Chapter 14:
Isaac’s voice was still a croak when he remarked to Mark that it was fairly obvious that John wasn’t getting flu, in spite of the deliberate exposure. He’d tried three times.
Mark said, “You’re better yourself?”
Isaac nodded, “A lot better now, just my voice.”
Mark said thoughtfully that it might be worthwhile not leaving that particular report in the file, in case others in the future attempted to use him to develop antibodies or something.
Isaac looked at him in surprise, and Mark said, “Remember, he’s just a young man, and I won’t always be in charge of him, and neither will you.”
Isaac’s curiosity was apt to make him forget the consequences of his research sometimes, but Mark’s measured words were enough to convince him to drop this part of his reports.
Rudy made it back to work, and Lance went down to flu. Zack was still fit, but a new guard was introduced to John. Timothy was very big, and very black. John liked him immediately. He was much younger than the others, and John found him good to play with, though he couldn’t lure him into the outdoor pool. “Too cold,” he said, ignoring John’s accusations of cowardice.
Even the heated indoor pool was not well patronized. With the flu epidemic, there were often not enough people available to have the specified number in the pool with John, in case he was struck with the head pain.
John said optimistically to Zack that it’d probably never happen again. It was nearly a month since his last escape attempt, and longer than that since that terrible time when he’d been down for so long. He wasn’t trying to practise what he termed his telekinesis though, in case it made him sick. The strategy of using it only when needed, had worked well last time, and he hoped it would again. It would be very soon, he thought. Just another few days and the leaves would be thick enough. The short staffing could only help. Quite a few of the soldiers were doing jobs they were not accustomed to.
Isaac, when consulted, agreed that the extra precautions were no longer needed, and John could go swimming as long as one good swimmer joined him in the pool, and there were two personal guards. There was an ulterior motive. Timothy was a champion swimmer. It was the reason he was now one of John’s personal guards, as Isaac was curious to discover just how well John could swim. They knew he was fast and smooth, but Timothy was to lure him into racing.
Nearly every day, with the reduced safety requirements, John could swim, indulging in horseplay with Timothy, and sometimes playing a rather rough game of something like water polo. John was the more agile and had quicker reflexes, but he sometimes lost sight of the ball or goal posts, and Timothy’s long arms gave him a big advantage. They’d become close very quickly, enjoying each other’s company.
Isaac had his wish, and John and Timothy were competing a couple of days later, a fifteen hundred meters race, several soldiers barracking for their chosen favorites.
John’s smooth stroke suddenly broke, and he turned toward the side of the pool. Zack?
Zack heard the frightened voice in his mind, as his charge reached up a hand for him. His friend pulled him out of the pool, and John staggered a little, looking uncertainly around. He was frightened of the pain that he knew was about to hit. It had lasted so long the last time.
“Don’t worry!” said Zack, and put an arm around him. “It won’t be so bad this time,” as if he knew.
John looked at his face, trusting his word, though for no good reason, Zack thought, wrenched with pity. But then John jerked as if he’d been struck, and his legs no longer supported him. Zack lowered him as gently as he could, and just waited until he stopped moving. He always tossed himself about to begin with, until he was able to stay still and just wait, enduring the terrible pain until it stopped.
Timothy was out of the pool by now, and others stood around, staring. Zack sent them back. The less disturbance the better, and people too close disturbed him. Zack had seen this a few times now.
Before Isaac came, he made a phone call. The specialist would be on his way within the hour. Although the placement of the location device under the muscles of John’s upper arm would not be difficult, the device would provide more information than just his location, and the probes had to be very carefully placed without doing damage.
As it happened, Zack’s assurance to John happened to be correct, and it was less than an hour before his body relaxed into unconsciousness. The first thing that Isaac did was to give him an injection, even before taking him to the operating theatre.
The operation didn’t take long, and when the surgeon left, he was cautioned again about the need for secrecy. He was curious, but contained his curiosity, only asking to check John’s legs that had been damaged by bullet wounds not so long ago. He remembered it well.
John was back in Ward 3, and was to be kept under heavy sedation until the arm wound healed. He was not to know that he now could be tracked wherever he went. He would not know, either, that Isaac had a continuing measure of blood pressure, pulse, and muscle tension. From now on, the film stored would be matched with notes and graph lines on the bottom, that gave physiological information. Isaac couldn’t wait to see how it worked, though Mark fretted about the ethics of it, even when he deemed it essential.
The small wound healed quickly, and just four days after the operation, Isaac removed the Intravenous Drip. He could wake up now.
Zack remembered that he should not allow his loyalties to be divided, as he’d said sternly to Timothy when a reported conversation seemed very brief. He told Isaac that John had called to him, telepathically. It was a valuable piece of information.
John was up and about quite quickly, allowed to ride on Bess, but not outside the Compound as Adam and Ernie were not yet fully fit. It was a nasty flu bug, and tended to leave people feeling lethargic for weeks.
He chose a day when Timothy and Bob were on, just two. Timothy had always been a bit careless, and Bob was suffering the after effects of flu and might not be as conscientious as usual. They were accustomed to John disappearing into his tree, and thought it amusing when he took up slices of bread to feed the parent birds.
John felt very carefully for the cameras. They moved them around sometimes, though not, thankfully, this time. His red shirt was left as a decoy, and then, taking as much care as possible not to be seen, he started working his way carefully from tree to tree toward the soldiers’ barracks. There were some cameras that needed to stop working, though when he tried to do that, he told them in his mind to freeze at the scene they had, and added that tiny surge of the mind that was his power. He was pretty sure he’d done it right, though it would be better, of course, if he could practise and see his results.
In an empty soldier’s room, John stole a camouflage uniform, tilting his head and squinting, trying to put the scarcely visible uniform on correctly. The broken pattern was very difficult for him. He touched his hair, but was lucky to find scissors to cut it. No soldier had a long pony tail. The staff always showed ID tags when they came and went. Jimmy had shown him once until Rudy interfered, suspicious of John’s motives. John had one, stolen two days before, though he hoped Hank wouldn’t get into too much trouble. But Hank was coughing and sneezing, and maybe wouldn’t leave his room for a few days.
Feeling for the presence of those around him, John, looking as anonymous as he could, strolled confidently and casually toward the gate. He used his power again, to wish the guard inspecting his ID not to look at him closely, that he was right to pass. The guard opened the gate for him, and he passed through. One to go and he’d be out of the Compound. When the alarms started shrieking, he looked around casually. “A false alarm, do you think?” he asked the soldier, luckily a stranger to him.
“Probably,” said the gate man, “but you’ll have to wait now. No-one in or out while the alarm is on.”
“Pest,” said John. “I was supposed to be waiting on the road. A friend was to pick me up.” He wished that t
he guard would decide to let him out, and again tried to add that tiny surge of the power he didn’t himself understand.
The guard looked at him, undecided, even started to open the gate. But then he raised a hand, “Just a moment,” and lifted his zoster to his ear.
John swore bitterly to himself, especially when he heard the guard say that there was no-one he could see close, just a single soldier waiting to leave. The guard said in a surprised voice, “Of course I won’t let him go. I know the regulations.”
John had failed again, but just in case, he leaned casually against the wall of the guard box and put his hands in his pockets. When a jeep came fast toward the gates, and more soldiers seemed to come running from all directions, he tried wishing that he was in Hallsville, which he knew to be the nearest town. He added the surge of power. But nothing at all happened, except that the jeep was allowed through the first gate.
Abruptly, John remembered that soldiers never casually leaned against walls when in the presence of officers, and straightened, saluting, though it was something he hadn’t thought to practice. Mark was stalking past to talk to the guard on the gate, ignoring the anonymous soldier. Abruptly he stopped, peering. “Sorry, John.”
John sighed, “Yeah. Me, too.”
Mark took him back in the jeep.
“Back to Ward 3, I suppose?” he asked Mark.
Mark nodded, “For the moment.” He looked irritably at his subject, “I can’t understand how the guards didn’t stop you.”
John said casually, “It was not their fault, I was in disguise.”
“What disguise?” said Mark, skeptically. “Wearing a uniform shouldn’t have fooled them.”
“I cut my hair. They didn’t know me because I cut my hair.”
Mark reached out, pulled off the uniform hat and laughed. “That’s the worst haircut I’ve ever seen!”
“I’ve never done it before,” explained John.
Mark shook his head. The driver chuckled, and John leaned forward. “By the way, Jack, I was wondering if you might teach me to drive.”
Jack glanced in the mirror at the Colonel, “Unlikely, I suspect.”
Timothy and Lance were in trouble for losing their prisoner. Timothy had to climb the tree and retrieve the red shirt, although crashing to the ground afterward and hurting his ankle. Timothy was no longer feeling at all friendly toward John.
Once back in Ward 3, John was deprived of the soldier uniform and the supplies of bread and chocolate biscuits in the pockets, and Mark started to question him. Instead of a rough battering of questions, he tried relaxing him by sharing a coffee, but while John was perfectly prepared to act as if he was a friend, almost the only thing that he would say was that the soldiers should not be blamed. Mark gave up, leaned back in his chair, and said that he’d have to visit the barber, as his hair looked appalling.
John reached up, and felt the ragged ends, but then stood, swaying, and looking around him in some panic. The few seconds when he knew the pain was about to strike were always terrifying, especially as he didn’t know whether he’d be down for an hour or a month. Mark hadn’t seen it before, except on film, and knelt beside him when he staggered violently and fell, grabbing his hand, feeling John’s finger nails bite hard into his own hand, drawing blood.
It was another very long bout of illness, periods of unconsciousness, sometimes a brief awakening, and then the pain would hit again. Mark looked in most days, but Isaac kept John as much as possible in the quiet and half dark, especially when he was in that distant world where the only reality was pain. After the second week, there were painkilling drugs and an Intravenous Drip, although that was violently pulled out a couple of times.
A nurse stayed in attendance, Nicki mostly in the daytime, whom John seemed to like, as well as always at least one of his personal guards.
There was plenty of time to analyze the escape attempt at leisure, and to equip far more of the guards with RABs, so that they could instantly know the position of the subject. The grid pattern on the calculator sized gadget showed the area of the Compound, and the scale could be changed to show the whole area of army land, or it could show a detailed segment, so that John’s position could be checked very accurately. It was a sophisticated and expensive device that Mark now deemed essential. They called it a RAB 2.
RAB 1 was what John carried unknowingly tucked behind the muscles of his right upper arm, and the faceless men who worked behind the scenes had RAB 3s. The RAB 3 was much larger, and gave the measures of muscle tension, pulse and blood pressure as well as location, though there was a pocket version, too, but that showed only the medical information. The guards were only told that it was a location device, so that John, if he read their minds, would not know that it gave additional information as well.
Time and again, as John lay helplessly sick, film of his attempted escape was run, and compared to the readings of pulse, blood pressure and muscle tension. There was a subtle change now and then, that seemed to correspond with times when John had success that he shouldn’t have had, cameras that failed, and guards on the gate that accepted an obviously false ID. Was this the physiological indication that accompanied use of his strange power?
There was a certain admiration as well. He was obviously not superman, but he had courage. There was film of the casual walk of just another soldier, whom they now knew to have been the subject, but they had readings of pulse and muscle tension, and could even see where there’d been a jolt of alarm as the siren sounded. And yet the posture remained apparently relaxed. The guard had nearly allowed him out, they suspected, even after the siren.
Mark was having increasing concerns about division of loyalties among his men. He knew himself how he’d come to care for his prisoner, a mixture of admiration for his spirit and pity for his situation. It had been heart wrenching, even for a tough professional soldier like himself, when John had gripped him so hard when the pain struck. It didn’t make any difference. The Colonel was still convinced. John was something different, and he could not be allowed to escape from their hands. It was infinitely better that he died than that he was free, with the potential to do unimaginable things. But better than that, they really needed to try and find out just what was his power.
Timothy was one of those who did his shift in Ward 3. His anger at John had not outlived the sight of him in such terrible pain. He wondered if anything would come of the anonymous letter he’d sent to the British Embassy about the detention of one of their citizens as a prisoner. He suspected not. John’s existence would just be denied.
They learned something more before John was finally over the latest illness. There were a couple of short-lived attacks of pain after the main episode, almost like aftershocks. An observant technician noticed a subtle change in the readings that seemed to occur up to half an hour before John felt anything unusual. If they were right, they would have warning when John was about to go down, much more than the few seconds that John mostly seemed to have.
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