"Gytha Sinnsdottir, hmmm?"
Charles Offdensen looked at the ID, pain and paternity waivers, and legal records of Gytha Sinnsdottir in neat stacks on his desk.
"Yes, My Lord. She's a contortionist with a metal-themed circus based out of Goteborg, Sweden. Before that, she worked at the . . the Cir-queh duh So-leel—"
"Cirque Du Soleil," Charles corrected automatically. "She was contortionist again?"
"No, My Lord; she was a clown."
"A clown? She's not a coke fiend, is she?"
"Ah, no, My Lord. She's never tested positive for anything harder than weed."
"That's a relief. Now . . . why are there extra fingerprints on her cards?"
Taped onto Gytha's fingerprint cards was an extra box for each hand, an extra fingerprint squarely in the middle of each.
"She has six fingers on each hand, My Lord." Klokateer 46122 shrugged. "Circus folk," he muttered.
"Interesting."
Charles spared a glance at the monitor, where the unfortunate Miss Sinnsdottir was duct-taped to a chair with a black bag over her head. She was in one of the isolation chambers designed to unnerve the 'guests' with solitude and silence while it was worked out what to do with them. While a strong, impressive looking chair replete with built-in restraints for the arms and legs dominated the room, Gytha was placed in a metal folding chair beside it.
"And why the folding chair?"
"Her arms and legs wouldn't reach the restraints on the regular interrogation chairs," 46122 reported. "Given how slippery she's been, we decided not to take chances."
"Wise decision," Charles opined.
On the monitor, Gytha suddenly bent her head over practically into her own lap. Charles thought she was vomiting at first, but the tiny woman managed to force her knees together and pinch the bag fabric just enough to pull it off. She looked around the solemn room, her eye makeup streaking and running. She'd obviously been crying.
"By all accounts, she's just been trying to get out of here, My Lord. We found no recording equipment or Dethklok property on her person. She's had casual contact with every member of the band and broke it off as soon as possible," 46122 continued.
The onscreen Gytha tested her bonds. Her arms were taped to the side supports of the folding chair from her wrists nearly to her elbows. The Gears had tried to tape her legs to the chair's legs, but found they wouldn't reach. Duct tape had saved the day again.
However, when there was at least six inches of space between whatever needed to be taped, the bond was less than secure. As Charles watched, Gytha wrenched first one leg, then the other out of the grip of the duct tape, leaving her socks behind.
"Why did you remove her shoes?"
"She was wearing four-inch stiletto heels, My Lord; those things are as dangerous as the knives of the same name."
"Does she have six toes on each foot?"
"We . . . didn't count her toes, My Lord."
Gytha stretched her legs out before her, and then curled them in a traditional cross-legged pose. She rested there for a moment, tugging experimentally at the duct tape on her arms. A decision seemed to have been made.
Gytha un-crossed her legs and pulled her knees up to her chin, feet flat on the seat of the chair. She rocked forward, ducking her head back to avoid the back of the chair, and then leaned to one side, then the other to rotate her shoulders in the proper direction.
Now confident in the fact that she wouldn't dislocate her arms when she changed position, the small Icelander stood on the chair seat. Or rather, her legs straightened and her pelvis rose into the air. Arms still lashed to the chair supports, Gytha folded over backwards as neatly as a clean towel folded over someone's arm.
Charles couldn't help one eyebrow quirking upward.
"What is it, My Lord? Is she trying to get free?"
"I'm not sure what she's doing, 46122," the CFO admitted.
Gytha fidgeted in her pose for a moment, and then raised one leg high in the air, followed by the other. All of her weight was balanced on her arms as she gripped – no, Charles realized – she wasn't gripping the chair supports. She was putting all of her weight on the duct tape.
Which was stretching.
"How secure is that room, 46122?"
"She might be able to pull free of the duct tape, My Lord, but she can't get out of the room. All ventilation ducts are covered in heavy-duty grates that are bolted down. The door is dead bolted from the other side."
On screen, Gytha bent over backwards again, returning her arms to their original positions. There was enough wiggle room in the stretched out duct tape for her to pull free. The little contortionist looked around the room, studying the vents and door.
Then her gaze went to the large, square fluorescent light set in the ceiling.
"What about the light?" Charles asked.
"My Lord?"
"The light in the ceiling. What's to stop her from going through that?"
"There's no way she could reach it, for starters."
"Well . . . . unless she had a folding chair to set on top of the interrogation chair," Charles stated, his eyes never leaving the screen. "And . . . . her balance was good enough that she could stand on the back of the folding chair. . . . and she was desperate enough to punch through the glass . . ."
Klokateer #46,122 was already on his two way radio, ordering every Gear within one hundred feet to get to the interrogation room.
Charles watched dispassionately as Gytha Sinnsdottir ripped the fluorescent light down and crawled through the hole.
"I . . . I think this one might be . . . a survivor."
Gytha pulled herself through the space created by the broken light, ignoring the sharp edges of metal digging gouges in her bare stomach. She was already a mess; her hands were practically hamburger just from balancing on the pegs of the Flying V, much less from punching through a sheet of Plexiglas.
She wouldn't be able to do a handstand for days.
Gytha started to crawl through the tight space jammed with wires and tubing and water pipes. The good news was whoever designed Mordhaus had decided that one big space for ventilation, plumbing, and electric wiring was more cost effective. The bad news was Gytha was now crawling along in the darkness with her belly on damp water pipes and dangling wires catching in her hair. One poorly insulated wire and things would go from 'atrocious' to 'Game Over, man, Game Over!'
"I just want to go home," she muttered in her native tongue. "Is that too much to ask?"
Apparently the universe thought it was, since she continued to belly crawl through darkness
She didn't know how long she slithered along until she reached an elevator shaft. Hours, maybe? There was a bit of light filtering through from the floors above and Gytha soon located an access ladder. Climbing it was almost out of the question as her hands had swollen to almost twice their normal size. She hooked her elbows around the side pieces and slowly stepped up on feet that weren't in much better shape than her hands.
'Jesus, I'm glad the Gears took my shoes,' she thought. 'There's no way I'd still be walking at this point.'
Up, up, up she went; one step at a time into the shaft. What was she heading for, exactly? She didn't really know. 'Down' was probably a bad choice, as that would be where the Gears got down to the business of running Dethklok's empire. 'Up' was more likely to be the elite living quarters. At this point, she just wanted to be away from the violent men in the hoods. Maybe she could live in the walls for a few weeks until they let their guard down and then slip away on a supply run. If she stuck to the ventilation shafts, that would cut down on the chances they'd spray for Gythas.
'I'm actually considering this as a viable course of action,' Gytha mused. 'That would have to be the third strangest place I've ever lived.'
Her imagination supplied her with a mental image of Gears with spraying equipment banging for hollow spaces in the walls, muttering: 'Damn Gythas! They're worse than squirrels this time of year! The last thing anyone needs is an infestation of Icelandic contortionists!'
A tiny giggle escaped her lips.
'Toki, Skwisgaar, don't leave the fermented herring out, it'll attract Gythas! Pickles, check your drums before practice to make sure a Gytha isn't curled up in one of them! Remember boys; they're more scared of you than you are of them!'
The Gytha in question tittered giddily at this.
'Wow,' some still rational part of her mind mused. 'If you find that funny, you need some sleep.'
"Oh, I know," Gytha sighed to herself, leaning back for a moment to stare up the elevator shaft. "You know, with my shitty luck, I'm amazed an elevator hasn't come through by now."
Far above, machinery clanked and a warning rumble shook the shaft.
"Goddammit," Gytha muttered.
Well, there was no need to panic just yet; she just had to get to another ventilation shaft before the car came down. The small Icelander increased her rate of climb until she found another ventilation duct and crawled inside. This duct was larger and more open than the ones down below. So the rooms it accessed would be better ventilated. So she was probably back up in the elite levels.
That was some good news, at least.
The feeling of slight optimism faded at the sound of a scream. Gytha tensed, ready to run, even though there was no physical way she could do so. Another, stuttering scream reached her ears and this time she recognized that it wasn't that kind of a scream.
Oh yeah; she was back up among the band.
Gytha continued crawling forward until she passed a vent leading into Nathan Explosion's bedroom. She didn't recognize the place by sight, but the deep, baritone roar of a lead singer in rut was unmistakable. In fact, Gytha couldn't see much of anything; a huge canopy of blood red fabric blocked her view. A canopy of . . . . fairly sturdy-looking fabric.
Gytha's sleep deprived brain sat up and noted the gentle, soft-looking folds of fabric that hung temptingly on the other side of the vent. The little Icelander pushed out on the vent, popping it from the frame. She wasn't too worried about making noise; from the cacophony coming from the bed, she probably could have fired a cannon in the room without making too much noise.
Gytha set the vent sideways in the frame and tested the strength of the canopy first with one hand, then two, then both hands and a knee. The canopy held, gently swaying from the shaking of the bed. It wasn't bad; it reminded Gytha of the swell of the sea under a boat. She finally crawled fully out onto the canopy, set the vent back into the frame, rolled herself up in the swags of red and fell into an exhausted slumber.