Free The Hollow City by Dan Wells Page B

she stops, and the halls fall silent, that’s when the other footsteps come. They’re heavy, and loud, and the space between them is wider; whoever they belong to has longer legs, and a longer stride. His shoes click on the floor like the ticks of a clock.
    I use more soap than the other patients, scrubbing my hair and body extra hard to make up for the cold water. I don’t dare use the hot, and I never go in the showers when someone else is already there. They can control which spigot is connected to the cyanide, just like they can control which devices are watching me.
    I sit in the commons room, waiting for Lucy, watching the patients and the nurses and the doctors and wondering who they are. I watch them walk around, all stiff limbs and floppy joints and bodies so solid they block the world right out. I’m surrounded by water and meat, by dead hair and slow, shuffling circuits. I listen to them talk and the words make no sense: tile. Tile tile tile tile tile. Words lose all meaning. I wonder how these creatures can communicate at all.
    And then I’m back, and I wonder what it was that bothered me so much.
    It’s been almost three weeks since Lucy came in, and I haven’t seen her since; I have to assume They got to her. I have to find her. If I can figure out the key code for the gate, I can escape.
    I start by setting up a chair in the lunch area, with a clear view of the gate, but it’s too far away—I have pretty good eyesight, but at that distance everything melts together and I can’t tell one number from another. I need to get closer. I try walking right up to the nurse in the side office, hoping to make small talk until someone walks up and uses the keypad, but I can’t do it—the nurse’s computer is right there, just a few feet away. I can feel it like a buzz in my head, burrowing in, trying to get control. I wave at the nurse and go back to the commons room.
    It’s the TV that eventually gives me my chance; irony’s like that sometimes. Every morning at ten-thirty Dr. Linda holds a group therapy session in the TV area, where all the nice couches are; not only do they turn off the TV, but the group is big enough that it spills just slightly into the hallway. I watch them from the cafeteria tables, calculating the distance. If I pull over a chair and sit right there, I’d have a perfect view of the keypad from only a dozen feet away. I stand up and drag my chair across the room.
    “Hello, Michael,” says Linda. “Thank you for joining us this morning.”
    I sit down. “Hi.”
    “This is a social therapy group, Michael. Today we’re talking about jobs and responsibility.”
    “I had a job,” says Steve. “I worked in a bookstore. I could sell anything.”
    “That’s wonderful,” says Linda. “Tell us about it.”
    I zone out while Steve talks about how important he used to be, and subtly turn an eye to the hallway. I can see the keypad clearly. All I need is for someone to use it.
    “I could sell anyone a mystery,” says Steve. “It didn’t matter what they came in for, I could send them out with a mystery.”
    “Why do you think that was?”
    “They always want to know how it ends.”
    Devon walks past me toward the nurses’ office. He stops and chats with the lady by the computer. Just use the gate! He says something too low for me to hear. She laughs. I flex my arm: open, close, open, close.
    “What were some of your responsibilities in the bookstore, Steve?” asks Linda.
    “I did everything,” he says. “I had to do everything because nobody else ever did anything.”
    “Did you help open the store?”
    “No, the manager did that before I got there.”
    The nurse by the computer says something else, and it’s Devon’s turn to laugh. He waves good-bye and reaches for the keypad. 6. 8. 5. Another nurse joins him, blocking my view.
    “Michael?”
    I spin my head around, my heart beating rapidly. Linda and the patients are looking at me. Do they know what I was looking