I noticed the sunrise for the first time in ages the next morning. It
always seemed to me that the city was always bright but the sun never
showed. Here, surrounded by nature, seemed to be the only place you could
see the sun itself. I imagined it hid itself from the city, too ashamed of
those walking around beneath it, too busy with their daily lives to
appreciate the world around them. But I remembered that I had always
noticed it here in my mother's home. As a child I would wake up every
morning before everyone else to watch the sun come up. I would sit in the
small bay window in my bedroom, holding tight to a stuffed gorilla my Uncle
Frank had bought me when I was just a baby, and hold my breath in
excitement, waiting for nothing more than a sunrise. It was an odd thing
to do, I thought now, all grown up; staring out the same window that seemed
infinitely smaller than it had. But the sun was still something that
amazed me. I had a hunger for its warmth. I had never noticed how cold I
felt on the inside until that morning.
"Good morning," I heard Karen say meekly as she rolled over in bed.
"You, too. Did you sleep well?" I asked. She nodded, slowly stretching the length of the bed.
"Alexa must have slept well, too," she remarked looking at the clock. "She never sleeps this late." It was nine o'clock. We were all usually awake by now, fumbling through our morning routine. Karen was usually getting ready to leave for the lab and I was usually getting Alexa ready for the babysitter. I would dress and, after they left, head to my office in our loft, and try to crank out a few more pages of whatever book I was working on.
"Why don't you go take a shower and I'll go get Alexa," I said, already making my way toward the door.
Alexa was in the nursery next to my mother's room. It had once been a store room/exercise equipment room, but Mom had had it decorated and furnished with my old baby things when she found out Karen was pregnant. I made my way around the staircase, tracing my hand along the dark oak railing, glancing down into the foyer and catching a glimpse of Clarissa as she opened the blinds in the study. I crept past my mother's room towards Alexa's, knowing my mother would be awake and not yet ready to talk to her, especially after last night's conversation. It had left me with more questions and conjectures than I would have liked. Something about her tone seemed so ominous to me and I couldn't shake the feeling that she had something very important to say. And something else told me that whatever it was, I was not going to like hearing it.
Alexa was standing up in the crib, staring out at the sunrise when I walked in. I smiled as I watched her total amusement at seeing essentially nothing. I remembered my Grandmother catching me one morning staring out at the sunrise and saying that I had my mother's infinite patience. An innate ability to wait on or out anything. I remember her saying, more to herself than to me, that it was this patience that would make my mother happy. I did not understand what my grandmother was saying then, and as I watched Alexa stare out at the light, I realized that I did not still.
After I had dressed and diapered Alexa, I carried her downstairs to the kitchen. Karen and Clarissa were preparing breakfast, talking and laughing like little kids. I sat Alexa in the highchair, which used to be my own, and pushed her up to the small table by the bay window. I thought of all the meals I had eaten at this table. It was really a breakfast nook, but my mother had always preferred to eat by the window, staring out at the lake, rather than eating in the silence and confined space of the dining room.
"Clarissa," I began as I turned towards she and my wife by the large oak island in the middle of the kitchen, "has Kit ever told you how she got this place?" The question seemed to surprise Clarissa. She blanched almost as she stopped chopping the vegetables for the omelet she was preparing.
"What do you mean? I had always assumed she bought it or it was left to her by her parents or something. Why do you ask?"
"It's just that, last month I was going through some old boxes I had taken back to Chicago with me and found the titles to the house and property. I never knew how the family acquired the property so I called the title office here to see who any previous owners had been. The lady I talked to said that there weren't anymore references to the titles, my mother's was the only one that had ever been given. That just doesn't make sense. I know she said she and Grandmother didn't move here until a few months before I was born. There had to be previous owners."
"Oh, you know how these things are," Clarissa scoffed, "They probably lost the paperwork through the years and when they switched over to computer files…well you know, if it's not in the computer…"
"That's exactly what I told him," Karen nodded in agreement. "Sometimes you can such a conspiracy theorist Michael. As long as there's a legal title with your mother's name on it, who cares who owned it before?"
"I don't care. I was just curious. It seems odd to me, like something's not right."
"Well, why don't you ask your mother? I'm sure Kit knows who she bought it from," Karen said, walking to the table with a bowl of oatmeal for Alexa.
I watched her for a moment as she and Alexa smiled and cooed at one another and then went upstairs to see my mother. She was sitting up against the pillows, slowly sipping a cup of tea, her hand slightly trembling at its weight.
"You know it's funny," she began, "I never thought I'd live this long." I stared at her, wondering silently why someone who had always been so full of life and lived in such a safe place, would ever think they would not live to see sixty-seven.
"So many things have happened. I just never thought I'd make it this far. Of all the things that have tried to kill me, I never imagined it would be cancer that would strike the death blow," she smirked and shook her head slightly in wonder.
"Kit, how could you think that. You've been the healthiest person I have ever known. I can't remember any time where you were in the hospital, or even had more than the flu. What things have tried to kill you?"
"Don't call me that," she snapped, her eyes darkening.
"What? Kit? I've always called you that."
"I know. But just for today, call me 'Mom'," she said to the window, her eyes softening as she turned to look at me slowly.
"Okay. But why? Why now?" I asked as I brought a chair over from the corner to sit next to her.
"Because I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you long ago but never had the courage to. It's something that will change your life and most likely your view of me. So, call me 'Mom' because today I need you to remember who I am, so maybe you'll understand why I've done what I have."
"What are you talking about?"
"You call me 'Kit' because you couldn't say 'Kate'. Do you remember who called me 'Kate'?" she asked, sounding like a child that was about to admit to breaking a piece of china.
"Yes," I answered cautiously. "Uncle Frank always called you that. I don't remember anyone else ever calling you 'Kate', just him. Why?"
"Yes, Uncle Frank," she smiled, shaking her head again. "Did you ever feel bad because you didn't know your father? Did you ever wish he'd been there? Or hate me because I picked him from a set of test tubes?"
"Hate you? No. I never hated you. When you first explained it to me I was hurt and confused, but I learned to accept it. I understood that you had wanted a child so badly, that you accepted the responsibility on your own. Besides, Uncle Frank was always there when he could be. He was practically my father."
"He was your father, Michael. Frank Donovan was your father. You didn't come from a test tube. You came from us. Maybe he didn't live with us, or eat dinner with us every night, but he was there at every play, every Little League game, and most every holiday because he was your father and he wanted to spend time with you."
I listened as the words came from her mouth, but I did not really comprehend the magnitude of her words at first.
"What do you mean? He couldn't have been my father! Why wouldn't you have told me something like that? Why wouldn't have he?"
"It's complicated," she stated bluntly, staring at me intently, trying to gauge my emotions.
"Well, make it uncomplicated," I demanded, raising my voice more than I had planned.
"Michael, it's a long story. We were in love. Even people like us can be in love," she said with a deep sigh, already tiring from the stress of the conversation.
"What do you mean? People like what?"
"Frank was an undercover agent for the Justice Department when I met him. Before that he had been CIA, a hostage negotiator, and God only knows what else. I was, I am, a protected witness of the State."
"Protected witness? CIA? Mom, what are you talking about? Frank was a cop, a detective. He worked homicide in Chicago and then D.C."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"What do you mean? I know because he told me. He didn't talk much about it, but I saw his badge when I was little, I visited him when he moved to D.C."
"You know what he wanted to you to know, what I wanted you to know, and nothing more. The badge you saw when you were young was a fake badge. He moved to D.C. because he moved the team from Chicago so their headquarters would be closer to us, closer to those he needed to protect."
"Protect from what? Nothing ever happened in this house or to anyone who ever lived in it."
"Nothing happened in this house because the government made sure it didn't. Frank made sure it didn't. Every day of your life, there have been agents watching over you. Our 'neighbors' on the farms around us are government agents, as good as the Secret Service, being paid very well to see to it that no one in this family is ever found out. The government owns this land that you've been so curious about lately. It was put into a kind of trust for our family as what you might call a 'reimbursement'. And don't look at me like that. My attorney is the one who found out you had been searching titles when he was preparing my estate papers. We've been put into the same type of protective custody as a former President might be. We live our lives safe, guarded, and completely monitored at the expense of the American people and our privacy," she began to cough violently, barely completing her speech, and as I looked into her eyes when the pain subsided, I knew everything she was saying was true. And every word she had just said made me sick.
I felt as if I had just awoken from a dream. Suddenly the walls seemed alive and felt as though they were closing in on me. I rose from my seat and paced about the room for a few moments.
"I have to take a walk," I said, looking at the floor, not sure where I wanted to walk to, and now wondering who would be watching me.
"Michael," she began softly, reaching her frail hand out, pointing towards her writing desk, "there's a letter in the desk. It's for you. I wrote it months ago, knowing that I was going to die. I thought I would have Clarissa give it to you when I passed. I didn't have the courage at the time to tell you myself, but I realized that I had to do it, and face whatever came of it. And if you must know, Clarissa knows everything."
"Why?" I huffed, plodding towards the desk and opening the drawer, "Is she one of them, too?"
"Yes," she answered bluntly.
I stopped in my tracks at her confirmation, letter in hand, and tears beginning to form in my eyes. I looked at the letter in my hand, then to my mother, and then out the bedroom door, as if psychically staring down the stairs and to the back of the house, directly at the nurse I knew to be standing in the kitchen. I felt a thousand emotions but could not isolate any of them. But something inside me stirred and I knew I was feeling something I had never felt before.
"Betrayed," I heard my mother say as I made my way across the room and out into the hallway.
I stormed down the stairs and out the front door. I turned towards the lake and the path I knew encircled it. I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run, until I reached the opposite side of the lake, facing the house on the opposite shore. I sat down on the remnants of an old boat dock, my elbows on my knees as I ran my hands back over my face and through my hair. I wanted to cry, scream; anything to release the confusion and madness that welled up inside me, but nothing came. I was too upset, too beyond words or actions. I still couldn't accept or even contemplate the meaning and impact of my mother's admission. I sat for a while, and then pulled the crushed envelope from my pocket that I had moments ago so forcibly inserted as I stepped off the front porch. I examined it in my hands, turning it over and over again. It was thicker than I had realized. As I opened it I saw it was my mother's favored parchment paper, folded into thirds, about a dozen pages or more. It was hand-written in lavender, the same way I had seen my mother write to friends and loved one's over the years. For all the computers and technology in the world, and despite her love for all of it, she still insisted that the most civilized way to reach out to someone was to do so with one's own hand. She used to say that type written letters were cold and lacked the soul of the writer. When you receive a hand-written letter, you have received a little bit of the person who sent it too you. The very thought of her old-fashioned charms made me smile in spite of all the chaos around me.
I unfolded the letter and began to read the words formed by the elegant strokes of my mother's hand:
My dearest Michael,
Of all the things I never told you, of all the things you could be angry with me about, there is one thing that I should have told you about long ago. When I was 24 I worked at a college in Illinois, outside Chicago. It was a small school, only a few hundred students were admitted yearly, and the science division where I worked, only had a little over one hundred students enrolled. I was an instructor for a few of the Pre-Med. labs. I had only been out of college a couple years myself so it seemed like the best job I could have at the time. I still remembered the material and was still young enough to relate to the students. My mother moved there with me. Being her only child and father being gone for so many years, we had a very strong bond and could not stand to think of not being with each other. Besides, what would be the point of both of us living alone?
Anyway, I quickly made friends with an another instructor, a girl about my age, named Vanessa Parkins. She was about the nicest person I had ever met. Always laughing about something, never complained about the slightest imposition, and had just about every young up-and- comer drooling over her. She ignored every advance in her
direction, even a few indecent proposals from tenured faculty. Her heart belonged to her
long-time boyfriend, Peter Shaw. They had been dating since their sophomore year
when they had both signed up for a year abroad at Adelaide University in Australia.
Vanessa had been waiting for a marriage proposal for a year when I met her. Peter
however was too worried about money and embarrassed he couldn't offer her a mansion
instead of a one bedroom apartment so he held off, working two jobs, one at the college
tutoring political science, the other at a campus pizzeria. The last real conversation I
remember having with her was about how his long, strange hours were wearing at their
relationship. It's ironic now to think that our last conversation was about time and how
little of it there was. We did not know then, just how little.
The morning of October 25, 2002 began just like every other morning. The autumn sky was gray and overcast, threatening to begin to snow. The trees had almost lost all their leaves and the air was chilly enough to warrant a winter coat. I left the house at six-thirty that morning, quietly locking the door behind me so as not to awaken my mother who had been quite ill for the past month. I started my car, an old Monte Carlo, with some trepidation, and waited for it to warm up. By seven o'clock I arrived in the parking lot across from the Science Hall and began to make my way into the building. I crossed the street, my hand clenched at the collar of my fawn-colored leather coat, ready to start the day, unaware of what was to come.
Writing this now, I see myself walking into that building, as in a movie. I remember speaking to a few of my students, placing my coat and briefcase in my
cinderblock-walled office with no window, and making my way towards the labs on the
other side of the building. I can almost see the expression on my own face. I must have
felt so safe and confident, so certain that today would not be unlike any other. I
remember waving to Vanessa as she entered her own lab room down the hall, preparing
to face her own student's lack of enthusiasm for having to be in the cold, sterile labs so
early in the morning. I slipped on my lab coat over the black turtleneck and blue jeans,
tugging the collar to straighten it, trying to give it a respectable air despite the frayed hem
and random iodine stains. I pulled my hair back into a loose ponytail, wisps of hair had
already slipped out by the time I had made my way to the front of the room, and began the day's lecture.
The rest of the morning went without incident. Classes began and ended, the campus chapel bells signaling each hour, and I returned to my office around one o'clock that afternoon for my usual late lunch. I would have normally eaten lunch with Vanessa at a small diner near the school, but today she would be tutoring a student in one of the labs and I was left to fend for myself. Unfortunately this meant fending myself against the vending machine, a fight that usually ended with me buying a large bottle of Pepsi and a candy bar. As I returned to my office, in my hands was proof positive that once again, the machine had won. I sat down at my desk, an ancient wooden thing with flaking varnish and drawers that stuck fast. I had tried to lighten the mood of my "cell," as I liked to refer to it, with a vase of flowers and a few pictures one of the Professors' daughters had drawn when I watched her for a few hours one day. But the cold of the room had wilted the flowers and the dampness that always pervaded the entire building had caused the thin pieces of copier paper to curl at the corners. I rubbed my hands together, trying to warm them, and began to grade the few research papers I had left in my pile. I remember that they were all turned in late, which meant that their writers could not receive a higher grade than a "B." I remember hoping they had used that extra time to write some damn good papers, but knew from my own college days that late papers were usually those written at the last minute and would never be able to do their writers any intellectual justice.
My next class would not have been until three o'clock that afternoon, an advanced genetics lab. It only had fifteen students in it and would last four hours or
more depending on the day's lab exercise. I can't recall now what exactly we were
prepped to do, but it doesn't matter, we never got to start. At five minute until three I left my office, lab book in hand, and made my way to the Genetics Lab down the hall. I noticed that the halls were deathly quiet, unusual for that time of day, but when I turned into the lab and saw that all of my students had already arrived, I shook the eeriness off and walked to the front of the lab as always. I was five minutes into the lab lecture when we heard what sounded like an explosion on the other side of the building. The noise was dulled through the thick walls of the one hundred-year-old building, but it was still loud enough to make us all turn towards the door. We watched, not knowing exactly what we expected to happen next, but we stared at the door anyway. A moment later there was another loud eruption from the same part of the building. My first thought was that there had been some kind of explosion within the gas lines, that a student had lit a Bunsen burner and the flame had been drawn into the line. After the third eruption I told my students to remain in their lab and I would go check on the noises. I walked quickly down the hall towards the main side of the building that housed the larger labs. Part of me wanted to run, but the other parts felt strongly that I should leave the building and take my students with me. Something inside of me told me that what I had heard was not a lab accident and that whatever it was, it was dangerous. But my sense of obligation to the other instructors and their students made me walk faster towards the main labs.
As I turned the corner and came into the main hall, I came face to face with a scene I will never forget. Three men, dressed in black and donning black ski masks were standing down the hall about fifteen yards from me. They were each holding guns. One I
recognized as some kind of semi-automatic and the other a rifle. I suddenly knew what the noises we had heard had been. At the feet of the men were four slumped and lifeless bodies and on the wall behind them three distinct areas of blood splatter. As I watched in horror, one of the men raised his weapon, and unloaded it into one of the bodies. Reacting to the sudden sound and the spray of blood I gasped loudly trying to stifle a scream, but it was too late. As if in slow motion, the three of them turned their heads towards me at once. One raised his arm towards me and in a heartbeat the other two broke into a run. I turned to run, to try to get back to my students, to get them out of the building, but as I turned I saw four more men in black exit the elevator I had just passed. They raised their weapons in unison, but before I could react I felt it. A sharp agonizing pain, like a knife being twisted into the flesh on my right side near my ribs. The last thing I remember after being shot for the first time, was the cold of the tile floor against my cheek before everything faded to black.
When I awoke I heard the angry voices of my captors. What they were saying was garbled in my sluggish mind as I strained to regain consciousness. I forced my eyes
open and the blurry images of light fixtures danced above me. As the image cleared, I
realized I was still in the Science Hall, the main biology lab to be exact, and as alive as I
could have hoped to be. I became aware suddenly of the muffled sobs of people near
me. Still too weak to move, I assumed they were the students and instructors that had
been scheduled to have class in the main labs that afternoon. I began to put together
pieces of the conversation the men standing above me were having. I remember hearing the words 'crazy,' 'agent,' and 'woman' as well as references to the FBI and the police.
They spoke English well so I assumed they were Americans, possibly, by one's accent, from the Chicago area. I was eventually able to turn my head to see one man with a walkie-talkie radio turn and walk to the other side of the room. Moments later I heard a dull thud and a muffled cry, followed by a string of profanities, and knew this faceless man was beating up one of his prisoners. I turned my eyes back toward the ceiling as one of the masked men bent over me. He said nothing, but cocked his head to one side as he reached down, grabbed my hair at the base of my skull, and pulled me up into the sitting position. Pain shot down my side reminding my just why I had been unconscious in the first place. My vision blacked and I pressed my head back against the wall behind me. As the pain subsided and my vision returned I could finally take into account where I was.
The men had apparently herded their prisoners into the central lab in the main hall. It was a large lab filled with six long rows of benches. Each row could be worked from two sides and in the center on each side was a laminar flow hood. These were large pieces of equipment, about the size of a washing machine, that sat level with the counter tops. the students used them to prepare sterile solutions and work with living tissue without it becoming contaminated by room air. There were cabinets below the work areas, each being assigned a student each semester, containing the necessary glassware. The right and back walls of the room were covered in storage cabinets and at the left side of the room were the demonstration areas where most professors gave their pre-lab lectures. I was at the front of the lab, against the blank wall, only a few feet from the door to my right. From where I sat I could only hear the other captives in the room, but I could tell from the way the men marched up and down the rows, that they were lined up along the inside benches. There were six men with guns in the room. One by the door, one standing against the wall to my left, and two each on either side of the lab benches. They had a multitude of weapons. Each had either some kind of large rifle-type gun slung over his shoulder, a handgun at their side, and a few even had knives strapped at their ankles. They all still wore their masks and I noticed that their clothing did not only match in color, but they wore exactly the same garments. Except from some differences in sizes, you could not tell one from the other in their attire. The man with the radio returned to the front of the room and walked up to me.
"What's your name, woman?" he asked in a harsh, haggard voice. I could tell he was older by the sound of it and his eyes, peering out from the holes in the mask, were pale blue, almost white, and small wrinkles lined his lids.
"I asked you a question - answer!"
"Katherine," I answered quietly, lowering my eyes from his dead stare.
"Katherine what?"
"Connor. Katherine Connor," I squirmed from the pain that suddenly exploded at my side.
"Hurts, don't it?" he asked, a smile almost evident with his tone. "Trust me, at least the pain let's you know you're still alive." He nudged my leg with his boot as he stood up straight again. The sudden movement triggering another jolt of agony.
His radio came to life seconds later. A man's voice, youthful and a little higher in tone, notifying the men in the room that "Carter" was on his way up to view the prisoners. It was then that I remembered the rest of the building. I couldn't come to any specific numbers but I knew that there were classrooms above us used by math and computer science and below us on the first floor were faculty offices and a couple of computer labs. The fourth floor should have been empty since the chemistry department had taken a number of students to a research meeting in Philadelphia and the entire faculty went as well. All told, there were probably between fifty and eighty people in the building, maybe more. I assumed that the people in the room with me were students from this floor's labs. Those meant about sixty people were lined up behind those counters. I remembered the bodies in the hallway. I couldn't tell who they had been, but I was sure they were the instructors from the three main labs. Vanessa was supposed to have been gone by three o'clock, so I held out hope that she had made it out. I shuddered wondering why, if they had killed the other lab instructors, that they hadn't killed me. Why had they taken the trouble to drag me into the lab with the others? Had they thought I was a student? Had the other instructors fought back?
I was broken from my thoughts when the door beside me flung open. Two men dragged a lifeless body into the room followed by a man to whom the others nodded. The body was dropped against the bench in front of me. It was the day security guard. He had been shot in the chest but perhaps not before he was beaten, such was the state of his battered face. The man that had entered last removed his mask and nodded to the
others who followed suit. The man, whom I assumed was Carter, was in his fifties, his full head of hair a faded shade of blonde. He was tall and muscular under his black clothing and when he turned towards me, I saw the darkest, most determined eyes I had ever seen.
"Why's she up here?" he asked to any one of the men who might answer.
"We shot her. Thought she was a goner, but it was only a graze. This was the easiest place to drop her," one answered. He was in his twenties, probably younger than most of the students whom he held captive. He had long, dark hair pulled back at the base of his neck.
"Yeah, and up her she's easier to get to for other purposes," another spoke up. It was the one with the radio. He winked at me and laughed softly, with a sinister intent.
"Is she the one?" Carter asked, turning to the man behind him.
"Can't tell. Don't think so," he answered.
"Well, find out. It's possible Donovan knew we were coming. He may have planted one of his little friends in here. Casey says he thinks the download happened at one of the faculty computers. Could be hers."
"Well, if she is who she says she is, then I saw her office - no computer. She's an instructor. Hired new each year. From the information we got from Casey she's new but everything looks good."
"Yeah, well, Donovan and his puppets have a way of making things look good-
too good," Carter looked at me intently. I did my best not to break the stare, trying not to look as defeated as I felt. He finally looked up at the rest of the men, "Turn on your radios boys. Casey says we have a clear line for the ear buds."
Simultaneously, the men reached into their pockets and pulled out the cordless ear buds that would apparently now serve as their means of communication. The older man with the handheld radio placed it on the counter and walked away as if he had just thrown it away.
"Take our little friend here for a tour of the room," Carter said two other men, nodding at me. "Find her a nice cozy spot in the back."
With that I was jerked up from my spot on the floor and practically dragged to the back of the room. As I passed, I tried to size up the situation down each row of benches. As I had thought, they were all students, about sixty of them. Many of the girls were crying softly and became notably more upset as they saw my blood-soaked lab coat pass by them. In the last row were my students from the last lab. Their eyes widened when they saw me. One boy tried to stand to come to my aid as they dropped me against the back cabinets, but one of the thugs hit him in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle and ordered him to sit back. I leaned against the wall, trying to focus on my breathing, feigning comfort, feeling only excruciating pain. I could feel all their eyes staring at me intently. I realized that I was the only 'adult' in the room. They had heard or seen their other instructors murdered and were merely waiting for my own demise. I tried my best to look strong for them. Even though they were not much younger than I was, I knew my position meant they would look to me for comfort and strength. It was that fact that both motivated and terrified me as I looked to the front of the room, watching as the men gathered in the corner by the door, plotting their next move. After a few moments, the group broke up and Carter came forward.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, as if what we were about to see next was some kind of sideshow display, "my name is Philip Carter I am, for all intents and purposes, a wanted felon. There's no need to sugarcoat the facts because who I am is why we are all here. You see my main job today is to draw the attention of the world to this stately institution. I'm not here because I want to hurt anyone; it's just that hurting people is how you get other people's attention. And if the right people show up here today, the right person to be specific, then this should all be over fairly quickly.
"Don't make any mistakes, though. The threats to your lives are real. I think we made that point when we shot your little professors. Don't think of escaping, the outside doors are locked and armed with plastic explosives, and my men are all over the building, and they will kill you if they see you. The administration has already been notified of the situation and your little campus has been evacuated. The police are outside the building as we speak, but don't think they're just going to come in here and sweep you out. They won't make a move until the government gets here. This is, repeat after me, a hostage situation. And a very serious one at that. They're about to send their best negotiators here to try and talk me out of this 'madness.' But that's not going to happen. The person I'm waiting for is going to pay for what he has done to me. And you, my friends, are the price."
He smiled as he turned his back to us and walked out the door. I could imagine him making his way to other rooms, other hostages, making the same speech. It was one I was sure he enjoyed making. He had the eyes of a man who was prepared to do
anything to get what he wanted.
I looked back at my students. Most were crying softly, trying not to draw unwanted attention to themselves, while others sat, their legs drawn up and their arms wrapped around them, staring at the floor, in a mild state of shock. I clutched my side, to hide both the blood and the pain, but I could feel the eyes of the girl directly across from me, staring intently at the bright red stains on my clothes and the red-brown crust forming on my hands. I forced a small smile when she looked me in the eyes, but I knew she could see in them what I was feeling: pain, fear, and most of all disgust.
I pulled my eyes from her when I heard the door open. One of the men walked in, said something to one of the others in the front, and then waved at three of the men in the room to follow him. After they left, the three left in the room with us, repositioned, one in front, and one on each side of the room. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps on another floor, there came a charge – another gunshot. 'Another instructor,' I thought to myself. They were going to kill all of them. But why not me? Who did they think I was? Carter had asked if I was the 'one.' Maybe they still thought I was whoever that may have been. If that theory was keeping me alive, what were they planning on doing to me?
The question had barely entered my mind when the answer walked in. Vanessa. She had been beaten almost beyond recognition. Her hair was matted, her clothes wet and torn. It looked like they had used a fire hose on her. She could barely walk and I could see that her hands were bound behind her back as they dragged her to the back of the room, letting her fall at my side, her head hitting the cabinet hard behind her. She was so far gone mentally; she did not even wince at the pain it must have caused. She stared straight ahead, never once acknowledging my presence. She shook all over, her trembling hands falling weakly into her lap. I realized then that she must have been freezing. I hurried to get her warm. I tried to rub her arms, to get circulation back to them, but she recoiled at my touch, sliding away from me, then laying down on her side and pulling her knees up to her chest. I slowly removed my lab coat. Despite it's bloodstains, it was the only thing close to a blanket I had to offer her as I draped it across her trembling, suddenly fragile body.
The door opened again. Carter walked in and marched directly to the back of the room. He stood above me, stared for a second as though as I was some kind of alien being to him, then waved to another one of the men.
"Bring her," he demanded, pointing to me.
Although I did not look at them, I could feel the students tense and their cumulative sense of fear flooded the room. As one of the men grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, Vanessa shot up from the floor and grabbed my leg at the thigh.
"Don't let them kill me. Don't leave me here. Promise me you'll come back. I'll die. I'll die. Promise me," she begged, bloodstained tears flowing down her dirty cheeks.
"Get down, witch," Carter barked, kicking her off of me, his black boot slamming into her jaw.
"Promise me," she pleaded, curling up on the floor.
"I promise," I said softly as they jerked me towards the door. "You won't die here. I'll come back!" I was screaming now. Stepping through the doorway into the hall, I watched her as the door slowly closed. Her eyes wide like a child's. It was to be my last memory of her.
"Good morning," I heard Karen say meekly as she rolled over in bed.
"You, too. Did you sleep well?" I asked. She nodded, slowly stretching the length of the bed.
"Alexa must have slept well, too," she remarked looking at the clock. "She never sleeps this late." It was nine o'clock. We were all usually awake by now, fumbling through our morning routine. Karen was usually getting ready to leave for the lab and I was usually getting Alexa ready for the babysitter. I would dress and, after they left, head to my office in our loft, and try to crank out a few more pages of whatever book I was working on.
"Why don't you go take a shower and I'll go get Alexa," I said, already making my way toward the door.
Alexa was in the nursery next to my mother's room. It had once been a store room/exercise equipment room, but Mom had had it decorated and furnished with my old baby things when she found out Karen was pregnant. I made my way around the staircase, tracing my hand along the dark oak railing, glancing down into the foyer and catching a glimpse of Clarissa as she opened the blinds in the study. I crept past my mother's room towards Alexa's, knowing my mother would be awake and not yet ready to talk to her, especially after last night's conversation. It had left me with more questions and conjectures than I would have liked. Something about her tone seemed so ominous to me and I couldn't shake the feeling that she had something very important to say. And something else told me that whatever it was, I was not going to like hearing it.
Alexa was standing up in the crib, staring out at the sunrise when I walked in. I smiled as I watched her total amusement at seeing essentially nothing. I remembered my Grandmother catching me one morning staring out at the sunrise and saying that I had my mother's infinite patience. An innate ability to wait on or out anything. I remember her saying, more to herself than to me, that it was this patience that would make my mother happy. I did not understand what my grandmother was saying then, and as I watched Alexa stare out at the light, I realized that I did not still.
After I had dressed and diapered Alexa, I carried her downstairs to the kitchen. Karen and Clarissa were preparing breakfast, talking and laughing like little kids. I sat Alexa in the highchair, which used to be my own, and pushed her up to the small table by the bay window. I thought of all the meals I had eaten at this table. It was really a breakfast nook, but my mother had always preferred to eat by the window, staring out at the lake, rather than eating in the silence and confined space of the dining room.
"Clarissa," I began as I turned towards she and my wife by the large oak island in the middle of the kitchen, "has Kit ever told you how she got this place?" The question seemed to surprise Clarissa. She blanched almost as she stopped chopping the vegetables for the omelet she was preparing.
"What do you mean? I had always assumed she bought it or it was left to her by her parents or something. Why do you ask?"
"It's just that, last month I was going through some old boxes I had taken back to Chicago with me and found the titles to the house and property. I never knew how the family acquired the property so I called the title office here to see who any previous owners had been. The lady I talked to said that there weren't anymore references to the titles, my mother's was the only one that had ever been given. That just doesn't make sense. I know she said she and Grandmother didn't move here until a few months before I was born. There had to be previous owners."
"Oh, you know how these things are," Clarissa scoffed, "They probably lost the paperwork through the years and when they switched over to computer files…well you know, if it's not in the computer…"
"That's exactly what I told him," Karen nodded in agreement. "Sometimes you can such a conspiracy theorist Michael. As long as there's a legal title with your mother's name on it, who cares who owned it before?"
"I don't care. I was just curious. It seems odd to me, like something's not right."
"Well, why don't you ask your mother? I'm sure Kit knows who she bought it from," Karen said, walking to the table with a bowl of oatmeal for Alexa.
I watched her for a moment as she and Alexa smiled and cooed at one another and then went upstairs to see my mother. She was sitting up against the pillows, slowly sipping a cup of tea, her hand slightly trembling at its weight.
"You know it's funny," she began, "I never thought I'd live this long." I stared at her, wondering silently why someone who had always been so full of life and lived in such a safe place, would ever think they would not live to see sixty-seven.
"So many things have happened. I just never thought I'd make it this far. Of all the things that have tried to kill me, I never imagined it would be cancer that would strike the death blow," she smirked and shook her head slightly in wonder.
"Kit, how could you think that. You've been the healthiest person I have ever known. I can't remember any time where you were in the hospital, or even had more than the flu. What things have tried to kill you?"
"Don't call me that," she snapped, her eyes darkening.
"What? Kit? I've always called you that."
"I know. But just for today, call me 'Mom'," she said to the window, her eyes softening as she turned to look at me slowly.
"Okay. But why? Why now?" I asked as I brought a chair over from the corner to sit next to her.
"Because I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you long ago but never had the courage to. It's something that will change your life and most likely your view of me. So, call me 'Mom' because today I need you to remember who I am, so maybe you'll understand why I've done what I have."
"What are you talking about?"
"You call me 'Kit' because you couldn't say 'Kate'. Do you remember who called me 'Kate'?" she asked, sounding like a child that was about to admit to breaking a piece of china.
"Yes," I answered cautiously. "Uncle Frank always called you that. I don't remember anyone else ever calling you 'Kate', just him. Why?"
"Yes, Uncle Frank," she smiled, shaking her head again. "Did you ever feel bad because you didn't know your father? Did you ever wish he'd been there? Or hate me because I picked him from a set of test tubes?"
"Hate you? No. I never hated you. When you first explained it to me I was hurt and confused, but I learned to accept it. I understood that you had wanted a child so badly, that you accepted the responsibility on your own. Besides, Uncle Frank was always there when he could be. He was practically my father."
"He was your father, Michael. Frank Donovan was your father. You didn't come from a test tube. You came from us. Maybe he didn't live with us, or eat dinner with us every night, but he was there at every play, every Little League game, and most every holiday because he was your father and he wanted to spend time with you."
I listened as the words came from her mouth, but I did not really comprehend the magnitude of her words at first.
"What do you mean? He couldn't have been my father! Why wouldn't you have told me something like that? Why wouldn't have he?"
"It's complicated," she stated bluntly, staring at me intently, trying to gauge my emotions.
"Well, make it uncomplicated," I demanded, raising my voice more than I had planned.
"Michael, it's a long story. We were in love. Even people like us can be in love," she said with a deep sigh, already tiring from the stress of the conversation.
"What do you mean? People like what?"
"Frank was an undercover agent for the Justice Department when I met him. Before that he had been CIA, a hostage negotiator, and God only knows what else. I was, I am, a protected witness of the State."
"Protected witness? CIA? Mom, what are you talking about? Frank was a cop, a detective. He worked homicide in Chicago and then D.C."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"What do you mean? I know because he told me. He didn't talk much about it, but I saw his badge when I was little, I visited him when he moved to D.C."
"You know what he wanted to you to know, what I wanted you to know, and nothing more. The badge you saw when you were young was a fake badge. He moved to D.C. because he moved the team from Chicago so their headquarters would be closer to us, closer to those he needed to protect."
"Protect from what? Nothing ever happened in this house or to anyone who ever lived in it."
"Nothing happened in this house because the government made sure it didn't. Frank made sure it didn't. Every day of your life, there have been agents watching over you. Our 'neighbors' on the farms around us are government agents, as good as the Secret Service, being paid very well to see to it that no one in this family is ever found out. The government owns this land that you've been so curious about lately. It was put into a kind of trust for our family as what you might call a 'reimbursement'. And don't look at me like that. My attorney is the one who found out you had been searching titles when he was preparing my estate papers. We've been put into the same type of protective custody as a former President might be. We live our lives safe, guarded, and completely monitored at the expense of the American people and our privacy," she began to cough violently, barely completing her speech, and as I looked into her eyes when the pain subsided, I knew everything she was saying was true. And every word she had just said made me sick.
I felt as if I had just awoken from a dream. Suddenly the walls seemed alive and felt as though they were closing in on me. I rose from my seat and paced about the room for a few moments.
"I have to take a walk," I said, looking at the floor, not sure where I wanted to walk to, and now wondering who would be watching me.
"Michael," she began softly, reaching her frail hand out, pointing towards her writing desk, "there's a letter in the desk. It's for you. I wrote it months ago, knowing that I was going to die. I thought I would have Clarissa give it to you when I passed. I didn't have the courage at the time to tell you myself, but I realized that I had to do it, and face whatever came of it. And if you must know, Clarissa knows everything."
"Why?" I huffed, plodding towards the desk and opening the drawer, "Is she one of them, too?"
"Yes," she answered bluntly.
I stopped in my tracks at her confirmation, letter in hand, and tears beginning to form in my eyes. I looked at the letter in my hand, then to my mother, and then out the bedroom door, as if psychically staring down the stairs and to the back of the house, directly at the nurse I knew to be standing in the kitchen. I felt a thousand emotions but could not isolate any of them. But something inside me stirred and I knew I was feeling something I had never felt before.
"Betrayed," I heard my mother say as I made my way across the room and out into the hallway.
I stormed down the stairs and out the front door. I turned towards the lake and the path I knew encircled it. I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run, until I reached the opposite side of the lake, facing the house on the opposite shore. I sat down on the remnants of an old boat dock, my elbows on my knees as I ran my hands back over my face and through my hair. I wanted to cry, scream; anything to release the confusion and madness that welled up inside me, but nothing came. I was too upset, too beyond words or actions. I still couldn't accept or even contemplate the meaning and impact of my mother's admission. I sat for a while, and then pulled the crushed envelope from my pocket that I had moments ago so forcibly inserted as I stepped off the front porch. I examined it in my hands, turning it over and over again. It was thicker than I had realized. As I opened it I saw it was my mother's favored parchment paper, folded into thirds, about a dozen pages or more. It was hand-written in lavender, the same way I had seen my mother write to friends and loved one's over the years. For all the computers and technology in the world, and despite her love for all of it, she still insisted that the most civilized way to reach out to someone was to do so with one's own hand. She used to say that type written letters were cold and lacked the soul of the writer. When you receive a hand-written letter, you have received a little bit of the person who sent it too you. The very thought of her old-fashioned charms made me smile in spite of all the chaos around me.
I unfolded the letter and began to read the words formed by the elegant strokes of my mother's hand:
My dearest Michael,
Of all the things I never told you, of all the things you could be angry with me about, there is one thing that I should have told you about long ago. When I was 24 I worked at a college in Illinois, outside Chicago. It was a small school, only a few hundred students were admitted yearly, and the science division where I worked, only had a little over one hundred students enrolled. I was an instructor for a few of the Pre-Med. labs. I had only been out of college a couple years myself so it seemed like the best job I could have at the time. I still remembered the material and was still young enough to relate to the students. My mother moved there with me. Being her only child and father being gone for so many years, we had a very strong bond and could not stand to think of not being with each other. Besides, what would be the point of both of us living alone?
Anyway, I quickly made friends with an another instructor, a girl about my age, named Vanessa Parkins. She was about the nicest person I had ever met. Always laughing about something, never complained about the slightest imposition, and had just about every young up-and- comer drooling over her. She ignored every advance in her
direction, even a few indecent proposals from tenured faculty. Her heart belonged to her
long-time boyfriend, Peter Shaw. They had been dating since their sophomore year
when they had both signed up for a year abroad at Adelaide University in Australia.
Vanessa had been waiting for a marriage proposal for a year when I met her. Peter
however was too worried about money and embarrassed he couldn't offer her a mansion
instead of a one bedroom apartment so he held off, working two jobs, one at the college
tutoring political science, the other at a campus pizzeria. The last real conversation I
remember having with her was about how his long, strange hours were wearing at their
relationship. It's ironic now to think that our last conversation was about time and how
little of it there was. We did not know then, just how little.
The morning of October 25, 2002 began just like every other morning. The autumn sky was gray and overcast, threatening to begin to snow. The trees had almost lost all their leaves and the air was chilly enough to warrant a winter coat. I left the house at six-thirty that morning, quietly locking the door behind me so as not to awaken my mother who had been quite ill for the past month. I started my car, an old Monte Carlo, with some trepidation, and waited for it to warm up. By seven o'clock I arrived in the parking lot across from the Science Hall and began to make my way into the building. I crossed the street, my hand clenched at the collar of my fawn-colored leather coat, ready to start the day, unaware of what was to come.
Writing this now, I see myself walking into that building, as in a movie. I remember speaking to a few of my students, placing my coat and briefcase in my
cinderblock-walled office with no window, and making my way towards the labs on the
other side of the building. I can almost see the expression on my own face. I must have
felt so safe and confident, so certain that today would not be unlike any other. I
remember waving to Vanessa as she entered her own lab room down the hall, preparing
to face her own student's lack of enthusiasm for having to be in the cold, sterile labs so
early in the morning. I slipped on my lab coat over the black turtleneck and blue jeans,
tugging the collar to straighten it, trying to give it a respectable air despite the frayed hem
and random iodine stains. I pulled my hair back into a loose ponytail, wisps of hair had
already slipped out by the time I had made my way to the front of the room, and began the day's lecture.
The rest of the morning went without incident. Classes began and ended, the campus chapel bells signaling each hour, and I returned to my office around one o'clock that afternoon for my usual late lunch. I would have normally eaten lunch with Vanessa at a small diner near the school, but today she would be tutoring a student in one of the labs and I was left to fend for myself. Unfortunately this meant fending myself against the vending machine, a fight that usually ended with me buying a large bottle of Pepsi and a candy bar. As I returned to my office, in my hands was proof positive that once again, the machine had won. I sat down at my desk, an ancient wooden thing with flaking varnish and drawers that stuck fast. I had tried to lighten the mood of my "cell," as I liked to refer to it, with a vase of flowers and a few pictures one of the Professors' daughters had drawn when I watched her for a few hours one day. But the cold of the room had wilted the flowers and the dampness that always pervaded the entire building had caused the thin pieces of copier paper to curl at the corners. I rubbed my hands together, trying to warm them, and began to grade the few research papers I had left in my pile. I remember that they were all turned in late, which meant that their writers could not receive a higher grade than a "B." I remember hoping they had used that extra time to write some damn good papers, but knew from my own college days that late papers were usually those written at the last minute and would never be able to do their writers any intellectual justice.
My next class would not have been until three o'clock that afternoon, an advanced genetics lab. It only had fifteen students in it and would last four hours or
more depending on the day's lab exercise. I can't recall now what exactly we were
prepped to do, but it doesn't matter, we never got to start. At five minute until three I left my office, lab book in hand, and made my way to the Genetics Lab down the hall. I noticed that the halls were deathly quiet, unusual for that time of day, but when I turned into the lab and saw that all of my students had already arrived, I shook the eeriness off and walked to the front of the lab as always. I was five minutes into the lab lecture when we heard what sounded like an explosion on the other side of the building. The noise was dulled through the thick walls of the one hundred-year-old building, but it was still loud enough to make us all turn towards the door. We watched, not knowing exactly what we expected to happen next, but we stared at the door anyway. A moment later there was another loud eruption from the same part of the building. My first thought was that there had been some kind of explosion within the gas lines, that a student had lit a Bunsen burner and the flame had been drawn into the line. After the third eruption I told my students to remain in their lab and I would go check on the noises. I walked quickly down the hall towards the main side of the building that housed the larger labs. Part of me wanted to run, but the other parts felt strongly that I should leave the building and take my students with me. Something inside of me told me that what I had heard was not a lab accident and that whatever it was, it was dangerous. But my sense of obligation to the other instructors and their students made me walk faster towards the main labs.
As I turned the corner and came into the main hall, I came face to face with a scene I will never forget. Three men, dressed in black and donning black ski masks were standing down the hall about fifteen yards from me. They were each holding guns. One I
recognized as some kind of semi-automatic and the other a rifle. I suddenly knew what the noises we had heard had been. At the feet of the men were four slumped and lifeless bodies and on the wall behind them three distinct areas of blood splatter. As I watched in horror, one of the men raised his weapon, and unloaded it into one of the bodies. Reacting to the sudden sound and the spray of blood I gasped loudly trying to stifle a scream, but it was too late. As if in slow motion, the three of them turned their heads towards me at once. One raised his arm towards me and in a heartbeat the other two broke into a run. I turned to run, to try to get back to my students, to get them out of the building, but as I turned I saw four more men in black exit the elevator I had just passed. They raised their weapons in unison, but before I could react I felt it. A sharp agonizing pain, like a knife being twisted into the flesh on my right side near my ribs. The last thing I remember after being shot for the first time, was the cold of the tile floor against my cheek before everything faded to black.
When I awoke I heard the angry voices of my captors. What they were saying was garbled in my sluggish mind as I strained to regain consciousness. I forced my eyes
open and the blurry images of light fixtures danced above me. As the image cleared, I
realized I was still in the Science Hall, the main biology lab to be exact, and as alive as I
could have hoped to be. I became aware suddenly of the muffled sobs of people near
me. Still too weak to move, I assumed they were the students and instructors that had
been scheduled to have class in the main labs that afternoon. I began to put together
pieces of the conversation the men standing above me were having. I remember hearing the words 'crazy,' 'agent,' and 'woman' as well as references to the FBI and the police.
They spoke English well so I assumed they were Americans, possibly, by one's accent, from the Chicago area. I was eventually able to turn my head to see one man with a walkie-talkie radio turn and walk to the other side of the room. Moments later I heard a dull thud and a muffled cry, followed by a string of profanities, and knew this faceless man was beating up one of his prisoners. I turned my eyes back toward the ceiling as one of the masked men bent over me. He said nothing, but cocked his head to one side as he reached down, grabbed my hair at the base of my skull, and pulled me up into the sitting position. Pain shot down my side reminding my just why I had been unconscious in the first place. My vision blacked and I pressed my head back against the wall behind me. As the pain subsided and my vision returned I could finally take into account where I was.
The men had apparently herded their prisoners into the central lab in the main hall. It was a large lab filled with six long rows of benches. Each row could be worked from two sides and in the center on each side was a laminar flow hood. These were large pieces of equipment, about the size of a washing machine, that sat level with the counter tops. the students used them to prepare sterile solutions and work with living tissue without it becoming contaminated by room air. There were cabinets below the work areas, each being assigned a student each semester, containing the necessary glassware. The right and back walls of the room were covered in storage cabinets and at the left side of the room were the demonstration areas where most professors gave their pre-lab lectures. I was at the front of the lab, against the blank wall, only a few feet from the door to my right. From where I sat I could only hear the other captives in the room, but I could tell from the way the men marched up and down the rows, that they were lined up along the inside benches. There were six men with guns in the room. One by the door, one standing against the wall to my left, and two each on either side of the lab benches. They had a multitude of weapons. Each had either some kind of large rifle-type gun slung over his shoulder, a handgun at their side, and a few even had knives strapped at their ankles. They all still wore their masks and I noticed that their clothing did not only match in color, but they wore exactly the same garments. Except from some differences in sizes, you could not tell one from the other in their attire. The man with the radio returned to the front of the room and walked up to me.
"What's your name, woman?" he asked in a harsh, haggard voice. I could tell he was older by the sound of it and his eyes, peering out from the holes in the mask, were pale blue, almost white, and small wrinkles lined his lids.
"I asked you a question - answer!"
"Katherine," I answered quietly, lowering my eyes from his dead stare.
"Katherine what?"
"Connor. Katherine Connor," I squirmed from the pain that suddenly exploded at my side.
"Hurts, don't it?" he asked, a smile almost evident with his tone. "Trust me, at least the pain let's you know you're still alive." He nudged my leg with his boot as he stood up straight again. The sudden movement triggering another jolt of agony.
His radio came to life seconds later. A man's voice, youthful and a little higher in tone, notifying the men in the room that "Carter" was on his way up to view the prisoners. It was then that I remembered the rest of the building. I couldn't come to any specific numbers but I knew that there were classrooms above us used by math and computer science and below us on the first floor were faculty offices and a couple of computer labs. The fourth floor should have been empty since the chemistry department had taken a number of students to a research meeting in Philadelphia and the entire faculty went as well. All told, there were probably between fifty and eighty people in the building, maybe more. I assumed that the people in the room with me were students from this floor's labs. Those meant about sixty people were lined up behind those counters. I remembered the bodies in the hallway. I couldn't tell who they had been, but I was sure they were the instructors from the three main labs. Vanessa was supposed to have been gone by three o'clock, so I held out hope that she had made it out. I shuddered wondering why, if they had killed the other lab instructors, that they hadn't killed me. Why had they taken the trouble to drag me into the lab with the others? Had they thought I was a student? Had the other instructors fought back?
I was broken from my thoughts when the door beside me flung open. Two men dragged a lifeless body into the room followed by a man to whom the others nodded. The body was dropped against the bench in front of me. It was the day security guard. He had been shot in the chest but perhaps not before he was beaten, such was the state of his battered face. The man that had entered last removed his mask and nodded to the
others who followed suit. The man, whom I assumed was Carter, was in his fifties, his full head of hair a faded shade of blonde. He was tall and muscular under his black clothing and when he turned towards me, I saw the darkest, most determined eyes I had ever seen.
"Why's she up here?" he asked to any one of the men who might answer.
"We shot her. Thought she was a goner, but it was only a graze. This was the easiest place to drop her," one answered. He was in his twenties, probably younger than most of the students whom he held captive. He had long, dark hair pulled back at the base of his neck.
"Yeah, and up her she's easier to get to for other purposes," another spoke up. It was the one with the radio. He winked at me and laughed softly, with a sinister intent.
"Is she the one?" Carter asked, turning to the man behind him.
"Can't tell. Don't think so," he answered.
"Well, find out. It's possible Donovan knew we were coming. He may have planted one of his little friends in here. Casey says he thinks the download happened at one of the faculty computers. Could be hers."
"Well, if she is who she says she is, then I saw her office - no computer. She's an instructor. Hired new each year. From the information we got from Casey she's new but everything looks good."
"Yeah, well, Donovan and his puppets have a way of making things look good-
too good," Carter looked at me intently. I did my best not to break the stare, trying not to look as defeated as I felt. He finally looked up at the rest of the men, "Turn on your radios boys. Casey says we have a clear line for the ear buds."
Simultaneously, the men reached into their pockets and pulled out the cordless ear buds that would apparently now serve as their means of communication. The older man with the handheld radio placed it on the counter and walked away as if he had just thrown it away.
"Take our little friend here for a tour of the room," Carter said two other men, nodding at me. "Find her a nice cozy spot in the back."
With that I was jerked up from my spot on the floor and practically dragged to the back of the room. As I passed, I tried to size up the situation down each row of benches. As I had thought, they were all students, about sixty of them. Many of the girls were crying softly and became notably more upset as they saw my blood-soaked lab coat pass by them. In the last row were my students from the last lab. Their eyes widened when they saw me. One boy tried to stand to come to my aid as they dropped me against the back cabinets, but one of the thugs hit him in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle and ordered him to sit back. I leaned against the wall, trying to focus on my breathing, feigning comfort, feeling only excruciating pain. I could feel all their eyes staring at me intently. I realized that I was the only 'adult' in the room. They had heard or seen their other instructors murdered and were merely waiting for my own demise. I tried my best to look strong for them. Even though they were not much younger than I was, I knew my position meant they would look to me for comfort and strength. It was that fact that both motivated and terrified me as I looked to the front of the room, watching as the men gathered in the corner by the door, plotting their next move. After a few moments, the group broke up and Carter came forward.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, as if what we were about to see next was some kind of sideshow display, "my name is Philip Carter I am, for all intents and purposes, a wanted felon. There's no need to sugarcoat the facts because who I am is why we are all here. You see my main job today is to draw the attention of the world to this stately institution. I'm not here because I want to hurt anyone; it's just that hurting people is how you get other people's attention. And if the right people show up here today, the right person to be specific, then this should all be over fairly quickly.
"Don't make any mistakes, though. The threats to your lives are real. I think we made that point when we shot your little professors. Don't think of escaping, the outside doors are locked and armed with plastic explosives, and my men are all over the building, and they will kill you if they see you. The administration has already been notified of the situation and your little campus has been evacuated. The police are outside the building as we speak, but don't think they're just going to come in here and sweep you out. They won't make a move until the government gets here. This is, repeat after me, a hostage situation. And a very serious one at that. They're about to send their best negotiators here to try and talk me out of this 'madness.' But that's not going to happen. The person I'm waiting for is going to pay for what he has done to me. And you, my friends, are the price."
He smiled as he turned his back to us and walked out the door. I could imagine him making his way to other rooms, other hostages, making the same speech. It was one I was sure he enjoyed making. He had the eyes of a man who was prepared to do
anything to get what he wanted.
I looked back at my students. Most were crying softly, trying not to draw unwanted attention to themselves, while others sat, their legs drawn up and their arms wrapped around them, staring at the floor, in a mild state of shock. I clutched my side, to hide both the blood and the pain, but I could feel the eyes of the girl directly across from me, staring intently at the bright red stains on my clothes and the red-brown crust forming on my hands. I forced a small smile when she looked me in the eyes, but I knew she could see in them what I was feeling: pain, fear, and most of all disgust.
I pulled my eyes from her when I heard the door open. One of the men walked in, said something to one of the others in the front, and then waved at three of the men in the room to follow him. After they left, the three left in the room with us, repositioned, one in front, and one on each side of the room. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps on another floor, there came a charge – another gunshot. 'Another instructor,' I thought to myself. They were going to kill all of them. But why not me? Who did they think I was? Carter had asked if I was the 'one.' Maybe they still thought I was whoever that may have been. If that theory was keeping me alive, what were they planning on doing to me?
The question had barely entered my mind when the answer walked in. Vanessa. She had been beaten almost beyond recognition. Her hair was matted, her clothes wet and torn. It looked like they had used a fire hose on her. She could barely walk and I could see that her hands were bound behind her back as they dragged her to the back of the room, letting her fall at my side, her head hitting the cabinet hard behind her. She was so far gone mentally; she did not even wince at the pain it must have caused. She stared straight ahead, never once acknowledging my presence. She shook all over, her trembling hands falling weakly into her lap. I realized then that she must have been freezing. I hurried to get her warm. I tried to rub her arms, to get circulation back to them, but she recoiled at my touch, sliding away from me, then laying down on her side and pulling her knees up to her chest. I slowly removed my lab coat. Despite it's bloodstains, it was the only thing close to a blanket I had to offer her as I draped it across her trembling, suddenly fragile body.
The door opened again. Carter walked in and marched directly to the back of the room. He stood above me, stared for a second as though as I was some kind of alien being to him, then waved to another one of the men.
"Bring her," he demanded, pointing to me.
Although I did not look at them, I could feel the students tense and their cumulative sense of fear flooded the room. As one of the men grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, Vanessa shot up from the floor and grabbed my leg at the thigh.
"Don't let them kill me. Don't leave me here. Promise me you'll come back. I'll die. I'll die. Promise me," she begged, bloodstained tears flowing down her dirty cheeks.
"Get down, witch," Carter barked, kicking her off of me, his black boot slamming into her jaw.
"Promise me," she pleaded, curling up on the floor.
"I promise," I said softly as they jerked me towards the door. "You won't die here. I'll come back!" I was screaming now. Stepping through the doorway into the hall, I watched her as the door slowly closed. Her eyes wide like a child's. It was to be my last memory of her.