by E. R. Torre
Of all the ways to die, I didn’t think it would be by drowning…
Instead of water, her lungs filled with air.
Her mind tried to process this. She tried to look down as far as she could and at her mouth. She saw something attached to the lower part of her face. It was dark, formfitting.
An air mask!
She felt incredible relief and hungrily sucked down the air. The water continued to move above her, splashing to and fro. It dawned on Nox that while she didn’t feel movement, the casket she was in was moving.
She turned her head to the side, to see beyond the liquid and beyond her glass prison.
She tried to recall how she got here but couldn’t. Vague memories burst into her mind, visions of a motorcycle ride, electronic wails, and black boxes. All together, these images and memories formed a confusing muddle. None of it made sense.
The fingers of her bound hands felt along the smooth surface of the casket.
Around her and outside the casket she spotted shadowy figures moving back and forth. The place they inhabited moved as well. Nox and her captors were in some kind of vehicle traveling along a very rough road and at top speeds.
There were at least four people with her. Three of them were dressed in dark clothing. The fourth, a bald man, was dressed in white. He worked what appeared to be a computer on the wall opposite her casket. While the others focused on whatever was happening toward the rear of the vehicle, the bald man’s attention was entirely on Nox.
The bald man realized Nox was awake and pointed to her. One of the figures in black hurried to the man’s side. The figure was larger than the man calling him. There was something black over his right eye, something…
A black eye-patch.
Though she still couldn’t quite remember all the details of how she got here, she distinctly remembered the man with a black eye patch. She remembered hating him from the moment she first saw him and wanting him dead. Involuntarily, she thrashed in her pool. She still wanted to reach out and grab the man by the neck, to squeeze him until…
Nox shook it off.
She felt a buzz, as if something outside the vehicle –something filled with rage– had just linked up with her.
Nox felt the gunshot even before it happened.
The shot slammed through the vehicle’s outer wall and ripped into the man in white. The bullet erupted through his body and emerged from the other side, shattering the left side of the glass casket just above Nox’s face. The glass collapsed above Nox, sending most of the sticky liquid out in a heavy rush. Nox now had a clear view of the figures around her. The man with the eye patch grabbed the man in white. That man’s clothing was stained a brilliant red. He could not survive.
The sounds of the truck’s engine revving high and the squeal of tires followed the gunshot. Nox felt the pull of gravity in the crumbling casket as the vehicle made a very sharp turn. She heard yells coming from somewhere beyond her feet and toward the back of the truck. It came from the other two people dressed in black.
She heard more gunfire.
The truck lurched some more, sending the two figures at the back tumbling.
We’re being attacked.
Nox allowed her body to sink to the bottom of the glass casket. She felt at her bonds and realized what held her in place were a pair of thick rubber straps. Her fingers wandered about. She felt slivers of broken glass that came from the shattered casket under her. She grabbed a large, jagged piece and used it to cut through the straps. In seconds, she was free.
She planted her palms flat against what was left of the cracked glass above her and pushed. Splinter lines expanded. She felt the glass give. She pushed harder.
Outside, the man with the eye patch yelled for a med-kit. His hands were pressed against the man in white’s wound. He was trying to staunch the flow of blood and hadn’t noticed what Nox was doing.
Nox pushed even harder. The glass was giving. The glass was giving.
The glass gave.
The rest of the casket shattered and fell to the floor. Nox ripped the mask from her face and sat up. The moment her body left the sticky liquid, she felt an incredible pain.
The electronic wails were back in full force.
“Get down!”
The words came from the man with the black eye-patch.
He had a gun in his hand. It was a shiny silver piece, something Nox had never seen before. An electronic arc jumped at the gun’s side. She heard the sound of something sizzle.
He didn’t fire.
Her eyes locked with his.
His other hand remained pressed against the man’s wound.
“Who are you?” Nox said.
Her voice sounded alien to her ears. It was full of rage.
The man didn’t reply. At his side, the two other soldiers trained their weapons at Nox. The man with the eye patch shook his head slightly and the soldiers stood down.
His weapon, however, remained on her.
“Who are you?” Nox repeated. “What is this?”
The man with the eye patch shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said.
The man’s finger twitched against the weapon’s trigger. Nox tried to dodge the charge but couldn’t. The last thing she saw was a brilliant arc of energy leap from the gun and hit her in the chest.
23
Nox awoke screaming.
She was in a strange, brightly illuminated room and surrounded by people in surgical scrubs. Their faces were covered with masks and their eyes hidden behind safety goggles. She fought against them, her arms flaying at their faces, but there were too many and they held her down. She tried to kick them away but discovered her legs were immobile. When she could no longer fight, she yelled and swore.
One of them stood back. In his hand was a large syringe. There was a black eye-patch over his right eye. He walked toward her, lowering the syringe as he did. Something pricked her left arm.
Her struggle was over.
She closed her eyes…
She awoke a second time in a dull gray room.
Someone sat on the corner of her bed looking down at her. It was the man with the black eye-patch. He was dressed in a freshly pressed black military jumpsuit.
“Who…?” Nox muttered.
This was the closest she came to the man with the eye-patch. She stared at his face, at the massive scars along the right side of his body. His skin looked as if it had been roasted over a pit.
“…who…?”
He was older than her, slim and athletically built. He projected an air of authority but, surprisingly, not one of menace. He reached out and held her hand. His hand felt warm to the touch.
He gazed at her for a long time without saying anything.
Somehow, they communicated. He asked her silent questions and somehow she answered them without talking. He was in her head, sorting through her memories, baring her soul, as surely as the mind scanners did back in Arabia. This scared her. Every time she was strapped to those scanners, she experienced terrible pains and left the procedure feeling violated.
Nox swore she’d never again undergo that experience yet here she was. She felt the man with the eye-patch approach her very few memories of the war and fuller memories of life after the war. He was intent on examining them as if they were files in a dusty cabinet.
She clenched her teeth and fought.
For a while she blocked him out.
Only for a while.
Easy, Nox, a soundless voice told her. I won’t hurt you. I promise.
After a while, she couldn’t fight him anymore and was forced to give in. Instead of feeling violated, the man with the eye-patch very gently sorted through her recollections. Even more gently he gazed at her dreams and nightmares. He didn’t judge her recalled atrocities nor condemn her actions after the war. And as he looked her over, the worst thoughts, the ones Nox dared not return to, lost their sharp edges.
By the time he was done, Nox felt curiously relieved.
<
br /> The man hadn’t just read her memories, he relieved much of her pain.
She closed her eyes and drifted off into a heavy sleep.
Many years of anguish were lifted from her mind.
24
When Nox awoke the third time, she was lying in a small bed in an equally small white room. A spotless white sheet covered her body. She shed it and found she was wearing a plain hospital gown. She frowned. She couldn’t remember how she got here. She couldn’t remember all that much.
She remained in the bed and took in her surroundings. The room was composed of four completely white walls, a white door opposite her bed, and a set of fluorescent lights shining from above. An IV was attached to her arm and from it a transparent plastic tube stretched into a small pouch hanging on a metal stand beside her bed. The medicine in the pouch, a clear liquid, dripped down and into her veins.
Nox tore the IV out. That simple effort left her weak. She let her body sink into the bed and closed her eyes. While she recovered her strength, she tried to recall how she got to this place. She felt a stinging sensation coming from her upper right arm. Where she was injected.
Injected.
Realization came in a flood. She remembered awakening from a nightmare in Catherine Holland’s apartment, of receiving a phone call and rushing to the Yoshiwara club. She moved on from there, recalling events piece by piece, like a line of dominoes tumbling in slow motion.
She re-lived the anger and fear of seeing her friend removed from the debris of the bar and taken on a stretcher into an ambulance. She followed the ambulance to the hospital and then…
And then things got…strange.
Her last memory of the hospital was of disarming a bomb planted in her friend’s room.
How did I know it was there?
Nox’s body shook. She recalled what happened afterwards, of being trapped in a glass tank. Of gunfire…of death. There was the man with the eye-patch. He held a strange handgun and pointed it her. He fired…
Son of a bitch.
Nox got into a sitting position. A loud groan escaped her mouth and nausea overwhelmed her.
She closed her eyes and relaxed until the unease lifted. Once it did, Nox again opened her eyes. This time, she allowed a little more time to pass. She let her feet dangle off the side of the bed.
Easy now.
She slowly, very, very slowly, slid off the side of the bed. Her feet touched the piss-yellow linoleum floor and an electric charge flowed through her body.
Damn that floor is cold.
Nox gradually put more weight on her feet. A fresh wave of nausea flowed through her and she gritted her teeth.
“You’ve wasted enough time,” she muttered. “Move!”
She thrust forward until her feet again touched the ground. She put her full weight on them. The nausea came…
…and went.
Nox walked to the door leading out of the room and pressed her ear against it. There were many noises coming from beyond. People were moving about, back and forth. Their pace was frantic, their voices spoke with urgency. Nox reached for the door’s knob and turned it. She opened the door…
Outside her room was a long corridor.
As expected, there were many people there. Almost all of them were dressed in green military fatigues and looked like they had places to go. Fast.
A pair of soldiers, a young man and woman, were posted at Nox’s door. Like the other soldiers, they too were dressed in fatigues. They faced Nox when she emerged from her room.
“Where am I?” Nox asked them. “What is this place?”
“Tell the General she’s up,” the female soldier said. She walked to Nox’s side. “You’re weak. You should get back to bed.”
Having said that, she gently grabbed the Mechanic’s arm and put it over her shoulder. Though she hated to admit it, Nox welcomed the soldier’s help. She wouldn’t have remained standing much longer.
The male soldier grabbed a very old fashioned telephone from its wooden case beside the entrance to Nox’s room and pressed his ear against it. He turned a crank three times before talking into the device. Nox couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The phone looked positively prehistoric.
“Get me the General,” the soldier said.
He waited for an answer. When it came, he said:
“She’s up.”
Another pause.
“Yes sir, we’ll wait for the Sergeant.”
The soldier put the phone back into its place. He walked to Nox’s other side and helped the female soldier take the Mechanic back to her bed.
“The General wants to see you,” he told Nox.
“General?”
“Spradlin. You haven’t met him?”
“Guy with an eye-patch and lots of scarring over the right side of his body?”
“That’s the one.”
“Seen him around of late. Haven’t had the pleasure to formally introduce myself.”
“Pleasure? Now that’s a word I’ve never heard in reference to General Spradlin,” the male soldier said.
Once they sat Nox back on her bed, the male soldier exited the room. The female soldier remained at Nox’s side.
“There’s clothing in the closet,” she said. “I can help you change.”
“Thanks. I can do that all by myself.”
“If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”
“I won’t.”
When the female soldier left the room, Nox remained sitting on the bed. A few minutes passed. She didn’t move. A few more minutes passed.
Maybe I should have taken her up on the offer, Nox thought.
It took her a few more minutes to build up the strength necessary to walk to the closet.
25
It took Nox a very long time to dress.
Every part of her body protested each and every move she made. After a full ten minutes of very slow work, she removed her hospital gown and stood naked before the closet. Inside, she found a shirt, jeans, and underwear. The clothing was hers. It was what she wore upon leaving Catherine’s apartment. It was freshly washed.
Service with smile.
Nox dressed and made her way back to the bed. She sat down heavily and waited for her escorts to return. The wait proved long, something she didn’t mind. With each passing minute, the aches and pains lessened while her strength returned.
Must have been one hell of a party.
Nox stared at the door leading out of the room. She thought to call the soldiers in, to do something, but instead remained sitting, thinking. She once again tried to remember the details of the events leading to her being here.
She sorted through them, stopping at the memory of the bomb she defused in Catherine Holland’s room. She once again wondered how she knew it was there.
She had no explanation, at least none that made any sense. Her hands came to her face. Was Catherine still alive? She didn’t know. She hadn’t asked.
Why didn’t you? How could you forget?
She felt an overwhelming guilt for not asking the guards but forced those negative thoughts out. She had to keep her mind focused. Whatever was happening, she needed to stay sharp. Remember everything. Everything.
There was one other strange thing that occurred.
She wanted to kill the man with the eye-patch from the moment she first saw him. Even now, with her head clearer than it had been in a while, she still wanted the man –General Spradlin– dead.
“What did you ever do to me?” Nox muttered.
More thoughts swirled through her mind, running around and around without reaching any conclusion. So focused was Nox on them that she almost missed the knock on her door.
“Come in,” Nox said.
The door swung open, revealing two male officers. One of the soldiers, the smaller of the two, carried a rifle. He remained outside the door. Though he didn’t aim his weapon at Nox, it wouldn’t take much effort to do so. The other soldier was a giant. He stood well over si
x feet five inches tall and was built like a Gladiator.
“Name’s Delmont,” the burly soldier said. “We’re here to take you to the General.”
Nox noticed the patches on his shirt.
“Yes sir, Sergeant,” she said.
“Stand up and turn around,” Delmont said.
“Why?”
“Ma’am, please do as I ask.”
Nox considered the request.
“Only because you’re so polite,” she said.
Nox stood and turned. The Sergeant searched her body for any hidden weapons. His search was thorough but, all things considering, reasonably polite. When he was done, he said:
“Place your hands behind your back please.”
Nox did this as well. Handcuffs locked around her wrist.
“Is this necessary?” Nox asked.
“Until I’m told otherwise, yes it is,” the Sergeant said. He leaned in close to Nox’s ear and added: “Try anything, anything at all, and I will fuck you up.”
Despite the invitation, Nox didn’t feel the need to test him. Not yet.
They escorted her into the corridor beyond. As before, it remained full of people, military and some civilian, all of whom gave Nox and her escorts a wide berth. Nox was taken up a flight of stairs and to the ground level of the facility. They passed a large double door and entered an enormous garage, one much larger than Nox had ever seen within the Big City limits. The garage was loaded with vehicles and people moved quickly back and forth. Off to the side was a long, thick line of people, civilians from the Big City. They were escorted from the entry doors, through the garage, and down a set of enormous stairs. They disappeared into the base’s lower levels.
Nox felt a chill watching them go down. Though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, she felt some kind of massive machinery buried down below. It vibrated angrily, sending small shock waves through the concrete floor.
“What’s going on?” Nox asked.
“You’ll get your answers soon enough,” Sgt. Delmont said.
Considering the massive numbers of people heading below, the lower levels of this garage had to be enormous.