Rewired: Project Insula

Chapter 19

Daniel awoke to a bright fluorescent light above him, instantly forcing a clench of his eyelids. Purple streaks of light danced and darted across his vision, as he slowly adjusted to the whiteness.

It felt difficult to sit up, there was tightness in his chest and shoulders that he couldn't quite understand. He looked around to see, very clearly, that he was led in a Hospital bed, alone and strapped in tightly.

Seeing his wrists clamped down onto the bed caused panic to run rampant through his body. He began to breathe heavily as if awaking from a night terror; his body tensing at the foreign feeling of being immobile.

Through clenched teeth, Daniel exhaled and inhaled heavily; spitting as he did so.

“Help! Someone help!” He shouted, helplessly.

Daniel laid his head back and began to breathe slowly, to calm down. He began to focus on what had led him here, but it was difficult to remember. The store was fresh in his mind; hiding under the counter and waiting for someone to come and help him. However, getting to where he was now, was not only impossible to recall, but certainly was not the result he could ever have expected. He couldn't remember being injured, speaking to anybody or even leaving the store; yet here he lay, strapped to a hospital bed.

His blazer, tie and footwear had been removed. His sleeves that were once white, instead bared a grey damp look and were scrunched up to his biceps.

His arm began to sting slightly; a nagging dull pain that seemed to vibrate sharply. He lethargically leaned his head forwards to look at the area where the pain came from and could see a tiny red dot sitting there. Blood tests or IV treatment could be the prime suspect here, all dependent on the reason why he was there.

He soon looked over to the left, revealing a large metal door to the right and a long mirror next too it. The metal door seemed to give off the impression that this hospital was perhaps not a hospital after all. It seemed far too high security, plus there were no doctors or nurses running around, nor the bustling noise of hospitals in general. It was awfully quiet and as his sense began to return to him, he soon realised that something was not right.

Before long and with a noise resembling a shutter closing; the mirror turned to a window. On the other side were four people, all wearing identical hazard suits.

One was stood at the front, still and staring. Two were behind with their backs to the window, frantically writing. The fourth was checking a tablet device, with his hand on what looked like a door handle.

Daniel stayed staring at the people behind the glass, he said nothing nor showed any real expression on the matter; until one of them was looking through a now opened viewing port located in the middle of the large metal door. He assumed that this person was looking straight at him, but it was hard to tell. The reflecting silver visor showed nothing but a distorted reflection of the room he was in, leaving what was behind the mask to Daniel's imagination.

“Hello?” Daniel asked, almost pleading.

The person with the visor looked to his left, and back at Daniel; before looking left again and back again. This went on for a short while, allowing Daniel to notice that they were communicating with eachother through the rooms. The three that still stood behind the window, were now all turned to the right, nodding and gesturing to the person at the viewing hole.

Daniel strained slightly in his restraints. He didn't feel badly injured, but the feeling of immobilisation was causing him to ache all over.

“Please!” Daniel shouted, squirming and gritting in frustration.

At this, the visor stared back at him, before closing the metal panel completely. There was quiet, but he could see there was some intense conversing happening between the three of them he could see.

The door swung open slowly, its sheer weight obvious in its course. Soon following, came one of the hazmat wearing scientists – scientists being Daniel's educated guess.

Thanks to the protective suit and its visor, the person was genderless by sight. Daniel could not make out whether this person was a man or women, thanks to their very average height, and large overalls that cancelled out any kind of definition.

He wasn't sure why this was important to him, but still he analysed the figure as it timidly approached his side; finally deciding on assuming it's a man.

“Where am I?” Daniel asked the scientist.

The scientist reacted to Daniel's question by stopping and turning towards the window. The other three egged him onwards with nods and waves.

“Mr Green?” A soft voice said, through an intercom.

Daniel looked around the room for the speaker, before it spoke again.

“Here Mr Green.” The voice spoke again.

Daniel quickly realised that the voice was being spoken through the scientist's mask.

“How are you feeling?” the voice spoke again.

Daniel propped himself up as much as he could.

“I would feel a whole lot better, if you could untie me from this bed and tell me what has happened.” He said, now calmly.

The scientist turned to the window again and turned back to Daniel. With an elegant reach, the scientist removed the helmet from the suit. Making a satisfying sound in doing so, whilst releasing some gas from the pressurised connection.

A long, dark braided ponytail unravelled itself beautifully from the top of the scientist's head, revealing that it wasn't a man; it was in fact a gorgeous woman, with what seemed to be an African descent.

Daniel noticed the other three scientists at the window begin to panic and rush around. The lady turned to them and scoffed.

“Mr Green, I am Dr Ada, I'm sorry for what must be a terrifying ordeal.”

Her accent was heavy with African twang, but it fell delicately on Daniel's ears, making him feel calm.

Daniel looked down at his wrists and shook his arms slightly.

“Oh, I am sorry. For both of our protection, this is necessary.” She said.

Daniel threw his head back frustrated and looked up at the ceiling.

“Do you feel… normal?” She asked.

He looked at her and almost laughed.

“Well” He said sarcastically.

“What do you think?”

She began to jot something down on her tablet, frowning slightly.

“It is very important that you answer the question Mr Green. The faster you satisfy the questions, the faster you may leave.” She replied sternly.

“Look, untie me, tell me where I am and then I might be able to tell you if I feel normal or not.” He said, frustration building.

He understood the basis of what was happening; he had been taken to a testing facility because of his exposure to whatever had been going on out there. It was obvious with the suits, the strange room and of course with the superhuman freaks that had been roaming around last night. Was it last night? How long had he been there?

“I cannot.” She replied bluntly.

Daniel leant back once again, with a frustrated sigh.

“Look, you clearly don't think I am one of them, otherwise you wouldn't have taken your helmet off. Your scientist friends' reaction was a big giveaway to how much danger you could have put yourself into.” He said.

“One of them?” She replied.

“Oh come on. I'm not stupid.”

“I am fully aware of that, Mr Green.”

She walked over to the bottom of the bed, before making her way round the other side.

“May I look at your eyes?” She asked.

“Why?” Daniel replied with a hint of genuine interest.

Ignoring Daniel's question, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small torch.

Daniel obliged to let her inspect his eyes, but his question was still unanswered.

“What happens to the eyes?” He said, as she shone the bright white into his face.

Again, she ignored the question.

“I don't think you understand, I have been researching these things since the first case!” He snapped angrily.

“Mr Green, I am afraid it's you who doesn't understand.” She replied coolly.

“What?”

Dr Ada put the light back into her pocket and walked out of the room, picking her helmet up on her way.

As she approached the large metal door, she turned to Daniel.

“You don't even know how you got here do you? Don't presume to know anything.” She said fiercely, before leaving the room and slamming the large metal door shut.

The lights turned off with a static hiss, leaving Daniel alone again and in the pitch black.

…

Daniel suffered badly from hypnagogic hallucinations growing up; now he still did but suffer had become the incorrect word. Hypnagogic hallucinations, also known as seeing Shadow People, was a condition often confused with sleep paralysis.

Daniel saw sleep paralysis as a frightening state, when you would wake up, witness some visual or auditory hallucinations and be unable to move your body; hence the paralysis part.

Hypnagogic hallucinations to his knowledge, was identical, aside from being able to move just as you would when you were awake; because you were awake. This he was certain of, there were many times during the first few cases of it happening, where he would get up out of his bed and run out of his room, peaking in from time to time, to ensure that whatever beast he had just seen, was now gone.

He had often flirted with the idea of shadow people; the ideology that the shadows and people you would see in the corner of your eye, that aren't there; were in fact there. They were beings made of shadow that wanted nothing more than to just watch. Watch us live our lives, or in Daniel's case, watch him sleep.

Laying in the pitch black, drifting off when the dull ache of not being able to move was bearable; he managed to see these tricks of the eye and brain a couple of times. However, since his run in with these real-life monsters that he had become so well acquainted with recently, this wasn't the first time that his sleep disorder had entered his mind.

Often after seeing the shape of a tall man, creeping towards his bedside, Daniel would scream in alarm or jump up and push away the non-existent entity. He found this show of terror very interesting, as he couldn't tell if it was genuine or not. For example, if there was to be a genuine paranormal entity, that was walking over to Daniel in the darkness and solitude of his own bedroom; would his reaction be the same? Does his mind, fully knowing that it is just a trick, react for a split second as it would if it were to be real? Or over the years, has it simply become that same reaction to a sudden scare that you would show if a person was to play a prank on you?

Seeing those hideous and horrifying creatures, run and scream and tear people apart; allowed Daniel to finally witness his own reaction to real fear. When those things screeched and poured out of the smoke, along with his knowledge of what they had done to people in the past, it was like seeing a real-life zombie in comparison to the zombies that you would see on television or in movies. You know, the zombies that you constantly wish were real? We all know that the dead will literally never rise and perhaps that is what makes people so confident in wishing their world away.

It is difficult to determine what your actual response would be to something so incomprehensible that you can only find it in fiction – fiction which is created to bring fear out of someone.

Did Daniel scream? Did he run? Well the latter did come eventually, but his initial reaction was nothing he had experienced before. The fear that crept up his body, freezing him still, that was a new sensation. Seeing with your own eyes, human beings, that had somehow been altered to not only rip apart others with no prejudice, but to act with abilities only seen in fiction; that didn't just change his life forever, but it changed his perception on morals and fear in general.

It is often interesting to wonder when someone snaps or becomes desensitised when dealing with intense and horrifying ordeals; for Daniel it was as soon as he saw what those humans had become.

Which brings us over to Daniel's current state. He had a short battle with himself upon finding his arms strapped to a bed in a peculiar facility, one that was based mostly on the social constructs he was used too.

This is insane he would tell himself. And he would often beat himself up for not screaming or crying, when really, he should have. If you were to wake up strapped to a bed in an unknown place, it would be near impossible to refrain from it.

It wasn't long before he realised that, those things that were and could still be out there, were the things he was most terrified about. It was a feeling similar to that of a child scared of spiders or ghosts but intensified by 1000.

He finally understood Meera, when she was so adamant about not doing anything that could potentially mean that they were to run into one of them; and he now commended her courage for doing it anyway.

Just like the fans of zombie fiction and how they assume they would do well if the undead were to walk the Earth, Daniel assumed that because he had seen pictures of and heard of these killing machines, that he would be fine should he come across one. He would have the ability to run away, hide or fight if he needed too. He was wrong. And he wasn't scared, laying here in the pitch black, with no idea why he was there, seeing his shadow friends from time to time. No, he was afraid of those relentless killers out there; and they weren't getting him in here.