Chapter 10: The Escape
Sarah woke up. "Ow!" she exclaimed from her hospital bed in the warehouse.
Casey, sitting at the desk and making notes, looked up and over his shoulder at her. "What?"
"Everything hurts," was Sarah's pouting assessment. She fidgeted around in the bed, raising her arms to her face.
Casey ran over to her side and pulled her hands down and away. "The sedatives must have finally worn off completely. No more drugs for you, young lady."
He smiled down at her. She grimaced and then grimaced again at the pain the movement had caused her.
"Be still and try not to scratch at anything," Casey advised. "Here's something we can do now."
He stopped the IV drip and unwrapped the gauze from her arm. Carefully removing the adhesive tape and sliding the small needle out of her flesh, he moved the metal stand to one side and threw the disposables into the plastic drum. He then went to the medical supply table and, finding a box of Band-Aids, selected one and returned, applying it to the small puncture wound near the crook of Sarah's arm.
"When do I get rid of these?" asked Sarah, raising her splinted arms into the air again.
"Not until after we're out of here and you get checked out. There might be small breaks that I can't feel and I don't want you to cause any further damage without knowing it. And be careful, or I'll tie your arms down," Casey added, narrowly avoiding a smack on the nose as he ducked his face out of the way.
"Kinky," Sarah replied, wincing in pain again as she tried to smile at her own joke.
"Casey!" wailed Sarah from behind the privacy screen. "This is impossible!"
"Shhh! Keep your voice down!"
Casey delivered this admonition in an exaggerated stage whisper as he hurried to the corner where the toilet was situated and cautiously peeked around the screen. Sarah sat, her splinted arms held out in front of her in a beseeching manner. In her left hand, she clutched a wad of toilet paper.
"Oh, I see," Casey said, clearing his throat and raising a hand to his lips to cover a quick smile. "How about if we take them off so you can get washed up, then they go on again for the rest of the time? That should be all right, I think."
"Thanks," Sarah said forlornly. As Casey began to unfasten one of the braces, Sarah looked up at him. "Thanks for all of this, Casey. Spy school never mentioned anything about having to be a nursemaid. This must be terrible for you."
"Just part of the job, Walker," Casey replied gruffly, carefully avoiding Sarah's pathetic gaze.
After three more days had gone by, even Casey was beginning to feel a little antsy. Sarah wasn't helping the situation any.
"What do you think they're doing now?" she asked for the tenth time that day, nervously picking at the bedclothes and staring at Casey with a furrowed brow.
"I think," he replied with an amused quirk to one side of his mouth, "they're not sitting around wondering what we're up to, for one thing, and for another, whatever it is they're doing, we won't be able to assess the status of the mission until we're out of here. So try to relax and we'll leave as soon as possible."
Sarah finally subsided after her partner's remarks, but he was pretty sure he could make out, coming from the direction of the bed, vague sounds of impatient huffing and puffing with a little grumbling thrown in for good measure.
By the next day, Sarah's condition had improved markedly and, just after they had eaten their breakfast, Casey set about preparing for their departure. First, he went to one of the darker corners of the warehouse and wheeled a coffin-sized crate on a hand truck over near Sarah's bed. From inside, he pulled a sports equipment bag that contained a skin-hugging body suit for Sarah and a brown courier uniform, complete with cap and wireless tablet, for himself. The crate was lined with medium-density padding and at the level where Sarah's waist would rest was fixed a cylinder of compressed air with tube and nose fittings attached.
After the two agents had changed into their new clothes, Casey carefully checked the entire room one last time to make sure they weren't leaving anything behind that would reveal their identities. He tucked the logbook and a couple of other small items between the lining and the wood of the crate, then gave Sarah a hand to step into her temporary chariot.
As Casey slipped the elastic that would hold the oxygen tube's nose piece in place around the back of her head, he commented, "If all goes well, you won't be in here for more than a half hour. Full out, this bottle holds enough air for 20 minutes. I'll turn the regulator to a third, which should give us a maximum of an hour. Since you won't be moving, you should be okay with less, and the box isn't airtight. So relax and that will cut down on your oxygen consumption as well."
"What if we're intercepted?" Sarah asked, a little afraid of what Casey's answer might be.
"Well, I can see two scenarios," he replied seriously. "Either they open the box right away, in which case you'll be able to breathe, or they don't, in which case, eventually, you won't."
"Oh," Sarah responded. "I don't suppose you'd care to repeat that with a bit of sugar coating, would you?"
Casey's stern expression softened a bit when he saw the worry in Sarah's eyes. "It's okay, Walker, you'll be fine. I've got your back, remember?"
Sarah's attempt at a smile wasn't a complete success but it did serve to buck up her spirits a bit and steel her resolve.
"I remember," she said, "and thanks again, Casey, for everything."
"Stop, I might cry," he quipped, and Sarah's smile came out full force as she briefly laughed at her partner's ability to bolster her confidence using his particular brand of sarcasm in this dangerous and crucial leg of the mission.
"Now," he continued, all business again, "I set up for a vehicle to meet us at a specific rendezvous point every day at the same time. We now have 18 minutes to get there before it leaves and we have to wait another day, so lie down and breathe."
As Sarah reclined into the padding and arranged her arms, once more in their splints, as comfortably as possible beside her, she tried not to think of the darkness of that other warehouse while Casey fastened the crate's lid over her.
Sarah hadn't known what her reaction would be when the crate's lid dropped, separating her from the weak light of the warehouse. At the Academy, they had practiced being shut up inside various confined spaces, sometimes even with a limited air supply, to learn how to survive should something similar ever occur during a mission. But this was no classroom exercise, and Sarah wondered if what she had just been through at the hands of those terrifyingly detached monsters would cause her to panic in any way.
Sarah needn't have worried. As she listened to Casey tightening the screws in place, her well-trained mind automatically took over, evening out and slowing her breathing until she could allow her muscles to relax one by one so that, by the time the head end of the crate jerked slightly as Casey hefted the trolley up and onto its wheels, Sarah was smiling slightly into her oxygen apparatus and drifting off, her mind wandering to her imaginary safe place, the one she had constructed in class while locked in a dark closet for twelve hours – or that really uncomfortable exercise where they had each been bound, gagged, stuffed into a hockey equipment bag, and driven around in the trunk of a car on some of Washington, D.C.'s, bumpiest roads for what seemed like forever.
Letting herself float, Sarah pictured a leafy green park, the bright afternoon sunlight diffused by warm, slightly hazy air. A few small children ran around a sandbox playing a boisterous game of tag while others swung from monkey bars in a joyful test of juvenile endurance.
Sarah, now inserted into the idyllic scene as her four-year-old self, shot up into the air on a swing, pumping her little legs as she flew backwards and forwards. Plummeting towards the earth, she smiled as she approached the ground at a dizzying speed, knowing that the swing's chains would keep her from hitting the uneven dirt. When the swing began its forward ascent and reached the point where its motion would change direction to once more carry Sarah backwards, down and up, high into the balmy afternoon breeze, she released her grip on the chains and felt her body leave the swing's seat with a jolt.
Momentarily confused, Sarah tensed and blinked in the confines of her living coffin before relaxing again and returning her thoughts to the imaginary playground. This time, she was seated on a teeter-totter, once again as high in the air as the device allowed, except something was different. Instead of four, Sarah was her current age of 26, and when she looked to the opposite end of the teeter-totter, there was Casey, his arms extended straight out in front of himself, hands gripping the handles, his long legs bent fully at the knees, making him look very out of place on the child-sized ride.
Sarah felt more than saw the way he was holding back, making sure the teeter-totter was under his control, his look of concern tinged with sadness telling Sarah more than any words of consolation could have expressed.
Just as she was feeling safe and beginning to allow Casey's solicitous bearing to permeate this strangely real-seeming unreality, Sarah noticed his expression had suddenly changed to one of alarm, and the seat she was sitting on began to fall, dropping like a stone. It should only have been a foot or so to the ground, but it wasn't. Sarah flailed her legs a bit, her feet searching for a solid surface, but it was hopeless. She was still falling with no hope of saving herself.
Then she felt a new sensation. There were arms tightly circling her waist. She was still falling but now it felt like a controlled descent. When Sarah's seat should have struck the playground's loosely packed earth, it instead came to rest there gently, and when she turned around to see whose arms were holding her so gently and yet so securely, she was relieved to discover Chuck smiling into her eyes. She only had a second, however, to push herself more deeply into his embrace before he spoke, saying, "I've got you, Walker. You can get out now. Hurry and get into the van."
Sarah blinked her eyes a couple of times as though coming out of a very deep sleep and focused on Casey's face, his look of concern similar to the one in her waking dream, his hand extended to help her out of the crate. Sarah blinked a couple more times to help clear her head and removed the oxygen tubes from her nostrils before taking Casey's hand and getting out to stand beside the brown van painted with the name of a popular courier firm in gold lettering.
"Ten minutes to spare," Casey said as he pulled the van's side door open.
The driver, who was waiting inside, first helped Casey to lift the crate and hand truck into the van and then helped Sarah inside. He sat her down gently into a jump seat behind the driver's chair and fastened a seat belt around her hips, then tugged on it a bit to make sure she was securely strapped in. Only after he was sure she was in place did he raise his gaze to look shyly at Sarah's face.
"Welcome back, Agent Walker," he whispered as a slight flush spread up his cheeks from his neck.
Casey's abrupt bark from the driver's seat was quiet but firm. "Save the flirting, Phillips, and let's get out of here."
Phillips, whom Sarah pegged at about 20, jumped slightly and flushed a little more redly at Casey's admonition. His look of embarrassed guilt touched Sarah and she placed the ends of her fingers on his forearm, smiling and mouthing Thanks to the younger agent. She was happy to see that her response had gone a long way to restore the young man's confidence when he smiled back quickly then left her to take his place in the passenger seat as Casey started the engine and pulled the truck out of its parking spot to drive away.
After they pulled into the hospital's delivery bay and the door had rolled back down to conceal the vehicle, Casey was the one who helped Sarah out of the van and into a waiting wheelchair. Phillips quickly took his place behind the wheel of the vehicle and prepared to back it out of the bay once Sarah was safely out of sight and the door to the outside could be opened again. Apparently, whoever was running the operation was going out of their way to ensure Sarah's safety, and just before her chair was commandeered by an orderly to go into the hospital proper, Sarah flashed Phillips one last smile, which for some reason proved to be too much for the novice agent to handle, and he quickly found something very interesting about the backs of his hands as Sarah's wheelchair began to move.
"What's wrong with him?" Sarah asked Casey, who was flanking her left side. "Is it my hair?"
Casey looked down into his partner's upturned face and spared a glance for her peach fuzz scalp as they moved along a corridor in the services section of the basement past doors marked "Laundry" and "Electrical." After a moment, his thoughtful expression became an amused smirk, and he replied, "I'm guessing it's because you're a hero, Walker. The kid would have had some kind of briefing. They probably played it up a bit, though. You'd better milk it while you can before they find out you're a fraud."
Sarah looked at the side of Casey's face that was towards her once he had turned his eyes to look in the direction they were moving. Of course he was pulling her leg and the familiarity of it gave her a warm feeling inside. But a hero? For what? Allowing herself to be taken and tortured? Not doing anything while all those people died horrible deaths?
As though he could read her mind, after Casey had pushed open a door marked "Research" and held it so the orderly could guide Sarah's wheelchair through the opening, he halted her progress momentarily by putting his hand on the arm rest of the chair and whispered in Sarah's ear, "You're a hero, Walker, because you survived."
Once they were inside, Sarah was pretty sure the room marked "Research" was rarely used for such a purpose. Around the edges was an array of medical testing equipment surrounding two exam tables in the middle separated by the same type of divider that Casey had used in their warehouse hideout. Casey brushed aside the nurse who was directing him towards one of the sectioned-off tables until he was sure that Sarah was in good hands. Only when Sarah's attendant appeared a bit nervous that he might stay while Sarah exchanged her body suit for an open-backed hospital robe did Casey back down and begin to submit to his own post-mission physical.
While two doctors and the two nurses poked and prodded, shone flashlights in eyes and ears, drew blood and attached electrodes to their chests and heads, Casey kept up a steady stream of conversation when he was able to. He spoke in general about some of the things they would have to remember to take care of when they finally returned to the outside world, and Sarah noted with satisfaction that he neatly skirted any specific mention of their mission, either the one concerning the disk or the Intersect.
At one point, it became obvious to Sarah that Casey was beginning to allow himself to relax after a long period on high alert. His voice took on a slightly weary and a more gentle tone, and he suddenly switched from "Walker" to "Sarah," something he had never done in front of other people before. This simple slip on Casey's part brought home to Sarah just how much pressure her fellow agent had been under over the past week or so, and she smiled wistfully to herself as she remembered how attentive and at times tender he had been with her when she had been at her worst.
Seeing Sarah's expression as she listened to Casey's tone of voice and heard his obvious concern for the welfare of her charge, Sarah's nurse shot her a knowing smile and winked her way, and when the nurse's unspoken signal said Lucky girl, it took Sarah a moment to figure out what was intended. When it finally clicked into place, Sarah quickly shook her head from side to side while mouthing No, but the slight flush that crept up her neck only served to strengthen the nurse's opinion that the two agents were lovers in love, and Sarah finally had to resort to closing her eyes to block out the woman's lascivious smirk.
Only after the radiologist's report on the X-rays of Sarah's arms and hands had been read by her attending physician was she declared fit to leave the hospital's secret basement infirmary. Casey had insisted on taking Sarah back to his apartment for their debriefing with the general rather than waiting for the appropriate communications equipment to be brought into the hospital, explaining to Sarah that she would feel much better in familiar surroundings and so would be in a frame of mind to continue the mission that much sooner.
"But, Casey, I feel okay now," she said to him, a note of uncertainty in her voice that was all-too-evident to her partner.
"Give it another day, Walker," he replied as he steered their car smoothly along the Los Angeles streets. "There's something you have to take care of first."
Puzzled, Sarah turned her head to look at Casey but he would say no more, and when they finally entered Casey's apartment, she was surprised to see several of what looked like large hat boxes and cube-shaped suitcases on the table in the middle of Casey's living room.
As she stood there trying to guess what was inside them, Casey strode forwards and picked four of the cases up, arranging them under his arms and in his hands before saying, "I had a selection of wigs and make-up sent over. You go upstairs and I'll bring them up. We have to debrief with the general at some point this evening, but I thought you might like to see Chuck before that. I hear he's been asking about you."