question. He gave me an excuse to break eye contact
with Drake and forced Dr. Marshall to answer him.
I was so relieved I could have kissed him. Instead, I
reached for the pancakes and syrup again, staring back
down at my plate while Dr. Marshall explained to the
table how there'd been a minor electrical glitch this
m o r n i n g that had triggered a fire warning sensor on
their security panel. Drake had investigated, naturally,
but there'd been no cause for alarm. I risked a quick
glance around, and only Red Beard and Wheels looked
surprised by the news. Obviously only Bill's room and
mine had been checked.
"Wow," Red Beard gasped. "Good t h i n g it was only a
false alarm. A fire in a j o i n t like this could do millions
of dollars' worth of damage. Trust me, when I was in
the department, we used to see a lot of nasty ones. A
fire here would put up a hell of a fight."
Red's admission that he used to be a fireman was
enough of a revelation to everyone present, and the focus
of the conversation was turned away from me and onto
Red Beard, who thoroughly enjoyed the attention. He
explained how he'd been a full-time firefighter in N i a g
ara Falls, N Y , for thirteen years before he'd lost his leg in
a warehouse fire. The roof had collapsed, crushing his
left leg beneath a steel girder and tons of flaming rubble.
'You weren't really a fireman, were you?" Drake asked,
sounding positively shocked.
I almost burst out laughing, hearing the skepticism
in the head of security's voice. He was making the same
stupid prejudiced assumption nearly everyone makes
about the homeless. Drake simply couldn't picture it in
his thick head that Red had ever been anything other
than the desperate loser sitting in front of him today.
He thought—and trust me, he wasn't alone—all home¬
less people were lifelong drunks and fools. Sure, those
types of bunis were around, people so messed up on booze
and drugs they'd paved their own way onto the street,
but in my experience, those types of people were the
minority. Most street folk, like Red Beard, Blue J, and
I, were normal, ordinary, hard-working, productive
members of society before our worlds crashed down on
top of us. Don't get me wrong. We were far from in¬
nocent victims—we all make our own beds—but peo¬
ple like Drake would never understand that people like
us were exactly the same as people like him.
"Sure I was," Red Beard shot back, his angry tone
making it clear he was frustrated by the same tired
prejudices I'd j u s t been t h i n k i n g about. "I can prove it,
too. H e r e , take a look at t h i s — "
Red pulled up his left sleeve and showed us a large
colorful tattoo that was inked onto his bicep muscle.
His arm was covered with tattoos but this particular
one was of a bright red fireman's helmet, with a yellow
ladder and an axe crisscrossing in front of it. The words
N . F . S T A T I O N # 5 were boldly written below.
"She's a beauty, huh, Drake?" Red Beard taunted,
pride evident in his defiant voice. "Our whole shift went
out, got right shit-faced, and decided to get these.
Never regretted it for a minute."
Drake glared at the tattoo for a few seconds, then got
up and left the table without saying a word. Contented
smiles spread across all our faces, and Red Beard winked
at me as if to say, That'll teach the bastard to have a
little respect.
Right on, brother, I winked back. Right on!
The rest of the day was a breeze compared to the "un¬
der the microscope" treatment I'd suffered through at
breakfast. Our surgeries were all scheduled for tomor¬
row m o r n i n g — m i n e was penciled in for 10:00 A . M . in
operating room #2—but before we could go under the
knife, we had to pass our pre-op physicals. Records
were made of our blood type, heart rate, blood pres¬
sure, and temperature. They collected blood, urine, and
stool samples, checked our vision, took X-rays, and
brought out another stack of forms that needed to be
filled out in triplicate, again. They asked about aller¬
gies, childhood illnesses, sexual diseases, and any other
relevant health issues—past or present—that Dr. Mar¬
shall needed to know about. It was all bullshit, really.
They'd done their background checks on all four of us,
and I was willing to bet they already knew the answer
to every single question they asked before we'd even been
approached. Still, I guess it didn't hurt to double check
to make sure their records were up to date and correct.
All the running around managed to take up the entire
morning, and we didn't sit down to lunch until 1:15 P.M.
Thankfully, Drake and Dr. Marshall didn't join us so it
was nice and peaceful. After we'd eaten, we had the rest
of the afternoon to ourselves. The other guys took ad¬
vantage of the break to catch up on a little shut-eye. Not
wanting to look out of place, and still trying to avoid
Drake, I also went to my room and hid until supper.
Even supper was rolling along without incident, ev¬
eryone making small talk and stuffing their faces until
Bill Smith silenced the room by asking, "So, any chance
we can pop up and visit your son tonight, Doc?"
The surgeon froze in place with his fork halfway to
his mouth, and Drake nearly swallowed his, he was so
caught off guard. Wheels and Red Beard thought Bill's
idea was marvelous, so I quickly chimed in my two cents'
worth of approval, too. They were serious, but I j u s t
wanted to see how Dr. Marshall was going to get him¬
self out of this predicament.
"There's a small problem, I'm afraid," he began. "To
night's not a good night to visit Andrew. I was up seeing
him earlier, and he isn't feeling very well. He might j u s t
be nervous about tomorrow, but let's give him the beneft of the doubt. Let's get through our surgeries, guys,
and then you'll all have time to get to know Andrew.
Fair enough?"
Small problem, my ass. Not a good night to visit him, on
account he doesn't even exist!
Still, I had to admit that Dr. Marshall sounded sin¬
cere. He either believed what he was saying, or he was
an incredible liar. No one at the table doubted his sin¬
cerity. Even I did a double take when I saw the pain on
his face when he'd said Andrew wasn't feeling well. Maybe
it was me that was crazy here. Maybe, somehow, I had
this all twisted around and was mistaken about the
doctor. Man, I was confused.
Then confront him. Do know, Mike. Stop fucking around
playing secret agent and just flat out ask him about what you
saw.
I was tempted to do j u s t that, and I think I would
have if I hadn't noticed the way Dr. Marshall and Drake
kept giving poor Bill Smith death stares. They'd glare
over at him, then nod slightly to each other as if shar¬
ing some secret message. They thought they had their
man. Bill had inadvertently asked about meeting An¬
drew and the chief of security was on him like a blood¬
hound on a fresh scent. To Drake, Bill's harmless remark
was the slip of the tongue he'd been waiting for all day.
Dr. Marshall remained civil but Drake was practi¬
cally drooling beside him, grinning like the village id¬
iot, t h i n k i n g he'd discovered the nighttime wanderer.
Seeing that deranged look on his face was more than
enough" to make me thank my lucky stars I'd kept my
big mouth shut.
C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
We went to bed early, all of us needing to rest up for
our operations in the morning. Unfortunately, resting
was a luxury I couldn't afford. Sprawled on my t o o comfortable bed, I tossed and turned until after mid¬
night, trying to decide if I should bolt for h o m e or not.
Something deep inside me was whispering I should
run before it was too late, but t h i n k i n g about that big
chunk of cash kept giving me a reason to stay. Two
million reasons, actually, and as weird as things seemed
around here at times, I didn't really have any concrete
evidence Dr. Marshall was up to anything nefarious.
Truth be told, he'd treated me with n o t h i n g but kind¬
ness and respect since I'd arrived. Could I be overre¬
acting?
It was a fair question, one I didn't have an answer
for—and never would if I j u s t lay here in bed doing
nothing. Time was running out. They were going to cut
my arm off in less than ten hours. I had to do something,
for Christ's sake!
I shot out of bed and put my clothes back on. Rea¬
sonably sure the majority of people here at the medical
center were in their beds, I was going out on the prowl
again. I had no idea where to look, or even what I should
look for, but one way or another I was determined to
find out exactly what Dr. Marshall was up to.
Find bis office, that's the place to start.
My hand was reaching for the doorknob when I heard
a noise outside in the hallway. I froze. There it was again,
and this time I recognized it for what it was—a cough.
N o t a big hacking cough, j u s t someone clearing their
throat, but it was enough to send a chill down my
spine.
There wasn't one of those tiny glass peepholes in my
door, so as quietly as I could, I knelt down on all fours
and pressed the right side of my face against the floor.
Sure enough, just on the other side of my door, I could
see two thick black rubber soles, and a large shadow on
the hall carpet.
That bastard!
Drake had placed a guard outside my room. I was
sure he thought it had been Bill Smith messing around
in room 3 0 1 , but obviously he wasn't taking any chances.
There would be a guard outside of Bill's room, t o o . Drake
was making sure no one was going anywhere tonight. I
had to give him credit. He was smarter than he looked.
W h a t was I going to do now?
The window?
It was the only other exit from the room, and al¬
though I knew I was on the third floor of the building,
I walked over to check it anyway. The moon was out t o
night, but most of it was hidden behind a bank of dark
clouds. It was too dark for me to see much of anything
beyond the glass, save for my shadowy reflection star¬
ing back at m e , but I didn't need to see to know the
ground was way too far below me to consider climbing
or j u m p i n g down. I was trapped in this room, whether
I liked it or not.
The window itself was made up of three separate
pieces of glass, with the biggest pane in the center and
two smaller sections on either side that could be
cranked out to let in some air.
Feeling slightly claustrophobic all of a sudden, I did
j u s t that, spinning the little brass hand crank clock¬
wise to open up the left-hand panel. I took several deep
breaths of the cool night air to calm down, and was about
to close the window when I spotted something clinging
to the outside of the wall a few feet over to my left. I
cranked the window fully open, quietly removed the
bug screen, and stuck my head outside to get a better
look.
A surge of adrenaline shot through me when I real¬
ized it was a trellis covered in thick green foliage. I
might be able to use this to climb down to the ground,
and make my escape. Or up, to climb onto t h e —
Roof, Fd been thinking, but my thought process was
permanently interrupted when I tilted my head to gaze
skyward. The side panel of the window in the room di¬
rectly above my head was cranked open j u s t as mine
was. If I wanted to, I could climb the trellis, re-enter
the medical center one floor u p , and carry on with my
plans to search around this castle of secrets.
W h a t had Dr. Marshall said was on the fourth floor?
Nothing but storage space and room for future expansion.
That meant no one would be up there. I could hit any
of the stairwells, search anywhere I wanted as long as I
was quiet and extra careful, then retrace my steps back
into my room, hopefully without anyone knowing I'd
ever left.
Would the trellis hold me? I could picture myself
h a n d s , then taking the slow-motion drop to land on my
back on some sharp unseen rock far below. N o t a nice
thought. Maybe I should j u s t go back to bed and get
some sleep.
I reached through the ivy (or whatever the hell type
of plant it was), and gave the trellis a good strong tug.
N o t h i n g happened. It was made from some type of metal,
cold and hard to the touch, and from the way it didn't
even budge I could tell the trellis had been securely
fastened into the brickwork of the building. It would
hold my weight, no problem.
Maybe.
Before I had a chance to think too much, I swung
my legs over the ledge, and grabbed for the metal
framework with first one hand, then the other. Seconds
later, I was successfully onto the trellis. I h u n g there for
a minute as still as a display window mannequin, hardly
daring to breathe as I waited to hear the wrenching
noise of metal bolts breaking loose that would precede
my fifty-foot drop to oblivion. N o t h i n g happened, and
if the gods that watch over lunatics had decided to smile
on me tonight, I wasn't one to question their reasons. I
j u s t started up the makeshift ladder hand over hand,
foot over foot, as quickly and quietly as I could manage.
No doubt, I should probably be heading the opposite
direction, down the trellis to the ground and getting
the heck out of here, but I was too stubborn to do that.
Call m
e a fool, but I still wanted to get my hands (well,
hand, if I went through with this) on the money I'd been
promised. Until I had solid proof Dr. Marshall was
pulling a scam here, I wasn't about to let my vivid imag¬
ination cheat me out of my chance at being rich.
Scaling the trellis was easy, and getting into the fourthfloor room proved even easier. I'd expected to have to
wrestle with the bug screen, popping it off and trying
to catch it while dangling from one hand. Thankfully
there was no screen on this window, so I j u s t reached
over and stepped right in.
Inside, it was too dark for me to risk blindly stum¬
bling around, so I stood my ground and waited for my
eyes to re-accustom to the gloom. Soon, I could make
out enough details to guess I was in some sort of" large
storage room. There were several large bulky items ar¬
ranged along both outside walls, but the center of the
room was free of debris. Straight ahead, about forty feet
away, I could j u s t make out the rectangular-shaped
outline of what had to be the exit into the hallway. I
started walking in that direction, intending to find the
nearest stairwell, but I stopped dead in my tracks be¬
fore I'd taken my second step.
One of the bulky shapes against the wall to my right
began to move. Then my eyes caught another movement
somewhere over to my left. I remained calm, relatively
speaking, anyway, until I heard a sound that sent my
heart straight up into my throat. In that dark, suppos¬
edly empty storage room, someone began to snore.
Okfiuk!
I wasn't alone in this room. Someone was in here with
m e , still sleeping, obviously, but for how long? As my
night vision improved, it became evident things were
even worse than that. The bulky items I'd seen lining
the walls were all beds, and nearly every one of them
was being slept in. I counted ten, n o , eleven people sleep¬
ing around me.
My first thought was I'd walked into a room full of
security guards, slumbering in a barracks-type room un¬
til their shift in the morning. Something wasn't right
about the way the people looked, though. The bodies
looked weird somehow, far too small to be a group of
fully grown men.
The m o o n chose that moment to emerge from be¬
hind the clouds, bathing the room in a soft white glow
through the window behind me. I nearly screamed when