29. The Curator #2
Sacha nodded at the window. “Would you be willing to respect them around the outside of the building?”
She joined him and leaned her head out. The building jutted out underneath. The ledge wasn’t very wide, but she could walk it, if she was careful.
“You want me to climb outside and get in through his window?”
“You have any other ideas?”
She shrugged. Talia shrugged too. Her heart began to beat faster.
Isaak had better have left a window open.
“Here. Put this on.” Sacha shrugged off his vest and held it out so she could slip her arms into it. “There are all kinds of things in there that might help you open the window, if you have to. Don’t smash it, if you can avoid it.”
“Right… like you haven’t already fucked with his lock.”
Reluctantly, she grabbed onto the windowsill, her white dress riding up as she lifted her legs through it. She looked back into the corridor to see Talia give her a thumbs-up. “Go on, babe. You can do it!” Squeezing through the window opening, she dropped down onto the ledge.
The sun was shining. Market noises and food smells in the air.
“That’s right, people, just keep not noticing me…”
She shimmied sideways, hugging the grimy white-cemented walls. She’d need to manoeuvre a corner up ahead. There was a metal column sticking out of the wall. She’d need to swing around it and find footing on the other side. It looked doable. Then she made the mistake of looking down.
Fuck.
She made a rude gesture back at the window she’d dropped down from.
“You see that? That’s for you!”
She gripped the metal column and swung her right leg around it. Found footing. She tapped her foot and bent her knee to test its stability. Looked good.
Beads of sweat formed around her temples. Okay. Let’s do this, Dylan. With one movement she shifted her weight to the right foot, her right arm holding on to the other side of the column as she pushed herself around it.
The force of the movement slammed her right against the wall, arm, chest, and knee first. The recoil pushed her back and she felt herself losing balance.
She leant desperately back towards the wall, heart hammering.
Fuck. You made it, girl.
Slightly further ahead and above her, there was one window, which mapped out to Isaak’s flat.
It was closed.
Obviously.
No handle on this side.
Sweat mingled with dust covered her hands. The mixture slid down her skin. Deep breaths.
It wasn’t long now.
She forced herself towards the window.
The brick ledge had a weathered piece of plastic stuck to it. Her foot slipped.
The thought of falling and breaking every single bone in her body lasted only a moment. Instinct took over and she grabbed onto the windowsill above her to reposition her foot somewhere more stable.
She took another deep breath.
She dug around in the tool vest and took out a plunger, and with one movement she stuck it on the glass.
The first tug didn’t budge the window at all.
Dylan shifted her weight and pulled the handle of the plunger upwards. The window swung open. Good job Isaak didn’t bother with the window lock…
One more jump and she was in.
Isaak’s flat was small and dark. Only one corner was lit up. His desk.
“Isaak!”
He was right there. But something was wrong.
He was sitting on a gaming chair, slumped forward. There was a thin line of saliva at the corner of his mouth. A plastic crown wrapped around the back of his head, covering both temples. It looked familiar somehow.
She pushed him up and held his body back in the chair.
“Isaak!” Tears welled in her eyes and started to roll down her cheeks.
He was unresponsive. The device on his head, she couldn’t pry it off. It was locked onto him.
Then she realised where she’d seen it before.
Those sleep trials I saw on my feed… This is the same device! He’s asleep!
She could hear Sacha and Talia at the door. It took her a while to undo the various chains from inside.
“Is he here?” Sacha asked.
“You made it, Dee!” Talia enveloped her in a strong hug.
“He’s here,” Dylan managed through her tears, arms still wrapped around Talia.
Lights flickered on. Sacha had hit the switch.
A stack of letters, bills of all kinds, littered the desk around Isaak’s screens. Sacha leafed through them. “Whoa. Damn, bro. Why didn’t you say something if you needed cash?”
Dylan cleaned Isaak’s mouth and pushed his hair out of his face.
“Rent, electric, water, net,” Sacha said, slapping each letter on the coffee table. “He’s overdue on all of them.”
“No wonder he’s had to work for that bitch you told me about, Dee,” Talia said.
There was a green LED lit up on the back of the plastic crown.
“Isaak… can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Dylan slapped his face lightly… That didn’t work either.
She told the others not to try to pry the crown off. It didn’t work like that.
“Hang on, we might be in luck,” Sacha said. He walked over to the kitchen – if you could call a two-hob install in a studio flat a kitchen – and picked up a cardboard box that had been discarded on the counter, bringing it back to the desk.
The three peered inside it. Polystyrene packaging and cellophane.
“This is how he got fucked,” Sacha said. “Someone shipped him the device, Isaak tried it on, and boom. Unconscious.”
“Is there an address on the box?” Dylan asked.
Talia nearly tore it apart looking for any trace of information. Nothing on the cardboard panels but barcode stickers.
“Let me see those,” Sacha said.
He pulled out a phone from his pocket. A huge grin formed on his face after he used it to scan one of the barcodes.
“SKU reverse lookup. Pretty neat, huh?”
Talia looked impressed. “You got a shipping address?”
“Not yet, and it’ll take some time, but we’ll get there.” Sacha pocketed the phone.
Dylan took Isaak’s hand, hoping that some part of him knew they were there, trying to help him.
“What are we going to do about this thing on his head? I saw this online, advertised as some kind of sleeping aid. It’s called the Sleeper.
But…” She looked at Sacha. “Are you thinking the same thing as me?”
“You say it.” His eyes were on poor Isaak.
Talia’s eyes darted between them.
“I’ve never been as certain of anything as I am of this. This thing is something to do with the tape. He’s stuck in the Tapeworld. And any address we get from the box it came in is either going to be Astrid’s, or the Third Kingdom.”
Sacha nodded.
There was no way to tell how well Isaak was doing. He was breathing, and he even automatically drank some of the water they poured on his lips, but there were no signs of malnutrition. He was otherwise unresponsive.