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“Wha—” I start to say, and only then does my befuddled mind realize there’s a piece of duct tape over my mouth.
More doors. An elevator.
We’re going down.
Out of the elevator, through a locked door—I hear them keying the combination—and then we’re on another elevator. Going down again.
Going down to where? There is nothing this far down. I know the Spiker campus like I know my own face. There is no second set of elevators. There is no sub-basement.
And yet there is.
The elevator stops and I am shoved out. I stumble. I smack into
something hard and unyielding, like a wall, only not. I feel it as it slides past my cheek: a steel support column.
The hood is snatched from my head.
The light is dim, ancient fluorescent cylinders way up high, hanging from unfinished concrete. We’re in a large space, the size of a high school gym. Tanks of various shapes and sizes are everywhere. Tall cylinders, horizontal cylinders, giant steel-bolted aquariums.
There are objects, creatures, in many but not all of these tanks. Nearest to me, most visible, is something that must once have been a gorilla. It’s been shaved, or worse yet, deliberately designed to be hairless. It looks like a wrinkled, sagging, old bodybuilder with skin the color of licorice. It’s not alive, at least I hope it isn’t, because it’s jammed tightly into the vertical cylinder.
I count four men and one woman. Dr. Chen, Dr. Gold, Martinez, a grad student working on his PhD, and a guy named Sullivan, who works in accounting. Dr. Anapura is the only woman.
The missing person, the sixth, is standing behind me.
“Solo Plissken,” Tattooed Tommy says, a regretful tone in his voice.
I size up the people facing me. Chen and Anapura are the tough ones. The rest are scared and unsure of themselves.
“Plissken?” Martinez echoes. “As in…?”
“You didn’t know that?” Tommy said. “You are missing out on the good gossip, dude.” He moves around to a spot where I can see him. “Yes, Plissken, ‘as in.’ Dr. Jeffrey Plissken and his lovely wife, Isabel. As in what, three major, groundbreaking, Nobel-bait papers?”
I glare at Tommy. He rips the tape from my mouth.
“Leave my parents out of this,” I say with my first breath.
“He’s a gofer,” Martinez protests. “He runs things through the autoclave.”
Tommy looks at me, as if it’s my job to explain.
“He’s actually quite bright, it turns out,” Tommy says. “His parents had, what, an average IQ in the 170 range? There’s been some reversion to the mean, of course, so I don’t believe bagel boy is quite in that league, but oh, he’s smart. Aren’t you, Solo?”
He leans close, cocky. He’s enjoying performing for his crew. I jerk my head forward hard, a head butt.
I miss. But I make him jump back.
It’s not enough to ruin his triumphant mood.
“How did you find me?” I demand.
“Well, Solo, you come with a few interesting modifications. I assume you know that you were given the same potential to heal as your little girlfriend.”
Of course I know.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say. Which is a stupid and dorky thing to insist on.
“You haven’t tapped that little piece yet? She’s no great beauty, but she’s cute enough, and she’s got a nice little body.”
