Scott came up behind him, wrapping one forearm around his neck and planting the other hand over the top of Mitchell’s head, effectively rendering him immobile. Mitchell struggled as Albright stepped around behind him, and out of sight, but any effort was useless.
‘Please don’t struggle,’ advised Albright. ‘I don’t want to wind up disabling you when I put the needle in.’
The back of the chair was partly open, making it easy for Albright to pull up part of Mitchell’s paper uniform and feel for his spine. A second later Mitchell felt something slide deep inside the thick musculature there.
The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced. Fire spread through his muscles and, as he struggled to escape, he felt as if his bones might snap. Bile surged up the back of his throat and he vomited over Scott’s arm.
After a little while the pain faded. He drifted on a black tide under a starless sky, his skull seeming full of soft cotton wool that scratched against the back of his eyeballs.
Well, he’s still alive, Albright said from somewhere far, far away. Tell me more about the learning pools, Mitchell. Tell me what they told you about the Founders.
Mitchell woke to the dawn light spreading across the upper wall of his cell. He lay there for some minutes without moving, thinking about what it might be like to be strapped to a table and cut apart with scalpels. Albright and the men he worked for were little better than primitive sorcerers, desperate to divine their own fate from his still-warm entrails.
He brought his right hand up close to his face and opened it, keeping it cupped around the thin strip of serrated metal he’d grabbed from the workbench when Scott had taken him down. He could recall only vague snatches of what he had told Albright under the influence of whatever drugs they had pumped into his body, but he was fairly certain he had gone into detail about the Repository, elaborating on the few details he’d already given them.
Mitchell twisted around on his narrow cot until he lay facing the door. If he didn’t escape, he would die – and soon.
Mitchell unfolded himself slowly, grimacing with pain while keeping his fist tight around the blade. Do it now.
He kneeled by the door, pressing one temple against its cool metal, as if momentarily resting h head there. He used one end of the blade like a screwdriver, slowly working out one of the screws securing a thin metal plate to the door frame.
His palm started bleeding where it clutched the serrated length of the blade. He put the strip down and clenched his bleeding hand for several seconds, swearing under his breath until the worst of the pain had passed.
He started working again. It was funny how things turned out, because the locks were cheap and shoddy crap, the result of some budget-cutting exercise. Fortunately for him.
He took a fresh grip on the blade and started working at the screws once more. After fifteen or twenty minutes of labour, he had removed four of them, but the plate wrapped its way around to the other side of the door frame, where it was presumably held in place by more screws.
Mitchell dropped the blade and took a grip on the loosened plate with the fingertips of both hands and started to pull, grunting with the effort. The metal was thin and malleable but even so it took a considerable effort to bend the plate back aside and expose the delicate electronics beneath. He fell back and massaged his injured hand for a minute, before pulling himself up close to the task once more.
He studied the exposed electronics with a practised eye, then, working carefully, used the tip of the blade to tease a single wire loose, the thumping of his heartbeat increasing to a roar between his ears. He meanwhile took extreme care not to touch any of the circuitry connected to the alarm system.
The door clicked loudly, and swung inwards. Mitchell let out his breath in a rush. He hadn’t even realized he was holding it in. He stepped out into the corridor and listened carefully, but there was no sound of anyone approaching. He began to walk, slowly at first, then more quickly, the tiles cold and hard under his bare feet. His injured hand throbbed against his side, the blade held in the other.
Halfway along the corridor, he came to the stairwell leading down to the garage. At the bottom he found a door with a security keypad, where he tapped in a standard override code, then watched with relief as it clicked open.
Mitchell continued down the rest of the stairwell below, noticing the lights were on and the van had been lowered to the ground. A tool bag had been dropped next to one wheel, and the door on the driver’s side stood open. He stopped and listened for a moment, but heard and saw no one. Even so, he ducked down to take a look under the vehicle, in case someone was standing on the far side. Seeing nothing but the other side of the garage, he quickly heaved himself up and climbed inside the van, pulling the door shut.
He barely had time to think any further, when the door was suddenly ripped from his grasp. He heard a muttered curse, in the same instant that a fist struck him on the side of the head. Mitchell raised a hand to try and defend himself, moving with the same inexplicable speed as before. Bright pain flared through his body, leaving him helpless, but out of the corner of his eye he saw that his assailant was Albright’s assistant.
Scott dragged him roughly out of the seat, and Mitchell landed hard on the garage’s ccrete floor. His assailant leaned down and took hold of Mitchell’s head, apparently preparing to smash his skull against the concrete.
It was a sign of how badly the cryogenic process had affected his thought processes that he only now remembered the hacksaw blade still gripped in one hand. He drew it straight across the bridge of Scott’s nose, then watched as the other man screamed and leaped back, his hands clasped to his face.
Mitchell managed to stagger upright and then over to a workbench. Taking hold of a heavy wrench, he gasped as Scott wrapped one arm around his neck from behind. Mitchell swung the wrench wildly around behind him, hearing a wet thud as it buried itself in the side of Scott’s head.
It was Scott’s turn to stagger, collapsing against one side of the van. Mitchell leaned over him, his breath rasping, and struck him a second, then a third time. He was lost in a black fury, and blood and hair spattered across the grey concrete before he finally let go of the wrench. He wiped one trembling hand across his mouth, then forced himself to look away from the devastation that was the remains of Scott’s face.
He headed over to the garage doors and pushed them open, still gasping hoarsely. Brilliant sunlight spilled across the concrete as he gazed out at the same buildings and the airstrip he’d viewed from his cell. The Rockies stood blue and hazy on the horizon beyond the airstrip. He’d never seen anything more beautiful.
The anger had felt good, even cleansing. Mitchell worked at regaining some semblance of calm, all too aware of how lucky he was that nobody had yet noticed his escape from the cell and sounded the alarm.
He stepped back to the van, and rummaged around in the rear until he found a set of overalls. He pulled them on quickly. They were baggy and loose, but a lot better than the paper blues he’d been wearing before.
Mitchell got back in the cabin and touched the dashboard, listening with satisfaction as the van’s engine vibrated with latent power. He tapped a softly glowing panel and the wheel unfolded from its slot, the vehicle reconfiguring itself slightly in order to accommodate his smaller frame. He took a grip on the wheel and steered it, slowly, on to the narrow road that ran beyond the garage.
The other Mitchell, the one who’d been kept under sedation ever since he’d been brought back from Site 17, was still locked away in another facility near Omaha. And the only one who could possibly have got him out of there, he realized at last, was himself.