Someone needs to turn off that light, you used to say, but now you're resigned to its never-dimming presence. And it's hard to tell now if your eyesight is degrading or if it's just the cell's foggy glass. Someone rarely comes except to take your waste and bring you food. You sit in one corner for days, then alternate. The one that faces away from the hall door is your favorite, because weeks of anxiously watching it, waiting for rescue, made you crazy. Crazier. A mind like yours, that spends a third of the time hallucinating, another third panicking, and the other third laughing until you cry and crying until you laugh, can't really fit more crazy in its schedule.
You wish somebody had left you something to write with. A dry erase marker would be perfect, because you could practice your equations. Then again, it'd be a heartbreak to have to erase some in order to fit more. Some really great breakthroughs might be made, if they only gave you the chance. The Freelancers could even take all the credit! Privateers, sailing the seas of history and steering it wherever they want.
Maybe it's a week or seven or fifty or one hundred weeks (or maybe it's actually been a thousand years!) into your confinement when the brown-haired man stops lurking on the edge of your vision and actually talks to you.
"Jason," he says, but he's muffled behind the glass. He steps closer, so his voice can be heard through the grate at the top of your cell without carrying too far. "Jason," he says, and he doesn't ask how you are because who would ask you such a question?
You open your mouth to croak a response, when he says, "Don't talk, just listen carefully." Intrigued, you stand up weakly, and press your face to the glass.
"In two days time, I am going to be on watch duty. I will come to you that night, and I will get you out of here."
You blink slowly, uncomprehending. This has to be another dream.
"Two days, Jason. I promise."
He places his palm on the glass for a moment before turning to exit. Okay, that was weird, and that's probably the weirdest thing about this place. People are kind to you one moment, then shatter your hopes the next.
Two days, two days. It's gotta be another trick. Another carrot to keep you going for whatever they have planned for you. What do they have planned? You've agonized over and over and over this question before realizing their plan is to leave you in here until they come up with a plan. It's amateur crap that would get you kicked out of any school or office but makes you perfect for upper-level time prison management.
Ha! That was funny. Sometimes you're funny. A minute later, you forget what was so funny about it.
The door to the hall opens and the young brown-haired man is back with a duffle-bag over his shoulder. When he opens the cell door, you don't stand, just look at him with confusion. He came back?
The Freelancer unzips the bag and removes a bundle of clothing.
"Put this on as quickly as you can and come with me."
"Wh-what? Why?"
"Because this is an escape." When you still don't pick up the clothes, he says, "I am getting you out, but we don't have much time. Get dressed."
He has to pull you to your feet to get you to move, but his grip isn't as hard and rough as Miller or Warren's, more like Catherine's.
He keeps a lookout while you slowly dress, and apparently you're not moving fast enough, because he helps you into socks and shoes, leading you out the door before you can pull your new coat on.
The tunnels are as confusing with your eyes open as they are blind-folded, and the fear that courses through you has you dragging your feet. The Cage is torture, but it's familiar. You're used to it by now. You don't know where this man is taking you or what awaits you outside.
"Why are you doing this?" you ask, voice wavering.
"Because I can't stand by while someone's stripped of their humanity."
You encounter nothing and no one between the Cage and the surface, where the city noise grates your ears and the stars give you vertigo. The stars! You can smell fresh air and gasoline, and it's all so overwhelming you could cry. You are crying.
He gently guides you in the passenger side door of a sedan parked outside. You suck on your sleeve and once you've driven at least an hour in total silence, you quietly ask, "Who are you?"
"My name's Marc." The man smiles at you warmly. "Marc Sadler."