I must still be asleep. I must still be in the dream.
I’m not outside at all. I’m on a bed in a room with soft green walls. There’s a black, very solid-looking door on the wall past my feet. In the upper half is a small window, but I can see nothing through it.
I try to sit up, but I can’t seem to move. Have I hurt myself worse than I thought?
No, wait. I can move. I moved my head to look around, remember? I lift my head again, but this time examine my body. The good news is that I don’t think I’m paralyzed. The bad is almost as disconcerting, though. I’m being held in place by straps across my chest, arms, and legs.
Panicking, I push at them, hoping they’re loose enough for me to slip out of them, but it quickly becomes clear they’re not.
My chaser! Oh, God, my chaser!
I scan around. My bag is definitely not on the bed with me, nor is it anywhere in the room, as there’s not a cabinet or table where it could be stashed. In fact, the only other item in the room is a chair sitting against the wall.
“Hello?” I yell toward the door. “Is there anyone out there? Hello?”
I’m either being ignored or no one can hear me.
Think! I tell myself as I close my eyes. What happened?
My last memory is lying next to Lidia on the grass. Whatever happened after that is nothing more than jumbled images that very well could only be part of my dreams.
I didn’t jump, did I? I mean, I’m still where Lidia brought me, right?
I can’t tell from anything in the room. The chair and the bed look as if they could be from 1915 as easily as 2015.
I lie in my ignorance for what seems like hours before I finally hear a clank from somewhere outside the room. A moment later, the door swings open, and three people enter — two women and one man.
The man and one of the women, the taller of the two, are wearing some sort of uniform I have never seen before. The other woman is dressed in a light gray pantsuit, I guess you’d call it. Their skin tones, though not identical shades, are all browner than mine, and there’s a slight Asiatic look to the women’s eyes.
The woman in the uniform starts talking. If she’s talking to me, as her gaze would indicate, I don’t know what she wants as I can’t understand what she’s saying. There’s the occasional word that sounds familiar, but I can’t be sure of their meaning because everything else is completely foreign to me. When she finishes, she stares at me, obviously waiting.
I hesitate for a moment to see if anyone else is going to speak up before saying, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
Stone faces all around.
The uniformed woman says something else to me, and again waits.
I shake my head and then ask, “Do any of you speak English?”
This causes the three to huddle together, each rapidly talking over the top of the others. The man gives me a suspicious sideways glance and then says something to the woman in gray.
With a nod, she approaches the bed and starts checking me over. From the attention she gives my wounds, it’s pretty clear she’s a doctor. As she moves the sheet away from my leg, I can see that the wound has been resealed, though not with sutures as far as I can tell. There’s also less redness around it, which I take as a good sign.
She has to loosen the strap across my chest to look at my shoulder, but immediately tightens it again when she’s finished. The last thing she does is place a square on my neck that looks kind of like a piece of thick paper, but is cold like metal. She looks at it for a moment and then says something to her colleagues.
More conversation, and then the three leave without engaging me further.
I try not to theorize about what kind of society I’ve found myself in. The only thing I need to concentrate on is finding my chaser and getting out of here.
Barely a minute passes before the door opens again. This time I have five visitors, all in uniform. One is the woman from before, but the others are all new. She directs them as they unshackle me from the bed and roughly pull me to my feet.
As I’m guided down a series of white hallways, I try to keep track of each turn and draw a rudimentary map in my head.
At the end of a particularly long corridor, they take me through a doorway into a small room we all barely have enough space to stand in. The moment the door is closed, I feel the room move downward and realize that we’re in a lift. There were none of the usual indicators when we entered — no gap between the doorway and the car, nor any selector buttons on the wall.
When it stops moving, the man closest to the door opens it, and I’m ushered out again. No white hallways here. Dirt, with wood and rock supports. Almost like a mine shaft. We are definitely belowground. How far, I’m not sure, but I don’t like it. They take me along a windy route before turning down a new tunnel. Unlike those we’d just come through, the walls of this tunnel are made of what appears to be concrete. The passageway dead-ends about thirty feet down. Spaced evenly along each side are black doors — three to the right, three to the left.
I’m taken to the farthest door on the left. When one of my escorts opens it, I try to peek inside, but there are no lights so all looks black.
The woman says something to me and waits. I don’t even try to respond. After several moments, she says something else, and one of her colleagues pushes me in the back.
As soon as I stumble into the room, the door shuts behind me, plunging the space into complete darkness.
I stand still, temporarily unable to move.
Whatever relief I’d been feeling at the knowledge that Lidia was no longer a problem is gone. Unless I can get out of this cell, the havoc she has sown will stand.
And at the moment, I’m not feeling particularly optimistic about my chances.
Something scrapes against the floor to my right. I whirl around to face it, but in the pitch black, I can see absolutely nothing.
“Is someone there?” I ask.
The movement stops for a second before starting again.
“Hello?”
The punch that hits my face comes without warning. I fall onto the floor, my mind barely clinging to consciousness.
“Confuto,” a deep male voice says.
The scraping returns to the place from where I first heard it, then all goes quiet again.
The word the man has spoken feels familiar, like I should know what it means. But my mind has shattered into a million shards, and all it wants is to turn off.
A final stray memory guides me into unconsciousness.
RJ standing in my living room with a big grin on his face as he says, “May you live in interesting times.”
He said a friend told him it was a curse, but RJ wasn’t so sure.
I could tell him now, without hesitation, that his friend was right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brett Battles is a Barry Award — winning author of more than twenty novels, including the Jonathan Quinn series, the Project Eden series, and the Alexandra Poe series — the latter of which he wrote with Robert Gregory Browne. Battles draws on his extensive world travels to infuse his thrillers and science fiction stories with rare cultural and historical authenticity, bringing people and places to vibrant life. He lives in Los Angeles. You can find him at www.BrettBattles.com.