Chapter Two.
Jack was alone in a ten by ten foot room with a window behind a chain link grate. Everything was white. The bed that folded down from the wall, the bureau, the lamp, the door to the bathroom: white. Jack was a little uneasy here, still dressed in black and used to the shadows of his basement lair.
"Hey!" he yelled to the two orderlies as they left. "I don't do well in confined SPACES!"
But, the door and the square window set in it were both soundproof. Jack threw his hands up in aggravation and leaned his back against the door.
"This must be someone's twisted idea of a practical joke," he muttered. "This would happen to me! Don't they know that people go crazy in these places?"
He crossed the room to the window and, hooking his fingers into the grate, stared down at the massive courtyard below. The building he was in had no end- it was a like a twelve story doughnut.
The world outside was gray to the point of being outrageous. Every window was tinted on the outside, the clouds looked like a thick layer of out-of-focus gray matter: even the grass at the center of the courtyard looked like someone had spray-painted it all gray.
"Maybe I just went color blind," Jack exclaimed quietly, blinking a couple times.
After a few hours, during which Jack came close to dieing of boredom, the evening became dark enough for the guards to turn on the exterior lighting. Once in a while, the blinding glare of a search light would blast through Jack's window and, for a just a moment, it was day again.
Then, someone knocked on his door and opened it.
"All right, Mr. Spicer. It's time for dinner."
"I shouldn't even be here, you know!" Jack exclaimed, coming down from the headstand he was doing on his bed in a desperate attempt to entertain himself.
"Of course not," the guard said in a bored voice. "Come on, I have to show you to the common room and other places patients are allowed."
"Great," Jack muttered, rolling his eyes, as he walked past the guard and out the door. He checked the guard's nametag as he went by. "So, Garrison," he began, following the big guy down the hall, "I don't suppose you have any idea why I was kidnapped from my house and brought here against my will without explanation?"
"No," Garrison replied, glancing over his shoulder at Jack. "My job is just to make sure you don't kill any of the others, none of the others kill you, and no one escapes."
"So, what, they hold Coliseum fights down in that courtyard? Is this a hospital from the criminally insane or something?"
"Something like that," Garrison chuckled.
They must have passed about forty doors, all in a gradually curving hallway, before they came to a set of double doors leading into the Common Room. The C.R., as Garrison called it, went so far back that the other end disappeared into the curve of the building. There was a long cafeteria with a shiny steel food court, a lounge with a number of televisions, and an area with a ping-pong table and other ridiculous table games that are enthralling after seventy-two hours of total solitude. One wall was made entirely of tall windows, and the other wall in the outer curve of the building had only a few, smaller windows.
"You're here until nine thirty every evening," Garrison informed him. "Your room is L036- don't forget it- and just scream if you get in trouble."
Then Garrison turned and went back through the double doors, leaving Jack in an endless room filled with about seventy mildly bored lunatics.
"Holy Hell on Earth," Jack muttered to himself. "This can't be happening."
Cautiously at first, Jack started to cross the room towards the food. No one looked up at him or gave him angry glances, for which Jack was extremely grateful. He expected that at any moment a crazy old lady would come running up to him and scream hysterically in his face for ten seconds before running away to repeatedly bump into a wall. Luckily, that never happened.
Despite his low expectations in the catering, the food wasn't too bad.
"Do you have any pudding cups?" Jack asked one of the bored workers behind the counter.
"We do, but I don't think you want them," the guy admitted ruefully.
"No, I really do," Jack insisted.
Once Jack had a tray full of food and he had found a seat at an empty table, he took a moment to inspect some of the other 'patients'. He was a little confused, as he looked the room over, as he would have expected more disabled-looking types. But, there were no semi-comatose droolers in wheelchairs, there was no one pacing back and forth talking to themselves, there were no nervous twitches- nothing! And, as Jack eavesdropped on the conversations, they sounded a little too normal.
"This is weird," Jack muttered. "And the killer is: it's weird because it's so normal!"
Suddenly, a heavy hand slapped him on the back and knocked a spork right out of his mouth.
"Ha! I see Crazy Catchers finally caught up with infamous Jack Spicer! They use giant net or straightjacket to get you?"
Jack spun around in his chair and looked up in shock.
"Vlad!" he gasped after desperately swallowing his food. "What are you doing here?"
Vlad laughed and took the seat across from Jack.
"Same as you! They travel all the way to Moscow to catch me!"
Just then, another familiar voice joined in.
"Oh, no! I can't believe they brought you here! Now I have to put with RoboFreak, too?"
"Ashley?" Jack exclaimed, his voice rising to almost a squeak. "Actually," he paused, sitting back and putting his forefingers together, "I can definitely see you getting locked up in an asylum. Did ya get Kat Scratch Fever or something? I heard that infected cat scratches can cause schizophrenia."
Ashley, better known as Katnappe, hissed at him as she walked by with her empty tray.
"They took all my cats, freak," she muttered darkly.
Jack raised his eyebrows and craned his neck to look around the room.
"Dear lord, who else is here?"
"Ha ha!" laughed Vlad. "Everyone!"
Jack could see no one but total strangers.
"Wait, you mean you know all these people?" Jack asked Vlad. Ashley came back and sat at the table with them. Both were dressed in very normal clothes, as were all the other patients. Ashley had on tight jeans with a black turtle neck, and Vlad was dressed just the same as ever- only, his hat was gone.
"Don't you recognize them?" Ashley butted in with a nasty tone. "What kind of villain are you?"
"Um…"
"Jack, you're such a dufus!" she went on. "Everyone here is a Villain, Heylin and everything else! Duh! Hello? Don't you ever check out Seriously."
"Uh, no, I don't ever 'check out' because I, unlike you, have a life and I have things to do."
"Jack never go there because evil chat rooms always making fun of him," Vlad explain in a flat tone.
Jack glared at Vlad and made like he was about to flick mashed potatoes at him with his spork.
"So…" Jack said after a suspenseful pause and instead ate the food, "why are all these villains here? Some doctor got a thing for collecting bad guys?"
Ashley just shrugged.
"They told me when I got here that they would explain it all 'tomorrow', but they totally never did."
Jack's jaw dropped and one side of his nose knotted in a snarl.
"That's exactly what they told me, too! Did they just show up at your house and take you away?"
"Yeah!"
"These people are sick!" Jack snapped, slamming down his spork. "What are they doing?"
"Everyone here likes to guess," Ashley said, taking out a nail file, "but no one really knows. You'd think that a building filled with evil geniuses wouldn't stay standing for long, but…"
"As much as people here plot to escape," Vlad continued, "there is no way to carry out such plan."
Jack just frowned and poked at his food. The guy behind the counter was right: the pudding cup was awful. This only filled Jack with an even greater passion to escape.
It didn't feel like long before the analog clock on the wall read 9:30. The double doors opened and Jack could see that the walls beyond were lined with guards.
"Remember your room number?" Ashley asked Jack as they got up to leave.
"L Zero Thirty Friggin' Six," Jack murmured, casting his eyes over the room again as he left.
For the very first time, he noticed a man sitting in a chair before a window that overlooked the remainder of the facilities, not the courtyard. He didn't move a muscle as everyone filed out, so Jack slowed his pace a little. He was curious about his guy, and he couldn't help but wonder if he was dead. The man was tall, slim, and very pale, with eyes hidden in shadow and long, dark hair. In a way, he reminded Jack of Chase Young, but it definitely was not him. Nonetheless, there was something about him…
"Hey!" someone suddenly grabbed his arm. "Aren't you Jack Spicer?"
Jack turned sharply to see who had taken hold of him.
"Ah! Who are you?"
"Oh my God! I'm such a huge fan of you! I just love your robots!"
"Um…"
"Oh, sorry! I'm Erika Sparks! It's an honor to meet you!"
Erika was a young lady of about fifteen with long, bright orange dread locks that fell all the way down her back. She was short and skinny, and a bit on the spastic side.
"How do you know me?" Jack asked, too surprised to be flattered.
"Oh!" Erika stopped walking suddenly and pulled away from the group. "Here's my room! See you tomorrow!"
And she whipped through her door and disappeared.
"…freak," Jack stated to himself, but not in an insulting way.
"Don't believe a word she says," Ashley warned him as she pulled away towards her own door.
"Why not?" asked Jack.
"Because there's no way she could have ever heard of you. She's been here since she was, like, eight. She only knows your name because she touched your jacket and read your thoughts."
"WHAT?" Jack just about screamed, throwing his hands to the side.
"Yeah, she's totally crazy," Ashley rolled her eyes. "See ya." And she, too, vanished back into her room.
Eventually, Jack reached his door again and, with a glare at the guard, returned to his tiny room.
He took off his shoes, jacket, and goggles, and wondered how the Jack Bots were getting along without him. He used the bathroom and, once there, discovered that they had stocked his room with all the little essentials like a toothbrush and toothpaste, and even a set of pajamas. Naturally, they were white.
"People who say that black is the color of evil are so confused," he said aloud as he held up the PJ top. "Black is the color of secrecy and stealth. White is evil, apparently. Whoever chose the color scheme for this place must be with the KKK!"
