VII
Two days later I am brought via transport to another facility. All I know about the place is that it is three hours flying time distant from where I was. But this place is no cushy recovery hospital. Even as I pass through the reception area, I can feel the torment of hundreds of poor souls within, as if someone has turned up a hidden radio, filling the entire place with ear-splitting noise.
One day they bring me to an interview room. And who is waiting for me with a stack of printouts in front of him, a vortex of steam rising from his cup of black coffee? Aisling’s father. It has been nearly two years since the last time I have seen him. Broad shouldered, massively deep chest, bald; he is a thick slab of muscle jammed into a starched uniform, pushing it out at every seam. His eyes are frantic and intense, as they often were when I’d spent time with him around Aisling. He pushes the printouts in front of me. Page after page of my writings to Aisling. He must have taken my ideas seriously and together with the remarkable recovery rate of my unit, decided to test my story.
“Did she give you those?” I say.
“Does it matter?”
“It does.”
“No.” He leans in then, deadly as a bear; cheap aftershave and sweat waft over the table. “I want this war over, Dai. If you have something inside you that can make that happen…” He dangles the threat. I suddenly flash on him at our wedding: in a tuxedo, smiling with a glass of champagne in his hand.
“Like Shadrach?” I say.
His eyes widen enough for me to know I have hit the mark, but he says nothing. In a remarkable show of bravery, I tell him to go fuck himself. Neither of us have much to say after that. He rises, takes the printouts, and leaves.
The next day I am taken to a large, square room with shiny stainless steel walls. A woman with short graying hair wearing blue-shaded eyeglasses watches as her young male assistant covers my shaved head with thick gel. I feel blooms of cold on my head as he embeds a number of teardrop-shaped sensors into the gel. Once these are in place, the woman starts asking questions. Can I tell if there are men in the next room. And if I can, what are they thinking? What are my dreams like. Blah, blah, blah. I can’t sense what they want me to and they know it.
The testing continues for days. Sometimes there are questions and gel, other times I spend the entire day in medical undergoing tests and providing samples. One day in the stainless steel room, the young assistant brings in a wounded cat. The tan tabby has a bandage on one of its legs and is mewling loudly, claws extended. The little thing is in misery and they have done nothing to ease its pain. While the woman watches, the young white-coated assistant places the cat on a table and wheels the table up to me. I feel the animal’s pain as it draws near. Without thinking I clutch it in both hands and cradle it to my chest. It heaves and mews and I can feel its claws digging into my arm. Like the wounded soldiers I feel its pain transfer into me and as this happens, it begins to purr and push its head against my hand. I close my eyes for a moment and when I open them the cat is curled up in a ball on my lap. The woman removes it and takes off the little bandage covering its leg. They both look at each other, then at me, then leave the room with the cat.
The next day they put me in front of a screen and tell me to concentrate on moving dots around. I crash them into each other, make blue dots evade red dots, then hold various patterns in place. Somehow I am able to do this but I can’t say how. I feel something new snap into place somewhere inside, but it is weak and I can’t control it very well. From the dots on the screen we gravitate to ping pong balls, but try as I might, I can’t make them move.
Several days later in the same room they bring in the cat that I had healed and place it inside a clear plastic box with a metal screen lid. They erect a platform about a dozen feet or so above the box and place a tank on it. The young assistant fixes a hose into the tank, and drops the other end directly over the cat’s box. Water flows through the hose, slowly filling the box. Immediately, the cat begins to freak out. It is thoroughly frightened, hissing and scrabbling as the water rises, soaking her fur. But the wire mesh keeps it prisoner.
“It’ll die if you can’t tap those powers of yours,” says the woman with the blue tinted glasses, emerging from behind my chair. “It’s all up to you.” She walks over to her assistant, and they stand watching me.
I close my eyes and remember the feeling of moving and holding the screen dots. I do it over and over again, then open my eyes and concentrated on the hose, willing it away from the box. Eyes open, closed, open, closed. The cat is now frantic, its claws tearing furiously at the wire mesh. The water is nearly to the top. The bastards! The rotten fucking bastards! They stand there watching a defenseless animal die just so they might learn something more about me. Fury rises in me like a rogue wave, sweeping everything else aside. Something suddenly gives way and the hose flips backwards and away from the frantic cat. The wire mesh exploded away from the box and the cat jumps out, shaking itself and spraying water everywhere.
The woman and her assistant freeze, eyes wide. The assistant points and shouts at the cat, not wanting it to get away. I watch him as he follows it to a corner of the room and moves in to pick it up. The cat, completely freaked, hisses and swipes at him. I see him reach into his pocket for something and suddenly I want to kill them both quickly and spectacularly. In an instant, his head explodes. Parts of his skull slap wetly across the wall. The restraints on my chair tear themselves away as I rise and look around for the woman. She must have fled instantly for there is no sign of her. Suddenly the cat springs up into my arms, its tail flat and swishing from side to side. It presses itself hard against me and I use one hand to tuck it under my arm. I stride towards the door and slam it open, emerging into the hall just as six burly orderlies stride into view, unclasping shockprods from their belts. I move my hands at them and they scream as their bodies bulge and twist as if they had suddenly depressurized. Heads come off, legs twist and crack into knots, necks break, fingers tear from hands. In less than a minute I stand alone in the hallway across from the gelatinous remains of the six men sprayed on the wall like a Pollock original.
At the next turn of the corner there are two young men, Asian, standing in the middle of the hallway. Behind them are guards with shockprods. I see briefly the woman with the blue glasses as she shouts at them all, then she disappears down a hallway. The guards look pretty scared of the two men and they keep a wide berth. Both of them look at me with lopsided smiles. Suddenly, I can feel a pressure building up inside of my head like a headache gone awry. It gets stronger and stronger, as if there’s a air bubble wanting to push past by skull. My body gives out completely and I sag to the floor. The twins don’t move but stand there, looking at me. We lock gazes. I look at their insipid smiles – lifeless, inhuman dolls – and suddenly with a single effort, I focus on both of them. The force in my head vanishes at the same time I see fear in their dead eyes – finally something animated – and then their heads join the countless others, sprayed out along the corridor walls with soft double ‘pop.’
I can barely stand now and move slowly towards the guards, who bring up their shockprods and move in towards me. I want to simply wound or move some of them out of my way, but I wind up killing them out of frustration. Why won’t they leave me alone? Why won’t everyone just leave me the fuck alone! By the time I shuffle slowly past the startled guard at the gate, I am crying and nearly dead with fatigue, but I know that if I pass out or stop, they’ll take me, and this time I won’t get away. I’ll wind up like those sick looking twins.
Then after a few hundred meters I’m out and away from the place, but there’s nothing left in me. The ground rushes up at me and smacks my face. Then lights, helicopters, and someone yelling my name – something about Aisling and home, and then everything goes dark.