The Book (29 page)

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027-67984

It was a bright, cold day in recycle and the icon was spinning thirteen.

Holden pulled his hands over his widened eyes and turned himself away from the computerized window. Eventually, when he felt he had regained some control over his mind, he allowed himself to remove his hands and admit the rest of the room.

There was an area where the carpet stopped, which he hadn’t noticed before, where a smooth, brown, rubbery surface began. Upon it was a desk made of clear, green acrylic material that cantilevered asymmetrically from a single, giant leg that stamped into the brown rubber like the tree trunk of some recycled, extraterrestrial forest. Behind the desk was a simple, stainless steel chair, polished to a mirror finish. Holden looked down at it and saw his reflection again, dislocated and disjointed in its curves. He wasn’t looking good, that was for sure. There was a patch of blood on his forehead and a line of dried blood that ran down across his nose. He touched it and a tender pulse rattled his skull. Holden leaned closer to the chair, spit onto his shirt sleeve and wiped the crusted blood from his skin until only a faint scratch snaked along his brow.

He stood in the recurring dizziness and looked down at the desk to find his name atop a digital screen that was incorporated into the clear, green material and only visible from that particular, perpendicular perspective. Below Holden’s name was his most recent driver’s license picture, his job history, grades in middle school and a family photo of him with Eve and Jane. Beside this was a list of ten people that were, according to the screen, his
likely cohorts
. One of these names, Marion Tabor, was highlighted. All the others, thankfully, were people that knew nothing of their group and the thought relaxed him. But only slightly. More interesting than the list was a series of three letters, capitalized and circled profusely: L.O.C. He didn’t know what they meant. There was no L or O in his name and he assumed it was a sort of ranking system for people captured in the room with the revolving symbol. Following the series of three letters was the number one, underlined with three dark, digital slashes.

Holden stepped back from the table and assessed his situation as if he’d just arrived at a job site without a floor plan. There were two things about that scenario that he knew for sure. He knew his time was short and he knew that he would very likely, at any moment, be living out the experience of those that disappeared from Winston’s group. Which was why, for the sake of acting out with whatever form of freedom he still had, Holden sat in the chair and threw his legs up on the table, hands locked behind his head. His toes poked from the worn socks on his shoeless feet. Wherever he was, it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes as if it were a bright summer’s day and he was sitting on the front porch of his grandmother’s country home beside a glass of sweaty lemonade that was gradually becoming diluted in the melting ice. Of course, in that reality he was wearing shoes.

When he opened his eyes to find that the spinning, recycling icon had been watching him from across the room, Holden turned his gaze toward the ceiling where he noticed, to his delight (as it usually had), a complete fire sprinkler system. Eight blunt sprockets, spaced an equal distance apart, broke through the delicate blue surface like space ships preparing to douse the earth below with some sort of mind controlling, gelatinous ooze. In actuality, it was a simple thing. Just sprinkler heads arranged in one of many rooms in order to protect the building and whatever had been inside from an accidental fire. But the sprinklers brought Holden a different sense of peace than what the luscious green carpet and finely chosen color scheme could ever provide. It was even better than the calm, soothing, gently-swooping eye of the recycling icon that –

The fire sprinklers bookmarked Holden to reality. And it was something, he assumed, that his jailors hadn’t expected. The surprising fact was that this gave him hope. These people had underestimated him. They didn’t realize that, by seeing a finished job, when the unblemished drywall had been cut precisely to fit the outer ring with its polished, metal finish, they would lose control over him. The protective, yet orderly, organization of sprinkler heads brought him joy. The job was done. Even when it wasn’t his job, seeing someone else’s work gave him the euphoric sense of checking the clock and seeing that it was time to go home. The work day was finished and he was allowed to spend the rest of the day any way he pleased.

The freedom of that feeling numbed the matter of his brains they were trying to reach, but in his mind Holden knew that the work day wasn’t finished. A lot of people were counting on him and unless the government leaked the news of his capture to the newspapers and media (which they wouldn’t because…who
really
was he, anyway?), he would end up like all the others in Winston’s group. One of the vanished. One of the
gone
. It reminded Holden of
Peter Pan
, Abby’s favorite story. The one she read aloud to the group. The quote that came to mind was the last line from chapter eight.

“
To die would be an awfully big adventure.”

The immediate guilt that rose in steady clouds upon the heavens of his obdurate heart had surprised Holden. He had let the group down. He wished he had done more. Been more. Been more patient. Especially with Eve. He should have taken more time to ensure his protection if there were signs he couldn’t trust her. Now, there was no telling what the group would do or how the loss of their leader would affect things. And what about Marion? He had gotten her involved in it all and left her there to deal with the rest of her isolated life alone. He was stunned by how much he missed her. There were feelings there. He finally accepted it. It was the reason he kept dragging Shane back to her bar. Of course, that didn’t matter now. He’d seen them all for the last time. And Jane. Oh, Jane. He couldn’t allow himself to think of her. To see her face in his mind as she screamed and clawed at her ruined, forever ruined, chest. No, he wouldn’t. He would rather stare into that recycling symbol and lose his mind before going to that place.

Holden released his entwining fingers and rubbed his left hand feverishly against the fuzzy fur of his head before dropping his patchy, cold feet from the table. He stood and paced the room. Once. Then twice. Three times. And just as he was ready to launch himself full speed at the window that continued to laugh at him –