Disclaimer: 24 and all its wonderful characters belong to Fox. I only borrow them, and add a few of my own.
Chapter 1
The following takes place in a detention centre near Shanghai about 6 months after day 5.
Jack entered consciousness with the disturbing thought that he knew neither where he was, nor how he had got there. His mind was fuzzy. By habit, he attempted orient himself before giving any outward indication that he was awake, so as not to alert the guard.
A quick body-check first. He was proned out on what felt like a bed, hands above his head. He could feel restraints at ankles and wrists, but did not want to risk any noise in these just yet, so he remained still. Pain – yes – mostly in the back. There had been a flogging – he couldn't remember how long ago, but the pain was consistent with that. At least something added up. He was wet and cold. The bed under him was also soaked. Had someone thrown a bucket of water over him? No, he seemed to be wet everywhere, and that effect is difficult to achieve with a bucket.
A smell – familiar, but he couldn't place it. The dullness of his mental processes frustrated him. He began to chide himself for being slow and then chided himself for that, too. Self-recrimination was a luxury he could not afford right now. You're slow Jack, you're slow. That too may be important. File it. Get on to the next thing.
Sounds. In the distance. Low chatter in Chinese. Talk about the weather, most likely. Last night's supper. What's good on TV. Didn't sound important, and certainly not directed at Jack. Other sounds – nearby whirring. Fans. These were directed at Jack, and he shivered some more. Bad enough being cold, wet and naked, they don't need fans, too. Fans mean electricity. File that thought and move on. Still on sounds. Some faint beeping. Like medical alarms going off. That was it, thought Jack, a medical place. The smell – disinfectant! He congratulated himself for working this out. He had woken up in an infirmary of some kind.
He'd had medical checks before. Not for his benefit to be sure, just to make sure he didn't die unexpectedly. The Chinese were a thorough people, they liked to be in control. Every so often they would take him to a room, strip, poke and prod. They took blood, they demanded samples. He never saw the same doctor twice, and imagined they worked rotations here, or were contracted in specially. Either way, the doctors were actual doctors. They were not interrogators, jailors, guards or torturers.
Jack decided it was time to open his eyes – he wanted to see which guard was with him. Decisions like these – when to keep eyes closed and when to open them – were important to Jack. Measures of control he had over himself and the people round about him. He could manipulate them just with his eyes. This time, opening them brought no immediate response from the guard. Jack turned his head and saw him, sleeping soundly, on a plastic chair to Jack's left. He recognized him as the one he had nicknamed 'Eric.'
Eric, like most guards, was young, perhaps 18 years old, about 5'5, weighing some 160 pounds and wore a boringly-grey uniform and cap. Initially Jack had found it difficult to distinguish one guard from the next. Then he had started giving them names, and found that they did have distinctive features. Jack was getting better at recognizing oriental faces. This was progress. Progress was a positive thought, and positive thoughts were treasures.
Once they had names and faces, the guards also took on personalities. Eric was not a good guard. Jack would have discharged him, dishonourably, by now. The boy had no stamina, was afraid of his superiors, afraid of his charge, afraid of his own weapon. He had a tendency to fidget, and would hit Jack with the butt of his weapon when Jack baited him.
Eyes open, Jack used the opportunity to take in his surroundings. If he had just woken from, say, a coma, and they had not yet realized, this might be his best opportunity for exploration before they put him under better guard. He was, as he had suspected, shackled by hands and feet to a bed in a single room, perhaps 10' by 12'. A clinical room, white, with electricity and a window (Jack's heart skipped a beat) but blinds drawn. Medical equipment all around, but clearly out of his reach. He seemed to have been placed with his head to the foot of the bed, attached to monitors behind him.
A chart on a board was hooked on the foot of the bed, right in front of him, inches from his hands. This was too tempting for Jack. He risked some noise bringing his feet as far up the bed toward him as he could to allow slack on the chains that held his hands to the corners. There was just enough slack to bring his hands together and reach the chart. Silently, he brought it over the bar at the foot of the bed. All in Chinese of course. He searched for a date, but saw nothing he recognized. Some numbers (40.3, 40.9, 40.5) were, he presumed, temperature readings, but he could not figure out over what time-span they had been taken. His blood pressure seemed very low, but that did not worry him. Let them worry about that. More importantly, the chart had a pen at the top. A pen with a little metal clip on the end. He bent the clip several times, breaking it off the pen and replaced the pen in a little plastic pocket in the chart. The clip he put in his mouth, nestled comfortably at the bottom of his right gum. That's where he used to hide chewing-gum in school. He quietly replaced the chart over the end of the bed, hoping they wouldn't notice the missing clip, and inched back down the bed.
The second time Jack moved, he had dislodged one of the sensors stuck to his chest. A beep went off beyond the door, then the door opened. A nurse had come to check on him. She was slim, petite, and wore a crisp white uniform. He felt like asserting himself into the situation, so he gave her a long, hard stare. He knew that, together with an impassive face, this was unnerving for most people. She was surprised to see him awake, and spoke sharply to the Eric. Eric shook himself awake and shoved his rifle in Jack's ear. Slowly, Jack turned his head to stare Eric down too. Really, at rifle at the head was gratuitous when a man is shacked by all his limbs. Jack felt some tension in their conversation between Eric and the nurse. He was worried she might rat him out. The nurse hastened to replace the sensor on Jack's chest and then stuck something (he presumed a thermometer) up his ass. He tried not to react to the indignity, but looked calmly past Eric's muzzle right up into his eyes.
Jack remembered where he had seen this nurse before. Not here, in this room. Interrogation booths. That's right, she was one of those who came to site an IV line for medical interrogations. She would site it and leave. Not all interrogators were trained in siting these lines; not all who were trained were any good at it. Sometimes they would fumble about, trying fruitlessly to find a vein. That gave him a chance to laugh, which infuriated them greatly. This one, however, the nurse, got the vein first time. Always. She knew where to put the needle.
He hadn't given her a name because she was the only female who had been in the booth. As if she was reading his mind, she spoke to him.
"Prisoner Bauer, my name is Jasmine. You lucky you alive. You have septicaemia. How you feel right now?"
Jack was unused to being addressed so politely, and certainly had had no idea she could speak English. In his surprise he might even have spoken, only he had no idea what to say. The idea that someone was actually interested in how he was feeling was quite alien. He looked at her more closely, taking in her features. She too was young, but he felt unable to judge how young as he'd seen no other women for such a long time. She could have been 20, she could have been 30. He guessed from her figure she had no children. Now that she wasn't actually sticking a needle in his hand, she actually looked quite pretty.
The thermometer in his ass beeped. She took it and wrote in the chart. She didn't seem to notice anything strange about the pen.
Jack chuckled inwardly. She would get more information from his ass than his mouth. That was as it should be. Perhaps he had been really ill. He was out of his element. He needed to keep his guard up.
She positioned herself back in his eyeline. "How you feel?"
Silence.
She sighed. "You feel hot, cold? Thirsty, nauseous, hungry?"
More silence.
"Look, I not want confession. This not interrogation. You tell me how you feel, I make you better quicker."
Jack allowed himself a small smile. Her logic was impeccable. But from Jack's point of view, a long slow recovery was just as good as a fast one. The new surroundings, even with the shackles, made a welcome break from his cell.
She moved closer to him. "You in pain? I can get you morphine. Tell me you want it, and I get it."
Jack closed his eyes. Not funny. He would keep them closed until she went.