A/N Hello, my lovely readers, I apologize for the slight delay in updates.
Thanks to all Reviewers!
Dedication: To daisymall13 for her review.
Disclaimer: I only own the plot and the evil people.
At exactly five fifty-five p.m. the door to Frank's room was opened and he was told to come stand on the left-hand side of the door and wait for further directions. When he exited the room and did as directed he spotted his cousin similarly standing next to his door, and a glance down the hall allowed him to glimpse the rest of the captive geniuses doing the exact same thing. The man who had entered Frank's room, headed back down the hall to stand at the front of the line. He introduced himself as Mr. Jones although Frank highly doubted that was his actual name. They were directed to turn toward the staircase and merge into a single line. Charlie was last in the line, Frank just in front of him.
The entire group was led by Jones down the stairs, through the front hall and past six rooms until Jones opened a pair of French doors which led into a dining room. They were directed to find their spot via the place-cards resting on the plates, but were warned not to sit down until 'the boss,' as Jones called him arrived.
The place-cards were set-up in alphabetical order, thus Charlie found his spot to be the seat directly to the right of the head chair. He was seated next to Jeremy Fanfold, whom he recognized from the pictures at the FBI office. On Fanfold's other side was Frank, who sat next to Andrew Harrington.
Across from Harrington on the left hand side of the table sat Janet Malone, who was seated next to Benjamin Nemi. On Nemi's other side sat Emily Vander, and then directly across from Charlie sat Kathryn Weston.
At six o'clock precisely the French doors opened once more and a stern looking man in a suit entered and made his way down the row of chairs, seating himself at the head of the table. This apparently was a signal for the rest of them to sit because those geniuses who had been their longer followed suit, and Frank, Charlie, and Benjamin, who had also been kidnapped that day from Washington D.C., quickly took the hint and sat down as well.
"Good evening, everyone." The man said in his best school-teacher voice.
His greeting was quickly followed by a mumbled 'good evening, Mr. Satori.' Judging by the quick responses he manage to get from his captives, Frank was fairly sure this was not someone he should cross, at least not until he had a sure way of escaping.
"I would like you all to greet your newest colleagues, Dr. Charles Eppes, a mathematician, Dr. Frank Hardy, a private investigator specializing in literature, and Dr. Benjamin Nemi, a strategist previously working with the United States government."
Frank despite his two Ph.D's still found it exceedingly strange to be referred to as 'doctor,' and usually ignored the title. Satori's introduction elicited another round of mumbling this time 'hello, Drs. Eppes, Hardy, and Nemi.' as opposed to 'good evening, Mr. Satori.'
"Now, I'm sure that you three probably have quite a few questions, however I must insist that you hold on to them until after dinner, at which point I will be happy to explain the situation you have found yourselves in. We will be meeting in the conference room for discussion and further assignments." He concluded. "Now, let us eat."
As though in response to his words the French doors opened and a man who appeared to be the butler, who Satori addressed as Barnes, entered pushing a cart laden with food. He placed the serving dishes on the table and asked Satori if he would be needing anything further. Upon receiving a negative answer the butler retreated from the room.
The meal passed mostly in silence, it seemed that most of the geniuses were reluctant to talk in front of their captor not a particularly surprising turn of events. The only conversation that took place was largely elicited by Satori who questioned each of the occupants in turn about their individual subject areas asking them what projects they had been working on and whether there was anything they needed not currently in their rooms.
The responses he drew were largely stilted. No one seemed eager to converse with him by any stretch of the imagination. When the meal was finished Satori led the way out of the room and down the hallway opening the door to a conference room, a large oaken table took up the majority of the room, chairs were positioned around the table name-plates marking where each of them should sit. The seating seemed to be according to subject area as opposed to alphabetical as the dinnertime seating was, rather it appeared to be designed so that people with similar subject areas would be positioned near each other.
Frank was seated directly to the right of the head seat, next to Andrew Harrington, the linguistics specialist and University of Chicago professor. On Andrew's other side sat Kathryn Weston, the musician, on Kathryn's left sat Janet Malone, the first individual kidnapped by Satori and artist. Across from Janet on the other side of the table sat Jeremy Fanfold, the philanthropic chess master, who had Benjamin Nemi, the newest captive apart from Frank and Charlie as well as being a military strategist. Next to Benjamin was Emily Vander, the computer specialist, and finally directly across from Frank sat Charlie.
Satori seated himself at the head of the table in between Frank and Charlie. He indicated that they should all sit down before he began speaking. "We have a lot to discuss tonight, but before we get down to business we are going to begin with explanations in the same way we have done for each new addition to my collection, since I acquired Mrs. Malone," He ignored the disgruntled looks present on the majority of faces upon being referred to as though a rare stamp in a collection. "I am by nature a collector, I collect various things including houses such as the one we are currently residing in,"
"Where is it that we are, exactly?" Frank asked. "Out of curiosity, of course."
"Well played, indeed, Dr. Hardy, however I will not be revealing our location to you even though I highly doubt that you will have the opportunity to apprise anyone else of it."However, I really must beg that you will not interrupt me, I don't care for it at all." Despite his deceptively polite words his voice was cold making it clear that further interruption would result in exceedingly unpleasant occurrences. "Continuing on, as I said, I am a collector, and lately I've found I've grown bored of my usual collections, endangered animals, Egyptian artifacts, the usual black market stuff, I was thinking recently and the thought occurred to me that what is a better collection than a collection of people?"
"What indeed." Came a sarcastic sounding murmur from Emily.
Satori ignored her. "So, then it was only a matter of deciding what type of people I wanted to collect. I pondered for months and the thought finally occurred to me, what could be better than a collection of geniuses of all different types? I could rent them out, allowing others to sample their expertise, I could turn a nice profit and at the same time assemble one of the rarest collections in the world." He paused here looking around the room. "Any questions?"
Seeing none he continued speaking, "Now, as those of you who have been with us for awhile already know your expertise and availability have been discreetly advertised, thus you will each be receiving weekly assignments either for me, or for a client, you will complete these tasks without question, or you will regret it strongly. I don't want to have to hurt any of you, damaged merchandise and all that, but I will if you make me. And, more importantly than that, I want you to know that any escape attempts will be punished by killing a member of your family, so I must strongly discourage you from doing so, if you wish them to remain in their current states of health. Understood?"
Murmurs of "Yes, Mr. Satori," sounded from around the table although despite this outward display of obedience each genius was attempting to figure out how to escape without allowing him to get to any of their family members.
"Now let's get on to your newest assignments, shall we?" He asked settling down for what would entail a fairly long discussion of business.
A/N Review! Update next Saturday! :)
