The room held a faintly acrid scent, a hint of recently dried adhesive plus something else. Heather turned her head so she could see her vital signs on the monitor, memorizing them at a glance. The drugs were affecting her thought processes, but before she did something about that she needed to know what her drugged readings looked like so she could keep those in the same range.
The body’s autonomic nervous system was an amazing thing. Without a single conscious thought it kept her heart beating, lungs breathing, and blood circulating, adjusted bodily cooling, digested food, and on and on. These things continued whether she was sleeping or awake. One of the many advantages she, Mark, and Jen enjoyed was the ability to enforce a high degree of control over these processes.
Heather shifted her attention to the haze that affected her thinking. This wasn’t the high-powered tranquilizer they’d stuck in her thigh in Bolivia. Neither was it Thorazine or any of the other phenothiazine-derivative antipsychotic meds Dr. Sigmund had tried on her back in Los Alamos. Taking a deep breath, Heather executed Mark’s meditation trick, pulling forth the perfect memory of how it felt to be clearheaded and alert.
Within Heather’s brain, underutilized neurons compensated for her drugged state, remapping her neural net to achieve the desired mental acuity. Another glance at the monitor rewarded her with the knowledge that no one would detect the fact she’d just rendered the drugs ineffective.
Once again Heather turned her thoughts to the smells that hung on the air. Remodeling smells. The spot where white padded walls butted up against the ceiling’s acoustic tiles still showed evidence of recent installation. A stainless steel toilet and sink occupied the center of the rear wall and a rudimentary shower drained into the left rear corner. Those, her bed, with its scratched frame and railing, and the small video camera in the upper right front were the room’s only decorations that weren’t freshly installed.
Heather brought up the room dimensions, forming a 3-D model in her head. She rotated it, stripped away the asylum padding from the walls. Removed the acoustic tiles from the ceiling. Replaced the front wall and door with tempered steel bars, an electronically controlled sliding steel gate, and a chuck hole for pushing in meals.
This wasn’t Henderson House, and it wasn’t a psychiatric facility. It was a recently converted solitary confinement cell in a supermax detention facility.
So why had the government gone to all this effort to throw together this fake? Obviously, Dr. Sigmund had been flown in to establish early credibility, something the drugs were intended to augment. They’d pulled Heather’s records, identified a mental weakness, and now they were determined to exploit it.
There was a certain irony to it. By trying to exploit her weakness, her captors had provided her with an advantage she could play to. She felt the leather cuffs binding her hands and feet to the bed, flexed her muscles just enough to build an estimate of their tensile strength. Breaking free from her bonds wouldn’t be a problem, but she wasn’t going to do that while they were watching her with that camera. Before she made her break for freedom, she had a lot to learn about the routine, this facility, and the people behind this operation.
The thought of Mark and Jennifer worried her, but she knew their capabilities and training. The best way she could help them was to handle her own situation.
A distant sound caught her attention, the scuffing of two pairs of rubber-soled shoes on concrete. The noise had a reverb echo that indicated a long hallway, an impression that was reinforced by the amount of time the footsteps took to reach her door.
With an electric click, the door opened to admit two men in medical scrubs, a tall, blue-eyed blond wearing a stethoscope around his neck and a short bald man holding an Apple iPad. The one with the stethoscope stepped up beside her bed.
“Hello, Heather. My name is Dr. Jacobs. This is my physician’s assistant, Frank Volker. It’s good to see you decided to come back to us.”
Heather let a slight slur creep into her voice. “Did I?”
Jacobs smiled. “Yes, and you should be proud of that accomplishment. Most people in your condition never find their way back.”
Heather glanced down at her hands. “Why am I tied down?”
Jacobs patted her right hand, giving it a slight squeeze. “It’s for your own protection, at least until we’ve formed an understanding of just where you’re at.”
“For my protection?”
Jacobs sat down in the chair next to her bed. “Just until we’re sure you’re stable, that you’re not going to suffer an immediate relapse. It’s why we’re keeping you mildly sedated. Do you remember anything at all about your stay here?”
Volker tapped away on the iPad’s touch screen.
Heather frowned. “I remember Bolivia.”
“I’m not talking about your alternate reality right now. I’m talking about the months you’ve been in this facility.”
“The first time I ever saw this place was when I woke up to see Dr. Sigmund standing over me. Like I told her, I want to see my mom and dad.”
A serious expression settled on Dr. Jacobs’s face. “Believe me. I want that for you too. We all do. But you’ve been through a hell of a mental trauma these last few months. And, as hard as it is for you to understand why, we’re going to go slow and careful about reintroducing you to the real world. For now that means no TV, no radio, no Internet, and unfortunately, no friends or family.”
Heather squeezed her eyes shut. “So I’m just supposed to lie here, drugged and chained to the bed, and trust you?”
“I didn’t say this was going to be easy.”
A bitter laugh escaped Heather’s lips.
“Tell you what,” Dr. Jacobs continued. “I’ll get you out of these restraints as soon as we finish a battery of tests. Then, if you work with me and learn to recognize the difference between what’s real and what’s not, then we’ll get your parents out here to California for a visit. But Heather, you’re going to have to trust me.”
Dr. Jacobs rose to his feet, patted her hand again, and turned toward the door. Volker switched off his iPad and followed.
“Can I at least go to the bathroom?”
“I’ll have a nurse bring a bedpan.”
“Doctor.” Heather raised her voice just enough to cause him to turn back toward her. “Right now my alternate reality looks pretty damn good.”
Jacobs’s face acquired a sympathetic cast. “You can’t beat this by yourself, Heather. But we can. You just have to let me in.”
As the door closed behind them, Heather concentrated on their footfalls, the sounds plus their echoes rendering an image in her mind. A hallway, all right. Eleven and a half feet wide, ten feet tall, and really, really long. Another piece of her facility blueprint filled in. And when the nurse brought her the bedpan, Heather would see whether it was the same one who had assisted Dr. Sigmund.
Heather looked up at the camera, then closed her eyes, gradually letting her vital signs drop. They expected her to be exhausted, so she’d feed them the data they wanted.
Heather smiled inwardly at the thought.
Just like training Pavlov’s dog.