February 19, 2018
Okbur Pass
Sixty Eight Kilometers East of Murghab
Tajikistan
Tolan swore as he prodded the sheep towards their enclosure and cursed himself for the folly of marrying a beautiful woman. Youthful yearnings and a deaf ear to wisdom had triumphed over sensibility, and so here he was - fifty years older, still poking sheep, and in all that time the soul crushing shrillness of Tahina’s nagging had never stopped. On and on and on it went like the wheel of time… and whenever you thought she was done it was just another beginning. Even now the wind brought the sound of her haranguing their son to him. So he started looking for a way to lengthen his chores. But then the wind shifted, and granted him a short reprieve as the sound of her screeching went with it.
With a sigh, he leaned against a fencepost and lit a cigarette as he watched as the sun set over the mountains. The day was waning, casting long shadows in its wake. The sun was a dying ember, and as it dimmed it interwove the last of its brilliance with the irregular dips and planes of the valley. A complicated dance of shadow and light ensued that brought a rueful smile to Tolan’s weathered face… and he took a moment to smoke and watch. There wasn’t much to be joyful about in this God forsaken land… but this part?... Well, he had to admit that this part wasn’t all that bad.
Then the wind rolled back like an unfinished task and carried along with it the dulcet tones of Tahina’s shrieking. So Tolan sighed and took one last drag of his smoke before he went to close the gate. And what he saw so disturbed him that his hand trembled as he slowly pulled the cigarette from his mouth.
Standing before him, every sheep in the pen was as still as a stone… staring in terrified silence at something directly behind him.
So it was with a fearful dread Tolan slowly turned to look back out over the craggy plateau.
And there was nothing there...
With a sigh of relief, the old Tajik finally chuckled at his imagination, and then flicked his cigarette butt out across the pasture. But instead of completing its journey, it made a peculiar and disturbing decision… by simply stopping in midair to hang in place like a miniature star.
For a moment there was nothing but silence as Tolan stared in abject wonder at the first event that had ever truly broken the monotony of his life. Then just below the butt another light burst forth and when he turned his face to shield his eyes he saw something else… something that terrified him beyond comprehension.
There were no shadows.
Instead, the light passed straight through anything that stood upon the ground and spread out. With it came a musical note so powerful and pure that he felt his heart began to gallop in his chest. Feelings of terror and ecstasy rose up to thunder through him, tearing free the ossifications of age, and breaking loose something deep inside of him. Something that hadn’t stirred since the day he first laid eyes on Tahina… and he fell to his knees as tears of passion and fear poured from his eyes.
From within the ephemeral brilliance before him, two men suddenly exploded into existence. Naked and bleeding, they were soaked in some kind of a viscous fluid like newborn babies. One was carrying the other across his shoulders and as soon as his foot touched the soil he stumbled – and then he dropped to his knees with a heavy thud.
As he did the circle of light shrank to a tiny dot behind him and winked out of existence. Then, as if it had suddenly remembered somewhere it needed to be, the cigarette butt finished sailing across the pasture and faded into ash.
As he knelt there trembling, the man seemed oblivious to Tolan’s presence, and with arms that shook and twitched he slowly pulled the other off of his shoulders. Then he cradled the man in his arms and lifted his face to let out the most baleful and soul rending scream that Tolan had ever heard. It was a ragged and serrated thing, like a rusty sawblade being pulled across flesh… and it came out filled with such horror, volume, and anguish that the man was felled by it. As Tolan watched, he then fell face first into the dirt as parts of his hair faded from a thickly curling black to a nearly straight and pearlescent white.
After that came silence… Not even the wind stirred, and for a moment it felt as if the earth had ceased to turn out of sympathetic grief.
Then another sound drew his attention and Tolan saw the ashen and fear stricken face of his wife across the field as she raced to kneel and embrace him.
“Oh husband! My husband! My love! Are you hurt? Are you alright?”
She gibbered as her hands fluttered over him, checking his old bones for injuries. Then she cupped his face and showered it with kisses.
“There was a terrible sound! A sound like the voice of God and then a light came that went right through me! I saw my own sins… and I cast no shadow! Then I was young again and I saw your eyes as you looked at me on the day we first met. My heart! Oh my heart! My love… what has happened? What has happened?”
Unable to imagine a way that he could explain the last thirty seconds, Tolan simply turned his eyes back to the forms of the two men and Tahina gasped. Then she clutched even tighter to him and he was surprised to feel his arms comforting her as she whispered
“Who are they?”
“I… I do not know.”
Then the sheep began to bleat again and his paralysis ended. With a gentle touch he slowly unwound himself from his wife’s embrace and crept closer. Neither of the men moved, but he could see that the one who had been carrying the other was still trembling and mumbling into the earth. Words spilled from his lips in a language Tolan had never heard and it hurt to try to understand them. The other lay on his back, and if it weren’t for the sporadic rise and fall of his chest there would have been no sign of life. Across his torso was a series of circular incisions and strange markings. A tangle of tiny black tubes still hung from one, and as Tolan knelt beside him they fell free to the ground. There they twitched and squirmed before dissolving into a burbling green ooze that stank like death.
Cautiously, Tolan reached out to touch the man’s arm and his eyes immediately flew open. A fleeting glimpse of terror passed across them before they hardened down into the kind of determination and control Tolan had often seen in his own father. The eyes of a man who has carried great burdens… the eyes of a soldier.
Then the man’s hand shot out and grasped Tolan’s shoulder, and he spoke in hoarse and heavily broken Tajik.
“Dear God… please… you… you have to help us!”
August 22, 2018
Five months after events in Tajikistan
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
Bethesda, MD
As Aaron passed his ID and badge to the guards he noticed an odd combination of boredom and heightened awareness radiating from the. It was something that he recognized from times when his own base had been on high alert. So he tried to be as perfunctory as possible as he stood still for the retinal scanner. Men kept in a state like this for too long could be overstressed and he knew that this particular scanner model could be twitchy. But then, as if triggered by his thoughts, the device clicked and buzzed for a moment before letting out a long beep. This elicited a frustrated sigh and a slap on its side from the guard operating it and in response every light in the building flickered and buzzed. Aaron flinched as the room strobed, and for a moment a horrible vision flashed across his mind. Men hung in the air screaming as their bodies stretched and pulled like taffy. A burning, baleful light surged around him, gibbering and swirling as it threatened to burn out his mind.
Then it was over... and he realized that he had been crouching on the floor next to the guard station. His arms were wrapped over his head and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut as every muscle in his body trembled.
“Whoa buddy”, an older guard said as he took a knee next to him. He had graying hair and the kind of demeanor that Aaron recognized as the mark of a long-term veteran. He reached out, but Aaron jerked away involuntarily before he regained his control and took several deep breaths. Then he slowly stood, smoothed his uniform, and turned to the older man, “Sorry”.
“Nothing to be sorry for son”, the guard replied solemnly, “Took me six years to stop diving to the floor any time something went bang. You’ll get there.”
Aaron tried to smile but all he could muster was a weak grin, “Thanks. Only been back a few months… I guess a part of me is still there.”
“It always will be”, the older man replied as he handed back the ID and badge, “Hard part is leaving it there. Ain’t no way to fill that hole... You just gotta make peace with it.”
Aaron considered that for a moment, and then nodded before straightening himself up, “Yeah, yeah I guess you’re probably right.” Then he turned to the other guard who waved him through the checkpoint.
“All set Sergeant. Just follow the yellow line to psychiatrics, and be sure to badge in at the desk there.”
“Thanks”, Aaron replied. But as he walked away he began to worry about how hard it was getting to maintain the sort of military rigor exchanges like this required. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, or had lost his internal discipline. He was just too damn tired... and worried. In fact, he had passed worried a few months ago and now he wasn’t quite sure what it was that he felt. At times there was a heart wrenching and helpless agony, and at other times it became a white-hot anger that threatened to burn through him like a phosphorus grenade. He could imagine it searing its way out of his stomach and dropping onto the floor to burn through. Down and down it would go until it sank so deep into the earth that it was never found.
Grimacing, he kept his eyes down and tried to shake it off as he followed the yellow line that led to Jacob’s ward. It twisted and turned as it took him deep into the bowels of the building and wound in increasingly serpentine patterns. This had caused him to lose his sense of direction the first few times he had come here. But over the last few months the repetition of it had etched the entire route into his brain. Now he could follow it without thinking, and so he tried to relax in hopes that the mindless routine would help wash his mind clean.
But the wriggling yellow line brought him quickly to Psychiatrics too quickly and he found spotted the pretty brunette receptionist who always flirted with him. This drew an elongated sigh from him and he felt his pace slow as he approached. Normally it would be flattering, but in her case he only found it annoying.
“Just put your palm on the square Sergeant Saylor. Dr Mendez will be out for you shortly.”
Aaron frowned at the softly pulsing square on the crystalline surface before he slowly placed his hand on it. There was a gentle tone a moment later and the surface displayed a message that he had been registered into the system.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it!“, she replied perkily and winked at him.
Aaron found a chair as far from her as he could and waited. A few moments later Dr Mendez bustled in and waved. Aaron rose in response and quietly followed the portly Hispanic man through the double doors that led to the patient rooms. It was always dark in this part of the building and more subdued in its decorating choices. He figured it was designed to help keep the patients calm, but from what he’d seen here he doubted it worked. A few twists and turns later they were standing in front of a large shaded window and the lights flickered again. Without thinking, Aaron reached out to touch the wall and closed his eyes.
“Ah, yes. Sorry about the lights”, Mendez murmured, “It started out this morning and it’s just been getting worse all day. Maintenance can’t figure it out. But... well, they’ve always been about as useless as tits on a turnip.”
Feigning a smile at the joke, Aaron took another deep breath and tried to relax, “It’s fine, I’m OK. So tell me what’s going on? What couldn’t you say over the phone?”
Mendez gave him a serious look, “Well, I’m happy to report that your brother’s catatonia seems to have broken... although to be honest I can’t explain why. Yesterday his brainwave patterns were still diffused and sporadic. We were only picking up occasional flares of localized activity. But this morning we started seeing some changes, and then everything started lighting up. By noon he was out of bed and he hasn’t stopped pacing since then. He’s extremely... agitated.”
“Wait… he’s... he’s awake?“, Aaron exclaimed. This was huge! His brother hadn’t reacted to outside stimuli in weeks, and hadn’t even twitched when they stuck needles between his toes. Now he was suddenly up and walking around?
“Well, in a manner of speaking”, Mendez mused in reply, “He’s definitely awake and moving, but he seems to be suffering from some sort of delirium. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, and to be honest... his test results aren’t making a lot of sense.”
Aaron looked at the doctor pensively, “Can I see him?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea yet. He didn’t react well when one of the nurses went in, but you can observe him.” Mendez indicated the shaded glass, “It’s a one-way mirror, but I have to warn you that he looks a little... unsettling right now.”
Aaron turned and looked directly into the doctor’s eyes before responding, “Doc, my brother carried me out of hell and there’s nothing that can compare to what we saw there.”
“Well, as long as you understand... he’s not going to seem a lot like your brother”, Mendez cautioned, “His brain isn’t operating like anything I’ve ever seen before and it’s triggering some pretty odd behaviors.”
Aaron frowned, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Mendez shook his head, “Not really. From what I can tell an entirely new network of neurons has metastasized throughout his brain. But it’s not cancerous, and there’s an incredible amount of stem cell activity inside of it.”
“What could cause something like that?”, Aaron asked quietly as a nurse bustled by.
“I don’t know… and I don’t think we’ll ever find out because it’s already fading away, integrating itself into his brain. At the current rate it will be gone in a week and there will be no way to discern it from anything else. I just wish I knew what happened to the two of you. That might shed some light on all of this. But it’s all been classified so tightly that I can’t even ask for a medical inquiry. I damn near lost my job just requesting his civilian medical records.”
“I doubt it would help anyway Doc”, Aaron confided, “I can’t remember anything. I just get these… flashes.”
Mendez grunted as he pulled the shades back, “I guess it’s for the best considering what it did to your brother.”
Aaron froze. Behind the glass his brother was standing next to the bed and staring into some distance that only he could see. His hands were drawn up to his chest and his fingers danced rapidly in a series of incomprehensible patterns while his mouth worked desperately, trying to form into a long list of alien shapes. All of these things were shocking, but the thing that truly stunned Aaron was his brother’s hair. Somehow, his formerly wild mane of disheveled black curls had straightened and grayed to the point of being nearly white. He shuffled around the bed and Dr Mendez flipped the switch on the wall so they could hear what he was saying.
“Avvon d-bish-maiya, nith-qaddash shim-mukh. Tih-teh mal-chootukh. Nih-weh çiw-yanukh: ei-chana d’bish-maiya: ap b’ar-ah. Haw lan lakh-ma d’soonqa-nan yoo-mana. O’shwooq lan kho-bein: ei-chana d’ap kh’nan shwiq-qan l’khaya-ween. Oo’la te-ellan l’niss-yoona:il-la paç-çan min beesha. Mid-til de-di-lukh hai mal-choota oo khai-la oo tush-bookh-ta l’alam al-mein. Aa-meen.”
Several times he repeated this as he shuffled aimlessly around the bed, his eyes still fixated on nothing. Occasionally he would pause and tilt his head like he was listening, then he would twitch violently before going back to his chant. Aaron watched all of this, frozen in abject horror and despair. This was his little brother. The most brilliant and idealistic soul he had ever known. The one who had saved them both from whatever terrifying pit of hell that room filled with gibbering lights and shrieking men had been. The one who had carried him to safety for what had to have been dozens miles. The one who had collapsed into a coma the moment he found a local villager.
“Any idea what it is?“, Mendez asked, and Aaron shook his head in reply.
“No. I speak a little bit of most of the languages from the area where I was stationed, but I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“Neither have I. So I hope you don’t mind... but I emailed a recording of him to a colleague. He’s an expert in neurolinguistics but he couldn’t identify it either. It’s not gibberish though, he said it’s definitely a language.”
Aaron nodded, but then Jacob suddenly stiffened and his eyes flew wide as if something terrifying had just occurred. He stumbled backwards against the opposite wall and cried out in a completely different tongue from what they had heard previously. The sounds felt alien when they touched Aaron’s ears, and it hurt to listen to them in a way he couldn’t describe. Somehow it felt as if the syllables had never been intended to be spoken or heard by human beings. Then the lights flickered again, and things got worse. Bulbs along the hallway burned out with a series of soft pops and another flash of paranormal light exploded into Aaron’s mind. Screams from men twisting into nightmarish forms descended on him and in his mind’s eye came a vision of a flaming man suspended in light. Aaron clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut as he recited the Lord’s Prayer… attempting to dispel the visions. But the guttering madness raged on until sparks flew from the wall switch near Mendez and the doctor jumped away with a startled shout.
Then as suddenly as it had erupted, the power surge ended and the flaming wall plate subsided into a long black scorch. Aaron shook his head and looked to see that Jacob had resumed his pacing and chanting. But something was different now. He had dwindled down to a whisper, and peered with obvious curiosity into the strange distance again. Then without warning he erupted into a high pitched laughter that made the hair on Aaron’s arms stand up.
It was a strange, sound... taut and completely inhuman. Like a wire pulled so tight that the slightest touch would snap it. But Jacob’s face didn’t reflect the emotion. Instead, he continued to look curious and lost while his gibbering fit wound down. Then it slowly slid into a low keening that Aaron knew was going to haunt him later when he tried to sleep.
“I’ve honestly never seen anything like it “, Mendez confided and Aaron noticed that the man had spoken in a near whisper because a nurse and several hulking orderlies were passing by. “I tried to backtrack whatever’s happening to him by looking at his scans from the last few weeks. But someone in radiology must have gotten the files mixed up. All the ones labeled for your brother can’t be his.”
Aaron was barely able to tear his eyes away from Jacob. But something in the doctor’s voice drew his attention, “Wait... What? I thought everything was coded and encrypted now?”
The doctor stepped closer and looked very directly into Aaron’s eyes before replying, “That’s the thing... It is. The patient’s DNA is used to tag their files, and it’s used as part of the encryption. It’s virtually impossible to get them mixed up. But I’m telling you there’s no way the brains in those scans belong to your brother... Hell, from what I saw I’m not even sure if they were human!”
Upon hearing this Aaron turned back to the shuffling form of his little brother.
Something here smelled rotten.
It was only because of what happened in Tajikistan that the Army was taking care of Jacob. But Aaron held no delusions about the military’s uncharacteristic altruism towards his brother. He knew that the only reason they were doing it was to find out where they had been held for nearly two years. They wanted to know who had treated their injuries and how they had been kept sedated for so long without any physical side effects. At least that was what the official reports had said. But now Aaron wasn’t so sure. Was there some sort of cover up underway? Was someone tampering with Jacob’s medical records?
As he drove back to Camp Peary he mulled all of this and the strangeness of his brother’s condition over. Whatever was going on it was coming down from people with a lot higher pay grade than his. So he knew there wasn’t enough Ranger Candy in the world to deal with the kind of headache they’d probably give him for poking around.
But he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. He owed Jacob more than that.
A lot more.
Several hours later Dr Mendez was absorbed in reading the results of Jacob’s most recent scans as he munched on a sandwich and walked back to his office. But no sooner had he stepped through the doorway when he felt his arms seized so powerfully that he felt fingertips grinding into the bones of his upper arms. Both his workslate and sandwich tumbled to the floor and all two hundred and thirty pounds of him was carried over to one of the chairs opposite his desk. Then he was unceremoniously seated and the crushing forces on his arms slipped away. But then the same massive hands descended on his shoulders and he looked up to see two colossal men in nondescript black suits standing on both sides of him.
“Over here Doctor”, came a voice from behind his desk, and before he even looked to see who spoke he knew he was in serious trouble. He had done enough work with the military to know what a voice like that meant. It was the kind of voice that was only heard when black ops were involved and the man sitting at his desk practically radiated spook. He was wearing a soft pair of relaxed cotton slacks and a mauve colored golf shirt as he favored him with a gracious smile. But the immaculate crew cut adorning his head, perfect shave, and an obsessively chiseled physique made one thing clear - this was not a social call.
This was a man who didn’t do social.
He leaned forward after a moment and folded his hands on Mendez’s desk before frowning.
“Dr Mendez I’m Agent Barnes and it has been brought to my attention that you’ve been making some... inquiries. You’ve also shared certain classified information with a foreign national at Oxford and that was unfortunate… for him. At this moment I believe he is having a very similar conversation with a British colleague of mine.”
“Doctor Godwin? But… but he’s not a security risk for God’s sake! He was the personal physician for the Duchess of Cambridge!”
“Yes I know. He was. But now he’s a guest of British intelligence.”
“What? Where? For how long?”
“Where is unimportant actually, but rest assured that he’ll be there until we’re satisfied that sensitive information hasn’t found its way into the hands of the wrong people.”
Upon hearing this Mendez sat very still and considered things as he tried not to make eye contact. He had seen a lot over the last twenty years, and he knew how something like this could go if you weren’t careful. One wrong word and he could end up in a very small cell for a very long time. So he kept his counsel, and an uncomfortable silence began to stretch out as they sat opposite each other.
Then Barnes sat back again and let out a deep sigh as he looked at the ceiling, “Dr Mendez. I need you to understand that I’m in a bit of a situation. There’s no way I can turn a blind eye to your behavior. But on the other hand, I can’t just kill you and be done with all of this bullshit.”
“I... I’m sorry?“, Mendez stammered.
“Well, it’s a fuck-ton of paperwork for one thing, and you could say that whatever happened to the Saylors is... of great interest to certain ‘Powers That Be.’ In fact, you were sought out for this position back in February due to the specific expertise you have regarding Jacob’s condition.”
“Wait, what?“, Mendez exclaimed in shock.
“Oh yes, it’s been quite the lifestyle change for you as I understand it. Made it possible to move Daniel here, and that’s a real step up from that place you had him at out in Delmar. Don’t you think it would be a real shame if you had to go back to St Louis now? As I hear it, nobody’s really been funding your kind of research anymore, well… least not since that fiasco with Sacks back in sixty-nine.”
At this Mendez found himself going against his better judgment as he blurted out in outrage, “That was no fiasco! Dr Sacks changed everything we knew about persistent vegetative states. Without him we might have pulled the plug on thousands of people who just needed more time or... or the right treatment!”
In response to this Barnes leaned forward and fixed Mendez with a powerful and unwavering stare, “Oh... so you mean like Daniel?”
Three hours later, a very ashen faced Dr Mendez left his office and took an elevator down several floors without speaking to anyone. Then he walked as quickly as he dared until he reached the second to last door of the nearly silent ward. Once there he slipped quietly into the darkened room and spent the rest of the day holding the hand of his nine-year-old son, praying and watching the rhythms of the machines that kept him alive.
By the time the day ended and he finally left that room he had come to two inescapable conclusions. The first was that the longer he was around the Saylors the more dangerous things would become. The second was that he had to find a way to get his son away from here, as far away as possible.
Sᴇarch the FindNovel.net website on G𝘰𝘰gle to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.
Report
