Calypso Directive Read Online Free PDF Page A

Four stairwell appeared in front of him, and the door opened politely without a touch. He laughed. He was going to make it. He jumped, sailing over the railing into the abyss. But this time, as he made the four-story plunge in the stairwell, he realized something was different. He had forgotten the bedsheets. He was free falling without a safety line. Yellow-suits and orderlies lined up along the stairs and balconies, peering over the railings at him. They were laughing. Laughing at stupid Will Foster as he plummeted toward his death.
    He sat up in the narrow bed, hyperventilating and clutching the bedsheet in his fists.
    â€œWhoa, dude!” a shaggy haired boy in a Rutgers T-shirt said. “That must have been one wicked nightmare.”
    Will was completely disoriented. He could not remember where he was or how long he had been asleep. His surroundings were strange and unfamiliar. A chocolate brown mural with a cartoon depiction of the Brevnov Monastery and a white tour bus adorned the wall facing him. Then he noticed two other people in the dimly lit room, staring at him.
    â€œWhere am I?”
    â€œYou’re at Miss Sophie’s, dude.”
    â€œMiss Sophie’s?”
    â€œYeah, you know, the youth hostel. Miss Sophie said that you’ve been out cold since late last night. You must have been smoking some really good shit, man,” said a jock sporting a New York Mets baseball cap. “I wanna know where you party.”
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    â€œIt’s like, almost ten at night. We just came back from the pub and you were twitching and moaning like crazy. I thought you might be, like, an epileptic or something, but Frankie said you were just having a nightmare,” Rutgers said.
    â€œYeah, we were dying with laughter. Sorry we woke you up, man,” Frankie said, eyeing Will from under the brim of his Mets cap.
    The cobwebs in Will’s mind were beginning to clear and the details of the previous twenty-four hours were coming back to him. The cabbie had driven him to what he had called “a good, safe place.” Will had thought Miss Sophie’s was a budget-priced inn, but now he surmised it was a hostel—the kind of place frequented by backpackers, young adventure seekers, and the university party crowd. A two-minute conversation had taken place between the cabbie and a Czech woman with a kindly face and it ended with a hug. No money had changed hands, so Will suspected the cabbie and Miss Sophie were more than mere acquaintances. The woman had led him to a dorm-style room, sparsely furnished with steel framed beds. After sizing him up, she returned several minutes later with a pair of blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of filthy athletic shoes from what he deduced must be the establishment’s equivalent of the lost-and-found bin. He vaguely remembered unwrapping the gauze tape that held the vials to his leg and stuffing them into his jacket pocket, before collapsing from exhaustion onto the bed. If the time was indeed ten o’clock, then he had slept for twenty hours straight.
    The vials!
    He jumped out of bed, frantic. He needed to confirm that the vials were safe. He scanned the room for the olive-green army jacket, but saw only two large North Face backpacks propped up against the wall. Perhaps Miss Sophie had placed it under his bed with his newly gifted garb. Will knelt on the checkered parquet floor, dragged a white rectangular clothes locker out from under the bed frame, and flipped open the metal-hinged top. Inside were the folded blue jeans, grey T-shirt, and dirty athletic shoes neatly arranged, but no jacket.
    Rutgers burst into laughter. “Dude, check out his pajama pants.”
    Frankie chortled. “Those are classic. They look like what I wore in the hospital when I was six and had my tonsils out.”
    â€œYeah, totally.”
    â€œHave you guys seen my jacket? I had it right here under my bed. Now it’s