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____‡_______‡___ Keep the earth below my feet For all my sweat, my blood runs weak Let me learn from where I have been Keep my eyes to serve My hands to learn ____‡_______‡___ Blurred images. Men in white coats, drawing near. A table of cruel equipment nearby. Blinding white light. Shadows shifting. Restraints biting at his wrists in ankles. Hushed German dialect. Pain. Hot, fierce...unmerciful. No room left to beg for death. No voice left to scream. Only agony. And then, sweet, blessed nothingness. Suspended in the throes of unconsciousness, the man on the pavement did not stir to the sound of clicking heels. He was lost too far in the recess of his own mind, too deep and too immersed in the effects of his journey. His broken mind was fighting fiercely to somehow regenerate, to catch up with the place in which his body now rested. His subconscious was already aware that something was wrong...and vitally so. No amount of preparation would ever fully ready the man for what he was about to endure upon his waking...so wasn't it only natural that the mind's defense would be to prolong the bliss of blackness only a little longer? The man's brow furrowed, and he stirred only slightly as the woman came to a stop beside him. He mumbled something unintelligible, but clearly not anything from the English language. The brown strands of his hair were matted to his brow with drying sweat, and there was a stark bruise on the rise of his left cheekbone. There was not an ounce of fat on the male, and though he was leanly muscled, he had the look of someone who had not seen a meal in quite some time. The crease of both elbows were mottled with bruising, the look of flesh that had taken many needles. The tops of his hands looked nearly as bad, black and blue and yellow all fading into ugly smears on his skin. There was a fresh set of stitches on his right flank, though the work looked rudimentary at best. All in all, to the average onlooker, he looked no better than the average heroine junkie overdosed in the dirt of a forgotten alley. If only that were the case. It was the cold metal pressing to his flesh that finally brought him to the surface of the waking world. Though there was no pain from the action, the sensation was enough to induce panic. Metal, in his world, meant cruelty and pain. The man's dark eyes shot open wide, and he was moving even before he was aware of her presence. He clawed himself upright, gasping deeply as he moved away from the offending sensation. His flesh scraped against the pavement in his haste, but he barely noticed as his wild gaze shot around the unfamiliar surroundings in which he now found himself in. It was after a few seconds of this panic that his gaze finally found and locked on her. The woman was dressed in a way he had never seen. Her hair was situated in a style he had never witnessed. In fact, he had never seen anyone like her before. But she wasn't German...couldn't be, without the bright blonde hair and clear blue eyes so favored by the race. He began to talk rapidly in Dutch, asking who she was, what she wanted, and where he was. And then, suddenly, something rolled past the alley...something terrifying. It rolled like a car, but it looked nothing like any automobile he had ever seen. It was full of lights, streamlined like something from a fantasy movie. A muffled, terrified sound escaped him, and when his back his the wall of the opposing building, he knew very surely that nothing was the same, and he was trapped in something far more complex than he ever could have imagined. |