Hell and Back

Chapter 4

By Kris Gupton

Good ol' John and me had made our pact. Further Ferium treatments were going to be a no go with us, though we did expect to take some flak from the medical staff over that. Emotionless or not, we knew, logically, that the deaths of Hollis and Murdoch were more than just coincidental to the drug trial. It could have been wracked up to paranoia on our parts that maybe, even despite the claims John had received otherwise, that the Ferium was to blame in those deaths. Still, it wasn't worth the risk, as we'd agreed.

So, it was on the following morning, after our breakfast of scrambled eggs and hash browns which fell on the fifth day of our drug trial, and at the conclusion of our first full week outside of Wutai, we made our stand. The nurse first came to my bed side, as that was the order in which it was done, and I refused to give over my arm. Granted, I was still without my feelings from the prior dose, but I had my resolve intact. "I'm gonna decline further treatments…"

The nurse had looked at me, dumbfounded, and before she voiced her protest, the colonel cut her off. "I'm not going to get anymore, either."

She spun around and looked at him, then me again, before huffing and walking out of the room, carrying her tray of syringes with her.

John and I shared a blank stare toward one another, noticing that all the other men in our room had taken notice of our protest and had started to whisper amongst themselves. However, that was all silenced when a very annoyed looking Hojo stormed into the room and between John's bed and mine. "…need I remind you two subjects that you signed a waiver, agreeing to receive a minimum course of one full week?"

It may just have been that I was glad for a second there I was loaded on Ferium, thus avoiding an emotional response to the way he'd spit his words out to us. Surely if I'd had my senses, I would have gotten up and decked the fucker. He'd, in that one sentence, shown us exactly what we were to him. Not patients, but subjects for his little project.

We were rats…

My lips parted to start a reply, but John beat me to it. "Maybe we did, but it's making us feel wrong and when we've lost two men in the course of just a few days, it brings up concerns."

I'm fairly sure that in the back of John's mind, just like mine, there was a small, caged version of his formerly emotional self that was gnawing at the bars to put a helluva lot more force behind his words, but damn the drug… I watched Hojo's reaction like a mindless drone.

He curled his lip, before reaching up and pushing his gold framed glasses higher up his nose. "You military types have the most pathetic, non scientific minds… It is for the reasons of that doubt why the trial must progress as directed. I suppose that is beyond your comprehension. I will remind you, further, that your life belongs to Shin Ra, whether it be for active duty, or whatever the company so desires to do with you during your conscripted time. Is that within the scope of your understanding?"

Yeah, I could definitely feel the inward, emotional, but restrained Cid Highwind screaming at that point. Maybe the twenty four hour lapse was causing me to regain that sense of something more with this sort of… instigation before another dose. Hell if I knew, it's not like the emotion was outright, but I knew it was in there somewhere, still.

When I looked at the colonel again, I could see that he was clearly coming to that same kind of resolution within himself. He sat up tall in his bed and leaned toward the scrawny little fuck. "I said no. Highwind says no, too. Now, I have a feeling, a good idea, in fact, that the others in this room are probably deciding to join our little refusal party, thanks, in large, to what you've just said. We may still belong to Shin Ra, but I'm willing to bet that the fourteen of us remaining could put up a decent fight."

It looked like blood was about to shoot out of Hojo's eyes or… hell, he could have spontaneously combusted for all I knew. In hindsight, that would have been the best result, but he didn't. Damn it all.

No, instead of flying off the handle in his rage, that bastard seemed to be able to immediately can his own emotions. "Well then, that is very disappointing to hear. If you change your minds, however, and I do believe that you will, the Ferium will be waiting with the nurses. Good day."

John looked over at me as Hojo simply put his hands behind his back and then strolled out at a casual pace. When the scientist was out of earshot, the colonel spoke to me. "…do ya feel that?"

I didn't need clarification to know what he meant. "…part of me is… starting to feel really pissed off."

He gave a wise nod, before relaxing against his bed again. "Good, so am I… that means it wasn't permanent…"

The old guy was right, of course, though we had no idea what we were in store for, yet. For those intermediate hours between breakfast and lunch, most of us in the room were quiet. Slowly, bit by small bit, my emotions were resurfacing. It was maybe an hour before lunch when John said something to me that actually struck me as funny and I laughed. Honestly, that was a relieving moment. Systems the Ferium had suppressed were coming back online again. I thought that maybe we were going to be okay again.

Hindsight, follies of youthful blind optimism, whatever.

Lunch came and went. Club sandwiches, if you're interested, I think it was. Hell, maybe it was roast beef. There was bread involved, that's all I can say for sure.

The reason I can say it was bread, was the simple fact that about half an hour after I'd finished, I started to feel bad. Really bad. That general sort of malaise that settles into your body the day before you break with the flu or what have you. My muscles were starting to feel like they were going to cramp throughout my body, and a cold sweat broke across my skin before much longer. I knew what the natural progression was when I felt like that, and I got up to try and head toward the bathroom, already feeling my stomach start to turn.

Like most folks, I rank vomiting pretty high up on my list of things in life I detest most, and I didn't quite make it to the toilet before my entrails tore loose and I heaved. If I hadn't felt so damn miserable, I might have given some mind to the fact I had spilled my guts all over the bathroom floor and part of the sink, but my only real concern was trying to steady myself so I didn't end up falling face first into the splash. My head was feeling like someone was pushing in on either temple, threatening to collapse my head, and my ears were filled with a static drone. My eyes, in that nauseous tunnel vision I had, focused down on the floor, and an errant bit of bread crust that I'd purged.

Ergo, I remember it was a fucking sandwich.

Regardless, I felt a hand upon my back after some small elapse of time, and I heard the voice of Lt. Col. Dell Gottard behind me. "Cap'n… are ya all right?"

I tore my eyes away from the mess I'd made and dragged my left hand across my mouth, before looking at the guy. "Tossed…"

"I see that. My stomach's been bothering me, too, since lunch but not that bad, yet. Lemme get ya back to your bed." And with that, he slung an arm around me and started to take me back to my bed, whether I wanted to go or not. I looked at the others as I was lead back, noticing several of them looked ashy and not unlike I felt. Some were sitting up in their beds, trying to rub at their own cramping limbs, others held their stomachs. I thanked Dell for his help before crawling back into my bed, and looking over at John.

"…I think we've got us a virus going around," he said before I ever asked. Not looking like he felt so well himself, he flashed me a dissatisfied look, as though he didn't sincerely believe his own words.

I can say that I was on the same inner track that he was. We were getting the first look at Ferium withdrawal, that was the long and the short of it.

Before I got much more of a chance to lay there and get philosophical over the whole shit storm, another lost his lunch. It was Maj. Morton Amery, who hadn't even had the chance to try to get up to go to the bathroom (ruined as it was) or even head to a trash can. No, the poor son of a bitch just rolled onto his side and let it go onto the floor. Now, I dunno if it was one of those chain reaction things, or the fact that most of us were getting hit with the same sensations, but within minutes, four more guys seemed to repeat his action.

Whatever the case was, I knew if I hung around much longer, I was going to barf again myself, so aching muscles or not, I forced myself up and out into the hallway. I flagged down a nurse, informed her that everyone was puking, and then dragged myself further down the hall.

I didn't get real far, though. Maybe ten yards from the door at best, before my legs buckled and I slid to the cold floor. Being only dressed in a pair of boxers with a hospital gown draped over my torso the cold chills that were setting in seemed even worse. I'd be damned, though, if I was going back into that room while it was a pukefest. Though I was going to be relegated to dry heaves if I did, still… I'm not that kind of masochist.

I half sat, have lay there supported by the wall, staring off toward a window in the distance. My heart was racing away under my ribs and I was struck with that feeling that I'd pass out if I tried to move any further. I could hear nurses and doctors scrambling behind me, trying to take care of what was going on back in the ward room, but I seemed to either be unnoticed or not cared about.

Honestly, I couldn't have cared less. I felt sick, I hurt everywhere, and wanted to be alone. Funny that 'alone' meant lying in some ungodly position on the floor in the corridor, but such was the case. That pressure on the sides of my head seemed to still be there, and I looked down at my hands, seeing them shake. My feelings that had still been somewhat muted then flooded back tenfold. If I'd thought the flashback I'd had prior was bad, what suddenly washed over me in those moments was far worse. The reason being is that in the flashback, I wasn't entirely conscious, but this time, I knew I was…

It was like a screen was pulled in front of my vision, and while I could still see through it to my hands, visions of all sorts of hellacious shit started to play in front of me. I gave out a groan I think, and tried thumping my aching head against the wall to get it to stop, but it didn't. Soon, the inevitable happened, the worst thing I'd seen in my life floating there in my line of sight—Sarah's face the morning I'd woken to find her stone dead before me. Only then did I scream, though it seemed a distant sound to my own rushing ears.

It must have been a good one, though, because it was then that someone noticed that one of the patients had 'escaped'. A male orderly came over and tugged me up, starting to talk to me as he basically dragged me back toward my room. I don't have a clue what he said, though, all I could do was see my dead wife's dull eyes.

There was already a furious clean up detail working in our room, trying to rid the room of the evidence left on the floor and beds. Several of the guys had gotten up and were sitting in a small huddle beneath the one open window at the end of the room. Obviously they'd migrated there to try and escape the stink. I was taken toward them, and allowed to drop.

I was half way lying onto another man's side, I simply didn't have the strength to right myself from where I'd been deposited. I may have been leaning against Hemmings or Armstrong, I have no real recall on that. My mind was trapped in itself, and judging from how no one else was saying anything, I think it's safe to say that the others were slipping into the same sort of delirium.

After a time, the male nurses were back, hefting us into our beds.

This was when things went from bad to worse.

Upon being lain out on my gurney, I felt something being placed on my wrists. I was, like all the others, being physically restrained to my bed. Having just come out of captivity at the camp, the feeling of restraint did spark some real terror within me, and I started to struggle. I was no match for the orderlies in my present state, though. I was tied, wrists and ankles, to the bed railing, and I wasn't going anywhere. Sarah's ghost cleared out of my vision after a time, and I looked around to see the others all tied up like I was, their eyes reflective of the same fear I had.

Fear and questioning. We all wanted to know what the hell was happening to us, I knew it. After being trapped together for as long as we did, maybe we'd developed some sort of hive mind about certain things, but regardless… Not one nurse or staff member seemed willing to say one word on it.

In retrospect, I'm sure that was Hojo's order. Most likely he'd already known what sort of reactions we were going to have, at least to some degree and had, by then, assigned himself as the only person allowed to address us as a group. About an hour after we'd been tied up and then seemingly abandoned for a spell, he came in.

Sadly, it would seem that from my initial protest, he zeroed in on me as some sort of figurehead for the lot of us. He came to my bedside and leaned over me, giving me a brief visual exam. "This is your reward for refusing your dosage this morning. Are you regretting it now?"

I wasn't really sure how to respond to him, but a rescue this time wasn't coming from John's bed, since he was laying there, just writhing against his restraints, off in some God awful vision. I met Hojo's gaze, my own jaw aching with how tight I'd clenched it. "…ya knew this would happen? Why the fuck'd ya give it to us?!"

"Omelets and eggs, as they say," he replied, going to the end of my bed and tipping up my medical chart for a moment. "Captain Highwind… My plan was to give this to you for a week, then to attempt to taper you off, to see if we could avoid such a reaction. However, you decided to make waves, didn't you?"

"You never explained that to us! If'n ya had, I'm sure we…" Hell, I wasn't even strong enough to keep up arguing. My head fell back against the pillow again as I found myself winded from just that previous outburst.

"Well, now we are in the midst of an abrupt medication stop study," he said, as though he was discussing the weather. "In a few days, it will be out of your systems. I assure you, you will be compensated, does that make it better?"

From the way I was feeling, I wasn't sure there was any sort of compensation that would ever be worth it. Doubly so if the men that had already died had done so from the Ferium. "Heh… send my ass to space," I said, in what would be a sadly prophetic statement.

The professor, or whatever he was to be called, he sure as hell wasn't a doctor at the very least, gave me a leering smile before turning to leave the room. "I will ensure that the lot of you are sedated through the withdrawal period."

I started to fight against my ties; that panic setting in again. A fleet of nurses soon came in, giving each of us a whopping dose of something into our upper right arms. It was done without any ceremony, we were all injected. It stung like a bitch and then the nurses, seeming scared in their own right, filed back out.

I know in movies that when someone is injected with something in the muscle of their arm they seem to generally drop within seconds. Truth of the matter is, though, that it takes a few minutes depending on what you're given.

I'll be damned if I knew what I was given, but after about ten minutes or so, my body quit cooperating, and soon, I was in a nearly paralyzed state, consciousness somewhat intact. The room grew silent as all the others were flat out like I was. My eyes would open occasionally and I stared at the ceiling, but I could do no more than that. Sometime later, I returned to consciousness to realize that a new IV line had been put into my arm, but then I blacked out again.

What happened for the next few days I don't know. I was kept in that helpless state, sometimes only hearing, occasionally seeing, but having no sense of time at all. I do, though, remember the pain. Every muscle in my body burning as though they'd cramped for hours on end. There were rare sounds from the other men, animalistic noises, indicating to me that they felt it, too. If only I'd been able to lift my head and look, but I couldn't.

Days… again, I'm not sure how many, but I'm willing to bet around three or four. There were no calendars in the room, never had been. There was no way to tell anymore.

Finally, I opened my eyes and found that I could, weakly, move. I was still tied, though, an IV in my arm, and from the more than slightly uncomfortable feeling down in my cock, well, hell, I knew I had a catheter going up there, too. Makes sense, I guess, since we hadn't been trekking ourselves to the bathroom by any means.

My body felt tired, as though I'd run a marathon or two. My muscles still hurt like sin but I could lift my head. What I saw made me wish I hadn't.

On the day of our drug refusal there had been fourteen beds.

Now, there were only six.

Six.

I looked to my side, feeling some measure of relief to realize that John was still there, though he looked like death. I proceeded to take a small mental roll call.

Survivors: Col. John Laron, Maj. Steven Hemmings, Lt. Jared Westin, Maj. Morton Amery, Lt. Ross Osbourne, and myself.

Now missing that had been there when we'd been sedated: Capt. Billy McGreggor, Capt. Brayden Lockhart, Maj. Cory Armstrong, Lt. Sebastian Howard, Capt. Octavius Eitan, Lt. Col. Dell Gottard, Capt. Zachary Julyan, and Maj. Wystan Clemmins.

Once again, a lot of men missing, better men than I, and though I had yet to be told or asked if they were alive or dead, I knew. I knew it in my heart instantly, and felt my eyes burn. "…Colonel…"

John shifted slightly against his restraints, probably looking toward me, I don't know, I had my eyes closed again. "Yeah, Captain?"

"Six…" was all I could manage to say.

"I know, soldier, I know…"

I had to hear at least his belief on it, so I asked, "Do you think… it was the Ferium?"

"I don't know, Highwind, and if we want to get out of this alive, for right now, I think we'd be best to not go speculating about it," he replied, voice flat. It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order.

I nodded and twisted a hand up in my sheets, opting to do as told for the time being. There weren't many of us left to tell the story, it was time to cooperate and play dumb.