A/N: Again, I apologize for the delay in updating. I'm writing whenever I get the chance, which isn't much. Hoping to have Chapter 21 up this weekend since I'll have days off work for the holidays to write.
A/N2: This chapter is entirely in the past and covers what happened to Jack during those 4 months he was missing.
Chapter 20: A EmKay ULTRA
Four Months Earlier
August 2003
Paris, France
They were surrounded.
Jack moved in front of Will the moment he spotted Julian Sark and McKenas Cole coming down the steps to block their path. He made sure he pressed Will up all the way to the edge of the Seine River. If all went as planned then Will would be able to make it look believable.
"Your stooge botched the drop, Bristow," Cole said as he eyed Will. "You really should keep better company."
"I still got two of your guys," Will shot back.
He bumped into Will's side, making sure his gun brushed up against him. Jack wanted Will to take his gun and once he felt him do just that and the pressure of his weapon was no longer pressing into his back, he made his move. He bolted toward the closest man on his left and got a good jab into his jaw and another against his nose before he was taken to the ground by the other three.
Jack hit the ground but didn't let the pain show on his face as he was jerked up and peered at Will as his lip swelled and he tasted blood on his tongue. Will held the gun but it wasn't trained on anyone. Breathing heavily, he made a show of acting confused at why Will didn't try to shoot any of them.
Sark looked at him and said, "You don't know who this man is, do you Mr. Bristow?" as he gestured toward Will.
He spat out the blood in his mouth as he continued to glare at Sark; he wasn't going to answer. As far as Sark was concerned, he didn't know the truth of who Will was. He would let him go on believing that.
"Why don't you show Mr. Bristow who you are? Show him why you were able to take out two highly-trained operatives on a subway train."
Will hesitated, gun in hand, and then shook his head. "I don't know-"
"Stop with this innocent act," Sark said in aspiration. Looking down at him, he told him, "He's been lying to you-"
"I haven't been lying! I don't know what you're talking about!" Will argued back. "Jack, please, don't listen to him."
Sark turned to Will and stepped up into his face as he said, "Why are you hesitating with that gun? Have you lost your nerve?"
Will held his ground as he told him, "You don't know me."
"Oh, I know you," Sark said as he walked over to him on the ground. "Do you?" he asked as he looked down at him. "How'd you think we found you? I don't think the botched drop was an accident."
Jack knew it had to be soon. Will was ready as he eased his arms down, giving him a good view of his chest. Under Will's coat was a bulletproof vest. All he had to do was not miss.
"Jack," Will said, "it was a mistake. Don't listen-"
He didn't hesitate as he grabbed the gun out of the holster of the man next to him, took aim, and fired.
Will's body jerked as he lost his footing on the ground and fell backwards into the Seine River.
The three men were on him again; knocking the gun out of his hands and punching him in the face.
Sark had rushed to the edge of the river. He searched the water where Will fell in. The current was moving quickly and several boats passed, but Will never resurfaced. Jack laid on the ground after being kicked in the back and ribs and closed his eyes as he hoped Will made it out alive.
Two Weeks Later
London, UK
The floor inched closer to his face for a brief two seconds, touched his nose, and then he pushed up again. The muscles in his arms were starting to shake but he did five more push-ups before he succumbed to the floor and panted for air while listening to silence. Days didn't exist in the room. He had no idea how many hours or days had passed. No one spoke to him. The room was dark with no light and he had to feel around for the cot in the room. His stomach hurt; there wasn't anything he could do to make it stop hurting and quivering. The only thing he could do was keep moving, thinking, and breathing. If he was going to have to fight his way out of this, he was going to put up a good fight.
Foot falls could be heard coming down the corridor outside the door. They were getting closer. A click could be heard against the door before a little window in the door opened. A shadow in the light looked in on him and then shut the window. The footsteps left.
He tucked his arm under his head as he rested on the cot. Jack closed his eyes and tried to sleep since his muscles were screaming at him to do so. All he ended up doing was thinking about what he was going to do about his situation. Deep inside, at the basic components of who he was, he was a killer. And because of that he had known one day that he would meet a violent end. His death wouldn't be peaceful. He'd known that for a very long time. His only goal was to make sure it happened later in his life rather than sooner.
He wasn't going to die there. That was a certainty. He wasn't a quitter and he knew how to fight back. He'd done it before, many years ago. He sat up on the cot, crossed his legs, and let out a deep breath as he tried to focus his thoughts. A meditation of his mind to keep himself from going crazy.
The images that invaded his mind were from a very long time ago to another place.
Vietnam
February 1974
"This is the end, beautiful friend,
This is the end, my only friend,
The end, of our elaborate plans
The end of ev'rything that stands
The end-"
Jack was jostled awake as the van hit a bump in the road. He blinked against the high afternoon sun, saw the greenery of the landscape surrounding them as wiped the sweat from his forehead and neck despite the a/c in the van. In the air was cigarette smoke that couldn't be dispersed due to the closed windows. He grabbed the handle and cranked the window next to him down. They'd been driving for hours, having left before dawn, en-route back to Saigon. There were other CIA agents in the van along with several Marines that were their escorts.
"-No safety or surprise
The end
I'll never look into your eyes again-"
Driving was Staff Sergeant Daniel McKnight and he was humming and singing along to the song playing over the speakers. A cassette tape of The Doors that had been sent to him from his brother back in Boston. He'd heard a lot about McKnight and his family. The Marine liked to talk.
"-Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger's hand
In a desperate land-"
"Well, would you look at that," he heard Andy Douglas say right behind his ear. "You slept for nearly an hour against a window and not a single hair out of place."
"Do you use some sort of brylcreem in your hair to get it to stay so...stiff," asked Steven Mitchell as he went to touch his hair.
Jack moved away and nearly swatted at Mitchell's hand as he heard Douglas laugh.
"I think something else makes Bristow stiff," Sloane said, "and it's not a hair gel."
Mitchell concealed a laugh as he covered his mouth while Sergeant McKnight laughed from the driver's seat. Jack sat up straighter and looked around the van at the other members of his so-called "team" and then at Arvin Sloane who was seated in the passenger seat. The man was his age but had been with the CIA for a year longer than him which gave him seniority. They barely knew one another but one thing he's learned about Sloane over the past couple of months was that the man liked the sound of his own voice and had a very smart mouth.
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
Sloane stared at him behind the big round rims of his glasses as he said, "It means you have a stick up your ass...Most of the time." He then held up a lit cigarette and asked, "Smoke?"
"You know I don't smoke," he shot back.
"Don't smoke?" Sergeant McKnight asked skeptically as he looked through the rearview mirror at him. "Do you at least drink, Boy Scout?"
He watched as Sloane passed the cigarette to Mitchell who took it as he said, "I've never seen Bristow do anything that wasn't work related. Everything with him is work. I bet he dreamt about all the paperwork he's going to do once we get back to the Embassy."
"You know I'm sitting right next to you," he said to Mitchell who took a drag off the cigarette and then passed it over his shoulder to Douglas.
"You know what they say about all work and no play," Sloane said as he looked back at him with an amused smirk on his face, "It makes Jack a dull boy."
"I think he's the last true conventional man on the planet," Mitchell said as he looked over at him. "I bet you don't even listen to Rock'n'Roll, huh Jack?"
"Of course I do," he objected and then asked, "What are you trying to tell me?"
"I think he just called you a square, man," McKnight said as he laughed again. "A boring ass square. The fact that you didn't know proves their point."
He looked directly at Sloane as he asked, "You think I'm boring?"
"Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane-"
"I think you think too much," Sloane countered. "I think you don't know how to let loose and have fun."
"-All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain-"
"Fun," he said as he looked around the other occupants of the van, "is relative. I have a great deal of fun when I am working."
Mitchell moaned as he shook his head, "You're the worst, Brist-"
An explosion rocked the van, sending it over onto the side as it tumbled into a ditch and landed on the roof.
"-There's danger on the edge of town-"
As he hit the ground, his head exploded with pain as his hearing was engulfed in a fog of a high pitched buzz. Muffled noises, voices and rapid fire from an AK-47. Smoke filled the van as he saw blood, heard screaming, and glass breaking as he kicked out the window. Crawling out in the fresh air, he barely had time to register his hearing was back as a gun was shoved into his face.
He froze as he stared up into the face of the man who held the AK-47 pointed at his head. The navy blue fatigues hung off the small thin body as the helmet covered most of his head and dropped down over his eyes. It wasn't a man under the uniform, but a boy, a teenager, and his eyes were dark and cold.
Jack held his hands up in surrender as the others were pulled from the wreckage. As the Viet Cong surrounded them, he could hear the voice from the singer coming through the speakers.
"-The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall-"
A week later and he was surrounded once against but this time by a bamboo cage. Rain poured down on top of him as the dirt ground turned to thick mud as he ran in place; barefooted and with his knees hitting his chest. His eyes focused straight ahead, past the bamboo and at the sight of the man on the ground, rope bound his wrists, irons his legs, as he was held in a grotesque position by two Viet Cong soldiers. They stretched his arms past the point of normal movement. He could tell that the man's shoulders had been dislocated. The man, the Marine Daniel McKnight, refused to break despite the pain he was in.
If McKnight wasn't going to give into the Viet Cong then neither was he. Jack finished out the run and then dropped to the mud and did fifty push-ups. After the push-ups he jumped up, grabbed the bamboo "bars" that were above him, and did fifty pull-ups. Then he dropped down, turned his back to the guards, laid on his back while locking his feet under the bars and started doing sit ups. All the while in his head he planned his escape. He'd memorized the camp, the guards routines and their habits, how they held their weapon, anything and everything. The bamboo cages had weaknesses too.
In a cage next to his, Arvin Sloane watched him as he barely moved from a corner of the cage. He was sitting in the mud, soaked, cold and freezing. The rain had long washed away the blood on his face from a beating he'd received when he refused to answer the Viet Cong's questions. He had swelling from his own beatings and lashes on his back from the whippings, fractured bones from the same "Vietnamese rope trick" that currently bound McKnight.
"What're you doing, Jack?"
He came up out of the mud and once he was sitting up, used his hands to scoop away clumps of mud from under the bamboo bars. "Calisthenics. What are you doing?" he asked when he eased back down onto his back, tensed his core muscles and came up again. And again he used his hands to scoop away handfuls of mud from under the bars.
"It looks like you're digging a hole."
He didn't answer him as he continued his task for the rest of the set of sit ups. Then he stood and started running in place again. His feet pounded into the earth, loosening the mud, making his hole deeper, wider, as he watched the guards beyond the bamboo bars.
"Where do you think you're going to go? We're surrounded by jungle."
He didn't answer Arvin as he saw the two Viet Cong soldiers who were torturing McKnight let him go before one of them pulled out a knife, cut the ropes, and let McKnight fall backwards. He was unconscious. But no one in that camp stayed blissfully asleep for long.
One of the soldiers laughed as he grabbed the knife from the other and slit McKnight's throat. The laughter filled the air as the guards all started laughing.
Jack stopped running. As he watched the two soldiers walk away, all he could hear was the beating of his own heart and the rain that poured down heavy and loud.
Arvin broke through his thoughts as he heard him say, "Something's changed."
He nodded as he realized what it meant. "They don't need us anymore."
The soldiers walked away, out of sight, leaving them alone. They wanted them to see the execution. Wanted them to sit there in the cages, feeling helpless, hopeless, with a constant reminder of what their own fate would be. This form of "torture" could last hours or even days before they were pulled from their cages and faced their own execution.
Jack wasn't going to give them that chance. He was done waiting to die.
September 2003
"You can end this, Jack. Just answer my questions."
Jack continued to stare straight ahead at the brick wall. He was seated in a chair, his arms and legs strapped down to it. He wore no shirt, no socks or shoes, only a pair of sweatpants covered his lower body. It was cold in the room as he could barely feel his fingers.
Arvin Sloane, his once best friend, walked in front of his vision as he told him, "I forgive you, by the way."
He focused on Sloane who stood in front of him. "Have I ever cared before about your forgiveness?"
"I am curious. When did our friendship end, do you think? Was it before or after you killed the love of my life?"
He felt his jaw twitch at the thought of the love of Arvin Sloane's life being Irina Derevko. "I think it was when you tried to have my daughter murdered by Noah Hicks." He glared up at him as he fisted his hands and tried to keep his fingers from going numb. "No. Scratch that," he said as he smirked slightly, "it was when you acted as my best man at my wedding and then slept with my wife. That's when our friendship ended, Arvin, because I realize now that you never were my friend. Not then and definitely not now."
"Oh, please," Sloane said as he adjusted his glasses, "I did you both a favor. As for you believing that I was never your friend, I am truly sorry you feel that way. If I knew that one day that you would consider me your enemy, who knows, I may have done things differently."
"Self-pity doesn't become you," he said with a painful huff of laughter as his legs started to cramp. Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and focused his mind off of the pain.
Having been both captured and stuck in a POW camp and put in solitary confinement, he'd learned how to resist these sorts of tactics. Along with zen meditation, he could withstand and hold out for a very long time.
"At least I don't live in denial, Jack. Irina was a KGB spy who only saw you as her target. I always thought you understood your relationship with her was nothing more than business. Then you had to go and prove me wrong when you made it personal. How could you? You let your emotions blind you and then you betrayed everyone, including your own daughter, by killing her. Has Sydney forgiven you for shooting her mother?"
"Sydney didn't know her well enough for me to require her forgiveness for what I did," he said as he glared over at Sloane.
"You never gave her the chance to get to know her-"
"There is no scenario that could ever exist where I would have allowed my daughter to get to know that woman." His jaw clenched and as his stomach started twisting and biting at insides trying to find something to survive on. He was starving.
"Hungry?"
"Is this what you want? You want me to suffer? You want me to die knowing it was you who did this to me?"
"You got it all wrong," Sloane said. "I don't want to kill you."
"Why not? I would," he said as he glared up at him.
Sloane smiled; a smile that sent a wave of nausea through his gut. "See, again with questioning the nature of our friendship. You're always so willing to kill someone, while I am not. Whether you want to believe it or not, you're still my friend."
He huffed out a laugh as he said, "You have a funny way of showing it."
"I want to make this perfectly clear so you don't misunderstand my intentions here. What you have done to my family, I will do to yours. And you get to live with the fallout...The same as I have."
Jack opened his eyes and refocused on Sloane as he asked, "What are you talking-"
"You took my family away from me, Jack. You shot the person I loved in the head and then you took my daughter away from me."
His body trembled; goosebumps coursed over his body as his feet felt numb on the concrete floor. He tried to blame it on the cold but knew that was a lie. Those words stung his heart and filled his head with fear and uncertainty. He immediately thought of the only two people on earth that he loved more than himself: Will and Sydney.
Sloane adjusted his glasses and started to walk around him. "You're starting to understand, aren't you?" he said as he disappeared behind him. He stepped in front of him again but this time with a syringe in his hand. "There's a change coming. Something that even I could have never imagined possible."
He shook his head at Sloane as he fought down the urge to get sick. His starvation was turning into sickness. "I feel sorry for you, Arvin. I pity you-that you are so devoid of purpose that you have to stoop to revenge to fill the emptiness."
"You're one to talk-"
"I didn't go looking for Irina," he stressed as he glared up at him.
"She loved her, you know," Sloane said as he stepped closer to him. "The way I loved her. That's always been your problem. You can't allow the thought of someone else loving Sydney-"
"You don't love. You possess. Then once you realize that your possessions aren't as committed to you as you are to them, you destroy them. I know why you sent Noah to Berlin to kill Sydney. It wasn't because you found out that Sydney was CIA. You were angry and jealous of the closeness that my own daughter was feeling towards me even though you were the one she called "dad"."
"Maybe you're right. Maybe I let jealousy get the best of me," Sloane said as he stepped closer to him. "I made a mistake with Noah. I should've known that if I wanted something done right, then I would have to do it myself." He jammed the syringe into his arm. "I never was one to throw punches. I prefer," he looked into his eyes as the world started to fade, "more strategic methods to get what I want."
Jack tried to stay awake, to focus, but the drug in his arm was winning the fight as he felt his cold body go numb as he closed his eyes.
"Wake up, Jack. It's going to be a long night." Sloane's voice echoed in his head as he drifted in darkness. "I have business to attend to so I'm having Doctor Oleg Madrczyk take over."
Opening his eyes, he blinked up in confusion. Jack saw a man staring down at him with a white light blinding him from the ceiling over a man's head. It had to have been Madrczyk.
"Hello, Agent Bristow, sir," Madrczyk said as he smiled down at him.
Sloane's voice drifted into his head as he heard him say, "You've got your hands full with this one, Madrczyk. I once spent a couple weeks in a Viet Cong POW camp with Jack Bristow. He will be extremely difficult to break."
"Don't worry. I have many different ways to break a man's mind."
Jack moaned at the voice in his ear. It mixed with the other swirls of painful colors in his head and behind his eyelids. Light cut through the lids of his eyes and he flinched back at the sudden sting. When he tried to open his eyes again a jolt of electricity rippled through his body.
He tried to sit up, but was immediately thrown back into something liquid. He gasped at the sudden burning, swallowing a mouthful of the hot water down his throat. When he was pulled up he coughed up the water, making his chest tight with pain. His eyes sprung open only to blinked back at the bright white light in front of him. Before he could catch his breath he was thrown back again, this time the water was freezing; it was a shock to his system and he forgot to breathe. Forgot to even move.
With a strong jerk, his head whipped back, banging against the steel tub under him, and he was brought back out of the water. He sucked in a deep, staggering breath. It reminded him of breathing in freezing cold air on winter nights in Russia or Canada. It was an ice cold burn all the way down to his lungs.
His bare feet slipped on the tile concrete floors as he was thrown back again. He was burning now. Against all logic he screamed again in the burning hot water, taking in gulps of the water. Instead of being frozen to numbness, he thrashed around, trying to grab a hold of the side of the steel tub but couldn't get his arms free of the restraints. Another jerk and he was coughing up water again, but this time it was mixed with bile as he body was trying to balance itself. He didn't know how long his body could manage to continue putting up with his constant back-and-forth between burning hot water to freezing cold water.
It was getting harder to breathe; he was starting to hyperventilate. Just when he thought he wouldn't be thrown back again there was a jerk and he hit the ice water in the midst of a deep breath and his throat froze from the sudden ice hitting it. His reflexes clicked in and tried to shoot the water out and close his mouth, but he could already feel himself not being able to breathe. His head was lighter, almost not there and he opened his eyes only to see it darkening around the edges. Through the rippling clear water he could make out the light that was shining on him; it was the sun rays shining through a sunroof.
A figure blocked out the light and he could make out a distorted version of Dr. Valerie Kholokov beside Madrczyk before he was jerked up again. This time instead of coughing up the water he went limp in the restraints and fell to the concrete floor.
He coughed out the water into the floor and stopped feeling. He drifted in unconsciousness where nothing existed except his past.
It'd been over a year and Jack still couldn't shake the horrors of Vietnam. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't get the pain in his body to stop, couldn't get the images of the men he killed out of his head, and he couldn't feel the love from his girlfriend's touch whenever she tried to sooth it all away.
He grabbed the whiskey off the kitchen counter and took a big gulp. The burn from the hot liquid going down his throat and pooling in his stomach soothed his aching heart and troubled mind. The walk down the hallway and into the bedroom only consisted of ten steps but he stumbled every one of them. He was back home for the time being. It was only a brief leave until he was due back to Vietnam next month. Laura rolled over in the bed as he passed by. She had come over to talk but all he could do was drink without ever speaking a word to her. She finally laid down on the bed without him.
He remembered a question the CIA therapist had asked him several months ago. "How are your relationships? Have any of them been affected by these intrusive thoughts and nightmares? Any disturbances-"
"I don't have relationships," he had responded before getting up to leave.
Despite Laura's persistence in him after his return, he kept pushing her away as he remained quiet and distant as he tried to turn off his connection to her. No one wanted him, and quite frankly, he didn't want anyone to want him. He was too damaged. Too angry.
The bathroom light burned his eyes as he entered. He gripped the side of the sink as he stared into the drain. After several long minutes and two more gulps of whiskey he was able to look at himself in the mirror. What he saw staring back at him scared him to his bones. It wasn't the fact he had grayish-black bags under his eyes and hollow cheeks from drinking himself to sleep every night. It was that for a briefest of moments he'd seen blood covering his face before it faded. Another gulp and the only pain he felt was the fact that he was out of alcohol.
Laura was going to leave him. It was inevitable. Deserving. He was no boyfriend and he would be a horrible husband and father. Any feelings of happiness he had felt before had all been a lie. The only thing he ever did was make everyone he ever loved hate him. All the immediate blame that he put on the job and the war withered as he looked into the mirror. It was him; his fault and only his. Jonathan Donahue Bristow was a failure. He'd always been too busy shutting himself down in order to do his job that he didn't know how to open himself up.
It also didn't help that he wanted someone else. Someone who wasn't the woman in his bed.
The cold water numbed his head and face as he dunked his head under the sink faucet. He couldn't believe how talking to another person had become so physically painful; it was like he was stuck in that POW camp, except now it was his own mind that entrapped him. He couldn't talk, and when he did, it was out of anger and resentment because he couldn't stop feeling what he felt then. He couldn't stop seeing what he saw. He couldn't stop thinking those thoughts.
They offered him a position. A side job, as it were, with the Company. They wanted him to kill again; this time for the job. They wanted him to be an assassin.
Jack Bristow, CIA Case Officer, CIA Agent, and now, CIA Assassin. Codename: Dragon.
He could still feel nails digging into his hands as he held a tight death-like grip around a man's neck as he strangled the life out of his body. He still felt a sharp throb of pain on his face as the tip of a knife came up and sliced over his face, across his lips, in an effort to get him to stop. He didn't stop until the man pleading for his life under him was dead. It hadn't been one man he'd brutally murdered but seventeen.
The stench of blood was in every corner; echoes of pleading screams overwhelmed every crowded room and devoured every empty one. Any pleasurable caress was laced with an abundance of guilt that brought to light every sin he'd ever committed. There was a cruel and constant digging just below his heart that dug deeper and deeper into his chest. It pounded so hard that he prayed for a heart attack.
He was a murderer. But that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part of it was that he'd said yes. He accepted the position. He wanted the job.
A shaky hand rubbed at his wet face. He needed sleep. He needed one night that wasn't filled with screams and cold sweats. He wanted to stop sleep-walking and getting confused by what was real and what wasn't. Whenever he tried to sleep, in his dreams he saw Laura dying in his arms. Her lifeless eyes staring back at him. They were teasing, taunting, begging and pleading for him to stop. And when he looked down, he held the blade that had carved death into Laura's skin.
That was his nightmare every night and vision during the day. He was the murderer he feared the most. He had become the dragon he'd sworn to slay.
Days before, when he and his best friend Arvin Sloane were talking, Sloane leaned forward in his chair at the mention of Vietnam. Penetrating him with those steely blue eyes of his, he asked, "Do you really feel that bad, Jack, because killing them felt so good?"
Sloane knew. He knew that the reason he really hated himself so much was because what he'd done had felt just. He not only did it because he had to do it to survive, but because he wanted to do it. And he did, in an odd way, enjoy it. He heard laughter in his head. The laughter of the Viet Cong as Daniel McKnight was killed. They had found it funny. He found it purposeful.
His fist collided with the mirror before he had a chance to register that he was no longer in that dark hell-hole in Vietnam, but in his small apartment.
Pain rippled up his arm as shreds of shattered glass embedded themselves in his skin while others fell onto the sink and floor. His vision blurred as he watched the blood drip from his hand to pool on the tile floor.
"Jack?"
He jumped back, stumbling so fast that he slammed into the opposite wall with a loud, painful crack. Clenching his eyes shut, he tried to push his fear away. He was terrified of Laura. Terrified that she was still there, willingly. He was terrified of her expectations of him. Boyfriend? A husband? Her lover? Her protector?
He could very well end up being her murderer. He could kill her as quickly and as easily as he had killed those in that POW camp.
He opened his eyes and started at her as he raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth blindly as he took desperate gulps at nothing. The bottle landed on the floor, empty and broken. His head spun violently as the echoing laugh of the Viet Cong finally stopped but only to be replaced by another voice.
Her voice.
She took his hand, pulled him toward her, as she told him, "It'll be okay, Jack. It'll be okay."
And he believed her.
Laura led him to the bed and pushed him down on top of the blanket. He stared up at her and closed his eyes as she brought her face down and kissed him.
"I'm sorry," was the first and only thing he'd said to her that night.
A jolt of electricity shot through him and he screamed out in pain into the floor. Hands were felt under him, lifting, but the touch was one he couldn't feel. There was nothing distinct about his movements or the movements around him. Light would come and go as he involuntarily opened and closed his eyes; they took nothing in. Nothing was noticed, no details of the room, the people, or the tubs. Nothing but bright lights, strobing and flickering in his eyes.
Water encircled him, burning one moment then freezing the next. He couldn't think, couldn't even scream anymore. Whenever he went completely unconscious a shock would wake him up, but only to be thrown back into the water again and again.
October 2003
This was how men were broken.
Their every essence of life was stripped from them minute by minute, day after day, until all they knew was a dark cell and no life on the "outside". Institutionalized. Make a man forget what hope was, what love felt like, and he would eventually break. He wasn't spoken to anymore. He wasn't touched other than to be tortured or given a shot. They kept him drugged up most of the time now.
As he laid on the small cot in his own private hell, he forgot what Will's voice sounded like. He forgot what Will felt like under his hands. He forgot what Will smelled like as they laid in bed together.
Worst of all, he forgot that he loved him. And in that dark cell he didn't cry in agony over it. He felt a deeply gut-wrenching betrayal over it.
Then there was her. Someone else he knew he was supposed to love and care about that was no longer there. She was just...gone. A figment of a memory that no longer lingered in his mind. A love that no longer gripped his heart but released it, leaving him uncaring. He felt cold.
For some odd reason, a poem entered his mind. Had he read it before a long time ago? He wasn't sure because he couldn't remember the last time he'd read anything. The poem went:
"His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone."
It was a poem by Rainer Rilke. Now, in the "dark room", he understood that poem all too well.
Jack had to try really hard to even remember what his life once consisted of. To him there was no other life outside the brick walls and concrete floors. Sounds echoed then faded; faint images of what he thought were humans stuttered in and out of his vision but never connected with his mind or heart. They were never imprinted in his memory. Only the things that felt real filled his memories, like the burning of water over him before the freezing water would numb him. Or the light hurting his eyes and head right before the darkness of the cell surrounded him in nothingness.
Then, one day, a voice spoke into his ear. The heat from the breath of the voice didn't tickle his neck; it faded into it like it was never there to begin with. The voice was saying: "This, this Jack, this will help you get through. This is what you need."
He felt a pin-prick in his arm.
A hint of a feeling grew in his stomach and filled its way up to his head. He needed that. That fix. It took the pain away and made him feel...so good.
He closed his eyes as euphoria filled his body. It made him feel stronger, if only for a moment. Opening his eyes, he saw a familiar looking man holding the needle. Doctor Oleg Madrczyk. He learned that when Madrczyk was in the room with him then the door to his room was unlocked.
Pure adrenaline would keep him going once he took care of the doctor.
His voice, as quiet as a whisper, spoke into the room, "Do you know what I am?"
Madrczyk just looked at him.
"I am the dragon. And I am going to kill you."
Jack's mouth twisted up. He didn't think twice before he slammed into the doctor, sending them both backward onto the floor. The sound of Madrczyk's body hitting the concrete echoed in his ears before his fists pounded into the man's stomach, chest, and finally his face. Grabbing Madrczyk's head up, he slammed it hard into the floor before he took off out the room.
The lights from the hallway caused a rippling effect of pain through his head as his bare feet pounded the concrete floor. He didn't know which direction he was going or where the exit was, but he figured as long as he kept moving forward he'd be okay. His focus was off, blurry from days of not being able to see and it caused him to almost run into a wall. He saw it just in time to avoid it.
His heart was beating loud in his chest, breathing was beginning to get ragged as he slowed his pace and frantically looked around him. He was in a darker area of the building and he could see the hallways better. The lights had been killing his eyes. Concrete lined the floors and ceilings, brick lined the walls. Rooms could be seen that once used for treating patients and holding lectures; he was in the old med school or something.
At the end of the hallway, he saw his salvation. A door with light shining from under it; he took off running as he heard something behind him click. He was too focused on the door to not notice someone was coming up quickly behind him. As the door banged open he saw a bridge, the sky and trees.
He heard a noise on the wind then felt a sting in his neck. Before he could turn around his vision blurred and he hit his knees as darkness engulfed him.
November 2003
Jack was in his house in Maryland. He was at the piano when a sudden scream shattered the silence. It came from the study. The door to his study was locked from the inside and his leg throbbed as he kicked the door open to barge his way into the room. His face paled at what he saw.
His child, his daughter, was dead on the floor. A shadow moved behind him and he pulled his gun as he turned and took aim. Gunfire erupted in his ears as he emptied the magazine as the bullets slammed into the shadow man's chest. He watched as the shadow stumbled and fell to the floor in front of him as his own hands grew cold and the gun slipped from his loose fingers.
He heard the gun hit the wood floor with a loud clunk as a hot throbbing pain grew inside him. The taste of copper was on his tongue as he coughed blood out of his mouth. Breathing became harder as he struggled to stay on his feet, but his body grew too heavy and he hit his knees. His hands roamed over his own body and stopped on a warm wetness that covered his chest.
As his hands rose up, he saw blood.
Confusion and fear set in as he stared across the floor at the other body riddled with bullets. The face of the shadow man came into focus and he saw it was Will. Blood soaked through his clothes as he laid in front of him, dying, and holding the gun that he had used to kill his daughter.
"I see," he heard himself say in a whisper as he fought to breathe.
He watched as Will closed his eyes and took his last breath.
A laugh started to build in his throat, warm and full of clarity, as he said again, "I see."
Kill one, he thought, and we all die.
The cloudiness of the nightmare began to fade but his throat ached raw as he choked on a scream. His eyes flew open only to stare into darkness. An intense burning filled his chest before he finally sucked in a deep breath. He'd been having dreams like that every time he closed his eyes. Death was all around him. Everyone he loved was dead and gone. He couldn't even remember his daughter's name.
He closed his eyes again as he tried to push the memories of the dream away into nothingness. It didn't work. Their deaths were all he could think of. Will had shot and killed his daughter. Him shooting Will. And by killing Will, he had killed himself.
When he opened his eyes, he was confused why there was a man and woman standing in front of him. The walls were brick and didn't keep the warmth in but he knew that the bricks were real. The small hard cot was real. The darkness was real. His breath. The two people, the man and women, were not real. Not in his world at least. Maybe in someone else's, someone who wasn't used to seeing nothing, maybe they existed in theirs.
"This is Em," she said. "I'm Kay."
Jack stared into the dark room, at two images in front of him, and kept silent as he listened as they tried their best to tempt him. They were named Em and Kay for a reason. His mind was assigning meaning to the hallucinations.
His mind was trying to tell him what was happening. What they were doing to him. And how he could beat them.
Em. Kay.
He rolled those names around in his head and smiled once it clicked. In the darkness the two images faded as he thought about the abandoned CIA mind control program called Project MKUltra (MK-Ultra).
The project had been organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories and had been sanctioned in 1953 and then abandoned in 1973. It experimented on human test subjects as a way to identify and develop drugs and procedures that could be used in interrogations, weaken the mind, and as ridiculous as it sounded, force mind control. The methods and techniques used to manipulate the subjects' mental states and brain functions included administrating of high doses of psychoactive drugs and other chemicals, the used of electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and isolation as well as other forms of torture.
He'd been subjected to all of those methods. That got him thinking and he laid awake for a long time wondering if they really were trying to manipulate his mind and force him to do something. The thing was that there was no way to make someone do something that they normally wouldn't do. His problem was that there wasn't much he wouldn't do.
He's killed a lot of people and if they wanted him to kill one more, they could probably make him do it.
TBC...
Note: Song used in the chapter is "The End" by The Doors.
