A short author's note: Thanks to Geonn_Quotes. He's my editor, and, more importantly, the one who came up with this story idea. He couldn't make it work, so I got to write it. I derived some of the story from his version though. I would also like to note that this story is subject to change…and at any point in time I might change a thing or two.
A man once said, "What is real?" I agree completely.
Who are we to say what is truly real? We can never know for sure. But we live
like we know. There are times when our "reality" is yanked away from us, and since
we have closed our minds to the possibility of being wrong, we lose everything.
Sometimes we gain it back, other times we don't. But who is to say where we
belong? After all, what is real?
Darien jolted awake, and sat up. He looked wildly
around the room, then relaxed as he found that nothing was wrong. He seemed to
recall struggling and being strapped down. But, that was stupid. Why would
anyone want to do that to him?
He glanced at his wrist, and couldn't
find what he was looking for. He didn't know what he was looking for. He
supposed it was his watch. It was sitting on the sink, its red frame gleaming
in the sun…
Wait a minute. Red? His watch frame
was silver. Why was he so sure that something red should be on his wrist?
He looked at his wrist and rubbed it.
Lord only knew why he felt so strange. Maybe he had whacked his head last
night…
What was he doing last night anyways?
He seemed to remember creeping around some building with some paranoid guy. He
couldn't picture the guy; he just knew that the guy was paranoid.
Darien gave himself a mental slap. He
didn't have a partner, he worked alone. And if he had gone anywhere, he must
have gone to rob the building.
Rob the building. He had never felt so
ashamed thinking about his thievery, and being what he was. It was like his
conscience had kicked in, full time. What was wrong with him?
Darien hopped out of bed and went to go take a shower. He came out
wrapped in a towel, and he began to make up a rap.
"My name is Darien Fawkes, they call
me Furious D, and I'm the coolest s…" He stopped. He was about to say secret
agent, but that was crazy. He thought about it for a moment, then decided just
to ignore it.
He threw on some clothes, and was just
sitting down when a knock came on the door.
Darien stood up and opened the door. A
woman was standing outside. "Claire!" he blurted. Wait, that was Casey. Claire
had long hair.
Who the heck was Claire? He didn't
understand his own thoughts anymore.
Casey walked in. "Thanks for inviting
me in. And did you just call me by my last name?"
Darien squeezed his eyes shut, and
shook his head. "Sorry, I just woke up and I'm feeling kind of weird."
"Then I guess now wouldn't be a good
time to talk about the wedding?"
"The what?"
Casey looked exasperated. "The
wedding! Our wedding! The only thing I've been talking about for days!"
"Our wedding?" Darien looked at his
hand. Sure enough, there was a ring there. He stared at the ring incredulously.
Why was he marrying Casey when he loved Claire?
Crap! Who was this Claire character?
She was interfering with his life.
He looked back up and saw Casey
waiting for an answer. "Oh…our wedding…of course," he finished lamely.
She tilted her head to one side, then
the other, scrutinizing him. "You need some coffee or something."
Darien sank in a chair, and put his
elbow on the armrest and his head in his head. "Yeah, I guess I do."
She crossed the room and kissed him,
then drew back. "I'll make you some."
She walked away, and Darien rubbed his
face. This was weird…he felt like he was living in the past.
And what was all this crap about
Claire, his red watch and his paranoid partner?
He sat there trying to sort out his
thoughts when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He jumped and looked up.
"Here's your coffee." Casey handed him
the cup, and then sat down across from him. "Why are you so jumpy today? And
why did you act like you hadn't heard about the wedding already?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Darien
mumbled into his cup.
"What?"
"I'm just really tired, and I'm not
really awake yet."
Casey stared at him, and searched his
face, as if deciding whether to press him further or not. "Well, you should get
some rest. I'll pop in tomorrow and we'll discuss the wedding." She gathered up
her purse, and walked to the door, Darien following. "Bye!" They exchanged
kisses, and she was gone.
Darien sank back into the chair. He
rubbed the back of his head, then stopped. What was he doing? He felt like
there had been a horrible pain at the back of his head.
As if on cue, a spike of pain flared
across the back of his head, and then was gone. It did it again, and then
stopped completely.
Darien just stopped thinking about it,
and contemplated his coffee instead. It was too complicated to think about, the
incidents of this whole morning.
He reached out for a book, and a
strange thought came to him. He thought of an office with a white-haired man
behind a desk, and a short man next to him, whose name Darien knew had to be
Eberts.
He turned his gaze from inside him, to
outside, and reached for the book again. His surrounding flickered, and he saw
the exact place he had just pictured in his mind. It flickered away just as
soon as it had come.
Darien stopped his hand in midair, and
looked around. Was he going crazy?
He stood up and paced the room. He
could go to a doctor, a psychiatrist…and get laughed at. He could tell
Casey…and get worried over. He could tell Hobbes…and get a torrent of sarcastic
comments.
As he thought about Hobbes, an image
popped in his head, the one where he was at a darkened building with a paranoid
man at his side. Was that Hobbes? Even if it was, what did it matter to him? He
had never known anyone named Hobbes in his life.
He flipped on the TV to take his mind
off the strange occurrences. The news was on, and he watched with
half-interest.
"An Agent Hobbes is stuck in Johnson
Corporation's main building, which burst into flames only five minutes ago,"
said the reporter. She was standing in front of a burning building, which Darien
supposed to be the one she was talking about. A picture popped up on the
screen, and the reporter said it was Agent Hobbes' picture.
Something clicked in the back of
Darien's mind, and he grabbed his jacket. "I've got to save Hobbes," he said
aloud. He stopped just short of the door. "I don't care! I'm not going! I don't
know Hobbes is, and I never will!"
Darien decided that was the straw that
broke the camel's back. He went on out the door, going to a psychiatrist's
office.
On the street, Darien ran into his
brother Kevin, who stopped and talked to him.
"Hey brother! How are you doing?"
Darien could only stare at his
brother, confused.
"Oh, by the way, congratulations! On
your wedding, that is."
Darien raised his eyebrow. "How do you
know about it?"
"Of course I know! I'm your brother!"
"Kev, you haven't spoken to me for
three years, and I'm supposed to believe that you've kept up with my life? Try
again. How did you know?"
Kevin sputtered, "You, uh…you told me.
Before. And I…I saw your uh, your ring. I…I…"
"Spit it out! What is going on?"
Darien yelled.
Kevin hurried away leaving his thought
unspoken, and leaving Darien with one more unanswered question.
Darien gave up, and went on his way, feeling
that he needed to tell someone everything.
He pushed the door open, and was told
he had to wait. He sat down, and forced himself to contemplate the wall, rather
than think any longer on the weird things happening lately.
He came to at the repeated calling of
his name. "Mr. Fawkes!"
"Yes?" Darien looked up.
"The doctor will see you now."
Darien stood up and pushed the door
open, and then turned to close it. A female voice sounded behind him. "Now what
is your problem, Mr. Fawkes?" He froze, having the feeling that he had heard
that voice before.
He turned, and was greeted by a face
framed in long, blond hair. He knew that this was Claire, and that he depended
on her. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Slow down, Mr. Fawkes, slow down." As
she repeated this, Darien felt the world whirl beneath him, and he sank to his
knees, feeling small and insignificant as the world closed in on him.
Darien's body seemed to shrink into
itself, and then pull back out and begin jerking and contorting. His muscles began
an abnormal cycle, straining against the restraints as they threw Darien's body
this way and that.
Arnaud walked in the lab, frowning at
the scientists gathered. "What is going on here?"
"His thought patterns are rejecting
the simulation. There's nothing we can do."
"I don't care! Fix it! I'm not going
to lose this opportunity!"
The scientists worked for a moment,
then stopped again. "The quicksilver madness is interfering with the
simulation. If this goes on any longer, he probably won't survive."
The door was kicked open and Agent
Hobbes stepped in. "That's all I need to know." Arnaud whipped out his gun, but
Hobbes made a threatening gesture with his own gun. "Drop it, Swiss Miss."
Arnaud complied, reluctantly putting
his gun down.
Hobbes made a gesture with his other
hand, and Claire appeared from behind him. She began to slowly bring Darien out
of the false reality he was in, and back into the real world.
"So what were they doing to me?"
Darien had come out of everything just fine, and was now full of questions.
"Arnaud had kidnapped you and hooked
you up to his latest invention. He was hoping that by recreating your past and
slowly bringing you out of it, he could also erase your memory of the Agency.
Then he would make sure that you thought that he was the one you supposed to be
working for, and make you do his dirty work. You would never hear of the
Agency, and so in your mind, there would be only one person with
counteragent…Arnaud," Claire patiently explained.
"Where is he now?"
"He got away when we were taking care
of you."
"So how'd you get all this info?"
"The scientists he had hired were more
than willing to talk about everything they were doing."
Darien pondered this. He felt a little
bit glad that all this had happened; it made him realize just how much his new
life with the Agency meant to him. Otherwise, he probably would be marrying
Casey, and seeing Hobbes' death on the news, and not caring about Hobbes.
Aw crap…his head hurt.