34 Rounds [Part 3]

Posted: Monday, 30 May 2011 by Unknown in Labels: , , , , , , , ,
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So this is it, the final part to 34 Rounds, a story that I would have never ever written if it wasn't for way too many video game hours, a few books, and some cheap action films. Enjoy!
Some parts are shamelessly ripped of stuff I've played/ seen/ read. You get a dollar if you can find the references. I'm being serious. I will give you a dollar if you find which source has inspired which part of my story. Have fun with that.
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34 Rounds

-part 3-


            We step inside the narrow elevator as the doors rattle their way open. It feels like a shower cabinet. My companion punches a few buttons and the doors slide to a close. A thump stirs the elevator into motion and we’re slowly ascending. I still have no idea how I got here or where I was last. These corridors, the guards, this man, it makes no sense. 

           I strain myself to remember something, anything. A tingling sensation at the back of my skull suddenly shoots down my spine. I suddenly realize I remember my name, “My name is …”
            “Shut up. This isn’t over yet!” my companion grumbles touching his swollen face.
            “Common man, we’re more than capable of slipping out of here.”
            “Hmmm!” he grunts in what would usually be taken as silent approval, only once more I have that same eery feeling that he knows just a little more than I do. I relax and lean against the elevator wall and cross my arms with a smile. His face is a mess, but he looks quite focused. In fact I don’t recall this guy not wearing a frown. 

            “So do you remember anything at all?”
            He took a moment, then said “The man who you said gave you orders; he addressed me as soldier when I woke up in my cell. Nothing new, could have figured that one by myself.” He lit a cigarette.
            “Those guards before … how did they catch you?”
            “ Off guard. Listen, do you have a point?” he looked at me with his good eye, the frown still on his face.
            “No, just asking. How’s your wound?”
            “Better …” the elevator jerks to a halt. And unsurprisingly we’re in another concrete corridor. A short way ahead a metallic door is rattling in the wind. That must be the way out.

            I step outside and it’s cold. The chill bites into my skin like a battle axe and I feel my fingers slowly going numb. Five minutes in this weather and you get a nose bleed, two hours and you fall down from exhaustion and get ready for the warm comfortable slumber of hypothermia. Nothing burns like the cold.

            The wind and snow make it impossible to properly discern anything. There are three barely visible walls some way away, tall and white. A few crates and a massive truck are half buried in the snow. No visible tracks. Everything else melts in the white noise around. One thing is quite clear, there are no guards. Home free!

[SFX: a soft machine gun rattle of helicopter blades]

            “Well done soldier. Your progress has been satisfactory,” the same voice from the cell is yelling in the wind through a megaphone. “Your final task is to eliminate the infiltrator, the man beside you.”  The voice dies out and the only thing left is the silhouette of the UH-60 Blackhawk floating in the storm. 

            I look at my companion. Beneath the frown his eye is examining me unblinkingly. “A soldier follows orders!” I tell myself as my hand flies to my holstered gun and knife. Before I can reach anything he grabs my hand again. Same technique; elegant and quick as lightning I can barely feel myself flying off my feet down to the icy ground. Only this time he won’t hesitate to kill me. 

            It’s simple, this type of fight. A soldier follows orders. Your loyalties lie with the commanding officer, and there is no room for friends you make along the way. And with the realization that your face is going to be leveled to the ground by an incoming boot you don’t really have time to argue about it anyway. 

            Time can slow down if you want it to. It takes practice but some professionals manage it. All noise gets muted, your vision gets fixed to the nearest threat, the cold goes to a boil in your nostrils as you prepare to act, and for a split second you’re as stiff as a lightning rod. All you feel is the most exquisite sense of flow and focus: combat high.

            I catch the flying boot with my arms. It weighs a ton, but I manage to twist and kick my opponent off balance. I roll backwards and upholster my weapons. For a split second I wait and see the eye patch fixing my gun. I fire a series of shots but they hit air as the man leaps from side to side like a leopard. 

He pulls out his weapon. A well placed shot and his gun goes flying into the white storm. He looks taken back by my shot. I squeeze the trigger again. Then comes the ominous click of an empty magazine. Out of bullets! Before I reach for a new clip the eye patch is racing closer and closer.

            I ready my knife. The blade cuts the wind with a deaf shrill of sharpness. Whatever I do or however quick and deadly I slash this man dodges my blows like he’s not made of flesh and bone. For a second I hesitate in my next move. It’s enough for him to catch my arm. “Not bad boy,” he smirks and burns me with his one-eyed stare but what he has in technique and finesse he lacks in brute strength. So I smash my forehead into his face aiming for his eye. He grunts as I apply a knee to his stomach. 

            He seems to go down. NO! the snake only takes me for a fool as he reverts to his full height, grabs my arm and vaults me over his shoulder. In the instant it takes him to disarm my knife hand I make another roll and run as fast as possible to the half buried truck.

            I look back. He’s vanished like a ghost. I feel the empty magazine slide in my palm as I fit the last seventeen bullet magazine in my gun. I shove the empty clip in my belt and lean out of the cover of the truck to look for my adversary. Nothing there but the cold snow and the impenetrable white wind.

[SFX: a muffed out sound, like a stone falling on ice and snow]

“GRENADE!” I vault out of cover as the safety of the truck goes flying into a thousand pieces of shrapnel. I know his eye is on me. The next thing may be my death. But before I can decide where to move a rush of footsteps charged me from behind. I turn and I see him running. “So much for your element of surprise” I say to myself squeezing four rounds and seeing him dodge behind snow covered crates. I put a few more bullets in the crates and make for the far off point of the perimeter hoping he’ll lop another grenade and give away his position, and then he’ll be dead.

            I run toward the far end corner but as I’m fording through the thick snow I feel a stinging pain in my lower calf. The hurt is the instantaneous. No blinding pain, no shock over the stumbling of my feet, only the clear cut realization that the knife I lost only a few moments ago is properly lodged in my leg.

            I crouch down and shoot a few bullets in the direction the knife came from then I feel the wound. The knife is in deep but the bone is untouched. Before I can pull the blade out another rattle of footsteps catches my ear. I point my gun and fire aimlessly. “I’m losing focus.” 

            All of a sudden I see my adversary rushing toward me like a crazed buffalo. “I know what you want. That’s it; common you bastard!” I intentionally fire off the last of my bullets and hear the finish-line click of an empty magazine. That’s it for my thirty four rounds. Now it’s going to be hand to hand. The eye patch was now coming closer and closer at a steady pace. A sliver of red on his right shoulder, “So you do bleed motherfucker!”

            I stand my ground and get ready for an attack. I grip the knife in my leg. Three meters, I feel the blood coursing out of me; two meters, a few more moments and I’ll put the knife out and shove it right in his abdomen; one meter, I thrust the bloody blade out of my leg and make for my enemy. Weary, wounded, and cold he still manages to block my attack. I thrash and slash but where one moment there’s an opening I feel the hard edge of a blocking elbow, and where I sense a weakness there’s only a strong and proportionally disappointing counter blow. 

            I stop, and he stops. Steaming we stare at each other. He says nothing but stares from under his frown, his eye patch still fixed to his face. I thrust my gun away. It’s useless now. The only remaining weapon, my knife. I can feel its weight in my hand. Will it do any good or will I be stabbed with it in the next thirty seconds? I take a moment. My opponent is stronger, and better trained than I am. I’ve been attacking him like a child attempts to tackle a lion.

            “This is my last chance.” I start at the man; knife in my left hand. He grabs my hand and tries to twist. He’s weakened. I no longer fly of my feet only to realize that I’ve been bested. Instead, the knife seamlessly slips into his reach in a meticulous sleight of hand. It’s then that I feel the cold bite of metal in my chest like a jagged splinter, just inches from my heart. “It’s over” he whispers with a sigh of near regret. And just as he’s about to twist the blade I reach to my belt, grab the empty bullet magazine and shove it deep into his eye socket crushing his temple.

            I hear a beastly scream as he loosens his grip on the blade. Hopeless and blind he dangles back and forth like a sock puppet, a steam of bloody tears flowing from the fresh wound. “Now we’re even.” 

            All around me flies back into proportion like the curtains just dropped behind me. It’s so cold. The helicopter’s blades cut the chilly air in a rhythmic cacophony. It feels like it’s been hours since I’ve heard it. The screams of pain die out as the man retreats farther and farther away, stumbling aimlessly in the snow. I reach to my wound. Hot streams of blood are flowing out in torrents. Nothing can be done about it, I’ll soon be dead. Now it’s just a matter of time.

            Soon after, I collapse on the cold ground. The helicopter flies away. “So much for extraction” I tell myself. The snow is biting at my face as I fall powerless to the ground. My eyes slowly close and a deep slumber comes over me. Nothing burns like the cold.

-          Debriefing   -

My name is Mathew. And I’m dead. I died of a stab wound (well, several) in a large court in the middle of a snow storm. I felt the life run out of my body as I closed my eyes. So … how is it that I still live?
“First sergeant Mathew, weak up!” the colonel’s voice echoed in the large room.

As I opened my eyes I found myself strapped to a table. But I remembered everything now. The experiment, the training, the drugs … John!

“How’s John?” I looked around the room and suddenly remembered the backbreaking bed I was seated on a few hours ago.
“He’s smoking in the lobby. Apparently you cost him and some of the staff, and me, quite a sum of money.”
“What do you mean?” I asked confused.
“Bets, but that’s off the record …” he explained looking for a man in a white coat. “Doctor, are the drugs still affecting him.”
“No sir, but it’s usual for a test subject to be disorientated after …”
“Alright, alright! Get him unstrapped we need to debrief.” the colonel dismissed the man in the white coat.

            I ran my hand to my chest. The wound was gone. And so was the one in my leg. It was all just a dream; a very real and quite painful dream. The man in the white lab coat unattached a few wires from my head and unlaced my arms and legs.

            “Ok soldier, on your feet and follow me!” I stood up. No hazy feeling of pretend balance, no headaches or sores, it was like I just woke up from a long dream.

We stepped into a large lobby. Many men in white coats started clapping frantically, some cheering, some just smiling. “They must be the ones who won the bet …” I tell myself. Among them was a man with an eye patch on his face: John. He took a few steps toward me; the same frown was on his face. “A bullet clip?” he asked as he started laughing and patting me friendly on the back. “Common, this wasn’t as bad as last time. Let’s go.”

            We arrived in a large well lit room. A podium was placed on the far side and the rest was all chairs and a few disgruntled looking military officials. I and John were asked to sit close to the front. “This always makes me feel like a lab rat.” John whispered leaning over to me.

            The colonel took the stand, saluted the men in the room. “The twenty third trial of the Epsilon experiment has just been concluded. We received two well trained voluntaries for this session: First Sergeant Mathew MacAlister, and Major John Crams. The experiment is a form of exercise. We sedate the subjects, link them up to the monitoring apparatus in the laboratory and chemically induce a state of controlled amnesia. A very vivid dream, that’s the best description for what the subjects experience.

            “The general task of the subjects is to escape a predesigned maze and then fight each other. We’ve varied the experiments, as you’ll see in the full report, but the general goal is to gauge the effectiveness of training within the altered state, and assess the soldiers understanding of a given command. Sixty five percent of subjects have become unstable during the process so the experiment had to be terminated. Twenty five percent exhibited psychotic behavior. Our team of scientists is trying to see if there’s a causal link between psychotic behavior and the administered drugs. Lastly, the remaining ten percent complete the course at a satisfactory level.
            “So far we’ve realized that some subjects like MacAlister and Crams almost realize the false reality. However, we keep that risk under control by inserting virtual guards, and life like scenarios. We’ll get an architect for level design in future …“ That’s where I stopped listening. It was mostly the same story I’ve known form the beginning of the project.

            The experiments we’re working well and they were using John and me between fairly large intervals of time so we wouldn’t develop any mental imbalances. There was an explanation for that one two, but I reconsidered and stopped caring. At least it paid well.

            It’s very strange, to be very certain of something one moment and then to be able to doubt and even reconstruct it in the next. During the past months I’ve felt more and more certain that this experiment was indeed messing with my mind. I didn’t have violent dreams, or sudden outbursts of uncontrolled rage. No. That was for the unlucky twenty-five-and-growing percent of subjects. What I did feel was hollow. A growing hunger.

            When the order to “eliminate the infiltrator” finally came they would be testing your loyalty to the chain of command, your honoring of the military service. I checked the reports on my previous performance on the same test. I always, always flinched or hesitated in some way, until a few sessions ago. I asked a lab staff member, he confirmed by showing a few graphs that supposed to be changes in brainwaves.

            You did hone your skills and all felt as real as it could. But it was unnerving to remember how you decapitated your friend with a vent grill, only to laugh about it over a beer. That uncanny feeling was digging deep inside my head and I was only now starting to question if my sanity was hanging in the balance.

            They say that only two types of people don’t hesitate when they have a gun pointed at them: professional killers and psychopaths. I wonder if anyone could really tell the difference.
           
 The End

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