by J. M. Madden
Wulfe? You okay big man?
There was no response.
Given his height and breadth, the doctors believed they could experiment on him more than the others. Fearing the worst for his solitary friend, Aiden gathered his energy to push.
What? Wulfe snapped in his mind.
Just checking on you my friend. And trying to block off my own pain.
Yes. I’m still here.
Even in his mind Aiden could hear the gritty determination in the man’s mind. It bolstered his own determination to beat this trial.
Aiden lost himself for a few hours, encouraging his body to heal itself. They hadn’t figured out the exact mechanics of the ability, only its results. Though he expended a lot of energy healing himself, the results became clear almost immediately. His cold chills eased and some of the blisters absorbed back into his body. They didn’t have enough hydration to spare to splitting blisters.
When the guard came around to fill their water canisters, Aiden hurriedly drank the last swallow before setting the bottle near the door, then moved back to the corner of his cell. God, his skin burned. Already several large patches had sloughed off, leaving raw pink patches behind. Keeping the insects away from the wounds was a futile endeavor but he tried, constantly waving his hands over the worst wounds.
The guard, Smoke, growled at Aiden like he always did, but before he left he dropped a second oat cake into the pan. The bottle was filled completely to the top with water before the cell door clanged shut.
Aiden blinked, wondering what the hell had just happened. Why had he given him two? Crawling forward he looked at the oat cakes and water, then nibbled and drank. They tasted as horrid as they always did. Gritting his teeth he sat and ate one of the cakes, the whole thing, washing it down with hearty gulps of water. For the first time in weeks his belly felt full and satisfied.
Wulfe.
Yeah?
What’s up with Smoke? Did you get two?
Yes. Not sure. Taking advantage while I can.
Yeah, me too.
Nothing was said about the extra food that day. Aiden had long suspected that the guards trimmed the prisoner’s allotment for their own benefit. Had Smoke suddenly grown a conscience?
Doubtful.
The next day Aiden felt much better, so much so that one of the assistants doing well checks remarked upon it and jotted something in his chart. Aiden wished the little punk would come close enough to the bars to snap his scrawny neck. Colin seemed to sense the danger because he stayed well clear of the cage.
He took the same care at Wulfe’s cage but didn’t seem as impressed with his progress.
Then it was Fontana’s day in the med center. Once again when he walked by, he gave Aiden a lazy smirk, as if he were the one running the entire operation. Aiden puzzled on the look for a long time and waited for the SEAL to return. When he did, Aiden was stunned. It didn’t look like anything had been done to him. There were no bruises or restraint marks. Definitely no burn marks, like he and Wulfe were dealing with. He looked a little ill, but nothing like before. As the man walked by Aiden couldn’t help but look into his eyes.
Fontana winked at him. Did you like the extra oat cake? Smoke is very susceptible to suggestion. Finesse him.
Shock roared through Aiden’s mind and it was all he could do to keep his expression still. What the fuck?
Out of his peripheral vision he watched Fontana walk away, one of the strongest of the group. Was that how he had done it? By coercing other people to do things for him? Aiden wanted to ask the man questions but there was no time. He’d already disappeared beyond Wulfe’s cage, beyond Aiden’s line of sight.
Wulfe, did he talk to you?
Aiden rolled over deliberately, trying to hide the tension in his body by curling up and hiding his face.
Yes. Crazy, I think.
Is he really though? Why would Smoke have given us extra if he didn’t have to?
The silence was prolonged.
Maybe we need to explore this. We have a few days before next trial.
Smoke apparently took a day off, because Aiden didn’t see him until the following night, and then it was only briefly. The man walked by and tossed in a small folded towel. He started to walk away but Aiden stared at him, focusing his mind on a single question. What is your name?
“Hernando”, Smoke answered immediately.
Aiden let him go.
Fuck…
Chapter Two
There had been a carefully written note hidden in the folds of the towel. Aiden made sure to glance at the thin paper out of sight of the cameras in the corners of his cell.
Planning a party. Be ready.
Damn. Not much to go on. He crumpled the paper as tight as he could and sent it down the piss tube.
Wulfe.
Yes, American.
I think Fontana has something planned. Not sure when but Smoke just dropped me a note.
Fontana is going to get us all killed with his games.
No, I don’t think so. I asked Smoke what his name was mentally, and he answered me out loud. I think Fontana is on to something.
There was silence for several long minutes. I will try with the other guard.
Aiden didn’t need to tell him to be careful. They were all being as careful as they dared, but they had to get out of this place. He’d started to give in to the despair of being away from home and his regular life for so long. Their bodies had maintained so far, but what if whatever Dr. Shu and his cronies came up with next killed them? The experiments themselves had already escalated. Yes, they were getting better about repairing what damage was done to them, but at some point their torturers would find something they couldn’t recover from.
There were ways to get in and out of the camp. When Aiden had first been imprisoned he’d watched every single movement, desperate to memorize everything. The routine hadn’t changed much over the months. There were food and personnel deliveries once a week, and a maintenance truck came at least once a week. There was a fuel truck that came twice a week. If they could plan their escape around one of those times it might give them some cover.
How many would be able to travel? Aiden and Wulfe, definitely. Fontana and the young Army Ranger, Rector. The other men had slowly dwindled away. Aiden vowed to himself to stay aware and watch who was still active, and he would try to speak to each prisoner that passed. If they made contact, it would be one more person for their team.
Two unfamiliar Army guards stopped outside his cell. Aiden was confused because it wasn’t his testing day. Standing, he prepared to be shackled and led away, but it didn’t happen.
“Turn around,” the taller guard ordered.
Aiden did as he was told, hating having his naked back to men he didn’t know, even just by their faces. The lock on his cage door rattled and he heard the door swing open, then there was some fumbling. It sounded like they were working on his cameras.
“Looks fine,” the man murmured in Portuguese. “I don’t know what Ortega thought he saw.”
They fumbled for a few more minutes and barked something over the radio. They received a response, then left the cage, door slammed shut behind them. They didn’t tell him he could stand down, just left him there. Aiden eventually turned his head enough to check their proximity. He looked up at the cameras in the corners but didn’t see anything different. If they had messed with them he couldn’t tell what they’d done.
Relief edged through him that they hadn’t expected anything from him and he sagged down to the floor. Every time they came toward him with the shackles in their hands, his throat would tighten with fear. He hated to admit that even to himself, but it did. They’d programmed him that when they latched on the cuffs, pain was coming. These two today hadn’t had cuffs with them, but they’d had the cattle prods and they’d been in uniform, which had been enough to send his fear response racing.
Two days later it was his turn in the rotation for ‘training’ and he had to fight tha
t choking fear again as he turned to face the wall. Aiden tried to prepare himself for whatever was to come but it was so hard, not knowing what he’d be facing. They’d dealt with every kind of common, contagious sickness known to man, it seemed like; colds, flu, meningitis. But it seemed like they were moving into injuries now, and how they recovered from them. As he walked into the facility, he dragged his dignity around his naked self like armor. They could do whatever they wanted, but they would not break him. He came from a tough life. He was one of only six men out of a hundred that survived his hell week when he’d tried out for the SEALs. This was just another chapter. Aiden shut that corner of his mind off and tried to prepare himself. It would be painful and senseless, but he would damn well live through it.
They would not defeat him. No one had ever given him a hand up in this life. He’d had to fight for every single thing he’d ever had, and he didn’t expect this to be any different. There was no one on this property stronger than he was, and he would make it out of this godforsaken jungle alive.
Dr. Shu, a man hired because of his sadistic personality as much as his scientific research, had put them through stress tests at the beginning. How far could they run? How long could they hold their breath without passing out? All baseline information, they were told, in preparation for the real testing.
Once they’d been at the camp a couple of weeks the actual experimentation had started. The first test had been to fight off the common cold, then three different variations of the flu strain. Those everyday illnesses had taken out three men, as much because of the Ayahuasca dosage levels at the sickness itself. The Ayahuasca was originally developed by indigenous shamans for religious rituals, but poultices made from the plant had been shown to slow bleeding. So, the doctors had derived a serum from concentrated Ayahuasca plant suitable for injection and given that to the men before the trauma or illness was ‘administered’. In other words, they’d gotten shots before they were contaminated with whatever the flavor of the week was. The plant itself had several different strains and had to be boiled down into a thick syrup, which then had to be diluted in something to be injectable.
When the project had first started, Dr. Shu had been guessing at the amount of derivative it took to administer the proper dosage per kilo of body weight. All of the information he’d had about the Ayahuasca was second hand knowledge and hearsay. After they’d figured out a moderate level that healed the men without killing them, they moved on to bigger and more dangerous things.
Meningitis had knocked him down for a double rotation, but he’d survived it. Typhoid did as well. Several of the men had developed malaria naturally from the mosquitos in the environment around them and recovered without treatment.
Then one night one of the region’s poisonous vipers decided to crawl into his cell to taste him. Snake bite was a standard wartime hazard, so the techs and Dr. Shu considered his misfortune a learning experience. For three days Aiden stayed in the med center, his blood being drawn every hour to monitor the progress of the venom. It had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to survive. For days he’d been out of his mind with fever as his body tried to combat the poison. When he’d finally become coherent enough to know where he was, he could tell he’d lost a large amount of weight. He still had an occasional shimmy in his hands that he thought could be attributed to that incident.
He received his regular weekly shot, and the symptoms of the venom had faded away. They hadn’t given it to him early because they wanted to ‘stick to the schedule as closely as possible’.
Now they knew that if you were bitten by a highly venomous viper with a fast acting neurotoxin, the Ayahuasca could only slow the spread of the toxin. And it wouldn’t help with the residual effects. But if you had a slower acting trauma, it had startling recuperative effects. The Ayahuasca would make you better, it just took a while.
So, the doctors had learned to shape their tests accordingly. They were working their way through poisons and illnesses, one per week, one each per testing group.
When he was shoved into the building, he was immediately escorted to the shower room. It was the only time they got clean, right before testing. There was no scrubbing, just a torrent of lukewarm water from a faucet overhead and a brick of yellow soap. It was bliss. The only enjoyment he got in this damn place. Aiden tried to prolong it as much as he could, because it felt really good to get all of the accumulated sludge off of his body. He scrubbed at the stubble on his head. The handcuffs made it difficult to reach everywhere though, and they were a constant reminder of where he was.
They never went anywhere without the sexy bracelets. There had been a few incidents when the guards had been overwhelmed by the captives. That was when the Army had moved in and had begun doing the transports. And they had batons and cattle prods if the subjects forgot their places again.
Once he was fairly clean he was positioned in front of a fan to dry, then escorted to the testing hallway. People in lab coats walked the over lit corridors, barely glancing at his naked form because so many had come through there. Aiden actually tried to make eye contact with a few people, but they had been trained to avoid even the slightest hint of impropriety. It infuriated him to be dismissed so casually.
When they entered the testing room, Aiden did his best not to struggle, but he knew the pain was coming. He didn’t know what form it would take, but he knew it would be devastating.
In desperation he looked at the lab tech moving in to secure his wrists to the bed shackles.
Please, don’t do this.
The man’s hands fumbled. Not daring to hope, Aiden stared at him as hard as he could. Don’t put those shackles on me. Something is wrong with them.
The tech turned the shackles in his hands, looking at the leather. He moved the posts that slid through the holes and flipped it over. He glanced at Aiden. “These look fine,” he said, and moved back in to fasten the pieces around his wrists.
Aiden didn’t want to jeopardize any escape Fontana had planned, so he swallowed down his panic and allowed the man to secure him to the tilt table. He closed his eyes, refusing to acknowledge whatever was coming.
In a moment they’d lay him horizontal and inject him with their experiment of the week. He waited, breath held, as one of the vacant-gazed medical techs moved in and applied sensors across his body, then two at his temples. She strapped a blood-pressure cuff to his arm, and an oxygen sensor to his finger. Then she left the room the same way she’d entered. She didn’t lay the table down.
Aiden panted, the anticipation making his heart rate pick up on the beeping monitor. Eventually someone would come in with a needle and he’d fight the restraints just like he always did, though he knew it wouldn’t matter. In the end they were stronger than he was. At least for now.
They left him alone long enough that he actually started to relax. He should’ve known better. He closed his eyes to block out the blinding light from the overhead fluorescents.
Only then did he hear a slight thumping noise.
Aiden opened his eyes when a sharp crack of sound ricocheted through the small space. Blinding, excruciating pain ripped through his lower left side. He gasped and tried to curl into it, but he couldn’t move because of the straps. For a moment it just felt like he’d had the air knocked out of him, then it began to focus. Oh, fuck, it hurt. Nausea swirled through his gut and he forced himself to look down. A bullet had ripped through his side. The entry wound wasn’t large, but he could feel the exit wound on his back. Blood flowed down his side and when he shifted his feet, the left one squelched in blood. He looked down at the curtain of red sweeping down his thigh, so stark against his skin. This was going to be bad.
No one moved to help him. The tech who’d fastened him in had a blatant grin on his mouth, just for Aiden to see. It pissed him off that they had been reduced to disposable animals for the enjoyment of these sickos.
He glanced up to the two-way mirror across from him. It had slid over about two feet, someth
ing he hadn’t been aware it could do, and the muzzle of a rifle rested on the sill. The space behind the weapon was completely black, but Aiden could feel the casual disregard and antagonism rolling off the shooter. The man’s hands felt tied, as surely as Aiden’s. He was a sharpshooter for the Army and he wanted to kill, but Capitão Aguirre wouldn’t let him. Aiden could feel the enjoyment the man took in shooting people, and how unsatisfying the single shot to merely wound was to him. The task had been too easy. He wanted to shoot again.
Aiden felt the man’s emotions as clearly as if they were his own. Through the blazing pain, he looked at the smirking tech. Trying to concentrate in spite of the pain, he turned the shooter’s attention there, to the piece of shit who’d brought him there and fastened him into these cuffs.
And just that easily the man was dead, a perfect bullet hole through his smirking face.
Aiden knew he should feel bad about taking advantage of the shooter’s feelings and motivations, but he didn’t. Not after what they’d just done to him.
Confusion exploded. People screamed and guards came from nowhere, shouting at the shooter to lay down his weapon. A light flipped on in the room next door and Aiden could see the dark-haired native man. He seemed sincerely confused as he looked at what he had done, then at Aiden, fastened securely to the table and still bleeding. There was no explanation for what had happened.
The guards marched the sniper from the building and Aiden heard shots fired outside. Without opening his eyes, he knew the sniper was gone. Fuck you, bastard.
He watched orderlies remove the tech’s body through slitted eyes. They refused to look at him. He was still a test subject, and in spite of what had gone on around him they would still monitor his test. Lousy motherfuckers.
Time stilled. While his body worked to repair the damage, he sank into himself. Aiden could imagine his sidearm in his hands. He pressed the button and released the mag, setting it aside, then he released the slide and the spring. He took the Mk. 25 apart in his mind, rebuilt it, then repeated the process… over and over again to take his mind off the pain. When he was calmer, he allowed his body to relax.
