The first thing he noticed was that he was cold.  There was almost a numbness creeping
into his bones and the surface he was lying on was hard.  The dizzying disorientation made
it difficult to concentrate, but he realized his arms were stretched out to his sides and
he uncurled his fists to brush his finger pads against it.  Concrete… yes, I’m pretty sure
it’s cement I’m lying on.

Slowly other senses came to life, and he smelled a dank, musty smell that reminded him of
a place either long abandoned, or a cave… maybe a cellar.  He strained to hear, and he
thought he caught the sound of some kind of metal softly banging into something hard
enough to emit a slight clanging sound.

The eyes were a different matter.  He was sure they were open, yes, I’m blinking, but
there was only a dim light that let him see through a dark fog.  Gradually, other things
began to occur to him, and he tried to raise his hands to rub his eyes to clear them, but
they refused to cooperate.  No, my muscles are working.  My wrists are tied down to
something.  He pulled with his strong arms, but they barely moved.

He tried to clear his fuzzy mind to think.  Have I been in an accident?  Is that girl…
Julie, something… is she here?  Shit, what if Harriet finds out?  How long have I been
here?  Sam did a mental scan of his body.  Nothing hurt, but maybe they had given him
something for pain.  As time passed by, exactly how much time he was not sure, an accident
seemed unlikely.  He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered.  The office and
the Phiston contract… Julie laughing with me over the meeting… I called Harriet to tell
her I was working late on the completed contract… Julie’s apartment and having sex with
her.  Did we have sex?  He remembered her straddling his lap.

As he became more conscious, several uncomfortable facts about his situation bombarded
him and caused the dizzying headache to turn into a painful throb.  His ankles had some
kind of straps on them that were holding them spread apart and locked in place.

Now fully awake, he became anxious as the full measure of his current status became
clearer.  He realized he was naked and lying on a concrete floor with his hands and ankles
spread and bound, and he could not see.  At last he tried to call out, and his voice came
out raspy and hoarse.

“Hello?  Hello, is anyone there?”  God, I’m thirsty.  It felt as though the inside of his
throat had been scraped with something, and it was swollen and sore.

“Mr. Sturgis, I see that you are awake.”  The voice had a slight echo, and he thought it
might be coming from a loudspeaker.

He tried to search for the sound with his unfocused eyes, and that was the first
indication he had that there was a strap around his neck as well, like some kind of
collar.  It was hooked to the floor beneath him, and offered minimal movement.

“Where the hell am I?” he demanded, and the voice of authority that usually caused his
employees to quake, came out as a feeble croak.

“You are in Section Nine, Training Room Three.  Someone will be with you shortly,” the
woman’s voice echoed.

He heard the click of some switch, and he guessed that it had been the speaker being
turned off.  “Hey… hey… what the fuck are you talking about?”   He winced at the pain in
his throat.  “Who the hell are you?  I demand you release me, now.”  He finally silenced
when no further responses echoed a reply and his yelling was hurting so badly that he felt
like he was swallowing glass.  His eyes seemed to be adjusting, and he was relieved to
begin to see a light haze around the edges of the fog.

In a comfortable office in the center of the training hub, a woman ran a French tipped
manicured nail down the ridges of her cut crystal rocks glass.  The ice clinked as she
took a small sip of the single malt.  After she looked on the monitor in the corner at the
man spread on the floor, and had assured herself it was Samuel’s raspy voice she had heard
through the speaker she said, “You guarantee he will not be found?”