There are still lots of ways they might be faking the studies, but I feel confident that at least we won’t be dealing with radio interference or frequency tampering.
In addition, the heart rate monitor Xavier gave us — the one Charlene will secretly wear to make sure that the center’s findings actually match ours — is working and undetectable outside the chamber.
As we’re finishing up the tests, she proposes that we place the RF jammer beneath the chair cushion so it’ll be in place for tomorrow’s test, but I don’t want to take any chance it’ll be discovered or removed before the test begins. “Palm it,” I tell her, “and then place it when the research assistant turns her back.” Over the years I’ve spent hundreds of hours rehearsing magic routines with Charlene, and although she isn’t quite as good at sleight of hand as I am, she can certainly hold her own.
“Okay.”
Thinking about the chair, I look for any ways of running low-voltage current through metallic threads to trigger the test subject’s physiological responses, but find nothing. Charlene agrees to check it tomorrow again before the test.
We’re gathering our things when I hear footsteps in the hall.
Charlene and I freeze.
I click off my light.
A flashlight beam dances across the crack at the bottom of the doorway.
Okay, maybe they do have security guards here after all.
“Into the chamber,” Charlene whispers, but I shake my head.
The intensity of the light skimming beneath the door is getting stronger. The person is definitely coming our way.
“We have to.” Her voice is urgent. “Now.”
She’s right and I know it. There’s nowhere else to hide. I take a deep breath and step into the Faraday cage with her. I try to tell myself that I’m really still simply in the room, not in an enclosed metal cube, but it doesn’t work.
She swings the door nearly all the way closed so that no one would be able to see us — as long as they don’t decide to open the door and have a peek inside.
Probably for my sake she leaves it open just a couple inches.
But already I can feel the walls pressing in on me. I shut my eyes and try to relax, yet immediately I feel like I’m no longer in the chamber but in the minivan with my family. It’s filling with water and there’s no way out. The doors won’t open — I try them, the water is rising, the boys are begging me to—
The hallway door creaks open.
I open my eyes.
Through the crack in the chamber door, I see the flashlight beam cut through the thick blackness of the room. A person enters, and the abrupt heaviness of the footsteps leads me to think it’s a man. Possibly quite large. He sweeps the beam through the room, and it slices momentarily into the crack of the chamber’s slightly open door.
Charlene and I edge backward. Thankfully, the footsteps don’t approach us but rather head toward the computer desk positioned against the south wall.
As the man passes by, it’s hard to see what he’s wearing, but it appears to be all black. No insignia, no uniform. So, not a security guard, not a custodian. I half-expect a ski mask, and though I catch only the briefest glimpse of his face, I can see that it’s not covered. He’s Caucasian. That’s all I can tell.
My heart is racing; it feels like a meaty fist opening and closing inside my chest, but I realize that the nervousness is just as much from being in the chamber as it is from the presence of the intruder.
The office chair at the workstation by the wall turns, and a moment later the bluish light of the computer screen glows on, faintly illuminating the room.
Though I want to focus on this man and what he might be doing, my curiosity is overshadowed by my strangled breathing from being inside the chamber.
I lean closer, edge the door open slightly, then draw in a breath of air from the thin opening leading to the room. It seems to help.
From this angle I can’t see what might be on the screen, but I do see that the man has placed a combat knife with a long, wicked blade beside the keyboard, and I find myself thinking of how I might defend Charlene if things turn ugly, if the man opens the chamber door. She’s a tough and independent woman, in great shape from lap swimming and yoga, but she’s slim and small-boned and she’s not a fighter.
I’ve been taking TaeKwonDo for three years, but I’m only a brown belt. Besides, I’m weaponless; he has a knife and a big size advantage. Still, I’ve spent a lot of time sparring and I can take care of myself pretty well in a fight.
However, I’ve never fought an armed assailant.
And I’ve never sparred in a space this small.
Though mostly shadowed, the look on Charlene’s face tells me that she has noticed the knife as well. She is fingering the cross she wears around her neck.
I rest my hand on her shoulder to try to reassure her, to tell her without words that things are going to be okay.
A tiny nod, then her hand goes on top of mine.
The intruder types for a few moments. The color of the monitor’s glow changes, becomes brighter and white, and I guess that he has moved past the desktop to some specific program or file.
As the moments pass I’m caught up again thinking about the tight quarters, and I don’t know how long I can stand being in here.
Based on what I’ve seen, people who’ve never experienced claustrophobia have no idea how desperate and frantic it makes you feel, when—
It’s all about your breathing.
Calm. Stay calm.
I breathe, yes, I do, but it’s not calm breathing at all.
Trying to distract myself, I think of the escapes I’ve done, all the closed-in spaces I’ve been in and how I’ve survived them — sealed tanks filled with icy water, the coffin I was buried alive in for two days, the controversial million-dollar bet I accepted from a TV psychic I’d debunked. He challenged me to an escape even I couldn’t have come up with on my own: I was put in a straitjacket, locked in a trunk with a parachute beside me, then dropped from a plane at 22,000 feet.
To give the chute enough time to open, I only had ninety-one seconds to get out of the straitjacket, strapped into the chute, and out of the trunk. It hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea at the time, but free-falling made it a lot harder to get out of the jacket than I expected, and then when I popped open the trunk, I didn’t quite have the chute buckled and almost lost hold of it.
But I made it down safely and took home the million dollars.
And I had to admit that the adrenaline rush was something else.
You did that, you can at least stand being in here for a few more minutes.
But then the chair squeaks, alerting me again to where I am, and I see the saber of light from the flashlight swing around the room.
Toward the chamber.
The man’s footsteps follow it.
My heart is beating.
Beating.
I grip my flashlight, which really is too small to serve as much of a weapon. “Get back,” I tell Charlene softly. She steps backward.
The man aims his light at the crack.
And then the door to the Faraday cage flies open.
Blood
It happens all at once, in a swirl of light and shadow and movement, blurred and swift.
I flick on my flashlight and shine it into the eyes of whoever opened the door, hoping to momentarily blind him, perhaps give us a chance to push past him and escape, but he’s quick and knocks it away. The flashlight goes spinning around the chamber, clattering to the floor.
Whipping, twisting shafts of light.
Dizzying in the darkness.
Directing his own flashlight into my eyes, he slashes the knife toward me, and as I avoid the blade he swipes it at Charlene.