It'd been a few days since Kraemer had politely declined participation in the experiment, a few days since he'd spat in the face of the man who morbidly informed him he didn't have a choice, and a few days since he'd been haphazardly tossed into a dark prison cell with only a cot and toilet.
Jackson had guessed that they'd realize the kind of legal trouble they could get into by keeping him against his will and come back for him a few hours later, but the next time he saw another human was the next day, at exactly six in the morning. His internal clock told him so. It wasn't the sound of the door opening, but his own habit that woke him. And instead of offering him a hand up and informing him that a mistake had been made, he stepped forward with a syringe.
Now, he'd grown eerily accustomed to the morning and evening visits—six a.m. and six p.m., respectively—from the man with the syringe, and his many variations. Sometimes he came in the form of a pudgy blonde woman. Others, a lean man in a white coat. But he was always the same man, with the same purpose. There was a hole in the wall of his cell, maybe the size of a quarter, that allowed him to see into the cell beside his. And for all of his glancing, he never caught a glimpse of anything of importance.
-
Her only rule was, "God, don't tell my mother. She'll ground me until I'm forty if she finds out." When she'd snuck out that night, she hadn't imagined she'd be brought in by what she thought were cops and offered an opportunity that told her they definitely weren't.
She also hadn't imagined that she'd agree to it almost solely on the grounds that her mother wouldn't be informed of her whereabouts. Granted, Savannah wasn't exactly told she'd have to live on the grounds or undergo weeks, months of treatment—and things would be a bit problematic when her mother awoke to find her gone without so much as a trace.
While her decision might've been hindered by such details, she'd been told that her decision, once made, was irretractable. So, when he awoke in a plush bed in a carpeted room, she tried not to think about how she'd be grounded until she was sixty—upped by twenty years, for the circus she'd just let herself be tricked into—and slipped into the hallway.
September 14th, 2014 at 07:03am