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I don't approve of how Dr. B calls Gordon by his first name. Secretly, neither does Miles.
Chapter Eight
The night before the day of Miles' escape attempt, Gordon surprised him with a dinner of actual, solid, non-OmNutro food. Sort of. He'd saved up the entire month's worth of cherry tomatoes, cobbled together a hotplate out of Thread and more door parts, and seasoned it with absolutely nothing. There was nothing to season it with, unless they wanted peanut butter and tomato soup. Basically, it was a martini shaker full of hot, crushed tomatoes. Gordon also pulled a workbench over to Jenni's corner of the project room, threw a clean bedsheet over it, and set the office chair and three crates around the makeshift dining table.
Miles walked into the project room after his evening shower, spotted the table and laughed. "What the hell, Grod?"
Gordon was busy shaping twists of the Type-7 twine stuff at either end of the table. The twists were half a foot high and looked like licorice tubes stood on end. Gordon, be-goggled as always, spread his arms over the table. "Eh?"
Miles sat on a crate and nodded to one of the twists. "What are those?"
"They're like candles." Gordon fisted his hands on his hips and beamed.
"Oh," said Miles. "You realized they don't actually glow when you're not looking at them through your goggles."
Gordon deflated. "Oh yeah."
Miles grinned. "Dumbass. What's this for, anyway?"
"It's your last night down here."
Miles peeked in the martini shaker, set in the middle of a pillowcase placemat. "And you want to remind me why I'm motivated to leave?"
Gordon made his frowny-face, the one that still never failed to crack Miles up. "I wanted to do something neat and memorable."
"Memorable's a good word." Miles sniffed the contents of the shaker. It didn't smell that bad. Actually, it didn't smell like much of anything.
They sat down to dinner and a game of hearts, and as much as the next day loomed, Miles couldn't remember ever feeling so relaxed. He was getting out of here. And in the meantime, Gordon and Rex and Jenni weren't bad company when he wasn't facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life with them. Except when each of them passed him the Queen, three rounds in a row. Then he considered them bastards, and told them so.
Afterwards, they held a final Actually Good Movie night. This time, as a treat, Miles let Gordon put on his stupid dog movie. It wasn't nearly as bad as Rex said it was, but it sure wasn't good. The kid's voice got on his nerves in the first ten minutes, and boy was there a lot of narration.
As usual, Miles and Gordon sat at the foot of Rex's bed, butts gradually going numb on the hard floor. This time Gordon fell asleep, and halfway through his movie. His head tipped back on the mattress and he snored through his thin nose, and the video player splashed flickering yellow and blue over his throat. Miles still couldn't figure out why he refused to come along.
The next morning, Miles waited in the corridor while Gordon talked to Dr. B over the P.A. He felt like he should have packed something, but the only things he'd brought in were the clothes he was wearing when Dr. B captured him (and the $2.16 in change in his jeans pocket, which he'd lost at some point over the last seven months). Instead he pulled the eyepatch down off his forehead, stuck his bandaged hands in his pockets, lounged against the wall and waited for Gordon to finish chatting.
When Gordon did appear, he brought Jenni with him. For the first couple months, Miles assumed Jenni couldn't stand, since she spent all her time propped up in the corner like a doll. It turned out she could move around fine without even support from Gordon – she just saw no need to, most of the time. Now she strode alongside her maker. Gordon popped his head into Rex's room and called him out on his way to the end of the hall. All four of the habitat's inhabitants gathered by the lift door.
Rex shook Miles' hand. "You play a mean game of Bugger Your Neighbour, Miles. And you have better taste in film than Grodo."
Gordon snorted. "By the way, thanks for ensuring that he'll never call me by my actual name again."
Miles grinned. "Be sure to drive Grod totally bugfuck in my absence, alright?"
"Miles, you and I know he's far past 'bugfuck' by now."
"Ha ha," said Gordon. "You done?"
Rex tipped his hat at Miles. "Good luck and Grod-speed in your endeavours, Shawnigan." He glanced at Gordon, seemed to take some kind of cue, and trotted off to his room, tossing a final wave over his shoulder.
Miles faced the lift door. "Going up now?"
"In a minute," said Gordon. Once again, he wore a shirt under his housecoat. This one he hadn't stolen from Miles at the last minute. The housecoat also looked freshly washed. He reached up and squeezed Miles' shoulder. "Uh. It's been good having someone else down here."
"You know where there's lots more someones?" Miles pointed to the ceiling. "Up there!"
The corner of Gordon's mouth twitched. He didn't give Miles the full sun-coming-out smile. He actually looked like someone had just stepped on all his cherry tomatoes. His shoulders hunched forward and he had the worry-divot between his eyebrows. Miles had the sudden urge to hug him. So he did.
Gordon responded immediately. He let out a breath and squeezed Miles tight. Miles gave Gordon the manly back-thump and went to pull away, and Gordon let go slowly, dragging his hands around Miles' sides. Normally something like that would tick Miles off, but nothing could ruin his mood this morning. He was nearly freaking free. So he didn't grumble, even when Gordon hooked his hand up behind Miles' head, tugged it down, and planted a kiss on his forehead.
Miles pulled back, shook his head and chuckled. "You're still a freak, Grod."
Gordon shrugged. He turned to the lift door. "Check-in with Dr. B."
The door slid open and they stepped inside. To Miles' surprise, Gordon ushered Jenni in too.
"Oh," said Miles. "Sorry. I didn't say goodbye to you, Jenni."
"No need," said Gordon. "She's coming with you."
"She is?"
Jenni said, "I am."
Gordon patted Miles' shoulder. "No offense, but I don't think you can make it out of here on your own."
"But I memorized the building layout and where the cameras and guards are." Miles crossed his arms. "I'm not completely stupid."
Gordon blinked, and conspicuously didn't comment on the last part. He said, "She'll come in handy. Trust me."
Miles relaxed. "You'll be back down to two, for cards."
"I'm still building the new BOT. He shouldn't take long to finish."
Gordon glanced at the glowing dot on the you-are-here bar beside the lift door. He waved Miles over. "Come on. Time for gimp legs."
"Oh, right." Miles slung his arm around Gordon's shoulders, leaned against him and pretended his legs were weak. Gordon's neck radiated head. He was getting pretty worked up over this escape. Miles didn't get why – he was the one who had to sneak around and dodge guards.
The lift doors opened on an empty hallway. It had been so long since Miles had been out of the habitat that for a moment he wondered who had redecorated the corridor so fast. He and Gordon had come up with two escape routes: one from Dr. B's own office, and one from the Amana CEO's office on the top floor of the complex. The latter was less likely, but preferable, since the CEO's office took up the entire top floor, so there would be fewer people to get past.
When Gordon first mentioned the CEO's office, Miles assumed Gordon had been meeting with the CEO as well as Dr. B. That meant the head of the entire company knew there was a man buried in an underground habitat, inventing useful things and receiving protein sludge, cherry tomatoes and verbal abuse in return. Gordon explained that no, it was all Dr. B's machinations. None of the other researchers were involved or even aware. Dr. B held his meetings with Gordon in the CEO's office for the same reason these check-ups occurred every three months: four times a year, like clockwork, the CEO took a one-week vacation. Dr. B had greased the building caretaker to lend him the keycard to the office long enough for the doctor to make a copy.
"Yeah," Miles had said, "but why does he sneak in there just to hold one stupid meeting?"
Gordon had rolled his eyes. "He thinks it's impressive and intimidating."
At some point during Gordon's time topside, Dr. B would want to run a quick physical check-up, to make sure Gordon wasn't going to die anytime soon, and stop inventing lucrative things. If he did it first, chances were he'd leave Miles and Jenni in the sixth floor office. If he decided to do it in the morning, he might bring Miles and Jenni upstairs to inspect them as part of the main meeting.
Dr. B rounded the corner at the end of the hall and marched toward him. His skin was a lighter brown than it had looked on the news reports. He still had the same sticky-up hair as Gordon, although today the black mess leaned left, like he'd stood in the wind too long.
"Dear Gord in Heaven!" Dr. B spread his arms. "How is my little invention mill today? Ready for your tri-monthly checkup?" His eyebrows waggled in a way Miles wasn't sure he approved of.
Gordon made a small huff/sigh noise that Dr. B seemed to miss entirely. "Sure, Trace. Hey, look, I brought one of my projects up, and the guy you gave me to work from."
Dr. B leaned close to Jenni and eyed her. She didn't flinch, just stared straight ahead through the doctor's skull.
"Hm, yes," said Dr. B. "This is the one that didn't work?"
Gordon scratched his jaw against his shoulder. It was a nervous gesture he usually only made during news reports on Thread things. "It's not that she didn't work. It's just that she looks more human than she acts. She was my first try, after all."
Dr. B nodded, and moved on to Miles. He stared him right in the face, so close Miles would have to go crosseyed to look at the doctor's nose. He concentrated on keeping his eyes unfocused.
The doctor's eyes narrowed. "And you say this one is still somewhat sentient?"
"He's on-and-off," said Gordon. "I still haven't discovered the trigger."
Miles mentally shot Gordon a thumbs-up. They'd planned that line -- that way, if Miles -was- caught, they could claim it was another half-aware freakout.
Dr. B stared for another moment. Finally he pulled back and gave a satisfied nod. "Well, there's no immediate signs of intelligence."
Miles wasn't quite dumb enough to protest out loud.
Dr. B headed down the hallway and gestured at Gordon to follow. Jenni walked with her usual short, stiff steps; Gordon hauled Miles along like an injured soldier. The turned left at the end of the hall, and left again into a closet-size office. The doctor barely had room for a desk. He also had a large window on the back wall, looking out over a hangar-sized space filled with machines and workbenches and men in labcoats like the one the doctor wore.
Dr. B instructed Gordon to sit down in the office chair by the desk. He knelt in front of Gordon, braced a hand on his knee and brought out a stethoscope and otoscope. Gordon seemed to know the drill. He pulled up his shirt and breathed in and out as Dr. B pressed the stethoscope to his chest.
Gordon sat through the examination with a look of overt boredom. He turned his head when Dr. B instructed him to, letting the doctor stick the otoscope in his ear and wincing at the cold instrument.
Miles and Jenni stood in the corner of the room and pretended not to watch the examination, or the activity out the in hangar area. Closest to the window, half a dozen lab coated men stood around a device the size and shape of a shipping container. A square frame on a track moved from one end of the prism to the other, like a photocopier. The men watched the frame, scribbled on their clipboards, and shook their heads.
Dr. B made a gimme gesture with his fingertips. "The goggles, Ar?"
Gordon pulled the goggles off his forehead and handed them over. "Can I have them back this time?"
"Sure, sure." Dr. B slipped them on, grabbed Gordon's wrist and inspected his hand. "No problems with the Type-7 weave?"
"Nope," said Gordon.
Dr. B slipped his hands under Gordon's housecoat and held his sides. "No body degeneration?"
Gordon rolls his eyes. "Even if there was, as long as I have my hands I can keep making things."
Dr. B patted his knee. "Now Gordy-pie. You know that's not the issue."
"Uh." Gordon cleared his throat. "I'm feeling fine. See? Hey, why don't you check out Jenni? She's got working organs without a working digestive system. Wacky stuff."
Dr. B stood. "You can show me your projects tomorrow. Be a good boy and go get your MRI. I'll meet you on the top floor in an hour."
Gordon jerked his head at Miles and Jenni. "You're just going to leave them here? What if Miles has a moment and tries to run away?"
"Then we'll post extra security." He lifted Gordon out of the chair and shoed him out of the room. Once Gordon was out, he poked at the intercom on his desk and said, "Dr. B to security. Can you spare an extra guard for outside my office?"
A low, garbled voice replied: "Would that be in addition to the two on level ten?"
Dr. B stroked his goatee. "Mmno. Reassign one of those." He released the intercom button, tugged at the lapels of his lab coat and strutted out of the room.
Miles counted to two-hundred. He eyed the men out in the hangar-space. Most of them had their backs to the window; those who didn't had their noses to their clipboards. Miles edged along the wall and stopped beside the door. The guard was probably out there by now. He and Gordon hadn't planned for this. He flexed his hands and swore under his breath.
"Jenni?" he said. "Any ideas?"
She stared out the window for a long moment. Finally she said. "Heavy object: the computer tower underneath the desk. Lure Guard One inside and strike him or her unconscious."
Miles flicked his eyes at the window. "I'm pretty sure they're going to notice."
Jenni paused again, then said, "Gordon's schematic indicates the glass is one-way. They will not see us."
"Oh," said Miles. "Cool." He knelt, unplugged the cords from Dr. B's computer and dragged it out from underneath the desk. He considered taking the eyepatch and arm bandages off so he could his move his fingers, but Gordon would have told him to keep them on. As long as he did, there was at least some hope of keeping up the charade.
Miles hoisted the computer tower over his head, turned the doorknob with his foot and tugged. The door swung open slowly. If the guard was any good, it would catch his attention. Miles waited. He adjusted his grip on the computer's plastic casing. No one leapt through the door.
Maybe the guard was cautious. Miles edged toward the door. He suddenly felt completely unequipped to pull this off. Even in crappy movies -- actually, especially in crappy movies -- people stuck in situations like this suddenly had the reflexes and instincts to navigate labyrinthine buildings, fly past guards and karate-kick the ones they did come across. Miles wasn't even sure if the computer tower would knock the guard unconscious. Maybe the guard would rub his head, say "ow" and shoot them both in the stomach. Just because she had a monotone voice, didn't mean Jenni was always right.
Miles held his breath and peeked out into the hall. It was empty, as it had been when they arrive. No guard stood by the door. Either he got lost on his way down, or he was taking his sweet time following orders.
Miles set the computer on the floor, held Jenni's wrist, and pulled her out of the room. He consulted the building map that should have been in his head -- he'd spent every night memorizing it for the past two weeks. Where it should have been, he found an image of Gordon stuffing cherry tomatoes between his teeth and his lips and making a goofy face. Turned out the doof was right about needing Jenni.
He sheepishly asked her the way. She took point and led them to a stairwell, narrow and dark. It reminded Miles of the college Edmund went to for half a semester. Their footsteps echoed up through the stairwell. Miles tried to move more stealthily, lifting his heels off the steps and propelling himself by the balls of his feet. It didn't make much difference, especially since Jenni thundered up like a charging caribou.
They raced up four floors. At every level there was a door with a pair of narrow, crosshatched windows; Miles ducked below window-level every time and scurried past. On the eighth floor, Jenni paused before they turned onto a flight of steps and yanked Miles back by the elbow.
"Security camera," she said. "It is on the end wall, right corner."
Miles clung to the handrail. He really would be screwed without Jenni. He'd studied this stairwell on the map, and he knew about the camera, but in his rush to the top floor he'd forgotten about it.
He'd asked Gordon what to do in case of security cameras – if he could wait until they rotated to a certain angle and dash past in the blind spot. Gordon shook his head and said his advice for cameras was to just not go past them. Find an alternate route.
Miles backtracked down to the last landing and peeked through the window. Two people were in the hall: one striding down toward the end, the other leaning on a doorframe and talking to someone inside the room. The walking one wore a lab coat like Dr. B, but the other wore a polo shirt, slacks a size too short, and mismatched socks. Miles looked down at his t-shirt and jeans. According to Gordon, Dr. B was the only one who knew about the habitat. So he was the only one who knew Miles was up here, aside from the security guard assigned to the door. No emergency lights flashed in the hallway or stairwell, and no announcement had come over the PA warning employees of rogue men in eyepatches. So in theory, if he could walk out there looking nonchalant enough, he could get past those employees. Who knew every single person in the building they worked in, anyway?
Despite Gordon's advice, he'd have to lose the eyepatch and bandages. He stuffed the patch in his hip pocket, unwrapped the bandages from his hands and kicked them into a corner.
Jenni shuffled her feet. "I would advise keeping those on."
Miles explained his plan to her. She responded with silence, which hopefully meant the idea was sound. He took a final look through the window, straightened his shirt and patted down his hair, and stepped out into the hall.
The man at the door glanced over his shoulder as Miles stepped out of the stairwell. Miles fought the urge to freeze. He sauntered on down the hall and didn't make eye contact with the man in the polo shirt. Jenni padded along by his side. He noticed for the first time that she wasn't wearing any shoes or socks, even outside the habitat. Polo shirt guy was quickly distracted by whoever was inside the room, and forgot about Miles entirely. Miles picked up his pace toward the end of the hallway and rounded the corner -- into a hall with three people, instead of two.
Miles' shoulder jerked. He kept his eyes forward. If his internal map was right (and really, he had no clue anymore if it was), they should turn left at the end of this hall. Down the next corridor they would find a lift.
The three people in the hallway -- all in lab coats this time -- walked toward Miles and Jenni, chattering amongst themselves. The woman on the end glanced over. Miles hunched his shoulders.
He found the lift at the end of the second hallway. He looked around to make sure no one was in this corridor, then said, hopefully, "Open."
The door made the same I-don't-think-so noise it had in the habitat. Miles turned to Jenni.
She stepped up to the door. "Open."
The door responded the same. Miles scratched his head. It was an elevator, after all -- not just a door. Maybe they were giving the wrong command.
"Uh. Call?" The door made its unhappy noise. He checked the hallway behind them again. "Call to floor eight. Destination floor ten. Here elly-elly-elavator!" The door blatted repeatedly. Miles gave up and leaned against the wall.
Jenni stepped back up. "Open: broach, disclose, gape, release, reveal--" She listed every synonym for "open," each punctuated with a squawk from the door. "Unlock," she continued. "Unroll, unseal." She paused. Then: "Call: ask, bid, invite—"
She kept on listing, and the door kept protesting. Miles tugged on his chin. Either there was some password involved, or the lift was set to recognize employee voices. Either way, he would have to go in with other people. And while he hadn't been noticed so far, cramming himself and Jenni into an elevator with a bunch of Amana employees may be pushing it.
However, if one of the doors they'd passed was a maintenance closet -- he patted Jenni's shoulder. "Jen, sh. Wait here. And no more talking to the door."
He snuck back along the hall until he found a door that was narrower than the others. It turned out to be a storeroom, full of stationary, printer cartridges and a broken photocopier. He found a second narrow door, and behind it, what he was looking for: a wheely mop bucket, grimy rope mop, and a sink. He ran an inch of water into the bucket and wheeled it down the hall toward the lift. It squealed and clattered and did its mop bucket trick of trying to go every direction except the one he pushed it in.
He dipped the mop, wrung it out, and pretended to clean the floors until a pair of labcoated employees came around the corner. Then he jammed the mop back in the wringer and squeal-clattered the bucket down to the lift door. Jenni stood with her usual limp-armed slouch and watched Miles. She kept her mouth shut.
Miles timed it so he got to the door at the same time as the employees. The one closest to him, a guy with thick-rimmed glasses and slicked hair, didn't even look over at Miles and Jenni. Miles had counted on this -- no one wants to acknowledge the cleaning staff.
The man tipped his face up. "Lift, eighth floor."
The door made a pleasant trill, and the light beside the door moved up from the bottom of its bar. Miles reached for Jenni's elbow. The lift door opened. She and Miles crowded in with the other two. The second labcoat man, a tiny guy with an upturned nose and deep eye-bags, rolled his shoulders and said, "First floor."
The slicked-hair man nodded. "First floor."
The lift doors didn't close. Both men shuffled and looked over at Miles and Jenni.
The elevator made its unhappy noise again. An over-enunciating female voice said, "Four occupants. Final two, please state floor request."
"Uh," said Miles. "Tenth floor."
Jenni faced the door. "Tenth floor."
"Restricted floor," said the elevator. "Unrecognized voice patterns."
The two employees raised their eyebrows at Miles and Jenni. They both raised the same eyebrow, even. It would have been amusing if Miles wasn't suddenly sure he was screwed.
Miles cleared his throat. He put on the gruff, half-drunk old prospector voice he remembered from the janitor at his high school. "Err. Damn comp'ny never programs me inna these things. Fr'g'n brr'gn technol'gy." He scowled.
The small pig-nosed employee furrowed his brow. "If you're not programmed in, how did you get up here?"
"I." Miles stood and blinked for a moment. "I live here."
The men gave him a flat-eyed look.
Miles held his hand up. "Bye."
He grabbed Jenni's hand, ditched the mop bucket and fled the elevator. It didn't sound like the employees followed them, but Miles wasn't taking any chances. He ran full-tilt for the stairwell and charged up the last four flights to the tenth floor. There wasn't much point in avoiding the security cameras now. He paused at the tenth floor landing -- there were two more flights above, up to a rooftop door, if Miles remembered correctly.
Somewhere below them, a door clatter-banged open and a disconcerting number of footsteps thundered up toward Miles and Jenni. Shouts accompanied the clomp of boots -- and although Gordon would say he was overreacting, Miles swore he heard the rattle of guns, big guns on shoulder straps, against hips. Panic exploded in his chest. He launched himself up the last two flights of steps and out the door at the top. The second he pushed the door out, a fire alarm began to shriek.
Miles burst out onto the roof. The wind hit him instantly, and nearly knocked him back through the door. He grabbed Jenni's arm and pushed onward.
Even before Gordon sketched out the building schematics, Miles had seen it on the news reports about Amana Inc. It was built against the side of a slope, so the top floor was only actually a story and a half above the level of the rock. Even if Miles couldn't find a ladder or footholds of some kind, he could jump the height and hope he didn't completely shatter his legs. As for Jenni, well, they would find out just how badass Gordon's BOT-constructing talents were.
Miles ran a dozen steps, completely blind. His eyes hadn't adjusted to the dark, and the wind stinging them and whipping up tears didn't help. He paused and blinked until he could make out a difference in light between above and below. The sky arced over, yellow-grey with light pollution. They weren't that far from a town or city. Against it, spiked black shapes leaned and thrashed -- evergreen trees. It narrowed down his location to approximately the entire province of British Columbia.
He worked out a third light difference, between the black trees and the grey of the roof's concrete lip. He ran to the edge and looked over. They were on the wrong side: the light from the windows below illuminated the nine wide steps of the building's lower floors. Below that lay an oval of concrete, more trees, and a flat expanse even blacker than the trees -- that had to be the ocean.
He dragged Jenni to the opposite edge and peered over. The light from the windows on this side was more orange. When they were coming up with Escape Plan B, the one from the CEO's office, Gordon pointed out that the entire back wall of the floor was floor-to-ceiling windows.
The stairwell door hadn't exploded open yet, but Miles estimated it was a matter of seconds until it did. He shuffled along the edge, looking for something like handholds on the side of the building. The best he could find was a narrow groove, part of the the retro 1980s architecture. He could wedge a foot inside, hold onto the blade of concrete sticking out beside, and inch his way down. At the very least, he could get over the edge so the guards wouldn't spot him right away.
He swung his leg over the edge and inched down the groove as fast as he could. Jenni peered over. She watched Miles' hands and feet, and when he was far enough down, she followed, imitating his position. Before she was completely over, the stairwell door banged open, and their pursuers stomped and babbled their way out onto the roof. Miles would have panicked and leapt off the side of the building at this point. Jenni just curved her body so her head was below the edge of the concrete. For a moment they both froze.
The guards' commotion faded toward the other end of the roof. They were following the exact same pattern he and Jenni had taken. Miles got his ass moving, sliding his foot down the groove, nearly twisting his ankle which his heel caught a clot of moss. He was just over halfway down when a face appeared over the edge of the roof. A pale smudge under a dark blueish smudge opened the hole of its mouth and fluttered its hand. It yelled to its buddies, and two more faces appeared. Miles swore and looked over his shoulder. He could probably make it. It probably looked higher than it was. The guards pointed down at the ground, shouted out each other, gestured back toward the stairwell. Two of them disappeared, heading down to intercept Miles on the rocks. The third one stayed and glared.
Miles tried another foot or two at inching-speed. At least none of the guards had shot at him. Yet. It wouldn't take them long to get down a floor though. He looked over his shoulder again. The ground was close enough. He let go of the building and twisted as he dropped what felt like fifty feet. He hit the ground hard, the impact jarring up his legs and pushing the breath out of his lungs. He'd never been skydiving, but Edmund had told him how to do it, and how to land -- something about rolling onto your side to spread out the impact. He tried that. Mostly it hurt his elbow.
Jenni thumped to the ground beside him. They scrambled to their feet and headed up the hill. The two guards, now followed by two more, rounded the corner of the building, and Miles adjusted his path, to a direct line away from them. This took him on a diagonal, uphill and across in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that Gordon had warned him to, at all costs, avoid running past.
It wasn't like it mattered by this point if anyone inside saw them, even Dr. B. The guards' shouts were getting closer. Their boots didn't thunder on the rock, just rustled, but Miles could hear -that-, and that meant they were too damn close. His own feet weren't used to the uneven rock: slanted, humped up like turtle shells in some places, in others, jagged and loose. His sneakers hit patches of moss that were as slick as black ice.
Jenni wasn't beside him anymore, or close behind. Even in his panic he checked over his shoulder. She'd disappeared completely. All four blobs of the guards were still there, so they hadn't taken her down. The bitch ditched him!
The guards were bobbing silhouettes against the bright orange-yellow of the building's windows. Miles could see right inside, to a wide, lavish executive-type office, with the long wooden desk and high walls with one microscopically small framed painting per surface. Gordon said that the first time Dr. B held their meeting up their, he hid all the actual boss's nameplates in drawers and pretended he'd made CEO in Gordon's absence. He got monumentally ticked when Gordon didn't buy it.
Just before Miles returned his attention to where he was going, he spotted Gordon and Dr. B. They were standing beside the long desk. Well, not so much standing as oh God, if Miles survived this night he was never going to get that image out of his head.
He picked up his pace.
He made it over the top of the rock and discovered the other side was even steeper and less even, and wasn't sheltered from the wind. He managed to avoid falling on his ass and rolling down, but in doing so he slowed. He had to zigzag down, and the guards clearly had more experience on this terrain. One tried to grab him, and Miles twisted and got an elbow in the guy's stomach. Two more latched on, and a third got him around the knees. Miles thrashed and kicked and something connected with his jaw. He rolled and writhed like a crocodile with its snout looped, but the guards had him. They dragged him back into the Amana Inc. building.
--
There was some confusion as to where they should take Miles. Eventually they met up with a frazzled, fluff-haired woman. Miles gathered from their barking that she was the guard who was supposed to keep Miles and Jenni in Dr. B's office in the first place.
Jenni was nowhere to be seen. Miles assumed she'd escaped, or at least avoided them for longer than he had. He couldn't decide if she'd be incredibly good or incredibly bad at surviving out there on her own.
The frazzled guard led them down the hall to a maze of glass walls and neutral-coloured couches. They wove their way to an actual opaque wall, decorated like the CEO's office with inch-square paintings in ludicrously large frames. One of the guards knocked on the doorframe.
Dr. B swung the door open. He wore his lab coat with only one button done up, and no shirt underneath. It reminded Miles of Gordon, in his short pants and housecoat. Miles was just glad Dr. B had put his pants on.
The doctor glared at Miles. He looked him up and down, hands braced on the doorframe. He cleared his throat and called over his shoulder, "Ar. Would you like to explain this?"
From inside the office, Gordon said, "Uh. A minute." His voice had a tone Miles didn't recognize -- past exhausted, faint and flat. He shuffled and thumped, and finally his face appeared over Dr. B's shoulder. He spotted Miles. "Oh."
Dr. B propped his hands on his hips. "Yes, 'oh.' What happened to his eye, hm? His hands? And oh look, he's walking around pretty spryly for a cripple."
Gordon scratched at the side of his head. "Oh wow. It's a miracle. His body has regenerated."
Dr. B swatted Gordon's head. "It has not! You tricked me."
Gordon tilted his head. One of his eyes squinted shut. He looked at Miles and said, "You're not actually gimped? You tricked me!"
"He did not!" Dr. B swatted him again.
"Ow." Gordon rubbed his head. "Jeez, Trace, quit it."
Dr. B brandished his finger at Gordon. "You just tell me what the hell is going on here." He turned the finger on Miles. "And you. Are you really braindead?"
"Uh." Miles shrugged. "Sometimes?"
Dr. B flung his hands in the air and made a noise of disgust. "You've been having me on this whole time!" He grabbed Gordon's housecoat by the collar.
Gordon weakly tried to pry Dr. B's hand off. "Sir, look. I was--"
The doctor shoved him through the door. "Cram it, muffin. Guards, escort these two to the lift. Gordon, you get back down there, and you take your lively little vegetable with you." His mustache rippled with agitation. "I'll be watching what floor you stop at."
Once they were back out in the glass wall maze, Gordon convinced the guards to let go of Miles. The two avoided eye contact the rest of the way down.
