A man wakes up . . . with no other identity than his affinity for the English language. He is given a name-"Akimo"-by his non-English-speaking Asian attendant, and gradually, Akimo comes to realize he is being confined-held against his will-by persons who claim that he has been in an induced coma for several years-placed in that state for his own good. Despite his conclusion that he is an American, "Chancery," the institution where he is being held, appears to be a cancer-treatment facility that has taken over the grounds and buildings of a Great House-quite possibly a French chateau, although most of the "guests" are British or American, while most of the staff seem Asian or continental European. Just as curious, when he is permitted to join other guests in a small chemotherapy group, he discovers that although all of them are being treated for cancer, many are also suffering from severe head trauma. Like him, none of them remembers his or her name, or what they were doing before they returned to consciousness in Chancery's domain. Several of them suspect that they are just prisoners being subjected to medical experimentation. All of them want to escape. Soon, two questions come to dominate Akimo's thinking: First, with all this treatment going on all around him, why is no one recovering, and why does no one ever leave? The only place his departing colleagues seem to go is to more desperate circumstances-down in "the Hole," for CBX treatment. As his washed-out female colleague Kimo-Kell explains: "CBX is CBT-Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy; with the 'X', it means 'as applied to cancer treatment'." She brightened and put on a radio-announcer's voice. "Have a fear of heights? -A fear of nights, or a fear of bright lights? -How about a fear of frights? -CBX will put it all to rights." Second, since no one ever leaves, when internally publicized visitors days come, why does no one ever visit? It isn't long before Akimo's observations lead him to become an accessory in a desperate "prison break." His tendency to keep bad company gains him an unpleasant private audience with Chancery's chief administrator, the Keeper of the Rolls, and when his work assignment as a member of the grounds crew finds him picking up trash on an obscure path in a dark wood near the institution's high-walled perimeter, he runs head on into the double-barreled shotgun and twin black mastiffs of Chancery's head of security, Warden Bardell. Akimo's discovery of Chancery's nefarious purpose and diabolical operations leads him to discover his own previous identity and purpose in life, and just when he seems to have escaped, one more twist returns him to the site of his former ordeal-just in time for a final revelation.
