Subject Seven

Chapter Five
Hunter Harrison

Hunter didn’t wait around. He woke up and checked his surroundings. It was the same sleazy hotel he’d been in the last time he’d been awake. That was all he needed by way of information.

Maryland wasn’t home. That was somewhere in Boston. He had family, he probably had friends. Okay, he couldn’t remember them, but maybe they’d remember him, help him realize who he was supposed to be and get him away from whoever it was that was trying to force him to play private detective.

Anything was better than waking up alone and scared in a different place all the time.

The tape recorder sat where it always did. He ignored it and unlocked the door, squinting against the bright sunlight of another day. A quick search of his pockets yielded almost a hundred dollars. Enough for food and maybe a bus ticket to Boston.

“Anything. Please, God, anything is better than this.”

The bus ticket cost more than he hoped, but he had enough left to get a cheap burger and a Pepsi that was watered down and flat. It tasted better than he expected because he felt something he’d almost forgotten about. He felt hope. He was finally going home. He was going to get the answers he needed to His leg throbbed with dull agony and he reached down and found a chain wrapped twice around his ankle like a dog leash. He stared at it for a few seconds and then wrangled his foot out of the chain. It might have been a problem, but the links were loose enough to let him manage the feat with minimal effort.

He looked around and felt his heart sink in his chest. “You gotta be kidding me.”

The same room. He was back where he’d been before. There was one difference: the mirror had been broken over the desk, and the note written for his attention was scrawled across the plywood backing for the glass.

PLAY ME! He looked at the note, sighed and reached over to the recorder. A moment later, the voice started up again.

He had learned to hate the voice already.

“What? Are you retarded? Do you have a death wish? Do you really want to stay in the dark forever? I can arrange that, Hunter. I can make sure you never remember a damned thing.” The voice didn’t yell, but it was low, menacing and very obviously angry. He smiled at that thought, taking pleasure from inconveniencing his captor.

“You listen to me, Harrison. You get the information I asked for. There’s a laptop under the bed. Use it. Surf the Internet; check them out. Learn about them and leave me the details. Like I said before, I don’t have the time for this and you won’t get what you want until I’m happy. Guess what, loser. Right now I’m about a million miles from Happy Land. Don’t piss me off, Hunter. You don’t even know how bad I can make it for you.”

Hunter listened and felt his blood pressure rise until his ears rang. “You better watch who you threaten.” His voice shook, not with fear but with fury. He’d been so close! The last thing he remembered was crossing the state line into New Jersey and counting his change so he could maybe grab another soda at the next rest stop.

“Before you get any more stupid ideas about spending my money, I’ve hidden it all away. You won’t find anything. You got nothing. You don’t even have the money for a newspaper, loser. There’s two cans of spaghetti and there’s water in the closet. Do your job the right way and the food will look better next time around.”

The tape went silent.

And Hunter went postal.

He screamed and thrashed and cursed his captor. He punched at the wall because he couldn’t find the voice’s owner, and the impact scraped his knuckles bloody. That was okay-the pain was just another reason to be furious. He’d find the source of the voice! He’d find it and he’d destroy it!

If he’d had a gun and a target, he’d have killed the man who left the recordings. His hatred was a growing, living thing that wanted out, wanted to burn everything in his path. He cursed the man and demanded that he show himself, knowing full well that the bastard was too cowardly to ever answer the challenge.

It didn’t make sense! The bastard was watching him somehow. He’d checked the last hotel room and this one too, looking for cameras, trying to understand how the man could knock him unconscious and keep him that way without even trying, and so far he’d found nothing. When he finally calmed down, he pulled out the computer and powered it up. The names were taped to the top of the case. He thought about his options for all of ten minutes and then he started searching for information.

It was a puzzle; he knew that. He understood that he was dealing with pieces of a bigger mystery and that he was being given only a handful of clues to work with.

His enemy hadn’t thought of one important thing.

He was good at puzzles.

At least he thought so.

He still couldn’t remember enough of his past.

For now he would do as he was told. But only for now. There would be other chances to escape. When they came around, he’d take them.