by Justin Sloan
Riot looked at her reflection, half worried she would see some distorted, pig-faced person looking back at her, or something other than what she remembered her features to be. Like ripping off duct tape from your mouth, it was better to do it fast.
Riot looked into the clear, glass mirror. She was fine. Same exact face she always remembered looked back at her. Short, dark hair met blue eyes, tanned skin, and large features she had come to embrace. She moved her view from the mirror and tilted her head down to take in her thick frame and curvy shape. All of the bumps were in their appropriate places.
The doctor cleared his voice and began his story. “You’re not, nor have you ever been, a marine. The alien invasion you keep talking about is a delusion you have suffered from since you’ve come to the Institute for help. You’ve been here for the past four years, receiving treatment.”
Riot stared at the doctor for a full minute, before bursting into laughter. “Oh, my gosh! Good one, doc. I don’t know how you’re able to keep a straight face. Who put you up to this? Was it Quinn?”
“The sooner you come to grips with this, the sooner we can get you back on the road to recovery.” The doctor shook his head, pushing toward her the file he’d also placed on the desk. “You had a relapse, that’s all. Try to remember.”
“Yeah, okay.” Riot grabbed up the file and began leafing through it. “You’re not going to tell me that my entire life up to this point was a psychotic break. I mean, I know I have a few screws loose, but who doesn’t?”
Riot swallowed hard as she examined the file. Page after page documented sessions of her therapy and treatments, and contained meticulous notes on her medication regime.
“This … this doesn’t mean anything.” Riot refused to believe her time in the Marine Corps had been meaningless. She’d felt the pain of losing friends, and the rush of battle. “Anyone could have put anything in here.”
“You’ve said that before.” The doctor again reached into his desk, and this time, he brought out a silver laptop computer. He opened the screen, clicked a few keys, then turned the screen toward Riot. “See for yourself.”
Riot stared at a screen, where she sat in a plain, white room with the same doctor sitting across from her. Her own voice in the video drifted from the laptop.
“The Earth was attacked by an alien force. I was part of an elite marine division that fought them back. That has to be true. I know it is.”
“Then how do you explain how you got here?” asked the doctor’s recorded voice.
“I … I don’t remember—wait, if I was never in the Marines, how do you explain my combat skills?”
“You’re trained in martial arts, don’t you remember? It was the brain trauma in your chosen field that brought you here in the first place.”
Riot hated looking at herself in the screen almost as much as she hated hearing her own recorded voice. She’d seen and heard enough.
“Listen, doc whoever-you-are”—she slammed the laptop shut as she stood—“I know what I know. I’m leaving. You can try to stop me if you want, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“Wardens!” The doctor had raised his voice to shout as Riot turned her back on him and headed for the room’s only exit.
The fogged glass door Riot was walking toward flew open. Five grey-uniformed wardens ran into the room, each carrying a yellow firearm.
Riot eyed each one. They were hard-eyed and twitchy fingered. Already she was gauging her odds. She could dodge one or two of the roofie darts, but five would be too many. She could land a blow or two before she was knocked out again, but she needed to escape this crazy house, not beat up the wardens.
“We’ve learned through trial and error what it takes to bring you down.” The doctor stood from his desk behind her. “You’ve never made it past five darts. We’ve met many times before, but I’ll introduce myself again: I’m Doctor Micah Keyes. Please don’t do something you’ll regret.”
The warrior inside told Riot to throw caution to the wind, the devil on her shoulder, the same. The angel speaking into her ear made Riot second-guess her actions.
Just wait. There’ll be a chance to get out of here and figure all of this out when you don’t have five beads trained on you.
Riot threw her hands into the air, ready to give up. “Okay,” she said, though her quick action spooked one of the wardens.
Pfft!
The fart sound from the roofie gun filled the room, and Riot felt a pinprick of pain on the left side of her chest.
“Really?” Riot looked at the wide-eyed warden, whose hands were still shaking.
Again, darkness came for her.
“AND THAT’S when I said, ‘Really, ma’am, I think your goose ran away with your shoes!”
Riot jolted to consciousness. She was sitting in a large cafeteria at a bench-style table with a handful of other people also dressed in plain white shirts and pants. There were wardens stationed at the two exits to the large, open room. A line of glass separated the patients from the cooks in the kitchen.
“Hey, Riot, are you going to eat your jello?”
Riot looked over to her left, where she noticed a skinny girl in her late teens. Tattoos covered her arms; her eyes were tired, and she didn’t look like she could keep still if her life had depended on it.
“No, I, uh … I guess not.” Riot looked down at her untouched meal of poop-colored beans, a soggy white sandwich, milk carton, and green jello.
“Awesome.” The kid reached over with a scrawny arm and grabbed Riot’s jello from her tray. “I love green jello day. It reminds me of being sane.”
“I don’t think Riot is remembering us today, Slade,” said a dark-skinned man, with a graying beard and hair, from across the table. He looked at Riot and flashed a crazy grin. “One of those days, huh, Riot? I’m Jessup and this is Slade. We’re your friends, or I guess, more like frenemies. We put up with one another.”
Riot was still coming down from the roofie dart, her mind reeling with the insane events that had taken place since she had woken up in the room with Ashton. For the very first time, she allowed herself to wonder if she actually was crazy. Had she made up her entire time in the Marine Corps? No. She couldn’t let herself believe that. She had seen the aliens descend from the sky, fought them with her family in the corps.
“Let it go.” Jessup shook his head as he shoveled another plastic spoonful of beans into his mouth. “Just let it go, Riot. I don’t know how many more times you can be tranquillized before you start going crazier than you already are. Try to eat something; the beans are great.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Riot stared down at her food. She lifted a spoonful of the brown muck into her mouth, immediately regretting the act. It was spicier than she would have thought. Seemed the cook had replaced flavor with heat. “We can’t stay here.”
“Yeah, okay.” Slade abandoned her spoon and dug into the lime green jello with her left hand. “That’s what you always say, and we always try to talk you out of it, and then you always go and get tranq’ed.”
“Hell, we even tried with you the first few times.” Jessup shook his head as he remembered the past. “We all paid the price—tranquillized, or stunned with a baton. Then we lost our privileges, and you know how much Slade likes her privileges.”
“I couldn’t access our library for a full week.” Slade shook her head so fast it made her long, tangled hair shiver. “It was a dark time in my life. A dark time.”
“Where are we?” Riot looked around the cafeteria for a window. “What state are we in?”
“Wow, maybe you’ve already been tranquilized too many times.” Jessup looked over to Slade for a consensus. “She seems different this time for some reason.”
“I don’t know.” Slade shrugged. “I like her.”
“Where are we?” Riot repeated. There were no windows in the cafeteria, only benches filled with the clinically insane. Manic laughter and shouts of gibberish permeated the air. “On an alien ship?” s
he asked.
“Uh, no.” Slade looked at her with large eyes. “Try in the woods of Colorado.”
Riot’s mind struggled to find meaning in the words. She had never been to Colorado before. Why had she wound up here? Why now?
“Everything okay over here?” A muscular warden, with a shaved head and unkind eyes, walked over to their table.
“Yeah, we’re fine,” Slade squeaked. She refused to make eye contact with the warden. Instead, she turned her gaze down to her empty jello cup.
“You know, it’s polite to look someone in the eye when they’re talking to you.” The warden reached for his baton. With the business end, he lifted Slade’s chin. “You know, life could be so much easier for you if you were willing to do certain favors for me. I could get you all the green jello you could ever want.”
“She doesn’t mean to be rude.” Jessup licked his lips, trying to diffuse the situation with a smile. “If we could jus—”
“Shut up, old man.” The warden glared at Jessup before turning his gaze on Riot. “And you, don’t even think about it. You crazy loser, you’re no marine. You’re in my world now, freak.”
The entire cafeteria was silent. Even those crazy enough to legitimately be in the Institute knew when danger was close. All eyes were on the warden and Riot.
Anger boiled up inside of Riot, not necessarily because the warden was bullying Slade, but because she was getting tired of fighting other people’s wars. Riot wasn’t the heroic type, but neither was she willing to walk away from someone who was begging for a beating.
“Listen, I’m not really sure what’s going on here…” Riot stood from the table. She was close enough to grab the warden and rip that stupid smile right off his face with her bare hands. “First, I’m saving Ashton from being pulverized. Now, I’m stopping you from bullying Slade. I really need a break to get my own head straight. With that said, if you don’t leave her alone, I’m going to open a can of whoop-ass on you that’ll make your ancestors ache in their graves and prevent you from creating future generations of meatheads in the process.”
Gasps of shock and surprise erupted all over the room. The inmates of the Institute leaned forward in their seats, wide-eyed to see what the warden would do next.
“You talk a big game, fake marine, but you’re not going to do anything to back it up.” The warden’s thumb hovered over the button that would activate the electric baton. The opposite end that would sizzle into life with a blue charge of electricity was still pressed to Slade’s chin. “Now sit your ass down, or you’re little friend here is going to experience what a lightning bolt to the brain feels like.”
It killed Riot inside to realize she was in a no-win situation. She was fast, but not fast enough to disarm the warden before his thumb pressed down on the button.
Riot clenched her fists so hard, she felt her nails dig into her palms. Shaking, she sat back down on the bench next to Slade.
“That’s a good play-marine,” the warden mocked. He holstered his baton as he walked toward the exit of the cafeteria. “Remember my offer, Slade.”
As soon as the warden walked out of the room, the cafeteria fell back into its normal white noise of mutters and random yells, and one male patient even broke into a faintly familiar rap by an artist duo Riot remembered due to her fan knowledge of the vintage music and culture of Earth. The artist was called Kris Kross. The repeating line of “Jump! Jump!” echoed in the background.
“Thank you.” Slade looked over at Riot with tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Riot.”
“For what?” Riot was still seething with anger. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No one ever sticks up for me.” Slade licked the last of her lime green jello from her fingers.
“You and Warden Chambers have been going at it for a while.” Jessup pushed his tray away from his seat, signaling he was done with his meal. “When it comes to a head, be careful with that one. He’s not past using any underhanded technique he can come up with.”
A plan was already beginning to form in Riot’s head. Wherever she was, whatever this was, she needed to get answers. Answers meant getting outside of this nuthouse.
“How do you two feel about giving me a tour?” Riot stood for a second time, her uneaten meal still sitting on the table, as unappetizing as ever.
“Uh-oh, I know that look.” Jessup followed her lead, also rising from his seat. “That’s trouble.”
“No, I always look like this,” Riot lied. “It’s just my face.”
“NOTHING.” Riot stared out of what felt like the dozenth window in the Institute. Throughout Jessup and Slade’s guided tour of the facility, every window they came across provided the same view. Pristine green grass lawns met a chain link fence topped with razor wire. A hundred yards beyond that, the view was lost to a lush green forest. “Every window shows us absolutely squat; no landmarks, no surrounding buildings—nothing.”
“It’s just the man keeping us down.” Slade twirled in the hall they walked down. “But it’s not that bad. I mean, besides Warden Crappy Pants. We get to hang out with our friends, eat green jello, and play in the activity room. Speaking of the activity room, come on, let’s go!”
Slade took off at a run down the hall, leaving Riot and Jessup in her wake.
“Is she always like this?” Riot turned to the elderly black man for answers.
Jessup shrugged with a wide smile on his lips. “Slade’s a good kid. She’s full of energy and a little misguided, but all around, she’s not so bad.”
“Why’s she in here?”
“Boyfriend beat her for years. Ruined her physically, emotionally, and psychologically. One day Slade snapped.” Jessup’s voice got lower as he continued to tell Slade’s story. “They found him in pieces going around in her washing machine. She said he was a dirty man and something needed to be done with his filth.”
“Wow, that’s brutal.” Riot got a visual of the scene that made her smile. Little Slade had a mean streak in her after all. “And you? Why are you here? You seem pretty normal-ish.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Jessup avoided eye contact with Riot. Noise could be heard down the hall where a television played. It sounded like the Power Rangers theme music. “Look, we’re here.”
Riot didn’t mind pressuring Jessup for answers about his past, but at the moment, there was more to think about. They had taken her on a tour of the Institute, showing her the sleeping chambers, the showers, the solitary confinement wing, and now the activity area.
All around, patients clothed in white pants and shirts and white robes drew with crayons, watched Power Rangers on the small television, or played various tabletop games.
Slade had found a seat on the carpeted floor in front of the television, and she sat clapping her hands and rocking back and forth, enjoying the action.
“Well, you’ve seen most of the Institute now.” Jessup looked over at Riot with an arched eyebrow. “But I know that look too well. What’re you planning?”
“When tweedledee and tweedledum came along with Ray to pound Ashton, they were carrying those electric batons. How did they get them in the first place?”
“They jumped a trio of wardens, but that won’t happen again. Warden Chambers is the only one who’s carrying a baton around the patients now. And besides you, Ray and his loonies were the only ones insane enough to try to break out of here. With them in solitary confinement, things should settle down now.”
“Ray had a plan to get out of here, until I stopped him.” Riot folded her arms over her chest in thought. “I need to set up a chat with him.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Jessup furrowed his brow, trying to follow along with Riot’s train of thought. “I told you, they’re locked up tight in solitary—”
Jessup’s face lit up as he caught on to Riot’s plan.
“Oh, Riot, don’t do it.” Jessup shook his head. “Even if you got in there, there’d be no way to get you out.”
&
nbsp; “Let me worry about that.” Riot looked around the room for an opportunity.
DING!
The loud noise had come over the intercom, with the same female voice that had warned them about the escape attempt. “Attention patients: Please report to the dispensary. All patients, please report to the dispensary.”
“Dispensary?” Riot flexed her hands and rolled her neck from side to side. “They hand out weed here?”
“Pills.” Jessup motioned with his chin to the patients who were shuffling down the hall, a pair of wardens ushering them along. “It’s time for everyone to take their afternoon medication.”
Riot fell in line with Jessup. This was too perfect. Stop one: the dispensary. Stop two: solitary confinement.
THE URGE TO get out of whatever alternate reality she had woken up in hit her again. Her fellow Marines were out there taking it to the Syndicate, fighting and dying while she was in here supping on green jello and beans.
From an early age she had found the true definition of family in the Marine Corps. Her family needed her now and the longer she stayed in here, wherever here was, the longer it would take to get back into the fight.
“Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me.” Slade cut in line with Riot and Jessup. “Hey, you two didn’t think you’d swallow some mystery pills without me, did you?”
“In another setting, swallowing pills wouldn’t sound so bad.” Riot looked at the warden who stood at the front of the line, and then the one at the back. “How many wardens are at the Institute at any given time?”
“I don’t know. What do you think, Slade?” Jessup looked to the girl for consensus. “A dozen? No more than eighteen?”
Slade blew out a loud mouthful of air past her thin lips. “Oh, you’re close. There’s fifteen here on any given day, plus doctors and ancillary staff. But there are another ten wardens on call who can be here in case of an emergency. Their response time is twenty minutes, so they must live close, and just carry their equipment with them. If your plan is going to work, you either need to be out in under twenty minutes from when the alarm sounds, or disable the alarm altogether.”