Lois reached into the tray, took out a fork, and offered it to Longford.
He shook his head. "Animals don't need no fork," he said. "Trask never let him have anything he could use as a weapon."
Lois replaced the fork and decided that she didn't need to witness the pain inflicted by the rod, or the prisoner's efforts to eat the dross that was his supper.
Longford took one of the four rods from the closet. He unlocked the door to the cell, picked up the food and disappeared.
He was back within seconds. He replaced the rod and re-locked the door to the cell.
"All done?" Lois asked.
He nodded. "Anything else? Or can I finish my Coke?"
"Finish your coke," Lois said. "I'm leaving now."
He picked up a newspaper and his Coke and grunted in farewell.
Part 3
Lois walked through the hushed, dimmed common area.
In the corner, the television emitted sporadic flashes of light into the gloom, but there was no accompanying sound. All but two of the twenty or so chairs were empty.
Lois kept her eyes forward as she passed them.
The door to the third room on the right was open. As usual.
She brushed a soft knock as she entered.
The light was on. Her father was in the bed, awake, his eyes fixed on nothing.
Lois pulled the chair closer to the bed and looked into his vacant face. "Hi, Dad," she said in a tone that she hoped sounded as if she expected an answer.
He turned slowly in her direction and stared blankly at her. She smiled - although the spasms in her chin probably ruined her efforts.
Would her dad notice?
Lois took her father's hand - the good one, the one that wasn't paralysed - and flattened it between both of hers. She ran her fingertips down the length of his fingers, between his knuckles, and along the back of his hand.
His fingers began to curl, and she positioned their hands in an arm-wrestle hold. She placed her elbow next his on the bed and softly rubbed the back of his hand against her cheek.
"How are you doing, Dad?" she asked.
There was no indication that he'd heard the question ... understood it ... was answering her on the inside.
And, according to the best medical advice, there was no way to predict how much ground - if any - her father would recover from the overwhelming effects of the stroke.
The silence stretched. And stretched.
Lois Lane used to have the ability to babble her way through wet cement.
But no more.
She desperately searched her barren mind. There had to be *something* she could talk about. Why hadn't she planned ahead?
The weather.
"It's been unseasonably mild for October, Dad."
It was fall. Leaves. Had they started to turn yet? She hadn't noticed.
"The fall leaves are beautiful. Can you see them out of your window? The nurses have told me that sometimes they take you into the garden during the afternoons."
In her mind, she saw her dad - slouched in his wheelchair, his useless arm lying in the trough that was attached to the left armrest, his face suggesting that he wouldn't have known if he were sitting in a heat wave or a blizzard.
"I started a new job today, Dad," Lois said. "It means I'll be in Metropolis for an extended time. I can come and visit you. I have my own office. With a big window.
"Mom sends her best wishes." Lois never knew whether she should mention her mother or not. Her parents hadn't been on speaking terms for years, but did her dad remember that? Did he wonder why Ellen didn't visit him? Did he remember who Ellen was?
"I called Lucy yesterday. She's going for a job in a diner. She doesn't know when she'll be able to come back east to see you, but she's going to try. Maybe for Christmas."
Lois feigned the need to cough and turned her head away to glance at the clock on the wall. She'd been here for less than five minutes. She loved her father, but every minute spent in his room in the nursing home felt like an hour.
She couldn't leave yet.
Her meagre store of ideas had run dry. It wasn't as if she could talk about her world.
*His* world, perhaps?
"I hear you've been doing physiotherapy, Dad. The nurses told me that it will help with your balance. I know they work your arms and legs - to keep your muscles supple."
Lois stopped. Did the efforts to rehabilitate him look as hopeless from inside his prison as they did from outside? Was it as hard to find hope that he would regain anything that the stroke had callously stolen from him? It had been nearly two months now - and there hadn't been the slightest sign of improvement.
It had taken his ability to speak.
And it had leached all feeling and movement from the left side of his body.
How much did he understand?
Was her dad still present inside this ravaged body? Or had he gone, leaving only a crust that was kept alive - not by a heart but by a beating pump?
Lois could feel the rigid lump of grief crawl up her throat.
She stood from the chair and awkwardly put her arms around her father's shoulders. He felt so thin ... so frail. As if he would crumble if she hugged too hard.
She put a trembling hand on each of his shoulders and looked into his eyes, desperate for a hint of connection. Something that would say he knew her. Remembered her. Loved ...
There was nothing ... and Lois used the last of her resolve to mould her mouth to a smile. "I love you, Dad," she said. "I'll come and see you again on Wednesday evening."
Lois kissed his cheek and hurried from the room, shadowed by her own hopeless inadequacy.
She didn't know what her father needed ... didn't know how to be what he needed ... didn't know if anything she did made any difference at all.
She held her emotions in check long enough to have a short conversation with the nurse. The various therapies - aimed at developing a form of communication, maintaining the movement he had in his right side, and helping to re-establish his sense of balance - were continuing, but little had changed since Lois had visited two days ago.
It was dark, cold, and wet as Lois walked from the nursing home to her car.
As she drove home, the raindrops surged down the windshield ... and her tears cascaded down her cheeks.
||_||
~~ Tuesday ~~
Lois gaped, horror-stricken.
She closed her eyes.
She opened them.
Nothing had changed.
She spun around, charged through the door of her office, and took the steps in one leap.
"What happened?" she demanded loudly before she had even reached the staffroom.
Shadbolt's head jerked up from the newspaper he was reading. Moyne kept reading and then slowly lifted his eyes. "What happened when?" Moyne asked politely.
"What happened to the prisoner?" Lois said coldly.
Moyne twisted his face to a show of confusion. "The prisoner?" he echoed.
"Someone bashed him." Lois speared Moyne with her eyes.
He gave a derisive chuckle. "No, Ms Lane," he chirped. "No one *bashed* him. I went in there during the night. Someone had left a bowl and a towel in there." He gestured to the bowl that was sitting on the drainer with the towel roughly thrown across it.
"How did you know it was in there?" Lois said.
"I was doing a patrol," Moyne replied. "We can't see the prisoner from here. I wanted to check on him. I saw the bowl and attempted to remove it. He attacked me."
"Did you take a rod?"
"Yes."
"And you used the rod to bash him?"
"It was self-defence," Moyne said nonchalantly. "Him or me." He smirked in evident self-satisfaction. "I chose me."
"You are not to enter the cell without my permission."
Moyne's lower jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me," Lois said. The anger that had boiled at the sight of the prisoner had now cooled to a more controlled - but equally dangerous - level. "You do the night shift, Moyne. There is no need for you to enter the cell."
He shrugged. "Suits me."
"*No one* goes in there without my authorisation," Lois said. Her glare swung to Shadbolt. "Understand?"
Shadbolt nodded dourly.
Lois turned from the staffroom and climbed the stairs.
Once in her office, she locked the door behind her. It seemed important that she did - not so much for her privacy but for *his*.
She put her hands on her desk and leant forward.
The prisoner hadn't moved from where he'd been when she'd first looked through the viewing window a few minutes ago. He was crumpled in a heap on the concrete. She could see one shoulder, part of his lower thigh, and about half of his back.
Lois turned away - unable to look a moment longer.
She wanted to cry.
She wanted to cower in the corner of her office and weep with helplessness and anger and frustration - to scream her protest at the sheer ugliness of the world.
She hung her head, closed her eyes, and inhaled to the full capacity of her lungs.
She released the breath slowly.
She had a job to do.
She would do it.
She had been brought low many times before - it was an occupational hazard of her job. But she knew what to do - when the big picture was simply too horrendous and too overwhelming to grasp, you took refuge in the detail. You found something that was small and doable.
Lois picked up the phone and dialled her uncle Mike. When he answered, the sound of his cheery voice felt like a cool cloth on a fevered brow.
After the initial greetings, their conversation turned to her dad. Lois knew her uncle had visited his brother every morning since the stroke.
"Have you seen any improvement?" she asked. "Nothing's changed at all in the month since I've been back in Metropolis."
"It might take some time," Uncle Mike said gently. "We'll keep visiting him; they'll keep doing all the different therapies. They've been putting his favourite music through headphones for him. They've asked me to record some stories about the things we did when we were kids so he can listen to them."
"Do you think he knows us?" Lois whispered. "Do you think he knows it's us?"
Uncle Mike sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "But for his sake, we have to carry on as if he does know us. Maybe one day, he'll be able to tell us how much it meant that we were there for him."
Lois hoped so ... but, much as she wanted to, she couldn't coax that flimsy hope into solid belief.
In her heart, she believed that her father would never recover. In her heart, she believed he had gone forever.
"Was there another reason for your call?" Uncle Mike asked. "Have you started your new job yet?"
"Yeah."
"It's great that they were able to find a desk job for you."
"Yeah." Uncle Mike - and everyone else in her family - thought that she worked on a cruise ship as a singer. It explained her long absences from Metropolis, and the difficulties in contacting her when she was *away*. She hadn't known about her father's stroke until almost three weeks after it had happened. "Uncle Mike," Lois said. "Would you do something for me, please?"
"Anything for my favourite niece," he said.
"Do you know Bessolo Boulevard?"
"Yup."
"There's an old warehouse on the south side of the street."
"They used to sell office furniture."
"My job is to take bookings over the phone and via the Internet. Because many of our passengers are from other countries, I need to work in the evenings to fit in with their time zones." She hated lying to Uncle Mike ... but this was insignificant compared to the whoppers she'd told regarding the missing month of her life.
Uncle Mike chuckled. "And you'd like me to send a meal around for you?"
"Would that be all right?"
"Of course it's all right," he replied. "I'll be glad to do it. How many nights a week? And what time?"
"Every night - if that's OK. About a quarter past six."
"Every night?" There was concern in her uncle's voice. "You're not going to be working too hard, are you, Lois?"
"No, Uncle Mike. My shifts are only a few hours, but I need to be at work every day."
"Will you come to the front? I'll get one of my delivery boys to bring it."
"Tell him to leave it on the doorstep of the warehouse. I might not be able to be there right at 6:15 if I'm on the phone to a client."
Uncle Mike chuckled. "Are you sure you don't want those cooking lessons I've been offering you for years?"
"I'm sure," Lois said with a laugh she hoped passed as reasonably genuine. "But I do appreciate you doing this for me, Uncle Mike."
"Anything for you," he said. "Hey, Lois?"
"Yes?"
"It's great that you're going to be in Metropolis for a while. I've missed you."
"Thanks, Uncle Mike."
"Come to the cafe for lunch one day."
"OK. Thanks ... Oh, and one more thing. I've ... ah ... I've had a bit of a stomach bug the past few days. Could you send really simple foods for a while, please? Nothing too spicy. Nothing too rich. Just chicken or fish and a few vegetables or some salad."
"Easily done," he said.
"Thanks, Uncle Mike."
Lois replaced the phone.
She hadn't changed the world.
She hadn't healed the wounds Moyne had inflicted on the prisoner during the night.
She hadn't struck a blow for good against evil.
But at least the prisoner would no longer have to eat dog food.
He still hadn't moved.
Trepidation squeezed her heart.
What if Moyne had killed him?
She couldn't even go to him.
She couldn't check if he were OK.
She couldn't check his wounds.
Dress them.
Would that help, anyway?
Did the wounds of aliens get infected?
Did aliens understand compassion?
*Was* he an alien?
Did it matter?
He was ... something. Someone. Someone who felt pain. Someone who could be hurt. Someone who - despite having been forced to live in complete deprivation for seven years - still remembered how good it felt to be clean.
She couldn't go to him. She couldn't send someone into the cell. If anyone went in, the prisoner would be exposed to another dose of the Achilles rod - and she couldn't do that to him.
She was staring at him - and couldn't look away. She was willing him to move ... but he didn't.
Lois jerked from her chair, turned away, and perched her butt on the edge of her desk.
There was a digital clock on the wall. Under it was a sheet of paper, handwritten by Trask.
Moyne - 10pm to 7 am
Shadbolt - 6am to 3pm
Longford - 2pm to 11 pm
The clock showed that it was after seven. Moyne should have gone by now.
He would be back tonight.
Alone.
And with keys to the cell.
Lois had banned Moyne from entering the cell, but she had no faith that, alone and unsupervised, he would comply with her command.
What had Trask done to keep control of Moyne?
Or had he encouraged his vile tendencies?
Had Moyne always behaved like this? Or was he testing the mettle of his new female boss?
Lois doubted Trask would have had any concerns about the treatment the prisoner received in his absence, but it didn't seem in character for him to simply clock off and walk out.
Surely, he couldn't have been unaware of Moyne's appetite for violence.
Lois turned back to the window.
The prisoner still hadn't moved.
To her right, there was a padlocked closet. Lois reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out the keys Scardino had given her yesterday. There were four keys on the key ring.
One was for the outside door, one for her office, one for the cell ... and one that - she hoped - would open the padlock on the closet.
It did.
The door swung open ... and revealed the answers to at least two of Lois's questions.
A camera was mounted above the top shelf, pointing through a hole and into the cell. A VCR was next to it, and below that was a closed circuit television.
Lois turned on the television and the VCR and pressed 'play'.
A black and white picture came onto the screen. The date and time in the top right corner showed that this footage was from last week - recorded at eight o'clock in the evening. It was the day of Trask's death. He'd probably programmed the tape to record in his absence and then left the compound, never to return.
On screen, the prisoner jogged along the far wall. Back and forth. Mindlessly.
Lois pressed 'fast forward' and watched as he sprinted in jerky strides. He slowed to a walk.
He placed his hands on the wall, angled forward, and appeared to be stretching the muscles along the back of his legs.
Lois's thumb hit 'pause', and she stared at the still image.
His back was relatively unmarked. The injury she'd seen yesterday must have happened some time between Trask's departure and her arrival.
She remembered Trask's timetable - there had been a 'discipline session' ordered for Sunday. Perhaps that was when he'd received the injury to his back. However, Shadbolt had said that the discipline sessions involved two guards beating the prisoner. That damage had been less than what had been caused by Moyne last night - presumably working alone.
It explained the prisoner's state this morning. Two beatings in less than two days had taken their toll.
And all the evidence pointed to Moyne's assault last night having been particularly vicious.
Did the assistants know about this camera?
Did they know that every interaction with the prisoner could be recorded?
Had Trask and the assistants used it so they would have evidence if the prisoner killed again?
Or had Trask used it to spy on his assistants?
Lois glanced through the window. There was still no sign of life.
She continued with the tape - skimming through it at accelerated speed.
The prisoner had slept ... walked ... stretched ... done sit-ups ... push-ups ... slept ... stared into the nothingness ... walked ... stretched ...
How did someone who existed on so little food manage to keep active?
Was it instinct? Or self-discipline?
Did it indicate a mind that had deteriorated to mechanical ritual? Or a mind so strong that it still fought to exert some control in a world of total suppression?
She paused the tape again and studied him.
He was excruciatingly thin. His ribs looked like rough corrugations that jutted over the cavern of his stomach.
Lois had thought he was tall, but now that she looked more closely, she realised that the impression of height had probably come more from limbs that seemed disproportionately long due to emaciation.
Had Trask been trying to starve him to death? Or had he purposely supplied just enough food that the captive's hell continued?
Lois fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape. In the eight hours it covered, no one had entered the cell.
When the tape reached the end, it rewound automatically.
Lois picked up the remote and flicked through the instructions for setting the timer for recording. She set a perpetual daily program to record the first eight hours of Moyne's shift.
From now on, she would arrive at the compound before six o'clock.
She hoped to prevent Moyne from ever attacking the prisoner again. But if he did, she would have the proof she'd need to have him dismissed from the operation.
Lois ran her eyes down the lower shelves of the closet in search of other tapes. There were none. The middle shelves were empty ... but she did find the answer to another question. A rolled-up camp mattress and a limp pillow had been shoved onto the bottom shelf.
Trask had slept here. In his office.
Did that mean he hadn't trusted Moyne and had been trying to curb his violent excesses? Or had Trask encouraged - either implicitly or openly - Moyne's abuse?
Lois pulled the mattress and pillow from the closet and added them to the pile of Trask's possessions. She shut the closet door, sat down, and picked up a sheet of Trask's notes from the folder.
The questions were banking up in her brain, demanding answers.
She figured there were two ways to find out what she needed to know.
She could read Trask's notes.
And she could give the prisoner access to everyday items and see how he responded.
||_||
By noon, the prisoner had crawled - with agonising slowness - towards the wall, probably in search of a more comfortable position on the hard concrete.
He wasn't dead.
Lois winced every time she looked at him and couldn't bring herself to dwell on his suffering ... but he wasn't dead.
She activated the camera, checked that the tape was recording, locked her door, and went down the stairs to the staffroom.
Shadbolt had his feet up on the table, his magazine in one hand and a can of beer in the other. He took a slurp of his drink and eyed her, daring her to make an issue of the beer ... or anything else.
What he did to pass the hours of his shift was of little concern to her. "Do you have a key to the cell?" Lois asked, although she knew he did.
"Yes."
"Could I have it, please?"
He sniggered. "Don't you trust me?"
"How long have you been on the job?"
The top layer of his animosity peeled away. "*This* job? Or *the* job?"
"*The* job."
"Thirty-three years."
Lois gave a low whistle. "That's a long time. Were you on this job from the time of the capture?"
"I came in one week later."
"Did you ask for it? Or were you ordered here?"
Shadbolt grunted bitterly. "Both."
He clearly didn't want to continue the discussion, so despite the ambiguity of his reply, Lois decided not to probe any further. "If you've been on the job that long, you know that trust is a luxury we can't afford." She held out her hand. "Can I have your key, please?"
He only hesitated for a short moment before standing and rustling through his pockets. He took out a key ring containing two keys and handed it to her. "Why don't you want me to go into the cell?"
"Because of the beating Moyne gave the prisoner last night. If you go in there with a rod, it's going to hurt him more - and I don't want you to go in there without the rod."
Shadbolt laughed caustically. "There's no way I'm going in there without a rod. I did Bortolotto's body recovery."
"Were you on-site during either of the attacks?"
"No. Trask called me in. He and Moyne were too shaken to go into the cell again." He grimaced. "But we couldn't just leave Bortolotto's body in there with that animal."
Lois took the cell key off the ring and handed the external door key back to Shadbolt. "I'm going out," she said. "I won't be long."
He took the key in a churlish manner. "Take as long as you like," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."
Lois walked into the weak sunshine. The air smelled fresh - washed clean by last night's rain. From the damp ground rose a sweet, musty smell.
Did he miss that?
Did he miss the smells of the outside world?
Did he miss the scent of flowers, or the freshly mown grass, or the baked smell of the summer heat on the road, or the alluring waft of brewing coffee?
Lois walked two blocks ... seeing things she didn't usually see, hearing things she didn't usually hear. The kaleidoscope of colour. The orchestra of sound. Was the cell sound-proof? Even if it wasn't, she doubted that many outside sounds would permeate through the thick walls.
What was it like living for seven years in a place with no colour, no sound, no seasons, no fluctuation, nothing to mark the passing of time?
Lois's job had taken her to places she never wanted to go again.
It had shown her things she never wanted to see again.
It had forced her to experience things she wished she could eradicate from her memory.
But there was something horrendous about being locked away with nothingness.
She arrived at a small cluster of shops and went into the drug store. She lingered at the shelf of soaps. She smelled every one, and then - being unable to decide - chose a natural one with very little scent. She added a tube of Neosporin, a soft washcloth, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a half-gallon bottle of drinking water to her basket and went to pay.
Then she went into the fruit store and bought two apples and two oranges.
She ate one of the apples as she walked back to Bessolo Boulevard.
And for the first time in months, she felt ... *something*. It wasn't contentment ... it certainly wasn't enjoyment ... but it was as if the cloud of hopelessness that had engulfed her for so many weeks had thinned ... just a little ... just enough for her to glimpse a future that might, possibly, offer something other than pain and despair.
Walking in the cool air and gentle sunshine of fall, eating a sweet apple - it was so simple.
So normal.
So sane.
So unremarkable.
So taken-for-granted.
But not for him.
Note
Neosporin - antibacterial ointment.
