"Sixteen runaways"
"91.011% success."
"Any leads to the sixteen missing subjects?"
"Not yet. We are estimating that by December 24th the problem will have been contained."
"We need the statistical data."
"We do not have any, due to the... 'unforseen circumstances' we are dealing with."
"So the estimation is based on what?"
"Recent research on the survival possibility of our test subjects. They have a 95.54% mortality probability in the first 24 days. We didn't have any surviving subject past the first month. Although we could eliminate any possibility of survival by terminating the acquired targets throughout the city."
"Proceed with that."
"What about the Anomalies?"
"We expect them to weaken themselves, as always. In any case they will not interfere with the runaways. Let the other conventions worry about them. We should focus on our mission.We have our orders, we will carry them out."
"Affirmative."
A small apartment in Brooklyn , Saturday, November 30, 21:13
"Josh wanted to go to work. His steps were heavy, but not confident at all. He was stumbling, trying to find a mental straight line up to the door. In his mind he knew that this was the first step to accomplish the difficult quest of leaving the room. But nothing would stay in its place. The floor was full of gaps, the few pieces of furniture were unpredictably humpy, and the worst thing was the door. He kept staring at it; either it was shy or just playing some stupid game, it just refused to stay in place, moving in all possible directions.
"You fucking door, cut it out!!" he shouted bouncing up and down, just before he started marching, ouraged, towards it. The armchair moved in front of him and tripped him. Lying on the floor, he wouldn't give up. He kept screaming every obscenity imaginable about his door, dragging his disobedient body on the floor. It was at that moment that the library thought he was helpless, so it threw itself on him, leaving him incapacitated and, for the first time that night, peacefull
y sleeping on the floor..."The tape recorder went silent for a moment, right when Josh was trying to wake up, shaking his head and tilting it. Those sudden moves hurt him and he stopped, realising that the library had covered him. Moving slowly, he tried to free himself, throwing away the books and notepads that were on his head, and finaly lifting the heavy piece of furniture as much as he needed to crawl aside. He sat up and tried to catch hos breath. He realised that the tape recorder was still on. He quickly ran to it; He remembered he couldn't have turned it on. Maybe he was too high to turn it off properly, he thought, and went ahead to push "stop".
He stopped just before hitting the button. He recalled tha story he has been listening to this whole time. He looked at the his library and armchair, puzzled. He stood speechless for a moment or two and then he quickly pressed on "rewind". He had to hear it again. And yes, the tape told the same story - and what's even more unbelievable, it did so with his own voice! After a small pause his voice continued: "That's how it happened, as I remember it."
He replayed the whole part four times, just to be sure that what he was listening was real.
"Excuse me, mate... Why do you keep playing the same blank part over and over again?"
A jungle near the Mexican borders, Tuesday, November 26, 3:45
The only thing he could hear was the sounds of the jungle, wild and menacing, and his own breath. He wished and hoped that the patrol could hear even less than that. He dragged his head deeper in the hollow, between the spiders' webs and the mud. The searchlights were going round and round as if they were playing, dodging him on purpose, simply to extend his anguish. He started trembling. He tried to hold his breath, his eyes half-closed and awaited that which seemed inevitable.
A young mexican caught his eye, a boy he remember vaguely from the truck. He was crouched behind a thick bush and seemed to ache. Jacob realized he could not feel sorry for the young man. He wouldn't trade places with him for anything in the world. He suddenly felt more secure, he tried to catch his breath. He knew that the patrol would arrive sooner or later and their flashlights would reveal the boy. Maybe he would live to tell the tale.
But all that was before the gaze; that boy's terrified gaze, that struck him like a bolt and made him shudder. The young man, that mexican boy who was searching for something in the other side of the borders, who was only a few miles away from that dream of his, decided that he was already dead. He cowardly picked up a small rock and measured the distance, and threw it towards Jacob, who froze. He saw the rock coming straight for his head. He didn't move, even when he heard the patrol yelling and running to him, their flashlights in a frantic dance on the surrounding trees. He saw the branches move in the direction where the little mexican traitor fled.
He looked around, searching for something useful, and fast. Right over his head he saw a black arm extended towards him. His blood froze in his veins and his sight followed the arm straight up, until it met the white eyes of the creature hanging over him, the black as the night, creepy humanoid. Its hair were hanging like the tentacles of an abominable octopus, ready to devour him. Both of them stοοd motionless for a few seconds, till the clatter of the patrol was dangerously close. Then the creature stretched towards him, gripped his trembling arm, and pulled him up silently and firmly to safety.
