Shephard's Story
-The Glorious Awakening-
The pain was so intense, so white hot, Adrian screamed out as loud as the boiling air inside his lungs would let him. His skin tingled as though singed by a hot brand, and his insides tossed and turned in excruciating nausea. Had Shepherd been in any state to survey his surroundings, he would have noticed he was far away from the weightless void, but he still hadn't escaped the blackness. His body lay spread eagle out on the side of a gravely dirt road. The night sky lay open above him, but even darker rain clouds obscured most of it, and soon the heavens opened up, and let the deluge overtake him. Adrian moaned, and curled up into the fetal position, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
The rain continued to fall, with no regard for the haggard and beaten figure lying sprawled under its curtain. Adrian couldn't think, didn't want to, his body still burned. Every move, every breath, released more of the same searing pain. Opening his eyes towards the heavens, Shephard almost wanted to cry out for someone, anyone, to come to his aid, but the mere act of speaking precluded itself.
But the world of darkness and pain was soon illuminated to Adrian's left, far off down the road. Ignoring the pain, and twisting his head, he strained to see through his unruly and soaked hair, the lights, which made their way down the road, did so rapidly. Two sets of two, one behind another. Cars. Which meant people, which meant help.
"…help…" Adrian whispered, fighting against the agonizing pain. But the vehicles couldn't hear him, they were metal and lifeless, which is what Adrian wished he was, lifeless, an end to the pain. The vehicles continued their violent descent of the adjacent hills and were fast approaching the battered individual. Adrian brought his hands up, grunting and gritting his teeth against the soreness, in one last feeble effort to make a signal, before he became road kill.
This is it, Adrian thought, as the lights barreled down on him. Was this what a deer felt as some unsuspecting sedan plowed it into the ground? Adrian closed his eyes, and tried to accept his fate, when he heard the gravel crumble under the tough wheels, as they skidded to a stop just feet from his sprawling body. Squinting in the bright light of the headlights, Adrian tried to make out the vehicle, which seemed almost like a world war two style jeep, but his vision was still blurry, making everything hazy and fuzzy around the edges.
A car door could be heard opening, and several pairs of boots dropped onto the gravel, and Adrian could make out three distinct pairs make their way around him.
"Kto eto?" A foreign language, one Adrian was familiar with, pierced the air. A set of hands pulled him onto his back, causing him to gasp in pain.
"Ya ne znayo." A voice off to the side replied. The hands poked and prodded, searching his vest and his fatigues.
"Help…me." Adrian gasped, the hands running over his body stopped momentarily, fingering the American Flag patch attached to his shoulder.
"Eto Amerycanskee." The person tending to him said in what might have been disbelief. Did he mean American? Come to think of it, the accent of the language sounded oddly familiar, eastern European maybe.
"Nyet, nepravda." An authoritative voice from off the side retorted. The hands left Adrian's shoulder and the figure stood up, pointing at his frail form.
"Da, eto amerycanskee!" Adrian reached back up to the hazy figure, desperately wishing for them not to leave him alone out here, the rain coming down harder than ever.
The authoritative voice took several steps toward Adrian until he could discern his form by the shadows cast by the headlights. Several hands reached out and pulled Adrian from the mud, and he cried out, the pain surging up and down his back, causing his legs to buckle, sending him back to the dirt, only to be picked back up.
"Do you speak English?" That was the last thing Adrian heard as the pain took hold, sending him flying to some unknown destination of unconsciousness.
X X X
The light was the first thing Adrian saw as he came to. The pain that had wracked his body in such a foul fashion was now nothing more than a dull memory. His mind swirled, and he wondered where he was. Turning his head from side to side afforded him nothing but another bout of nausea. The room was small, the walls covered in white and gray cabinets. In the corner of the room sat a rusting footlocker, and to the left side of the examination table Adrian occupied he could make out a door, which blended almost seamlessly with the cold concrete walls.
Shephard found himself draped in a medical gown. He felt absolutely naked, like an animal without his gear. But why? Why did he feel naked with out a specific set of clothing? And where was he? Better yet, who was he? For the life of him, he couldn't remember who he was.
"Its amnesia," he told himself, "It will wear off soon." His voice was high and shrill; terrified that he had no identity. The fear of the unknown struck him like a pale of cold water, and he sprung up from his reclining position, which he immediately regretted. Pain surged up and down his back, and he moaned through gritted teeth against the pain, beating it back down inside of himself. Reaching behind his back, he searched for the source of the pain, only to find the entire length of his spine covered in gauss, moist gauss.
He jumped down from the table, his feet shivering as they came into contact with the freezing cement floor. He made his way across the small room, towards a full-length mirror in the corner opposite the door. He turned so he could see his back, and opened the gown slightly, revealing, and indeed vindicating, his fears. Up his spine ran a length of gauss, still bloody. Had something happened to him? Was his spine damaged at all? He was walking fine, so that obviously precluded any serious injury, which caused Adrian to sigh with relief. Following the length of gauss up his back, Adrian came face to face with his own gaze. He turned and brought his face close to the mirror, scrutinizing the image before him, wondering whom it belonged to. The eyes were a deep hazel, the hair a complementing black. His facial features seemed chiseled from stone, covered in a fine layer of stubble.
"Who are you?" He asked the image, but he was only rewarded with the same question he had just asked. Out of the corner of his eye, Adrian's heart stopped at he looked at the image of the open doorway in the reflection, a man standing in the threshold. Dressed in a blue suit, his skin was pale as new fallen snow; he regarded Adrian with cool interest.
He might not have known his own name, but Shephard knew that this man was someone he had dealt with before. His heart raced, and his breathing became rapid. He didn't move, he simply stared at the reflection of the man standing in the doorway. Finally Adrian mustered the courage to turn, but was greeted with a closed door, completely devoid of any dark figure. Turning back to the mirror, the same shut door greeted him.
But Adrian nearly jumped when the cold metal of the door shrieked as someone from the other side slowly opened it. Turning around, he felt helpless against what laid behind that door.
"Oh, you're awake." A heavily accented voice spoke in English. "We didn't think you'd make it." The man stood several inches shorter than Adrian, around five foot seven inches, but he seemed a great deal older. Graying temples, accentuated by wire frame spectacles, graced his face, wrinkles serving only to perpetuate the grandfatherly image. His attire, though, spoke differently. Dressed entirely in blue, midnight camouflage fatigues, he had donned a Kevlar combat vest, a silenced H&K MP5 dangling on a restraint to his side.
Adrian stood silent, unsure of how to act. The man regarded him uncertainly, finally sighing and pointing to the table. "Come on, hop up, I need to change your dressing. Adrian could do nothing but nod and comply, as he sat up straight on the table. The man pulled his gown down over his shoulders and inspected the gauss. "It's looking better today, any pain?" The man's voice had the familiar Russian accent to it, and Adrian began to feel not so much comfort, but a small level of safety around the man attending to him.
Nodding, he replied, "Just a bit, but not much anymore." The man who seemed more like a doctor than a soldier smiled slightly.
"Good, good, it's healing very nicely." He said as he peeled the old gauss off carefully, and replaced it with a dryer one. "So," He said, still attending to the wounds. "How did you come to be all the way out in our neck of the woods?" Adrian was confused, about where he was, and who he was.
"I…I don't know, I cant remember… anything." The doctor stopped rebandaging, and turned to look Adrian in the eyes, almost rather suspiciously.
"Nothing?" Shephard nodded, and the look of suspicion receded. "You don't remember how you came along that nifty vest of yours?"
"What vest?" The doctor finally tapped the last bit of gauss to the wound, and stepped back, allowing Adrian to pull the gown back up.
"The protective vest you had on you when we found you at the side of the road? Its why your back is the way it is, I had to surgically remove it to get it off of you." Adrian again touched the bandages covering his wound. Protective vest? Adrian didn't remember ever donning such a thing, not that he remembered ever donning anything, even the gown he had found himself clothed in.
"I don't remember anything, besides this," He said gesturing to the room. "Waking up here." The Doctor shook his head.
"Had to the be the water." He mumbled. Adrian's eyebrows curled in curiosity.
"What does water have anything to do with it?" The man turned to the old foot locker and opened it, exposing the lump of clothing contained within. Pulling out several garments, he laid out a pair of raggedy looking olive pants, and a beige military sweater, as well as a pair of thick socks and black boots.
"Get dressed, I'll meet you in the hallway." The doctor said. As he walked towards the door, he turned to Adrian, still sitting on the table. "By the way, my name is Yuri Pavlovich."
Adrian smiled, "Nice to meet you Yuri, my name's…" But Adrian couldn't continue.
"Adrian, Adrian Shephard." The doctor said. Adrian decided that was good enough.
X X X
Yuri shut the door securely behind himself. As he turned to face the end of the hallway, he was startled by a man sitting in the shadows, puffs of smoke rising from his silhouette.
"Christ, Sasha, you scared me." The figure didn't stir, but continued to smoke.
Flicking the ash from his cigarette, Sasha finally spoke. "How's our guest?"
Yuri sighed and pulled out a pair of dog tags. "The good 'corporal' seems healthy enough. He says he doesn't remember anything, I personally believe him. He has all the symptoms of high level exposure to unfiltered water, but on a scale I haven't yet seen, he can't even remember his own name."
The figure shifted, bringing him into the light. Dressed in blue coveralls and a tight fighting Kevlar vest, the man's hard facial features, a broad forehead, chiseled cheekbones, and short cropped gray hair, made him seem like a hardened fighter. "Wasn't there some chatter on the wire about 'memory erasure' among the Overwatch and Civil Protection units? Maybe he's a failed experiment? Wouldn't that explain the hardware he had on him?"
Yuri shrugged, "It's anyone's guess. I had the vest sent up to Stanley, but at first glance, when I was separating it from his body, there were no Combine serial markers. Besides, where would he have gotten the military fatigues? And the dog tags? Something's going on." His voice seemed suspicious, though not specifically of Adrian, but the situation at large.
Sasha nodded in agreement. "Yes, our friend indeed has some explaining to do. When he's ready, bring him down to the holding area. Until then, I'll be down in C lock, helping unload the cargo."
Yuri nodded and mock saluted. "Yes sir, general Destovaya, sir." Sasha smiled and smashed the cigarette under his boot, finally turning to walk away.
