I've always loved the water, from my first memory to this very moment in time. My mother said I took to it like a duckling. Maybe it's because I am an Aquarius. I really don't understand it myself, but something about the babbling, trickling sound and the way the light reflects off the surface of the stuff is almost hypnotic. When I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to breathe under water, so that I could live in the lake about a half an hour from my home.
I spent years of my life working on my lung capacity, holding my breath and laying on the bottom of my bathtub with it nearly overflowing at first, pushing my luck several times, waiting until my vision began to dim before resurfacing. As a teenager I started training myself in the pool at my high school, often-times sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the deep end for nearly three minutes on a single deep inhale of air.
I joined the swim team as well, but that's getting a bit off the point. As graduation approached, I had a decision to make, between going to college on a swimming scholarship, or entering the Navy as part of their Underwater Demolitions team. I chose the Navy. I was in good physical shape, so the training wasn't all that hard for me, and my PT scores were in the top six. The classwork and water training came pretty easily as well.
I graduated and was pretty quickly sent out on a mission, which I cannot disclose the details to, I will simply say that piracy is still a very real thing, and sometimes the Government decides to do something about it. I'm getting off the point again, and I apologize, but I'm trying to organize my thoughts as I write this. I think I've given enough of a backstory here, so I'm going to skip through a few years of my youth just for the sake of brevity.
I was honestly considering not re-upping when my contract expired, mainly because I wanted to spend some time around my father who had fallen ill. Thinking about it now, I got the visit that changed my life while I was on leave. I had just returned from the hospital, to the house I had grown up in, and was getting ready to crack a beer, dressed in pajama pants and an old t-shirt. The doorbell interrupted my hands, bottle opener settled around the lid of the beer.
I stopped and walked to the front door, confused, as I hadn't told anyone but my family that I was back in town up until that point. I didn't recognize the man, but his stiff stance and stoic face marked him in my mind as a fellow soldier. He was wearing casual clothes, but they looked wrong on him somehow. His eyes were also slightly larger than average, and his skin was pale, and almost too perfect. I stared at him for a few moments before I found my voice.
“May I help you?” I asked, trying to sound neutral despite my spiking adrenaline. The man approximated a polite smile, and nodded his head once. “I've been sent here by general Montgomery to speak to you about something rather.. Sensitive.” I let the man inside in one of the most regrettable decisions of my life. He was quick to settle on the small couch that I own, making himself right at home.
When I sat in the easy chair to the left hand side of the couch, the man approximated another smile, though the expression never quite reached his eyes. I suppressed a cold shiver, and returned the smile, trying to look relaxed as I leaned backward. He didn't speak for a long time,too-wide eyes moving around my living room. The silence grew almost heavy with the silence in the room and the man finally spoke up.
I don't remember the exact words or phrasing he used, so I'll just sum up the conversation here. He invited me to join a special unit of troops, for covert missions, promising me all the things a military salary couldn't provide. He left, telling me I had three days to answer, and shook my hand before showing himself out. His touch made me feel like I needed a shower long after the man himself was gone.
I gave the offer serious thought in the time that I was permitted. When the deadline had come, the man again appeared at my doorstep. After another awkward fifteen or so minutes, I told the man that I had decided that I would join the unit, and that seemed to please him, and he produced a small piece of paper. The only thing adorning the small square was an address along with a date and time. He shook my hand again and I resisted the urge to wipe my palm on my thigh.
This time, I escorted the man to the front door, locking it after he stepped through. I also stood near my front window, unsure why the touch of paranoia was on my thoughts, though the feeling was definitely there. I didn't see the plain off-white sedan he had been driving return to my street, and after about four or five minutes started feeling a little bit better about his visit. The creepy feeling started to drain from my mind and body as well.
There was a reason we called the higher-ups in the Government spooks, I mused, moving to grab a can of beer from my refrigerator. I sipped the semi-bitter brew and tried to relax, finding a John Wayne movie on television to half-watch while I sat on the couch, still contemplating taking a shower to wash whatever slime the guy's hand had left on my flesh away. I finished my drink first, then headed toward the bath room, doing just that, washing thoroughly.
I felt much better by the time I lay my head on the pillow, and fell into a deep, pleasant sleep. I woke easily to my alarm and went through my morning routine, dressing in simple clothing, and walking out to my car. I typed the address into my GPS, and followed the route that the small machine laid out for me. There were quite a few other soldiers standing around the outside of the small, squat brick building.
The thing looked like a garage of sorts and some of the other men chatted nervously around me, speculating on what exactly was going to happen when we got inside. We didn't have to wonder all that long, though I admit that my own curiosity was fully aroused. When the black car pulled into the lot, it was almost like a magnet, drawing all of our eyes toward it. The man that stepped out was dressed in a very expensive suit and tie, with designer sunglasses.
His shoes were so glossy that they reflected the sun at almost mirror-like intensity. He herded us inside, and to my surprise we were met by the rear ends of several small buses, with the windows tinted extremely dark. We were split into little groups and loaded into the vehicles, and the bay doors in front of them rolled upward. We started out onto a small access road that eventually brought us onto a highway.
The hum of the wheels and still nervous conversation provided a sort of droning, buzzing soundtrack to the dull ride, my eyelids starting to grow heavy not long after we had passed the second or third small town along our way. I somehow managed to stay awake through the trip as we made our way into a small pass in the mountains. Just as I was about to lose my fight with the sandman, we pulled into a large gravel parking lot, and the buses parked in a tight row.
The doors opened and the man partially boarded each bus in turn, instructing the men to get into formation at the rear of the buses. We all did as we were told, standing at Parade Rest until he stood in front of us and directed us down a small trail into the woods, just wide for us to march along. After nearly a half hour, we found a large, heavily guarded building. It was large in square footage, but squat, the roof only about eight feet high.
We were again herded inside the building, and split into a trio of single-file lines, and checked in through metal detectors, as well as subjected to pat downs. I almost thought they were going to strip search us, but thankfully, I was wrong. They did ask us to change our clothing into a set of clean, pastel green hospital scrubs after the short security checkpoint. They placed our personal clothing into large, heavy green trash bags and locked them in a large cabinet after marking them with our respective last names.
We were again herded away, into a long, wide, sterile hallway. I started to have a slight case of cold feet, a bit of sweat breaking out on my forehead and palms. I controlled the bout of panic, and we were escorted into a medium-sized auditorium. The lights were lowered after we all found seats in the front two rows of the room. A white screen rolled down slowly from the building, and an unfamiliar image appeared there.
It looked like an official seal, though there were obvious runic symbols in along the outer edge rather than the typical Latin writing. Soon enough two pairs of men appeared on the slightly raised platform that served as a stage. They were all wearing very expensive looking suits, though most of their eyes were unadorned, the shortest of the four wore black-framed spectacles. He was the first to approach the small podium that occupied the stage, tapping the head of the microphone.
The sound echoed through the speakers around the roof, and he seemed satisfied that there was minimal feedback. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen.” he said, his voice lower than I expected. “My name is Crispin Veig.” the man introduced himself. “I trust that you are all very capable of meeting the requirements we expect of you.” he droned on, but to be honest I don't remember much more of the speech that he gave.
I do remember him mentioning that extensive testing would take place the next day. He wished us luck, and then the men walked off the stage, none of the others saying a singular word. We were escorted down into rooms, being randomly paired with a room mate. The guy I got assigned to was a quiet, slender figure, with dark hair and pale skin. I don't think we spoke at all the first night that we slept in the steel-framed bunks.
As promised, the next morning, we were fed a serviceable, if bland breakfast before being subjected to a full physical exam, including them pulling about a pint and a half of blood from each of us. They pumped us full of Gatorade and cookies. They also tested us for all kinds of diseases and then we were left to our own devices for the rest of the night. There wasn't much to do in the partitioned off building, though there was a small room equipped with a television and several differently formatted video players, along with a small collection of movies.
Finally someone found one of the films we could all agree on, although halfway through I opted to leave the room, heading back to the small, semi-private room I was being provided with. The next morning they eliminated a few people due to blood work issues. That was when the poking and prodding intensified. After lunch each of us was taken into a small room set up like a hospital examination room, complete with heart monitor and I.V. Stand.
I was instructed to strip out of the minimal covering I had been afforded and to change into a plain blue hospital gown that the man ordering me about handed over. I waited for him to leave, and then I did what I was told. My questions and doubts were beginning to become stronger than my ability to silence them, but somehow I managed not to bolt from the room, settling on the mattress of the bed instead. Shortly after, Mr. Veig appeared, flanked by nurses.
They threaded a large stint into my arm and connected a saline bag to the rear of the needle. They asked me a flurry of rapid-fire medical history questions as they took my vitals and shined a light into my eyes, ears, and throat. One of the women, her smooth somewhat yellow skin and softly rounded face, as well as slanted eyes marking her as distinctly Asian measured my body fat as well as taking the exact length of each of my limbs.
That was when Veig injected something that had a sickly yellow tint to it into the line pumping fluids into my artery. A strange, kind of ticklish feeling crept up along the path the drug was taking, riding the flow of dark plasma in my veins. As the stuff crept up toward my heart and lungs, the tingly sensation became slightly cold, like crisp refreshing water flowing into my body. I breathed deeply, and flexed the fingers of my left hand as that limb went slightly numb.
“Just relax.” Veig said as a sudden dizziness rocked my perception. The lights over me suddenly became very bright for just a moment before euphoria swept away all the unpleasantness. “Holy... Wow.” I heard myself say, and I blacked out, the last thing I remember being Veig's face hovering over me. I woke in my bunk, my body weak and tired, chilled down to my very bones. The other man in my room seemed just as lethargic and cold.
We finally introduced ourselves to one another after the drug seemed to lose whatever effect it was having on us. We talked about our lives a little and I have to admit, I was starting to hope that we both made it through whatever tests were still to come. I'm not going to tell you guys his name, but the dude seemed pretty solid, and was someone I would be proud to fight beside. The next morning is where things started to get really weird.
For one thing, they woke us up before the lights were even switched on, and directed us back out onto the buses without any of our personal belongings. I noticed that there were only enough people to fill two of the buses on the excursion. I started to wonder about the ones who were being released. Were they sick? Unstable somehow? We certainly weren't being told anything by the suits who seemed to run the facility.
We followed a road which was little more than a finely graveled track for at least two hours before we found another paved pathway, the bus turning right, further away from the nearest town, the nose of the vehicle aimed toward the foothills. We stopped at a Rest Area where we were all given a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and shoes to replace the hospital clothing and flip-flops we had been wearing. I saw why after we re-boarded the vehicles.
We were treated to lunch at a decent diner, though we looked like some sort of parolees or prison work release group as we entered. Our gang gathered quite a bit of attention until we were seated, all of us being allowed to order whatever we wanted. I had pancakes. I didn't know that this luxury was a prelude to the worst few days of my life, but again, I seem to be getting a little bit ahead of myself. After everybody finished their meal we were again herded to the buses.
I was expecting to arrive at a building like the one we had been escorted to before, but was unpleasantly surprised when we arrived at a small, seemingly private airfield and loaded onto an unmarked, windowless aircraft. From the looks on the faces around me, I wasn't the only one that regretted making it through the testing. Before takeoff we were all given a small plastic cup of water to drink.
I have long suspected that the drink was laced, though the thought didn't cross my mind as I shot back the small amount of crisp liquid. I fell asleep twenty minutes after takeoff which is the reason for my current suspicion. I'm sure that all of the others didn't last much longer than I did, and when I woke, I was inside a solitary, sterile room. The wall opposite the small bed that I occupied was floor-to-ceiling glass.
I was rewarded with an intense head rush when I sat up, and a piercing pain flared behind the back of my left eye. I breathed inward deeply and held the oxygen in my lungs for as long as possible, which, as I mentioned before was longer than average to say the least. I waited until the edges of my vision grew slightly dark and fuzzy before letting the air in my chest out in a big rush. I also closed my eyes for a few minutes.
The sound of approaching footfalls prompted me to let my eyes open. A man I had never seen before walked past the large glass wall, to the door to my current living quarters, opening the clear barrier with the swipe of a plain white card, the only distinguishable feature being the black magnetic strip. He was short, and much older than the men at the other place I had been tested in. I tried to look neutral as we stared silently at one another.
The man's eyes were hidden by the glare of the buzzing fluorescent light glaring off the very thick lenses of his round spectacles. The silence continued until I couldn't take it anymore, the anxiety seeming to literally make the blood boil in my veins. I opened my lips and tried to control the edge of anger in my tone as I said “Is there something I can help you with?” The man's grayed eyebrows arched and a slight, crooked smile appeared on his thin, wrinkled lips.
“When there is something I need from you, I will take it.” He said, and his words were clinically certain. He moved to the wall nearest himself, pressing the small green button I hadn't noticed set into the wall. Thinking back on it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a panel of some sort that slid open and closed around the button. A pair of nurses entered the room a few minutes later and one grabbed each of my arms.
They half carried, half walked me out of the sterile room into a pale blue hallway. The characters 3B were stenciled at the end of the hall, where there was a solid white door. The barrier had no handle, the only obvious means of opening the thing being a thumbprint scanner on the right-hand side of the door. The old man pressed his thumb against it, and the partition swung inward. They strapped me to an exam table silently despite my near panicked stream of questions.
I was seconds away from breaking down into hysterics when I felt something press against my neck, and heard a sound like the hiss of an angry rattlesnake. I didn't quite lose consciousness, but the world definitely became very weird, and almost dreamlike. The feel of the soft, fast hands taping gauze tightly over my jugular vein felt like the touch of tiny feathered wings. I let out a slightly giddy sigh, and the blurry, bright, pulsating light moved directly over my face, obscuring my sight for a few brief seconds.
“Dilation is acute.” The distorted, choppy feminine voice said. I couldn't understand the old man's reply, but I did notice a very heavy, but mysterious accent to his speech. I heard the sound of something being wheeled to the room, but apparently they had pulled a strap across my forehead to keep my neck from turning without me noticing. A sort of mask came into my eye line. The eye sockets looked solid, and for some reason that was the trigger that caused fear to resurrect in my belly.
The nurse must have noticed my discomfort, because as the thing lowered to enclose my forehead below the strap, to the bottom of my chin. When I tried to breathe, I realized that there was a very small mouth-slit, as well as a pair of nostril openings. Sudden, sharp pains accompanied the hidden, fish-hook shaped things that attached themselves to my sensitive flesh. I felt the small hooks enter the thin flesh of my top and bottom eyelids.
The sharp implements pulled my eyes gently open, but made it impossible to blink in the darkness. I felt them threading another IV into my body, this time in the back of my left hand in lieu of the crook of my elbow. I felt the same strangely ticklish, cold feeling that I had felt before, when Veig had put the stuff into my veins. The semi-familiarity comforted some of the fear, and soon the euphoria soothed the pain.
That was when images flashed over the enclosed eyepieces. Most of them were too fast to comprehend, but every once in a while one would stutter long enough to be seen. A coffee cup. A bonfire. A pile of maggots on some kind of grayish meat. The New York skyline before 9/11. A group of children, tear-streaked faces toward the camera standing in the rubble of a bombing. I started to feel sick, but couldn't vomit.
My body broke out in a cold sweat and my right hand flexed into a fist as the images raced by me rapidly before exploding into a kaleidoscope of color. The varying shades of the rainbow danced and fused before separating again, changing shape and form in a liquid flourish. A circle. A square. A star. A cross. A butterfly. That last image held and shuddered a moment, the wings almost actually seeming to flutter.
Everything went dark and I felt a sharp pain in my right shoulder before I again blacked out. When I woke the next morning for breakfast, my brain felt like it was physically in pieces and rattling around in my skull with every step I took. I willed myself to eat the scrambled eggs and hash browns, and it seemed to ease the pain between my ears. When I returned to my room, I ended up passing out with the door open.
It was closed when I woke up, and I suddenly felt like a rat in a cage. Frantic energy prompted me to pace the floor, though I kept my pace measured, calculated. I hid the majority of my anger rather well, I think, not clenching my hands or jaw to let on, knowing I was being watched. That realization awakened my semi-dormant paranoia, and all the stress exacerbated my earlier headache. The pain returned with a vengeance, derailing my train of thought and dropping me to a knee.
After a minute or so, I had recovered enough to settle on my bed. I was accosted by the nurses from the day before, the little old man nowhere to be seen at the moment. The practically full-on dragged me down the blue hallway, to the room they had taken me into the previous day, one of the nurse's thumbprints obviously coded to the scxanner. They strapped me to the bed again, and this time I was fully aware when my head was tightly secured. I swallowed hard, hoping the sound of the wheels approaching didn't herald the arrival of that mask.
A different apparatus was affixed to the lower part of my jaw. It was much like the oxygen masks that pilots wear. They fed a stint into the crook of my right arm this time, and hooked up the saline bag after about a minute. They added another bag of clear fluid to the stand and attached that line to the one already flowing into my veins. Soon, I heard the door behind me open and the slow, almost pained footfalls of the old man.
There was no chatter this time, all three of them grimly silent the entire time that my memory serves me, which wasn't long after they turned on the flow of whatever gas that mask was attached to, everything kind of washing out in an almost orgasmic head rush. When I came to, I was again in the sterile holding room. My right hand hurt, and the pain radiated down to my elbow. My knuckles were split, the dried blood around them telling a story.
The next day they subjected me to another physical, disqualifying me for a fabricated dark spot on an X-Ray. I was released, and soon after that, the Military allowed me to quietly ride out the end of my contract. None of that is important really.. But I'm starting to think that maybe the people who run this operation are still watching me. Studying me. What could they want? Do I want to know?
Submitted April 19, 2017 at 01:36PM by Kendersarecooler http://ift.tt/2o2CEyP nosleep
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