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He woke up sitting on a bench at a police station. He blinked his blurred vision into clarity to survey the yellowed dingy walls of the precinct, and to note that every officer was giving him wide-eyed undivided attention. A disembodied voice dripping with a heavily drawled southern accent told silent disembodied ears that the John Doe was awake. He looked down and saw that he was wearing several layers of oversized clothes, soft slippers, and a full set of shackles which were connected to an eye-bolt firmly set in the concrete floor.
A rotund authoritative looking uniformed man stepped around the corner holding a set of keys and looked at the handcuffed mystery man with a smug unsettling look that was some combination of contempt and satisfaction. He hated him instantly. Two officers flanked their superior and kept one hand on their sidearms at all times. Wordlessly, the large smug man gripped the shackles firmly and yanked the unknown man off the bench only to send him face-first onto the floor. Unable to use his hands to break his fall, he bore the brunt of the impact on the crown of his forehead. Instantly, a trickle of blood began to pool onto the concrete.
A jingle of keys and a metallic snap announced that the shackles were now free of the eye-bolt, and then as suddenly as he was tossed to the floor, he was yanked to his feet by the subordinate officers. By his arms, he was hauled, very nearly dragged, down a narrow corridor lined with cork boards and fluorescent lights. By the time he was brought to stand in front of a windowless steel door with a simple deadbolt lock, he had lost both slippers and had come to the startling realization that he had very little strength. He was quickly shoved inside and felt the distinct impression of someone's boot in his spine, sending him off balance and again bringing him face to face with a concrete floor. The deadbolt latched in the door behind him. The room seemed to be monochrome until his eyes adjusted to the low light level, and he managed to make out a table with 2 chairs on opposing sides. The walls were the same kind of smooth sealed concrete as the floor and were completely blank aside from four small upturned lights which cast pale yellow lights across the ceiling which did little to chase away the shadows, and taking up the majority of one wall was a large pane of reflective glass.
He found enough strength to flop himself onto a chair and sat facing the large mirror, confident in the assumption that it was a cliché two-way mirror. Despite the ambient darkness of the room in which he now sat, he could no more see into the adjacent room than he could into the murkiness that was at this point his memory.
Suddenly, he stopped trying to see through the mirror and began looking into it. He connected with the eyes of a stranger who looked like hell. The stranger's oversized clothes hung from his scant frame the way his clothes hung from him, and a lone trail of blood ran from his forehead. His dark hair was lengthier but not long, and looked like a classic case of bed head. In spite of his otherwise disheveled appearance, he was surprised to see that he was relatively clean shaven, and had showered recently.
On his shoulders hung a gray billowy shirt, unbuttoned revealing a dingy blue colored jumpsuit. He pulled aside the left half of the shirt to see the lone designation 3-DRAD-10, which at first appeared to read "3Dradio". He tried to milk his memory for any meaning behind either version of the moniker, but in every form it remained indecipherable.
The deadbolt in the windowless steel door spoke with a staccato clack and the door swung open to reveal the portly superior and his two lackeys. The lackey on the left remained at the door and engaged the deadbolt. He handed the keys to his boss with his left hand while his right remained on his firearm. The two subordinates stood in position in the two corners opposite the chair in which 3Dradio sat. The older, higher ranking officer sat in the other chair, and put his boots up on the scuff marked table.
"Let's start with your name," said the seated superior. "Since we're doing introductions, I'm chief Jack Maggard." His round face was an almost merry palate for his neatly trimmed mustache, but nothing short of a snow-white beard and red suit could take away the malice.
"I have no idea what my name is." 3Dradio stated bluntly.
"No idea," said Maggard, seemingly amused at 3Dradio's answer "We'll just have to refresh your memory Mr. Doe. We found you passed out in the middle of 28 bodies and enough damage to look like a tornado went through and a bomb went off."
"I don't know anything about any tornadoes…or bombs."
"How about you cooperate and tell us what we want to know before I have to perform my own special brand of interrogation?"
"I don't know my name. I don't know anything about 28 bodies, tornadoes, or any bombs. What I do know is that you stepped in something with your idiotic looking cowboy boots that smells like yesterday's alpo."
"Carl, you have your taser on you?" Maggard asked the officer on his left. Wordlessly, the officer known as Carl handed the instrument to his superior and returned to his corner with his hand on his sidearm. Maggard then took his boots off the table and leaned closer to 3Dradio who still had a warm trail of blood trickling down the middle of his face.
3Dradio said nothing, but licked at the blood running along his lip and down his chin. He flashed a gleeful grin, now stained crimson with his own blood. After several seconds of staring face to face with Maggard, he said through reddened teeth, "Actually, your boots smelled better."
"I'm going to ask you one more time…" Maggard barked and spat as he spoke before pausing a moment to consider his words. "No, I'm not." He shot the twin darts into 3Dradio's chest at point blank range, sending the shackled mystery man into spasms and for a third time face to face with the concrete.
Inside his head, memories stirred and visions of figures and strobing lights danced around until his sight returned. His sight seemed to usher in blurred memories of electrodes as well as a kinship with the inky darkness that enveloped the corners of the room. Before any more elusive lucidity could return to him, the subordinate known as Carl and his counterpart hauled 3Dradio back into the chair from which he'd previously been blown by the 50,000 volt blast. They retook their previous positions and waited with their hands still on their firearms, though they were now much more relaxed since he'd been tased. They all stared at 3Dradio for a long moment before he spoke.
"I'm not sure how to tell you this, but you have as much skill at interrogation as you have at personal hygiene. I'm sure I do know how to tell you this though. You're about to die a confused painful death." Suddenly, the pointed shadows running along the corners flexed and drew away from the walls before they solidified, looking like smoke-tinted glass. They then moved like menacing translucent blades, crossing behind 3Dradio like swords on a mantle piece.
Both subordinate officers drew their firearms and leveled them at 3Dradio's head. The subordinate not known as Carl broke his silence. "Whatever it is you're doing stop right now, or I will shoot!" He was speaking with the voice of authority despite it being very obvious that he was scared out of his sissy britches.
The officer known as Carl shot first. His Glock issued an ear-shattering report and a cloud of smoke and debris flew from the weapon's ejection port. Hearing the report from Carl's weapon, the other officer followed suit, firing only one shot before realizing something was very wrong. His hand was throbbing and stinging. As he brought his hand into view, what remained of it sent him instantly into shock. Exposed shattered bone and arterial spray were the last images he would see before embracing oblivion and collapsing onto pieces of his weapon now scattered around on the floor.
Maggard looked stunned and confused. He looked down at the body of not-Carl, and then at Carl to discover him slumped in the corner, his uniform shirt soaked with blood from puncture wounds in his face and neck. He had been killed almost instantly by parts of the weapon which had been blown through the back of the slide. Finally, Maggard managed to force his body to react. He reached into his holster , retrieved his .357 revolver, and drew a bead on 3Dradio's forehead.
"If I were you, I wouldn't pull that trigger," 3Dradio hissed with more malice than any of the crooked cops could have mustered. "Unless you want to see what a revolver looks like when it backfires. Firearms do funny things when there are impenetrable shadows congealed in their barrels." Maggard lowered his weapon, not eager to watch his Smith & Wesson turn into gunmetal colored shrapnel.
"The keys to your shackles, they're on my belt. They're yours. You can unlock the door and walk. I won't stop you. You won't have to kill me…you won't even have to touch me. I can make it look like you were never here."
"You're right about one thing. You won't stop me." 3Dradio growled through his still-reddened teeth. Unseen shadows audibly torqued the inner workings of the shackle cuffs until all four disengaged in unison and fell away. He stood to his full height of six feet two inches and glared into the face of the crooked cop. "Do you realize the number of places shadows hide? I could impale you with one of these things behind me, or I could make your head explode. How much shadow do you think lurks in a human cranium? The chest cavity? The lower intestine…I could do things to you that would make you redefine words like pain and hell. For that matter, I could choke you to death with your own shadow…or cut you to ribbons with it."
"Please, no. I've got a wife and kids…I've got grandkids…"
"Sorry," 3Dradio interrupted. "Looks like you're not going to make it to retirement to collect that largely undeserved pension."
Then, one of the shadow blades curled past 3Dradio's shoulder and shot straight for the chest of Jack Maggard, piercing his sternum and pinning him to his chair. A few seconds later, the steel door burst from its frame and into the narrow corridor through which he'd been dragged only moments prior. Menacingly yet barefoot, 3Dradio plod on unsteady steps through the jagged opening.
3:32 AM, February 16, 2008
In a cold sweat, he sat up in bed and looked for signs of the kind of damage he'd just dreamt he'd inflicted. Relieved, he discovered his shadow mastery had remained in his subconscious and had not wreaked untold havoc on his surroundings. It had been years since he woke to find he'd trashed the place in his sleep. His nights were usually plagued by this story. The recurring dream of his earliest memories haunted him nightly the way the longing to solve the mystery of his life beforehand haunted his days.
3Dradio's story was sketchy at best beyond 7 years ago when the episode at the police station had taken place, and even he didn't remember much of his life prior. In the 7 years since the incident, several memories had returned, from the days and weeks before, and some from the years prior.
What was known was that he was one of the third and last generation of a failed program designed to take otherwise ordinary yet gifted youths and turn them into super soldiers. When he entered the program and when it was shut down weren't known. What was known was that his participation was not by choice, and that it left him with virtually no pre-existing memories. He never understood why he was discovered amid chaos and corpses in the hangar of a small airport on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, why those 28 bodies had the same kinds of jumpsuits on, or why he had to waste almost 30 people whose faces he could barely remember. Then his mind flashed back to the manila folder he'd lifted from the police station during his devastating maelstrom escape.
As was his morning ritual most days, he took the aged folder from its place on the bookshelf and pored over the contents trying to remember anything. What made the least sense to him was why there were 28 people there, 29 including himself. 30 seemed like a more sensible number, as the small charter plane next to where he and the other bodies were discovered had been equipped to service 30 passengers, not 29. He pored over the pictures of bodies hacked to bits and the blood spattered plane and read the bland reports of the condition of the unconscious lone survivor.
It was dismally apparent that this discovery was kept secret by the police who had taken him into custody, and that they were tragically inept at handling such situations. He assumed they either wanted the glory for solving a case that would have most likely gone to state or even federal bureaus or they somehow found out about the DRAD program and wanted to keep the last one for themselves. He considered the latter farfetched, though the former made only slightly more sense to him.
Aside from mixed blurred flash-memories of what could only be described as torture as opposed to training, he had some idea of who he was before he was discovered, if only that in high school his large frame and excess bulk contributed to the harassment of the coaches who desperately wanted to make a football player out of him. Much to their chagrin, he hated sports with the exception of Martial Arts and the non-NASCAR version of Auto Racing. Everything else he had learned about who he was before his first memories had been conjecture.
Since coming to in the police station, it was discovered that he could outdrive pretty much anyone with pretty much anything, and had even gone off-roading and Rally Cross racing a few times. He had an ear for languages, which had earned him a working knowledge of Spanish, French, and German. He abhorred country music with a passion that burned with the fury of ten thousand suns, knew more about weapons than he could ever explain, had an extensive knowledge of history, an intricate knowledge of both Martial Arts and human anatomy, and no idea how he knew any of it.
Since getting zapped with the taser seemed to unlock the knowledge of his shadow mastery which had before then apparently been temporarily forgotten, he tried electroshock therapy to try to uncover lost memories, but had never discovered anything except the unwanted side effects of voltage on the human body.
Since escaping from the police station and fleeing to other parts of the country and the world at large, he had perfected his shadow mastery to startling proficiency. He had caused backfires with solidified shadows in the barrels of countless guns, crushed hearts, exploded heads, used shadows as shields, suffocated one person in a sphere of solidified shadow, and once for effect turned someone inside out, leaving nothing but a peeled cadaver with a shadow core that for several moments retained its form. He had used his singular talent as both an assassin for hire and a free agent pursuing his own interests. His limitations were basically his imagination and his sphere of influence, which was a number kept very very secret.
He reordered the papers and photos as he preferred them, slipped them back into the manila folder and replaced it on the bookshelf. He walked to the window and looked across the sea of lights that was Berlin. He pinched the bridge of his nose having made no more sense of his past, and considered going back to sleep, being it was only just past 3:30 in the morning. Knowing that would most likely mean another round with Maggard, and having no desire to do so, he walked into the kitchenette and started a pot of coffee.
He considered his most recent alliance with continued reluctance, but with what his proposed business partner was offering it was hard to turn down a payday of such magnitude. When nothing else made sense, and when nothing intangible could be made real, the tangibles were an acceptable substitute, and few things were more tangible to 3Dradio than cold hard cash. Still, something didn't sit right with him about it. However, each and every time he was double-crossed, he made good on his promise to redefine anguish, and of course to terminate lives. Sometimes he was merely a being of pure sadism and retribution, and when the situation warranted, he never had reservations or regrets about ending a life. This was something that unnerved him a little, but that he attributed to his training at the failed DRAD program.
As the doubts rolled over and over in his mind, he stared in deep thought at the lights of Berlin.