After they were gone I sat for a few minutes, emptying my mind, practicing deep, slow breathing, and gathering my energy. I was pretty sure I had a concussion. My headache was not normal and I felt on the edge of confusion. I would need all my faculties to escape. Once my mind was calm I reached into the pocket inside my waistband again and extracted a small zipper bag. In it were a very small pick and tension wrench, a length of fine, flexible steel cable, and a flat, credit card size multitool. The pick set wouldn’t work on any lock requiring much tension to turn the tumbler but would hopefully be enough to get me into the cabinets I was leaning against. The doors had panic or crash bars on both sides, probably so that maintenance workers pushing carts could ram through them without having to turn a knob or handle. They were locked on the inside where I was trapped but Jutting’s security had simply pushed the doors open when they entered, meaning the outside bars were not locked. I knew a good bypass method if I could find the right materials.
Slowly, I rose to my knees and leaned my shoulder against the cabinet door. The cabinets were about seven feet tall with pull down handles at waist height. The locks in the handles were small. I inserted my tension wrench and started raking the pins with the pick. It only took a few seconds. The lock turned and I twisted the handle to open the door. Inside, I found cans of paint. There were four shelves, each with neat stacks of cans. Some unopened, some showing drips down the sides. I moved on to the next cabinet. It was full of plumbing supplies—pipes, gaskets, fittings—all glinting brass and steel. I was working on the lock of the next cabinet when I realized I had already found what I needed. I went back to the paint cans. Each can had a stiff wire handle in a U shape. I really was foggy and confused. The wire would suit my purpose perfectly. I took two of the cans out, sat back down on the frigid floor with them, and took another minute to breathe, allowing the pain behind my right eye to subside somewhat. Then, I slowly bent and worked the wire handles until I had them detached from the cans. They were long enough that I really only needed one of them. I bent it straight, then rose and stepped on it, bending a ninety degree angle about eight inches from one end, then another ninety four inches from the end. When I was done I had a J shaped piece of tough wire. I bent the very top of the J to create a little serif that would give me something to hold on to, and then fastened one end of my steel cable around the improvised device. Walking unsteadily but as silently as possible to the doors, I leaned against the one on my left and pressed my ear to the small gap between them. I was listening for a guard. It seemed unlikely that they had left someone outside. They had seemed confident that I would be helpless without my tools. Still, I listened. After two minutes, I decided there was no one there, crouched down, and slid the bottom of my wire J under the door. There was a gap between the doors of perhaps half a centimeter with a bit of weather stripping—enough for my cable and the wire itself to squeeze between. I inched the wire up, using the cable to pull while simultaneously pushing from below. The effort made me light headed but I managed to get it up to just below the level of the latch. From there it was a simple twist to bring the point of my J in line with the push bar. I had bent the serif handle parallel to the bottom of the J so I would be able to align it without being able to see it on the other side of the doors. I twisted it to just the right rotation then took a deep breath and yanked. The point of the J met the bar on the outside and pushed it in. I kept pulling and the door creaked open. I stepped quickly into the gap and rested there for a minute, my toe holding the door open. I was free but now I needed a plan. More than anything, I needed to know what time it was.
I opened my eyes and looked down a concrete corridor. At the end, maybe fifty feet away, I saw a stairwell. Fluorescent lights lit the corridor with a greenish glow. I walked slowly, running my hand along the wall, passing several closed doors. Near the stairs an old punch card time clock was bolted to the wall, probably for workers to clock in and out. A rack of cards was bolted to the wall above the clock, each little card holder labeled with a name. The clock read eleven seventeen. It was probably accurate. That meant I had been out for a while. The ritual would start in forty three minutes. Jutting was just the kind of guy to start his demon summoning ceremonies precisely on time. I had no choice but to climb the stairs and hope I didn’t run into any security on the way. Were they the stairs I had seen in the building plan? The ones I was originally planning to take down once I was on the roof? It seemed likely. If so, they must have carried me down them and then found the closest place to lock me up. There
