Dead? Was this what death was like? Was he actually dead? He had no recollection of any last moments. Actually, he barely had any recollection of anything… nothing at all. Where was he? What did he do for a living?
He could feel that he was lying, at least it felt like lying, on a very cold, very smooth surface. He couldn’t see what colour the surface was or how far it stretched in any direction though as their was no light. Nothing. Not even a faint glow or reflection from anything.
Suddenly, he felt something. Something soft and very fine as if it was there but not. It startled him and he jerked his head up.
“Aaaargh!”
He crashed his head against something hard. And just when he was starting to feel a little more alive too. It took him several minutes to recover himself and he could, gently this time, feel for what his head had struck against. Carefully he stretched out his hand behind his head and felt some cold and smooth. He stroked the floor again for comparison and both surfaces felt the same. Slowly, he tried to turn himself over onto his back to better feel what was above him but he only managed to turn onto his side. He could not turn any further – one of his feet was being held. It could twist a little in either direction but then no more.
“What is going on?!”
He had never felt more puzzled nor confused in his life and a horrifying thought had just dawned on him that perhaps there was light in the room and he had gone blind. The thought caused him to hold his breath for a moment and he felt a tear come to his eye. However, something inside of him knew that wasn’t right, that there must be some other things going on. He was determined to figure it out. Starting with freeing his damn leg!
He bent down and felt around his ankle there was definitely something around it. It felt metallic and he could feel what seemed to be bolts holding it to the floor. He ran his fingers over the restraint many times and could not find a padlock, keyhole, chain, button or anything that might open it up.
Failing to free up his leg he resumed trying to figure out what he’d banged his head on and if it was a low roof or some other object.
After waving and stretching his arms about in all directions like a lunatic, and feeling thankful he was in the dark and apparently alone, he came to conclusion he was in some kind of small room, perhaps a cell, or some kind of box or container. The smooth, cold surface stretched above and below him as far as he could reach. He was definitely trapped with, so far, no way of getting out or changing his situation.
He was feeling the frustration building and he couldn’t think of anything else to try. He was also starting to feel hungry and wondered how long it had been since he last ate. He also wondered what he last ate as he had no recollection of eating anything.
He fell into a dreamless and restless sleep.
“When the world spins round and round and round, I get very dizzy.”
In fact I get so dizzy that I can no longer stand up and walk straight! It is a right royal pain in the…
“Asquith! Asquith!”
And he was suddenly, and from his perspective rather rudely, startled out of his morning reverie. He realised that he was supposed to be working as he was sitting at his desk. For a moment this surprised him as he had completely forgotten he was at work and could hardly even remember coming into work this morning.
“Earth to Asquith! Earth to Asquith! Come in Asquith! If it’s not too much trouble I’m ready for that file now if you’ve actually finished it yet…”
Asquith winced. His cubicle neighbour’s voice drove him crazy but, on the positive side, it did help to bring him back to reality. Fortunately, he’d actually finished his work yesterday but tended to delay passing it on to his co-workers; it was better if he spaced things out at a rate he could control.
He turned back to his display and flicked the file at his neighbour’s avatar.
“Ooo. nice icon! Thanks, dude.”
Asquith had no real idea what his job was. The pay was pretty good and it wasn’t that there was nothing to do, there was – plenty of it. It is just that in the grand scheme of things he didn’t really know what it was he was doing and, when it came down to it, who he was doing it for. He was processing data, that was basically all he know. Munging it from different formats to other formats and pushing it into other databases, but he was working for corporation that was contracted by the real supplier of the data. He’d always wondered what the data actually refers to. What process was he enabling by the work he was doing? These thoughts did not seem to bother his cubicle neighbour even when he’d tried to bring it up on breaks. For that matter, no one else seemed to be at all curious about it. He either got blank looks or comments along the lines of: “Oh Asquith! We’re on a good thing here. No one I know gets paid like we do. Just enjoy it, dude!”
He definitely did enjoy the fruits of his work. But still, he would like to know that he was actually doing something important. Something that mattered. To someone. To anyone.
He let out a resigned sigh. His cube neighbour just rolled his eyes.
Time for coffee.
“Is it break time yet? I’m getting more coffee.”
“Nah, but that never stopped you before.” remarked his cubicle mate.
“And it won’t stop me now!” he said as he got up and headed for the cafeteria.
One of the benefits of working here, which some may see as a minor one but Asquith saw as an essential, is the company supplied cafeteria. And the coffee machines. Especially the coffee machines. Fully automated. Fully customisable to each employee’s tastes: just a swipe of his company ID card and the machine remembers exactly how he likes it and makes his perfect beverage. It had taken Asquith most of his first year to get the settings just right for the way he likes his coffee. It was one reason he guarded his ID card so carefully. No one, but one comes between Asquith or his coffee!
As he approached his favourite machine, the one in the middle for silly reasons known only to himself, the aroma of the beans were already making him feel better. He swiped his card through the machine and smiled as the machine acknowledged him and began grinding those lovely smelling beans.
When he’d first started he was worried about the machines being linked to the ID card and that maybe they would track his breaks and limit his daily coffees or something. That was before he had the opportunity to do a little hacking and confirm there was no such link – they really did want to provide nice coffee.
The cafeteria was quiet, it was break time so he found a quiet table in the corner and pulled out his tablet. A little time doing some writing is one of the few ways that his mind can completely relax. Besides it was November and he did enjoy using NanoWriMo as an excuse to start a new writing project…
When he awoke he remembered his situation, his chest started tightening and feelings of panic began to overwhelm him.
“I need light!” he shouted.
He surprised himself with his exclamation and went quiet again.
In the distance he heard what sounded like a faint whirring and then, unexpectedly, a light faded on in his box.
Erin looked up from her desk and stretched. She let out a combination of a sigh and groan as she realised how tired she was. It had been almost 24 hours since she had last slept. In fact she hadn’t had more than a couple of hours of sleep a night for the last week. Ever since he’d disappeared she’d been unable to sleep.
He’d never done anything like that before. They had always done as much as they could together except when either of their jobs had temporarily separated them. Even then they’d always kept each other up-to-date with what they were doing and where they were.
This time he hadn’t gone anywhere except to the office in the morning. She had met him for lunch at their favourite cafe around one o’clock and then returned to her own office. She had gone home at the end of the day and decided to cook his favourite dinner for him. He never arrived. She called his office and they said he’d left on time. She logged in to their phone provider and checked the “Find My Phone” feature. She discovered that his car was leaving work at around five past five that evening. The last contact with the cell network was at 5:45 when his car appeared to be heading out of town and that is all she knows. Certainly not much to go on and even the private investigator she hired couldn’t find anything. He was so embarrassed he wouldn’t even take payment – said he had never failed to find a lead in all his years as an investigator; until now.
She has spent the last week pouring over maps trying to figure out where he may have gone and calling all his friends, family, work colleagues and any ex-colleagues she could think of. She even dug out all high school and college yearbooks and tried to contact anyone she could from those. Nothing. Nada.
Erin stood up from her desk and stretched again. She grabbed her mug and wandered over to refill it with more coffee and then flopped down onto the couch. She gulped down a mouthful of coffee while she flipped through her notebook. She just had time to set her mug down on the floor as her body decided it could take no more – she collapsed into the couch.
“Zeph! Zeph!” were her last words as she slipped straight into a deep sleep.
It took Zeph several minutes for his eyes to adjust to the light as he had been in this box… for a day? Two days? A week? He really didn’t know. He didn’t seem to have his phone or a clock, not that there would have been any light to see the time anyway.
He looked around now and saw that he was in a small room of charcoal coloured concrete. He judged it to be around three metres long and around two metres wide while only being around half a meter high. No wonder he bashed his head so violently before.
He could not tell where exactly the light was coming from as there were no light globes or fluorescent tubes anywhere. Yet there was an eerie yellowish glow filling the entire room. Room? He had trouble thinking of it as such. Box definitely seemed a more apt description to him.
For the first time he was able to see what he was actually wearing which he hadn’t thought about until now. He was dressed in a skin tight, black rubber suit which seemed very similar to a wetsuit, although he had never been diving so it definitely wasn’t his.
The most interesting development of these last several minutes was the discovery of small square panel on the wall to his right. It was also charcoal colour and blended almost invisibly with the surrounding surfaces but it was raised several centimetres from the wall. It too was smooth and cold to the touch but felt more like a metal than concrete.
Zeph tried pushing in the middle of the square, but nothing seemed to happen. He pushed again. Then he tried swiping in various directions and patterns – it did not seem to be a touch pad. He wondered if maybe it was a portal with a camera on the other side. Pushing his face as close as possible to the square he tried to see if he could see hints of anything through it. Unfortunately, if there was a camera on the other side, there was no way to tell from this side it was definitely made for one way viewing.
Glancing down he noticed that there was a cable or rope coming from the bottom of each of his suit legs and connecting into the device that was restraining his leg. He managed to bring up his free leg enough to get a hold of its cable. It appeared as if it might have been an electrical cable of some description but he had no idea what it might be doing or what it was connected to. Something seriously weird was going on and his feelings about it were getting worse and worse.
“This ain’t gonna end well.”
Click!
He looked towards the sound, above his head in the corner of the room a panel raised itself into the roof and slid quietly sideways.
Nothing happened for what seemed to be an age but in fact was only about a minute. He couldn’t take his eyes off the newly created hole. He also couldn’t see anything beyond it – except pitch blackness.
A whirring sound began, then a mechanical arm dropped through the opening carrying a small tray which it released on the floor before retreating from whence it came. The panel slid back into place.
He crawled over to the tray and raised himself up on one arm. It contained a small bottle of water, a couple of sandwiches and a cup of coffee which felt hot and smelt amazing to a man that had been locked away for as long as Zeph had been. He picked up one of the sandwiches and the bread felt fresh. Underneath the sandwich was a small slip of paper which appeared to have been neatly written on an old fashioned typewriter.
He picked it up.
It simply said, “Zeph, Enjoy your food. We mean you no harm. All will become clear.”
“We mean you no harm. Obviously! My friends always lock me up,” he remarked snarkily. “I am hungry though.”
At this point with the increasing hunger pangs from his stomach and the smell of coffee having filled his box he figured he didn’t have much to lose. He may as well enjoy the food and keep his strength up. Something inside suggested he may need it.
The ringing phone disturbed Erin’s pleasant dreaming but not enough to fully wake her. Thinking a phone in her dream was ringing, she rolled over and began trying to look around her dream world for the pesky device. Another few rings later and the dream world had almost completely faded from view. She had returned to reality enough to now realise that it was her phone that was ringing. This realisation caused her to leap to a sitting position. The excitement and hope that it was Zeph calling to say he was on his way home hit her like an Adrenalin truck!
She reached for her phone and let out a sigh as she saw the dreaded words, “Private Number”. Not Zeph.
She tapped the answer button, put it on speaker and put it back on the table as she tentatively asked, “Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Erin?”
“Yes.”
“You need a coffee.”
“I do?”
“Yes. McMead’s Cafe. 1:30 today. Meet me there. I know about Zeph.”
“Really?! Whe…”
The mysterious caller had already hung up. Erin wanted to be excited but was suspicious. Not to mention a little bit scared. She had to go, obviously, any clue to the circumstances of Zeph’s disappearance she wanted to follow up. But could it be dangerous for her too? Zeph was the one she would have consulted for help on this and now she couldn’t even do that.
She decided there was no option – she had to go. The mysterious meeting was only an hour away so she grabbed her phone and purse and decided to walk into town. She was also depending on the fresh air and exercise to wake her up properly so she’d be fully alert.
As she rushed out the door, quickly locking it behind her she didn’t notice the one thing that may have given her a clue about the scale of what she was about to get involved in.
Several seconds after Erin pulled the front door closed behind her and locked it there was a small click. An almost inaudible click. In the corner of the entranceway there was a small round table of the variety found in thousands of hallways across the western world and onto which workers throw their keys and phones upon arriving home. However, the difference with this table is that on its underside was a small round object. The object from which emanated the click. The device on which a small LED just changed from red to green.
Walking turned out to be just what Erin needed to clear her head and regain her alertness ready for whatever was going to happen or be revealed to her.
She reached the cafe at around twenty-five minutes after one o’clock. She found a table and ordered a latte – a caffeine boost couldn’t hurt!
Erin looked up as the waitress brought her coffee. When she looked down she saw a manila folder with her name written on it on the ground beside her chair leg. She reached down and picked it up, then she stood up and looked around. As far as she could see there was no one who looked like they would have put it there: just fellow coffee drinkers and a couple of passers by, one of which was already carrying so many boxes that she thought it highly unlikely it was them.
She sat down again and took a deep breath. Then a sip of coffee. Needs sugar. Then another sip of coffee. Much better. Then she psyched herself up for what was in this folder.
Placing the folder on the table in front of her she slowly opened it up. Before her lay a watch, a photo, a flip-phone and USB drive.
She was certainly not sure what she should have expected but it most certainly wasn’t quite this! The watch puzzled her the most of all though. A watch! Why a watch? She picked it and had a good look at it. It was actually a very nice, gold, analog, ladies dress watch. In fact, if Erin was going shopping for watches she probably would have picked something similar to this herself.
Upon turning it over and over in her hands for a few minutes she decided to put it on. It actually suited her. She checked her phone – and it was already set to the correct time too.
She smiled as she checked out the flip phone.
“I used to love these phones!” she laughed to herself.
It was one of the old flip phones, before the era of app stores, when phones were for phoning people and “worms” was about as exciting as mobile gaming got. She put it in her purse. After all, someone must want to communicate something to me later.
“Let me look at this picture…”
She picked up the picture and discovered that it was actually a sketch of locked security box with the key in it.
“What does this mean?”
The oddest feeling passed through her body and caused a shiver to travel up her spine. A feeling like the situation was worse than she was expecting or ready for.