Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 20:13:54 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "(Nancy Cleveland)" Subject: Aloha Chapter 2 (p 67-72) The first man knelt in the hallway, his face pale with shock, his wrist twisted, bones showing white against his bloody skin. His fingers clutched at the wrist, trying to stem the slow pulse of blood that drained from his arm. Jonathan ignored him and crawled to the third man's body, prying the gun from under his heavy, lifeless leg, then inched around the corner of the door, using his elbows and knees, still on the floor. Strategy and weakness combined. He could feel his own blood seeping along his side. His left arm was numb. He didn't know where the third bullet had gone. He extended his senses, listening to every rustle, every sound. Nothing. Nothing but his own now labored breathing. The adrenaline surge would wear off soon. He had to move, now, while he still had that edge. He pulled his legs under him, and launched himself across the floor into the living room in a low dive, hitting the rug with his shoulders and rolling to the hallway beyond. There. A flash of motion, and the final agent appeared. They both fired, simultaneously. Jonathan felt the kiss of air as the bullet passed over his head, less than an inch away. His own found its mark. The agent, a woman this time, crumpled slowly to the floor, her face frozen in an expression of surprise, her hand pressing her chest, above her heart, where Jonathan's single bullet had severed her aorta. Behind him. Noise. White pain slashed through his brain as the first, momentarily forgotten agent's bullet hit his head, a sledgehammer blow searing across his skull, explosions of light and fire filling his vision. He slumped on the floor, curled in agony, fighting to think, to see, to plan. He blinked, and for a moment his vision cleared. The gun was still in his hand. His finger tightened on the trigger. His arm raised, trembling. He fired. But the man stepped forward, inexorable, stepped onto Jonathan's wrist, ground it into the rug. A silk patterned necktie dangled from the agent's arm, staunching the flow of blood. Jonathan felt the his tendons and bones twist, grate together, and shatter, his hand dropping the weapon as he lay pinned on the floor. He looked up, dazed, trying to focus his blurring eyes, his fading consciousness, and watched the man smile, aim his gun. Jonathan looked down the black barrel, looked at death. A shot. He lay, expecting to die. Wondering where the bullet had hit, wondering why he felt nothing. Seeing something he could not understand. A small hole appeared on the agent's smiling face, a dark mole, a spot. The man's eyes closed and he disappeared from Jonathan's sight, as Jonathan spiraled out of consciousness, into the long cold dark. Alone. All alone. A final image of blond hair, ice blue eyes, a face twisted with rage, ravaged by pain....peering down at him...a vision of the past. A dream. Vulcan. * * * * * "Mr. Cartwright...." He opened his eyes, just a slit, veiling them with his lashes againt the bright glare of the flourescent lights overhead. Words were coming back to him. Vocabulary, meanings, context. All that was missing was his own identity, the blank hole in the middle of the picture. Who he was, why he was here. Who he had been. He knew he was somehow different, less than what he had been, could be. He just didn't know how. The missing voices, the unnamed others...perhaps that was the difference, the clue. If only...if only he could remember. Remember....what? The answer floated just out of his grasp, tantilizing, elusive... "He's awake....get him up." The man spoke again. HIs face hovered near, glimpsed through barely open eyes, a flash of full sensual lips, pursed in ...anticipation? He shivered, inside. Rough hands pulled him into a sitting position, swung his legs sideways and down, snapped metal cuffs around his ankles, his wrists, holding him to the sides of the bed. A white coated lab tech entered, bustled across the room and reached for his thumb, rolled it on an ink pad and the pressed it to a sheet of white paper. He jerked his arm, ruining the print, smearing it. The tech looked at him and shrugged. "You can do it now or later. Makes no difference to me." The tech left his pad and papers on a side table, and went out the door. Three more men, large, tough, silent, cirlced him, then stood back. He tensed, flexed his arms, his legs, looking for a way out, a way to avoid what was coming next. "Drugs seem to have unpredictable results, with you." The first man was staring at him, dissecting him with his eyes, coldly. "So we're going to try something else." The room was white, sterile, institutional. The door was closed, locked. Probably soundproof. The three moved towards him, swinging their arms. He could read deadly menace in their eyes. "Please, tell me your real name, Mr. Cartwright. Tell me who you are." The questioning man's voice was quiet, cultured. Dispassionate. He licked his lips, wondering if there was any point in trying to explain. Probably not. He didn't sense any concern, any flicker of pity or kindness or sympathy in these people. They had subordinated their human feelings to a cold professionalism, one that, he bleakly realized, would allow them to beat him to death in that room, if they decided it was the appropriate thing to do. "How do you know Raven, Mr. Cartwright? Are you helping him? Where is he?" The quiet voice continued, pausing after each question to give him a chance to respond. He said nothing. There was nothing he could say. The name brought a glimmer of images, as if the curtain covering his memory was pulled back, fluttered for a moment, letting him glimpse, briefly, a few chaotic pictures from what he supposed was the past. A man, slender, dark haired, lying dead, covered with blood, his eyes staring into nothing, lying among other dead bodies in a bright, sunny suburban kitchen. The same man, alive, running, leaving a dead man in his wake, crowds screaming, scattering, at an airport. The second image seemed to be after the first. It didn't make sense. Nothing did. A hand slapped his cheek, the sharp pain scattering his fragementatry memory, rocking his head back, the echo of the impact loud in the room. He shook his head, closed his eyes for a moment. Blinked, through the tears that stung in his eyes. "You're not paying attention, Mr. Cartwright." The voice curled through the air like a silk rope, then snapped at him like a whip. "Pay attention. Look at me. Now." He opened his eyes, stared into those of the man in charge. He looked into the man's eyes, then deliberately looked away. Heard the indrawn breath, sensed the arrogance, the certitude, the murderous intent. Looked away, defiant. Footsteps, behind him. The second man moved closer, then there was a hint of sound and a glimpse of movement and he felt a something rough, rope, or cloth, stretching across his throat, cutting off his air, forcing his head up, and back. His mouth opened, involuntarily, as he fought to breathe, his blood pounding in his ears, his lungs burning. His wrists strained agasint the metal bands, his legs buckled and jerked, he could feel the pressure in his head as if it was about to explode. His heart hammered wildly. Red clouds crawled across his vision, and the pounding in his ears turned into a roar, like the ocean at full tide. "You will look at me, Mr. Cartwright. And you will talk. Eventually. Everyone does. Everyone." The voice was a whisper, the hot breath tickling his ear, as the man leaned over him, smiling slightly. The pressure on his neck increased. He could get no air. He felt his eyes, straining out of thier sockets, his mouth, wide, gasping, struggling to pull oxygen into his empty, heaving lungs. His vision, his hearing, faded....all he could hear was the pounding of his heart, all he could see was a curtain of red, blood red...then nothing. He fainted. That was the easy one. Later, he couldn't even faint. The three men experiemented on him, using his flesh and bone and muscle, his skin and sensations and organs, as a laboratory for pain. They learned his tolerances, by trial and error, and kept just below the limit that had brought him a moment's peace and unconsciousness. He supposed, at some point, he had talked. Talked, as much as he could, with nothing to say. The questioner kept asking him about Raven, about files, about a computer access code....none of it made any sense. He tried making up answers, tried lying, and embroidering those lies, anything to make them stop. He tried telling them he knew nothing. Nothing worked. He swam in and out of lucidity, remembering different kinds and varieties of pain, each time. The voice was always there, whispering sometimes, or shouting, always asking questions, always pushing and poking at him for answers. He could hear his own voice, ragged and hoarse now, whispering and shouting back, sobbing occasionally with the aching, unrelenting agony of the pain. And still they continued. He felt his mind wandering, felt himself moving into the mind of the man who tortured him, felt his identity turning inside out, as he identified with the torturer, rejected himself, tried to escape his powerlessness, his utter helplessness and the constant, unending pain in all its new varieties, varieties he had never imagined, never dreamed could exist, never dreamed could be inflicted on one human being by another. He felt superficial damage, on skin, on muscle, then more serious damage, to joints, to cartilage, to bone, then with a sinking desperation, felt damage to his body that he knew could never be repaired, cutting and tearing and searing damage that would stay with him until he died. Damage to his very identity. To his soul. He lost all hope. And he pleaded, shouted, sobbed, and begged at last that they simply kill him and be done. Perhaps they did. He wasn't sure. Only sure that they had stopped. He heard them speaking to one another, as if he wasn't there. "He can't, or won't, tell us anything." The man again, the questioner. His voice was angry, frustrated. "I never failed before. Give me time. He'll talk." "We don't have time, damn it. Don't you understand, Eric?" A woman, this time. "Raven's threats were real. Information is beginning to show up that could blow us out of the water. The director's disappearance stopped the congressional hearings cold, but if this goes beyond him, we could all end up having to testify, and you know what that means." "They shut us down." The man, flat voiced, almost a whisper. "We're dead." The woman. "Don't let it happen. He's our key, use it. Use him." He felt a hand touch his face, lift his drooping head, peel back an eyelid, then drop him again. He had no control, his head fell forward, heavily. Dangled, his chin resting on his chest. He fought to breath, to cling to the remnants of consciousness. "He's still out. Let's get some coffee." Footsteps, receding. The door, opening, closing. Silence. He wasn't sure how long he sat there, held up only by the manacles to his wrists, drifting in a semiconscious daze.They had left him, bruised and broken and beaten, slumped on the bed, still manacled in a sitting position. He gathered his will and the tiny flicker of self determination still left in him and opened his eyes. The lights shown down mercilessly, glaring into his eyes, revealing every detail of the room, of his defeat. He could feel moisture sliding down his face, tears, blood, spittle, whatever....felt one eye puffing shut, could see with his other the blood staining the sheets on which he sat, staining his clothes. His fingers were bloody. He curled them and felt the broken bones grate. He almost passed out from the pain. Lines whirled across his darkening vision, then he could see again. He reeked, of sweat, of fear, of vomit, of urine. He was, dully, amazed he was still alive. He hadn't expected to be, had seen the looks in the eyes of the men beating him, had seen thier grim enjoyment of the task. This Raven, they said, had killed their friend. As if that justified everything. His mind wandered, vague thougths, unfocused.....He wondered what a data dump was...they thought it was so important... Then pain brought him back, gave him focus. It was like drifting on a sea, waves of fuzzy incoherence, then sharp clarity, like a spike in his chest. Every time he drew a breath, fire pierced his side. At least one rib was broken, maybe two. He closed his eyes, wishing with all his heart to die, to leave behind his broken, crippled body, his shame, his pain and fear and the bitter, bitter taste of defeat. Failed, he had failed at something. It didn't help that he couldn't even remember what. He knew he had had a mission, a goal. A purpose, in being here. Gone, lost, all forgotten. Somehow, it was tied up in his identity, and in this Raven. He was still uncertain of what role Raven played. The questioning man had called him a traitor, had told him he consorted with a murderer, an assassin, a renegade. Told him that he, himself was a criminal too and lived outside the law. He didn't know what to believe. They acted like they believed it. He just didn't know if it was true. He feared it was. Feared he was something that, instinctively, he himself abhorred. A thin thread of identity. A moral compass to cling to. It was something. I t was more than he'd known, or been able to articulate, before. The pain was fading. He sat, still slumped, and watched, quietly amazed, as the bruises and burns on his wrists gradually disappeared. He slowly realized he could breathe without each motion being a constant agony. His fingers....the bones were knitting together, the ripped flesh healing even as he looked. His testicles...burnt embers of the agony that had wracked him still lingered, but it was fading too, fading..he felt a sudden hope...maybe he hadn't been crippled, hadn't been gelded, by these torturers..maybe he was still a man, still alive, and still whole. Hope returned, and with it, determination. To do something, anything to avoid a repeat of what he'd just been through. Death would be better. A quick, clean death. Far better than this. He didn't move, besides trying an experimental curl of his fingers, enjoying the way they moved easily back and forth now, almost chuckling in his relief....almost, but not quite. Cameras were probably monitoring this room, watching his every move, waiting for an obvious return to consciousness... or whatever. He sat, slumped as he had been before, flickering occasional glances around him, moving only his eyes, keeping the lids half closed, cataloguing the loose items, calculating what he could use as a weapon, what could help him escape, or die in the effort. Waiting. Ready. A click. The door opened. He glanced out of the corner of his eye, keeping his head down, lolling on his neck, feigning unconsciousness. A shadow moved across his view, a single person, in a grey suit. The woman. She picked up the fingerprint ink and papers, and walked up to him, close, so close. He held his breath, hardly daring to move, willing her to lean closer yet. She did, her fingers touching his neck, searching for his jugular, feeling for a pulse. Her body was close to his, her lilac fragrance tickling his nostrils. =========================================================================