Symptoms of mutiny

Keres woke up in an unfamiliar bed with a metallic taste lingering in his mouth, his vision was hazy and the ringing in his ears hadn’t subdued.

“Keres,” a voice called out as something shook him slightly. “Wake up.” It was a soft voice, Ryker’s voice.

His countenance was one of concern and more importantly of fear.

When the fog in Keres’ mind cleared out he tried to jolt forward but his hands were fastened to the sides of the bed. The bed, which he just noticed, was in a hospital room.

“What—what’s this?” Asked Keres, jerking his arms violently to set them free. That was when he heard the voice. A coarse and cold voice coming from the corner.

The owner was a tall man, easily 7 feet, with silver eyes set deep in their sockets, a fluffy white beard, thinning hair and a scar on his cheek. All of these features, even the conspicuous scar, escaped Keres’ notice. The only thing he saw was the jet black leather trench coat.

The Vollstreck.

“You,” The man crept closer. “Appear to have seen classified information not fit for the public.” He towered over the bed. “Where does this place you?”

A shiver ran through Keres when he caught a whiff of the man’s cologne. It was the smell of something sweet like vanilla mixed with a metallic substance. Blood.

He quivered in silence and tripped on his own words.

“Hmm, heretics always go silent when they see this jacket. Tell me young man, Are you a heretic?”

“N—No sir.”

“Then answer the question. Where does your action place you? What do I do with you?”

No response. Keres kept his eyes on the man’s name tag ‘Krieg’, which was embroidered under his badge. A sergeant major’s badge.

Sergeant Krieg observed his prey like an eagle, he snapped his fingers and beckoned. “Doctor Gallagher, I require your assistance in this matter.”

Gallagher entered the room almost immediately, it was hard not to suspect that he’d been standing by the door, on his toes, eavesdropping.

“Yes,” The words accompanied him as he walked in. “How may I be of service.”

“Hmm, your little helper appears to be lost for words and as this is a matter of urgency I would like the opinion of an enlightened mind.”

“An enlightened mind?”

“Yes,” The sergeant spoke with a dreadful sluggishness as though he picked his words carefully and strung them up in line. “What should be done with the young man?”

Doctor Gallagher stole a nervous glance at Keres then abated. “As you well know, Major, the final goal of our project is to send physical beings back in time not just metaphysical data like we have done since the machine’s conception.” A slight pause as he scrutinized the tabloid he was holding. “In today’s test we got an unprecedented breakthrough, for the first time we were able to exist on the same three dimensional plane as the subjects of the past—”

“An abridged version,” Krieg interjected, his voice rising above the conversation. “Just summarize.”

“Keres is the only test subject that has been able to interact with the past, this makes him a vital aid for continuous research.”

“Good and simple. So he lives?”

“As I said, he’s vital to our research.”

Krieg smirked, for some reason that answer satisfied him. He placed a hand on Keres’ shoulder and whispered. “A man with enough knowledge is an asset; A man with too much knowledge is a Threat. Which one are you?”

A single sweat streamed down Keres’ hair to his eyebrow. “Neither…Sir.”

“Neither?!” The sergeant yelled, unfolding to his full height, cackling. He laughed like that until he left the room.

After stern warning from Doctor Gallagher and a few concerned remarks from Ryker and some more hours in the hospital Keres was discharged and allowed to go home.

The day, or last few days, had been eventful to say the least. He’d come to learn a little about the past and gained a few more faces for his insomnia to exploit: The dead girl with the purple brooch, her sister and Sergeant Krieg.

When he got home he found Thane seating leisurely on the coach in the living room.

“Oh you’re back.” Said Thane as he dipped his hand in a bowl filled with Nuts.

“I’ve been gone two days.”

Thane was bemused. “You left a couple hours ago,” He scrutinized Keres’ jumpsuit. “and I see you dry cleaned like I asked.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you going on about?”

Keres shoved Thane aside and took a seat. “I saw them…” he buried his face in his palms. “They shot them. One by one.”

Thane gazed at the floor, his eyes ran both sides as his mind tried to decipher what his room mate was saying. Not being able to settle on anything he placed a hand on Keres’ shoulder as tiny sobs escaped the young man’s throat.

They sat there, like that, for a while. Both of them. One utterly confused but sympathetic and the other overwhelmed and exhausted.

****************************

Keres’ room was more disoriented than usual, his study touch pads, his motion posters, his clothes, everything was in disarray, but more disorienting than the literal mess was the white material on his desk.

It was light, brown in some areas, crude in others and in every way the material he’s read about in history notes.

Paper.

The surprising bit was that paper is impossible to come by since it’s production was illegal as it is made from trees that were almost extinct.

On one side of the paper he saw poorly written scribblings, mostly illegible but there was no denying that he understood those words.

‘The  truth lies at the end of your desires.’

His desires. There was nothing he desired more than to see the woman with the grief-stricken face, to take her to where her sister’s body was, to give her solace in finding the shell of what she’s lost.

‘One more time.’ He thought. ‘If I could go back just once.’

Going back there, going back to the F—R&D, was suicide. From those few moments however, those moments where he imagined what could be if he got it right, he gained maniacal confidence or perhaps it was just suicidal impulse.

He shoved the piece of paper in his pocket and left the apartment. On the cold empty streets of the city, he trudged almost endlessly. The sheer fear of purposely committing a crime made him overly cautious. ‘Using a warp booth can be timed or tracked.’ ‘Walking two steps in two seconds could easily be noticed.’

These thoughts, although slightly exaggerated, contain vague truths in them. Everything was bugged.

Everything.

A fact he realized when he came face to face with seargent major Krieg and his men near the F—R&D building.

They stood straight-faced, blending perfectly with the night’s darkness. They looked like reapers, ghostly features made even more terrifying by their monstrous shadows.

The smirk on Krieg’s face, the way it crept slowly from the corners of his mouth, was haunting. From his tight lips escaped the words:

“I know them when I see them. Dissenters.”

He snapped his fingers and at that moment Keres felt a sharp pain on his head. He was hit by something blunt.

As he lay on the floor with the blood oozing from his head, he realized the parallels between him and the dead girl. They were victims, victims of a power tussle beyond their control.

The clogging of boots grew louder. His vision was getting bleary. He felt a hand lift him up and heard someone say “it’s not over yet, we still have to put you on display.”

His consciousness slipped from him with every second that went by. Before his head slumped and he blanked out, he saw those moments that fueled him earlier, those moments where everything was right and felt it all turn into the dreams that they were.