the ghost of hl2rp past
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- Feb 11, 2022
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- #1
An ambient light wedges itself unto my dark and cushioned capsule as the large door slowly opens outward. The color of the invasive light- that hushed, winter's breath blue against the alien walls of the prison's corridor flushes my eyes with a blur. As they adjust to the sudden exposure to outside light, I can see three pairs of boots. Two guardsmen at the door and one pair of dress shoes with slacks encroach further into my territory. I am acutely familiar with this scene, this song and dance.
The man tuts and clicks his lips several times as he nears me, lowering himself in such a way that his labcoat eclipses what little light bleeds into the room.
"The guards tell me you are growing more reluctant to cooperate with each passing week," he says, reaching out to slowly raise my chin with his index finger. Inconsistent meals and little sleep has left me deprived of the energy to contest him. "They tell me you're not taking your medicine. Can you tell me why you're not taking your medicine, Mr. Glass?"
I can once again see the circular shape of his glasses, and from his glasses comes the reflection of a face that has not shaved in many months; an untamed beard hanging off my chin. The bags under my eyes have turned nearly black.
"Can you tell me why you're not taking your medicine?" he parrots, head tilting slightly to the side, and from that momentary exposure of the doorway, I see one of the monocular red eyes of the guardsmen lean inwards out of curiosity. "This is for your health, Linwood. You will not survive the procedure without it. Your mind must be groomed."
All that moves is my eyes, for it is the only thing I can move with little effort; my poor physical health chaining me to the floor. I can make out the disgust on my face against his spectacles, and he frowns in response. He takes off his glasses sets them on the cushioned floor of the cell, leaning himself closer to me. I avert my eyes from him.
"Are you familiar with the Hunter? Those little tripods responsible for bringing you back into our bossom?" He lightly taps my cheek with two fingers to reassert my attention back on him. "They're very smart, you know. They think as quickly as any man, mundane or transhuman. I've even heard it rumored that they have a sense of humor beyond our understanding. Do you know why?"
I don't entertain him with an answer. This lack of interaction does not cease his monologue.
"We as a species have created a harmonious union with Our Benefactors. While our strides have been overall far lesser than that of the collective Combine, we do our part to give our piece of the puzzle to the grand design. Transhumans, the 'Striders' and the other synthetic war machines that we all became very acquainted with all those years ago in that seven-hour window of confusion, they are all by-products of species becoming a part of this greater whole."
He raises a finger at me, wagging it in front of my face a few times. My eyes drill holes in his face and imagine smashing the biggest stone I can wrap my bloodied fingernails around through his bald spot as he continues to speak.
"But the Hunters, oh they are a much different beast. They were not assimilated, see, they were made. Via the combined intelligences of Our Benefactors, and our added terrestrial know-how, was born a ferocious thing made from hand-selected genes and traits of all manner of lifeforms. Some of them were even from our world, in fact."
He then gestures outwards with his hands as if cupping water from a pond, emphasizing his words as he spoke.
"For the first time in I suspect a million years has the Combine created something rather than invite it unto itself. Together, with the aid of our Benefactors, we created the most efficient apex predator that this cosmos-lost speck of dirt has ever seen, but most importantly: We created life! Our society has long defined such forces as divine, and it is no different when speaking beyond those archaic superstitions.
"But this enlightenment before us is twofold: It is the believers and worshippers that give a god its power, the ability to move mountains and make life from clay." He continues as he leans intimately closer, speaking his words down into my ear. "Our union with these Benefactors will ensure our star in the night's sky, but it is up to us to brighten that star. Humanity cannot shed its mortality if it does not believe its own destiny. We have added the final solution to the puzzle that has made them gods, and in return they have offered to elevate us with them. Humanity's existence is not counter to the Combine's design. Humanity compleats them."
"They have shown us firsthand our seat on Olympus, Linwood. And you continue to reject this, not for yourself, but for the rest of the species. Your defiance is selfish."
He pulls himself away from my ear, reaching for and procuring the plastic cup of pills that I had chosen not to take. He rattles the cup slightly to catch my attention from drifting away into the soft white walls.
"The key to our salvation is not in your mind, but the path to that key is. You have chosen to not relinquish this information willingly, so it is by your own design that you have placed yourself in this cell. But more worryingly, you have not made the preparation process for this procedure in any way easy for yourself by refusing to prepare your mind."
He knows better than to wait for my response by now, following himself up near immediately.
"Do you think that you will die in this cell, Linwood? That your misery will simply end? Is that your half-baked plan for suicide? Because let me assure you of this: You will not die, and without these tranquilizers, the procedure will not be painless."
"You will live, but you will never be the same again." He stops, waiting to see if I react beyond my eternal stare into his greyed eyes. "Do you understand that the mere offering of a sedative is a generosity afforded by your previous position? The council insisted that you were offered this mercy and you have done nothing but squander their good intentions."
He places the transparent, plastic cup before me once more, insistently. My eyes slowly trail down his form and stare into the opaque white pills sitting at the bottom. It takes me seconds to form my decision, and it comes out by means of spitting into the cup.
He exhausts a terrible sigh, knowing that I could not be waivered into submitting to the willing corruption of my mind, nor the surrender of my secret. He picks up the cup- the saliva foaming around the pills, and he rises above me until I only see his shoes and slacks once again.
"With or without you, we will carve out a new America, Mr. Glass." He sharply turns and his labcoat swiftly washes over a gust of wind into my face, sending chills through me in an already uncomfortably cold room.
Beyond earshot, I can make out the doctor exchanging a word to an unseen individual, and a fourth pair of boots march through the door. I look up and make out an unfamiliar mask on an unfamiliar uniform, entirely white and devoid of marking, not unlike the tomb that I have come to die in.
An iron grip wraps itself around my throat, and while I instinctually wrap my fingers around his hand to pry for air as I am lifted off the ground, I prepare for more brutality against my already brutalized and frail person. While it was in fact brutality that I was going to receive, it was not in any way like I had imagined.
The figure removes his mask, and a pale face stares back at me with missing eye-sockets. His lips were white and chaffed like limestone, and his skin was discolored and veined like rivers of tar running through a salt flat.
He slowly reaches into one of his eye sockets and I promptly avert my eyes at the morbid performance. When I look back, he is holding what appears to be a cord with two syringe tips at the end. He flicks the cap off and unwinds the cord, hand still pressed against my throat immovably. The lack of air begins to blur my vision, and I soon begin to feel a painful sting crawling up my nose.
It doesn't take long for that sting to suddenly transfer into overwhelmingly agonizing pain riveting through my entire body, like a headache felt across your skin. My thoughts and memories suddenly became slogged and vague as I tried to form a coherent thought through the pain, but I was re-remembering things long since past.
Someone is inside my head, I scream. He is inside my head. He is going to ransack my mind until he finds what they want.
It is impossible to accurately postulate the feeling of intense torture that he was inflicting upon my brain, like he was wringing my grey matter out like a dishcloth over a sink, watching it drip slowly until the cloth was completely dry. I am being held in place, but it is like I am being thrown around the room.
There is a sudden quietude that overcomes my mind amidst the ongoing quaking pain that reverberates through my skull. The last thing I remember as he unplugs himself from my mind is my lifeless fall onto the cushioned cell floor, comatose from the pillaging that he had committed indiscriminately through my thoughts. Though unconscious, the pain endured in my head like a writhing parasite, gnawing around my skull as I slept. There was no enduring it, there was no biting down on a rag. It was feeling a cadaver's knife in the one place you thought that they could never touch.
It is a silent pain that I now live with for the rest of my days.