Amber Poe : Filling the Gap
Aug. 17th, 2004 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsThe key fit in the door, popping it open. The interior was clean, and unfortunately empty.
After carefully noting my surroundings on the chance that Trent decided not to take me back to that place again, I insisted that we leave. We made one stop at which I obtained two very large cups of black coffee, and then returned to the road. It was my instinct that, at this point, any conversation that was to be had on the matter would be best conducted in the most private means we had available. I didn’t know what, or who, was looking for me… and after the previous night, I certainly couldn’t trust even the most innocuous of situations.
“What do you know?”
“About you?”
“Yes.”
“Not very much, really…” Trent shifted in his chair, a little uncomfortable but un-resistant to my questioning thus far. “I don’t exactly have real access to any of the files…”
“Well, tell me what you do know.” I was making some effort not to be too short with him, but it was difficult. My need for information, of any kind, was escalating to desperation.
After a deep breath and a long pull from the coffee, Trent requested that I pull over and I acquiesced. Once stopped, we rolled our windows down and shifted to face one another, and he spun me my story.
Amber E. Poe is my name. Roughly a month before Trent and I ‘met’, as it were, I had become a subject of a highly classified set of experiments overseen by Doctor Gregory Sahen – Trent’s father – and doctor Alan Chantry. Their project was being funded and overseen, in turn, by the government and, for this reason, although there were many overtly illegal things happening within the firm, they were primarily outside of the law. Although I was not the only subject of this particular experiment and others related to it, I was the only one Trent had found any concrete information about. And that was primarily due to the fact that something had gone wrong, and I had not received the kind of careful monitoring and quarantining that everyone else had.
Sahen and Chantry’s project involved research into substances that could alter the thought and memory of human beings drastically, and permanently. Soon, Trent’s words were beginning to parallel what little information I’d been able to garner from the newspaper article I’d read the day before. Drugs that would wipe the mind of identity, theoretical narcotics that could allow a doctor or scientist to selectively erase sections of memory. Instruments that could record, and subsequently delete, information out of the mind of an unwilling informant.
The security leak I had read about, I gathered, was only going to be a small inconvenience for the two good doctors.
I nodded along as Trent talked, ever more convince that his desire to aide me in some way, though underdeveloped, was completely sincere. I admired him for it quietly, feeling fortunate that he had managed, by dumb luck really, to happen upon me when he did. He had, he said, been looking for me that night… had talked to the dispatcher that had taken my 911 report and ultimately determined where the other police officer had dropped me off. Eventually, he ran out of story to tell, and a long silence passed between us.
I finished the dregs of my coffee. “So. Do you have access to that building?”
“The lab? Yea, I have a key… most of the offices lock independently though.”
“That can be dealt with. What kind of security is there?”
“Hmm… cameras and a minimal night watch. Since, well… the building is, incognito, you know? No one knows that the project is kept there, so they don’t post guards.” He was beginning to look, and sound, uncomfortable. I tried to slow down, but my heart was racing.
“Alright… Trent, I need information on the drugs you father has been working on. Do you understand?” I kept my eyes levelly on his, and he nodded. “I need your help to get that information. And I need this as soon as possible. Can you do this for me?” He nodded again, and I got the feeling immediately that we had a long night ahead of us.
Anxiety blurred the rest of the day for me. There was nothing else important for me to do, but wait and prepare. There were no blueprints, no elaborate escape routes… Trent promised it wouldn’t be difficult to get into the building. That he had been there after-hours before, to pick something up or finish something he’d started before an earlier class. The only catch, seemingly, was that he didn’t know where to find the information we were looking for.
The sun set, and we were back in that broad parking lot behind the ugly, windowless square building. Trent pointed out his father’s car, and Alan’s… said we’d best wait until they both left, and I agreed. So, we moved the car to the far side of the lot, which was adjacent to a library which kept scattered hours. The vehicle wouldn’t look out of place there. We sat, and waited into darkness.
After about two hours, two men wandered down out of the building. I could hear the exchange of voices drifting across to us in the crisp, cold silence of the night, but not quite so well that I could discern what they were saying to one another. The two men made light talk as one smoked through a cigarette, and then parted ways and drove off.
“Alright.” Trent whispered beside me, and we were off.
Like he said, we had no trouble slipping into the building unruffled. He lead me through a series of hallways, circumventing the areas of the building that had the most cameras posted in them, and eventually up a long, steep stairwell. All the while, we were silent, communicating with small gestures in the close space between our moving bodies. Perhaps a quarter-hour in, he lead me through one of the numbered doors. Save for the number – which I assumed was different than the numbers on all the other doors – it was precisely the same as each one we’d passed before, on every floor. I frowned, having lost count long ago by the tortuous path that Trent had run us through to get to where we now were.
“If there’s anything to be had, it’ll be in here…” he said, flashing the lights on. Something else, however, had come into my consciousness, and I didn’t look around the room.
“Shh…” I held up a hand, and we simultaneously stopped breathing. Then, I was sure. Footsteps approaching from down the hall, opposite of the way we’d come. Trent and I both met eyes, likely sporting similar horrified expressions, both frozen.
“Stay here.” He whispered, pressing me to the wall beside the door and wandering out it. He whistled as he left, jingling his keys idly and strolling down the hall. The footsteps stopped – all three pairs of them – and I listened hard to the silence.
Five minutes passed, then ten. My heart was pounding so loud that I could easily fancy it to be shaking the building… I closed my eyes, counting to and from ten as slowly as I could with each breath. Fifteen minutes passed. I looked around the room. It was completely nondescript: an office, cramped. There was a white laminate desk, a set of bland file cabinets, a computer, and assorted cabinets. I thought about making my way to the computer and doing what I could to find some information, but that would render me visible from the small window in the door, and I couldn’t have that. Besides, I would need Trent there to tell me what I was looking for. So I waited. Twenty minutes.
I ducked down and crept closer to the door. Leaning my head against it, I pushed all of my senses into that quietness. All I could hear was the humming of the fluorescent lights above me. The building was lifeless. Had Trent lead them away from me? Had he gone with them? Had they sent him away? Fear flashed through me, that I was now locked inside this empty building, stuck as a squirrel in a live trap, waiting for the master of the house to wake in the morning and find me, administer my fate. I counted to ten again, and then back down, and then back up. No sound from outside. Carefully, I replaced myself against the wall and waited for several more minutes. With a deep breath, I turned from the door and went toward the desk.
Surely, I can at least check the drawers and cabinets, if not the computer itself.
The room goes black. Time stops in my hands; a tether I can feel pulling against the skin of my fingers. I can remember a time when I didn’t things like this happened to people.
[Why is it, I'm usually inspired when I have other obligations? Like sleep?]
After carefully noting my surroundings on the chance that Trent decided not to take me back to that place again, I insisted that we leave. We made one stop at which I obtained two very large cups of black coffee, and then returned to the road. It was my instinct that, at this point, any conversation that was to be had on the matter would be best conducted in the most private means we had available. I didn’t know what, or who, was looking for me… and after the previous night, I certainly couldn’t trust even the most innocuous of situations.
“What do you know?”
“About you?”
“Yes.”
“Not very much, really…” Trent shifted in his chair, a little uncomfortable but un-resistant to my questioning thus far. “I don’t exactly have real access to any of the files…”
“Well, tell me what you do know.” I was making some effort not to be too short with him, but it was difficult. My need for information, of any kind, was escalating to desperation.
After a deep breath and a long pull from the coffee, Trent requested that I pull over and I acquiesced. Once stopped, we rolled our windows down and shifted to face one another, and he spun me my story.
Amber E. Poe is my name. Roughly a month before Trent and I ‘met’, as it were, I had become a subject of a highly classified set of experiments overseen by Doctor Gregory Sahen – Trent’s father – and doctor Alan Chantry. Their project was being funded and overseen, in turn, by the government and, for this reason, although there were many overtly illegal things happening within the firm, they were primarily outside of the law. Although I was not the only subject of this particular experiment and others related to it, I was the only one Trent had found any concrete information about. And that was primarily due to the fact that something had gone wrong, and I had not received the kind of careful monitoring and quarantining that everyone else had.
Sahen and Chantry’s project involved research into substances that could alter the thought and memory of human beings drastically, and permanently. Soon, Trent’s words were beginning to parallel what little information I’d been able to garner from the newspaper article I’d read the day before. Drugs that would wipe the mind of identity, theoretical narcotics that could allow a doctor or scientist to selectively erase sections of memory. Instruments that could record, and subsequently delete, information out of the mind of an unwilling informant.
The security leak I had read about, I gathered, was only going to be a small inconvenience for the two good doctors.
I nodded along as Trent talked, ever more convince that his desire to aide me in some way, though underdeveloped, was completely sincere. I admired him for it quietly, feeling fortunate that he had managed, by dumb luck really, to happen upon me when he did. He had, he said, been looking for me that night… had talked to the dispatcher that had taken my 911 report and ultimately determined where the other police officer had dropped me off. Eventually, he ran out of story to tell, and a long silence passed between us.
I finished the dregs of my coffee. “So. Do you have access to that building?”
“The lab? Yea, I have a key… most of the offices lock independently though.”
“That can be dealt with. What kind of security is there?”
“Hmm… cameras and a minimal night watch. Since, well… the building is, incognito, you know? No one knows that the project is kept there, so they don’t post guards.” He was beginning to look, and sound, uncomfortable. I tried to slow down, but my heart was racing.
“Alright… Trent, I need information on the drugs you father has been working on. Do you understand?” I kept my eyes levelly on his, and he nodded. “I need your help to get that information. And I need this as soon as possible. Can you do this for me?” He nodded again, and I got the feeling immediately that we had a long night ahead of us.
Anxiety blurred the rest of the day for me. There was nothing else important for me to do, but wait and prepare. There were no blueprints, no elaborate escape routes… Trent promised it wouldn’t be difficult to get into the building. That he had been there after-hours before, to pick something up or finish something he’d started before an earlier class. The only catch, seemingly, was that he didn’t know where to find the information we were looking for.
The sun set, and we were back in that broad parking lot behind the ugly, windowless square building. Trent pointed out his father’s car, and Alan’s… said we’d best wait until they both left, and I agreed. So, we moved the car to the far side of the lot, which was adjacent to a library which kept scattered hours. The vehicle wouldn’t look out of place there. We sat, and waited into darkness.
After about two hours, two men wandered down out of the building. I could hear the exchange of voices drifting across to us in the crisp, cold silence of the night, but not quite so well that I could discern what they were saying to one another. The two men made light talk as one smoked through a cigarette, and then parted ways and drove off.
“Alright.” Trent whispered beside me, and we were off.
Like he said, we had no trouble slipping into the building unruffled. He lead me through a series of hallways, circumventing the areas of the building that had the most cameras posted in them, and eventually up a long, steep stairwell. All the while, we were silent, communicating with small gestures in the close space between our moving bodies. Perhaps a quarter-hour in, he lead me through one of the numbered doors. Save for the number – which I assumed was different than the numbers on all the other doors – it was precisely the same as each one we’d passed before, on every floor. I frowned, having lost count long ago by the tortuous path that Trent had run us through to get to where we now were.
“If there’s anything to be had, it’ll be in here…” he said, flashing the lights on. Something else, however, had come into my consciousness, and I didn’t look around the room.
“Shh…” I held up a hand, and we simultaneously stopped breathing. Then, I was sure. Footsteps approaching from down the hall, opposite of the way we’d come. Trent and I both met eyes, likely sporting similar horrified expressions, both frozen.
“Stay here.” He whispered, pressing me to the wall beside the door and wandering out it. He whistled as he left, jingling his keys idly and strolling down the hall. The footsteps stopped – all three pairs of them – and I listened hard to the silence.
Five minutes passed, then ten. My heart was pounding so loud that I could easily fancy it to be shaking the building… I closed my eyes, counting to and from ten as slowly as I could with each breath. Fifteen minutes passed. I looked around the room. It was completely nondescript: an office, cramped. There was a white laminate desk, a set of bland file cabinets, a computer, and assorted cabinets. I thought about making my way to the computer and doing what I could to find some information, but that would render me visible from the small window in the door, and I couldn’t have that. Besides, I would need Trent there to tell me what I was looking for. So I waited. Twenty minutes.
I ducked down and crept closer to the door. Leaning my head against it, I pushed all of my senses into that quietness. All I could hear was the humming of the fluorescent lights above me. The building was lifeless. Had Trent lead them away from me? Had he gone with them? Had they sent him away? Fear flashed through me, that I was now locked inside this empty building, stuck as a squirrel in a live trap, waiting for the master of the house to wake in the morning and find me, administer my fate. I counted to ten again, and then back down, and then back up. No sound from outside. Carefully, I replaced myself against the wall and waited for several more minutes. With a deep breath, I turned from the door and went toward the desk.
Surely, I can at least check the drawers and cabinets, if not the computer itself.
The room goes black. Time stops in my hands; a tether I can feel pulling against the skin of my fingers. I can remember a time when I didn’t things like this happened to people.
[Why is it, I'm usually inspired when I have other obligations? Like sleep?]