men disappeared, presumably 'reassigned' to other Wards; the rest were left to starve, without food or water, until one of them decided to reveal where Robert had gone.
Meanwhile they were all changing. But some of the changes were more subtle than others.
They spoke among themselves in tones so low that they believed – they hoped – they could not be overheard or recorded. The truth was, as much as Kendrick hated what was being inflicted on all of them, the balance of power between the prisoners and guards was shifting slowly but perceptibly.
Buddy sat on the edge of Kendrick's cot, his expression still haunted since he'd begun to recover his motor skills. He'd lost a lot of weight, though the same could be said for all of them.
'So do we have the faintest clue where he went?' Buddy was referring to Robert. His voice was less than a whisper, barely the faintest exhalation.
'Nobody has a clue, not even Sieracki and the rest of them. That's why these interrogations. Robert…' Kendrick shrugged. 'He was right there one moment, then he just up and vanished.'
'The question is, can we all do the same?'
'Christ, I hope so.'
Buddy glanced over at two guards positioned at the far end of the Ward. 'Are they watching us?' he hissed.
Kendrick murmured, 'Well, it's not as if they've got anything else to do.'
'Robert kept saying how he wanted to go home -maybe he already knew he was going to get out of here. So where did he go?'
Kendrick glanced towards the Dissection Door, and Buddy followed his gaze.
'Yeah, I thought of that too. Unless there's some other route out of here we don't know about.'
'We don't even know what's through those doors. But wherever he went, he's not here any more.'
Kendrick dreamed that night, that he was in a dark place – no, more than that, a place with a total absence of light.
Somehow, however, as he ran along corridors whose walls kept shrinking and growing closer together, he knew what obstacles lay in his way Somewhere in here lay the way home that he had been promised.
He followed Robert as the boy ran onwards through lightless desolation, his heart full of an inexplicable joy. Going home! The words echoed in the cavern of Robert's skull. Going home.
Kendrick realized he was dreaming, but he became a silent passenger for Robert's thoughts. And in the blackness that surrounded them came a hint of something else: a silent crescendo of pale light and wisdom and acceptance that never quite made itself known.
Something beautiful, something bright. Something vast looming just ahead, verdant with the promise of new and unimaginable freedoms without boundary, without limit.
And as Kendrick's mind slid towards morning consciousness the memory of this dream lingered so that, when he finally woke to the familiar surroundings of the
Ward, he could not be sure that it had not been real.
More tests, more interviews, but no more trips into surgery – no more long days of recovering and hoping that they might live where so many others suffered long and anguished deaths. There were few of them left now, less than a dozen out of the scores who had passed through the same Ward during Kendrick's time there.
And, for the first time since they had been brought into the Maze, each of the prisoners of Ward Seventeen began to feel bored.
Days continued to pass, but Kendrick did not spend them in silent contemplation. Instead he made a decision: he was not going to wait around to find out what Sieracki's intentions for him were. How he might escape he had no idea – but a precedent had been set.
Yet, as more time passed, he wondered if an opportunity would ever present itself.
'They can't hear us.'
'Are you sure?' Kendrick realized he was holding his breath.
McCowan shifted on the edge of Kendrick's cot, reaching up to touch his own nose with one hand. The motion of his fingers towards his face became slower, almost halted; time slowed for Kendrick, at least from his own perspective. Everything around him – the pores of McCowan's face, even the sound of his heartbeat -jumped into sudden and powerful relief.
Then, in a blink, everything returned to normal.
'I'm sure. Just listen. Can you hear it? Isn't it beautiful?'
Kendrick listened hard, hearing the endless cascade of energy around them, throughout the structure of the Maze. Sometimes, when he looked at the other surviving Labrats – the nickname that in time they had come to choose for themselves – he almost didn't see their flesh. He saw another layer below that, a buzzing network of energy: partly biological, partly machine, each one of them reduced to an engineering schematic outlined in ruby red and flashing white.
Sieracki and his people clearly realized that something was up. Guards arrived several times over those next few days, pulling security systems and spycams apart and replacing them with new equipment. These guards seemed even more brusque, their weapons always held at the ready.
Kendrick looked over at Buddy, and McCowan, who was sitting nearby, registering the look in their eyes, knowing that they were thinking the same thing. There had to be some way out, some way to escape.
Kendrick woke in a panic, unable to see anything at all. He tried to twist his head but found that it was impossible. Something rough was chafing against his nose and cheeks.
He attempted to lift one arm but felt as if he'd sunk to the bottom of the ocean, a thousand tons of water pressing down on him. Then he felt a hand grab his wrist, pushing it back down again. Someone was strapping him tight.
Faint light began to show through the narrow space between his blindfold and the bridge of his nose. They were wheeling him somewhere else. He could hear the wheels squeaking and rattling over hard concrete, doors clanging noisily as they passed through.
And then, suddenly, Kendrick realized that he'd been taken through the Dissection Door. Dread filled his soul, and even though he opened his mouth to scream his strength deserted him so completely that he could muster little more than a faint moan, which was lost in the echoing din of the corridor down which he was being transported.
After twenty minutes they finally stopped. Nightmare scenarios flooded his mind. They've drugged me. They were going to leave him here, strapped to this pallet, to starve and die; or else they were going to take him apart, stripping muscle and flesh from his bones without the benefit of anaesthetic.
A long time passed during which Kendrick could hear other moans and faint cries around him. In the dark and the cold any sense of time slipped away from him.
After an eternity he heard a faint metallic click – and his bindings were suddenly loose. He reached up, pulled away his blindfold, and stared into a blackness so thick that he imagined he could reach out and grab fistfuls of it from the air.
He lifted a hand to his face, and at first he couldn't see anything. After several seconds, however, he could see a faint outline becoming gradually more distinct. In time, his fingers became pale shadows against the pitch dark.
A shuffling sound of movement nearby. Again Kendrick heard distressed voices calling to each other. Beyond
