There is nothing to see but white light all around him. There is no pain; in fact there is no sensation at all. He cannot feel his body, its as if he is separate from his body, his mind floating about in the whiteness. It is peaceful, serene, and John Casey hates every second of it.
He wants to struggle, to free himself from the white light but he cannot. He screams only he cannot hear his voice or feel the vibration in his throat. For all he knows he has been utterly silent. He wonders if this is what it is like to be dead.
Time passes; eventually the white place is gone. His body reports back in and Casey opens his eyes and takes in his surroundings.
He is in a cage made of something similar to Plexiglas. To his right in a similar cage connected by a shared wall is his asset, Chuck Bartowski. The young man is lying unconscious on his stomach, naked with a single silvery bracelet on his left wrist. To Casey's left is his partner, Sarah Walker, also unconscious, naked and wearing a silvery bracelet on her right wrist.
Casey's own senses tell him he is also nude but there is no bracelet on either of his wrists. Instead he reaches up with his right hand and fell the cool metal of a collar around his neck. His fingertips trace the metal looking for the release catch, but finds nothing but seamless metal; Casey snatches his hand away and growls softly in his throat.
He moves to his knees, the cage too short to allow him to stand. He crawls over to the wall his cage shares with Walker's and beats on it with his fist shouting at his CIA partner to wake up.
He sees her twitch, then hears her moan as she moves off her stomach rolling onto her back, her eyes opening slowly a hand coming to her forehead.
He knows the moment she realizes her nudity when she jerks into a sitting position her eyes wide and looking around her cage. She immediately focuses on Casey.
"What is going on?" Walker says. "Where is Chuck?"
Casey nods his head in the direction of the other cage behind him where Chuck is still out.
"He's there. I saw his breathing, he's just out like you were." Casey answers. "I don't know what is going on. The last thing I remember is driving through the desert."
He doesn't continue saying the reason for the drive. Sarah was there she remembers the reason.
"I remember. Do you think its Fulcrum?"
Casey looks around the room beyond the cages. The walls are silvery gray, and glow softly. It's bizarre in a surreal way.
"I don't think so." Casey says.
"Try and wake Chuck up." Sarah said.
Casey nods and crawls over to the wall his cage shares with Chuck's completely ignoring his nakedness.
Like with Sarah, Casey bangs on the wall with a fist shouting at Chuck to wake up. Unlike Sarah, Chuck wakes up with a jerk of his body, fear in his brown eyes. Not surprising since Chuck had been tranqued for his desert drive.
Chuck looks around widely not really seeing his handlers. His then looks down at himself and finds he his naked. Immediately hands go to cover his groin.
"What the government can't spring for clothes!" Chuck shouts.
"This isn't a government facility, Chuck." Casey tells him.
Chucks head swings in Casey's direction, his brown eyes wide as he sees his NSA handler sitting back on his calves just as naked as Chuck with a some kind of silvery metal collar around his neck. He also notices Sarah also in a cage beyond Casey just as naked and completely unembarrassed. Chuck immediately turns his eyes away from Sarah's nude body and looks directly at Casey's eyes.
"Wh…what is going on?" Chuck asks.
"We don't know." Casey answers honestly.
"You tranqued me and now we all suddenly end up on cages like some lab experiment and you don't know!"
"We weren't suppose to end up here. We were taking you to a secure facility. Someone intercepted us."
"Fulcrum?" Chuck asked afraid.
"I doubt it. Fulcrum wouldn't have any reason to keep Walker and I alive and they sure as hell wouldn't put us in glass cages with collars and bracelets."
Chuck looked down at the metal bracelet on his left wrist. The metal was smooth and seamless. Chuck could find now way to remove it. He couldn't even figure out how it was placed on his wrist in the first place.
"This isn't like any metal I know. All metals I know will eventually warm to your body temp, this is still cold even the part touching my wrist." Chuck said.
"So its not metal?" Casey asks.
"It's not like anything we know."
Sarah could obviously hear the conversation because she put in, "Chuck what are you saying?"
"I..I don't know." He didn't want to voice what he thought. It was crazy after all. Insane and it would just piss Casey off to hear Chuck's theory.
However, it was taken out of Chuck's hands when suddenly one of the walls dematerialized and two creatures right out of X-files entered the room.
Chuck gasped in shock and he noticed his two handlers weren't dealing very well with the sight of what Chuck could only guess was actual aliens.
"Oh my god there really are aliens, this is amazing!" Chuck was scared but excited at the same time. Proof of alien life was right in front of him.
"This is nuts." Casey said looking at the little gray aliens with their big heads and dark eyes. "We're hallucinating."
The aliens looked at their captives then walked over to one of the walls. Holographic images suddenly appeared in the air in front of them and the aliens touched the images with the three-fingered hands moving the images with touch as they spoke to each other in a strange language.
"We can't be hallucinating the same thing." Sarah said. She was handling it a bit better than her partner was.
"These are not aliens, there is no such thing!" Casey yelled.
"They are aliens!" Chuck said. "Look at them, people don't look like that even with the best make-up artists. And they aren't CGI."
Casey shook his head.
Suddenly holographic images surrounded Casey and he tried to jerk away only to find he couldn't move a muscle. The images around him appeared to be holographic images of human bio-systems, muscular, skeletal, nervous, and others. Chuck and Sarah watched in amazement as the holographic images moved around Casey changing so fast they couldn't make heads or tail of what the aliens were doing.