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10
Bloody Fucking Bollocks
Jack
I'mnotsurewhatwoke me. My eyes opened to the dark of night, soft moonlight glinting in through a crack in my curtains. My head still pounded, making sleep a difficulty. I'd thankfully had paracetamol in my room when I'd been placed in here, but the fear of concussion had been real, so I'd set my alarm on its loudest setting for thirty-minute intervals that first night, and now my sleep patterns were out of whack.
I sat up and looked about the space. Nothing seemed out of order that I could see. I didn't bother to switch the light on. It was a full moon and the small sliver of moonlight that slipped through the curtains was enough to illuminate the surrounding space.
Noting the position of all static items, I carefully checked the location of all movable ones next. The desk chair, the robe on the back of the door, the door to the bathroom, my shoes beside the wardrobe, the books on the shelf, the glass of water on the bedside table, and the alarm clock itself.
It was three-thirty in the morning. Much of RATS would be sound asleep by now. Those who enjoyed a few drinks before bed would be passed out and snoring off their hangovers. The more retiring of our set would be dreaming sweet dreams of nothing, hopefully, and not prophetic ones laced with doom instead.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and then reached for the bedside drawer, retrieving two paracetamol tablets and swallowing them dry. Deciding it was my headache that had woken me and not something else, I took the opportunity to wash my face in the bathroom and relieve myself.
I recognised the signs of a person in denial going about their business as if everything was okay and nothing could touch them. In reality, I knew nothing was okay at RATS. By now, I feared Clive had been removed. I didn't know for sure. I'd been cut off from everything. The console computer set into my desk displayed an error screen when I bothered to turn it on. The comm unit beside my bed relayed only static, which was ridiculous, considering it was digital in nature.
Anderson had locked me down as surely as he could, going so far as to place a guard on my door and denying me electronic entertainment of any sort. I'd spent the past day or so reading half-heartedly from my pathetically stocked library, dreaming of Mimi — the highlight of my captivity — and eating what food was supplied for me by the guard.
I'd tried to make conversation with the man, but he'd been well trained and disregarded any attempts made to elicit information from him. I wondered how everyone else was faring. I worried about Mimi the most, of course. The woman couldn't help but get herself into trouble every other day. I prayed that Rafe was looking out for her.
And himself.
We were in trouble. That much was obvious. And unless I broke myself out and came up with a plan to save Time and RATS, disaster was merely days away.
Of course, I couldn't think straight long enough to come up with a plan. I was all out of wise ideas. My head hurt. My thoughts were jumbled. I actually wondered if they were putting something in my food to make it difficult to concentrate, but I had to admit to myself that it was more likely the after-effects of a mild concussion that was doing it.
Something that could have been rectified with a med-device easily, but Anderson was not an idiot. Keeping me under lock and key was only part of the plan. Keeping me from thinking clearly rounded out the arrangement nicely.
I was useless, and I did not like being useless at all.
Walking back into the bedroom from the attached bathroom, my eye caught on something outside the window. For a second, I thought I was seeing things. An owl, perhaps, flying past. A tree branch where there were no trees. The ghost of Christmas Past. I didn't know. I couldn't think.
Then a familiar and much-dreamt face appeared between the two curtains, big eyes blinking, fingers precariously clutching the windowsill. God alone knows what her feet were doing. There wasn't a hell of a lot of space out there to perch upon.
Strangely, I wasn't surprised. This was Mimi, and Mimi would approach any problem laterally. For a scientist, she really did possess a rather unique mind. I realised, then, that her climbing out of an adjacent window was probably what had woken me. We did open our windows, but Shadowship was old and often a window opening made a sound.
And then I flicked through the names of the Surgeons on either side of me in my mind and came up with Winchester, which, it must be said, I did not like the thought of. I crossed to the window and opened it up, trying my best to keep the sound to a minimum.
But my heart was thundering inside my chest and my blood pressure had shot up enough to make my headache skyrocket into burst blood vessel territory.
The window, thankfully, remained silent, but Mouse stumbling in over the threshold was another story. She knocked over the glass of water beside my bed, stumbled away from the shock of the liquid covering her overall trousers, banged into the bookcase, making several heavy tomes thud to the floor, and then offered a squeak when whatever it was she'd miraculously carried with her collided with the desk.
Our rooms weren't overly large, so it all looked rather like a pinball machine, and Mimi was the little metal ball bouncing around its insides.
I reached out and steadied her, both of us standing stock still, eyes wide, ears peeled, trying to hear the oncoming steps of a guard. What we heard instead were voices from down the hallway, towards where I supposed Bryan Fawkes's room was. And what do you know? That familiar Floridian drawl sounded out and asked the guard if he'd care to get him another bottle of wine. Apparently, he'd — they'd — finished the last one.
I looked down at Mimi and said, "You climbed out of Fawkes's bedroom window?"
She nodded her head, her beautiful blue eyes big and round and glinting with excitement. It seemed they'd had a bit of an adventure.
"Mouse," I said, suddenly realising she was actually in my room, in my hands, right in front of me.
She came to me without hesitation, allowing me to wrap her in my arms and hold her tight. A more precious gift than freedom, even. A moment to hold the woman I loved.
"You could have fallen," I said. The words were softly spoken, Bryan and the guard had ceased their negotiations. I hadn't heard the guard's booted feet stomp closer, so perhaps Fawkes had convinced him to replace the bottle of wine. I doubted it, but it amused me for a second to picture the oaf doing the American's bidding.
"I almost did fall," Mimi admitted. "And Winchester's bedroom light was on and I thought he'd see me, but I guess it was darker outside his room than inside, and thankfully he wasn't paying attention to the bedraggled woman hanging by one hand and the strap of a picnic basket to the ramparts of his bedroom window."
