Chapter 16

The Doctor was softly humming a classical waltz, as he finished his preparations on Kim. The surf champion was only wearing her bikini and the collar he just put around her neck. He looked her over and took a moment to admire her fine physique.

"She will make an excellent subject for the maze. She is intelligent, fit and desirable, I can only wonder how she will turn out to be," the Doctor mumbled.

Unlike Erik he had no sexual desires for his subjects, but merely expressed a professional interest and assessed her qualities for the project.

I wonder how she will hold up against the other two new women in her start group. I imagine that Daisy is very intelligent too, but she is by far not as fit as Kim. Ilse might be healthy now, but it took me a lot of effort to flush those drugs out of her system. She also does not strike me as a very intelligent woman, but the Colonel assured me that she has a real fighter instinct and survivor mentality. She will make an excellent addition too, the Doctor considered, while flipping through the digital pages on his iPad, occasionally adding some notes to the statistics of Kim.

Having finished with Kim he left the room and made sure the door was locked behind him. In the event that she somehow managed to wake up and free herself from her bonds, this door would form an impenetrable barrier. The door was made of steel wile the glass was reinforced and strong enough to prevent a seriously pissed off alpha male from breaking through. He wasn't very worried that she'd manage to escape if it got that far. He had recently refreshed her sedatives and wasn't very worried in the first place that she'd even wake up, but protocol had to be followed.

That leaves us with Petros, our involuntary volunteer from Greece, the Doctor thought with a chuckle.

Work was mostly finished on him, but there were a couple of minor things he still had to fix before Petros was ready for the maze. When he had come in the Doctor had intravenously fed him with a diet that was meant to rebuild his physique. The poor man was severely underweight, but had made great progress the past several days.

He might be the only subject that will thank us, considering he is getting at least three meals a day here. I am curious as to how he will develop, especially if he will become a second Cor. Cor seems to be adapting remarkably well and is in charge of two women so far. Considering that I will release all four subjects in the same room this time, Petros will have the advantage of taking up a leading role from the start and be in charge of three women, the Doctor thought, while walking through the old Soviet base to Petros room.

His footsteps resounded in the large empty hallway, reflecting his sounds back to him from the high ceiling. The rooms he processed his various subjects in had a floor surface of eight squared meters and a ceiling of two and a quarter meters high, but the ceiling in the hallway was easily ten meters. The gray, faded walls reminded him of the lost glory from a once powerful nation that controlled all of East Europe and how quickly the whole system had crumbled once the people got fed up with corruption and a poorly functioning economy. Life in Russia wasn't much better these days, but at least people had more control over their own lives.

Looking around he was content with the facility that Miss Anga had arranged for him. There were there four different levels in total. Only the floor level had a broad walkway, while the other levels had their walkways attached to the sides of the walls, with steel railings on the side to prevent accidents. He used the floor level to prepare the subjects for the maze and additionally the capture and retrieve teams were also housed on this level, when they weren't after new subjects.

The first level housed the control room, which had tinted windows that allowed Erik and the Doctor to oversee the floor level, however, this went one way and you couldn't look into the control room. Miss Anga's office, a kitchen, a bath room and the bed rooms for the Doctor, Erik and Miss Anga where also located on the first level, while the second level was used as storage space. The third level wasn't used at all and only had empty rooms.

The maze was located in an underground facility directly next to the base and used consist out of four large missile silos, before it was converted to the maze it was now. Through an industrial elevator the team could reach the maintenance level below the maze, which in turn allowed access to the basement level of the maze that was located directly above it.

The majority of the old Soviet base was remodeled into a legitimate high class resort for the rich and wealthy and had nothing to do with the project. It was run by an independent staff that had its own access roads and own buildings, completely separated from the project, which was located in a supposedly abandoned building of the base that wasn't safe to enter. From the outside it was impossible to see that it was occupied and it looked to be completely closed off, with high fences and warning signs all around it. These fences served as much of a purpose to keep curious people out as to keep the subjects in, should they somehow manage to escape from the maze.

Before Miss Anga purchased the property from the German government, it hadn't been in use for over twenty years. The base was abandoned near the end of the cold war when the USSR had closed the facility in an attempt to improve its relationship with NATO and as a part of their agreement with the USA to dismantle nuclear warheads. The overgrowth on the building was left intact, adding to the feeling that it was an abandoned facility. If anything it gave the impression of being a haunted building with lost souls doomed to eternal wandering. The remnant of a history not yet forgotten, but long since passed.

The Doctor, however, quite liked the solitude of the base. Not being bothered by people, especially those concerned with ethics, morals and other such nonsense, allowed him to fully focus on the project, without having to worry about the petty details like security and managing a full staff. Miss Anga took care of security and supplies and the only person he had to manage was Erik, who was thankfully competent enough to work without needing his constant supervision.

This allowed the Doctor to focus on processing new subjects, reviewing research data and gathering useful information that either supported or rejected his theories. If it was the case of the latter than he ended up in the wonderful process of working out a new theory and then trying to find out whether or not they were supported by the discoveries he made in the maze. If there was one thing he loved then it was thinking up new theories and putting them to the test.

Still softly humming the tones of a classical waltz, he unlocked the door to Petros' room and flipped on the light switch. The Doctor saw that Petros was exactly as he had left him. Reading the charts and comparing them with his statistics, he decided to give Petros another sedative, to keep him unconscious for a few more hours. Next he took his temperature, measured his weight, blood pressure and took several other vital signs, meticulously writing down his findings on his iPad.

Once he completed several other tests on him and was satisfied with the results, he concluded that Petros was ready for the maze. After putting the collar around Petros' neck he verified with the computer that it was connected and checking out as expected.

"There will be no more worries for you to make ends meet with your flower shop, my dear florist. You are destined for far greater things, the results you give me will be very valuable," the Doctor said to an unconscious Petros, patting him on the shoulder.

He switched off the light and after locking Petros' room, the Doctor went to the Lieutenant. He needed him and his team to put the new subjects in the maze. They would wake up several hours later, ready to start their adventure. An ice cold smile appeared on the Doctor's face, as imagined just what kind of an adventure that would be.

Several hours later Daisy woke up with a banging head of the likes she had never felt before. Her mouth was dry and her surroundings much warmer than she had any right to expect them to be. In the United Kingdom it was cold and rainy, not warm and ... Completely dark?

Before she could give her new environment another thought, she heard the grunts of a woman, who was also in the process of waking up. She carefully felt around, while crawling over until she touched the body that the sounds belonged too.

"Are yo..." The shock she received discouraged her from talking any further, but not from finding out how the other woman was doing.

When in turn she tried to talk, Daisy felt the woman's body convulsing, realizing that she just got shocked too. She made a soothing noise, but abruptly stopped that in fear of getting another shock. When she noticed she didn't get shocked for it, she tried speaking extremely slowly, which actually seemed to work just fine. Conversation seemed to drag on forever though and whenever they talked a bit too fast they'd get another shock from the collar around her neck, but at least Daisy found out that the other woman was named Ilse and lived in Iceland.

Before she could ask another question, they heard the grunts of a man. The poor follow got shocked just as well, when he tried to speak in a language Daisy wasn't familiar with. After explaining the restrictions they had to work with in, she was glad to hear that Petros could speak some broken English and was understandable enough for her and Ilse to get his name and the country he lived in.

When a third woman also announced her presence, Daisy started to wonder just how many people there were in this room. She tried to stand up, but that seemed like a bad idea. After being a bump richer and some patience poorer, she crawled over to the new woman. It took a long time between the four of them to make introductions, find out where everybody was from and what the last thing was that they remembered. Their last memories were all similar, but worst of all, it didn't make them any wiser as to what was going on, except that they that they'd been picked up within twenty-four hours of one another and seemingly had nothing in common.