The Search for Artemis

Chapter SIXTEEN

WHATS BEHIND DOOR 132?


“Dr. Márquez, is there a way I can get a book or something?” Landon asked. “Leaving me in here with nothing has to be against the Geneva Convention or something. I mean Dantès had a palace at Château d’If compared to what I’m dealing with here.”

Landon was stir-crazy. After waking up from the mysterious scream, he had difficulty sleeping. It also didn’t help that in trying to get comfortable, he had rolled over numerous times and felt a sharp pain course through his body when the bruised side of his face pressed against the pillow. At seven in the morning, the lights of his room returned to their full brightness, and at that point, Landon realized he had missed an entire night’s sleep. He started to get up to take a shower and clean himself up a bit, but that was made impossible by the IV sticking out of his arm, so he fell back onto the bed and laid still until someone came.

Around eight o’clock, the nurse entered the room carrying a tray of food for Landon to eat for breakfast. She placed the tray on a rolling table and wheeled it over to Landon. As he ate with one hand, the nurse took his pulse and checked his blood pressure while asking him questions about how he was feeling. She then wrote a few things on his chart and proceeded to take out the IV. He seemed to be getting better, but the nurse told him he would have to wait until the doctor discharged him before he could leave.

In the interim, Landon occupied his time by pacing around the room and checking himself in the mirror. He was already developing a pretty substantial black eye. Touching the side of his face, he attempted to make a personal assessment of the damage. Now that there had been a night for the injury to set in, the entire side of his face hurt, from nose to ear and hairline to chin. He wasn’t sure how much of it was caused by Riley’s punch or his collision with the floor. Whichever it was, it really didn’t matter; he was stuck in the medical wing either way. One thing was certain; he was thankful that the side of his face seemed only slightly puffy. It was nothing compared to the swelling Riley endured after Landon had hit him with that ball in Telekinetics training last fall.

There are only so many times people can look at themselves without feeling vain and narcissistic. Landon also discovered that aimlessly pacing makes one more restless. In hopes of finding something else to occupy his time, he had scoured the cabinets and closets, only to find an assortment of medical supplies and a few extra pairs of white patient outfits. A few times he had to sit down for a minute as he started to feel a bit dizzy, but the feeling would soon pass and he would return to complete boredom. He was stuck in a white room with white walls, and there was no television, no computer and no books—nothing to make time go by faster. It was his personal hell.

Dr. Márquez didn’t come and check on him until just before noon. By that time, Landon had created a pyramid of cotton balls on the tabletop. Rushing to complete his assessment, the doctor skimmed Landon’s chart, examined his face, checked his brain responsiveness and then left the room. The only words Dr. Márquez spoke were, “See you tomorrow,” as he closed the door.

That night the screams returned, jolting Landon awake from his much-needed sleep. Again, the medical wing looked void of activity. The lights were dimmed and Landon couldn’t hear any voices or noise of any kind in the hallway, but it couldn’t have been a coincidence that the screams were recurring.

Landon slinked out of his bed, placing his feet on the floor softly so as not to make a sound that would alarm the orderlies. With silent footsteps, he made his way to the door and gently turned the handle. It let out a small click as it unlatched. Landon pulled the door toward him, opening it just enough to allow himself to peer into the hallway.

It was empty. The lights along the ceiling had been dimmed to a minimal level, casting an ominous shadow over the length of the medical wing. An inexplicable chill ran down Landon’s spine.

Then he heard it, a low muffled tone coming from down the hallway. It was barely audible, but it was there—a man’s voice. Landon couldn’t make out what he was saying. Landon pulled the door open a little more and delicately maneuvered himself into the hallway. He had to know where the noise was coming from. Who was sending the awful screams into his head in the middle of the night?

His stealth training for the Pantheon proved rather useful. He stayed to the shadows, moved silently, and kept himself totally aware in order to react to any unanticipated arrivals.

As he moved closer, the voice became louder, but it was still muffled by the medical wing’s walls, making it unintelligible. A minute later, he stopped outside the door of the room he believed the voice to be coming from—Room 132. It was the same room where Landon’s final test had been administered during his initial examinations. The memory of the drug-induced reliving of his apocratusis flooded into his brain, and he couldn’t help but look away from the room that held such awful memories.

The man’s voice started again. Hoping to use his abilities and sense who was inside, Landon closed his eyes and began to concentrate. There were two people inside, but just as Landon began to achieve some enhanced clarity, a scream bombarded his brain, blaring at such an excruciating level within his mind that Landon let out an audible cry of his own pain and surprise.

Before he knew it, he heard a set of footsteps moving toward the door; he had blown his cover. Sacrificing some of his stealth, he moved quickly and quietly back to his room. In the last moments, as he pressed his door closed, he heard the door of Room 132 open.

Landon rushed back to his bed and curled up in the sheets. His second night in the medical wing was as restless as his first.

• • • • •

“Are there any other patients in here besides me?” Landon asked Dr. Márquez during his checkup the following morning.

Dr. Márquez lifted his head from Landon’s chart and looked at him oddly for a moment before answering. “Nope, you’re the only one. The Gymnasium makes it a point to maintain high safety standards to avoid injuries like yours. So there’s only ever one or two patients at a time.”

There was something strange about Dr. Márquez’s delayed response that made Landon suspect he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Perhaps Landon wasn’t supposed to be asking questions, but now he felt certain there was someone else down the hall. However, he couldn’t let Dr. Márquez think he knew anything about the screaming man. He needed to think fast and make the motivation behind his question appear innocent. “It’s just that you only check on me once a day and you seem rushed at that. What else are you doing if you don’t have any other patients?”

Dr. Márquez smiled. “Well, I spend the majority of my time working on highly sensitive molecular research, and my experiments have some extreme timing constraints that require constant vigilance and attention. Dr. Longfellow is the resident physician at the Gymnasium. I’m just helping him while he deals with more pressing matters.”

“So there is another patient in here?” Landon couldn’t help himself but ask.

“Uh . . . Umm . . . No.” Dr. Márquez fumblingly replied.

• • • • •

“Help me.” The voice blew in and out of Landon’s resting mind like a passing breeze. He didn’t bolt upright in his bed as he did when the screams blared in his mind, but he just lay still and opened his eyes. They darted around the room, searching for the source. No one was there, but then the voice returned. “Help me.” It was there for only a second before disappearing into the darkness of his mind.

Like the night before, Landon rose out of bed and moved through the medical wing as stealthily as possible. He made his way straight for Room 132. Hoping to hear someone inside, he pressed his ear to the door, but heard nothing.

“Help me,” the voice repeated in Landon’s mind. The man sounded old. There was a deepness and resonance about it that Landon imagined could only come with great age and experience, but the man also sounded pitiful and desperate.

Convinced the man was inside, Landon tried to open the door. It was locked. Instantly, his training kicked in. He needed something to pick the lock, but he didn’t have a kit with him. . . . He’d need to improvise. He rushed back to his room and quickly acquired a metal paper clip from his medical chart and a plastic-wrapped scalpel he’d remembered seeing in one of the drawers along the back wall.

Once back in front of the door, Landon unwrapped the scalpel, placed it on the tile, and proceeded to pull out and bend the paper clip until it was relatively straight with a hook at its tip. He then took the scalpel in his left hand and gently inserted the tip of the blade into the bottom of the keyhole, torquing the lock’s cylinder slightly to the right to put some tension on the pins currently holding the door shut.

With his right hand, Landon took the makeshift lock pick and inserted it into the upper part of the lock, just over the scalpel blade. As he tweaked his hand, he could feel the individual pins moving up and down at the tip of the pick. Patiently, he pushed each pin up and out of the cylinder, applying additional torque as needed to keep the process moving. He could feel his pulse in his ears as he moved from pin to pin, and he couldn’t help but think of Cortland as he worked.

In the months since joining the Pantheon, Landon had learned that this was one of Cortland’s specialties. He had a flair for picking locks and cracking safes, and he had such dexterity with his telekinetic abilities that in most instances he didn’t even need tools. He would have already had the door open were he here now.

Suddenly the pressure on the other end of the scalpel eased, and he was able to turn the cylinder. He couldn’t believe it—he’d managed to pick his first lock. He couldn’t wait to tell Cortland, but immediately realized he’d never be able to tell him about this.

Holding onto the door handle, Landon stood up and gingerly pulled the scalpel and paper clip from the lock, sliding them into his pocket. He slowly turned the handle. It popped as its bolt disengaged.

A lot had changed since the last time Landon stood in Room 132; it was no longer the sterile, bright space he remembered. Machines, cabinets and various monitors congested the large room, and the overhead light emitted only a pale yellow glow, casting dark shadows all over the place. Its appearance—that of a mad scientist’s nefarious lab—frightened Landon a bit. One thing that hadn’t changed, though, was the steel gurney centered in the room and the long mirror that ran along the back wall. That gurney had been disconcerting before, but was now downright terrifying with an elderly man lying strapped to it, unconscious. Landon approached the gurney; the door closed behind him.

He was probably in his seventies. His hair was stark white and his face covered in wrinkles that were typical for someone his age. Judging by how he looked on the steel table, he was rather short and ever so overweight. He was wearing a navy lab coat, and on his chest, just above the breast pocket, was the name “Dr. Pullman” and an owl clutching a branch embroidered in silver thread. It reminded Landon of the Pantheon logo that adorned the Gymnasium scientists’ lab coats, but Landon had never before seen this design.

Landon arched over the man’s body in an attempt to get a better look at him. He had a strange expression on his face, like someone who had been tortured and defeated, but his body showed no signs indicating anything reprehensible had happened to him. He had no scratches, bruises, burns—nothing. If it wasn’t for the pained expression on his face, Landon would have imagined he was in a coma or just asleep.

Landon reached out and put two fingers against the man’s jugular. Just when he could feel the faintest of pulses, the man stirred, which caused Landon to jump back from the table until he’d put a safe distance between them. Dr. Pullman rustled around a bit, as if he was fighting to free himself of the straps holding him to the gurney, but his movements looked labored. Landon rushed back to help him. The man strangely reminded him of Mrs. Bradford, but as he fought to unbuckle the strap running across his chest, Dr. Pullman spoke.

“No! Don’t undo my restraints,” the old man commanded in a scratchy, strained manner. “They can’t know you’ve been here.”

Terrified and confused, Landon looked down at the man, who lay there with his deep blue eyes staring back at him, looking determined through his lingering pain.

“You heard me, didn’t you?” he forced out while trying to keep his volume in check. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

Landon took a step backward, away from the man. The second question he heard loudly in his head; the man knew Landon would hear him telepathically.

Dr. Pullman’s voice reentered Landon’s mind. “I’m so sorry for what we did to you,” he said in a pitiful, remorseful tone, as if he were fighting back tears. “I’m so very sorry.” The elderly scientist closed his eyes and turned his head away from Landon.

What? What does he mean? Landon’s need for answers caused him to disturb the frail prisoner. He moved to the man’s side and shook him slightly.

“What are you talking about?” Landon was surprised by how loud he was speaking. He then crouched over, putting his mouth near the man’s ear and continued, “Why are you apologizing? You haven’t done anything to me.”

The man lay there unresponsive, but after a minute, he gently turned his head and looked at Landon; tears welled up in his eyes.

“They never told you, did they?” His voice resounded in Landon’s head. “They didn’t tell you how you obtained your gifts?”

Landon looked at him confused. What was this man trying to tell him?

“Please . . . Please forgive me. You must understand that I was young and ambitious. I never considered the consequences of playing God. If I had paid attention to what they would use you for, I’d have destroyed it all.”

“What are you talking about?” Landon pleaded in a low volume. “I came in here to help you. Why are you talking like you’re already dead?”

“Oh, boy, you are a noble one, but so naive,” the scientist replied telepathically. “I will die on this table. Whether it is this night or the next, my time on this plane of existence has run out.”

“But we’re in the medical wing. I can go and get Dr. Longfellow . . . or Dr. Márquez. They can help you.” Landon turned toward the door, prepared to dash into the hallway and alert one of the doctors.

“No!” the man’s voice echoed through Landon’s head. “Dr. Longfellow has done far too much already. But with your forgiveness, I can die in peace. Please tell me you forgive me.”

“Sir, I can’t forgive you when I have no idea why you’re asking me for it.”

“Yes, you have a point. And you deserve to know the truth, no matter how ashamed I am of it.” The man closed his eyes for an extended blink. “Please come here. It will be far easier if I show you.”

Landon inched toward Dr. Pullman. What did he mean by show him?

“Take my hand,” the doctor requested telepathically. Landon tentatively placed his hand atop the doctor’s and gripped it with his fingertips. Dr. Pullman’s skin shifted under Landon’s hand like a loose tablecloth, and he was ice cold. “Just open your mind.” Landon closed his eyes to concentrate on quieting his thoughts. “Please know I’m not proud of my part in what I’m about to show you. You’re foolish when you’re young. Try not to judge me too harshly.”

Suddenly, Landon felt a tug upward from the base of his spine and flashes of white light raced through his brain. A millisecond later, he had a strange sensation of weightlessness, and then it stopped. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever opened his eyes, but he somehow was staring out from a massive building on to sand and rocks as far as the eye could see. Multiple rows of jets and helicopters were parked just outside, baking in the afternoon sun. He wasn’t sure how, but Landon was now standing in the middle of a military hangar somewhere in the desert.