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Seeking Clarity
[Ch. 9] Checking Out

[Ch. 9] Checking Out

There are only three pawns in the room now with Abby and James. Abby has a look of shock still on her face. James is planning an escape route. ‘We can’t just sit here and wait for them to come back,’ he thinks to himself. He begins pulling his wrists apart. The tie stretches a bit. He pulls harder. His wrists begin to sear with pain. The tie pulls against his skin. He continues pulling, and grits his teeth. The tie breaks! The three pawns look down to see what has happened, by the time they've registered what James accomplished, he already is standing up and punching one of them in the face. He rushes across the room and knees another in the stomach. She falls to the ground, gasping for air. The third pawn rushes towards him, leaving Abby unguarded. As she goes over to the desk in the middle of the room to search for scissors, James leaps over the third pawn, kicking his jaw on the way down. The three pawns lie on the ground, each writhing in pain. Abby finds scissors and manages to cut herself loose. James grabs her arm and leads her towards the exit. They burst through the door and begin sprinting down the hallway.

“Which way towards the exit?” James asks Abby.

“Just up ahead!” she responds. 20 yards in front of them is a door marked with one of those red Exit signs. James throws open the door and begins down the stairs that lie behind it. He sees signs in the stairwell that tell him which floor he’s on.

“8th floor, 7 levels down to exit.”

“7th floor, 6 levels down to the exit.”

Eventually they reach the first floor, and find a door marked exit. Abby pushes it open, and the two of them rush outside. They are standing in a parking lot late at night. Nothing can be seen for miles except rolling green hills, tinted blue by the moonlight. A man in a lab coat in on the other side of the parking lot, rifling through his keys. He find the right one and unlocks the door to his car. Moments later, James knocks him out and takes the keys out of the car door.

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“Get in!” he tells Abby. She climbs into the passenger seat.

“Do you know how to drive?” she asks him.

“It can’t be that hard, right?” James reassures her as he puts the key in the ignition and turn it. Abby hurriedly puts on her seat belt. James looks in the driver’s mirror. It’s the first time he’s gotten a good look at himself since he woke up. He admires his own blue piercing eyes, and… black hair? He could have sworn he had golden blonde hair. Why is it black? Another rush of cool air overtakes him. His mind is flooded with more memories than he imagined one person could ever have. He sees his mother filing for divorce several years ago, his kind father winning custody in the court room. His older sister going off to college a few years before that. Every birthday he’s experienced. His father’s three story house in Chicago. The park down the street of it. The pizza place they always go to on Saturday nights to get a cheese pizza and pepperoni pizza, despite the fact that the two of them never completely finish both before it needs to be thrown out. And then he’s back in the car, fingernails dug into the steering wheel. He realizes now why there were no mirrors in the bathroom. Throwing the car into reverse, James carefully pulls out of the parking lot, and starts driving on the main road.