Just The Way You Like It - Under Construction

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Chapter Seventy-Eight

After another uneventful night sleeping with Wallace, we went our separate ways in the morning. Wallace returned to work, and I made my way back down to The Pit. Mr. Max arrived only moments after I did, hauling down what was left of his shopping list. I thanked him profusely and we went about my work. I didn't stop until sometime in the afternoon, when my body would no longer oblige me. Sore and exhausted, I dragged myself back upstairs to take a shower and get a meal.

I knew I was going to have to wait until Sam delivered the rest of my supplies to continue any real progress downstairs, so I decided to have a look around the top floor. Even after Mr. Max's tour, I knew there were at least a few halls that I had not been down yet, and my curiosity was getting the better of me. The first hall was empty, like so many others before it. Rooms upon rooms with nothing in them, apparently waiting for some unknown income to justify some sort of use. The second hall became a little more intriguing when I came across a door that I couldn't open with my set of keys.

There was nothing special about the door itself, but my gut told me that it was an important room if it was kept under a special lock and key. I wheeled myself back to my bedroom and dug into my luggage. Finally finding what I needed, I made my way back to the door and waited. There was no sound coming from the other side, and the small crack at the bottom of the door frame told me that the lights were off inside. I checked to make sure no one else was around, loitering in the halls, and pulled out the four bobby pins I had retrieved from my suitcase.

It took a lot longer than I had thought, mostly due to my broken arm and finger, but I finally managed to tumble the lock open. Pride swelled into my chest when I felt the lock snap open, then fear crept in slowly behind it. I was pushing my luck, and I knew it. Swallowing hard, I turned the door knob, checked the hall one last time, and then pushed the door open. The light from the hall filtered into the room enough that I could see the light switch on the wall just inside the doorway. With a shaky hand, and an even shakier heart, I flipped the switch.

It was an office of some sort, decorated almost the same as the bedroom that Wallace and I shared. The room had a strange, comfortable, relaxing feel to it, that I thought shouldn't belong in a place like this. A large mahogany desk took up most of the space in the room, and I decided to take a quick peak before leaving. My curiosity had been mostly sated, and now I was really only worried about getting caught.

The drawers to the desk were not locked, and it was pretty easy to tell what was inside each one of them. There were five drawers total, so I felt pretty sure I could check each one quickly and get out of there even quicker. The fourth drawer got my attention however, when upon opening it, I found file folders. Each one was labeled with a person's name, and Wallace's handwriting was too easy to identify. My eyes scrolled down the files, not recognizing any of the names, save one.

Counting as swiftly as possible, there were twenty-seven of them in total. My name was scrawled on the last. I pulled out one, reading the name on the tab, Missy Canon. I opened the file and began reading, my interest in the matter lessening the fear of being found in Wallace's office. Age: twenty, eyes: hazel, hair: blonde, height: five foot five inches, weight: one hundred twenty pounds. On and on the page went, detailing everything imaginable. Her likes, dislikes, family, friends, co-workers, high-school, allergies, medical operations, traffic violations, the whole enchilada. I continued flipping though the pages, until things started to appear medical. Slowing back down, I began reading again.

To my horror, the more I read, the less I wanted to continue. As little of the medical terminology that I could understand, it became quite clear that Wallace had been drugging the poor girl, but with what, I had no idea. I closed her file and replaced it, pulling out another, and another, and another. All twenty-six of the girls were being given drugs of some sort, each one getting a different drug name. Half-way through the process, I dug out a piece of blank paper from another drawer and had started writing down the drug names as I found them.

The only folder that I hadn't gone through yet was my own, and I was almost too scared to open it. I took a few moments and bolstered my courage. It was now or never, and I was pretty sure that this was going to be my only chance to look into my file. Before I could think on it any longer, I yanked my file out and plopped it on Wallace's desk. The first few pages were the same, maybe with a little more detail than all the others. It seemed that Wallace had every second of my day charted out and noted in great detail. All of our dates, the type of flowers he gave me, the time and date that he picked me up, where we went, what I drank, how much a drank, what I ate, when we left, what we did after, the lists ran on and on. He even had notes scribbled in the margins on his own personal thoughts of our evenings and his future plans that had never come to fruition; thanks to my sudden uproot from the outside world.

I skimmed through the rest of my file, never seeing anything drug related or medical, other than my past breaks and sprains from being in The Pit. Almost relieved, I tucked my file back into it's place and shut the drawer. After folding up the paper I had with the drug names written down, I turned off the lights, and made sure to lock the door behind me. I slowly made my way back to the bedroom.

My mind raced with thoughts as to what all of this meant. I knew I couldn't ask Wallace about it without giving away the fact that I had broken into his office. I'd have to find someone else who could help, and the only person I could think of was Kaga. Still, I didn't know whether or not I could trust him to keep a secret, and so my mind returned to it's original path. After what felt like hours, I was nowhere closer to solving the mystery myself, and decided that I'd have to trust someone.