The Awakening

Two Years Ago “Open up!” “Don't leave me!” The child whimpered. Her hands clutched me with a death-like grip on my bloodstained clothes, panic seizing the girl's crackling voice. For some reason I did not recognize the frightened child I held in my arms. The kidnappers had brutally beaten Raven beyond recognition; the reasoning behind it at that moment was insignificant. Our imminent escape was the immediate concern. I glanced over my shoulder at the closed door. I jammed discarded, heavy objects in front of it before hearing sounds of shouting, and guns shooting at it from behind. The metal door dented inward from the spray of bullets from our enemy. I turned back to the child. I felt the pain of my labored breath piercing against my bruised sides. The terrorist fought viciously when I entered their secret room moments before. They broke a few of my ribs as I killed a person or two with my bare hands to retrieve Raven from them. Protecting the girl was my one job, the kidnapping one of my many faults. I was getting the girl back to her home, one way or another. My smile down at her was unsure as we searched for a place to hide. Our bodies trembled with fear. They were many and I was one, and no one in my team knew of our location. I held the child tighter in my arms as my mind began to race with panicked thoughts. She was the girl I had been sworn to protect after her grandfather's second inauguration as President of the United States, and a child I had come to love as my own for the last few years. My attention turned back from the past, as her legs and tiny arms entwined around my bruised and broken body, her bony chin penetrating into my right shoulder. The pain would keep me alert. “I'm not leaving you. Don't look, baby.” I breathed the words out loud, pressing her shaking body against mine. The shouts from the halls became brassier after my soft words to her. I could hear their boots advancing closer to the blocked door that separated us from them. I pivoted around to focus on it, backing deeper into the shadows of the warehouse room, anticipating the worse outcome I never expected and feared to come. I realized at that moment there was no way out. “Open up!” The familiar voice from behind the door demanded; my hunter's fist battered into the steel door. The child cried out against my shoulder with each thunderous sound made on the other side, clutching my shirt tighter with her hands. The door soon became pressed with force, heaved against, and finally ripped apart from its hinges. “They're going to kill us, aren't they?” She looked up with her swollen face into mine, her lips then pressed against my ear. “They're going to kill us…” My eyes drifted away from her tearful eyes. I hugged my body against the filth that plastered the walls and ignored her words, watching the door as we sank deeper into the shadows of our prison. “Cover your ears, baby, it's going to get very loud in here.” I whispered again, removing my gun from its shoulder holster and pointing it at the door. I readied to fire it when the door would open from the beating it was taking. The door resonated as it fell in, slamming against the debris blocking it from the inside. I would take them all to hell with me. I pulled the trigger and began shooting. Present Day They abandoned me in hell. Forgotten in the sanatorium was not the deal I made with the government officials, my employers. They promised the visit was only a matter of a couple of weeks, testing my unique abilities, so they said, so they promised. Now, I was nearing three months locked away with the loonies I endured day and night. I had yet to see the man that placed me here, and the new group in charge conveniently forgot why I arrived in the first place. That was just my luck. Doctor Flannigan's smoker's cough awakened me from my thoughts. He waited on my response to his preceding question; the one I dreaded answering…again. The young man before me was beginning to irritate and grate on my frayed nerves with his repetitiveness; the identical interrogation questions other doctors bombarded me with the previous months. “Well, do you believe?” “Do I believe in the existence of ghosts?” I snorted at my own words. “If you asked me two years ago, I would have laughed in your face and said you were the one that is crazy.” “And now, how do you believe?” “Now, my beliefs have changed.” The doctor stole a glance up from the medical report, directing a suspicious glare my way. “Ms. Warren, it says here in your file that you started hallucinating almost two years ago?” “Yes, that is what the last doctor said.” “You were a scientist working for the government. Now you see demons and ghosts?” I adjusted the state hospital bathrobe to cover my bare knees, and began fidgeting with the hospital identification band around my wrist. It felt awkward and restrictive around my flesh. I looked up and waited before answering. “You would not believe what I have seen.” Dr. Flannigan folded his hands on top of my file and smirked. “From my point of view, severe psychological trauma can betray someone into believing a fabrication of masked lies. Hallucinations are a coping mechanism of the subconscious when reality is too painful.” “Everyone's reality can be painful, Dr. Flannigan.” The doctor cleared his throat and reopened the packed file, turning several pages back before speaking. “It says here that—well, this is interesting.” He looked up with an unexpected expression. “Isn't it always interesting?” He cleared his throat again. “They pronounced you dead, and you revived on your own, and you came to in the morgue? That has to be a mistake,” he flipped through the massive data with determination; a concentrated, deep groove wedged across his forehead. “You're right, that is a mistake.” He looked up and smiled at my statement. “Twice that night I died. You see, that is when it all started; the hallucinations, the nightmares and everything else. I blamed it all on psychosis at first. Then, it all started going to hell when I woke up from the dead in the hospital.” Dr. Flannigan seemed amused without looking up at me, and continued his quick review of my records. “Admitting these episodes were hallucinations is the first steps to—“ I interrupted. “I'm not hallucinating and I'm not insane. They are real; the dead walk among us.” The doctor mumbled under his breath in anger, pitching his hands upward and lapsing back into his chair. “Ms. Warren, are you saying you had a near-death experience?” “No, Dr. Flannigan, it is not an experience; it is reality.” He smirked once more and jotted notes down on an adjacent writing tablet next to my file. “Okay, I'll bite.” I glared at the condescending attitude of the young man after he spoke. “You won't like me when I'm mad, Doctor. If my husband was alive you could ask him about my…talents, and what I do to those that get on my bad side.” The doctor glanced at me after my threat, smiled halfheartedly, and then turned on the video camera with a small remote. “The DOD insists resolving this matter as soon as possible, and for you to reach a successful recovery. It's apparent you are too valuable to the government to be locked away forever.” His statement triggered me to pause in my fidgeting state. “That's very considerate of them; especially since I worked for the CIA, not the Department of Defense.” I glanced over my shoulder, inspecting the video camera before I began to speak, and then twisted my attention back to the doctor. I began to wonder who would see the recording, and why I suddenly became valuable after three months of denying my existence in my new hell.