It was almost sun down when Katie entered Doc's office. "we're back" she announced happily.
"any trouble?" Doc questioned her, even though her expression and body posture already gave him the answer, the question was more out of reflex than anything.
"none whatsoever" Katie shrugged; her eye caught the cage on doc's side table "Hello Tom" she threw a piece of cheese to the rat who scurried away.
"oh? It's Dick?" Katie had learnt to easily identify and differentiate between Tom, Dick and Harry; thus, misidentifying one of the mice gave her pause.
"no, it's Tom indeed" Doc gave Katie a thin smile, enjoying her confusion.
"can you explain what it is that you know and I don't?" Katie questioned doc, Hands on her hips, eyebrow raised.
"I would, but then I wouldn't get to lord it over you" Doc laughed again, while Katie simply rolled her eyes.
"Goodnight Doc" Katie headed to the door
"Goodnight my dear"
XXXXXXX
"hey Isaiah" Tom greeted his friend as he entered the electronic engineer's room "you got a minute?"
"yeah, sure" Isaiah paused his game of chess on his mobile "what's up?"
"I was with Katie today, and... she told me that she's not gay"
"really?" Isaiah jumped off his bed. "Are you sure? Reading into sentence is tricky business, she could've said one thing and you understood it another way"
"her exact words were 'I'm not gay' read what you will from that" Tom deadpanned.
"oh man" Isaiah deflated "Kate and Paloma were my real life OTP"
"what's an OTP?" it was Tom's first time hearing the phrase.
"doesn't matter" Isiah didn't have the time or patience to explain true love to a plebeian. "have you told Paloma?"
"No!" Tom plopped down on Isaiah's bed "you need to do it"
"me?" the black man was flabbergasted "why me?"
"you've known her longer" Tom pointed out
"you're the one who found out that Katie was straight" Isaiah argued. The two boys continued to argue back and forth for the better part of an hour. "oh my god!" Isaiah threw up his hands in frustration "no one has to tell paloma right now; it isn't our place anyway"
"fair point" Tom agreed "I'll see you at the gym tomorrow"
"yeah... goodnight" Isaiah waved Tom out of his room. The blonde boy shuffled down the halls as he focused on his own problems, namely escaping from Alcatraz.
Tom waited until he reached his own room to pull out the two bullets he had stolen in Walmart. Tom had been able to sneak them into his pockets when he had left Katie's sight to grab the whisky; as for avoiding setting off the metal detectors; that had been a piece of cake.
"Now what?" Tom wondered, he had gotten two bullets for Doc and Katie, but he couldn't exactly kill an important scientist and military royalty and expect to live the rest of his life peacefully. No matter how much Tom focused on the problem, he was at a dead end; how to escape this facility without having the military after his big fat ass.
"I am truly madly deeply... fucked!"
XXXXXXX
Doc took a sip of his morning Irish coffee as he studied the playback of the hidden camera placed in Tom Cassidy's room.
Ever since he had woken to his new body, Tom hadn't done much more than pace around, groan and roll in his bed, but doc still made sure to watch it in fast forward every day. Narrowing his eyes, Doc quickly paused the feed and zoomed onto Tom's bedside table where Tom has just placed something.
"oh dear!" Doc sighed, guessing that Tom had been able to give Katie the slip and steal the pair of bullets. "guess we'll have to take care of him immediately" doc decided. He would have preferred to have more time and run a few more tests on both Tom the mice and Tom the human; alas, sometimes you just had to take a leap of faith.
XXXXXXX
At the same time, Isaiah and Tom were busy on the other side of the premises. "close your eyes and try to feel the pads in your back" Isaiah was instructing "the pads are like a muscle; you can use it and control it at will"
Tom shut his eyes tight, trying to do as Isaiah instructed. It was an odd feeling, trying to mentally access an electronic device, but Tom trusted Isaiah's methods, after all Isaiah was the man who had designed these pads in the first place.
"after you activate them, you need to push your shoulder blades together, that'll exercise pressure on the pads to activate it" Isaiah continued to talk.
Bzzt!
Tom felt a current travel through him; flexing and contracting every muscle of his body. Tom's eyes snapped open as he threw out a palm ahead of him. the air itself rippled as waves of kinetic energy traveled out of Tom's palm and through the air, spreading out as it traveled forward.
The propagating wave of force rushed forward, hitting the barbell bench. A scraping sound echoed across the gym as the entire bench along with the barbell was pushed a couple of feet forward.
"Holy Shit!" Tom slapped his own face, unsure if he was sleeping "did that just really happen?"
"yes!" Isaiah looked giddy "yes it did!"
"oh my god!" Tom grabbed his head "Oh. My. God"
"yes!" Isaiah jumped in the air, and then tightly hugged Tom who hugged him back.
"thank you" Tom said sincerely, Isaiah was the one person whom Tom was sure was an innocent in the base
"I'm glad that my device succeeded" the two boys ended the hug and headed to their rooms to take a shower.
"Say" Tom glanced at Isaiah as they trod down the hallway "How come you never went private with your devices? Sell 'em to Lockheed or some other defense contractors?"
Isiah barked out a bitter laugh "Developing these devices requires research, research means money; I don't have any so I need investors and investors wanna invest in someone who doesn't have a record"
"You have a record?" Tom was surprised, he had never though of nerdy and book smart Isaiah as the criminal type.
"Theft and larceny" Isaiah continued to smile bitterly "I was young, dumb, easily influenced and still in the closet"
"You loved your friend and got into dumb shit with him?" Tom translated Isaiah's words "Been there"
"Glad to know I'm not the only one" he clapped Tom's back "See you in a minute" Isaiah ducked into his room to take a shower.
Tom reached all the way to his own room when the thought suddenly popped in his head "the military let a man with a record work on a clandestine project?"
XXXXXXX
The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing; and Katie was fuming "Goddammit!" she slapped her hand on the table "That Fucker" Katie was sitting opposite Doc in his office and had just been informed that Tom had managed to sneak two bullets when he had gone out with her.
"Don't beat yourself up over this" Doc consoled her "Tom has proven to be far more cunning and resourceful than we ever gave him credit for"
"What do we do now?" Katie questioned Doc.
"We firstly neutralize him" Do decided "I am ready to finish what we have started"
"Of course," Katie's eyes widened, remembering Tom the mice's imitation of Dick's behavior "Why didn't I realize it sooner?"
"Let's go" Doc told Katie. The two of them heads straight to Tom's room intending to catch him off guard so he doesn't put up a fight.
"Locked" Doc declared, rattling the door knob a couple of times., he stepped aside to allow Katie to pick the door in all of fifteen seconds.
"TOM!" Doc and Katie burst into the room with full vigor, freezing; when they saw the blonde-haired man; unconscious, in the middle of the room.
XXXXXXX
"What the hell happened?" Paloma demanded as Isaiah helped Katie load Tom onto a Gurney.
"We heard a thud from Tom's room" Doc explained "We went in to check and found him lying unconscious"
"Firstly, we need to perform a Ct scan, then an x-ray, and then EMG Scans all over his body" Doc ordered Paloma as they wheeled Tom into the med bay.
"Okay" Paloma nodded.
"What can we do?" Isaiah asked in a panic filled voice.
"Wait outside" Doc redirected Isaiah and Katie to the med bay doors "I understand that you guys are worried, but there is nothing you can do here"
Thus, Katie and Isaiah found themselves pacing the floor outside the med bay. Moments melted into minutes, which then melted into hours, yet Katie and Isaiah continued to pace; full of adrenaline, but unable to direct it.
"I'ma go punch a sandbag" Katie told Isaiah.
"Yeah" Isaiah agreed "I'll find some way to distract myself as well" the two walked down the corridor when they heard the med bay door open behind them.
"What happened?' Katie asked as she and Isaiah rushed back.
Doc and paloma had grim and terrified looks on their respective faces "Tom Cassidy is dying"