As the sun set, I looked out at the wide river. My client was late. I loved watching the Bow River’s dark water gurgle past, just a few feet from where I sat at a cafe table, but I loved prompt clients even more. I tapped my foot impatiently. Nice view or not, the fall of ‘97 was unseasonably chilly, and I was underdressed.

“Alex Dahl?” A lightly accented woman’s voice came from behind me. I waved her to the empty seat across from me, and immediately regretted my discourtesy. The woman, my client, was gorgeous. Sharp features, blonde hair, maybe a hint of makeup. Her eyes were the color of the river I’d been watching, and twice as deep. And, I noted with a mercenary eye, the Italian suit she was wearing cost two months of my rent.

“Ms. Tarasova. Nice to meet you in person,” I stammered out. “I’m Alex Dahl, Private Eye.”

“Please, call me Irina. And I’m so glad you’re here. You’re the only one that can help me.” Maybe I should have been more suspicious, but rich and desperate makes for great clients. I assured her I was eager to help.

Ms. Tarasova, call-me-Irina, explained that she owned a chain of medical spas across the state. “We cater to a high-end clientele, providing concierge medical care, aesthetic treatments, as well as overall wellness and spa services.”

But she was concerned that something strange was going on after hours at one of her locations, just a few blocks away.

“What sort of strange?” I asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, but there have been rumors. Rumors of people using the facilities when they should be closed. People working on side projects. I want you to determine what is going on. I’ve made inquiries, but as the owner, my asking questions is rather conspicuous.”

I nodded. That was vague and useless, but open-ended investigations would take longer and I would bill for my expenses. “Well, Irina, fortunately, I have nothing going on for a few days, and the Private Investigator business means I’m my own boss. Your case will be my top priority.”

We discussed my fee for a moment. I doubled my usual rates, assuming we’d negotiate down, but she agreed to my terms immediately. I should have tripled them.

“So how will you… investigate? What will you do first?” She asked.

I considered my approach. Generally, the first thing I’d do would be to pull background on Ms. Tarasova and her businesses and all her employees, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Clients seldom actually wanted their hired inquisitors to be that overly inquisitive.

“For a job with such a nearby location, I’ll likely spend some time watching the location. Do some surveillance. Find an excuse to be in the area around closing time. Maybe even book an appointment, under some pretext.”

“Actually,” Irina smiled at me, and I knew I’d probably agree with whatever she wanted. “I was thinking something along those lines as well. I’ve scheduled a therapeutic massage appointment for you, in an hour, with one of my most trusted practitioners; Victoria Dunaway. You’ll be the last appointment before closing. Obviously I’ve told no-one that you’re my investigator.”

“Tonight? Normally, I’d do some background work before…” I trailed off, as Irina’s smile overruled my best judgement. “But good thinking. I’ll walk over from here. That should give me an excuse to lurk about the place afterwards.”

“Excellent. I’d be thrilled if you solved this case in a single night.” Irina stood, gathering her purse to leave. “Also, Detective, We’re a full-service operation, and Victoria is one of my registered nurses. Don’t hesitate to tell her about any medical problems you might have. Consider it a perk of the job. I don’t suppose that Private Detectives tend to have private health insurance.”

I nodded. “I’ll call you with an update in the morning, then.” I had one of those new cellular telephones that flipped open and closed, so even if I ended up surveilling the business all night, I’d be able to check in.

“Goodnight, Detective. And do try to enjoy yourself. Victoria’s massages are an absolute dream, I assure you.”

I watched her go. Maybe more closely than I should have. At the time, I thought I was looking forward to seeing her again.

——

I tarried at the cafe table for a bit. People-watching was a convenient hobby for a private eye. But as twilight descended over the river, any warmth the city had for me was fast fading with the sun’s glow.

I grabbed my coat, a PI’s best armor against the night. I decided to get on with it. Leaving a good tip on the table, I headed up 4th Ave. It was only a few blocks to the Waterview Wellness Center and Medical Spa, inside an unremarkable 3-story brick building, between a veterinarian and a falafel shop. Automatic sliding doors revealed a bright, modern entrance, more like a hotel lobby than a waiting room.

I decided it was my lucky day, because there was another beautiful woman inside, who looked like she’d been waiting for me specifically.

She was raven-haired, with a stark white uniform. It reminded me of a cross between a set of modern medical worker’s scrubs and an old-school nurses’ outfit. I’m sure someone had picked it out special, to appeal to the widespread fascination some men and women had with the nursing profession. The only thing missing was a hat with a red cross on it.

She had a stethoscope around her neck, as if to emphasize her professionalism, and as signal she wasn’t just a regular masseuse.

“Alex?” She asked, as I tried not to stare, and I nodded. “Welcome to Waterview Wellness. “ Her voice was soft and quiet, and I stepped closer to hear her clearly. “I understand you are a new Executive-level client. I’m Victoria, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.” I liked her immediately, and it wasn't just her outfit.

She had me follow her through the empty lobby, and back through a series of hallways. “I have you scheduled for a therapeutic massage, including a basic physical exam and a complete blood screening,” she explained. That sounded like what Irina had told me, if a little more involved.

“I don’t like needles that much,” I offered, if only to have something to say.

“I promise you’ll enjoy the experience. We provide only the best service for our Executive clients.”

I looked around as we walked, tried to get a feel for the place. After all, I wasn’t really there to enjoy myself, I was just establishing a reason to hang around while I investigated. But there was not much to see. A hallway, closed doors on each side, another hallway. I didn’t see any other people.

“Do you have any medical problems I should know about?" She asked a few questions about my medical history as we walked. “Do you have diabetes? A history of renal disease? Any known infections?”

I answered in the negative to everything, and failed to mention the functional alcoholism that was obligatory to all Private Investigators.

We turned into a small room with a bench. It seemed like a changing room, an alcove. And it was.

“Please take off your jacket and shoes, and change into this gown, and then follow me into the massage room. You can leave all your valuables here safely.” She instructed, and then stepped through another door, which l saw led to a larger, bright white room.

I took off my jacket, my shoes, socks, my shirt and pants, as I’d been instructed. I stuck my wallet, watch and flip-phone in a pocket and left them. Being a Private Investigator wasn’t like in a film, and I had no badge or gun to hide.

The gown on the bench was a soft, high quality material, but to my dismay, was open in back just like a medical patient’s gown. It took me a few minutes to awkwardly tie it closed before I followed Victoria into the next room.

Like everything else I’d seen so far, the color scheme was white and more white. The center of the room was dominated by a flat, comfortable-looking treatment table, with an arm rest on each side, and a strange looking headrest. Bright lights hung directly above it. There were various pieces of equipment in the room, carts and trays and machines, but everything had been pushed off to the sides, mostly in shadow.

Victoria waved me over, and I crossed the white tile floor towards her. The tiles were slick under my bare feet.

“Lie down on the massage table, and we can get started. On your stomach to start, please, Alex.” She adjusted the padded white ring that served as a sort of headrest. “You can put your head here. It’s very comfortable.”

Self-conscious of the open-backed gown I was wearing, I climbed up on the table. I sprawled out on the soft padded surface, and lowered my head into the hole of the headrest. The whole arrangement was as comfortable as promised, but in a face-down position, I couldn’t really see anything but the tile floor. I let my arms hang down towards the floor, but couldn’t quite touch it.

I could hear the snap of Victoria donning latex gloves a few steps away, before she rejoined me in the center of the room. Looking downwards, I could only see her white scrub-pants and the strange plastic shoes all medical workers seemed to wear.

When she spoke, she bent down and was practically whispering in my ear. “Try to get as comfortable as you can. You can rest your arms in front of you.” She adjusted the two arm rests so they pointed forward of the table and were bent slightly below. It was a good but strange position, almost like I was superman flying, or one of those people I’d seen doing Yoga at Riley park.

“Let’s try to get all that muscle tension and stress out. I know you don’t have much of a view; you should just close your eyes. If you find yourself nodding off, that’s alright. Plenty of people fall asleep on my table,” her voice, right by my ear, was breathy and sensual. “If you fall asleep, I’ll make sure you have a nice dream.” I raised my eyebrows at the double entendre. She untied the back of my gown, and let it fall open, and began the massage.

She started near my neck. It was immediately clear she was skilled. Squeezing, pressing, pulling, her strong grip quickly releasing the pressure I hadn’t known I was carrying. I gave an involuntary moan as she massaged my shoulders, then kneaded my back between my shoulder blades. I felt like I was melting. Being a private eye is a stressful profession, but as she moved down my back, I found I could let go of all that.

I remembered I was only here as a pretext, so I could lurk around after the business closed, and I didn’t know what a massage like this cost when the client didn’t own the place.

But as she kneaded my worries away for five, ten, fifteen minutes, I was thinking of returning after I’d solved this case. Whatever this cost, it was worth it. By the time she worked her way down my whole spine, I was practically purring with contentment.

“You seem nice and relaxed Alex, so I’m going to take your vitals now.” I mumbled in approval. So far, this was the best physical examination I’d ever had. Whatever Victoria wanted to do was fine with me.

I felt a stethoscope on my back, held for a few moments in a number of places. Then the sound of plastic and paper accompanied a number of sticky prods to my back. Victoria attached a number of sensors, in a square pattern, with one somewhere in the middle. “This is a simple electrocardiogram, to see if your heart is healthy. ” I heard a few rhythmic beeps, before Victoria silenced whatever monitor she was using.

She efficiently wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my left bicep, and some sort of clip went on my left pointer finger. An oxygen sensor, she said. The blood pressure cuff squeezed my arm, but not nearly as deftly as Victoria had while massaging.

“Everything looks good, Alex,” Victoria claimed after a few minutes, her voice calm and quiet. “I need to draw some blood, but since you’re an Executive-level member, and don’t like needles, I have something to make that completely painless.” Painless sounded great to me.

The sound of heavy rolling casters accompanied the appearance of a large, boxy machine near my head. I could only see its lower half, which was just a series of blue drawers and some strange corrugated tubing. A deflated surgical-green rubber bag hung from its side. It was a rare splash of color in this place.

“Have you ever had laughing gas? This is nitrous oxide, just like I give to our dental patients,” she whispered. “I highly recommend it for relaxation.”

Maybe I should have objected, but this sounded like exactly the sort of thing an Executive would appreciate to avoid a little pain. And with my massage-addled brain, whatever Victoria wanted to do, I wanted to do.

I could tell she was adjusting some controls on this machine, and I could hear the soft hiss of gasses start flowing. The corrugated tubing swayed and a black mask, just like they used in an operating room, appeared in my vision, held by her white gloved hand.

She didn’t exactly lower it over my face, since I was face-down. Instead, she gently brought it up to me, through the hole in the headrest, slowly and carefully sealing the mask’s soft edge over my nose and mouth. This was a novelty to me, but with Victoria taking care of me, I embraced it eagerly.

She adjusted some sort of harness behind my head to hold it in place. I took a deep breath, and the air tasted slightly of rubber and strawberries. It was nice, and I sucked it down greedily.

“That’s perfect, Alex. Soon, you’ll feel a little tingling and a little more relaxed,” Victoria commented. I wasn’t sure I could get much more relaxed; as she started kneeding my shoulders again, and I could feel my muscles relaxing even further under her touch. “It’s alright if you want to take a nap. You’ll have a nice dream, if you think of happy things. A sunny beach… a warm mug of cocoa… a soft cloud…”

“Or maybe think of me…” she added, suggestively.

I was thinking about her. And in fact, I was feeling great. A pleasant tingling sensation had started in my fingers, and the bright reflections from the shiny tile floor below me seemed to get hazier, less harsh. The tiles seemed to move slightly as a watched them, too, slowly rotating around me. The gas and Victoria’s skillful ministrations made me very drowsy, and when she suggested napping this time, I closed my eyes.

I could feel the cold of an alcohol swab on the back of my right hand, and a bit later, felt a very small pinch as Victoria skillfully slid a needle into my vein there. It really didn’t hurt at all, on the far side of the nitrous haze. She moved my hand about a bit, attaching tubes to the needle, and taping a small valve in place, with barely any wasted motion. It was clear she’d done this a lot before. I cracked my eyes open, and watched as she attached an empty vial to the IV port. There was a soft gurgling as it filled with blood.

I thought of the last time, years ago, that I’d gone to a physical appointment, the gruff old doctor who barely spent two minutes with me, and the phlebotomist who’d stabbed me half a dozen times trying to draw blood. This was so much nicer. Victoria was my favorite.

She attached a second sample vial, and I decided I didn’t need to watch. I let my eyes close again, and I promptly nodded off.

I dreamed of both Victoria and Irina, and all I’m willing to say about it is that it was nice dream.

——

I’m not sure why I woke, exactly. Maybe a door slammed somewhere, maybe the blood-pressure cuff had squeezed my arm again (as it seemed to be doing periodically). Maybe my honed Private Investigator instincts had given me a sense that something was wrong.

I don’t think I was asleep for long. Maybe a few minutes at most.

I got the sense that I was alone in the room now. I tried to push up, off the table, to look around. And that’s when I realized things had gone badly wrong for me.

Except for Victoria’s absence, most everything was the same as when I’d fallen asleep. I was still face down on the comfortable table, I still had the black, rubbery mask feeding me gas that was making the room hazy, and I still had the completely painless IV needle in my right hand.

But there had been unfortunate additions. Around each wrist was a broad leather restraint, exactly like the ones I’d seen used in psychiatric facilities. They were buckled tightly and each restraint was secured to their respective armrest. I tried to move my legs, to shift my body, but I quickly discovered my ankles and head were restrained, too. And the gown I’d been wearing was completely gone.

“Shit.” I said out loud. I didn’t panic, but I knew this was a really bad position to be in, and unlikely to be for an innocent medical reason. I had to do something.

I cursed myself for not doing my homework before coming in person. This seemed a good clue that Victoria was involved in whatever I was supposed to be investigating. Had she found out I was a PI? Had she tied me up and fled? Or would she be back?

I’d figure that out soon enough. For now, I had to get out. I couldn’t raise my head off the table, and all I could see below me was the empty tile, my restrained arms, the top of the rubber mask and bit of the machine it was attached to. I could only move each arm a few centimeters, so reaching one buckle with the other hand didn’t seem possible.

As a PI, I’d learned how to pick locks and shim handcuffs open. Neither would be any use here. I’d rented a movie where captured cops had casually dislocated their own shoulders to escape bonds like this, but that was just fiction. I wasn’t a contortionist.

I had really no other choice, so I decided to feel out my restraints a bit more. I tested the wrist-straps, levering my arms back and forth. The table and armrests must have been reinforced, as they didn’t move at all as I pulled. Turning my attention to the straps themselves, the soft, padded loops held firm as I moved… but maybe the leather around my left wrist wasn’t quite as tight. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Twisting and pulling, I thought maybe I could slide my hand out of it, if I pulled hard enough. So that’s what I did. Twist, pull. Twist, pull. I felt like it was working; my hand slid a bit in the restraint, but my thumb jammed against the leather, preventing my hand from coming all the way free.

But then the door to the room opened. Footsteps, and I wasn’t alone anymore. I stopped struggling and pretended to be asleep. One advantage of being face-down was that whoever was there couldn’t see my eyes darting around wildly.

There were two sets of legs. From the waist down, neither had the white scrub pants that Victoria had been wearing when I’d seen her last. Instead, they both had long gowns, and their shoes were wrapped with disposable isolation covers. The gowns and shoe covers were dark green. Surgical green.

“The heart monitor tells me you’re awake. Alex. There’s no point in pretending.” The voice told me one of the people was Victoria. She’d changed clothes. That was ominous.

“Let me go!” I insisted. “I’m sure this is a misunderstanding. Please.” I added. It couldn’t hurt to be polite.

“I’m afraid your blood tests came back from the lab, Alex.” She was right by my ear again. “It’s nothing to worry about, but you’re going to need a very small treatment. I can’t release you just yet.”

“A treatment? What kind of treatment?”

“Just a very routine procedure. Relax and I’ll take care of you, like I promised.” She whispered, telling me nothing useful as she gathered my hair into a bouffant cap. It was just like the hair-covers that patients were made to put on before surgery, as if I needed another ominous signal that this was very, very wrong. She stepped out of my vision.

I couldn’t tell what her and the other person in the room were doing, but sounds of plastic bags being opened and metal objects being placed on metal trays made me imagine the worst. Caster noises and wheels on tile told me that equipment was being repositioned. It felt like the massage room was being quickly transformed into an operating room.

“You really should let me go!” I figured the time for being undercover was over, and I had another card to play. “I work for Ms. Tarasova. I’m a private detective! ”

Unfortunately for me, the other person in the room spoke up. “It’s actually Doctor Tarasova, Detective. And Victoria knows who you are. She’s acting under my instructions.”

My blood ran cold. I couldn’t see her face, but of course the voice was unmistakably my employer, Irina Tarasova.

I put the whole thing together. I’d been tricked from the start.

Irina hadn’t ever wanted me to catch people using the facilities after hours. She had just wanted to arrange for me to be alone, vulnerable, and under Victoria’s control. So they could kidnap me, and do whatever “routine procedure” they had planned.

“I’m almost ready to begin. Administer the thiopental, please, Victoria.” Irina, actually-Doctor-Tarasova, instructed from somewhere in the room. “Detective, soon you’re going to start to feel a bit more drowsy,” she told me, clinically.

I had no doubt this was a big understatement. If they sedated me more, I didn’t think I was likely to ever wake up. I could hear the sound of glass and metal as one of my captors filled syringes above me somewhere.

“Don’t do this! This is murder!” I pleaded into the rubber mask.

Irina laughed. “Oh, don’t be silly, Detective. If I wanted you dead, Victoria would have overdosed you as soon as you turned your back on her. Our she would have turned off your oxygen while we were doing your blood work.”

Irina seemed to have no doubt Victoria would have killed me if she commanded it, so her reassurances felt hollow.

“This small operation will be over before you know it, Detective. Then we have a nice private room set aside for you upstairs, where you’ll stay with us for a while.”

I assumed she was lying. At very least, I’d never leave the room they’d prepared for me. If she ever let me go, obviously my first stop would be the police, and she obviously wasn’t stupid.

With renewed urgency, I twisted my left hand harder, as hard as I could, while partially drugged by the nitrous oxide. Even without know exactly what thiopental was, or how it worked, I knew I was running out of time.

My thumb started to throb with pain as it pulled against the leather, but I could see I was making progress, my hand starting to slip through the loop. Just a few more pulls, and I’d be free…

Victoria’s gown and feet reappeared by my head, and I froze. I worried she’d see how close my left hand was to getting loose, so I didn’t move. But she didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she didn’t care. The whole room was still spinning slowly, but I could focus enough to watch her white-gloved hands cleanse the port on my IV with an alcohol swab, preparing to administer the injection she’d prepared.

“Make sure you have a good dream picked out, Alex,” Victoria’s whisper was close to my ear. “Because you’re going to take a much longer sleep now.”

A big syringe, full of a clear liquid, appeared. She twisted it into my IV port, and pressed the plunger, slowly but firmly. As if in slow motion, I could see the clear liquid start to disappear into my vein. She rubbed my hand with her latex glove, as if to distract me from the chill that ran into the port and up my right arm.

I felt a faint taste of garlic on my tongue, clearly an effect of this new drug. I was out of time. I realized I had to do something now, or lose the chance forever.

I pulled franticly at the straps again, this time with no effort to conceal my struggles. With the strongest focus I could muster through the haze and numbness, I flexed both biceps against their restraints, as hard as I could, as if my life depended on it.

The padded leather above my right hand, where Victoria was slowly injecting the thiopental, continued to hold firmly.

But the strap around my left wrist was just loose enough that my hand pulled free, releasing my arm!

Wasting no time, I snatched at my right hand, and flailed at Victoria.

The tingling and haze from the gas slowed me down, and face-down is not a good position to fight from. But I took Victoria completely by surprise, and pushed her away. More due to her shock than my shove, she staggered back, and with a crash and a shout, fell over a cart of surgical tools, overturning it.

I noted that, as the cart overturned, scalpels and forceps and surgical steel clattered across the floor, glittering against the white tile. A large red and white cooler rolled into my view. The cooler had the biohazard symbol and a warning in large letters on the side. It read “HUMAN ORGAN.”

I figured I now knew exactly what they had planned for me, and it wasn’t something I wanted to happen.

Victoria’s fall had left the syringe full of anesthetic still attached to my IV port, and it stuck there, swaying vulgarly. I grabbed at it, and with a grunt, I pulled the whole syringe, the IV port it was attached to, all the tape, and the entire catheter from my vein. With all the gas I was breathing, it barely even hurt. I dropped the whole tangle to the floor. Blood droplets followed it down, spraying across the slowly spinning tile below me. One problem solved; no more drugs being injected.

Keeping my momentum up, a second later, I’d pulled the anesthesia mask from my face. It came free with a snap of rubber, as something broke off. I let the hissing black mask fall next to the leaking IV tubes. Another problem solved; no more drugs being inhaled. I took a triumphant gasp of fresh air.

I knew I had to get more limbs free, and I didn’t know how much time I had. I glanced towards where Victoria had fallen, and saw the gowned, masked and face-shielded Irina was helping her up. So not much time.

I went to the strap around my right wrist. If I could get both hands free, I’d have a good chance of pushing myself off the table. If I could get off the table, I thought I could overpower the two women, or just flee and get to my cellular telephone.

But all the laughing gas I’d been breathing had affected my coordination, or maybe the small amount of anesthetic Victoria had given me was too much. Because as I grabbed at the metal buckle, I just couldn’t seem to work it.

I tried again, and then a third time. The tingling in fingers from the gas hadn’t worn off yet, and they just wouldn’t find purchase on the buckle or the leather restraint.

I glanced to see where my two captors were now, but just saw two sets of green gowned legs and foot covers. Irina and Victoria were already there, looming above me.

With ease, Victoria caught my one free wrist, and her grip was a latex vice. I pulled against her, resisted all I could, but she levered my arm back onto the armboard.

“Well, aren’t you a fighter,” Irina’s voice was cold. “I wouldn’t have hired you if I thought you would be this much trouble.”

Irina unbuckled the restraint that I’d slipped out of, leaving it open and waiting for me. There was a brief and hopeless test of strength, as they worked together to close the restraint around my wrist again. With both women leaning over me, four hands quickly overpowered my one. I moaned in dismay, as one of them breathed an audible sigh of relief. I could feel the wrist strap was much tighter this time. Irina casually replaced the oxygen sensor on my finger.

In just a few seconds, they’d ended my escape attempt. I tried not to despair; I’d bought myself some time, and at least there was now no needle in my hand. Maybe I’d get another chance to act with the time I’d bought.

“You’re going to regret that.” Victoria snarled in my ear, as the nurse retrieved the anesthesia mask from tile soaked with IV fluid. She raised the rubber mask to my face again. I tried not to make it easy for her, and thrashed around as best I could, but before I knew it she had the harness refastened. My next breath tasted of rubber and strawberries.

With the cold black mask was sealed against my face, and with the harness re-fastened, with both wrists re-attached to the arm rests, I was helpless again.

“You shouldn’t have fought us, Alex. It’s not a good idea to screw with people that are going to be cutting you open in a few minutes.” Victoria’s words were all the more chilling because she was whispering in my ear again, with the same breathy tone that had lured me to this point.

“Don’t threaten the donor,” Irina’s voice seemed more amused than anything. “Just anesthetize them already. Turn the Forane on. They can breath themselves down while I setup a new tray of tools.”

I tested the restraints on my wrists and ankles again, but there was no give this time. I tried to think of something to do, something else to try. My eyes searched the tile floor for ideas. Maybe I could try to get one of the discarded scalpels, and cut my way free. But with my wrists restrained, I had no way to actually reach tools just a few feet below me.

Victoria adjusted her machine, and the empty green balloon inflated for the first time. The air in the mask quickly picked up a new scent; sharp, unpleasant, musty. This must be Forane, and whatever that was, I didn’t want it. I was running out of options, and I had to breath. The balloon deflated each time I did.

“I have a partner!” I shouted into the mask. “Other people know where I am!” I started coughing; the gas was irritating.

I wanted to pull away from it. I shook my head to try to dislodge the mask, but all that accomplished was to make the gas tubing sway slightly.

“Nobody knows you’re here.” Irina’s voice, and the clattering sound of her arranging surgical tools nearby. “You walked directly here from our meeting by the river. You have no other cases, Detective. Nobody will miss you for quite a while.”

“You’ll never get away with this!” I tried, setting off more coughing. But both women ignored me. I didn’t believe it, either. They had tricked me perfectly.

I really didn’t have any other ideas but to try to resist whatever gas they were giving me. Years as a private eye had at least taught me determination. I kept struggling against the bonds but made no progress.

I tried holding my breath. After a moment, a hand reached for the green balloon, and crushed it, forcing the cold, pungent gas up my nose and into my mouth.

“Just take slow, deep breaths, Alex ” Victoria bent down to whisper again. “I know the Isoflurane isn’t nice. But if you hold your breath, I’ll ventilate you, and going under that way will be far less pleasant.” Her voice echoed in my head. This was already not pleasant; the gas was making me nauseous and the room was spinning faster and faster. The haze and tingling I’d had from the laughing gas was completely overtaken now by the nausea and dizziness.

How much time did I have before I passed out? What could I do? Facing the floor, I couldn’t even see what my captors were preparing, although honestly that might have been a mercy.

Without anything else I could do, I simply lay there and tried my best to stay awake and wait for another chance to act. The green balloon inflating and deflating was strangely hypnotic, and I found myself just watching it when I should have been fighting.

The blood pressure cuff squeezed my arm again, unaware of my peril and the drama of my aborted escape. I coughed again, but the gas was less irritating now. For a minute, I thought Victoria might have turned the dose down, but as my dizziness increased, I realized I was simply feeling everything less as I faded. I told myself I needed to stay awake, stay ready, wait for another chance to escape.

Something touched my lower back and began swirling a cold gell across one side of my spine. I knew Irina was sterilizing the skin she intended to cut open.

“I know you don’t want this surgery, Detective, but there’s no reason to be afraid. Kidney donation is very safe, and I’m very experienced at harvesting them. It won’t hurt very much. Close your eyes, and this will all be over soon.”

There was a quiet rushing noise, in my ears or maybe in my head now. It was getting louder with every breath. It had been hard to focus since I’d eagerly accepted the nitrous, but it was nearly impossible now. The anesthetic gases were starting to have a serious effect. I found myself again entranced by the pulsing green bag.

I blinked to try to clear my head, but my eyes stayed closed as a wave of disorientation hit me.

I jerked back to consciousness, woken by a sharp scratch against my arm. I’d fallen asleep, just for a moment. Clearly I’d lost some time, as there was now a small bandage where I’d ripped out my first IV, and Victoria was taping down a new needle inside my right elbow. I hadn’t seen her prepare it or insert it, but already tubing full of liquid ran into me from somewhere above. Not long ago, I’d admired her competence, but now her skill with needles was sinister. How many unwilling victims had she practiced on? I tried again to pull my hands free of the restraints, but was so drugged that I only twitched, pointlessly.

“Still awake? I thought you were done, Alex. You might have been easy to get here, but I respect your resistance” Victoria whispered, and she was barely audible over the noise in my head. “Not that it matters. This will make you sleep no matter how hard you fight. And there’ll be no escaping this time.”

Another syringe was in my IV now, surely full of thiopental like Doctor Irina had ordered before. Victoria’s gloved hand was already injecting it, and I knew I must have missed more time. The light in the room had grown dim and pale. My eyelids were so heavy, and I struggled just to keep them partially open. My mouth filled with the odd garlic taste, much stronger than before.

I didn’t want to give up, but the reality finally settled over me. Victoria was right. I wasn’t going to get another chance to escape. I was helpless. All I could hope was that the surgery went well, and my tormentors were merciful. I tried to say something, maybe to beg, but talking was too hard.

“Goodnight, Detective” Irina’s voice echoed, and sounded like she was far away. ”If it’s any consolation, you certainly found out what was going on in my health spa after-hours.” She sounded pleased. “You solved the case in just one night. Exactly the way I wanted.”

As Victoria continued injecting me, she rubbed my arm with her gloved hand, up and down, along the vein. It was confusing to me now; It reminded me of how happy I’d been with her massaging my back less than an hour ago.

As the cold worked its way towards my brain, the human contact was strangely comforting, even from the nurse who was anesthetizing me against my will. But apparently the fondness wasn’t returned, because her whispers were anything but comforting.

“Instead of a nice dream, Alex, this time you’re going to have a nightmare. As you go out, I want you to think of knives… and needles… and saws… and blood…” I couldn’t tell if it was really Victoria’s voice, or if the nightmare had already started. I shuddered in confused fear.

I don’t know if it was another balloon full of Florane, or the thiopental taking effect, but the combination of anesthetics had become irresistible. I was unable to hold on anymore, the need to sleep was overwhelming. The pale glow of the white tile faded away. There was no more light at all, as my eyes shut of their own accord.

I felt like I was falling, as I spun more and more. Falling through the table, falling down through the white tile I’d been staring at this whole time.

The rushing sound in my head was deafening now, but I would swear I heard the gurgling noise of Victoria injecting more drugs.

The rushing and the gurgling were noises of the wide Bow River. I imagined the river was all around me, covering me.

My mouth was forced open, I felt a tube in my throat, but the water rushed in. I dreamed of drowning.