Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Sleeper Protocol
Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Ikenberry All rights reserved.
First Edition: November 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1-940215-60-0
ISBN-10: 1940215609
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Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
For my girls.
Chapter One
Light penetrated the darkness. I felt a sensation on my face and recognized it as warmth. Silence became a soft, steady buzzing, familiar and disconcerting at the same time. My eyes twitched under hooded lids while my fingers flexed and found a smooth, cool surface under my hands. The pinpoint of light expanded into blurry brightness. A million reflections of light rippling on water became clear as they danced and sparkled like diamonds. A horn boomed once, and then again, in the distance. Seagulls chattered all around, adding to the cacophony and confusion. I blinked—a slow movement of my sandpaper lids across my eyeballs—and the camera of my mind snapped into focus.
A wide harbor stretched from horizon to horizon in front of me. Recognition fought confusion and won in slow, lingering moments. The warm sun tingled the right side of my face. I glanced away from it, turned to look at the city behind me, and smiled.
I’d been there, to that exact spot, before. For the life of me, I could not remember when. The rough cut of stone overlooking the harbor had a name. Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair resembled a wide sofa tucked into the hillside above Sydney Harbor. It sat off to my right, up a slight incline of sidewalk. A faint breeze off the water rustled the leaves of a tree above and behind me, where the birds chirped. The expanded clamshell of the Sydney Opera House pierced the crystal blue sky a few hundred meters away, on the edge of Circular Quay. Is the small bar on the harbor patio still there? I had a memory, bright and vibrant, of going there on a tour of the city with three British girls. Sophie, the cute blonde with the Birmingham accent, liked my smile. We’d traded letters for a few months, and then our brief time together had faded into pleasant memories. I’d been seventeen years old. Across the Quay, past the Opera House, stood the Harbour Bridge, known as the Coathanger by Australians. The bridge, which dominated the skyline, had a constant stream of traffic crossing it and the space above it. Above it. I gaped at the hovering and flying vehicles of differing shapes and sizes as they dove and swooped through the sky like barn swallows at sunset.
A pretty girl in a green one-piece uniform bearing red crosses pinned to her collar points stepped in front of me and knelt. Her eyes were emerald green and her perfume light, like the scent of flowers on a morning breeze. The smell of hazelnut-flavored coffee came with her and made my mouth water. A shower of curly blond hair tumbled over her left shoulder. She leaned in with a concerned look on her pretty face and blocked my view. “Are you quite all right?”
Her Australian accent was warm and familiar. I licked my lips and managed to form the words, “How did I get here? To Sydney?”
A small tablet appeared in her hands, and she tapped on the screen with a stylus. “We’ll get to all of that shortly, sir.”
Just answer my question. There wasn’t time to ask her other questions before she stepped behind me, and we moved down the wide concrete path. A wheelchair? Panic shot through me. My blanket-covered legs barely responded when I tried to move them. Am I injured? I found that I could move my arms and legs, but they were heavy and unfamiliar even in the light cotton garment that fell around my shoulders. It had to be one of those silly things that tied in the back. That was what sick people wore. Am I sick?
A flying car banked above us, and beyond it, the skyline of Sydney appeared and took my breath away. All of it was wrong. The buildings rose like a steel-and-glass wall, reaching hundreds of meters into the azure sky—not angular, but rather, like curved wings and sails. The structures all appeared to have one thing in common: even the smaller ones contained immense rooftop gardens like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There was something… different. I couldn’t place it and quickly lost the thought as dogs and children noisily filled the park around us, and we proceeded down the path. Kids skated on hoverboards. A young girl led a proud cat on a leash. It was the size of a sheepdog. The blooms of a million flowers contrasted with the green grass of the Royal Botanical Gardens—all of it so similar and yet so very different.
“What happened here?” I croaked and gasped for breath. My chest tight, I glanced wildly around the strange city. A large vehicle painted like a city bus roared overhead. The stimuli overwhelmed me until a cool hand touched the back of my neck.
“Let’s get you home.”
Home. I wondered what that meant as she pushed me deeper into the city. This is not my home. I needed to find answers. That I was in Australia, what should have been a friendly land, gave me a little solace. I might be injured, or I could be a prisoner, but at least there was a chance someone would be able to tell me what was going on or that I’d figure it out myself.
Home appeared to be a hospital, though it seemed more like an almost-vacant office building, especially since I saw no patients or medical equipment. The lack of hospital beds and scurrying staff gave the building an empty feel. There were very few private rooms and many large, open spaces with uncomfortable furniture clustered in front of small windows or dusty paintings. My room was small and private. The young nurse pulled me up from the chair and positioned me against the bed without a word. Moving without the chair was much harder than I’d first thought. The rubbery feeling in my limbs remained, and
I felt as if I’d been sleeping for days. The walls of my room were the light blue of a winter sky. Pictures of the shoreline and lighthouses hung in creatively random places. There was no television, printed media, or medical equipment that I could see. I doubted there would even be a Bible in the bedside table. Across from the bed, a large screen hung on the wall and remained grey and empty. A small bathroom door stood ajar to my left, and the facilities appeared exactly as they should. Maybe I’d hallucinated the flying cars and alien skyline.
A nurse, much older and not as pretty as the one I’d woken up to, entered the room and stopped. “Can I get you anything?” Her hands came together in front of her and wrung tightly.
“Something to drink, please.”
The nurse stared at me with terrified eyes and hustled out the door. Alone, I sat for as long as I could before nature called. I pushed my way out of bed and stood on quaking legs. Using the wall for balance with my left hand, I managed to plod like a drunkard into the bathroom. A check of my reflection in the mirror gave me no clues. I looked the same as ever—at least, that was what I told myself.
The journey back to bed came easier—more balance and less shuffling—which made me feel a little better about my predicament. Nothing hurt. There were no wounds or healing incisions, at least that I could touch or sense. My mind raced. Why am I in a hospital? What happened to me?
The wide wooden door opened, and a man in a long white coat walked in carrying a tray, which he placed on a rolling table. His blond hair had some streaks of grey in it, as did his goatee. The sun-kissed man smiled and maneuvered the table to my bedside. “Good morning. My name is Doctor Garrett—I’m your physician. Why don’t we have a look at ya?”
“Can you answer a couple of questions for me?”
The doctor kept his distance. “Sure, mate.”
“I’ve met two nurses, and both of them seemed scared of me. Am I in some type of trouble?”
He laughed and ran a hand across his face. “You’ve certainly got your wits about ya. No, you’re not in any sort of trouble. You’ve surprised them—that’s all. Given your condition, we weren’t expecting you to wake up for a bit.”
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “My condition?”
Garrett nodded. “Let me give you a quick scan, er, examination, and we’ll talk about everything, okay?” His easy Australian manner, as he slowly scanned me from head to toe with a small device, was that of a man watching the surf. Like a smartphone, my mind whispered. The hum of his breathing as he scanned my back relaxed me. The procedure lasted a full five minutes, and as he finished, he set the device on the rolling table next to a collection of syringes.
“Well,” he said with a grin, “you appear to be fully awake and reasonably healthy. All of your vital signs are normal for a twenty-eight-year-old. Your nervous system is still adjusting, but it’s coming along fine. Have you felt a little rubbery in your limbs?”
The breath I’d been holding came out slowly. I was in good health. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I laughed and nodded. “Made it to the bathroom, though.”
“That’s good to hear.” He reached for the small device and tapped a few buttons I could not see. He chewed his lip and made two more entries. He could have been ordering my breakfast for all I knew. After a moment, he said, “Let’s talk about your condition. How do you feel?”
“Normal except for the heaviness in my arms and legs. Feel like I’ve been asleep for days. I’m not sure about a lot of things.”
“I can imagine, mate. Had quite a shock, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Care to tell me about the flying cars?”
“What do you think about them?” Garrett crossed his arms and squinted at me.
Outside, the sky was grey, and rain streaked the window. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I turned back to the doctor. There was really only one explanation. “What year is this?”
Garrett took a deep breath. “That’s what we need to talk about, if you are willing to talk about it calmly.”
The cars were only a part of it. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and I licked my lips again. How long have I been asleep? Didn’t he say I was twenty-eight? What the hell is going on? I pulled in a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and let the breath out. When I opened my eyes, I could tell by the look on Garrett’s face it was much worse than I’d thought. “Sure,” I managed to croak.
“You’ve been asleep for quite some time. Right now, finding out what year it is could greatly hurt your chances for a complete recovery. There are quite a few pieces that you’re going to have to put together on your own.”
“Like what? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Do you remember anything before waking up by the harbor?”
Panic rose in my chest. He hadn’t told me a damned thing. Two could play that game. “No. That’s all I can remember.”
“Are ya quite sure? Anna said you smiled. There must have been something.”
“Do I have… what’s it called?”
“Amnesia?” He shook his head. “Nothing like that at all, technically. You have a blocked memory. That’s something we’ve done on purpose. Everything you remember is there, but you are the only person who can sift through it and put it together. We’re just here to help you. Can you remember what you were thinking when you woke up?”
“Who’s we?”
Garrett frowned. “Your friends. You’re among friends here. We just want you healthy.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
He opened his hands. “I understand that, mate. I really do. We’re trying to help you remember who you are. That starts with answering my questions.”
“How about you answer mine?”
He flinched. It was tiny, but it was there. “In time, I’ll answer every question you ask. All I want to know right now is what you were thinking when you woke up.”
I told him about Sophie and knowing that I’d been to Sydney before when I was younger.
His eyebrows rose, and he tapped a few notes on his tablet. “That’s very promising. If you keep doing that, you’ll recover your memory.”
“How can I keep doing that—having those memories?”
“Experiences. Everything that you experience from now on is likely to trigger a memory. Could be a familiar smell, a sight, or some other type of stimulus. You’ll be doing that all by yourself, and it will take time. Lots of time. You just have to do two things.”
“And those would be?” I squinted at him. The whole damned thing made no sense, and I’d have to get the answers on my own. That was fine by me.
“Be a good patient, and ask a lot of questions. That’s part of my job with your integration.”
“Integration?” That didn’t sound medical at all.
“Yeah,” Garrett said and leaned an elbow on the bedrail. “This whole process of you putting your memory back together. For the moment, I’m the only person allowed to ask you questions. The nurse who went with you for a walk wasn’t supposed to say anything at all to you. A memory block failing at the wrong time would make it difficult for you to integrate. Too much stimuli could basically short-circuit your brain and maybe leave you in a vegetative state.”
“All because you’ve blocked my memory?”
Garrett straightened and turned, rolling the small table closer. “Let me ask you a question. What’s your name?”
My mind became a vortex of swirling leaves. Red, brown, and orange scraps of memory blew past my fingers. I grasped at them but came up empty-handed. I didn’t feel helpless, nor did I feel lost. I ran a hand through my short, coarse hair and scratched my head. My name was there, on the tip of my tongue, and while it mattered to me, it was not all that important. “I don’t know.”
His eyes followed my every move, and h
e relaxed and smiled again. “It’s all right, mate. That’s part of the process.” Garrett took his hand from the edge of the table and its contents, pushing it aside so he could sit in a chair beside my bed.
“I take it some people don’t react too well to that question?” I pointed at the tray of syringes.
Garrett laughed. “No, they don’t. Precautions are necessary in a case like yours, ya understand?”
“Do you know my name?”
The easy smile on his face faltered slightly. “No, I don’t. This is all up to you. Considering that you don’t know your name, and that things are very different outside, how are you feeling?”
There should have been some anxiety, but there wasn’t. The panic in my chest became muted, and the whole effect of the morning was more numbing than anything—as if none of it mattered despite its importance. There were too many questions. I needed answers, but I hadn’t had a single one. My stomach rumbled. “Hungry, I think.”
“That’s a good thing.” Garrett chuckled. “We’ll do something about that right now. Take some time, and think through what we’ve talked about. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and we’ll chat some more.”
Garrett walked away, carrying his tray of precautions, and left me staring out the window. The low-hanging clouds had become a raging storm. Water ran down the window, cleansing it. The sound of the rain and thunder soothed me, but as the downpour slowly slackened to a drizzle, the unfamiliar skyline caught my eye. Everything was wrong. Changed. Different. Except for me, I thought. But how in the hell do I know that? What in the hell is going on? I wondered a million things, trying to make sense of it all, but all I knew for sure was that the world was different, and I was alive and alone. The rain strengthened again, smacking the window in thick drops that obscured my view of a world not my own.
Sleeper Protocol Page 1