THE SW CASINO
By Minimizer
Chapter 79
Everyone listened intently as I told of my capture by Irwin for the zillionth time since my escape. As usual, I had to leave out certain details, and of course I didn't mention that I'd called Mark. That got me thinking about him a little bit. What was he doing right now? I missed him terribly! More than anything I wanted to be in his arms again.
But what if I were really stuck at this size? The only way he'd ever hold me again would be in his hand. God, what a horrid thought! Even so, however, it'd be enough just to have him near me again, and I wouldn't want anyone else taking care of me.
Anyhow, I'd told the Irwin story so many times I could do it without thinking, so that's how my mind was able to go down that path while my mouth continued to narrate. I just hope I didn't look too sad while I spoke. I don't think I did, but you can never be sure.
When I told how the police showed up to rescue me, there was a cheer from the assembled group. Some of them also clapped when they heard how Irwin had killed himself, but not everyone. I glanced around, trying to take note of who'd reacted in which way. Vicky and Nicole looked happy about it, but Heather didn't. In fact, she actually looked sad for Irwin. "I wish I'd been the one he took insteada you," she told me. "He sounds like a great guy. I'd been happy there, I just know it!"
"I'm sure you would have," I replied. "I'm not like you, though. This isn't heaven for me. It's Hell. Can you understand that?"
"Yeah," she replied in a low voice. "Yeah, I know, Ashley. I'll help ya if I can, since you're a friend'n all, but if you do escape I won't come with ya, y'know?"
"I figured that," I replied. "Fair enough, I suppose. To each his own, right?"
"Yeah," Heather answered somewhat sadly. "I guess so."
"Well," said Vicky, "that doesn't matter much anyway, because getting out of here is impossible. Your little trick with the computer won't help you here. This place is completely cut off from the outside world. They don't have phone lines, either, and cell phones won't work where we are."
"Be that as it may, nothing's impossible," said Lori confidently.
"You obviously don't know where you are," Vicky explained. "This house is in a remote area. You can look out the windows when it's daylight and see nothing but trees and hills all around. Go take a look tomorrow morning if you don't believe me. Even if you could get out, you'd have to walk through miles of wilderness, assuming you knew which way it was to civilization, and you know what that would be like at our size."
"Why bother with that?" said Lori. "These guys have to get here somehow, right? There's a road in, isn't there? We could just sneak into a car, and let them take us to town. All we'd need then is a phone or computer and we're as good as rescued!"
There were snickers from the other girls around us. Some of them had walked away by now, going back to whatever they'd been doing before our arrival, but most of them were still listening to the conversation.
"If it were that easy, we'd already be gone," explained Vicky. "At the entrance to the compound are heat and heartbeat detectors strong enough to pick up even our little bodies. Assuming we could deactivate the tracers, the only safe way out would be through the electrified fence, and its mesh is too fine for us to slip through."
"Tracers?" asked Lori, reminding me that we actually weren't supposed to know about those yet.
"Yeah, tracers," Vicky replied. "We all have one inside us somewhere. The casino put them in when we came on the job, probably in a drink or something. The owners know exactly where we are all the time. If you step outside the building, or anywhere else you're not allowed to go, it sets off an alarm and they come get you."
"How do they work?" I asked. "Are we just dots on a screen, or are there cameras, or what?"
"What difference does that make?" asked Vicky.
"You never know," I replied, not wanting to mention the fact that our own trackers were in our earrings, which could be left behind somewhere. "If we're just dots, then it might be possible to jam some of our signals, and they might not notice one or two missing out of the others."
"That won't work," one of the observers said. She was a tall one, probably six feet at normal size, with short brown hair and a well-kept physique. She was wearing a French maid's outfit, and from the introductions, I recalled her name was Rebecca. "I've seen the detection screens. I was on Victor's shoulder one time when he got a call. I think he forgot I was there. There's a bunch of monitors from various angles and all us girls are on it as little blips. But there's numbers, too, so they can identify us specifically."
"That's too bad," I told her. "Thanks anyway. You've got an eye for detail, you know."
"I used to be a cop," she said with a shrug. "Just one of the many different jobs I couldn't hold, until I got this one. I guess I finally found something I was good at, didn't I?"
"When you were in there," I went on, making a mental note of her former profession, "was there someone watching the screens all the time? Or were they just being used to locate us if one of us left the area?"
"I don't know," Rebecca answered. "When I was there, it was because one of the tracers was flickering on and off. A couple of the owners were looking at the problem, along with someone I think was a technician. They were afraid someone had found a way to mask the tracer signal, but it turned out it was just going bad."
"That was me," said someone else, a brunette in a maillot-style swimsuit. I remembered her name was Irene Valencia. "They took me away and put me in a cage, you know, until I swallowed a new tracker."
"Did you actually swallow it?" I asked curiously.
She looked around somewhat furtively. "Of course," she answered. "They put it in a sandwich and wouldn't let me go until they were sure it was in my stomach."
I made a note of that in my head. I had the impression there was something Irene wasn't telling me, so I resolved to talk to her about it in private later. "Well," I went on, "this doesn't sound completely escape-proof. I seriously doubt they have someone employed specifically to watch our monitors twenty-four hours a day."
"You're probably right about that," agreed Lori. "The fewer people who know about this place, the better. And those technicians she mentioned are weak spots."
Vicky laughed. "Don't even think about it," she told us. "Those people are pretty loyal. I'm not sure, but I think they're all relatives of the owners, sons and whatnot. They get to come in here and play with us sometimes."
"Just the same," I replied, "there's always a chance one of them might go bad, or covet one of us for himself, or something like that."
"Oh, sure, there's a chance," Irene put in, shaking her head. "You only get one chance here, though. Blow it, and you're gone."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lori demanded.
"Didn't anyone tell you?" Irene answered in frustration. "If you get caught trying to escape, or do anything else that pisses off the owners, they won't hesitate to kill you!"