Snatchers

by Martin Holden

  The people sat around this table other than me and Rymer, are all survivors of attacks, ones left behind, the living victims. All were brought here, just like you and all chose to join us, many others came but refused. They were taken back and their memories from here wiped”

  Geela explained further “The choice is entirely yours, but please note, once the choice is made there is no turning back, if you are in, you are in”.

  David was still struggling to comprehend. He stared back and repeated “But HOW can you snatch them and HOW do you know about all of this?”

  Rymer stood up, “I think we may need to provide you with an example, a show of strength maybe, a small demonstration … follow me” … he motioned to David to follow him to the back of the room where he pressed a small button on the wall, which immediately split in two with opposite panels sliding away from each other unveiling a large screen on the wall.

  The screen flickered into action and revealed a dark alleyway in Ancoats, just outside the very centre of Manchester. A single male stumbling along, clearly the worse for wear. Out of the shadows, a man pounced with extreme violence hitting the boozed-up individual and knocking him down, then raining more punches and kicks at his lifeless body before rifling his pockets and running off into the dark.

  Rymer pointed at the screen “That is the type of thing that we are monitoring, all the time in this city and this is how we react” he spun around and clicked his fingers towards one of the men sitting on the white seats who immediately stood up and walked over, stopping a few feet away from them.

  Out of his pocket he took what looked like a small grenade with a flip top which opened up to reveal a blue button. The man’s thumb pressed down onto the button and there was a swirl of colour and movement and he was gone. He just disappeared.

  The large screen changed, it went into a kind of clearer focus, a sort of night mode. It focused on the wiry attacker, running off into the dark Manchester night, but there was a blur that followed him, hovering just above the surface of the road … it got closer and closer to the man before completely swallowing him up and vanishing.

  David looked at Rymer, “what just happened?”

  Seconds later with a whoosh of disturbed air, the disappearing man was back, stood there grinning with a heap of clothes and curled up person at his feet.

  Rymer calmly spoke “Containment Capsule 43 is ready” and with that the man lifted his catch up and dragged him off to the corridor before returning and resuming his place on the white seating area.

  Rymer turned to David “that is what happens, that is what we can do to Kris Kelley, big question for you though, right now,

  “Are you IN or are you OUT?”

  Chapter 7

  Revenge

  Geela motioned him over – “if you choose to join us, there are some procedures that we need to undertake with you, some things that will change you” it was all getting serious now “you cannot go back, there is no return from here, once you commit you are with us forever”

  Geela cautioned him “the procedures will take 24 hours to take effect, once they have done, then you will be able to destabilise as we can. Then you can travel through time and space and do it all without identification or fear”.

  “So, the process is called de-stabilisation, is that what you do?” asked David

  “Yes, we developed the skills and technology and now we travel to take action and pass it on to others. It allows us to carry out this process and it allows us to bring people along like you.” said Rymer very methodically.

  This was all getting a bit too much for David, “So you are offering me the chance to play God and take revenge on these people?”

  “Where did you take that man before? Show me” asked David

  Rymer looked over to Geela and she nodded.

  “Follow me” Rymer walked away towards the corridor.

  They walked down the corridor and into a much bigger open space, a space with literally nothing in it, nothing at all. The room was clear of all furniture, stark and clean.

  “These are the containment capsules” he said pointing down to the floor, down to the large circular hatches that were dotted all over the solid platform they stood on.

  “Each of these will open up and this is where we contain the snatched” Rymer was still talking very calmly and in total control, “We can then choose what to do with them, permanent incarceration or disintegration”

  “Disintegration!” blurted David, “What like just get rid of them?”

  “Yes David, exactly that”

  Rymer, then walked over to a small panel on the wall and pressed button 27 and the corresponding hatch on the floor made a whirring sound, the interior of the circle opened up like the aperture of a camera and it revealed a window to the cell below.

  The room was stark, bright white with a table in the middle and lots of medical monitoring systems around it. Lying on the table, as if asleep and completely motionless was the body of a large man, a man with short hair and scars on his face, a man that looked like trouble.

  Rymer spoke “we picked this person up in the south of the city, following a household robbery that went very wrong, we snatched him and brought him here for monitoring until a decision is made on his future, although it looks very likely he will be disintegrated. For now, he is under deep sedation, deep enough that he will probably never see light again”

  “This is not something that everyone can handle David” said Rymer “and many before you have refused our offer, but you have that choice to make now”

  “Kris Kelley can be extracted and brought here, you can choose the capsule, you can choose what happens to him next. He abducted Zoe before killing her and leaving her in a freezing cold alleyway – he is absolutely going to be snatched by this team, the choice is yours, whether you wish to join us and be a part of it” Rymer put it all on the line.

  He continued “We only ever choose humans to join us that we feel need saving, the ones who were spiraling down and out of control, the ones who would be the next victims, victims of themselves”

  “You can refuse, and we will wipe your mind of everything you have seen here, and we will return you to the floor of that pub like nothing ever happened, the choice is entirely yours” said Rymer

  David didn’t take long to think about it, he had nothing to go back to in Manchester and he was raging inside, totally consumed with grief, he was most certainly IN.

  Looking straight at Rymer he snarled,

  “I am IN, I want to be part of this, and I want to take revenge”

  Chapter 8

  The Conversion

  The procedure room was, as you would expect, super high-tech.

  Machines, lights, noises and two figures stood amongst all this in the corner of the room. It would be wrong to call them people, as they were not, but they were recognizable figures, but without any features or hair. Their skin was more an outer coating, an outer coating of pure white.

  They had what we would recognize as arms and legs, with fingers and probably toes , although the white footwear they had on covered that fact for now.

  Rymer led David into the room “This is where you will become one of us David. The two medical attendants will complete the process. It will take some time and you will not be conscious for it but when you awake you will be part of the Snatch Team”

  Feeling very focused and ready, David lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

  All the months of misery, all the hopelessness was about to end, he could never get Zoe back, but in this way, he could get closure, he could take revenge, he could take back control.

  One of the attendants hovered over him and extended an arm and then a digit out towards the centre of his head, slightly touching his forehead. Almost immediately David was asleep, and they began to convert him, mentally and physically.

  He would next awake as a Snatcher.

  The first process involved a full scan by a machine that swept over David’s bod
y from the head down to the toes, the attendants both monitoring the results and flicking switches and pressing buttons on their control panels. They completed the process again, from the toes upwards this time, again making the necessary alterations.

  Next the whole bed began to raise up into the air, twisting as it went. Down from the roof and up from the floor came two halves of a sphere, coming together to encapsulate the bed and David on it.

  The attendants both took a step backward and continued to look at their control panel and monitors.

  The sphere started to fill with some kind of cloudy gas, a smoke high in radiation, a smoke that every so often flashed blue. David began to disappear in the thickness of the smoke and quite soon all that could be seen was a sphere of pure smoke.

  And then the lights went out completely in the room. The sphere was glowing with its blue flashes, the attendants were still working furiously and for the first time, they had eyes, small narrow slits up high on their heads, where you would expect eyes to be. These eyes were the same incandescent blue as the flashes in the sphere, and they were in time with the flashes in the sphere too.

  The darkness of the room was powerful, lit only by the blue flashes from the sphere and the eyes of the attendants, it was an eerie place to be. The flashes became more intense and furious, there were clearly some major changes taking place.

  After a fairly long and intense period of time, the lights came back on and the attendant’s eyes vanished, back to the featureless white creations they started as.

  The smoke in the sphere started to clear, as quickly as it came and it revealed David’s body on the table, still clothed in his black t-shirt and trousers. The only visible difference was his hands. Both were made into fists, both clenched tight shut.

  The sphere separated and the attendants moved closer to their patient.

  The chemical changes had taken place, the mental changes were all contained in the sphere, but now it was time for the physical changes to be implemented.

  Large blunt almost flat ended small tubes emerged from the sides of the table and extended upwards alongside the body on either side. There was one near the shoulder, the abdominals, hips, knees and ankles. Behind David, one of these tubes extended to the top of his head.

  Like hypodermic needles without the needles, they moved closer to his body, stopping only a few centimetres from it all round. Once in place the attendants looked at each other and the blue eyes reappeared, and almost simultaneously the ends of the tubes started to glow blue.

  A growing buzzing sound started to reverberate around the room and the blue glow got more intense before a very small piercing shaft of light shot out from the centres of each tube. This piercing light went into David’s body, his clenched fists relaxing and opening up as it did so.

  Seconds later, the light disappeared, and the tubes retracted. The room was silent now and the attendants moved to the back of the space.

  Rymer entered the room and spoke quietly into his communicator. “It’s done”

  Chapter 9

  Plan of Attack

  David opened his eyes. He was back in the same room where it all began, the same place he met the people who snatched him, the same place where his life changed.

  He felt strong and for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, he felt in control.

  Rymer and Geela were by his side. “Hello David,'' You will meet the other members of the team again shortly, but for now you need to rest. The process of conversion is intense, and you will need a period of time to recover.”

  With that they turned around and left the room. David started to get up, but although feeling great he suddenly found an immense wave of fatigue sweep across him and he lay back down and slipped off back into sleep.

  He didn’t realise it, but he slept for two days solid, awaking as if he had just had a nap. The period of rest allowed his new body to react and accept the changes it had gone through. He was now a much stronger and different kind of person.

  He got up, this time without any problems, and walked across the room towards the door. He knew the route to the main room with the white seats, the place he had been to before and as he walked along the corridor, his mind briefly flicked to that happy summer’s day on the deck, drinking coffee with Zoe.

  A flash of brilliant blue swept through his eyes and then was gone.

  He entered the room slowly; the seats and the table were all in place. Rymer and Geela stood there talking and with them this time four men sat around waiting. They all got up and walked over to him with smiles on their faces.

  Rymer turned and introduced them, “David, this is the rest of the team”

  “This is Jackson – he is from South Africa, his family were murdered by poachers” Jackson was a brute of a man, tall and extremely powerful. Jackson smiled and shook David’s hand.

  “Meet Javier – from Argentina, his wife was captured, tortured and killed by drug lords” Javier was a much smaller man, similar to David himself but wiry and intense. David shook his hand.

  “You already know Jonas, he helped us with the demonstration you witnessed. Jonas is from Sweden and joined us when his family was murdered during a robbery that went wrong” Jonas smiled and shook David’s hand as well.

  “Finally, meet Lucas, the first member of our team. Lucas comes from the United States and was recruited when his family were blown up during a terrorist attack in Chicago” Like all the others, Lucas shook his hand and sat back down.

  Geela spoke “We have a new mission, a mission directly as a result of the snatch and recruitment of David, this mission is for David and he makes the calls”

  She looked over to David, he looked up at her and nodded.

  Geela could see these thoughts racing through David’s mind and immediately she sprung to life “David, come over here”

  He got up from the white seats and walked over to Geela.

  Geela turned around and handed him the small grenade like object that he had seen Jonas use to disappear “this is the most important thing we can give you right now, this allows you to travel through time and space, we call it the “Orbitor” – it is programmed to you, and you alone, all you need to do is to think of where you want to go and then press the small blue button”

  David took the Orbitor from Geela and looked at it, this little piece of technology made him one of the most powerful people around.

  It was time to see what it could do.

  Chapter 10

  Snatching the Monster

  Geela saw the intrigue in David’s mind.

  She saw him going over and over it in his head and she offered some caution “Be very careful when you use the Orbitor”, she said “it can whisk you in and out of a place, but it does not make you completely invisible”

  David knew exactly what he wanted to do, it was simple, and it was clear in his mind.

  He wanted to use the Orbitor to snatch Kris Kelley, to extract him from the grubby streets of Manchester and drop him through that hatch into one of the capsules. He hadn’t really thought about what he would do next, but right now he was clear in his mind that he wanted to snatch that man.

  Geela continued, “You need to make the journey with someone, Jonas will go with you” with that Jonas stood up and walked over, his strong Scandinavian accent clearly audible in his voice “come with me, I will show you what to do”

  David flipped the top of the Orbitor in unison with Jonas and they both stood there “Focus on the street outside this railway station in this picture” Jonas held up an image of the street in Manchester “look at this point, imagine it and I will see you there” and with that Jonas pushed the button and was gone.

  David looked at Geela, she offered him some last-minute advice “if you can’t find Jonas, simply use the image in your mind of this room, right here and you can return to us”

  David nodded and pressed the button.

  The transformation was immediate, he felt like he was surrounded by swirling
mists and bright lights but all the while he was conscious of his surroundings. He was moving swiftly over the ground, right over the street shown in the image he had just seen back in the Snatch Team room.

  He touched down on the earth and regained his composure. He stayed low, wary of being seen, quite ridiculous really, as he was literally in the middle of nowhere.

  He was on a darkly lit street outside a rural railway station on the northern outskirts of Manchester.

  Out of the darkness came Jonas, smiling broadly

  “Well done David, you have completed your first destabilization, how do you feel?”

  David walked over to Jonas and they high-fived, “that was ok, a little strange at first, but I got here, and we got here together”