Chapter 22:
It was a little after three in the morning, very early Tuesday, the second of December, not quite two years since he’d been first found in a New York gutter. The zosters vibrated soundlessly in the breast pockets of Nicholas and Peter, both. Their separate messages were identical. John was about to be overpowered and drugged. They were to help.
John’s eyes opened even before the door of his room. It was now, and he swung himself out of bed and tried to fight as four men piled onto him. A chloroform pad was held to his face, and another tried to hold his arm still long enough for Price to do the injection. John fought off the cover over his face, and cried desperately to where he knew the camera was, “Mark! Don’t do it to me, Mark!”
Mark was watching, but only set his jaw and tried not to betray his tension to those others in the large Surveillance Room, those whom John had never met, though he guessed at their existence. The injection was made finally, through the material of sleeping shorts. John still tried to fight, though his face was covered with the pad of Chloroform. His struggles became weaker and finally ceased. The soldiers stepped back, panting.
Captain Prendergast formally commended Peter and Nicholas on an excellent job, and gave them six weeks leave and a caution not to tell anyone anything, except that John was ill again. They saluted and watched their helpless charge wheeled away. “He had tears on his face,” commented Peter.
A little later, as they turned into the soldiers’ barracks, Nicholas said something else, “Maybe we should have turned our backs - just let him go.”
Peter nodded glumly. In the showers in the morning, as the hissing water hopefully made any microphones useless, the information was passed on. John was sick again, but it was because they were doing something to him.
For the next few nights, it was Mark who found he couldn’t sleep. The shrieked words came back to him again and again. Don’t do it to me, Mark! It was easier for Isaac, as his sheer interest in the procedure, and the subsequent unnaturally fast healing of his patient, kept him enthralled. There was no need for any EEG monitoring this time, as CUZ gave the same information, and a bit more.
The physical wounds were healing very quickly, but John was not supposed to wake for at least another week. It was an hour and a half before dawn. Isaac was called, and then Mark was notified. The patient was fretting, sometimes briefly soothed when the nurse, Nicki, spoke to him, but then starting to mutter and turn his head again, as if irritated. The feeding tube was removed from his nose, and he settled down for a little while.
The Intravenous Drip kept blocking up, and Isaac finally gave up on that one, and made a new opening into the vein. Eyes squinting, frowning, John twisted in the bed, and hit away Isaac’s hands, along with the needle. Isaac swore, and jabbed a needle into his upper arm instead, injecting him with as much sedative as he dared. He watched the indications of brain activity on the large screen near the bed. John should have been quite unable to make himself wake.
As soon as he seemed quiet, he fixed restraints. Again, a needle was carefully inserted into a vein, and the Drip connected. A patient couldn’t survive prolonged unconsciousness without the support of something like that, even if it contained no more than a solution to combat dehydration. A further advantage was that drugs could be injected straight into the fine tube that ran into his vein, which worked a lot quicker than a jab into an arm or a buttock.
John was quiet again for a time, and Isaac breathed a sigh of relief and joined Mark in the Observation Room.
Nicki checked the drip and looked toward the Observation Room, though it was a blank wall to her eyes. “Isaac? The Drip’s blocking again.”
Isaac asked Mark, “Do you think he could be doing it?”
Mark looked to the technician next to him, who said, “No indication of any abnormal pattern.”
Mark shrugged, going himself with Isaac, and looking at John’s face. His eyes were still closed, but there were tears on his face. Don’t do it to me, Mark! and he’d done it to him. Mark sighed heavily and returned to the Observation Room. Perhaps one day John would become resigned to his captivity. There was the new agent to take the place of Clare, and he said to Isaac, “Leanne will make him feel better maybe.”
“Private Hinch?”
“We let her transfer.”
Nicki still tried to persuade the Intravenous Drip to start working.
John raised his arms, found them restrained and screamed in his panic. He was struggling, and the restraints vanished from his arms. The side of the bed fell at his touch, and he came to his feet, looking around, trying to know what was happening. Two guards as well as Price, the male nurse, surrounded him. Nicki spoke in a gentle voice, trying to persuade him to return to bed. He always took more notice of a female voice.
Isaac indicated, and the guards and Price fell back. Isaac was foolish in some ways. He still thought that John should trust him, and now he assured John than everything was all right, that he’d just been sick for a while, and that they were looking after him.
But John looked different, and Isaac shook his head - surely he was not glowing. Angels were supposed to glow, but Isaac didn’t believe in angels, and in any case, John was no angel. But there was a glow, faint but quite definitely there. He looked different, radiating power as they’d never seen him.
John cast a look around the room. Isaac and the three other men in the room fell. He looked at Nicki. She stayed very still, suddenly terrified. His gaze passed her by. He needed to be away from here. How he hated Ward 3. Observers behind the wall watched, open-mouthed. John vanished in front of their eyes.
Nicki regained her senses first, her training as a nurse taking over. Quickly she checked the fallen men in Ward 3, and looked up. “They’re all right, I think, like they just fainted.”
At this assurance, Mark also got over his shock, and snapped at the technician. “Where is he? Check the RAB.”
The answer came quickly, “At his tree.”
The appropriate screen was brought up, and John was seen quite clearly, still naked, in his usual perch in his tree, a leg hooked securely around a branch. The light was not bright, but adequate, from a nearby light pole. There was a camera, right next to him, cunningly hidden. John was not glowing, and Mark thought that he must have been imagining things, to think that the sick man could glow. He said quietly, “Use Option 3. Disable him.”
The chief technician picked up a pocket notebook sized device from his desk, pressed in the digits of the password, and pressed a red button. A scream rent the air, and John could be seen as he jerked in the sudden agony.
“I thought it was only supposed to make him faint!” said the technician, Brett. His voice was high pitched. He’d watched John so often, though John had never met him. The scream was suddenly cut off as the camera and the microphone were destroyed by a blow from a fist.
In the tree, John was still racked by pain, but the head pain from his attacks was worse, and he was beginning to be able to think in spite of the pain that still raged. But Mark was thinking, too. If he could disappear from one spot and reappear in another, then John was uncontrollable. He looked again at Brett, and said clearly, “End it. The black button.”
Brett said in a pleading tone, “No, don’t kill him! What’s he done to you?”
Mark held out his hand, “Give it to me.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Brett handed over the device. Mark took it, pressed in the numbers, and then firmly pressed in the black button. Graph lines on screens all over the room ceased.
“What’ll we do now?” said Brett bitterly. “Pick up the body for dissection, like he always said we would?”
Mark turned to an expressionless soldier, “Find him. He’ll probably be at the foot of his tree. Take him to his own room.”
And then he turned and left. His voice was a touch shaky. “I’ll be in my office.”