Awakening XV

The daimone charges toward me at high speed, chips of asphalt flying up behind its spiked feet. I shout to Roshan, "Distract it - I need time!", and he nods. I remember the giant's words, only hours past: "With horrific sacrifice, they bound it tightly..." I don't have any innocents to sacrifice - nor would I - so I must find something that will serve in its stead. Hoping that the syntax isn't too rigid, I begin: "Foul daimone, by my words and deeds you are here bound."

A shadow falls over me, and I look up. The daimone towers above me, staring malevolently. In that ever-so-sultry voice, it informs me, "You've run out of time, littl-" Roshan rudely interrupts it with a thick steel rebar he picked up when I wasn't looking, knocking the daimone several feet to the side. It snarls and turns toward him, saying "Two of you?"

I continue the ritual. Picking up a piece of glass on the flame-lit street, I intone, "With blood I bind you, blood for the blood you have spilled." I slice it across my chest; compared to the pain of my... stump, I hardly notice. Blood wells up, spilling onto the ground. Roshan shoots past my view, crashing into a pile of rubble. I hear snapping, and wince. The daimone stalks toward him.

Looking toward the other side of the street, where victims lay sprawled like toys, a tear trickles down my cheek. I carefully scoop it up with a finger and press it into the pool of blood growing beneath me. "With tears I bind you, tears for the anguish you have caused." As the daimone plucks Roshan up from the rubble, hands coming toward him to rip him apart, a shot rings out, jerking the daimone sideways. Dropping Roshan instantly (who is in no shape to attack again), it whirls and charges.

I reach into the car and pull out, with no little disgust, my roughly-severed arm. Holding it before me, I say, "And with loss I bind you, a sacrifice for that which you force on your victims!" The daimone blurs across my vision, charging Rebecca, clearly no longer in a mood to toy with us. I drop the arm, my last hope to resume the life I'd lived before, falling into the pool of blood and tears. It hits the surface just as the daimone's outstretched hand touches Rebecca's throat. I cry out, "Stop!", but there's no need - the daimone is frozen in place.

It curses me as I approach, saying, "Do you think you can bind me with such pitiful sacrifices? Those you emulate sacrificed thirty innocent souls to me to gain mastery over me - and see how that served them! You cannot hope to hold me for long. Surrender now, and your death will be... quick."

I look at it. I'm weak from blood loss, missing an arm, and somewhat sleep deprived. I turn to Rebecca and tell her, "Shoot it in the brain and the heart until it dies." She walks up to it and feels its blood-spattered chest for a pulse. Finding one, she levels her pistol inches away and fires.

She fires: once. Twice. Thrice. She alternates, switching from the head to the heart with every shot. The wounds are surprisingly clean. Its healing still operates, and the edges of the wounds begin to close up within seconds, but its agility was its greatest armor. After the seventh shot, it slowly topples over, forcing Rebecca to back up quickly to avoid being crushed. She walks to where it has fallen and continues firing: eight, nine, ten. Cautious, but hardly unwarranted. After the eleventh shot, the daimone stops twitching. After the twelfth, Rebecca runs out of ammo.

Roshan and I walk over to Rebecca. I don't know how he can walk. He's clearly broken bones, and from the fall he's taken, he might have some internal trauma as well. Then again... he could say the same for me. Wordlessly, we lean on Rebecca, lacking the strength to stand any longer on our own.

Eventually, I realize that sirens are blaring behind me. I turn and look. Sure enough, police cars, fire engines, ambulances: the lot. All behind us. I don't know how long they've been there. I wave weakly, and shout, "Could you get us to the hospital? I'm not feeling my best."

The Freemasons lived in a dream - a dream where power and wealth justified anything. A dream where their vile sacrifices to fuel the Heart could produce some good result. A dream wherein, even while summoning daimones and committing mass murder, they could do no wrong. It was a dream they took with them to their deaths, but a dream which, with the release of the daimone they summoned, could have lived on beyond them.

For me, this has all been one long nightmare, of terror and pain and loss. And only now am I finally awakening.

Awakening XIV

I jerk at a sudden pain in my right shoulder. My right stump. A water bottle is pressed against my lips, and I drink eagerly. My eyes adjust to the darkness; Rebecca's kneeling over me, blocking out the light, holding the water bottle for me. My shoulder jerks as I try to hold it for her; I decide against trying with my left arm, weak as I feel. There's a blood-flecked gun at Rebecca's hip. Presumably she took it from the Freemasons. She pulls me to my feet, saying "You lost a lot of blood, but the tourniquet should hold until we get to the hospital. They should be able to re-attach your arm, if we get there within the next twenty minutes." I take her at her word; she's in pre-med: she knows these things.

Wobbly-kneed, I walk out of the throne room, Roshan and Rebecca supporting me at first. I ask as we walk, "Where are the prisoners? And how did you get here?"

Roshan replies, "We saw the prisoners safely to the exit, before the screaming started and we decided to come back for you. We were nearly to the throne room when the monster emerged and, instead of turning at the corner, ripped apart the wall and went straight onwards. It didn't even notice us. We just walked right in." He's frowning. He doesn't look too happy with the attention Rebecca's paying to me; but he's an intelligent guy. I'm an intelligent guy. He's dealing with it.

We walk through the hole the daimone tore in the wall (through two feet of cinderblocks) and, a hundred feet past it, out into the open air. It's night-time. I take a deep breath of fresh (well, city) air for the first time in days. My ribs decide they don't like that, and I start coughing. When I stop, the asphalt in front of me is speckled with red.

Rebecca and Roshan look a little worried. I can hear screams in the distance; the daimone is loose and, from the sounds of it, slaughtering innocents just as wantonly as it did its captors. Horrific, but not really surprising. We walk out to the street, from the alley that the daimone decided to make its exit on, and find my car. My car! I'd forgotten that I'd parked it here; Roshan and Rebecca, still not fully recovered from the amnesia induced by the heart, don't even recognize it. I don't know what happened to the keys (they aren't in the clothes either of us are wearing, or we'd have found them by now), but the giant's key opens the car lock as effectively as it did every other lock I've encountered. (A most useful device, to be certain.) Roshan, saying "Oops,", reaches in and takes the keys out of the ignition.

Roshan drives; I'm in no shape to. The drive to the hospital, which I direct (having picked Rebecca up there twice on dates), takes us closer to the daimone. Sirens rise as we approach, mixing to form a sort of cacophonous symphony of wails.

As we get closer, some of them fall silent. And the human screams continue.

Ten minutes later, with just five minutes to reach the hospital before, by Rebecca's estimate, my arm will have deteriorated too severely to reattach, we see the daimone. It's truly monstrous now; six arms, ten feet tall, scaly skin and that same inhuman speed and strength. As we pass, the daimone tears a policeman in half as his partner desperately fires at the daimone, which dodges with agility belying its size, even as it devours a small boy with two of its right arms.

At that, I know what I have to do. There's no more time; no time for me to go to the hospital and heal while the daimone wreaks this gruesome carnage. I grab Roshan's arm and gasp, "Stop." He's already stopping; he's not quite me, anymore, but he's close enough to count sometimes. I tell them as I climb out of the backseat, "I'll stop it. I'm the only one who can. I'm the only one who knows the rituals that bound it. And I'm the one who... released it." They look at me as though I'm crazy; but Rebecca nods and says, "We'll help."

I walk towards the daimone. It turns toward me suddenly, and, in exactly the same voice it used while it tried to seduce me, says, "Why, my savior! You've come back for me!" Tossing its victims aside like rag dolls, it charges towards me, closing half of the eighty yards separating us in seconds.

I have time enough.

Awakening XIII

I walk along the greenhouse path, heading towards the elevator back into the building proper. (I still don't know how the Freemasons managed to conceal a hundred-yard-high arboretum atop an office building.) I plan as I go, somewhat distracted by the lush and colourful vegetation surrounding me. I need to go to the 'throne room', where the Freemason leader ordered me imprisoned, and, hopefully, where he still is. There, I'll confront him and either persuade him to destroy the heart and disband his organization (...somewhat unlikely, I realize), or imprison him and his minions with the Device and pound the heart into pulp myself. Then... well, there's no time to plan for what happens after that; I'm at the elevator. There's no time to waste; every second I take to find the throne room heightens the likelihood of a chance encounter with a Freemason in the halls.

As the elevator descends, I ponder on how unfortunate it would be to see, as the doors opened, a crowd of Freemasons right outside.

I get lucky - the corridor is still deserted. I hurry down it and try to remember the way I was dragged to the prison cells after I was taken to the throne room, so as to be able to backtrack. My effort at the time (to memorize the route, in preparation for this very contingency) pays off. I walk back past the beating heart (there's no time to destroy it now, and I don't really have a suitable tool - that'll have to wait), and take the route that Roshan and the other prisoners used. There's no sign of them. I continue, following the turns, until I come to the corridor just in front of the throne room, guarded by two Freemasons.

I duck back, but one of them's seen me. I hear him tell the other guard, "I think I saw someone over this way. If I yell, come running." I back away from the corner, trying to be quiet and yet fast-moving. I don't want to use the Device here - there's too much risk of wasting my chance, before I get to the Freemason leader. I look around, and spot a ceiling vent, a mere foot above my head. It won't be the first time I've used one of them. I jump, pulling it down and tossing it aside. The Freemason, not yet to the corner, exclaims at the noise. As inspiration hits me, I grab the money in my pocket (stolen from the Freemasons in the first place) and toss it to the ground, hoping that will distract the guard for a moment, and jump straight up, scrabbling for a grip.

I get one - somehow, on the nearly sheer sides of the shaft - and with the strength of desperation and a great deal of discomfort, pull myself up into a horizontal segment. I look down for a moment (where the guard stands, looking up!), take my bearings, and start crawling.

I'm very glad that I'm not claustrophobic.

A minute and two wrong turns later, I arrive at a wall vent in the rear of the throne room. It's just as lavish and ostentatious as I remember - covered in gold and precious metals, with the Freemason leader on his tall throne in the centre of the room, flanked by half a dozen minions. He has his hood thrown back, and is busy lecturing Roshan and the prisoners insolence in attempting to escape. Roshan, though surrounded by guards, isn't paying much attention to the Freemason king - his eyes are flicking around the room, hunting for some way to escape. He's holding Rebecca's hand. I feel a spark of jealousy light in my breast at the sight, but I force it down. Now's not the time for that. Now is the time... for action.


I open the lockbox, taking out the Device and holding it carefully in my hands. It's key to the plan. Dramatically, I push the vent cover off from the wall and, as the minions and leader turn to look, I jump down, landing in a crouch. I nearly collapse as my thrice-wounded knee burns with pain, but I force myself upright, declaiming, "You are done!"

Perhaps I should have spent some time planning my speech.

I continue, as the Freemasons guns from under their robes, "I have in my hands a device which can defeat you all!" I hold the Device high, my finger poised over the circuit. The minions show no inclination to stop, but the Freemason leader gestures them to halt. As his minions flock around him, he asks me with an air of disbelief, "Who are you, and what do you think you're doing?"

I respond dramatically, noting Roshan and Rebecca organizing a silent escape behind the Freemasons' backs, "I am stopping your reign of terror! For decades now, you have sacrificed countless innocents to fuel your idiotic plan. The Cold War is over! You will never create your invincible fortress! Destroy the heart and disband your organization, or I", as I gesture with the Device, "will disband it for you!"

The Freemason leader responds contemptously, as behind him Rebecca and Roshan together gag and pin the guard left to watch them, "You have no idea of what you're talking about. Once a daimone is summoned, it cannot be dismissed again. The destruction of the heart would free the daimone, which, I think, is something neither of us want."

I answer incredulously, "You summoned a powerful demon with no way to get rid of it afterward?"

The leader ignores my comment. Roshan and Rebecca have wrestled the guard out of sight, and most of the prisoners have already followed. He continues, "If you use that device, you will destroy the heart and free the daimone. The jewel at its center is a heart-seed - twin to the one from which the heart grew. The creator, one of our own, was sent to the cells for making it in a foolish attempt to end the experiment. Thankfully, he was unable to work up the nerve to use it, but he managed to render the device inaccessible to us before he was captured. I don't care how you got it, but you are in no position to threaten us. If the heart dies, no-one profits. Just put it down and come quietly, with your twin." He looks around at this, and I can see surprise dawning on his face as he realizes that Roshan and the others are nowhere to be seen.

There is absolutely no reason for me to trust anything that he says. He is a monster, and the leader of monsters. I stand to lose everything I have gained - even my life - if I put down the device. Even as I think, the Freemasons are beginning to crowd around me.

I look the Freemason leader in the eye and say one word. "Nuts." My thumb is closing the circuit even as the breath leaves my mouth.

Outside the bubble, it appears that the Device has quite a different effect. It's hard to describe, but a sort of hole opens up in the Device, and then rapidly swells, growing (as I drop the Device and back away) to human height, hovering in the air. Through it, I can see the 'bubble' fold and collapse. It's a cacophonous noise, as walls bend and crumble, beds collapse, and the iron bars of the daimone's cage bend and break. Everything seems to be growing... smaller, somehow. The daimone looks toward me as the bubble collapses, seemingly unharmed by the chaos all around, and smiles, saying, "You did free me, after all!" Then she somehow steps out of the hole, right in front of me, and, with a smile and a "Thank you!", tears my right arm off my body and kicks me into the wall.


I think I black out a moment from the pain. When I awaken, I see the daimone wreaking havoc around the throne room. As I watch, she tears the Freemason leader's head off with a single gesture and throws it at another Freemason with incredible speed, knocking him to the ground. Some of the Freemasons fire at her, but she's too fast for most of them and doesn't seem to be slowed by the bullets that do hit. She changes as I watch - she grows taller, harder-skinned, and I think she's starting to grow extra arms on her sides. Her wounds close slowly, as she disassembles another Freemason, tearing him apart one limb at a time. The survivors break and flee, but she follows inhumanly swiftly. The daimone has a red-stained smile on her face the entire time.

So here I am, lying in the corner of a body-draped throne room, bleeding to death. I... guess I made the wrong choice, though looking back, I don't really know where I went wrong. My vision is growing dark. I just wish... I wish that I hadn't freed the daimone. I don't want to die - I don't want to die! - but here, as a superfluous Roshan with no-one and nothing to call my own, destroying the Freemasons here might have been... almost worth it.

A shadow falls over me.

I guess I've... run out of time.

Awakening XII

I pick myself up gingerly. The lockbox dug painfully into my side when I crashed. I think I'm bleeding a little bit! Ow. And if my ankle wasn't sprained after the last fall, it is now. I look around myself. The robed figures are entering the elevator now; one of them is walking (or gliding) over to the cabin. It's a good thing I'm not there. I hope he doesn't notice the missing kites.

I've landed in front of the small building that the robed ones came out of. There's no door, and the interior seems much less modern than the cabin. There's just one large room, about fifty seats in a semicircle around what looks like an altar. I walk towards it, wincing with every step. I hope that Roshan leads the robed ones a good chase. I need some time to recover from this latest fall. (My escape in a nutshell: I fall down a lot.)

The walls are bare, with the exception of a few double-triangle designs near the corners (one above the other, both pointing upwards), and the chairs are plastic junk. In the back of the altar, though, there's a compartment that holds five thick books. One of them has no title on the cover: inside, there is a hand-written THE RITES OF THE FREEMASONS.

That explains a lot.

The other four books are titled by year: 1948, 1962, 1988, 2005. I guess that they're some kind of chronicle of the freemasons' doings. I open up the oldest, and start skimming; listening closely all the while. If a robed one - a freemason, that is - snuck up on me while I'm reading, after all I went through to get this far, I'd be pretty embarrassed.

From the look of things, these guys are some sort of splinter group that broke off from the real Freemasons in 1948. That's why they started their chronicles then. They apparently discovered some kind of arcane power back in 1947, and when the main bunch of freemasons forbade the use of it on 'ethical grounds', they decided to form a secret society within the freemasons. A nested secret society. I can see why I hadn't heard of these guys before.

Hmm. Money, recruitment, more money, ritual... they didn't go for the 'grand chronicle' thing often in these books, so I'm summarizing. Um. These guys were pretty scared about the atomic bomb, but they weren't really convinced that bomb shelters would protect them. So they bought this office building and set out to build the ultimate, impregnable sanctum. The secret freemasons gathered... over forty people over a period of eight months - coming very close to being caught when a police officer pulled over one of their kidnappers with two victims in his trunk - and sacrificed them in a single night to summon a daimone.

These people are monsters.

They... um. Lost my place. Johannsen, ritual, ritual, daimone... they made the daimone (one of the most powerful of daimones, apparently) create that heart to both guard and power this sanctum-bubble dimension, and then they sent it inside. They apparently had intermittent contact with the freemasons inside the bubble. Time distorted oddly, and though it's been half a century since the daimone was summoned, the freemasons who went inside (who emerge from the heart at seemingly random intervals to get food and supplies) have experienced no more than a year's passing. Still, from what's recorded here of their experiences, the giant's story was accurate.

Why did they capture him? He didn't know. They don't say anything about it outright, but... oh! They refer to him as the bodhisattva. The freemasons, once they saw the strange effects of the 'bubble', had the bright idea of using it for other means than self-defense. They speculated that they might be able to roam about space-time in it, if they disconnected its tether to reality - the heart. The freemasons inside, though, worried that instead of becoming independent of reality, the bubble might just shrivel up and pop - with them inside. (To continue the analogy.) So they captured something which could roam space-time freely - the giant, the bodhisattva - and begged for time to study it. Their counterparts here in reality seem increasingly impatient with this, but... they've been waiting for six decades. Impatience is relative, I suppose.

And the Cells of Forgetting? They're mentioned a lot. Apparently, prisoners are treated with a drug that knocks them out for a while, and then... they're just left to rot. No food, nothing. The amnesia comes from the heart somehow sucking out memories and, eventually, life itself, from the prisoners. It feeds on death. When the freemasons didn't have intruders just walk into the building, they went out and kidnapped people. Otherwise the heart would turn on them.

And they don't know how to stop it. They're rich beyond belief - they steal from the real Freemasons! - but they still kill untold numbers of people because they don't know how to stop this monstrosity, and they're too afraid to be caught.

Well. I do. I'm going to stop them, and I'm going to stop it. First, I'm going to walk right into their throne room and force them to end this insanity - either by persuasion or force. I still have the Device, and turning these abominations into a room full of glowing statues suits me just fine. Then, either way, I'm going to smash that heart into a pile of pulp.

Then... then, I can try to figure out where I fit in, with the other Roshan... with Rebecca.

No time for that now. I walk out of the building, wincing only a little, and look at the sun. (Ow.) It looks like I've spent at least an hour reading - maybe more. The freemasons could return at any moment. There's no time to waste.

I finally know what I'm doing.

Awakening XI

I stand in the corridor; my girlfriend, past self, past life fallen behind me. I need to figure out the robed figures' plot; and do it swiftly, before they find me. I walk briskly along the corridor; it just looks like a corridor in any other office building! There, a coffee stain in the corner - there, a loose staple lying on the floor. I can almost believe that I am back in the life I led before I saw the great heart; back in a life devoid of temptress daimones and imprisoned giants.

After a minute's walk, the corridor comes to an end. It's completely empty; I have no idea what purpose it holds. There are two elevator doors at the end of the corridor. One is marked 'Service Elevator', has an 'Out of Order' sign, and, to add injury to insult, is locked. The other one is completely unremarkable - and, having a key, I take the elevator that the robed figures seem to want to keep off-limits. It chugs as it moves upwards; not very comfortable. Perhaps it really is out of order.

The elevator finishes its ascent, and opens onto an unbelievable expanse of green. Somehow, a greenhouse - a greenhouse that I saw no sign of from the outside - lies atop the building, filled with (from what I can see from the elevator's position at the top of a rise) exotic vegetation and sprawling paths. It must be at least a hundred feet - no, a hundred yards! - from the lowest dip in the ground to the top of the glass roof, at least three times that long - and there's no sign of any of it from the outside. Do they conceal it with magic, or something?

Looking across the greenhouse, I notice immediately as files of robed figures begin gliding out of a building on the far side. They must be coming to hunt down the fleeing prisoners! They're coming down all of the paths (to get to the elevator fastest) - I can't hide in any of them. I look about quickly. There's another building to my left - looks like a large cabin, very nice, with a raised patio on the other side from the elevator. I dash towards it.

There's someone inside - I notice just before I'm about to enter! I quickly duck to the left of the door, hardly daring to breathe. Barely two seconds later, the robed figure opens the cabin door and glides to the elevator, not even bothering to glance behind himself in his hurry. I can't expect to be so lucky twice.

More cautiously, I open the cabin door and look inside. It's clearly a resort of some sort. There are consoles, TVs, PCs, kites, telescopes and any number of other recreational items. Perhaps this whole vast greenhouse is just a retreat for the robed figures? There's no time to contemplate that, though - from the patio in the rear of the cabin, I can see that the robed figures have gotten nearly halfway to the elevator! For all I know, one of them might stop in here to retrieve their car keys or some-such. I've got to find a hiding place.

I look around desperately - I've got to get out of here. I can use the Device, but using it might draw other robed figures to me, and I don't know what using it too often, too quickly might do. Considering the risks... I'll do it only if I can't find any hiding place. Unfortunately, that's looking rather likely. There's no place to hide in this dang cabin! And hanging off the kite patio hardly seems likely.

I do a double take. The kites! They're pretty big - maybe they can carry me? I take one, two, three, tie them to my belt. I look before I leap. There are some particularly cushy-looking plants in front of the patio - if the kites don't hold, at least I won't be any worse off than if the robed figures caught me in the cabin. I hesitate. My pulse thuds in my ears. Do I have a fear of heights?

I think back. No, not really.

Then I jump.

I fall terrifyingly quickly - the plants loom up before me (what if I miss them? what if I hit the ground?) - then I feel a jerk as the kites pull me upwards, and I'm soaring, flying across the greenhouse. It's glorious! The robed figures shoot past - none of them look up! - and I'm past, out of danger, shooting towards the other side of the greenhouse as fast as I drop.

I hit the ground.

Awakening X

I walk alongside myself through a seemingly endless corridor - the Cells of Forgetting. I pass black doors as I go, featureless and solid. Ventilation ducts criss-cross the spartan ceiling above. I spend the walk talking to myself - to Roshan. There is so much I must tell him - of the unbelievable events that took place in the bubble outside reality, and of his own past, which he and I both lost in the Cells of Forgetting, but only I have recovered. Roshan himself seems increasingly doubting of me - perhaps he thinks that I am some sort of doppleganger, a trick of his captors. I can think of no way to prove otherwise.

At last, five minutes after passing the cell we were both prisoned in, we reach the end of the corridor. At it is a plain white door, with a blurry glass pane in the top. Roshan reaches out, turns the knob and pulls the door open.

A robed figure whirls, saying the first words I have heard from any of them: "What? Who are y- the new prisoner!" Over Roshan's shoulder, who is blocking the doorway, I see the robed figure draw a knife and cut a deep gash in his palm. Roshan is already moving toward the man, but already he is pulling out something reddish and unpleasant-looking - a chunk of the giant heart? - and pressing it to the bleeding gash. Instantly, he vanishes, with a faint poom as air rushes in to fill the space where he stood.

Roshan turns to me - perhaps now more convinced that I am who I say I am - and says, "We'll have to move quickly - he's probably going to warn others." I agree, and begin searching the office for anything useful. One wall is completely covered with shelves holding bottles of some ambiguous liquid. I suspect that this is the drug that our captors use to induce amnesia. The robed figure who fled left behind a newspaper, dated June 25th, two days after Rebecca and I entered the office building. I picked it up from his desk - and beneath it is a switch-board, a row of pairs of tiny toggles marching through the middle. I call Roshan over, and we agree that this must control the cell doors. I flip one up, and sure enough, a door just outside swings open. Roshan flips them all up.

You know, I'm starting to think that he might be a little more impulsive than I am. Perhaps I shouldn't have given him the Device - I know that if I hadn't seen what I had beneath the beating heart, I'd be a little too eager to just escape the building, no matter whatever else lurks here. But I suppose I shouldn't criticize myself too much. Besides, there's no time to waste - more robed figures could arrive at any moment. Roshan is already calling me onward.

Most of the cells were empty, it seems. They look like they were never used. Eighteen prisoners in all emerged from the cells, scattered along the long corridor. Most of them are already walking in one direction or another by the time Roshan and I find them - they had to be explorers to get in here, after all. Roshan and I split the job of explaining their circumstances to them - most of them are quite incredulous, but follow us nonetheless. The sight of the beating heart, by the time we get there, silences most of them.

Rebecca is the last one found; she is brave, as always, and was almost to the heart by the time we catch up to her. It is an awkward moment, as she looks between the two of us. I speak up first: "I am Roshan - do you remember me?" She shakes her head; but there must be something about us that is familiar to her, or she would not look at us so. Roshan continues, "I am your boyfriend; we went here together on a date, and were caught by, um, robed figures and imprisoned." I consider whether to add that I am also her boyfriend, but time is running short until more of the robes arrive, and she looks confused enough as is. The rest of the prisoners are catching up behind us.

So we stand, Roshan and Rebecca and I, with some very confused prisoners behind us, gathered around the living heart. Two doors lead out; I have unlocked both. The prisoners look to us for leadership; and it is time for me to make my choice, though I have delayed it. Should I escape, or try to unravel whatever plot the robed ones make? I look at Roshan, who is thinking his own thoughts; I could predict him before, but now he has taken a path quite different from mine. While I delayed making my decision, events made it for me. I tell Roshan, "You must lead Rebecca and the other prisoners to freedom. I'll stay, and try to stop the robed ones." I'm the only one who can. Roshan replies, "Good," and walks out the left door. Perhaps he's grateful that I did not try to come after him; after all, only one of us can reclaim our life.

Well, we'll see about that. I have some ideas of my own on that count; but now isn't the time to voice them. I take the right door and run through the corridor beyond. I need to figure out what the robed ones' plot is, and then stop it. Time is running short; enemies might arrive at any moment.

Where first?

Awakening IX

I climb out of the beating heart, risen from the depths. That was a long climb - it feels like it took days! I look around. The room is just as I left it - the trapdoor atop the heart was closed, and all the other doors in the room are just as closed as they were when I descended. I climb down the moist, pulsing heart (and I never want to say that again!) and look at the two metal doors - presumably locked, as they were when I climbed down. I want to see what's inside them before I continue, so I can better choose an escape route once I've freed Rebecca. I dither for a moment, and then decide to open the one I saw that small creature (?) scurry through. I'm not too worried about defending myself - I still have the Device in the lockbox, after all.

I turn the giant's key in the lock, and try to open the door - it won't budge. I look at the door - it's wedged shut! Someone's put a little wood wedge just below the door - perhaps the creature that fled from my approach, just in case I managed to open the lock. I crouch down and poke it out - and just then, I hear footsteps. I quickly turn and look.

Rounding the corner - it's me! Just as I was when I entered this room before - covered in dust, holding only a roll of duct tape... I don't know what will happen if he sees me, but I don't want to risk it right now. I open the door and, before he gets a good glimpse of me (I hope!), dash inside, closing it behind me.

Breathing deeply, I realize what must have happened. The cavern beneath (?) the heart was a 'bubble outside reality', the giant said. Somehow - when I was in it, or entering it, or leaving it just now - I must have traveled back in time, to just before I entered the heart. Remembering what I saw in the room, I realize that there were slight discrepancies - I'd wedged the trapdoor open, and I doubt that the wooden wedge was in the door the last time I was in there. I'd examined the room pretty well, I'd probably have noticed that. I'm... in a time loop? It sounds improbable, but when a living heart as tall as I am is just a door away, I'm inclined to believe it.

So - what now? I guess I'll just wait until he - until I enter the trapdoor. Gotta keep causality intact - otherwise, I have no idea of what will happen. I hear a crash from outside, made tinny by the metal door - that must be me smashing the lock on the trapdoor. I wait a moment more, and then cautiously open the door and step back into the heart room.

I look back at myself, posed breaking a broom over my knee to use for keeping the trapdoor open.

Well, there goes that.

I decide to break the impasse - I am, after all, the older and wiser of the two of us. I walk towards myself - I'll call him Roshan from now on, to keep things simple. Simpler, anyway. I greet Roshan politely: "Hello, me. Sorry to surprise you like that - I expected you to be down the trapdoor by the time I stepped out."

Roshan still looks pretty startled by my appearance. "Who... who are you? Are you... me?" I - okay, he - stares at me. I respond, "Yes. I'm you, an hour and a half later. I just came out of there," pointing to the heart.

Roshan looks a little less shocked now, and more confused. "Did you come to warn me not to go in there? Was it a mistake?"

I consider. "No, not really. I actually came out pretty well from the experience. Learned a lot about my past and this place, got some very useful items... running into you really was an accident."

"Well... what do I do now?", inquires poor bewildered Roshan.

"I... don't know." I consider. "Going down there got me a great deal, but I'm not certain that it would do the same for you. The place down there is strange - it's entirely possible that it's left the way I last saw it, not the way it was when I entered it, and in that case you'd risk severe injury just getting down there, and likely have to make a deal with a daemon to get out." I consider further. "Investigating might prove my fears wrong, or it might prove them right... but either way, there's a pretty large chance that you'd be somewhere entirely different when you came out, and I don't think I - you - have much of a chance at escaping without the items I got there."

Roshan looks down. He looks up. He thinks. Then he closes the trapdoor and climbs down the moist, pulsing heart (dang it!), and stands at my side. "Where do we go now?", he asks. "Can you open the other doors back in that corridor?"

"I can, but not yet. First I want to see what's past these metal doors - they seem like the most likely escape route." As it turns out, they're just more corridors - bland, featureless, each turning in the same direction about twenty feet past the door. Roshan's getting a little nervous, though - worried about being caught? Oh, right! He doesn't have the Device! - so I close both doors, and we enter the corridor to the Cells of Forgetting. As we walk, I ask him for the lockbox, and open it for him. "What is this?", he asks. I explain, and politely ask him not to trigger it while I'm around.

We walk down the Cells of Forgetting. I know I should explain to Roshan what's going on - how he was trapped here, where I'm going, what I know of this place - but I am distracted. I wonder. What is the robed figures' plot? What do they hope to accomplish? I still haven't decided whether I'm willing to settle for simple escape or not - and now I'm accompanied by myself! I need more time.

...what first?

Awakening VIII

So, here I am; in a corridor outside reality itself, the only route of escape a vertical tunnel fifteen feet above the ground. I have, in my possession, my clothes, $10.27 in stolen money, a key that can open any lock, a great big metal rod, a nearly-depleted roll of duct tape, a pair of scissors, and a lockbox holding a device that vaporizes inanimate objects and sheaths living things in a burning-hot energy-shield.

I'm quite a sight, I imagine.

So how to climb those fifteen feet up? I go to the bunk room and look at the tunnel. After a moment of thought, I grab hold of a bunk bed (not the one I wrecked) and push it underneath the tunnel. I climb on top and reach.

It's still ten feet up. I can't reach quite that far.

I go back to the cavern of the giant. The robed men still stand there, immobilized in fields of sparkling red-and-white energy. I stare into the closest one's face. Even up close, the energy blocks a clear view. Mysterious even while trapped. And I can't touch them; my fingers or my clothes would burn equally well... but will metal? I take out the rod used to open the daimone's vault; on consideration, I wrap the end in my shirt before gripping it, to avoid worse injury than the blisters I've already suffered. Gingerly, I touch the rod to a robed figure. My shirt grows hot in my hands, but... the metal remains intact. It doesn't even glow!

I may have found a solution.

I begin experimenting; the figures are easily pushed around once they start moving, gliding across the floor smoothly. I nearly get hurt when one of them bounces off a wall and comes back at me faster than expected. As a plan forms in my mind, I push them all, one by one, into the bunk room, shoving them into a large pile in the center of the room. I look at the pile nervously; it's about nine feet high, robed figures piled about in a most undignified manner, and
I know that they won't give much traction. Reluctantly, I begin shedding my heavier and more awkward items; the metal rod (too big) and the scissors (too likely to end up poking me in the side at a bad moment - why did I ever pick those up, anyway?). On consideration, I use the last of the duct tape to fasten the lockbox and giant's key on safely, and toss the roll away. I look at the pile again.

Then I charge up the pile of energy-enshrouded bodies, running as fast as I can with the heap beginning to shift beneath me and my soles growing very, very hot. At the top, I jump the best jump I've ever made; slamming into the bars of the ladder and somehow managing to keep my grip. Beneath me, the pile is collapsing, spreading across the floor. From the feel of them, I suspect that my shoes have a number of holes in them, burnt by the heat.

I hope that I don't have to release the daimone after all. If it was hard getting down before... that mess below would give me quite a warm welcome.

As I climb, I wonder. I've lost my duct tape, opened the lockbox, gotten a bit of cash and a full meal... and a lot of knowledge about just what this place is, what they're trying to do here... what sort of things they can do. (Though I still don't know who they are.) Now I have a choice to make. I can try to escape - with a key that opens any lock, a weapon of immense power in the lockbox, and the exact knowledge of where they imprisoned Rebecca, my girlfriend, it should be easy. Or I can try a harder task - to free all the captives, and ensure that they (again, whoever they are) are stopped, from imprisoning innocents, summoning daimones, and otherwise causing havoc.

Sounds quite melodramatic, doesn't it?

Nevertheless. I've nearly gotten to the top of the tunnel. What now?

What now, indeed?

Awakening, Part One: Fin.

Awakening VII

I rise slowly, a little shaky after the blast. I look down at myself; I am, miraculously, unharmed. The lockbox rests open in my hand, the switch now open. I look at it for a moment, and then close it very, very carefully.

The room around me is scarred and blackened by the device in the lockbox. The piles of gold and gems are fused together into one gigantic, useless heap - the chests and paper money are nothing but ash. Looking at the door to the giant's cavern, I expect to see more ash where the robed figures stood - but no! There they stand, frozen in place, surrounded by some sort of red-and-white energy. I look at them, put my hand near one of them - there's no perceptible heat - and then touch it. With a pained shout, I withdraw my hand immediately. Looking at it, I can already see a blister forming.

I look at the robed figures further. Tenatively, I take off my robe and throw it on one of them. Smoke begins to rise; then the robe bursts into flame. I decline to experiment further and walk back to the corridor beyond the giant's cavern.

No-one is about. Seemingly, all the inhabitants of this cavern were in pursuit of me when I used the device. I look around the corridor. I already searched all the rooms... except the dining hall, which was occupied at the time. Entering it, I find it deserted as the rest of this place - did the giant call it a 'bubble outside reality?' There's food about, but I'm still full from the bag lunch - besides, I'm not that much of a hamburger fan. Behind the counter is the most interesting thing in the room - a great big metal bar. I look at it, and decide to take it with me. It's a bit heavy, but a metal rod is a useful thing to have.

On leaving the dining hall, I look at the door at the end of the corridor - with the metal wheel and metal plating - and realize what the rod must have been kept there for. I take it and begin turning the wheel, not without difficulty. Slowly, two plates slide back from the centre of the door, and a key-hole presents itself. I take the giant's key, slide it in, and turn it. The entire door at once falls into the floor. Immediately, I am greeted with hopeful cries: "Oh, thank goodness, someone other than those robed monsters! Please, you must help me!"

I take a moment to get my bearings. The room beyond the vault door is fairly large and circular. Strange equipment (some of it resembling telescopes, or perhaps microscopes) is spaced around the circular cage in the centre of the room - the sole occupant of which, a very attractive girl, is currently plastered across the bars, looking at me pleadingly. "They've taken me here and locked me in for days. They haven't even given me food!" the girl said as I walked closer. "I don't know what they're going to do to me, but I'm afraid to find out! Please, just unlock the cage door, and we can escape this horrible place!"

I have my hand on the giant's key and am about to do just that - and then I remember something. The giant said to me, And then they took this daimone and locked it safely behind steel and ritual... I wonder. Where would a demon be kept, except here? The girl - or 'daimone', perhaps - does not recognize the expression on my face. "Please! What are you waiting for? Those men could return at any minute!

With the state I left them in, I doubt that - though the worry now comes to me that the red-and-white energy might disappear unexpectedly. I push it aside - I can always use the device again, if it comes to that. I have the time to do some testing. I tell the girl - daimone? - "You're a daimone. What will you give me for freeing you?"

The daimone sighs aloud at the failure of her (?) ploy and leans back from the bars, coincidentally giving me a very distracting view. "Even if I'm no human, what I said still holds true. Once you free me, I will help you escape. And I can help in... other ways," the daimone said, flexing suggestively. "Here's one," she said, reaching out with one finger to just within the bars. Nervously, I touched it.

I scream in agony - this is not a good day for my hands - and fall back to the floor, probably bruising myself in several places - but the damage is done. The robed figures charge, knocking my girlfriend and I down - and out. When I awaken, I am bound hand and foot - my girlfriend much the same, next to me. I am in - a throne room? It's huge - over two dozen robed men standing to each side of a great throne, richly decorated, gold and jewels everywhere. (Where does the money come from?, a part of me thinks. What? I'm tied up by strange men, and I'm thinking about the decoration?) The man on the throne - dressed in a business suit! - points at me accusingly. "You came too far, and saw too much. You are not the first, and you will not be the last - but this will be your last trespass." To a man to his right, he says: "Take them to the Cells of Forgetting - double the dose for the first seventy-two hours, as usual." As I am dragged away, he has already forgotten me - not much of a personal touch, there. (Why do I keep thinking about these little details? I'm being dragged off the cells, for God only knows how long! What's going on?) My captors drag me back the way I came, through several turns - I try to memorize the route - and back past the same heart. (It's rather distinctive.) I see my girlfriend tossed into a cell. I'm next. The door opens, and I'm flung in, sprawling on the floor.

Then- nothing. Blackness.

I awaken. The daimone watches me. "See? I restored your memory, just like that. You can remember everything now, right?" It's true. I remember my girlfriend's name, now - Rebecca - my house, my parents, my life. Everything. Whatever they did to me in the Cells of Forgetting, it's gone now. The daimone continues, "I'll do much, much more for you once you release me from this cell." She doesn't need to say anything more about... herself... her whole body does that for her.

I am very, very tempted - in both senses. I'm still not certain how I'll get out of here, since the way I got into this 'bubble outside reality' doesn't really work the other way. (Falling tends to be like that.) And... well. I ask the daimone one last question: "If I do release you, how could I be sure that you won't just kill me and leave on your own?"

The daimone laughs. "You have whatever you used to deal with the, the robed men, right? Whatever you used on them will be more than enough to destroy me - they captured me in the first place, after all. Besides," she asks, "Why would I hurt you after you free me?"

The daimone's appearance isn't quite enough to make me forget the giant's cautions. They summoned a great daimone - a creature of tremendous strength, and greater malice. With horrible sacrifice, they bound it tightly... If the giant was telling the truth - and after he transcended reality itself with purity, I'm willing to bet that he was - this daimone would not only be willing to kill me after I freed it, but very able to do so, unless I was able to muster some 'horrible sacrifice' to match the robed men's.

Still with no little doubt, I turn away from the daimone and begin walking back towards the bunk room. There has to be some way out!

The daimone calls cheerily, "I'll still be here when you decide to free me!"

I leave the vault door open behind me.

Awakening VI

I stare up at the face of the giant, nailed to the cavern wall several feet above my head. Who am I, I think... I don't know! I can't remember anything!

Then I panic. How could the robed figures not hear that giant voice; not notice him looking at me? I turn slowly, eyes darting side to side. But none of them have noticed. And I suddenly realize that when the giant spoke, his lips did not move.

He speaks again. You do not remember who you are, eh? Then let me show you.

I was... with my girlfriend, in a car. Driving. I was driving her to her house, to drop her off after a date. She asked when our next date would be. On a whim, I suggested a lunch date at an old office building that I drove by on the way to her house; it had always perplexed me, in perfect condition as it was yet never visited. She humored me, and agreed. As I dropped her off, and turned back to the car, she said goodbye... she said, "Goodbye, Roshan." That's it. That's who I am! More and more, the pieces are coming together.

The giant is still looking down at me. So, Roshan. You are not like these others. What are you doing here, in these caverns suspended from the flow of reality?

I wait for another memory, but none comes. Lacking that, I think as clearly as I can, I am a prisoner here. These robed men, or others like them, imprisoned me in rooms above this place. I climbed down here in an attempt to escape.

The giant sighs. That was a poor choice. This place is but a prison writ large.

I am curious. Of the giant, I ponder: What happened to you?

Many, many years ago, those of the robe did a terrible thing. They summoned a great daimone - a creature of tremendous strength, and greater malice. With horrible sacrifice, they bound it tightly, and set it to three tasks: The creation of this cavern, this bubble outside reality. My capture and, the giant attempts to gesture, but is prevented by the gigantic nails in hands, feet, and joints, imprisonment here. And then they took this daimone and locked it safely behind steel and ritual, while they decide what to do next. It has been a very long time since then, but they have not decided yet.

I am a little stunned by this gush of history. Clearly, the giant has been waiting a long time to talk to someone. I wonder to the giant, What have you done, for all this time?

The giant again fails to gesture. I think. Sometimes I try to transcend the constant pain of the nails, but then my captors prod the wounds so as to intensify it tenfold. Sometimes I try to transcend the constant gnawing of my stomache, but then my captors parade rich foods past me, sprinkling drops of water and crumbs into my mouth, and my hunger and thirst intensify tenfold. Sometimes I try to transcend my discontent with my captivity, but then my captors inflict some new indignity upon me, so as to intensify my discomfort tenfold. I look at the giant's current position, raising an eyebrow. There is nothing so uncomfortable, I have learned, that it cannot be made worse, the giant responds to my unspoken question.

Despite my fascination with the giant, I am at wits end. I am trapped in a cavern that is apparently outside reality, in the midst of robed figures who can conjure demons and who imprisoned me here in the first place, and I have no means of escape.

Suddenly, a shout comes from the corridor at the other end of this cavern. A robed figure is standing at the cavern's entrance, pointing behind him up the corridor. They have noticed my theft from the office. Once more I panic, but the giant advises, Wait, and every one of the robed figures runs (glides?) off at high speed, paying no attention to me. One of them turns its hood towards me for a moment, but again there is no repercussion. It is almost as if I am invisible. You are not, the giant comments, but these have spent so long in their fortress that they have forgotten the idea of 'danger' or 'the unfamiliar'.

I look around now, with the robed figures gone for a time. I spot a door, partially concealed by stalagmites, that I had missed before when I dared not look around. It is the door that those of the robe store their rich food and other instruments of my torment behind, the giant remarks helpfully. He is desperate for conversation.

An idea strikes me. Checking quickly to see if any more robed figures are about, I dash to the door, opening it quickly. Thankfully, it's unlocked. Within lies a veritable treasure chamber: gold, gems, stacks and stacks of money, both US and foreign. I stand gawping for a moment, and then rush in, looking for what brought me to this room in the first place. Distantly, I hear another shout; they must have discovered the damage I did in the bunk room as well. Time is running out.

Looking around, I see the poles used to prod the giant; they must be at least ten feet long, but they're thin and flexible, so as to be carried easily. I take each one in turn - five of them in all - and break them, snapping them into three or four pieces. Then I look around, hunting for the food that must be stored in here somewhere. Large iceboxes are lined along the walls; the first one I look at alone holds caviar, peacock, hamburgers and a dozen other things. I grab a platter of hamburgers, grab a pitcher of water I find in another icebox, and take a big, nice diamond, while I'm in the treasure room.

I walk quickly back to the giant, careful not to spill. I give him the food, and, with his mouth just above the platter I hold up, I am able to spill the hamburgers in. I do the same with the pitcher of water. I turn for a moment to look back at the corridor, and to my surprise and dismay, the robed figures are spilling out, moving towards me at high speed. It's hard to tell, but I'm willing to guess that they're not happy.

I turn back to the giant. I am no longer afflicted by hunger, or thirst. With you here to talk to, the greatest discomfort of my imprisonment is lifted. The normal pain of having twelve nails pinning me to a wall may be disregarded, the giant narrates as serenity fully supplants pain on his face. Then, as I watch, he lifts away from the wall - though the nails - and begins to ascend towards the cavern ceiling. The nails are still there - still in the wall - but the giant appears to have transcended those, too.

Behind me, the robed figures have slowed, their hoods pointing toward the giant. The giant himself pauses a moment in his ascent and looks towards me. The material world, which the daimone bound me to, no longer afflicts me - but it is yet your concern. To ease your way to enlightenment - and in gratitude - here is a gift that may ease your way. The giant reaches down impossibly far and hands me a small metal object - a sort of rod, with irregular grooves on all sides. This is a skeleton key. It will unlock anything in the realm of the robed ones. They gave it to me for safekeeping - thinking me the perfect guardian, imprisoned as I was. Use it wisely. Then he vanishes into the ceiling.

Stunned as I am, I'm dazed enough to forget about the robed ones - I mean, the robed figures, starting to close on me again now that the giant has so visibly indicated me as the culprit of his escape. Panicked, I look all around me, and dash towards the treasure room. The robed figures pursue me hotly.

I slam the door behind me, and the robed figures begin to hammer on it from outside, ramming it repeatedly. It's not a sturdy door - it's unlikely to hold for long. I think - what can I do, what can I do? I have scissors, tape, the skeleton key, the lockbox - the lockbox! Fumbling, I take it out of my robe, inserting the skeleton key into the lock as quickly as I can. The door is beginning to splinter. The lockbox opens. Inside is a small box. There's a metal switch on top - an open loop - with wires leading through two D batteries and a tiny jewel. My bafflement ends as the door crashes open, throwing me backwards. As the robed figures charge in, I close the switch.

The room vaporizes in a blaze of light.

What now?

Awakening V

I stand, my hunger sated, and walk towards the doorway of the bunk room. Though I'd stayed several minutes after I'd collapsed the bunk bed (eating my lunch), no-one appeared to investigate; yet there was a bag lunch in here. Someone must live here. Curious, I walk out the door, and look each way.

To the left, the corridor extends further, with open doorways leading off it. To the right, though... I take a step backwards in shock. The rough stone covering of the bunk room and corridor opens up into a vast cavern, easily several hundred yards in length and height, and at least a hundred yards wide. Yellow crystals in the ceiling, walls and floor glow faintly to give the cavern an eerie yellow light. At the other end of the cavern, watched by robed figures (!), a gigantic man easily as tall as the cavern hangs - no - is nailed to the wall! He wears nothing more than a simple loincloth.

He's completely impossible, of course. No one that tall could live. His heart would be unable to pump blood. His muscles couldn't support the least part of his weight. His organs would collapse onto themselves.

But... given the gigantic pulsing heart through which I climbed to get down here, this may not be the best time to question the physical plausibility of the giant - especially with the possiblilty that one of those robed figures might glance my way at any moment, and - assuming that these are indeed my captors - decide to put me back into a somewhat more secure cell.

I duck back into the bunk room, breathing fast. I look at myself. Somewhere in my series of falls and exploration, I've lost my robe. No way I can pass for one of those guys in jeans. I look towards the other leg of the corridor. Time to take a little risk.

The first few rooms appear to be conference rooms - they have blackboards, but they're unused. Not even chairs! After that is a dining hall - I think I see someone in there, so I pass by quickly and quietly - and then an office. Jackpot. I walk in and rifle through the papers. No computers, no fax machine, nothing more advanced than a typewriter. The papers I skim aren't too interesting - financial stuff. I think there's a lot of money moving through here, but I'm not certain - I'm no CFA.

Other loot on the desk - scissors (which I grab), scotch tape (which I consider but reject), and a paper cutter (no.). Also - a clock on the wall! It's two o' clock, by its mark. Good to know. I look around a little further, but there's no calendar. A shame.

At the end of the corridor is a gigantic, black iron door. Rivets on the side, a big wheel in the middle... a real vault. I try the wheel, hoping, but it's locked somehow. Somehow I doubt that this will succumb to a bash from my lockbox.

I stand at the end of the corridor and consider my options. I have my clothes, a nearly-depleted roll of duct tape, a dented lockbox (locked), scissors and a full stomach. And no robe. A robe... as before, memory flashes into my conciousness. I'm looking at the giant heart, my girlfriend next to me. Robed figures sweep into the room, seeming almost to hover above the floor in the dim lighting. My girlfriend and I huddle back, and I try to gesture them back... and the memory fragment ends. AGAIN. I don't even bother examining it further.

Just in case, I check in the office again. There's a closet - I opened it before and, seeing only paper clips and paper sheaves, closed it again. Now, I go through it more thoroughly, alert for any sound of someone coming up behind me. Buried beneath the supplies is a musty-looking robe. I take and don it, and stride out into the corridor to test its fit. Whoever owned this isn't my size, but robes are shapeless enough that it doesn't even matter.

Now properly robed, I take a minute in the corner to gather my courage, and then stride out into the cavern. In rather an anticlimax, not one of the robed figures even bothers to spare a second glance at me. As I walk, I try to keep my curious stares to a minimum, but the wonder of the cavern is (I fear) nearly enough to undo my disguise.

Finally, I reach the giant figure. He is nailed to the wall in a sort of sitting pose, bleeding from the nails in both hands and feet, with that strange expression in his face - a sort of combination of pain and serenity.

He opens his eyes.

You are new. Who are you, little one? his voice booms in my ears.

WHAT?

Awakening, Part IV

I descend, into the blackness of the gigantic beating heart. To my surprise, unlike the organic exterior, the inside of the heart is a vertical shaft, with a ladder leading downwards. It is as though I entered a different reality entirely as I climbed, as the air grows warm and my stomach gurgles.

Wait. When was the last time I ate? Since my awakening, I don't recall any food... and I remember something else. Before I'd awakened, or seen the beating heart. I was eating a burrito outside an office building, waiting for my girlfriend to arrive... again, I can only remember the fragment, however hard I try to recall the context. I sigh and continue climbing down, regretting thinking of my hunger - now I'm thirsty, too!

After several minutes, I reach the bottom. Beneath me is what appears to be sleeping quarters, with several bunk beds about the room - after a fifteen foot drop. I'd survive the drop, but I'd suffer a number of sprains, at least.

What can I do instead? I still have the lock-box and duct tape, tucked under my arm as I climbed. After a moment, a notion comes to me. I wrap the duct tape around the metal box once, and let it reel out, dropping about ten feet. (I don't have much duct tape left at this point.) Carefully, I swing it until it lodges under the top of the closest the bunk bed and tug gently towards me, pulling until it rests beneath me. The box comes loose several times, and I must re-seat it on each occasion.

Gritting my teeth, I let go and fall. The bed holds for a moment, the cushion on the top preventing anything worse than bruises, and then I hear snapping noises as the top buckles. Once more, I'm covered in dust and splinters, but I've survived. Nothing seems to be responding to the noise.

I get up, wincing as my leg twinges - how many falls am I going to have to suffer today? - and look around. Unlike the upper area, this room is walled with unfinished, dark stone. There's an open door leading out, but I'm more interested in the wooden chests at the foot of every bed. Rifling through them, I snag $10.27 (at least I'm probably still in the United States, wherever I am) and a bagged lunch - a turkey (?) sandwich and bottle of orange juice. I hesitate for a moment - after seeing that beating heart, I'm a little nervous about EATING anything here - but my hunger is too great.

The lunch is quickly finished. I look towards the doorway. Where now?

Awakening, Part III

I rise, scraping the dust off. I am still holding my duct tape; the only other things I have on me are my clothes. The corridor stretches out to either side of me, similar black doors spaced three metres apart. The air is cold, smelling faintly of mold, probably from the air vent that had just collapsed. The only sounds I can hear are my own heartbeat, and a faint thumping noise to my right.

The doors are nearly featureless. They seem to be made of black-painted wood, but they are as solid as iron when I test them. I suppose that it was one of these doors that I'd been imprisoned behind. Rapping on several produces no answer. Lacking any better option, I walk toward the right.

The corridor makes a sharp turn after about a hundred metres and what must be nearly sixty of those doors. Walking past it, I see the source of the thumping: a gigantic, beating heart, suspended in midair. Pulsating veins suspend it from the ceiling. Something small stands near it; by the time I take my eyes off the heart, it had scurries away, the door it exited from slamming behind it.

Suddenly, I remember. I've seen one of those hearts before. I had been... somewhere - a darkened building. My girlfriend was with me. We'd found a heart - just like this one - beating in a room in the centre of the building... that was all I could remember. Though I try, I could not remember what happened before or after that moment. I turn my thoughts back to the present moment.

The beating heart floats in a diamond-shaped room; shabby, lit by flickering yellow light (and just where is that light coming from, anyway?). There are three entrances, not counting the one I came in from. Two are closed and locked. The last proves to be, upon examination, a closet. Beneath mops and cleaning solutions, a metal box is hidden; about the size of a shoebox. It proves locked shut, as with most of this complex, but I take it just in case. I'd already found use for one lump of metal, I recall.

The heart hangs there, pulsing loudly. It is moist to the touch. I decide not to touch it again if possible.

I stand there, thinking about my situation and my options. I have a roll of duct tape, a locked metal box, and a great deal of cleaning equipment. Also, a living heart the size of a horse. I consider the heart further. It is rather bumpy; I decide that, to my distaste, I might climb it. I quickly remove my socks, put them on my hands, and begin to climb. After a few false starts, I ascend to the top of the heart. To my surprise, a trapdoor is embedded within the heart.

It is locked.

I smashe it in with the lock-box, return to the closet, wedge the trapdoor open with a broken mop handle, and climb into the darkness within.

Awakening, Part II

(Continued from here.)

A plan. I'll see if I can find anything in the room that I missed the first time around; it's dark in here.

Walking around, feeling. The door's still locked shut. There's a space heater in a corner; I'd missed it before. It's off, thankfully. There's something behind it; a roll of duct tape! I take it.

I can't get through the door with this; the thing felt like solid metal. Have I missed anything? I have my clothes, that robe, the duct tape, the space heater (if I can loosen it somehow)... ah!

I check the room once more. The floor is cold and hard; it seems to be concrete. In the ceiling, though, there's an air vent; I can feel the draft as I approach it. It feels like it's blocked by... chicken wire? It's pretty low, less than a foot above my head, but the wire is in there too tightly; I can't get rid of it.

The space heater is pretty loose. I unscrew it by hand, in the dark, and try to lift it. It's pretty heavy; I'll need some leverage to smash the wire. I find the robe, which I'd dropped on the ground, and tie it around one bar of the heater. I swing it a bit, and then smash it against the wire. On the third try, I feel something give; feeling around, I pull the bent and battered chicken wire out of position.

Now what? The shaft goes up too high for me to be able to reach the top of it with my hands. I try standing on the space heater; still not enough. Perhaps if I try to use it as a grappling hook? I swing it about again, throw it up into the shaft. On the first try it nearly falls on me; the second time, however, it wedges itself in. Trying to pull myself up, though, the robe rips. I pull it back down (nearly crushing my foot), duct tape the mess together, and throw it back up. This time, it holds as I crawl into the air shaft.

What is this, a movie?

No. The shaft collapses under me; clearly, whoever designed it didn't plan to support a human crawling within it. I fall in a shower of crumbling drywall; I'm lucky to escape anything worse than bruising. I'm outside my cell, but now I'm in some sort of dimly-lit corridor; still unfamiliar, with no sign of where I am or who brought me here.

What now?

Awakening, Part I

Who am I?

Where am I?

Calm down. First things first.

I don't know who I am. I don't know where I am. I can't seem to see anything, I can't hear anything, I don't remember anything... calm down. Calm down!

All right. The last thing I remember was... my house. Yes. I was in my house... writing... something. Then it all went white.

I can't see or hear anything. Can I feel something? Yes. I can feel my clothes. I'm wearing... a shirt, underwear, socks... no shoes... something else? Yes. Something's covering me... my arms feel (I can move my arms?) a robe. I push it off.

All right. I'm starting to feel better. I stand up. It's dark in here, wherever I am. The air is cold. There's nearly no light. I can't tell where the light's coming from. I pace the walls: twenty feet to a side. There's a door, but it's locked. No handle.

I'm locked in a dark room, in unfamiliar clothes, with no memory of what's happened to me and no way to know how long it's been since my family or my friends or - or my girlfriend have seen me.

I need a plan.

Author's Note: To the impatient: Patience.