Omega Sanction

Chapter Ten

Hello?"

The girl's disembodied voice echoed down the hallway. There was no answer, so she called out again. Steel doors with small slits in them at eye level lined the hall. The voice was coming out of one of the slits, muffled, a whisper fearful of being heard by the wrong person.

"Hello?"

"Keep quiet!" another female voice hissed. "They told us not to speak! They'll hear!"

"I'm Terri. Terri Dublowski," the voice said. "Who are you?"

There was a long silence.

A third voice finally spoke. "I'm Leslie. Leslie Marker."

"Leslie," Terri said, drawing the name out.

"They told us not to talk," the second voice repeated.

"And we didn't," Terri replied. "Look what that got us. Does anyone know the name of the girl they shot?"

There was a long silence, then the second voice spoke. "Patricia."

"You knew her?" Terri asked.

"She was my friend."

"How did you end up here?" Terri asked.

The words tumbled out, as if a dam of silence had been broken. "We were together. In Germany. On the train. The man — the one who shot her — he offered us money. To go to a party. We got on his plane. He must have drugged us. We woke up here."

"That's what happened to me!" a new voice interjected excitedly.

"Does anyone know where we are?" Terri asked.

Silence answered that question.

"We can't give in," Terri finally said.

"If we don't, we'll end up like Patricia!"

"What's your name?" Lisa asked the second girl.

"Cathy. Cathy Walker."

Terri Dublowski pressed up against the steel door, her lips next to the slot. She didn't know how long she had been here. Her last memories before this cell were of walking in the forest outside Stuttgart, heading for home. Footsteps behind her in the dark. To her side. Then darkness. She awoke in this cell and she still didn't know how long she had been here. There was no way to tell day and night. Meals were shoved through a slot at the bottom of the door in no pattern that she could discern. She had not even known there were others until she was taken out of her cell earlier and marched in line to the room with the two men.

"There's one more," Terri hissed through the slot. "I saw you. Talk to us!"

There were a few seconds of silence, then Patty added her plea. "Talk to us!"

A tiny voice quavered, so low Terri had to press her ear against the slot to hear it. "I'm Mary."

"Hello, Mary," Terri said, then Cathy and Leslie also said hello.

"We're in this together," Terri said. "We have to stand together."

"What do they want?" Leslie asked.

"I don't know," Terri said.

"What did they mean by 'the One'?" Mary asked.

"I don't even know who they are," Terri said. "Do any of you know who the two men are?"

"The Jewel Man," Leslie said. "That's what I heard the small one called. The one with all the rings on his fingers. The one who shot Patricia. I was at a party. I met him in a disco in Stuttgart and he said he'd take me to this party. I went with him. He took me to a plane at the airport. A small jet. We flew for a while — I don't know how long. Then there was this party."

The words were tumbling down the hallway from Leslie in a rush. "They were rich. The people at the party. I could tell that. It was like he was showing me off or something. They were from all different countries. All different languages. When dawn came, I got scared. People at the party called him Jewel or something like that. The Jewel Man. All those rings."

"I told him I wanted to go home and he just laughed at me. I'd been drinking. And doing some coke. I knew it was bad, knew he was bad, but — I don't know."

"What happened next?" Terri prodded.

"I don't know," Leslie repeated. "I must have passed out. I woke here. That's all. No one's said anything to me. I don't even know how long I've been here. What do they want?"

"I don't know," Terri said. "They haven't said anything to me either." She proceeded to tell the story of how she had ended up here — as much as she knew.

"They got me at night too!" Mary said when Terri was done. She proceeded to tell her own story of abduction. She'd also been invited to a party by the Jewel Man. And when she awoke, found herself imprisoned in the cell.

"There's one thing we have to keep in mind," Terri said when the other girls were done. "If they are looking for one, that means the other three are expendable like Patricia. So no matter what the One is, none of us can become it, because by doing so, you condemn the rest of us."