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Lock and Key

Color. That’s all he could see, a vast washing of color, a sea of purples, greens, blood reds, pitch blacks, glowing blues. It held his rapt attention; he could see nothing else.

After staring at the pretty colors for a few minutes, he began to wonder exactly what it was. It was beautiful and all, but what was it exactly? He could think of no examples, for it was a kind of stunning that was all its own. It gave him a wonderful warm feeling...

Slowly, he began to gain his sense of hearing back. He could only hear a soft buzz, with dull clicks in the background. Then, the buzz began to rise into a crescendo, a choir of angelic voices singing to their own tune. The colors washed along with the voices, quickening to a restless sea with the occasional low note, and moving with a soothing flow with the higher notes. It was mostly high notes that the choir sung, soothing the poor old man, and drawing his attention away. It had a beautiful rhythm, a rhyme that he had not heard matched with the greatest of composers. He had never been able to put his finger exactly on what was so beautiful about it...

But then it all came crashing to a halt. The choir turned into shrieks, and the sea turning into a frantic and hard rush of color, painful to watch and painful to listen to. Pain. His sense of feeling had returned. He wanted to clamp his eyes shut, put his hands over his ears, and scream for it to stop because it hurt so much. But he could not do that. His eyes were already shut, and he could not move his arms.

It went on for several minutes. The pain caused to his eyes and ears shifted to his head, and worsened. The color and sound began to fade. His senses of taste and smell began to return; the revolting taste of vomit tinged his mouth, and the smell of decaying cloth and linens flowed into his lungs.

The fading of the sea of colors didn’t leave him able to see a centimeter in front of his face, and the fading of the choir only granted him with the same dull clicks he had heard earlier. He could feel, though. He felt his arms, his legs, and a cushioned wall to his back. He sat up against it, and stared out into nothingness. The dark too began to fade, into a white blur that filled his field of vision, save a gray, squarish object left of center. The blur hurt, too. It was bright enough to sting his eyes. He clamped them shut again, and waited a few seconds before looking again. In those seconds, he began to think about facts...

‘Name, Greyson Black. Occupation, full-time mercenary, part-time random task agent. Age...

His memory had not been wiped. That was good. He would check to see if the sky was blue, for that was often an indication that wherever he was could be remotely hospitable, but he assumed he could not see the sky in the little room he was in. That which he gazed at began to focus. It was a set of unkempt padded walls, reeking of mildew, and a single steel door.

‘Padded walls...?’

He looked down. He was bound in a straightjacket.

Greyson was in an asylum.

‘Just wonderful. Wonder what they put me in for...

Then it came back to him. He had been spit up by that blasted hole in reality that opened up every so often, and it had dropped him into an alley, drugged off his rocker. Someone must’ve seem him stumbling around the streets, rattling on about ‘them’ and ‘it,’ and taken him to the asylum, with no place better to take him. He remembered what had happened just before he was swallowed up by the first one, before the second one spit him up into the alley. He had been taking a stroll down the street, intent on going to a local pub to meet up with an old accomplice of his. Then the hole in reality opened up...

‘Of all the bloody places, I’m bound under lock and key, and assumed insane. Might as well make an attempt to get out, as soon as this headache goes away.

And so he waited. Within about a half-hour, he could stand up without risk of collapsing. He waited longer, until all signs of shakiness and lightheadedness that came with whatever drug ‘they’ gave him wore off. He found it unusual that he hadn’t gotten used to that yet, as he had grown accustomed to waking up in strange places. He also found it strange that those who put him in the jacket had left him with every article of clothing he had come in with, expensive shoes and gloves and all...

***

It was 1:37 in the afternoon when the new patient in Observation Cell 26 in the North Wing went berserk.

According to what was reported, he was some old man in an expensive business suit and leather gloves, found wandering around some backstreets in Lowtown and yammering on something about ‘it.’ He also had some strange harness under his right sleeve, which looked like it could hold a gun or other piece of weaponry. Before locking him up for further observation, some blood was taken, and a telepath had given him a mind scan. All the telepath could see was an image of falling down some kind of tunnel. She also reported some background noises, but had not been able to get far into the patient’s mind. That was quite remarkable, considering most lunatics were very easy to scan, though not many people actually wanted to try it.

Rudolph MacMillan was one of the attendants at the North Wing. He had a strong build, brown eyes, blond hair, and was often described as being a man of few words. He had been ordered to go to this patient’s cell, and watch him for his entire shift. He hadn’t expected much, all he really heard was some soft groaning. That didn’t amount to much, so it had been an easy day asofar. It would’ve been a long day had he not brought along a few books...

But then the old man went nuts. Started screaming, throwing himself at walls, kicking the door, the whole works.

‘Oh God, it’s still too early to deal with this crap...

He opened up the desk drawer, and took out a syringe and a bottle of a strong sedative. Following standard procedure, he filled the syringe with some 50 milligrams, gave it a flick for good luck, unlocked the cell, stepped inside, and locked in behind him.

It had not occurred to Rudolph that he should’ve kept in unlocked in case he needed to get away quickly.

The patient had ignored him upon entering, but as soon as the attendant put the keys back into his pocket, he turned his full attention to the new occupant. The patient saw Rudolph hold the syringe up, and then proceeded to kick it out of his hand.

With a few more kicks, the patient had put Rudolph into a corner, with one foot pressed against his throat. Rudolph’s day had just gone very sour. And if that weren’t enough, the patient began to speak in a perfectly rational tone of voice, complete with a light British accent...

“Unstrap this jacket.”

“...What?” Rudolph blew the blood coming out of his nose away from his mouth.

“Take this monstrosity off. I’m afraid it’s not very comfortable. To be honest, this entire place does not suit my fancy. I would very much like to get out of your hair, and leave.”

Rudolph considered it for a few seconds. The old man sounded perfectly sane, and he was in a position to snap his neck...

“Uh-kay. Jus’ leggo...”

Greyson obliged, and Rudolph began to unfasten the arm straps. While doing so, he frantically searched the floor for the syringe. Greyson felt the straps loosen up, and gave a good yank. The belt gave way, giving him enough room to wriggle out. While he began to bring it over his head, Rudolph scooped up the syringe again, and move to finally subdue the patient...

Greyson, with the straightjacket almost over his head, raised up his left leg, and firmly kicked him in the stomach, knocking him to the floor. Not wasting any time that would allow Rudolph to give it another shot, he discarded the straightjacket, swept over to his quickly-recovering form, snatched away the syringe, and jammed it into his thigh. Rudolph let out one final groan of defeat before falling unconscious.

Assuming he had little time to waste, he relieved Rudolph of his keys, and proceeded to leave the cell, making sure to lock the door behind him.

There was not much on the other side of the door, just a room as large as the cell itself, walls painted a drab white, with a basic steel desk facing the exit. On the desk were a set of pin-on ID cards and a few papers, looking to be a case file. He grabbed it, and began to read through it.

They knew not of his identity. His blood sample had been run through an identification system, and the results had come up negative. The sample was said to have contained some degrading compound, presumably a drug of some sort, the likes of which the local medical expert had never seen. It also told that he had a near-impossible-to-remove harness strapped to his right arm, looking like it held a weapon...

Greyson frowned. Someone had stolen his revolver. He scanned the report some more. It said nothing of any further weapons.

‘That’s even bloody worse. I must’ve caught someone idiot thief’s attention when I arrived...

That meant his shotgun and his cross-knife were gone along with the six-shooter. Just grand.

He had no money, no weapons, and the only way he was getting ‘home’ was if his main employers realized what happened, and went to track the wormhole he had fallen through. Greyson dropped the case file back on the desk and picked up the ID cards, quickly looking for the one that said ‘Sane.’ After a few second of fiddling around with it to remove all but the sane card, he adjusted his gloves, and left the observation cell with the impression that his time here was not going to be pleasant at all...



Written by Ren
Start - 01/15/2001
End - In under two hours.

This one took place directly before Greyson’s first FPL run, where he was smashed within two rounds, and not even given the liberty of a third loss. Sad, sad, sad...
 

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