I felt something pull at my sleeve, I mumbled and swatted it away, thinking I was still home in my own bed and my pet golden Labrador, Sandy, was licking me awake. That earned a vicious slap across the face; I was fully awake then, when I opened my eyes to a burly man in a security uniform and remembered being bundled into the van, the unformed scream finally rose and I let it flow in jagged shrieks of trauma, of terror, of pain, of total and utter confusion.
I was left alone and when the screams finally dried up I looked around, I saw that I was still in the back of the van yet both the double doors were swung wide open. Beyond the van doors I could see that I was in a relatively huge clearing, surrounded on all sides by forest. The clearing was a dump, but had the aura of a building site. Massive cranes and diggers were clearing away pieces of twisted rusted metal; the floor was a carpet of shattered glass, workmen in yellow uniforms were running around looking busy. I found myself climbing out of the van to watch a crane lifting a sheer piece of glass from a truck and gently, ever so slowly, place it into brackets in the concrete foundations. So much seemed to be happening at once, everyone seemed to be in a rush to be finished, something new was being built over the wreckage of something old but I had the unmistakable feeling that they were rebuilding the old, rather than just building anew.
I stood staring at the scene for so long and became so lost in my own musing that I failed to realise that Cyrus Kriticos was walking determinedly towards me with a huge grin on his face, which looked very out of place on his usually stern and grim features.
"How are you enjoying the proceedings Ms McKlarik? I hope you are having a ball!" He laughed at his own sarcastic words and his face creased a little more.
"What in hell is going on here!?" Which was my own sophisticated answer and Cyrus's grin widened a little more, I thought if he smiled any wider than his face would just split like a banana.
"Well, I suppose I have you to thank you in advance for what will eventually come to pass"
His eyes hardened like steel after this but the grin remained as if it was painted on, I doubted severely if any of this so called "help" would be voluntarily, he continued rambling on.
"You will assist me in ways you can't yet begin to imagine…" He left the sentence hanging in the air as if it was the hangman's noose yet to be weighted.
I fumed silently at this…this "man" whom I'd admired and assisted over my past eight years at the asylum. He was nothing more than an ugly self-absorbed baboon.
He must've seen the fury building up in my eyes for he stepped back but that grin, which reminded me suddenly of a grinning skull, never left his face though it didn't touch those steel grey eyes.
I suddenly felt the cold icy finger of fear trace its path across my spine, I felt fear for myself, fear for the world and fear for that man stuck in the asylum, Ryan, who was trapped in this web made of some unknown thread.
I turned to run and realised I had no idea where I was. I could be absolutely anywhere. I grabbed Cyrus's shoulder and felt a tidal wave of memories sweep over me, drowning me. I fell to my knees but kept a hold of Cyrus.
I started to see pictures of this place, a glass house, a basement, a man and his children, a junkyard, the man I seen before in Cyrus's office and then the images descended into madness, things that had at one point were human but now were macabre monsters. Then there was Ryan but not as I knew him, he was one of those things. One of the worst. I watched as he tore a young woman up viciously and then a man as he lay on the ground. I caught the vaguest glimpse of a machine and then I fell unconscious with the terrible racking pain that cut through my mind and threw me once again into that black and empty place of cold indifference.