To Those in the Future, Part 6

John sighed as he sat on a bench outside the infirmary. He had attempted to visit the injured window washer yet again, yet he was denied without much reason. He sort of knew there wasn't much chance they'd make an exception all of a sudden, but he still had to try.

Still, it was strange. The nurses seemed normal when he first arrived, but when he started to get pushy about visiting the window washer, they suddenly became incredibly suspicious and paranoid. It was for that reason that John backed off, though he certainly knew now that something was going on.

Thankfully, John did manage to get the general location of the window-washer's room, though it was in a rather inconvenient place for him. It was on the upper floor quite close to the nurse's station, which was certainly not a place he could sneak into without someone catching sight of him. Even then, the rooms were locked, so even if he did make his way there, he couldn't exactly get in.

Of course, he had known most of this already from the start. He wasn't so foolish so as to believe that meeting the window-washer would have been so easy when everyone else was having trouble getting a visit. He knew he'd have to come up with a Plan B, and while it was a little risky, he was determined to find out the truth.

He waited until nighttime – or at least, until whatever passed for nighttime down here in an underwater shelter. Once the area around the infirmary building emptied out, John walked around to where the window-washer's room was supposed to be and began scaling the wall. It was an avenue most people wouldn't dream of using, but as he was used to climbing up to high areas, it hardly bothered him. Of course, he didn't have a harness to catch him if he fell, but he simply tried his best not to think about that.

He managed to climb up to the room in question, but an unexpected roadblock stood in his way: the window was locked. However, the blinds had also been pulled up slightly, allowing him to see into the room somewhat. He peered into the dark room and tried to look for the window-washer, but to his surprise, he found the room completely empty.

For a moment, John worried that he had somehow gotten the wrong room. But after checking the adjacent rooms with great effort on his behalf, he eventually assumed that the patient was just not in his room. He decided to wait for a time, but it would be difficult to hang off the wall for a long time. He climbed back down and hid in some bushes for a bit, then attempted to climb the wall yet again.

As he climbed back up to the room in question, John discovered yet again that the room was empty. He found it strange. The infirmary was certainly state-of-the-art, but it was still rather rudimentary as a medical facility. He doubted there could be too many places that a patient could be in aside from their room.

That led John to another, more concerning conclusion, one that had great ramifications: that the window-washer wasn't in his room because he wasn't here at all. But if that was true, where did he go? And if he had disappeared, when exactly did that happen?

***

For the past few days, John was visiting the park repeatedly after work. On his days off, he would spend nearly the whole day there. His goal was to find one person: the woman who had sparked this little adventure in the first place. However, he had no luck so far, and considering that they had met mostly by chance, the only thing he could do was go back to the place they had first met over and over again.

Of course, this method yielded no results. Even so, there wasn't much he could do otherwise. Scouring the entire shelter would not only be a untenable, it would also make him incredibly suspicious to the Ackertons' guards. The only thing he could do was sit around and hope for a miracle, but even that made him feel like he wasn't doing much.

After another afternoon of waiting fruitlessly, John decided to make a visit to the Ackerton bar. To be honest, he had been so obsessed with meeting that mysterious woman that he hadn't been in a while. He was looking forward to speaking with Julio and Martina again, though he expected them to throw a few barbs his way for having been gone for so long.

As he made his way to the entertainment district, John caught a sight out of the corner of his eye, one that nearly took his breath away. It was the woman he was looking for, walking off in the distance. He burst his way through the crowd and grabbed the woman's hand. He was a little too forceful, as the woman immediately spun and readied a fist to throw at him.

“Wait, stop!” John cried out. “It's me! We met at the park, remember?”

“Huh?” The girl took a closer look at him and sighed. “Oh, it's you. What do you want with me?”

John looked around at the gawking onlookers, then leaned in to whisper into her ear. “That window-washer we talked about. I couldn't find him in his hospital room.”

“You went to check?”

“I did. I couldn't confirm anything, but as far as I can tell, he wasn't there. I don't know how long he's been missing, but the nurses have definitely been told to hide it.”

The woman's face contorted in anger. “I knew it.”

“You knew it? So you were expecting him to not be there?”

The woman looked around cautiously. “I don't want to have this conversation out in the open. Do you have a place to talk alone?”

“We can go to my dorm room.”

“No! Not the dorms!” She suddenly objected. “The Ackertons have cameras in there!”

“What? I didn't know about that!”

“They're not watching constantly, but they are recording in case they need it. We need a place where we don't have to worry about something like that.”

John thought for a moment. “Now that I think about it, there might be a place we can use. I just hope no one's walking around that area.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You'll see. Just follow me for a bit. Oh!” John thought for a moment. “I forgot to introduce myself. I'm John. What's your name?”

“Just call me Kath. Now where are we going?”

***

John scrunched up into the alcove to make some room for Kath, who was climbing in just behind him. Alone, he felt that the alcove was fairly roomy, but even adding one more person made it seem incredibly cramped. Once the two were fairly comfortable, they began talking.

“I don't even know where to start, but... well, first of all, do you know how many people are currently inside the shelter?”

“Right now?” John scratched his head as he thought about it. “Well, there's probably three hundred people, right? That's the number Paul Ackerton kept saying when we first arrived here.”

“Okay, but excepting the Ackertons and their guards, how many civilian residents do you think are here?”

“Er, probably around two hundred and fifty of them? I couldn't say off the top of my head.”

“Well, there are probably about twenty members of the Ackerton family and their associates here, and maybe about thirty guards, so that's about right.”

“Sure, but... what does that have to do with anything?”

“Just listen. How many civilian residents do you think are inside the shelter right now?”

“Huh? Didn't you just ask me that?”

“...Well, if you're going to say that, then I'll just tell you. As of today, the number of people currently living in this shelter... is less than two hundred.”