Someone's In My Head (WATTYS AWARD WINNER 2015)

Alternative Ending (Chapter Twenty-Nine)

Author's Note:

Hey, Team SIMH! This chapter (along with the next two chapters) is a glimpse of the draft that I created (and discarded afterwards) when I first finished writing the ending for Someone's In My Head. The beginning of CHAPTER 29 might be similar to the actual version, but the whole idea is drastically different, so read on!

As you read through the following parts you'll realize the reason why I discarded these chapters -- the impracticality and the impossibility of this alternative ending were so high that it seemed almost comical. So, to entertain you guys, I decided to post them (three BONUS chapters)! Don't judge, just enjoy laughing! xD

#teamSIMH

Truth be told, the tracking process didn't take long. Like, at all. It only took a mere five minutes for us to find our first target-Tanya.

Well, technically, the Oculus found her in two minutes. The other three were used to quench Lenny's insatiable inquisitiveness. In simpler terms? His curiosity.

"This baby could tell us where Mr. O is right now!" Lenny protested when we tried to stop him from stalking the President of the United States. "It could give us his phone number, along with the numbers of each and every celebrity in the world. C'mon guys, just give me five minutes and I'll have Ellen on the phone for you."

"Phil?" I sighed. "Get this bastard out of my way."

"Gladly."

Once Phil got Lenny to shut up, I entered Tanya's full name (the Oculus automatically retrieved her picture from her ID), a search radius of 600 miles, and an 8-hour timeframe. Two minutes later, we were staring at a pretty straightforward route. It was a zigzag pattern that connected the motel with the CIA safe house.

"Try narrowing down the time frame to the last hour," Phil suggested. "If there are cameras in this place, the ones in the room where Tanya's being held should've caught an image of her."

"I thought you were the one who said that there weren't any hidden cameras in here." I pointed out.

"Just do it."

I did as he asked.

As you would have thought, nothing showed up. No images, no video clips, nothing. It was like Tanya had mysteriously vanished from the surface of Earth. Which, theoretically speaking, was true.

"Try the past two hours," Phil said, his voice strained. I had heard doctors in the Emergency Room say "Charge him up to 200, please" in that tone of voice.

I placed a gentle hand on Phil's shoulder. "Phil, maybe she might not be-"

"Just change the fucking timeframe, will ya?" Phil's voice was deathly calm.

This time, we got something. It was a series of pictures, followed by a video recording of Tanya sitting on a chair inside a white room that looked similar to the one that I was in half an hour ago. Judging by her lolled head and lack of motion, I would say that she was indeed, as Phil had predicted earlier, in a drug-induced sleep.

"Which room is that?" Phil muttered as I scanned my eyes along the subtitle for the video clip.

"Room 7," I announced. With a flick of my fingers, I brought up the map of this building. It took me no time to spot the words 'Room 7'. "It's just two doors down from here."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Phil cried urgently. "Let's go!"

"Wait. We still have to find Royce, remember?" I reminded Phil, my fingers busy typing in the necessary parameters for the Oculus to perform the search. Comically enough, I was stumped at the first question.