Then she forced herself to sit up and look again, but there was definitely no water in the room. There was nothing in the room except the cot they had laid her on and the small grilled window high up, not even a one way glass to keep her under observation. There was no reason to observe her though, there was nothing she could do, and nothing she was likely to say out loud. They could simply keep her here for as long as they liked…
She knew it would do no good, but she had to stand on the cot and find out if she could see anything out the window. There was only the thick paned wavy glass and nothing more.
Finally she thought to check if she could still reach Gideon, and he was there with her like a different kind of light had suddenly been turned on in the room. And he answered her first question before she asked it. Yes, he had told Eric, that she was in danger, in trouble, and about the two men that had taken her away. Eric had told him what the g-men, that’s what Eric called them, were after, and he had to tell her that they had taken her computer. Gideon said he would be there with her as often as he could; however, they might be interrupted sometimes because there were some kind of machines nearby that interrupted, that produced static that interfered with communication. And he suggested that she keep looking around the room, not look like she was listening to him, because she was being watched. Leetzia decided to try the door, just for the hell of it; smiling to herself at the almost surreal action.
Gideon smiled with her, and she knew then the effect this room was supposed to have on her, but she didn’t have to let it take over. “Gid, thanks for being here, y’know I was getting so depressed, I almost couldn’t think when I thought I was all by myself here---the thought of being cut off from everyone and at the mercy of these people. Well, I’m not sure they have any---they looked like they’d do anything to follow orders; it was inhuman, and Gid I’m scared, but I need to keep thinking. Can you tell Eric where I am?”
“If he needed to come here, I could bring him…Leetzie, you will not truly be alone.”
Leetzia was moving slowly around the room, feeling dizzy under the flicker of the fluorescent lights reflecting off the thick white walls and waxed old linoleum.
“I wish I could bring you water,” said Gideon, “you are dehydrated; nothing wrong with you, just that.”
“O.K.,” she said and sat down.
“Leetzie, before you go back to sleep, Eric is waiting to hear from you…”
“Tell him someone needs to tell my Uncle Jack, you know the one we talked about, tell him where I am.” And then she had to lie down as a wave of nausea hit her again.
“I’ll be back when you awaken,” was the last thing she heard.
She woke up to the door opening as a gray haired uniformed woman with a serious face walked in. She was slowly sitting up when she felt Gid arrive too, and with Gid’s mind joined to hers, she could see that the woman’s expression was designed to tell her that she was In Deep Trouble, she had better Give Up Now, and Beg Them to Help Her. Before the woman even opened her mouth, Leetzia knew that would be the basic message in what she would say. And Gideon smiled for her, that this woman who thought she was so important, was so one-dimensional, so see-through, and that led to the insight that the woman’s self-importance had a snake-like quality---disturb it and she would strike you without thinking, so Leetzia was warned and prepared to cringe before the woman’s first words reached her…
“ Lateisha O’Donahue, why are you here?”
She let the shame and sorrow and anger and fear rise up in her like a bubble, and she let it spill out. “They, they kidnapped me, they drugged me…. They forced me to come here, they broke…into my house…. Who are they? Why am I here? Who are you? Oh, please help me… And the woman smiled.