Page 106 of To Save Him

 

 

 

Chapter Thirty-six

 

THE TEARS HAD long since disappeared but we were both feeling exhausted.  Some of the lights in the giant space had shut off, due to no detectable motion, and I was starting to look around the space when I heard something.

It was the metal door we’d entered earlier.

Had we been found?

I looked at Brandon and his pupils had grown as wide as I was sure mine were.  I sat up, taking in a weak but audible breath, and Brandon gave me a slight nod, standing quietly from the chair.  He wrapped his hand in mine and began to walk toward the open doorway in the cubicle-like space.  We heard footsteps and I saw Brandon looking around—for an escape?  A weapon?  I didn’t know.

And then we heard a voice echoing through the space.  “Sergeant Abbott?  Are you down here?”

Sergeant?  How could these people claim to have no record of Brandon and yet then refer to him with that title?

Something wasn’t right here.  Brandon knew it and so did I.

But he must have also known that hiding at this point would get us nowhere.  I saw his frame almost grow larger, his shoulders straighten, his body at the ready.  “Sergeant Abbott here.”  His voice was commanding, the tone I’d heard during the times when he’d dominated my eager body long before.  He held out his arm and pushed me behind him, blocking the doorway with his frame.  Gone were the remorse, the anxiety, the grief and guilt.  He was now all business, ready to defend me, ready to take whatever was coming without a second thought.

The echoing footsteps tapped again, moving toward us.  By the sound of it, it was one person, and the quality of his voice sounded neither threatening nor ominous.  “I’m coming your way.”

Brandon tilted his head slightly but he bent his knees almost imperceptibly, as if preparing to pounce.  “Who goes there?”

Before the other man could answer, we spied him as he got near, coming down the wide aisle.  I recognized him as the balding man with green eyes we’d passed in the hallway before winding our way down the stairwell.  “Sergeant?  Sergeant Abbott?”  He kept walking toward us.  Brandon wasn’t pouncing but he also wasn’t backing down.  He was waiting.  “Don’t you recognize me?”

That was when Brandon’s arms relaxed and his head moved slightly, his eyes scrutinizing the man who was almost beside us now.  After a few more seconds, he asked, “Bush?”

“Yes.  And we need to get you out of here.”

Brandon nodded and took me by the hand.  “She’s with me.”

“Come this way.”  The man named Bush led us down the aisle, in the opposite direction from the stairway where we’d entered.  When we made it to the end of the aisle, the man ran his hand down a seam in the wall, and then it slid away, creating a doorway for us to walk through.

That hallway was dark—nothing but concrete and the occasional light bulb in a recess above, and the lights switched on as we walked through.  It was tight, creating in me a sense of claustrophobia, but I held on tightly to Brandon’s hand as we made the journey.  He knew this man—trusted him, even—so I had to cling to him and trust the other man as well.

But I was also curious.  “Who are we running from?”

The man’s voice was clipped as he continued to lead us through what felt more like a tunnel than a corridor.  “How much does she know?”

“Not much.  And I’m just now remembering.”

The man nodded and then walked a few more feet until we ended in a small but round area the size of a broom closet.  There the ceiling opened up and I noticed a metal ladder bolted into the wall leading into a darkness above I could see no end to.  The air there felt a little cooler, and I knew it was likely just my mind playing tricks on me because I no longer felt smothered in the tighter space.  “It’s the program.  They left behind a couple of hired cronies to let them know when people surfaced and came looking for answers.  If the mind wipe didn’t work…they have other ways of shutting you up.  But you screwed them up.  They weren’t ready for you, Sergeant…and you also came with someone.”

“Mind wipe?”

“You don’t remember.”  The man looked at me as well, letting me know he was including me in the conversation.  “It’s probably better that you don’t.  A combination of drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, some kind of brainwashing.  And when they were pretty sure you couldn’t remember shit, they told you the funding had run out and they had to discharge you.”

Brandon said, “That sounds familiar.”

“Yes…because that’s probably about the time they stopped messing with your mind.  And if you’re like any of the other guys who’ve come back here, you’re suffering from PTSD but have no idea why.”  The bald man let out a breath.  “I’ve only saved one of them, and this is how I did it.”

“So why areyoustill here?” Brandon asked.

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