The cry came out of deeps of my throat before I could control it, even before I realized I was regaining consciousness. I was terrified, a fear threatening me like a poisonous snake distilling poison against a captured prey. The memory of the suffocation was still fresh, as if only now I could breathe again.
I was panting heavily trying to catch as much oxygen as possible, between a loud sob and another, until finally I calmed down and noticed what was around me. I needed to realize where I was again. It looked like one of the hospital rooms but much more clean. A white room, a small table beside the entrance, I began to imagine that it was all a hallucination when I noticed that I was literally tied with very fine blue-white chains on a reclining stretcher.
I tried not to panic again. I really needed to calm down and order my thoughts. Of course they probably believed that I deliberately destroyed two rooms in the hospital and now they considered me as a unstable threat. At that time, my psychiatrist would have discussed with my mother about the results of my tests, which were probably positive for schizophrenia or something like that. So the best option for then was to get me tied up on the stretcher, or even hand me to the government to deal.
I noticed by now, that I had not yet been treated for the cuts and scrapes that had occurred because of the shrapnel from those explosions. My pants and T-shirt were here and there speckled with drops of blood.
It probably should not have been more than a few minutes since the second series of explosions. But the chains that caught my wrists and ankles bothered me more than the scratches. Not just for hurting the slightest movement, but why I was not sure if it was ethical to arrest patients that way. I was in a hospital, right?
I was already wondering if ethics were applied to the treatment of patients considered dangerous as I probably was, when two security guards approached the door and stood guard while a third man entered, all wearing similar uniforms, but while these of the security guards were dark blue, almost black, this man's was light blue very close to gray. To my horor, They were all Jomons.
The only way I could still be in an environment with Jomons was if I was still stuck in the hallucinations. The man did not show a friendly face, and the moment he spoke, he wasn't cordial either. He punched the armrest of the stretcher and shouted an incomprehensible and demanding question in such a language that I did not know.
"I don't understand your language" I yelled back, desperately: "I don't know what you're saying! Is that some form of punishment for what happened? Sorry, but I swear that I didn't…"
The man was not convinced, and did not even seem to understand what I was saying, but he turned his hand and slapped a strong and efficient slap on my face, gesturing so that even I could understand that I should not scream. The metallic taste of blood trickled down my freshly cut mouth. What could I do? What should I do? Exhausted, terrified and in pain, I simply lay my head on the table and waited for the inquisitor to do whatever he had to do.
He removed from an inner holster of his uniform a stick similar to the one the first guard had leaned against me before in the destroyed room. I felt my muscles tighten with anticipation and fear. No matter what I said, he would not understand if we did not speak the same language. Or maybe he understood, and all this was really a punishment for the explosions.
He put a kind of gag in my mouth. It kept my teeth away to prevent me to bite my tongue, but it would not stop me from actually babbling. I couldn't understand. Then he adjusted the stretcher so that my head was lower than my feet. The movement forced the chains on my wrists and ankles. I felt the skin burn, as if It were already cutting me. But that was nothing near what came next. When I was being pursued, that guard's stick had briefly scraped against my arm giving me that terrible and painful debilitating sensation. Now this man in gray uniform simply willed the end of the stick firmly on my wrist.
To my greatest despair, he did not even ask another question before continuing. Again and again, he pressed the end of the stick into my skin, giving me just enough time to breathe. Exhaustion already consumed me more than the pain itself. I still cried in the beginning, and tears were still flowing, but even the strength to plead I hadn't more. My arms seemed like mere dead attachments by my side. There were lots of great burns on my right wrist, where he continually pushed the stick and blood was flowing profusely down my body from my wrists and ankles cuted by the chains.
This continued until could not breathe anymore. It just seemed very difficult to do that. I found it difficult even to remain conscious, but to my despair and unhappiness, I could not faint either. I had a feeling that at least in my head I had plenty of oxygen since the stretcher where I was was almost upside down. That's probably why he put me like this in the first place. There would be no point in torturing someone if that person was not awake.
Now that I seemed to be in the state He was aiming, he finally stopped his harrowing sequence and held the end of the stick close to my face. Inquisitive and ruthless, he recited what seemed to be the same question as before in an accusing and intimidating whisper and pulled off the gag so I could speak.
"I don't understand...." my voice hardly came out. Equally whispering, but on the other hand, it was a cry ... a plea. Nothing near to his threatening.
I was sure he would restart my torture, when a guard near the door came closer and whispered something to him. He was extremely surprised by the information he received. He joined the others, and stood in line at the door. Minutes later, as they all looked toward the corridor, another man appeared. Completely casual, this one was much younger and handsome, but somehow definitely more frightening. The guards turned in an exaggerated and extremely submissive reverence, and moved away to give way to him.
I had to struggled a lot to rise my head and see. He did not seem to have any intention of helping, and by the way everyone behaved, it seemed like he was in charge of this hell. Despite his shaggy hair, a bored face and his look — he wore a loose-fitting robe and sweatpants that seemed expensive at any point beyond anything I had ever worn — he had an extremely elegant and determined appearance of one who never had to hear a no in his life.
If I were to compare him to a Brard like myself, he would be at most 25 years old, but although he did not look as official as the uniformed guards, the others hurried to make one-on-one reports. Those three guards didn't eve dared to raise their heads, always looking down, seeming terrified to speak to him, and finally ending with the report of the man in gray uniform.
The loose man looked at me from top to bottom — or from the bottom up, since I was lying down with the side of my head down — with a bored face and even some contempt, he spoke a single word and they all left the room, leaving us alone seeming glad to do so.
I really didn't like this man. He doesn't seemed a nice guy. I could only hope for something much worse to come. My condition was already deplorable. Blood dripped from my ankles down my legs and my wrists down my arms from the chains, mixing with sweat, not to mention the various little scratches and burned marks. This was too much to be just some delusion.
I kept thinking for a ridiculous moment that confessions under torture should be very frequent. I would be ready to confess that I dropped bombs at the hospital and that I was a terrorist, or even had committed hideous murders just to get rid of it and end this whole thing.
"I don't understand your language…" I began to justify myself, even though I knew it would probably be useless, and then I did the only thing I could: I waited. He then straightened the stretcher back into the normal position until I was almost seated.
Despite the dizziness, now I could look better at him and see that he was really very handsome and young, I remembered someone famous that I could not remember now who it would be. His chestnut blond hair was curly, his face thin and beardless, but I think hardly anyone would find him charming, for the expression of deep disdain he held.
But when I stopped to see her eyes, from a deep vivid and penetrating lilac, I felt sucked and invaded at the same time by their intensity, as if they could say more about me than myself, as if they could devour my soul and read my secrets.
And I soon found out that he was really doing it, cause he stared me more closely. somehow, even if I wanted to, I could not look away. The pressure was terrifying as if he could turn me apart only by staring me. Then with a few minutes of that, he finally said:
"So you come from Quadrant 87… What shall we do with you?"