18 Years (WORK IN PROGRESS)

Chapter 2

         Everything hurt. I couldn't see anything except what I perceived was the back of my eyelids. I hadn't seen anything else since I blacked out on the field in front of the school. Now that I thought about it, how long had it been? I still couldn't feel anything below my lower back, and when I tried to open my eyes, I couldn't see anything. It was all still black, even though I could feel my eyes opening, the air hitting them and causing a cool feeling to brush over the sensitive orbs.
         I tried to move my arms, but they were strapped down at the wrists and just above the elbows. I strained against them for a second before I felt a pressure in my skull growing. It felt like a headache, just behind my unseeing eyes. I hated headaches. I wished it would go away even as it came on, and like that, I felt a cold substance flowing through me as soon as I wished for painkillers. A sigh, and I stumbled back into my docile state. Struggling against my bonds would do me no good, neither would the headache that the action brought along with it.
         A door opened. Behind me? Above me? Where? It felt like the sound was bouncing off the walls, back and forth and this way and that, and even with my heightened senses after my sight was cut off, I couldn't pick it out. Then I heard the sound of footsteps, of someone entering. Click, Click, Click. It was getting closer, then I heard another set of feet step in, the door shutting again. What was it, a metal door? A tiled floor and a small room? Without my eyes, I was at a complete lack of situational awareness. I began to struggle again, my fear growing deep inside me. The headache came back, and so did the cold substance that felt like I was getting filled up, my body only a hollow shell to be filled with ice water.
         I heard the tap of fingers against...plastic? Glass? I couldn't figure it out. It sounded like the noise people made furiously tapping on a phone's screen, something a lot of people did, what with phones lacking keyboards anymore and instead dealing with the touchscreen variety. I knew the sound from my own experience as well, but I wasn't worried about it yet. I noticed something else. When I awoke, there had been a thick antiseptic smell in the room, as if it was a cleaning closet. Now, I could smell something else. Cologne. A man had entered, or at least I assumed that from the use of the cologne. Then, another smell. Strawberry? Maybe. A woman then. One of each gender. Hushed whispers. Medical terminology that I knew nothing about.
         I had stopped struggling at the smell of the perfume, at the smell of the cologne. Doctors, I assumed. I was in a hospital, most likely. Who were these people? What was going to happen to me now? I heard the soft static hum of a tv or computer monitor turning on. It was the sound that you could hear in the dead of night when you woke up and had forgotten to turn the tv off. One of the voices, the female, spoke softly to her partner.
         “Engage neural route number 17A, Optics.” As soon as she finished, the glass tapping sound returned for a moment before my vision went white, blurring as my eyes came back on. I was startled. What the hell had been done to me? What kind of crazy experiments had gone on in this room? My vision remained blurry, too bright for me to do anything with a damn surgical light above me...wait, they're moving it. The light was moved away. I waited a few moments for my eyes to dilate properly.
         A moment later and I was looking around. The room was small, but large at the same time. I must have been in an operating room of some type. White ceiling, white walls, and what I assumed was a white floor. It was about15 feet tall, the top five feet revealing a room all the way around my little surgical box. I guessed it was an observation room. Why would I be in one of these? They had normal operating rooms where people would be operated on. Much smaller, much easier to work in, but here? Who knows how many people had been watching this, and who knows why.
         My eyes rolled to look at the two people. One of them, the woman, wore a white lab coat over a set of light purple scrubs, her straight black hair being the only thing I could see of her from the back. It reached down to her shoulders. The man had short blonde hair, cut not too much longer than my own buzz cut hairstyle. They were both looking at what might have been a computer monitor. Along the entire side of the room they were on, computer banks filled it up, all of them showing different readings. I could see several displays for tracking bio signs such as heart rate, brain waves, and a few even keeping an eye on entire systems, such as digestion and respiration. One showed a body that looked like mine in surprising detail, the digestive tract highlighted. Another one showed a skeleton, with the same ailments I had. A curved back that moved both left and right, hunched at the top and pushed inward at the bottom. I remembered it from X-Rays taken during doctor visits. The arms weren't fully extended, only to a certain point that I once again recognized to be my own.
         I looked over at them completely, turning my head and trying to speak up. I noticed my mouth was dry, my lips chapped and feeling like they were glued shut from the lack of water that had touched them. Flexing my jaw muscles, I felt my lips pull apart with a soft pop, and tried my hand at speaking to them. “Hey...Where am I?” I asked. I struggled saying it, my throat just as dry and hoarse as my lips.
         The two turned around, as if they had known I was awake the entire time. “You're in a hospital. It's been two weeks since you took a hit on the field at your school.” The woman spoke, taking a small rectangle from her partner. She walked closer and set it on a small stand next to the bed I was strapped to. Sliding the arm over to where I could look at it. It turned out to be a tablet, displaying the damage my body had taken. My lower spine had been damaged severely from hitting the tree, as well as my sternum, several cracks spider-webbing their way through the bone that protected my most vital organs.
         She let me look at the tablet for a few minutes as she turned back to another display her partner brought her attention to. My rib cage had been devastated. Cracks on every rib could be seen from the force of the kick, as well as several of them spinning out from a dent where the foot had landed. My spine had been crushed by the force of the impact against a tree much larger and sturdier than I could ever hope to be. It had almost severed it from the way I had landed. I looked back over at her for a moment, only seeing her back. I spoke again, wanting more than just this.
         “The people in the pods that landed and got to me. Who were they? What happened to the man who kicked me?” She turned back around, then looked at her partner again before coming back to me and taking the pad. She faced it towards her and searched for a moment.
         “Here...this is helmet footage from the man who made it to you first. His name is Sergeant Mark Reiner. He was the squad leader of the unit that was dispatched the moment your assailant was detected. He's-”
         I cut her off before she got any further, making a note to ask about the helmet footage later. I wanted to know more about what had caused those pods to be sent and why a man tried to kill me. “Wait...the moment he was detected? Those pods hit before I even managed to black out. The man who kicked me was gone, and I didn't even see him until I felt his boot hitting my rib cage. It should have-...Jesus, get me something to drink, please? It's damn near impossible talking like this.”
         The doctor turned to the side and sent her partner to get some water. “He should be back in a few moments. I guess I'll take the time to explain a bit of the more important things and you'll be given a data pad for you to read at your leisure once we've gotten you out of testing and everything else we need to do to make sure you won't die on us.” There was a soft smile at the end of her statement, as if she thought it would make me laugh. There had been many a time I had told friends and family I would die if I went without water or food for a time, and I admit I smiled a bit, but it was irrelevant.
         She continued at my lack of any spoken response. “I'm Dr. Lauren Woods. I'm the head doctor over Project Vacation. We were hoping to finish it up within the year. Now that you're actually awake and conscious so soon, we can call in Admiral Adler, and he can-” I cut her off again.
         “Admiral Adler? He's the man from my dreams, isn't he? The man in the military uniform, the one that told me about a vacation?” I asked, the name Adler coming back to me immediately. She hesitated for a second, as if caught off guard.
         “You know of him?” She asked. She quickly turned back to the computers against the wall, typing in a few commands before the largest screen of all flickered to life. She spoke for a few moments, getting through something on the other end of what looked like a corded telephone. “Hello? Get me Admiral Adler, priority code: 'Revelations'.” At that, she hung up and the bed I was on began to tilt up a bit, enough for me to clearly see the screen without moving much. The screen changed from the dull blue glow it had been holding to the same man from my dreams. Adler. It was him. There was no doubt about it. He looked older, his black hair having gone completely gray.
         He sat there for a few moments, staring at me. “You've grown up a lot, haven't you, General?” He asked, smiling a bit, almost smirking.
         I raised an eyebrow, starting to say something as I heard the doctor from before return. He took a glass of water from a tray on a cart he had brought in, placing a straw in it before holding it up for me to drink from. I worked my mouth a bit to circulate the water around before I spoke. “General? I'm just a normal teenager who's getting some extremely good treatment for some reason...I don't think my insurance covers this.”
         The man laughed a bit, shaking his head. “There's more than meets the eye here, Marcus, but you've been under a form of amnesia for almost 19 years. I'll meet you in person within the day, and we'll talk some more about this. I'm just glad to know that you're alive and awake after that hit from your would be assassin. In your current body, he could have damn near killed you, and he would have if we hadn't gotten there in time. We've already got a control team at the location you were assaulted, and for the moment, all of the witnesses have been put under intense security without communication, and their families have joined them for the time being. All of the loose ends have been tied up until you decide on what to do with their knowledge of what happened that day.”
         I guess I looked confused because he explained again. “When your friends saw what happened on that field, it threatened to blow everything we've prepared for wide open. That's something we couldn't have just yet. Again, when you've gotten out of here and we've gotten you back to normal, we'll decide everything, and I'll be there soon to discuss everything else. Until then, try to get some more rest, alright? Adler out.”
         The screen shut down and the doctor, Doctor Woods, turned back to me. “The Admiral hadn't expected you to remember anything about him, but it seems like your dreams have been allowing bits and pieces to seep through.”
         I felt my eyes narrow, my eyebrows knit. I wanted to know more. “What does it mean? What's going on? Why am I getting dreams about things from some other life?”
         The doctor smiled a bit. “I'll allow Admiral Adler to explain when he comes. You'll be woken back up when he arrives and you'll have him and the knowledge of the project all in front of you. Until then, you should rest a bit more.” She turned around, typing a few commands on the computer she had been hovering near for most of my time awake.
         I knew what she was going to do, and I didn't want it. “Hey, wait a minute! Don't...don't do that...” I felt my mind growing hazier, and my words threatened to stop coming. That same cold feeling from before filled my body, and my vision started to go black again. Then, all was silent once more.