Elite (14 page)

He saw two figures standing over him, one male and one female. They seemed to be talking about him. Their gaze was focused on something to his left. Whatever it was they were watching it very intently. Then, the female turned her attention to Daniel, looking him right in the eye. She then spoke in a voice containing a far greater level of excitement than she had just a few seconds earlier, and quickly turned and ran off to Daniels left. The male figure turned to look quickly at Daniel as if to confirm what the woman had said before walking off in the direction of whatever they had been staring at just moments before.

Daniel let his head roll over onto his left cheek. He was unable to discern what was going on around him, and was also unable to care. His brain was still awakening from what felt like a very long slumber.

To the left of him Daniel saw a man sitting in a chair along the far wall. The man wore grey slacks with suspenders, and a white collared shirt. Surprisingly, the man’s name came to Daniel’s mind immediately.
Mister Blank.

Blank just stared back at Daniel, hunched over in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees.

“Welcome back, Danny Boy,” he said.

Daniel turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Suddenly the world began to spin around him as his mind slowly regained awareness. He remembered his last night with Jordan, and the deal he had made with Richfield shortly after. He remembered going through all of the prep for surgery, and that moment of regret just before going under.

I guess it’s too late for that now,
he thought to himself.

             
Just then he heard more people walk into the room. He turned his head and saw Richfield and Horchoff approaching his bed. When they reached the bed they both leaned over him. Horchoff immediately began shining lights in Daniel’s eyes, while Richfield looked on intently. Daniel followed Horchoff’s movements while he examined him.

             
“Well, he is definitely cogniscant,” Horchoff finally said.

             
Richfield smiled at the good news and continued to stare at Daniel.

             
“How you feeling kid?” He asked.

Daniel tried to answer, but immediately realized that he could not speak. He tried to move his arm, but he couldn’t do that either. That
was when he realized that he couldn’t
feel
anything. He couldn’t feel his arms or his legs – he couldn’t even feel his tongue or his lips. The spinning began to intensify. The more he tried to think, the more he tried to do, the worse it got. It felt as though he had drank an entire barrel of whiskey but had somehow failed to die from it.

He closed his eyes a moment to try and cope with the misery, then opened them again, staring hopelessly back at Richfield.

“What’s wrong with him Doctor?” Richfield demanded. “He’s in there like you said, I can see it, but why can’t he respond?”

Horchoff
had moved to Daniel’s right, and Daniel turned his head to follow him. He now saw what the two figures had been looking at earlier. There were a series of monitors that were monitoring Daniel’s current condition.

“His brain must still be adjusting,” the doctor concluded.

“So it’s temporary?” Richfield asked, seeking clarification.

“That would be my assumption, yes.”
Horchoff replied.

“I’m going to need a whole lot better than an assumption, Doc.” Richfield countered.

Horchoff continued examining the monitors, keying the keyboard that sat in front of one of them.

“His brain function is normal,” he said. “In fact, it’s above normal, which indicates to me that his brain is trying to determine how to function with the new neural pathways I’ve placed inside of it.”

“But he will adjust?” Richfield asked intensely.

“I would assume so,”
Horchoff responded with a vague sense of confidence.

“Again with the assumptions!”
Richfield responded, some anger now behind his voice.

Daniel maintained enough focus to gather what
Horchoff had just revealed to them, but while he should have been frightened by the situation, he was putting so much effort into coping with the overload happening inside his brain that he couldn’t manage any sort of emotion.

“Let me use an analogy,”
Horchoff began in an attempt to calm Richfield. “It’s like switching from a basic TV remote, to a remote for an entire home entertainment system. The controls to the TV remote are relatively few – You have your standard volume control, channel up and down, power button – things of that nature. Eventually you get so used to using that remote that you can control virtually any function of your television without even having to look down at the remote itself.

“Now imagine that you decide to upgrade to a full home entertainment system – TV, sound
sytem, BluRay player, DVR – the works. Now you decide consolidate the controls for all of this new equipment onto one remote. Now you have a new remote with exponentially more buttons on it, and it is going to take time for you to learn which buttons control which features. That is what Daniel’s brain is doing right now. Trying to determine which buttons now do what.”

Richfield had been watching Daniel the entire time
Horchoff had been talking. He now turned to look Horchoff in the eye.

“So he basically has to learn how to do everything all over again? Like an infant child?”

Richfield’s statement carried enough weight that it was able to break through and gain Daniels attention. That is not what he had signed up for. He thought he was going to be learning things in his training like how to leap a building in a single bound, not learning how to walk all over again. He wanted to strangle Horchoff for not warning him about this before the operation. If only he could move.

“No, I don’t think so. Not if my theory is correct,”
Horchoff countered. “You see, when you get that remote, what are the first things you look for?”

Horchoff
paused to look at the faces of each person in the room as if waiting for an answer. He even looked at Daniel, which only served to make Daniel even angrier.

“You look for those same basic controls you had on your first remote. How to turn the TV on and off, change the channel, control the volume – and before you know it, you’re able to control those basic functions again without having to look for them on the remote anymore. Then you go back and begin to learn what the other buttons do as you need them.

‘The old pathways in Daniel’s brain are still there. It can still function the way it used to, it just needs to put the pieces together and learn that it can ignore those new neurons for the time being. It will be in training that we go back and try to teach his brain what cool features those new buttons control. And the ones he uses most often, he will learn to control without effort. The others, he will still have to glance down and search for the right button, but the control for it will be there.”

After hearing the doctor’s theory Daniel closed his eyes and tried to put his mind at rest. He tried to remember how he had functioned before, as if trying to convince his brain to forget about the new additions for the time being and just go back to business as usual. The thing of it was
, his conscious mind had never understood exactly how his brain communicated with the rest of his body. He had simply decided that he wanted to move his arm and his brain took it from there. He knew this was something he was going to have to learn if he wanted to be able to control his “new features” in the future.

“So give him a little more time, and he should be back to normal. That’s what you’re saying?” Richfield asked in an attempt to sum up the doctors explanation.

“Theoretically,” Horchoff said almost defensively, clearly frightened at what Richfield’s response might be but unwilling to lie.

This caused Daniel to turn his head to stare at
Horchoff. He couldn’t really feel his eyebrows, but he was quite sure that his glare was an angry looking one.

Richfield clenched his fist and acted as though he were going to pound it on the bed, but refrained when he realized that doing so might have resulted in him hitting Daniel.

“You said that the worst thing that could happen was that nothing would change! Not that he could wind up as a conscious mind trapped in an unusable body! What kind of hell is that?!”

“I said
probably
the worst thing,” Horchoff countered, as though that made things any better.

Daniel took strange comfort in Richfield’s anger. Maybe he really did care for Daniel’s well-being. But at the same time he felt a similar rage building
upwithin himself. Richfield had hit the nail on the head. Living like this for the rest of his life would be exactly that – hell.

He had become so angry that his anger began to supersede the spinning sensation. He may not have been able to feel his body, but he could certainly feel his emotions. The fear and anger had become very intense, and he wanted to let
Horchoff know just how he felt. If he could only…

Suddenly, without warning, Daniel felt his back raise as he lifted his head an inch or so off the bed. He let out a loud, angry grunt, his mouth closed the entire time, maintaining the angry death-stare he directed at
Horchoff.

Taken aback by the sudden outburst, Richfield and
Horchoff stared down at Daniel, not knowing how to interpret the sudden change in behavior. Daniel looked back at the two of them, just as caught off guard by his own actions as they were.

Horchoff
finally broke the silence. “See,” he said, gesturing with his hand down at Daniel and looking up at Richfield, “his motor skills are already returning.”

Just then Daniel forgot about his anger, as the sensation of spinning began to intensify even further, this time accompanied by a great pain in his skull. He had never before experienced a migraine headache, but he believed that this would have ranked up there with the worst of them.

He closed his eyes and cringed at the pain and discomfort. He could feel water welling up in his eyes.

“He looks to be in a lot of pain, Doctor,” Richfield said, immediately noticing Daniel’s look of discomfort.

“I’d prefer not to give him any pain killers or sedatives while his brain is trying to rediscover how to connect with the muscles and nerves in his body. They would block the signals his brain is still trying to figure out how to send properly, and needless to say that could have very adverse effects on the recovery process,” the doctor explained.

Richfield looked down at Daniel, an empathetic expression on his face. He hated to see this kid that he had grown to admire suffer like this, but he understood why it was necessary.

As did Daniel. He regretted now more than ever his decision to get involved with Richfield and his mad scientist. He wanted nothing more than to be with his family right now, and to have Jordan there with him as well, if only as a friend. He had been selfish to demand more. He wanted her – his best friend – more than ever.

“Hang in their Danny Boy,” he heard a familiar voice say from beside him. Daniel looked over and noticed that Blank has his hand on Daniel’s arm, grasping it as if to let him know that he did in fact have a friend there in the room with him. Daniel had no idea how long Blank’s hand had been there, given that he couldn’t feel anything, but there was no way Blank could have known that.

Suddenly Daniel felt a twinge of comfort. He alone had to deal with the physical pain, but he genuinely believed now that he wouldn’t be the only one who suffered. For whatever reason, Blank genuinely cared about Daniel. He was a man who had learned long ago how to look down deep into someone’s soul, and there was something within Daniel that he found admirable. He wasn’t sure why, but Daniel had quickly grown to share that same admiration for Mr. Blank.

Daniel closed his eyes once more, took a deep breath, and tried to relax. He tried to distract himself from misery by thinking about what his life would be like once he got through this. Once he had finished his training, become the top agent at Elite, and had more money and ability than Gordon
Demérs could ever dream of.

He knew one thing for certain – he was never going to talk to strange men on the street ever again.

Chapter 8

Daniel woke just in time to see the nurse walking into the room with his breakfast. She carried the tray over and fastened it to the rail of the bed so that it sat in front of him.

“You know Jo, I’m gonna miss seeing your beautiful face bring me my breakfast every morning,” Daniel said to the nurse with a grin.

Joanna was the head nurse of the facility. She was an older woman, early sixties, and she had apparently known Richfield for quite a long time. She began her nursing career at a V.A. hospital when she was only twenty years old, and had been doing it ever since. Her exact connection to Richfield was unknown to Daniel.

“Well darling,” she spoke, “I wish I could tell you the same but I got a hundred more just like ya. I’ll hardly know the difference.”

Daniel chuckled. Joanna had a very dry sense of humor. So dry that at times Daniel wasn’t sure whether or not her words were intended as
humor, or if she was just a grouchy old hag. Either way, Daniel had grown quite fond of the woman.

Just as Jo was leaving the room, Blank made his own abrupt entrance. In his left arm he carried some folded clothes. He wore an expression that was part anxiousness and part excitement.

“You ready to break out of here today, Danny Boy?” Blank asked, setting the clothes on the bed at Daniel’s feet.

“You have no idea,” Daniel answered, as he spread some strawberry jam on his toast.

This was Daniel’s ninth day in the recovery ward on the facility’s medical level. He had apparently gone into a min-coma after the surgery, and it wasn’t until four days later that he had woken up unable to control his body functions. All part of the “adjustment process” according to Dr. Horchoff.

The next two days were hell. His brain’s attempt to rediscover its own functionality caused him a great deal of discomfort. Between the world constantly spinning around him and the constant pounding in his skull, sleep was little more than a pipe dream. Slowly though, his brain adjusted and he gradually began to take control of his body once again.

Two hours after first waking he began to wiggle fingers and toes. Twelve hours after that he found that he could speak again. As each function returned to him the spinning slowed and the pain decreased. After two days he was finally back to normal. The entire next day had been devoted to catching up on the sleep he had been robbed of the previous two, and the last two days he had been devoted to recovery and general healing.

The next week or so would be devoted to testing to make sure Daniel hadn’t suffered any “unforeseen complications” that were related to the procedure. All Daniel knew was that
Horchoff had better pray that everything went according to plan. He hadn’t learned how to use his supposed new abilities yet, but he was pretty sure that he could take the good doctor with or without them.

“Well finish up your breakfast and put some clothes on,” Blank said. “Then we’ll bust you outta here.”

“Not until we change out those bandages!” Joanna’s voice sounded out in the hallway, as if waiting for her cue.

She came into the room and proceeded to
unwrap the white bandage that lined the upper portion of Daniel’s head. He looked over to see Blank’s expression as she exposed the stiches where they had removed Daniel’s scalp for the operation. Blank did not look appalled, but as though he felt sorry for Daniel for having to walk around with such a prominent, unattractive wound. They had shaved Daniel’s head beforehand to make the process easier, but it was quickly starting to grow back.

“You know the doc says with a little meditation training, your new talents should help you to heel up real quick-like,” Blank told Daniel.

“Great,” Daniel replied, unenthused. “Some quality one-on-one time with the doctor.”

Daniel was still very angry with Dr.
Horchoff for not warning him about the so-called “adjustment process” for his brain, and not letting Daniel know about how miserable an experience that would be. Richfield and Blank also made it very obvious to the doctor that they too were not all too thrilled about that particular oversight.

“You best be getting over your little grudge with the doctor, kid.” Blank told Daniel. “You’re going to be working with him quite a bit in the coming months and he’s going to show you a lot of things that are going to change your life. He may not be perfect, but you’ll be thanking him in the end.”

Daniel nodded his head as Jo finished wrapping his new, clean bandage. He still wasn’t completely convinced that he would become the physical specimen that the others expected him to, but at this point he was already neck-deep in it, so he might as well be optimistic.

After finishing off his scrambled eggs, toast, and yogurt, Daniel set his tray aside and got up to stretch. Surprisingly, he felt phenomenal. Aside from the two days of hell he had experienced after waking up from his
Horchoff-induced coma, a week of bed rest was apparently just what he needed. After his muscles felt sufficiently extended, he began to put on the clothes Blank had brought to him, a noticeable pep in his step.

He had been out of bed several times in the past couple days – to stretch out and walk around the medical level – but this morning felt different. He was finally getting out of here. He had made it through the ever-dangerous experimental brain surgery and come out alive, and was anxious to get started on the next chapter of his life. Now the worst thing that could happen would be that he walked out of there a hundred-thousand dollars richer if he were unable accomplish the task of becoming a super-human millionaire. Things could only go up from here.

As Daniel finished dressing, Blank briefed him on the day he had ahead.

“Richfield says he’s going to give you today to get settled in. We can take the day to just walk around the complex and get you familiar with where things are. This is your home now Danny Boy.”

Blanks words caused Daniel to pause for a moment as he was about to fasten his belt. This was it. For the next few months this was his world. There would be no family, no friends, and no Jordan.  Elite Personal Security force would serve as all of those things for the time being.

He looked over at Blank and nodded, acknowledging that he understood.

“Alright then,” Blank said, seemingly pleased to continue with the day’s festivities. “Let’s go see your new room.”

When the elevator reached the housing level on the fourth floor down from the surface, Daniel felt a great sense of relief from finally getting out of the medical ward. He had been there for a total of nine days and though he had been mostly conscious for only four of them, it had felt like weeks. Even though he was still technically underground he felt like a bird released from his cage. Although he was still confined to the house, his world felt much grander for the time being.

Blank and Daniel made their way down a long, drab hallway. The walls were concrete with no decoration except for the occasional bulletin board, and on them appeared to be the sorts of things you would normally expect to be found pinned to the board of any housing community. Daniel caught a glimpse of one flyer advertising a lightly used pair of black patrol boots for “only sixty-five dollars.” The person selling them was apparently someone named “Hodge.”

There were several other people walking through this particular hallway. Most were men, but there were a couple women among them as well. Most seemed to be headed either to or from the shower, as almost everyone was wearing some form of workout pants or shorts and had towels slung over their shoulders. The majority of the men were shirtless, while the women had on sports bras.

All of them seemed to know Blank. As they walked passed them, they all nodded at Mr. Blank and he greeted them all by name.

“Billy…Monster…Claw…Hawkins…”

From what Daniel could tell, many of the agents had nicknames. At least he hoped “Monster” and “Claw” were nicknames.

“Generally people don’t actually live here,” Blank began to explain, as they reached the halfway point of the corridor and made a sharp right into an adjoining hallway.

“Most agents have their own homes outside of the complex,” he continued, “but everyone does have their own bunk just in case they need it. Usually they just use them to store their gym clothes, an extra pair of street clothes – what have you – and sometimes they stay here if they’re just getting back from a long mission, in the midst of a special
training, if they’ve been up late researching a mission, or sometimes they just want to get away from home, know what I mean?”

Blank stopped in front of one of the doors, looking at Daniel for a response. Given that he had spent the past two years of his life living alone, he truly didn’t.

Blank let his previous statement fade into the distance and put the key into the door lock.

“Anyway, because of that most people are assigned to bunkmates – generally one to three depending on seniority.” Blank turned the key and pushed open the door. “But Richfield figured since you’ll be living here full-time for a while – and due to the special nature of your training – we’d give you your own room.”

Blank flipped the light switch turning on a single bulb in the center of the room, and stepped aside so that Daniel could make his way in. Daniel stepped in, feeling a twinge of disappointment though he was not the least bit surprised by the simplicity of the room. He had expected no more.

The walls, ceiling, and floor of the ten-by-ten room were all concrete, just like the hallways. Pushed up against the left hand wall was a small wooden desk, with a small lamp sitting on it. In the far right corner was a cot that looked as though it was just slightly wider than Daniel’s body. In the center of the floor was a hideous, though enormous, green and brown rug. And stacked in the center of the rug, were all of the things Daniel had packed up from his apartment ten days prior.

“Feel free to decorate however you please,” Blank said, and Daniel was not sure whether or not it was meant as some sort of joke.

“There is wireless internet and cable TV,” Blank explained, pointing at the cable outlet to the right of the doorway. “Community bath and locker rooms are back down this hall, opposite the way we
came. There is a set of stairs in there that lead up to the workout room. Take a few minutes to settle in, then come find me upstairs when you’re ready and I’ll show you around a little bit more.”

With that Blank left the room and closed the door. Daniel turned and dragged himself over to his cot and sat down. As he sat he found himself continuing in his motion and laying down, looking up at the plain grey ceiling. It wasn’t the most comfortable sleeping vessel he had ever used, but it wasn’t the worst either. He supposed it wouldn’t take long for him to get used to it, and the intensity of his training would most likely make it easy for him to fall asleep at night no matter where he was laying.

That’s when he asked himself the question, “What am I doing here?”

A part of him wanted to break down into tears at the thought of everything he had given up for this small, concrete chamber that for the next three months was for all intents and purposes his home. But a bigger part of him was growing in excitement. This wasn’t the purpose, this was still the journey. Things might seem a bit odd and unusual to him now, but soon enough he’d be back out in the world, living in a penthouse downtown, or better yet a mansion somewhere in the ‘burbs. On top of it all he would be the most advanced physical specimen walking the face of the Earth. In fact, he theoretically already was.

“This is worth it,” he said to himself with a renewed sense of optimism.

He climbed out of his cot and headed to the door, deciding that he would unpack later. It was time to go get familiar with the new “office.”

The tour he had received from Blank was less than spectacular. Daniel had already seen pretty much the entire complex already, so the
tour only stood as an opportunity for him to get to see things more close up. Doing so made the complex and everything in it seem even more intimidating.

The air in the work-out area on the main floor was thick with the moisture of evaporated perspiration. None of the equipment in the room appeared to be new, but it did seem very well maintained. None of the agents seemed to have any complaints about it.

Being so close to the action had been an eye-opening experience for Daniel, as he realized in just how good of shape his new co-workers were. They also appeared much bigger up close than they did from up on the catwalk. He could not imagine ever being able to keep up with them and their intense workout routines.

There were a few people on the obstacle course today, another area that had become a lot more intimidating to Daniel after standing in the middle of it. Both Daniel and Blank watched as one man tried to complete the final stage of the course. Daniel remembered the tower of teeth quite vividly from his first trip across the catwalk for his interview with Richfield. Blank had called it the “Pipe Ladder,” but Daniel liked his name better.

              Daniel watched in awe as the man hung from the pipe that rested on two parallel teeth, one on either side of him, then began to swing back and forth until he felt he had enough momentum to pull up on the bar with all his might, thrusting himself upward. He then he used his momentum to lift the bar off of the teeth it currently rested on and set it on the two teeth above them, moving him up the ladder. The whole process looked completely exhausting and incredibly difficult to do just once, but to reach the top an agent had to complete the process fifty times in a row.