Ch. 2 The Capture
Even before I was fully conscious, I was very much aware of the intense pain all over my body. Except my hands. Somehow or other, they were fine. Then I became aware that I was aware of the pain, which jolted me, as I had not expected to be aware of anything ever again.
I heard voices around me. They were whispering to one another, just low enough so I could not make out what they were saying in my battered state.
"What have you done?! You've killed him! This can't possibly be the right guy!" a female voice said rather shrilly.
"I honestly can't say," another female voice replied. "Though I'm not feeling very good about it. We'll have to wait until Morpheus gets here to verify for us."
Oh, shit. They hadn't killed me so they must want me for something, but I couldn't think of what that something might be. Shovel to the head might have had something to do with my slow mind. They wouldn't torture me would they? A bit low for them really. Morpheus considered himself to be on a sanctified mission and revenge just did not mesh well with that image.
"Is he secure?" asked another voice, male this time.
"As secure as he's going to get," responded the second female voice, sounding rather doubtful. She must be in charge. If they were unsure of the effectiveness of my restraints, which had just registered in my mind as I was still feeling the effects of my great fall, then perhaps I could get free.
"How do you know he's not dead? That was one hell of a fall."
"He is! He is! He's not breathing! We've killed a little boy! We're murderers!"
Oh, good idea! Play dead! I hadn't made a sound or moved since I had regained consciousness, so there was no evidence that I was not in fact a corpse.
"Oh, shut up! People die all the time. Get over it. Besides, we really don't know for sure. That's why we have to wait for Morpheus to I.D. him."
So I was safe for the moment.
"You mean we really might have killed some little kid in his apartment?" This was a new male voice, who was starting to sound as worried as the hysterical female.
"He's not just any little kid. He heard us outside his apartment and we were being quiet. Who sneaks out onto their balcony with a gun anyway? Where were his parents? What kind of parents let their kids tote around guns? No, I don't think we made a mistake."
"This is New York we're talking about. He probably lived with his mom who worked the night shift and she left him a gun to protect himself from the local riffraff. I wouldn't' leave my kids home alone there without some way to protect themselves."
One of the male voices scoffed at this idea.
Okay, maybe I wasn't so safe. I still wasn't going to give them a sign one way or the other.
I listened for cues about my environment. Judging from the number of different voices and footfalls, there were at least five people in the room with me. From the way their voices carried, it must have been a fairly small room with few furnishings. Everyone sounded above me and the surface I was on was colder than the air and quite hard, so I assumed I was on a tile floor. I was laying on my right side with my hands cuffed tightly behind my back. They were not standard issue, but a specially designed program that not only kept my hands immobilized, but made them feel rather numb. So that was why they had not hurt when I initially awoke. I could only guess that the substance holding my arms against my body was duct tape and was used to tie my legs together. The duct tape must have also been wrapped in a heavy metal chain because I could feel the links digging into my skin. The escape theory was dying in my mind.
"Even if this is the right guy, how do we know if he's awake? He might be listening to us right now trying to figure out how to get loose."
I was really beginning to wish that this particular group were a little less bright.
"Well, try kicking him a few times, see if he reacts."
That had to be the least scientific means possible. But there were worse stimuli than a human foot.
"Sure, let's bruise up the dead kid some more."
"Stop! Don't hurt him anymore!"
There came a hard kick in the small of my back, then one in my left shoulder and finally one in the back of my head. I willed myself not to react despite the refreshed pain. Oh, that little shit was going to pay…him and that shovel. Before my attacker could make another blow, the door opened.
"Morpheus! About time you got here!"
There was a short pause and the man replied, "I was gathering a few…supplies. I see you have found our contact."
Contact? That must mean they want information. About what? I certainly knew plenty, but not things of the sort they would find interesting. At least not now. Whatever they wanted to know, I would not tell them. But the way Morpheus had said the word "supplies," I became worried that I might have limited choice in the matter. How had they found me to begin with? I didn't advertise in the personals. If any rebel ship could find me, I must be embarrassingly obvious.
"Well, we hope he's the right one. The guys were getting a little worried that we might have a dead body on our hands with no pulse or respiration."
"Programs only have a pulse and respire when operational. If you indeed knocked him unconscious, he would have stopped breathing." How did he know that? How many programs could he have incapacitated?
"How did you subdue him anyway? I did not imagine he would come willingly."
There was a pause.
"Well, it began with a shovel and ended with the pavement."
Morpheus waited a moment to process the information.
"You hit him with a shovel?"
"Uh-huh. In the head. Really hard. Surprised the piss out of him."
"That's it? If that's it, I'm afraid you might just have killed some unfortunate soul."
"Oh, no. We were on the edge of the roof. Had to have fallen two hundred feet."
"I see. Well, let's see what we have here."
I didn't think it would do him any good. Only a handful of people would recognize me, and a rebel was not among them. I knew he couldn't know me, but I knew him well and I was afraid that he would look past the shell and see me for who I was. Silly, really, but it had been a bad day and my work had not yet been tested. On top of the throbbing pain coursing through me, I felt ill, as though some virus were invading me and corrupting my programming. Fear did this to me and I did not like it. It made me feel weak. Unfortunately, I had become depressingly familiar with this emotion as of late. But who would have ever thought that I would some day come to fear this human? That I would find myself in a very similar predicament to the one he had been a short year ago?
I heard three pairs of footsteps walk from the door around to where I lay on my side on the cold, hard floor. I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to see. There was no way he could recognize. Maybe he would be foolish enough to believe me dead. Maybe I would wake up on my couch again and realize that this was just another nightmare. But none of these ruminations were true. I heard him get down on his knees and felt him breathing on me, only a foot away.
"That's him."
The sick feeling in me got worse. Maybe he would think I was still unconscious.
"Open your eyes, Charlie."
AN: So do you know who your protagonist is yet? Originally I introduced him here (and I guess I still technically do), and hopefully in the rewrite I took out all the obvious clues. It's more fun to let you guess. So guess away and review!