Caged

Thirty - Myra

Room 22... How am I meant to find that? Thoughts run rampant through my head. Tom never told me about Berry being ill, so that rules him out; I cannot afford to make him uneasy. Sarah is in a meeting today with all the other heads of sections of the zoo, and anyway, if she knew about Berry she would already have told me. Wouldn't she?

I shake the doubts out of my head. Sarah is the one human that I can trust - not even Liam has managed to do that much, even with all the help he has given me. I like him, and I would be proud to call him a friend, but it is not the same. After all, what do I truly know about the vet? I don't know if he has family, or even where he works now. There cannot be trust if we don't know each other, and we don't.

I spare a thought for Nieve. I have seen her only once since I jumped out of her window, and even then it was only a brief glance to assure myself that she was still okay. I couldn't burden her with my problems, but did I trust her? Possibly.

But trust doesn't come easily to me; it hasn't for years. Not since I put my faith in the wrong person, and people I loved died because of him.

I shake my head. Now is not a time to dwell in the past; I have to find Berry. Wandering the corridors aimlessly isn't going to help, though, and I lean against a wall to think.

Room 22. It's not familiar - not in any of the areas I have walked with Tom. Something was bothering me about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it. 

I cast my mind back to my first week, and asking Tom how anyone was meant to find their way around the building. He had laughed at me and explained the system. It wasn't as ridiculously complicated as I had thought, but it was most definitely confusing. It operated on a system of letters and numbers, and - ah. 

That was what was bugging me. Room 22 didn't have a letter. I glanced around me. The doors were all labelled with small plaques, even the offices and cupboards. W12 was the closest door to me, and I realised that I had almost made it back to where I had started. Room 22.

There was only one part of the veterinary block that didn't have letters, and that was the ICU. My heart gave a pang. Berry... Lilla whimpered from somewhere deep within my head. 

But I remembered something else. The ICU was on the top floor, but there were only nine different rooms - Rooms 1 to 9. So where would Room 22 be?

It was like an infuriating riddle. I was close to despair, running through the list of rooms in my head. Room 22 didn't ring any bells.

Then it hit me. I didn't know Room 22 because it wasn't in this building at all.

Now I really would have to be careful. I was given a certain amount of freedom as both a friend of Sarah and as a 'student' doing work experience, but, although I had never been told so, it had been clear that I was never supposed to leave - or enter - the building alone.  

That hardly mattered now. All I cared about was getting to the young wolf and, with that in mind, I let myself out.

I breathed the air in deeply. Inside, the buildings stank of disinfectant, stale air, and other, worse, scents. It was hardly much better out here, but at least the air, contaminated as it was, had come from somewhere outside this hell.

I took a moment to study the buildings around me. Room 22. Where could it be?

The building across from me looked likely. It looked almost deserted, and was smaller than the others, making it a tempting target. I was the least likely to get caught in this one, and it would take less time to search. I was all too aware of the sun inching its way across the sky, threatening to summon crushing hordes of humans to gawk at the pups, ruining their chances of escaping altogether.