Chapter 2: The Team
     “All right, Elizabeth,” the young man said.  “In order to get you out of here unnoticed, I’m going to need to divide your body into fifteen pieces.  And for your protection, you’ll need to wear this.”  From within his trench coat, he pulled a series of garments.  They appeared to be made of black vinyl.
     “For my protection?  What is that, a bulletproof cat suit?”
     Sam gave a little chuckle.  The protection suit had earned several nicknames, but that was a new one.  “No, not quite.  Listen, I’ll be frank with you: the people we’re up against don’t pull any punches.  If they catch up with us, bullets may fly.  This suit enables you to undergo such treatment without any harm.  A bullet or blade will penetrate easily, but the sliced or pierced surface will be instantly covered by a new layer of fabric, and you will remain safely pierced or sliced until I patch you up.”
     “All right, then.”  She took the pieces of the garment and was about to don them when Sam held up his hand.
     “Actually, the suit has to be against your bare skin.  You can’t be wearing anything under it.”
     She was left speechless for a moment.  “Why not?”
     “Two reasons.  First, the protective powers of the suit only extend to living tissue.  Unless you’re wearing a tank top and short shorts, your clothes would get sliced to ribbons just from what I’m going to do.  Second, the suit needs to be tight against your skin to function properly.  If there were any foreign material between you and the suit, it might find its way inside you somehow, and I’d rather not take the chance.”
     “Well, all right, but there isn’t anywhere to change in here.”
     “So what?  You afraid I might peek at you?”  She chuckled and looked at the floor.  “I tell you what.  I’ll keep an eye on the main dining room, if it would make you more comfortable.  Just don’t take too long, okay?  We’re somewhat on the clock here.”  Sam turned and took up vigil at the door to the private dining room as Elizabeth removed her clothing and put on the segments of the protection suit.  When she finally slipped on the piece that covered her head and face, she called out to him.
     “All right, Sam.”
     He turned around and walked towards her.  “Could you point to where you left your clothes, please?”  She indicated the pile on the table nearby.  He walked over to the table and took the pile of her clothes, placing them in one of the pockets inside his coat.  “Now, before I go on, you don’t happen to have a steel bolt in your shoulder or anything?”
     “Nope.  One hundred percent original parts.”
     “Good.  Like I said, if there’s anything non-living inside that suit, I won’t be able to put it back how I found it.  Besides, unexpected metal parts might dull my blade.”  He knelt down and affixed the foot parts of the suit to the trouser section with magnets sewn into the fabric.  He did the same at the waist and wrist seams.  
     “Out of curiosity, why did you ask?”
     “What do you mean?  I told you, if it’s not alive…”
     “I mean, you knew my name and location before you ever met me.”
     “Well, I could have found out for myself if you’d had any surgery, but I believe I’ll need all the energy I can spare today.  Like I said, these folks fight dirty.”  He moved his hands to her neck to seal the head piece to the torso.  Fortunately, she had thought to her blond hair up into a bun.  As he attached the last magnet, Elizabeth felt the suit suddenly pull tight against her skin.  The fabric was very smooth, almost like satin, but it was incredibly thin.  She could feel every detail of the floor as if she were barefoot, even though the strange fabric covered her like a body stocking from head to toe.  She could barely tell that she was wearing anything at all, except for the transparent panel that had suddenly sealed itself against her face.  She began to panic, as though her regulator had suddenly failed on her on a dive, but somehow she could breathe just fine.
     “Don’t panic, Elizabeth,” said Sam.  “As long as this suit remains sealed, you’ll be just fine.  Just breathe normally.  You’ll die of old age before you run out of air in that baby.”
     “How is that possible?  You have some kind of rebreather in here or something?”
     “Uh, it’s called magic.  You’d better get used to it.  Now, lie down on the table, please.”
     She lay down on the long dining table, trying to emulate the magicians’ assistants she had seen on TV so many times.  Sam stood over her with his cane in his hands, the long blades glinting.
     “All right, Elizabeth, here we go.  For the sake of tradition, I’ll begin with the waist.”  He positioned his cane above her waist and pressed gently down until the blade rested on the tabletop.
     Elizabeth was unsure what to expect.  She felt the blade press down on her abdomen, and then she felt the pressure release.  She was beginning to think that Sam had just walked away when she heard the blade touch the table.  When she looked up, Sam was pulling the blade back and leaving the cane to hang from his wrist by the elastic.  Before she could reach her hands down to her waist to see what had happened, Sam had moved alongside her.  He placed his hands under Elizabeth’s armpits and lifted.  What happened next was something of a surprise to Elizabeth.  She knew that it really shouldn’t have been, but it was even so.
She felt herself dangling by her armpits from Sam’s strong hands, but at the same time, she felt the tabletop beneath her legs.  It was an odd feeling, and when Sam set her torso standing on the severed waist, the resulting spectacle did both much and little to put an end to her confusion.  She saw her own legs and hips, still lying on the table in front of her and still moving the way she was making them move.  When she looked down, she saw the edge where her trim abdomen ended.  Her fingers quickly went under her waist to feel the new surface that had formed there.  It was an unusual feeling, to say the least.  It was as if she could feel inside her own stomach.  She leaned forward to feel the matching surface over her hips, but Sam put his hand on her wrist.
     “Please, Elizabeth, I need you to stay still.  We need to move quickly.  Perhaps we’ll have time for you to explore later, but right now we need to keep our minds to the business at hand.”  She obligingly withdrew her hand and watched as he positioned himself at her legs.  He placed one hand on her feet, holding them to the table, while with the other he raised his blade and severed her feet at the ankles.  He let the blade dangle as he took one foot in each hand and placed them in pockets on either side of the inside of his coat.  He did the same with her shins below the knee and her thighs, cut straight across below the hips.  He then placed the hip section in its own pocket and set her torso back flat on the table as he severed each arm and divided them into three sections just like the legs, slicing vertically at the shoulders, above the elbow, and at the wrist.  Finally, he made one final cut at the neck and placed the torso into a large pocket inside the coat.  The head went into a special pocket with a loose-knit panel in the front, allowing Elizabeth to look out in front of Sam or up at his face.  In the process of being divided and concealed, she had decided to stop focusing on how incredibly bizarre this day had become.  
     When Elizabeth had been fully concealed in Sam’s pockets, he twisted the shaft of his cane, retracting the blades, and walked out of the restaurant with the confidence of a man trying like hell to avoid suspicion.  As he left the restaurant, he focused a corner of his mind on the two men who had tailed Elizabeth.  They appeared to pay him no notice.  He paused on the sidewalk for a moment as he concentrated further on them.  Sure enough, they thought nothing of the blind man walking down the street carrying their prey in his pockets.  
     He walked away down the street, remembering the exact route back to the rendezvous.  He wandered through the back alleys of Alexandria until he was back where he had begun his mission.  
     From his pocket, Elizabeth watched through the cloth window in the coat as Sam followed his secret path.  After several seemingly random turns, they ended up in a dead end alleyway.  “Sam, where the hell are you taking me?”
     “I’m taking you to meet the rest of the team.  From there, we’ll decide what must be done.”
     “From where?  I don’t see any doors.”
     “That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
     At that moment, Elizabeth heard a male voice coming from the far end of the alley.  “Sam?  Did you get her?” it whispered.
     “I got her, Wade,” Sam said as he walked towards the man in the top hat who had just appeared out of nowhere.  “She’s found the disc.  We haven’t got much time.”
     “Yeah, I was afraid of that,” the man called Wade said as he took Sam’s hand and led him towards the blank wall at the end of the alley.  As Elizabeth watched, confused, she saw Wade disappear into the wall, taking Sam with him.  There was a split second of disorientation, and then there was a white expanse of nothing.  Before her was a petite woman with dark flowing hair wearing full-length black gloves and a gown that reached to the floor.  A velvet scarf lay draped over her neck.  
     “Welcome back, Sam,” she said.
     “Hey, Rose,” said Sam.  He reached inside his coat and withdrew Elizabeth’s  head.  “Rose, Wade, meet Dr. Elizabeth Peyton.  Elizabeth, this is Wade and Rose.”  He cradled her head at about waist height.
     Elizabeth looked over the group, the white nothingness, and the shimmering rectangle that apparently led back into the alley.  Her mouth gaped for a few moments before she finally found her voice again.
     “Man, I am having the weirdest day.”

To be continued…