We were walking through another alleyway when Phil noticed it.
Slinking hastily but discreetly into a back alley, Phil and Tanya had managed to slip out of the three block perimeter the police had cordoned off just in time. The sirens gradually diminished as we ducked from alleyway to alleyway, trying to look as normal as two people who looked like they've just escaped from a burning building could possibly be.
We rounded another bend, and this time, Phil ordered Tanya to go on ahead while he followed from behind. And that's how he noticed Tanya's limp.
It looked agonizing. Tanya seemed to favour her right foot, as every time she took a step forward with her left foot, she would break in mid-stride and hop onto her right foot. Not to mention her constant wincing and tooth-gnashing.
"Stop," Phil muttered. He repeated with a louder voice when Tanya didn't respond. "STOP!"
Tanya halted. Turning around, she gave Phil the most exasperated look she could manage. "What?"
"You're hurt," Phil said accusingly. Bending down, he ignored Tanya's deliberate eye roll and peeled up her jeans.
Ugh. There was a hideously large purplish glob on her left ankle. Even the foot itself seemed to have deformed; it was bent abnormally to the ground, and in Phil's hands, the limp form looked exactly like a large rotten piece of potato.
Okay, I know, I'm terrible at similes.
Phil gave the swollen glob a tentative and gentle press. Tanya gasped involuntarily in pain and her foot twitched reflexively out of Phil's hands. She hobbled around on one foot for a good while, cussing wildly in pain, and trust me, if it wasn't for the tense circumstances, that would've seemed really comical indeed.
"We've got to get this fixed." Phil decided after Tanya had finished her twisted dance.
"No, no. I'm fine." Tanya shook her head indignantly. "Look, I can still walk."
"Listen, Tanny, we can carry on, and your sprain would worsen until the point that the pain in your ankle becomes so hard to bear you'll virtually be hopping on one foot. By then, this might seem trivial to you compared to the agony, but how do you think other people would react to a lady hopping down the street on one foot looking like a frigging coal miner? Phil reasoned.
Tanya bit her lip. I could see that Phil had hit a soft spot, but she did not reply just yet.
"You wouldn't want for that to happen, yes?" Phil pressed.
Reluctantly, Tanya shook her head, defeated. "No, I wouldn't."
"Smart girl." Phil beamed approvingly. Girl? "Now let's find a place to crash before someone sees us and decides to call the asylum."
Thanks to Phil's phenomenal sense of direction, we managed to navigate ourselves out of the myriad of secluded alleyways without attracting too much unwanted attention. If it was me, I would've been hopelessly stuck in the concrete maze, travelling mindlessly in circles. After the fast and furious (pun very much intended) car chase just now, I had basically lost all sense of direction due to the random and abrupt turns Lenny had made to shake our pursuers off our tail.
At the end, we arrived at a not-very-obvious-looking low budget motel (I suppose we weren't particularly rich at the moment). As we walked into the lobby, the receptionist stared at the both of us with an open-mouthed, what's-wrong-with-you-mate-this-is-not-the-hospital look.
Phil scooted over to the counter and flashed the lady with the most charming smile he could manage. "Had a little fight with our...Ford on the way here." He said apologetically. "Sonofabitch decided to break down in the middle of the street."
The lady returned the smile and nodded sympathetically. "Must've been a very...intense fight, I suppose?"
Phil chuckled. "You should've seen the other guy." But then his eyes clouded over as the words struck too close to home, and he quickly pretended to be very interested in the colourful decorations on the ceiling.
The receptionist, sensing Phil's mood change, took the cue and swiftly plastered on her professional, we-welcome-your-stay smile once again. "Room for two, sir?"
"Yep."
"One night?"
"Yeah."
"Cash or MasterCard?"
"Cash."
Once the payment was done, the receptionist passed a key over to Phil. "Your room number is one-oh-three; up the stairs, third room on your left. Here's the key. Thank you, and enjoy―"
"Umm, one more thing." Phil bit his lip. "I would love it if you could arrange to have a bucket of ice cubes sent to my room; my wi―mom's feet are terribly sore because of all that walking. Would that be too much of a trouble?"
The lady blinked, surprised at the request, but as her customer-service training kicked in, she quickly smiled. "Oh, no, definitely not. I would have it sent up in a minute."
Phil grinned. "Thank you."
The room was not as spacious as I imagined it would be, but it was cozy enough. After a much-needed refreshing bath, Phil ordered Tanya to sit on the bed.
Hobbling clumsily, Tanya made it to the bed and collapsed onto the fluffy cushions with a contented sigh. "This is paradise."
Phil grabbed a dry towel and the bucket of ice and climbed onto the far end of the bed. "It would've been a better paradise fifteen years ago." He muttered darkly.
The atmosphere nosedived from 100 to 0 real quick. Tanya folded her arms. "Do you think who killed Lenny would be after us too?"
Phil took two pillows and inserted it under Tanya's legs, effectively elevating them. "Yes, they will―if they know we're still alive."
Tanya frowned. "What do you mean?"
"This is gonna bite a little." Phil dabbed the homemade ice pack against Tanya's sprained ankle. She winced, but sighed in relief as the cold eased the throbbing pain in her ankle. Satisfied with his handiwork, Phil gave Tanya a good-natured pat on the other leg. "Keep that on for twenty minutes."
"Thanks." Tanya adjusted her foot slightly. "So you're saying we're safe now?"
"For the meantime, yes." Phil shrugged. "They might think we're dead, but sooner or later they're gonna find out that there was only one corpse in the Mustang. And then they'll come after us."
Tanya shuddered at the thought of it. Then, probably to distract herself from everything that has happened in the last 24 hours, Tanya snatched the TV remote off the bedside table and turned on the television.
The news reporter was blabbering away. "Authorities strongly suspect that the two cases could be connected, as the same man, known as Jarod Wickernham, was spotted in the security footages of both buildings."
Shit!
Two pictures flashed onscreen. The first one was me in the orange shirt and the rotten steak cap, striding purposefully through the hallway of Redwood Hospital. Even though I'd made sure that my cap was worn low enough to cover my identity, they had still managed to get a partial photo of me. Blasted CCTVs.
The second one was me in the jacket and jeans Lenny had given Phil before we went to visit Tanya. I guess this picture was taken in the lobby of Chambers' Mental Institute, when Phil was hustling Tanya out of the building in a hurry. I knew we shouldn't have taken the lobby; it was way too public. But what could I possibly do to change that? The damage is done.
The photos shrank and the reporter continued her report. "If you have any leads about this man, or if you had seen him anywhere, do not hesitate to dial the number..."
What the heck?
But she wasn't done yet. "Do bear in mind that this man is dangerous, and there's a possibility that he could be armed. So if you see him, do not try to confront him by yourself."
"What shit is this?" Phil exploded once the news report ended. "They're linking the two 'cases' now? Well, as much as I hate to say it, that's the only correct deduction they've got on Jarod. All the other incriminations are just...pure conjectures. Why in the world would anybody believe―"
"I think I know why." Tanya held up the copy of the New York Times in her hands. "You're all over the news, Phil."
Phil felt a sudden iciness rip through his backbones, paralysing him from the inside. With a pair of hands that could not stop shaking, he reached out and took the papers from Tanya.
The headlines―large, bold and shouty capitals―was unnerving enough. 'DOCTOR BRUTALLY MURDERED IN HOSPITAL', it shouted. There was a photo of Dr Gordon, but what caught my attention was the little box beside it. There I was, inside that small box, grinning my head off like some sadistic serial killer. They had taken the photograph from my freshman's year in college, apparently. And beneath my photo was the word that took the breath out of me.
'SUSPECT'.
Oh dear God. I couldn't bear to read the article below. But Phil had different thoughts. He skimmed through the article at super-high-speed, mouthing the keywords furiously as he went.
"Dr Gordon MacHaven...shot in the head by a gun―a gun, seriously―killed on the spot...19-year-old college student Jarod Wickernham...witness claimed that he was found at the crime scene just seconds after the gunshots were heard...fled the scene..." Phil flipped past the first page angrily. "God, they're stupid! Can't they see the difference between a pistol and a sniper shot?"
Pages two and three were mainly dominated by the 'brutal killing of Dr Gordon by the Jarod kid' topic, with several analysts and investigators penning their thoughts. Some were in strongly in favour of the police's opinion, while the others were sceptical.
But I had no interest in reading the debate. Not at all. Right now, all I wanted was some sedatives to calm the storm of conflicting emotions within me. Yep, some Valium will do the job perfectly.
Then something slipped out from the bottom of the NYT. Phil stooped down and picked it up. He chuckled. It was the 'Crosswords & Games' section. Snorting condescendingly, Phil was about to throw it away when something at the bottom corner of the paper caught my eye. Or Phil's eye, to be exact. He blinked.
It was a Sudoku puzzle. An ordinary, black-and-white Sudoku puzzle. I smiled; the sight of this reminded me of Wong and his constant taunts at my ineptitude in the game. However, my smile faded as I remembered what had happened to Wong.
A voice echoed inside my head. Find the puzzle.
What?
You must find the puzzle. It's the only thing that can free you from this place.
Then it all hit me at once. The old man's advice. The electric prison. Lenny's words: Our brain and consciousness could be accessed and stimulated by specific electrical impulses. And before this, my loss of control after I'd solved a Sudoku puzzle.
Find the puzzle.
I've found it. The puzzle―the key I needed to escape this mental cage, the key, to my freedom. It was this banal, run-of-the-mill Sudoku puzzle. Bingo. I waited, almost trembling in anticipation for the dramatic, shock-the-world moment that would announce my freedom.
Nothing happened. Phil was losing interest in the seemingly daunting Sudoku and was about to tuck it back into the NYT.
No, no, nononono―NO! This wasn't supposed to happen!
Miraculously, as if my desperate, last-ditch effort rambling of 'NO's was the correct password, my head started to ache. It started slowly at first, then the ache aggravated to such an extent that Phil had to sit down on the bed and clutch his head in his hands.
I was faintly aware of Tanya calling out to Phil, but I ignored her. There was no way I was gonna let her destroy this magical moment. Fortunately, Phil ignored her too. He was getting too worked up with the intensifying pain.
The headache lasted forever. Yes, it hurt, BIG time, but I bit down hard on the pain as I looked forward to the freedom I was about to procure after all these hours of mental captivity. My head felt like there were blazes of lightning coursing through it simultaneously. I'm not exaggerating―it was that excruciating. My breaths came in ragged puffs, and my hands trembled like a massaging vibrator.
Despite the unbearable agony, my hands seemed to have a mind of their own. Grabbing the pen on the table, they started filling in the blanks of the Sudoku at the speed of light. Showing no signs of pondering or possibility calculation, they darted from one end of the puzzle to another, jotting down random (at least to my blurry mind) numbers feverishly. So intense was the pain, that at several points, the tip of the pen punctured the paper, leaving behind sporadic blackened holes of various fashion.
Thirty seconds later, the Sudoku puzzle was complete.
That's the good news. The bad news is the pain in my head had yet to subside. On the contrary, it worsened by a considerable fraction every time a number was filled into the square boxes, as if solving the Sudoku exacerbated my neural misery. By the time I've solved the puzzle, my head practically felt like it was about to implode.
A grisly scene from Game of Thrones flashed past my mind, but I swiped it away. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Prince Oberyn, but no thanks.
Then, just when I thought I was about to pass out from the pain, I―well, I passed out. Conked out. My brain just went kaput. The last thought that was in my mind before the darkness consumed me was: Well, that makes what, four times I've passed out in the last 36 hours? Must be a new world record.