by S L Shelton
Wolf looked out the window and saw what he had been looking for. “Park there,” Wolf said, pointing at the spot.
They parked in front of a collapsing concrete wall. Its ancient, crumbling remains left rebar protruding from the front where it had been struck by too many truck bumpers over the long years. Wolf got out and went to the corner where the damage was the worst.
He pulled on an exposed end of half-inch iron rebar and dislodged it from the rubble. It broke free in his hands, a rod of about two feet in length.
When he brought it around to Mac’s door, Mac locked it. “No,” he said through the glass.
“Sorry, man. It has to be done.”
Mac shook his head. “No way am I letting you ram that thing into my already aching guts.”
“Mac. It’ll go quick and the clinic is right there,” he said, pointing behind him, talking gently as if trying to convince a child to eat an unwanted plate of broccoli.
Mac shook his head, but then unlocked the door. Wolf knelt in front of him and cut a small hole in Mac’s pullover Henley before ripping it wider. Mac chugged the remainder of the bottle of schnapps, spilling a good portion of it down his front in the process.
“I have to go slow,” Wolf said. “I don’t want to puncture any more bowel than the bullet already did.”
Mac shook his head. “I hate you, you fuckin’ spooky CIA creep.”
“No you don’t. But I understand.”
“Do you?!”
Wolf pointed at the bandage on his forehead and winked.
Mac dropped the bottle and nodded. “Oh. Yeah. I forgot,” he said and grasped the driver’s seat, bracing. “But I still hate you.”
“You’re going to hate me more after this,” Wolf said and pressed the ragged edge of the rebar into the bullet hole.
Mac grabbed a handful of shirt and stuffed it into his mouth as he began to scream tight-lipped. Seifert reached over the back of his seat and grasped Mac’s arm, holding firmly as the rebar slowly penetrated the wound.
Wolf reached behind Mac and felt the exit wound for the iron as he pressed it through. When it found its mark, he shoved it through with a fist’s width protruding from the other side.
“That’s it,” Wolf said, pulling the IV line out of the vein on the back of his hand. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
Woozy again, Mac, slid forward, groaning into the shirt still clasped in his teeth. As Seifert jumped out of the car, Mac stood on shaky legs, then punched Wolf in the face. Wolf quickly regained his wits and took Mac’s arm around his shoulder, helping to steady him. A trickle of blood dribbled from Wolf’s nose.
“I’ve got him,” Wolf said. “Take the car and park it near a bar somewhere a few blocks away and find us another ride. I’ll meet you inside.”
Seifert nodded and closed the back door as they hobbled away.
Mac looked back as they turned the corner. “Where’s he going?” he asked, weak and slurring his words.
“He’s parking the car. He’ll meet us inside.”
Mac nodded and his head lulled forward. “I think I should go back to base. I’m not up for partying anymore tonight.”
Wolf patted him on the shoulder. “It’s fine, big guy. You’ll be lying down in a few minutes.”
Mac looked down. “Shit! How’d that happen?”
“You fell. It’s okay. We’ll get you patched up.”
Mac slapped Wolf’s face lazily, tapping his cheek twice. “You’re okay for a fuckin’ alien, you spooky sonofabitch.”
“Thanks,” Wolf replied as they pushed through the double glass doors of the clinic. “And you’re okay for a fuckin’ aquatic Sasquatch.”
**
WOLF sat in the clinic’s quiet waiting room, his eyes closed. He heard Seifert’s footsteps outside before he arrived.
“They’re working on him now,” Wolf said without opening his eyes as the big SEAL sat next to him. “The doctor seemed competent.”
“That’s a relief,” Seifert said. “It’d be a shame if something bad happened to screw up this Op.”
Wolf grinned. “He’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but I’ll be tending to him and John for the foreseeable future,” Seifert said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. “We’re not going to be able to provide much support.”
“It’ll work out.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Seifert muttered.
After a moment of silence, Wolf turned to Seifert and bumped his arm with the back of his hand. “What kind of transport did you get?”
“A small delivery truck,” he replied, sounding as if he were already half asleep. “They won’t notice it’s missing until Monday morning.”
“Good. Hot-wire?”
Seifert shook his head. “The keys were in the visor.”
“Even better.”
Seifert sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. “How are we supposed to meet up with Temple?”
“I’ll get some clean phones before we head out and leave a message for him.”
Seifert nodded and wiped his face tiredly. “I hope he finds a place with beds. I don’t want Mac sleeping on concrete.”
“John’s not a sadist. He’ll think of the creature comforts.”
“I hope he finds some weapons, too,” Seifert replied. “I’m not feeling real confident out in the wild like this with only a SIG and two extra mags.”
“We wouldn’t have gotten off base if we’d kept the rifles and ammo packs.”
Seifert nodded. “I know. Doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”
Wolf stood and went to the coffee pot on a table by the receptionist’s window. He poured two cups then returned, handing one to Seifert. “Mac will heal fast. And honestly, the two of you are going to be providing security for John…not me.”
Seifert looked over the rim of his cup as he sipped then set it aside. “That can’t be what the plan was,” he said, lowering his voice. “Not to sound smug, but Mac and I are the best tactical assets you have. We’re not babysitters.”
Wolf shook his head. “Doesn’t matter what the plan was. With Hawkins dead and Mac wounded already…”
Seifert grinned. “The first casualty of every battle is the plan that brought you there.”
“Roger that.”
eight
Sunday, May 1st
Time Unknown—Location Unknown
I awoke submerged. Water closed in on my nostrils and mouth as if I had been mid-breath. Panic became my world.
I thrashed, frantically kicking and flailing my arms, seeking the surface. But “Up” wasn’t relevant. I didn’t know which direction I should move, and to be honest, my mind wasn’t cooperating enough to reason it out. The water was cold and turned my clothes into a prison of heavy, clinging obstruction.
A brief moment a clarity struck me, and I remembered I should look for the direction bubbles rose from my nose so I could discern direction—but it was pitch-black.
Or are my eyes just closed?
My eyes opened as if that simple thought had been the key to releasing me from my watery prison all along.
I stared at a ceiling, the water gone from my senses. The relief was short-lived. It immediately struck me that I still couldn’t breathe. I tried to suck in air, but my lungs didn’t cooperate. And worse, I became disturbingly aware that my heart wasn’t beating.
Breathe! I screamed inside my head. BREATHE!
My lungs filled with air then collapsed again. As if triggered by the thought, I heard my pulse in my ears.
Panic receded, and I reveled in the delicious sensation of taking a breath and having blood move through my veins. I relaxed into the rhythm of it, savoring each moment air moved through my nostrils and the slow thrub, thrub, thrub, of my heartbeat.
When calm had returned to my mind, I moved my eyes across the ceiling. Colored lights flashed across the dingy, cracking plaster above me in a regular pulse.
Then, panic set in again.
I can’t move my head. I can’t move my head!
As if letting any thought into my mind other than breath and heartbeat, my lungs emptied and refuse to fill again.
Breathe! I thought—and breath returned.
Oh shit. This is bad. Very, very bad.
As quickly as the thought occurred, I plunged into darkness again. This time, I felt my fleeting panic of lost breath vanish. I realized they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, automatically, without me having to order it.
I lay on something warm, soft, and a little itchy. On my closed eyelids, I felt heat and saw light. I opened them and my optic nerve was struck by sunlight. My hand rose to block the assault.
Ah! My arms work now.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around—I was home. Apparently, I had simply fallen asleep in the garden again. But something wasn’t quite right. Something irked me deep inside, like a bit of meat stuck between the back teeth hours after a meal. My mind, like that tongue probing what didn’t belong, became frustrated. And unlike the stringy invader stuck between teeth, I couldn’t simply reach in and pull it out.
Something isn’t right.
I sat up fully and searched my surroundings. How long have I…we, been here? Two years? Three?
The air was soft against my skin like a warm blanket, wrapping me in what seemed to be a whisper of “sleep”. Has it ever snowed? Rained? I searched my memory but found no recollection of either. And the garden—it’s not normal for tomatoes and greens to come in at the same time…or produce all year long. When was the last time there weren’t peppers to harvest?
And then, there was that nagging, persistent thought—that bit of meat between the teeth. The ceiling, and my inability to breathe felt more real than right now.
I stood and looked up. “I know this isn’t real!” I yelled up at the sky. “You can’t fool me anymore!”
“What’s that, liebchen?” Kathrin called out the kitchen window.
A sharp pain raced through my chest. If this is fake, then Kathrin isn’t really…she’s…
I ignored her call and turned my back on the house. “Answer me! I know this isn’t real!”
The wind picked up at that moment, and dark clouds moved in, impossibly fast. “Are you going to throw a temper tantrum?” I yelled at the approaching storm. “Face me!”
Night fell. I mean it fell hard. One moment it was nearly midday, and then the sun arced across the sky in a matter of seconds. A chill ran down my back.
“You’ve created a nice space for yourself,” he said.
I turned to see a man sitting in front of my fire pit. Flames and sparks licked up into the air lazily, then blinked out of existence above our heads. I recognized the intruder immediately—Wolf.
“How long?” I asked.
“About two months,” he replied gently as if saying it any other way would make my world collapse—which it might very well have.
I shook my head. It had felt like so much longer—at least two years.
“Scott, there are some things we need to talk about and some decisions that have to be made,” Wolf said anticipating my next question.
“Always the unwelcome voice in my head,” I said.
“At the moment, you are the voice in my head.”
Rage filled my senses. “It’s still my head, you arrogant fu—!”
“I won’t debate semantics with you,” he said, raising his voice. “You’re in no position to argue from an informed position.”
“Am I trapped?” I asked.
He shook his head. “This was not my doing,” he said. “Well…more correctly, I didn’t choose this. You did.”
“I did not choose to be imprisoned in my own head!”
“Neither did I,” he said. “The bullet in your skull decided that for both of us.”
“Bullet?!” The memory came flooding back, and my hand flashed to my hairline as a sharp pain dug through my head like a drill.
I sat abruptly—or rather, I fell, and a chair was there to catch me.
“It’s worse than you remember,” Wolf said. “There have been two attempts to remove it, leaving more damage than was there initially.”
“Doctors remove bullets every day. Are you telling me there isn’t a surgeon anywhere in the country to take it out?!”
“That’s the other thing. We don’t exactly have the freedom to pursue the best medical solutions… You’re on the FBI’s most wanted list. Treason.”
I stared wide-eyed. “What have you done?!”
He shook his head. “Nothing you don’t already know about. Taking Combine’s money forced them into a corner. They’ve escalated and are now controlling most agencies and legislative offices.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees as the pain in my head subsided.
“It’s an impossible scenario,” he said. “And as you accidentally discovered a moment ago, you have no ability to move or even breathe on your own.”
“I breathed.”
“Yes. Until you were distracted and you forgot to. Then even your heart stopped. You’d have to remain conscious twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week just to focus on taking breath and making your heart pump blood…and you’d still be unable to move, speak, sleep, worry, plan, contemplate—”
“I get it!”
“No…you don’t.” It was the closest he’d come to agitation.
I sat back in the chair and propped my feet up on the stones of the fire pit, letting the dying flames warm the soles of my work boots.
“Out there, they’re fighting… Out there, life goes on,” he said, almost pleading. “But here we are, trapped in a prison of skull and brain. And there’s work yet to be done.”
“What work?”
“Wake the fuck up!” Wolf snapped. “You started something. You jammed your fingers into a hornets’ nest and yanked away the walls. Did you think you’d just hand that information over and everything would be fine? That everything would go back to normal?”
I shook my head, lowering my gaze. “No.”
“So, when you jumped in front of that bullet on the beach, did you think these problems would go away?!”
I tried to remember that night on the beach in the Caymans. I recalled grabbing the body armor and diving to the sand—why had I done that?
I looked back toward the kitchen window. Kathrin stood there, apparently absorbed in some task. I watched her face, twisted in concentration with whatever it was she was working on out of my line of sight. I had jumped in front of that bullet to save Kathrin.
“I couldn’t…I didn’t think…”
“I know! It was a completely selfish act!”
My clenched jaw and rage sent me to my feet. “Selfish?! Who the—”
“Sit,” he said gently, and as if I had no will over the act, I did just that. “It was selfish because you knew about one of the biggest subversions of rule in modern history, unwinding in your hands…trusted by hundreds, possibly thousands of souls to see through, and you threw yourself in front of a bullet to protect what you loved instead.”
He may have had control over my body, but he had no ability to stop my rage.
He shook his head. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but in that moment, were you thinking of your oath or of Kathrin?”
“I was thinking of Kathrin, you cocksucker!”
He nodded. “And what of the team you had on the beach and the men and women at TravTech and the NCS personnel at Langley who died.”
Heat rose in my face, and I opened my mouth to scream my fury when the end of his statement registered. “Langley? What happened at Langley?”
“Director Burgess, the analysts, operatives, officers, internal security…dozens dead when Combine blew the lower floors.”
I stared blankly into the dark. “John? Nick?” I whispered.
“They’re alive.”
I nodded, grateful for that small consolation then looked back at the light in the kitchen window. “Is s
he…” But I couldn’t bring myself to finish the question.
He just stared at me for a moment. “There are things you need to consider before I answer what you’re afraid to ask.”
I dropped my gaze again. This is too much reality in one sitting. I wish I hadn’t figured it out. I wish—
“That’s the other thing,” he said. “There are issues affecting us that are going to make this world…” He gestured around him. “…impossible to maintain.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I’ve been here for years!”
“You’ve been here for weeks…and not many at that.”
I glared at him, angry. Angry at being told my life was a lie. Angry at having an invader commandeering my body, at being lied to, imprisoned, and—
“And angry your noble act didn’t—”
“Shut up!” I jumped up from my chair, fists clenched. “Don’t you say another word. Not one more fucking word.”
I looked again at the kitchen window to see if Kathrin had heard my outburst—she no longer stood there at the window. A second later, she walked out of the door with two mugs in hand.
“I thought you and your friend would want your coffee out here,” she said with a smile. “It sounds like it’s a serious conversation.”
She set the coffee mugs on the rim of the fire pit and looked at our uninvited guest before leaving without another word.
I looked at Wolf. “Why didn’t she…?”
“This is not my creation,” he said. “I only provided the space. You filled it.”
I sat down again.
“As I said, there is much that you need to know and some decisions that have to be made,” he said.
I stared at my boots in the dancing light of the fire for what seemed like several moments before speaking again. “You’ve been living and working with my body.”
He nodded.
“And no one else knows that’s what’s happened?” I asked.
“No,” he replied but then tipped his head in a half shrug as if conceding a point. “Though everyone suspects something is wrong. It’s not every day someone forms a rebellion while dealing with a bullet in his head.”
I gathered my questions and prepared for an assault of unpleasant information. I opened my mouth to speak.