by T. C. Clover
that the perpetrators were walking near the outer walls of the staircase. His hands began to tremble when he realized that there was no plan of action if he were to confront the killers. Despite the danger, Richard felt guilty for the events that transpired, and this shameful feeling propelled him down the flights of stairs. The green warning signs and bare gray walls looked identical to the young man, which made it seem like he was descending into hell. Each stairway landing had pitted gray non-slip surfaces, and the stairs were covered in a similar gray color. There was a chilly breeze coming up from the ground floor, which reminded the television star of his mortality.
Richard was sweating by the time he had descended eighteen flights of stairs, but his excitement piqued when he heard movements from a few floors below. His satellite phone began to ring, and the apprehensive man backed against the wall, freezing in the middle of a stairway to fish in his pocket for the device. It rang three times in the menacing tones of an old-fashioned telephone, and Richard answered the call in vain. He placed the unit close to his left ear and held the butcher knife out in a threatening manner. The television star was almost hyperventilating after the obnoxious ringing announced his presence to what seemed like the entire building.
“Is this Richard?” A middle-aged male voice asked through the receiver of his satellite phone. “Don’t hang up, Richard. Look up to your left at the camera. We can see you coming, and it seems like all you’ve got is a knife.” Richard turned his gaze up and to the left at a video camera that was mounted high above him on the concrete wall. “Richard, the people you're chasing are assassins – some of the best in the world. I urge you to turn around and go back to where you started. This whole thing is bigger than you think, and they won’t hesitate to make an example of you.”
Richard looked up at the red motion sensor light that displayed beneath the camera each time he moved and responded by raising his right middle finger from the handle of the butcher knife. He then hung up the phone and placed it in the pocket of his jeans as he sprinted down the stairs toward the ground floor. The defiant man heard a door open and shut on the level just beneath him and felt it was odd that someone would be exiting one floor above the lobby. His body resisted going further, and he felt almost paralyzed with fear, but Richard ignored his instincts and rushed down the next flight of stairs like a wild meerkat. When he got closer to the door, his phone started to ring again, and Richard answered the call out of pure fascination.
“Don’t go through that door!” The male voice shouted at him with what sounded like a sincere warning.
Richard dropped the phone on the gray non-slip surface of the landing and used his left hand to tug on the door, keeping his body concealed behind it for cover. For a moment, the film editor thought that he had heard a woman screaming his name, but his senses were overwhelmed by a bright and deafening explosion. The steel door was knocked from its hinges and impressed itself on Richard’s body against the stairs. He felt heat and pressure all around him, and the door slammed down on his chest like the foot of a giant, forcing his head to smack the concrete. His vision blacked out under the scorched and twisted metal door, giving him no time to react.
XIX. The Jester's Joker
THREE WEEKS LATER
Something was wrong with his eyelids; the young man had tried three times to open his eyes without success. This revelation gave him severe discomfort, combined with the sensation that he could not move his body. He strained several times in vain to complete this simple task; something he had been able to do since infancy. ‘Open your eyes,’ the man thought as he worked his eyelid muscles up and down with growing anxiety. After what seemed like several minutes, his right eyelid split open at an odd angle, giving him the ability to see bright indoor lighting. There was a burning sensation from the split eyelid and a trickle of blood, which caused him to wince and hold his breath.
When the man turned his head to the left, he noticed a heart monitor that was beeping in time with his pulse. There was also a tall rack with two bags of intravenous fluids hanging from stainless steel hooks. He could see long, thin tubes extending below the bags of fluid and into a vein in his left arm. A bright white body cast covered every bit of his skin, and it appeared fresh as if fashioned from new material.
Due to the rigidness of the cast, his ability to turn his head or speak were limited. The confused man strained to open his mouth and wanted to call out to someone, but felt a tube between his lips and heard the rhythmic sounds of air being pushed by a machine. He began to writhe within the confines of the body cast, realizing that a piece of hospital equipment was breathing for him.
This fit of rage didn’t last long, and his body punished him with pain that was worse than a thousand wasp stings. He stopped moving when his nerve endings began to hurt as if someone was rubbing sandpaper across his muscles and arteries. The burning was severe enough that it felt like he was going to die. He attempted to cry out, wanting to make the agony subside, but chose not to move his body until someone could tell him what was happening.
An alarm sounded from the heart monitor next to his hospital bed, and a twenty-seven-year-old African-American nurse sprinted into the room.
“Oh my God!” The woman exclaimed and partially covered her face with both hands, shocked to see that her patient was awake. “I’ll get the doctor right away.” She grabbed a paging unit from a black lanyard around her neck and spoke frantically to her coworkers through the device. “Yes, I have a code red situation in the ICU. Doctors needed in room 224.”
The nurse fled from the hospital room and returned a few seconds later with a bag of intravenous fluid. Her slender fingers were quick to mount the bag on one of four stainless steel hooks of the medical caddy. She then disconnected a tube from one of the other bags and affixed it to the bottom of the new bag.
“Okay my friend, you're about to feel much better,” the wholesome woman assured him in a comforting tone. “This morphine is going to make you a little drowsy, but we need you to rest anyway.” She adjusted the flow of the pain medication until her patient's heart rate went back down to normal, and turned around to check on him with a bright smile.
“What have we got?” A thirty-two-year-old doctor asked as he entered the room in a rush. “Oh, wow, he tore through the stitches on his right eye. How are his vitals?” The doctor inquired as he removed a pen light from the pocket of his white coat.
After a short pause, the doctor turned on the pen light and pointed it at the right eye of his patient. He listened to a verbal report from the nurse and seemed calmer after hearing the readouts. The doctor had large hands and was of Chinese-American ancestry. His hair was neat, and he carried himself like the type of person one would trust to save lives in desperate situations. Without looking, he reached toward the nurse with his right hand extended, and she handed him a clipboard with a hospital chart attached.
“Okay, Jason, I’m Doctor Henneman,” the medical professional stated with a smile and glanced down at the clipboard in his hands. “You were involved in a space shuttle accident, and you’re at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. You and a few members of your crew managed to climb into an emergency escape pod and eject during the explosion. Over sixty percent of your body is covered in burns, and we've already done five surgeries to keep you alive. So, please go easy on your body for the next few days; it can’t handle much. I’m sure you have some questions, and the FBI would like to ask you some questions too, but right now we need to focus on making you feel better. So, my nurse is going to give you something to help you sleep through the pain until we feel that you’re stable enough to interact with anyone. Your family is being brought down from the cafeteria, and we’ll let them see you before you go back to sleep. Don’t worry, Jason, you’re in the best burn unit in the country,” he said with a reassuring smile, and then jotted some notes on his paperwork.
Jason tried to stay awake for his family,
but between an overwhelming state of emotional shock and his body being too weak to continue looking at the world, hope was the last thing on his mind. The astronaut closed his right eye, praying that nothing he had just witnessed was real.
Edwina Holtzclaw Boarding School – Lancaster, California
Headmistress Mary sat behind a corner desk within a large mobile classroom, watching television on a black video tablet. With her earbuds in place, she couldn’t hear the stories that Satoko was telling the students and seemed oblivious to the activities of the class. There was a show playing on the tablet called Shots Fired in the Melting Pot that featured the survivors of an act of domestic terrorism. She watched the events unfold on the eight-inch screen with an anxious expression.
“Welcome to Shots Fired in the Melting Pot,” the European host stated as a camera panned in on his face. “I’m your host, James Iverson. For those of you who are new to the show, let’s help you to get caught up. This production used to be a reality television series about six natural enemies who were forced to share a loft together in New York City. But after an act of domestic terrorism just