Mike Evans woke up with a groan. He had been having one of those perfect dreams that he never wanted to wake up from. He had envisioned himself in his cozy apartment, on his comfortable burgundy couch in front of the TV with his daughter in his arms. Alex had insisted they watch the foreign channel so she could see the soccer games and he had relented. He wasn't a big Oprah fan anyway. He had leaned against the armrest with Alex leaning against his chest and she was making many humorous comments about the male players. He remembered closing his eyes and thinking how lucky he was. And that was when he had woken up.

"Given my life-long search for irony, you can imagine how excited I am." Mike mumbled under his breath at the thought. He pushed himself into a sitting position on the green concrete floors of Abu Ghraib with his one good arm and leaned against the wall. He heard David stir and yawn. "Good morning." He commented dryly.

"Now, Michael, aren't we Mr. the-glass-is-half-full?" David returned sarcastically. The soldier got to his knees and looked around, though he was careful not to make too much noise. He heard a commotion not too far off and his eyes widened. He moved quickly beside Mike and motioned for the journalist to be quiet.

Mike furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. He hadn't heard anything, but the sound grew louder as it came closer. He froze when two men walked past their cell, each man holding an American's arm, and dragging the victim past. Blood marked their path and Mike craned his neck to see what ailed the soldier. The man's face and chest were bleeding from wounds that had possibly occurred from a beating. Bile rose in Mike's throat as the overpowering smell of blood affronted his nose. The breaths he was taking became few and far between as his lungs seemed to shrink in size.

"You alright?" David whispered, afraid to speak any louder.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a small asthma attack." He waved it off. He had had asthma since he could remember and it was no problem.

"Okay." The Hispanic nodded. He stood up and walked over to the cell door where a lazy guard was sitting. "English?" He asked. "Espanol?"

"English." The guard scowled. "What do you what?"

"Paper?" David requested and jumped back when the guard waved his large gun.. "Okay, okay." He sat back down and sighed.

Both men drifted away from the prison into their own thoughts. Mike thought of Alex and her last letter. He wasn't jealous of his ex-wife's new boyfriend and the fact he didn't have a girlfriend. He was completely fine with it. It was the fact that Alex described him as 'mean'. Truth be told, Mike was a bit of a wimp at times, but he would not stand for his daughter to be in the company of a man who belittled her or made her feel unsafe. He burned with anger at the thought she could be talking to another man in the same way she talked to him. After losing his wife to the lull of being single and then finding out she was pregnant, he would cling to whatever he had left of his previous life. He had been in the construction business, always a writer on the side. After the divorce, he gave up building and got into journalism. He was very proud of the fact he made more money than any other man his ex-wife had dated in the last fourteen years. It was an ego-stroke, simply put, but it did him well.

The door to the cell clanged open and an intimidating-looking Iraqi stood above them. He could have easily been seven feet tall and he held a metal bar in his hand. His dark eyes glinted with sick excitement and if he had had any, it would have made Mike lose his breakfast. The journalist gulped, his heart thudding wildly in fear and it wouldn't have been half as bad if the monster of a man had been coming towards him.

David got to his feet just in time to dodge the first blow, but he was still exhausted and he had shrapnel from the bomb explosion in his left knee. He stumbled, merely for a moment, and the bar came crashing onto his head. Blood starting to pour down the right side of David's face and Mike cried out. He threw up at the sight and pushed himself away from the monstrous man. He wished he was anywhere, anywhere at all, and cried out to God for the first time, but no one answered and the last thing he remembered was a big metal bar coming towards his face.

0000

Mike's vision was blurry when he opened his eyes. He attempted to reach a hand up to his face, but his elbows were flaming with pain and his arm was still broken and it felt as it the entire bone was in pieces. His head swam from the overwhelming pain and he wished for the sweet darkness of unconsciousness to return to him, but he somehow stayed conscious. He heard a groan not far from him and he sat up. He cried out and laid back down quickly, only to find that his back was throbbing with pain.

"I miss those days when I had ribs!" He groaned, trying to breathe as little as possible. The overwhelming stench of blood assaulted his nostrils again and his lungs started to close in again. He focused on breathing and did the calming exercises he had been taught as a young child whenever he would have asthma attacks from playing too much soccer or running too hard in track.

"Michael, you… alive?" David groaned.

"If I were dead, I don't think I would be in so much pain." Mike replied, rejoicing inwardly that his friend was still alive and hadn't been killed by that man.

"You'd think so." The Hispanic grinned despite his massive head wound.

"I'm glad you're okay, man." Mike mumbled as another wave of pain attacked him. He slowly moved his arm onto his stomach to observe the damage. There were no open wounds on his stomach, only the one on his head. He was sure his left arm was broken, and his elbows were fractured. A couple of ribs were broken, but he hoped none of them had punctured a lung. His nose was bleeding, but he knew it wasn't totally destroyed. Both eyes were swelling up and he could only see through small slits.

"Yeah." David said. "Here." He weakly rolled over a small loaf of bread.

Mike grasped it in his hand and slowly sat up and leaned his upper back against the wall. That was the only part of him fortunate enough to be unscathed. He blinked, trying to clear his mind of the fogginess of his physical pain. He picked up the bread and bit into it, a sharp pain erupting in his mouth. He spat out two teeth and with it blood. He reached a hand to his mouth and wiped out the blood and tried his best to eat as much of the bread as possible. He remembered some survival techniques he had learned from a captain of the Marines before he had left for Iraq- it was best to eat as much as they gave you when you were a prisoner for you never knew when your next meal would be.

He coughed violently, and he put a hand to his mouth. He squinted at the hand he had covered his mouth with. Blood shimmered on the palm of his hand. He blinked and gulped, spitting out the remnants of the blood from his mouth. Mike relaxed as much as he could without paining himself further. He sighed.

"Hey David?"

"Yeah?"

"You ever think God is real?"

David raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"My daughter's a Christian and she's always telling me she prays for me and that she hopes God will bless me and that things are going to be okay because God's in control. Do you ever think that kind of stuff is real?" He rasped, feeling the side of his pants for his glasses. He had terrible eyesight but refused to wear the glasses for his writing, which he did most of the time. He pulled out the wire frames and blew on them before perching them on his nose as peering at David.

"HEY! No talking!" The guard snapped loudly as his supervisor walked by.

It was the giant monster. Mike gave a tiny groan. He was in such pain. Just at the sight of the man made his head throb even more. He closed his eyes and pretended to be dead. He coughed again, feeling flecks of blood land on his lips and chin. The giant monster man grunted and then continued to walk. A newspaper landed on the floor, tossed in by the guard, and David crawled over.

"Haditha." He grunted. "Civilians shot and killed. I can't believe it…" He sighed, lying back down.

"What does Chiarelli have to say?" Mike asked, putting all of this information into his head.

"He says that some individuals choose the wrong path and every soldier will be getting a moral training about when to shoot and when not to shoot and all that." David explained. "And you know about the Iranian leader?"

"Yeah? How he's going to become the next Hitler, with bringing back some of the Nuremberg laws, the yellow star of David and such?" Mike confirmed his knowledge.

"President Bush is trying to get him to give up his nuclear research and sit down to talks."

"God I hope it works." Mike sighed.

David and Mike looked away and lost themselves in their own thoughts. Mike again thought about Alex and how she was doing. He didn't know what he was going to do with himself if he couldn't stop thinking about her. She was ever-present in his thoughts and he hated being away from her. He hated his job but it was necessary. This was a time that no one should ever forget.

"Hey, what's that?" David asked.

"What?" Mike looked around.

"Nah, up in the window." The journalist craned his neck around to see what the big deal was.

There was something shimmering above his head. It was silver in color and it reflected the non-existent light. He squinted, pulling his glasses off to see it better. It looked like there was a rip in the wall and there was something silver behind the rock. Mike reached up to touch it and it was a sort of vacuum. He pulled his hand away quickly, looking down at it, groaning from the pain and effort.

"What the hell?" He asked, watching David slowly crawl over.

David reached up and touched it as well and his hand disappeared and he was suddenly sucked in. Mike's eyes widened and he would have called out, but his throat felt like it was stepped upon. He looked around and heard heavy steps in the distance. He gulped slowly and touched the shimmering silver again. The vacuum caught hold of him this time and he felt himself being thrown forward but he did not feel any pain. He flew through a silver tube before being thrown the opening and his head made contact with a tree and he was unconscious before his body hit the ground.