Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 3-3

“You got lucky last time. I’m going to kick your ass seven ways to Sunday,” I say.

“You’re just a kid,” Tengen says. “I almost feel bad hurting you.”

He looks around quickly to make sure there are no witnesses and then makes fists of his own. This time I’m fully ready. Nothing will catch me off guard. I’ll weaken him with a jab or two and then grapple him into submission. And then, I’ll knock him the hell out.

He’s close enough to step in and jab but suddenly my head pops back twice, and I know he hit me. He struck me. Bright lights flash seemingly inside my brain, and my eyes have trouble focusing. It’s as if he hit me with two sledgehammers. The pain is extraordinary. I’m dazed. My skull has to be broken. From two punches I’m blurry, and I’m suddenly terrified. He had moved so quickly that I hadn’t even seen him do it, yet there he is in front of me with blurry fists up and a cocky grin, and I’m sure it was him who hurt me. I think about my brother and I think about death. I think I’m going to die. I try to hold my hands up and swing, but I don’t know if my arms are working. I think about the backpack I put behind me but I’m so disoriented I don’t know where it is anymore. My vision spins and swirls. He hits me again. Three times by my count, but I’m not sure I can count anymore. And then he hits the back of my head, and I’m suddenly face down on the ground, unable to hear anything but a thick whooshing sound I think might be blood draining or my brain hemorrhaging.

He rolls me onto my back. I think I swing my fist up at him, but I’m not sure. This is what death feels like. Death hurts. I hit something with my hand that feels like steel, but all I see is his blurry arm. He says something, but it doesn’t process into my brain. It’s garbled, and I think, hey this is great, I can still hear! He says something else but everything — including my vision — is fuzzy now. I fight my mind to keep from passing out. I think he grabs my shirt and I suddenly feel as if I’m lifted off the ground. He comes into partial focus, and I recognize one of his fists pulling back for one last punch. This is it. This is how it ends. Tengen says something else. I don’t think he knows that I can’t hear a word he’s saying. Then I see another blur approaching behind him. It’s a man, I think. My eyes focus temporarily, and I see it’s an older man holding something out in front of him. Tengen sees my changed focus and half-turns, and releases me, but he’s too late. The man shoots a taser at Tengen who shakes spastically and collapses to the ground.

The old man is yelling something at me. I can’t hear him, so I try to shake my head but feel nothing working. Pain is everywhere. I’m definitely dying. My head feels like it’s leaking. The old man walks out of view behind me, and I know what he’s doing. He’s getting the backpack.

“No,” I try to say, but I barely hear my own words. I say it louder: “No!” But again, I’m not sure if anything of any meaning leaves my mouth. Then my torso is lifted. The old man is trying to get me to stand. I sense him yelling into my ear, but I can’t quite make out the sound. And then I figure it out. He’s telling me to walk. I remember trying to stand, and I remember waking up from a blackout and seeing my feet moving below me. I must be walking, I remember thinking. I must be dead. I feel the old man’s shoulder propped under my armpit. He supports me. Without him, I’d fall. One foot in front of the other. My arm is around his neck. We walk forward. I’m aware enough to know that we’re walking in the opposite direction of my car. Like a dumb drunk I try to say, “No, car back there,” but he ignores me and keeps us walking in the other direction. I had suffered a minor concussion when I was nine years old. I had been sitting at the edge of one of those mats that pole-vaulters land in after their jump, watching kids bounce on it and have fun when suddenly one kid fell into me and knocked me backward. I fell, and the back of my head hit squarely on the cement below. It was the worst pain I had ever felt, and I knew something was very wrong. I remember leaving towards home, I remember getting home, I remember the look on mother’s face when she felt the squishy bump on the back of my head, and I remember waking up in the hospital. That’s it. This was like that only twenty times worse. I suddenly wake up inside of a moving car. I wake again and remember the bright lights of an elevator. I wake again and think how odd it is that the old man and I are in my brother’s condo. I’m propped up near my brother’s desk. The whooshing pulsing sound inside my skull is lowered enough for me to hear and understand the old man.

“Your brother was the greatest man I have ever known,” he says. “He died trying to save us. Now that is up to you.”

He has an accent. I once had a tennis coach from Hungary who had the worst case of psoriasis on the back of his forearms, and who said things like ‘hello’ as if the ‘h’ wasn’t there, and that’s not how this guy was talking, but it was close. This guy was more like a bad actor doing Dracula. It makes me think about Romania. I think about death again. I think about my brother’s body at the morgue.

“Who are you?” I struggle to ask.

“My name is Radu Dmitriu,” he says. “Your brother’s professor.”

He does something under the desk. He’s very busy and rushed, and I’m trying to focus but I can’t. The pain spreads everywhere. My eyes are losing focus again. I’m losing consciousness. I feel closer to death. I’m hot and then very cold. He moves in front of me, and I suddenly get a whiff of some exotic tree root and spice cologne. I try to focus on his hair. It’s combed back but disheveled.

“This will hurt,” the old man says.

I’m already hurt enough. I look down to see what he’s talking about. My left arm is inside the steel gray box. My eyes slowly follow the cord of the steel gray box all the way to the outlet in the wall. It’s plugged in. He closes the clamps on the steel box.

“No,” I shake my head. “Destroy. Need to destroy.” My voice is weak. I think he can hear me, but I don’t know.

“This is the only way to avenge your brother,” he says. “Do you want that or not?”

I think and nod my blurred head slowly, ‘yes.’

“Avenge your brother. Save the world,” Professor Dmitriu says as he closes the clamps of the steel box, locking my arm inside.

The steel box pulses immediately with electricity. The electricity sounds like it’s building up. I hear small gears move. And then suddenly, I feel hot nails boring into my bone and searing my nerves. I try to scream but I can’t. This is pain unlike any other. The fog of concussion disappears entirely and I’m suddenly fully aware of everything, but I’m entirely helpless to move and free myself of the agony jolting into my arm and spreading through the rest of my body. I feel the complete destruction of my arm, and then a jolt of boiling heat hits my brain, and I can suddenly see inside the steel box like an X-ray. Inside are twenty gears pumping twenty thick needles full of neon green and blue fluid over and over again into my body. I watch as the neon fluid flows through my vessels and flesh, moving its way organically throughout the rest of me. As it does, the pain worsens. It runs from bone to bone until it’s everywhere throughout my body. This is no longer death; it’s straight-up hell. I'm melting. I’m sure I’m melting. Nothing hurts this bad. Nothing is supposed to be so horrible. This is a mistake. Something is very wrong. The pain paralyzes me to the extent that I’m not sure if I’m screaming or if I’m already dead and in hell. I can’t breathe in. I can’t breathe out. I can’t move. I will my arm to free itself from the box, but I have no control. My eyes sharpen focus and then hit me with darkness followed by the red of fire and burning. And then my mind races throughout my brother’s place. I see the carpet fibers from when I had been in his bedroom earlier, a single dog hair on the kitchen countertop, the coarse surface of the far wall opposite the front door, and then the stubble on the professor’s worried face. I aim my focus on him. “Help,” I try to say. He looks terrified like he had mistakenly killed me. My brain recognizes that I have only moments longer. Electrocution registers, but it’s also suffocation, and it’s hemorrhaging. It’s the failure of everything at the same time. For the first time, the pain in my chest elevates above all else. It’s my heart. I’m having a heart attack. And then my head pounds harder, and I know it’s a stroke. My lungs are collapsing. My spine feels like it’s snapping. My arms are ripping out of their sockets. My teeth feel like they’re jamming into my mouth and the pressure in my eyeballs will burst them at any moment. My mind flashes back to my dorm room, my lumpy bed, the toilet I share with the rest of the hallway. It flashes to Reginald’s front door, and then back to my dorm room, my front door, and then my lumpy bed again. I see coordinates in my mind’s eye. A sequence of numbers. 34.0024 118.2851 298. It looks like latitude and longitude, but the last three numbers don’t jive with that. Then everything flashes back to Reginald’s, and I see the door burst open, and men in black uniforms barge in with pistols aimed at the professor and at me, firing, firing, firing.

Bullets fly toward me. Ten, fifteen, twenty bullets all approach my head, my heart, and the rest of my body. Another five head toward Reginald’s professor. Ten of them hit me and shake me, but the bullets are nothing compared to the heat the gray box had just burned into me. Radu Dmitriu is hit by the bullets and starts to collapse. I see him fall in slow motion as the pain turns to warmth and I know it’s almost over. I know I’m at the end.

“I’m sorry, Reg,” I say, just before I black out.