Dreadmyre

by J A Raikes

  No no no, I muttered frantically. I don't know what is about to happen but it can't be good!

  Scared and out of options, I began banging on the door, hoping that somebody would realize that there was a person in here and stop whatever they were initiating. At the same time, two holes on either side of the doorway opened on the floor and two black, strange pillars started to rise. They ascended up all the way to the ceiling and a moment later began lighting up. I couldn't tell you what the heck was going on, but I certainly didn't want to be near those things when whatever was about to happen happened. I retreated back to the metal ring and cowered down behind it in hopes that I'd be able to hide from the purge.

  The sirens continued to get louder and louder and more lights began flashing in the room until the two pillars lit up from top to bottom with a bright blue light that literally started seeping from the pillars. They looked like tall circular LED lamps with a weird neon blue tint which emanated outward like a slowly expanding balloon or bubble. Oh, and the bubble had streaks of electricity or lightning or something zipping around in it. Yeah, so that was happening.

  As the light reached out through the room, everything it came in contact with was swallowed by the blue glow and if it wasn't metal and nailed to the ground, it was instantly disintegrated. It didn't matter if it was a box, some lint or dust, cobwebs or the paper hanging on the wall near the door (I think it was some sort of shipping manifest or something). Absolutely everything touched by the light was systematically dismantled.

  To say that I was scared would mean I had enough time to process exactly what was happening. The course of events probably took no more than 10 seconds for the room to be enveloped by this blue purging light. To me, though, it seemed like the light was seeping out at a slow and painfully molasses-like rate. Maybe my body wanted to just savor the moment and let me remember that I was going to die by electrified ooze bubble. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to all be over.

  I sure know how to take a relaxing weekend off of work, huh? Being stupid enough to forget to pack enough water to begin with, and then getting chased by a mountain lion, barricaded into a cave, sucked into some weird interdimensional portal thingy, hiding from armed guards and now about to be vaporized by a blue aura of doom. Maybe next time I can go skydiving without a parachute.

  All right, maybe that's a little dark, but I am, after all, the one who's about to be molecularised by a weird sci-fi laser blob.

  Behind my eyelids, I could see the light getting brighter and I knew it was only moments away. Just then, I heard a ripping sound, that distinct smell of burnt ozone and my heart lurched. I peeled open my eyes and I saw the portal was open again.

  I didn't waste any time. I dove head-first into the weird gelatinous barrier between me and the nauseating colors in the portal. Once again, a shock jolted my body as I made contact with the ooze, but at least this time I was prepared for it. I braced against the blow and surprisingly, it didn't hurt as bad the second time. I tumbled head over heels and hoped beyond hope that it would spit me back out in the cave. At least there, I’d only be eaten by a really hungry desert predator.

  The time I spent in that portal went by a lot faster the second time. Within moments, that same bright light appeared and I braced for impact. White radiance engulfed me and in an instant, I was flung from the portal.

  Instead of being on the ground in the cave or back in the warehouse, this time, I was falling helplessly through the open sky above an absolutely massive city. And as if things haven’t already been just peachy, in about 10 seconds, I was about to splat into a shower of Finn bits all over the ground.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When I was 18, my buddies and I decided it would be a fantastic idea to go out to the middle of nowhere in Idaho and prove our manliness. How you say? We decided that we would pay someone to allow us to jump out of their perfectly good airplane. So we went skydiving and, truthfully, it was a blast. The fear and excitement got my adrenaline going and the moment when I put my foot out the door of a moving plane without any ground beneath me for several thousand feet is unlike any experience I’ve ever had. The wind rushed all around and for a few moments, I felt like I was truly flying. Then, just pull the cord on the parachute, all that momentum stops and I calmly glided down to the earth. The experience is serene. It’s completely silent, save for the sound of the wind breezing past. The whole experience is incredibly peaceful as you enjoy unbroken views.

  The mind-numbing freefall to my untimely death I was currently experiencing was definitely not peaceful. The ground was rapidly approaching and I was gaining momentum every second. I didn’t know what to do. There was nothing to grab and nothing to slow me down. Nothing. My mind was racing and my heart was pounding so fast it probably would’ve won the Indy 500.

  I tried to orient myself somehow to stop spinning. The more I tried, the more I found it is a lot harder to do than the professional skydivers make it look. In all the falling, twisting and turning, I spotted something in the air a ways off and rocketing through the air headed toward me.

  A moment later, I was hit by something hard and sharp, felt an intense pop in both my chest and arm and promptly blacked out.

  ********

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious. As I awoke, my head pounded and my whole body felt like it weighed six tons. Something pressed hard against me and I realized that I was face down on a table like a massage therapist has, where there's a special hole for your face so you don’t suffocate. I opened my eyes and tried to flip onto my back and regretted my choice at once. First off, I found out that my arms and legs were tied down. Immediately, sharp pains shot through my entire left side, shoulder to foot, and it felt as though my body had been dipped in liquid fire. My vision went black with the pain and I decided it wasn’t so bad to just stay put. As long as I wasn’t moving, nothing really hurt. Breathing seemed okay. I could feel my limbs and I tried wiggling my fingers. Naturally, panic set in once again and I started to freak out.

  “Hehhlo,” I called out.

  “Whaaa ahhhm meh?” I mumbled into the table. I don’t think my mouth was working. Or my brain, for that matter. I took a breath and tried to shake off some of the drowsiness.

  A cold, firm hand pressed on my upper back and a gruff male voice spoke.

  “Don’t move. If you move, you’ll die.”

  Well, that is a refreshing turn of events. Good thing I haven’t reached my quota for near-death experiences yet today.

  “Seriously,” the man continued, “I just spent the last 19 hours putting you back together and I am not about to have my work undone because you move and jolt the augs out of place.”

  The what?

  His voice was rigid but sincere and I could tell he was irritated. He had an unmistakable English accent.

  “Nihntheen ‘ous,” I stammered. “Whaeh ahm ehy?”

  It felt like my tongue wouldn’t work or was too thick for my mouth, and everything in my mind was moving like molasses.

  “Nineteen and a few minutes, by the dragon’s tail,” he remarked, still holding his hand solidly in the spot between my shoulder blades. “The name is Giles. And you, young lad, are lucky to be alive.”

  “Luckhy toh be ahliveh? Ehy don evhn knoh whaas goin ohn,” each word was a serious effort of will to produce and came out thick and awkward.

  “Yes sir,” he said, easing slightly his pressure on my back. “I have no idea how you got up there, but my daughter and a few others saw you falling and ran over to where you were. They weren’t able to stop you from hitting the ground but a few of the boys managed to throw something together to break the fall. Seems they weren’t the only ones to notice you. The Hand must’ve thought you were something hostile since they sent that Curator at you. You’re lucky you weren’t closer to the city or there’d have been nothing left of you to hit the ground!”

  I felt something firm pulling on me, a twinge of pain in my lower back and ribs and then Giles’ took his hand off
my back.

  “Now son, don’t move. Eva and the boys may have stopped you from smashing into the ground, but you were still badly hurt. Doctor Bardell was able to stop the bleeding and stabilize you, but he knew that you needed intense reconstruction to survive. Eva called me and I brought everything I could think of that might help.”

  I took a deep breath again and winced, trying to ignore the pain ripping through my side I worked to speak more clearly. Giles was patient as I huffed out a few awkward sounds until I got the words out.

  “I dohn’t unnnder-ssstand,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “I don’t even know how I got here. Orhh where here even is!” The words came out more clearly but they were labored and difficult.

  My mind was clearing up and I was slowly starting to process what had happened. Being tied face down on a table in a stranger’s house, unable to move or even look around wasn’t helping matters, either. I felt heat rushing to my face and my heart beat quickly. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to run as far away from here as I could. In all honesty, I was downright angry. What the crap happened to me?

  “Settle down, settle down. Can’t have you pulling something if you get all worked up,” Giles said. I could hear him fidgeting with something off to my left.

  “You’re upset and I understand that. So let’s begin with the basics. This is my shop, for starters,” Giles stated matter of fact. “Fleming Gildwares. And we’re in the Etherborough Ward. You’ve likely not been this way much. We’re in 8-9 and almost off of the Embervein.” The way he said it sounded like “eight dash nine” and meant every word of what he said.

  “I must’ve really rahttlled my brain because nothing you said made ehhny sense,” I said and then cleared my throat. “I’m from Tucson. In the US. Is this England or something?”

  “Hmph. I'm not familiar with that area. Maybe you’re a bit confused. You did hit your head really hard. But then again, these Wards keep growing and trying to take every little bit of space they possibly can and I can't keep up with them all.”

  “No, you don't understand!” I blurted out, nearly yelling into the table. “One minute, I was out for a hike. The next, I'm almost being ‘purged’ by some weird blue laser light show.”

  I couldn’t help it, I was frustrated and nothing made sense. I pulled at my restraints on the table and I felt heat rising in my chest and face.

  “And then,” I said as I yanked with my wrists, “I’m plummeting to my death over some gigantic city, only to smash into little bits and put back together by Dr. Frankenstein!”

  I was met with silence.

  A moment passed and still Giles said nothing.

  “Well?!” I called out, my voice cracking slightly.

  Silence.

  I knew he was still there because I could hear him breathing slowly behind me, but he refused to say anything. Face down on this table unable to move, I sucked in a few short steadying breaths and allowed my rage to die down. After all, it wasn’t this guy’s fault that I had a really messed up day. I sighed, frustrated at myself for letting my temper get away from me and winced in pain as I tried to take a deep breath.

  “Giles?” I said, turning my head to look toward him. The moment I moved even an inch, a burning sensation abruptly shot through my body and forced me to freeze until the pain subsided.

  It was silent a moment longer and then Giles cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry, boy. It’s clear that you’ve had quite the ordeal. We can look into what you said, but for now, there are more pressing issues for us to discuss,” He said as he walked around to my right side, rested his hand gently on my shoulder and squatted down next to me as he spoke.

  “I need to talk with you about your situation.”

  Oh boy. That's never a good sign. I felt my pulse pick up tempo once again.

  “When you fell, a Curator was sent out and managed to clip your left side. It broke your arm in several places, along with a few ribs and your femur,” he said as he took a deep breath. I got a sinking feeling that he was steeling himself for more bad news.

  “I wish that were the worst of it, but it isn’t. As you landed, those boys were able to slow you down a bit, but the human body just isn’t designed to take such a beating. You hit the ground at an alarming speed and it jarred your entire body. You’re bruised all over and in a few places, your skin split open. Doctor Bardell was able to help with that, but the worst part was your spine. You hit the ground and basically folded in half. Seven of your vertebrae in your lower back were simply reduced to bone dust. They splintered into dozens of pieces each and your spinal column was mangled beyond repair.”

  My breath caught in my mouth and I felt the blood drain from my whole body.

  “But…” I stammered. It couldn’t be true, could it? I had been moving my hands, my feet, my arms. I couldn’t help it. I tend to talk with my hands. But if what he said is accurate, then how was that even possible? Shouldn’t I be paralyzed? Or dead?

  “Allow me to finish,” Giles interjected, his hand on my shoulder squeezing just a touch to draw my focus back to him. “It seems as though things here are unfamiliar to you. Maybe that is a result of memory loss due to your fall or maybe it is something else, so let me explain a bit of what I do for a living. I am an Aesthesium surgeon. My job is to implant workable Augs into people who have been injured or in some way have lost the use of various parts of their body. I work alongside doctors and medical staff to bring about quality of life improvements due to physical malformation. Typically, this is either creating part of an arm or leg or maybe a few fingers or toes. But every so often, there are more extreme cases where I need to replace part of a torso or entire limbs or even internal organs.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and continued, “Working on you, though, was one of the most intense and difficult procedures I’ve ever had to do. I haven’t had to create a spine before and so I cobbled together your replacement from other pieces I brought with me. Ultimately, I think I got you back together but we won’t know for sure for a few weeks whether or not you’ll regain mobility or even sensations throughout your body.”

  He paused a moment. It felt like forever…

  I could feel my body. I could feel my arms, legs, back and everything else. It was there! I could feel it!

  Giles must’ve known what I was thinking because he nodded his head, seemingly to himself and spoke up.

  “Clearly, some of the reconstruction was successful, since your arms have some mobility, but I wouldn’t press your luck. You don’t want to rip out any of the sutures or further injure anything. Try to avoid talking with your hands as much as possible and only small, gentle motions if you must.”

  He continued, “It is going to be very painful for a very long time, but I will help you through it. It’s going to take a lot of work to make sure that you are able to walk and function again. Probably several months or even a year, by the dragon’s tail.”

  I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling. My whole life was turned upside down in the span of a few minutes. And now this guy is telling me that I might never walk again?

  “I…” I trailed off. A lump was caught in my throat and my entire body seemed to lock up. I tried to form the words to what I was feeling but it was too painful to even think about it.

  Giles quietly continued, “It’s alright. You don’t need to speak right now. I’m going to go get some food and we’ll start with making sure you’re fed.” There was hope in his voice. The edginess was gone, replaced with a concern that I didn’t expect.

  “By the way, I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other for a while and it’d be a shame to call you ‘boy’ for the entire time. Can you recall your name?”

  My mouth and throat were dry and it was still extremely difficult to form the words.

  “Finn. My name is Finn Riley,” I managed to say.

  “Mmmm, Finn, then,” he replied, mulling the words over as he spoke. “Let me get us some food,
and then you should rest.”

  He stood up and dusted off his hands. He turned to a table nearby and messed with something and soon after, I heard him walk away and a door closed somewhere off to my left.

  I laid there motionless and soaked in what Giles had told me. The notion that I might never walk again terrified me.

  I didn’t ask for this.

  I still couldn’t imagine how any of this happened. You think you know what you’re doing and how life is going to play out, and in the blink of an eye everything gets thrown away. All I wanted was a quiet weekend out in the mountains so I could reorient myself from a crappy job. Sure, maybe I should have been a bit more prepared with my supplies, but this? There is no way I could have planned for this. And now it’s going to cost me at least a year of my life to get back to “normal,” whatever that is.

  In any case, maybe it was the sheer scope of the trauma or the fact that I had been operated on for over nineteen hours, but moments after Giles left the room, exhaustion flooded my system. My body gave up and I passed out once again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As I came to again, I found myself somewhere new. At least I think it was new since the last thing I saw was some sort of workshop mixed with a medical office. I was lying on my back now, facing a large room which looked to be a bedroom of sorts, though not quite like any bedroom I’ve been in before. For starters, it was absolutely massive. Looking around it seemed more like a ballroom than a bedroom, save for the huge four-poster bed I was lying on. The floors were a sandy brown polished marble. The walls mimicked the floors, made of a stone that had been smoothed to a polished finish. There were only a few windows and very little light was coming in from the outside. I couldn't tell if it was night time or not but it was dark outside. There was a small table with some antique chairs, though they didn't have that worn out look that is typical of most antique furniture.