Chapter 4
In Johnny's agitated dream, he had been reliving the shooting, but this time J.J. was the one being shot. Blood flowed from multiple wounds and J.J. cried for help, but somehow Johnny was paralyzed, unable to reach him. When in the dream J.J. finally lay still, glazed eyes staring at him, Johnny snapped awake in a sweat, jerking to a sitting position on a cot in a dimly lit windowless room. The sudden movement drained the effects of any narcotic still lingering in his system. He was fully alert and in intense pain.
He had no notion of what had happened since they had drugged him at the store. The one thought that brought him comfort was that he was certain that J.J. had gotten away from whatever had been planned for both of them. However, about himself, he only had the unaccustomed and terribly disquieting feeling of helplessness and total absence of clues about what was supposed to happen next. He had gotten used to being the one in control, formulating plans based on his visions—this was different.
Trying to brush those thoughts aside, Johnny decided to take stock of the situation. He attempted the unattached approach he had learned to take with his visions, like a visitor at a special museum exhibit carefully looking but not touching anything. This was a challenge, since the pain and everything else clearly screamed of reality.
The bandages on his right foreman and shoulder were spotted with fresh blood; the arm was encased in a cardboard split and hung in a sling. His jacket, shirt, and watch were gone. He now wore a grey flannel shirt with the right sleeve cut-off at the shoulder. His faded denim jeans were splattered with dried up blood, which might have been mistaken for paint. His sneakers were peaking from underneath the cot which sat against the grey wall in a windowless room, lit by a single naked ceiling light bulb. The minimalist furnishings were completed by a wood table and two folding chairs. On the wall opposite the cot, a metal fire door presumably led to the rest of the building.
A strong metallic taste coated his parched mouth. Johnny staggered across the room to the plywood door that he hoped marked a bathroom and not a closet. When he pushed on door, he had a vision of the bearded man also walking into this little powder room.
The man has small cuts on his forehead, purple livid bruises on his face, and a bloody swollen nose. He stares at himself in the mirror for a few seconds. Then he raises his hand in a fist and smashes it. After a quick glance at the closed bathroom door behind him, he grabs the sharpest broken piece and in one swift motion makes a deep cut at the carotid artery of his neck. Bright red blood spurts out in rhythmic beats. The man does not make any attempt to staunch the hemorrhage. He braces his body against the door when he hears someone banging on it. Soon he collapses to the floor in the widening pool of red.
Out of the vision, Johnny barely managed to kneel over the toilet before vomiting in convulsive heaves. After his stomach finished purging itself, Johnny had to wait a few minutes to gather his thoughts and stop shivering. He had no idea who had brought him here and why, but he had the frightening hunch that it was connected to the story of this bearded man.
When he felt a little steadier, Johnny slowly stood up, steadying himself with his free hand on the sink. He turned on the cold water tap and scooped water into his mouth spitting out several times before drinking. Then, careful to avoid getting his right arm wet, he stuck his head under the faucet to splash water on his hair and face in an attempt clear the fog from his brain. After awkwardly doing what he needed to do one-handed to use the toilet, he doused himself with water again.
Feeling a little less light-headed, Johnny made his way back to the cot. He stumbled on an uneven floor board and grabbed the edge of the table with one hand to keep himself from falling. This time the vision was longer.
A man wearing a dark grey suit and carrying a locked briefcase walks down a brightly lit corridor. When the man presents an ID card to two marines guarding a locked door, Johnny notices that it is the same man from the first vision, but with a more groomed appearance. He sports a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee, and expensive looking glasses.
Johnny reads the name on the card and notes the man's high security clearance. The man stands in front of a computer monitor on the right side of the door. He swipes his card, presses his face close to a small screen, and holds perfectly still for the eye (iris) recognition check. When the man goes through the door, Johnny begins to follow him but then hesitates, sensing that something is not quite right.
Snapping back out of the vision, Johnny's temples begin to throb with an incipient major migraine. He felt his knees buckling out under him. To save himself from a fall, he sat down heavily on the nearest chair. Another vision grabbed him away from reality.
The bearded man wearing the same suit is scanning information displayed on a computer screen in a cluttered office. The only light in the room is from the computer screen. File cabinets and bookcases displaying thick three-ring binders line two of the walls of the room. A lab coat and an umbrella hang from a metal coat rack set in the corner by the door. A large unmarked whiteboard fills most of the wall behind the desk. A window near the door overlooks a neatly organized and lavishly equipped laboratory. The office space and laboratory must be either underground or in the interior of a building, there are no windows to view the outside world.
The man saves some files onto a flash memory card which he places in an inside pocket of his jacket. He inserts a CD-Rom into the computer and starts up a program that wipes the entire hard drive. He then unplugs the computer, unscrews its back, and removes the hard drive which he smashes with a hammer. He places the computer bits into a plastic bag marked with the orange and black biohazard symbol for medical waste bags.
Then, he dons full hazard protection clothing and goes to a locked area of the lab where he removes several Petri dishes and disposable flasks partially filled with liquids from an incubator. He transfers a small sample of liquid into a plastic vial that he places in a machine. He adds the rest of the materials to the plastic bag. He then seals the bag and places it a high-temperature and pressure sterilizing oven, which he turns on at a maximum setting. After removing the protective gear, he takes his briefcase and walks out of the lab taking an elevator and walking a long corridor that leads out the guarded door that Johnny has seen in his previous vision. Outside, he walks quickly through an underground parking lot.
Released from the vision, Johnny looked around the room, certain that someone was monitoring his every move. His head pounding, he stood up to get back to the cot, the one spot so far safe from visions. A wave of dizziness hits him as a myriad of bright spots filled his sight; the room seemed to tilt around him. Automatically, Johnny wrapped his right arm over his injured arm cradling it like a newborn before falling unconscious to the floor.
Johnny woke up when a needle pricked the crook of his right arm. Initially he thought that he was having a Marathon Man-like waking nightmare. He hadn't seen the movie in years, since way before the coma, but he had no trouble remembering the key tooth extraction torture scene.
He found himself so blinded by a bright light directed at his face that he could barely make out the shadows of three figures standing around him. He was sitting in something like a dentist chair, his head and upper body tilted back a little and his legs and chest strapped down so that he could not move. The pain in his left arm and shoulder had been magnified, to the point that even wiggling his fingers brought tears to his eyes. He tried to move his right hand to wipe his face, but his wrist was handcuffed to the chair.
"Sorry about the rather primitive methods we had to use to obtain your cooperation," said the closest figure, a tall heavy set man. Johnny's couldn't make out the features of his face. "As you know, it's hard to sneak up on a psychic. We would have preferred to hold the gun to your son without firing it, but that didn't work out. I guess he's a little too old to stay by his dad's side at a store. It's a shame though, things might be a little easier for you and quicker for us if we had the pleasure of his company. But enough chit chat. I just gave you something to ease the pain and loosen up your tongue, then we'll ask you some simple questions, Mr. Smith."
"I guess you didn't kidnap me for ransom," said Johnny.
"Certainly not," answered the man, sounding offended. "We just require your renowned psychic expertise. Since unfortunately you don't provide those services for hire, we had to find a more creative way to obtain them."
"I don't control my visions," Johnny explained. Whatever drug had been given to him hadn't made the pain disappear from his body, it just didn't seem to matter as much to his brain. "Sometimes I see things, sometimes I don't."
"Yes, yes, we all know about that. I don't think you'll have a problem seeing what we are interested in. As I am sure you know, we have been observing you in the cell. We know you had some visions already. You tell us what you saw and you'll live to see your pretty family again."
To Johnny it felt like the interrogation went on forever. For the longest time he had no idea what they were aiming to get from him. Despite his mind's drug-induced fogginess, he fought to maintain some control of what he was telling them. Initially they asked him about the visions he had in the cell. He described the man's suicide in detail and then he told him about seeing the man entering some sort of secure area. Johnny felt like there was nothing to hide about these two events. During the first part of the interrogation, no one touched him, but the bright light continued to blind him the whole time. He didn't even notice the two times when someone administered additional drugs.
As time went by, he felt more and more disoriented, and his mind drifted to other thoughts. He day dreamt about the trip to Acadia that he, Sarah and the kids had the weekend before. He and Sarah had taken turns carrying Kate in a backpack while they hiked around Jordan Pond. J.J. had even tried tea with the hot popovers at Jordan Pond House Restaurant.
Intense pressure on his wounded shoulder made him jerk painfully and snap out of his daydream in a cold sweat.
"Please pay attention, Mr. Smith. Or we'll have to show you what else we have learned from the CIA's trusty training manual."
After that warning, they stopped using drugs and opted for cruder physical methods. Even with the treat of more pain, it was hard to concentrate on toeing the fine line between giving them enough information and not too much information. When they caught him in a lie, they used his stomach as an ash tray. The small burns from the lit match and falling ash hurt like hell. One more reason to hate smoking and, in this case, smokers. The combination of drugs and injuries nibbled away at Johnny's mental defenses. He became afraid that he would soon lose control and tell them everything they wanted, even though he had no idea what information they were looking for.
The situation got more intense when they wheeled in a metal cart with a pair of glasses, a pen, and a wallet, which they stationed in reach of his handcuffed hand. They told him to touch each thing and describe what he saw. To Johnny's dread each object triggered a vision that was clearly connected to the others. He tried to be selective in his accounts. Fortunately, they weren't pressing him too hard yet. They seemed to already know a lot of what he was telling them.
The story behind the bearded man's suicide clicked into place with the last vision, when Johnny held the dark-brown horn-rimmed glasses.
Johnny is walking in the downtown area of a large city. From the skyline and the view of the lake, it's clearly Chicago. He is fighting to move against streams of people who are running in the street in a panic fleeing a spreading white fog. When the fog reaches them, people around him fall to the ground, blood leaking from their ears.
Johnny starts to run too. He changes directions many times and has no idea where he is when the fog finally dissipates. Everything and everyone around him is at a standstill. Buses, taxis, cars stopped and bodies everywhere, dead faces frozen in fear—Johnny feels paralyzed at the horrific scene. The air becomes difficult to breathe.
On the chair, Johnny began to shake violently. At each body-racking convulsion the handcuff dug deeper into his wrist, carving it with bloody lacerations. None of his captors moved to touch him. When he finally lost his grip on the glasses—which fell to the ground, shattering the lenses—he lost consciousness. His bound body lay still on the chair, fresh blood soaked through the bandages and sling on his arm.
"Well that was interesting," said the lead interrogator. "It's pretty clear that Mr. Smith has seen much more than he has decided to share with us. We'll give him a break and then we'll finish this up. Put him back in the cell and give him some food and water."
Two of his associates removed Johnny's restraints and unlocked the handcuffs. They carried him back to the cell and dumped in on the cot.