David was just getting used to his room when he was once again visited by the robed lady and her armoured escort. At the robed lady’s command, four of the heavily armoured soldiers from the courtyard entered the room. David didn’t think there was much point putting up a fight, not when there was four of them and one of him, he surrendered.
They grabbed him, one of them put a bag over his head and tightened it. Then they grabbed both of his arms and dragged him out of the room.
David didn’t know where he was being taken to, but he knew that they had descended at least one floor. He struggled to keep his sense of direction through the winding halls. His captors weren’t gentle either, he struggled to keep his feet beneath him as they suddenly changed directions or stopped
When they the movement had finally ceased, David was lying on a hard table with several people holding him down. When they removed his hood, he noticed that the cultist lady was no longer present.
Holding him down were four of the heavily armoured guards. Another three people were in the room, two people in white clothing with a fabric cloth over their faces, and one man in the same uniform but sitting down next to him and preparing a selection of metal tools.
This man spoke to the other two in a gruff voice, they began to cut off David’s clothing in response. It seemed that the white prisoner uniform he was wearing was not very valuable. Once his shirt was off, the surgeon picked up a marker from his selection of tools and began to trace dotted lines across his skin.
Are they going to cut me open? David thought in shock. He tried to speak to his captors, but they ignored him.
The sensation of the marker drawing across his skin was an invasive one, and he struggled to break free.
“Jeiko no malim shurashni, ma atekai.” The male surgeon spoke in exasperation. One of the assistants responded in a feminine voice. She went to a drawer and grabbed a vial marked with some sort of text. She retrieved a syringe from another drawer and drew the liquid from the vial.
The girl approached David and went to inject his arm. David struggled to avoid the injection, but one of the four guards forced his arm still. He felt a sharp prick in his left arm as he was injected with some form of chemical concoction. Soon he felt as though he were falling headfirst off the back of the table.
***
“You have returned early Apostle.” Spoke The God of Mushrooms.
David turned his head, or his body, no, the world itself turned. Before him stood the otherworldly creature in all its glory. It was human-tall and probably human-wide if you rotated the human on its side and used that as the measurement.
The creature was in the form of a dark grey mushroom stalk terminated by a white mushroom cap with wriggling black lines on its surface. The lines themselves seemed to swirl around like ink in water.
Just as they had done before, the lines shifted, and pupils appeared. Eyes emerged from the cap, tiling the surface of the mushroom in an organic pattern with no care for structure, only density. White particles fell from the bottom of the mushroom in rhythmic pulsing as if it were respirating.
The creatures voice hadn’t changed, it was the same deep gravelly tone that resonated through the entire space as it was when he had first started this schizophrenic episode.
“This is probably the worst and longest trip I have ever had.” David commented.
“Do not disregard reality, you find yourself far from your mother world.” The creature responded.
“An error has been made; an unknown worshipper has pulled your descent away from your destination. You must follow the setting sun. Your destination awaits.“ It continued.
“These crazy cultists have locked me up and are trying to cut me open. How exactly am I supposed to leave?” David questioned in an exhausted tone.
“All things in time Apostle. Time in all things. ” The being answered.
“You know you’re not exactly… helping me with these spiritual riddles!” David The Apostle responded, avoiding the use of a choice word.
“I see. I see that in time you will escape.” The God of Mushrooms commented
“I understand that, but when will I escape?” David continued his attempt at extracting some semblance of meaning from the creature.
“All things come to an end; your imprisonment included. Freedom approaches quickly, four days at most. An unpredictable and unfortunate delay.“ It responded. David nodded in response, thankful for finally extracting some useful information from the deity.
“Why do you keep calling me Apostle?” David asked after a pause.
“You have eaten the pure flesh, you are an apostle.“ The otherworldly being responded.
“It seems, like all things, that our time has come to an end.” It continued, before the world shifted again. David’s lucidity was lost, and he returned to the unconscious world.
***
It was the third or fourth time David had awoken in captivity. He got out of the bed and was wracked with pain, just like when he had first arrived. He lifted his white shirt and saw a thin line of stitches that went up his torso, slightly left of centre.
Another line intersected it in a curve, and several more branched off of this main structure. It was as if someone had lifted his skin off, taken a peek and stitched it back together.
His torso wasn’t the only victim, his left arm had the same treatment, with incisions branching from a line that went from the base of his wrist to his elbow and then to his shoulder. There was some bruising under the skin adjacent to the each of the incisions.
David couldn’t understand the purpose of such an invasive surgery. He felt a pang of hunger and looked towards the window. Unluckily for him, there was no meal waiting on the wooden table, the platter from his previous meal was still there, empty.
Hopefully I still have my kidneys. David thought to himself.
Seriously, capturing him, giving him some sort of remote-controlled pain collar, and cutting him apart? These cultists had no concept of human rights. And what was up with the magic super soldiers?
David, upon recollecting his short meeting with The God of Mushrooms, couldn’t help but still believe that he was stuck in some sort of drug afflicted hallucination. Despite that, he couldn’t explain why he was so lucid, or why the reality he found himself in was so consistent.
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Objects didn’t disappear when he wasn’t looking, the maid arrived twice per day, and when he scratched a word into the wooden window seal with his fingernails, it didn’t spontaneously change after looking away.
And that crap about being an apostle? I’m not even religious!
David exclaimed mentally, wondering what sort of apostles were used for human experimentation.
If he was an apostle, maybe he had to preach about the God of Mushrooms? What had the glorified DMT entity even done for him? Stolen him away from his home and called him an apostle?
The thing had told him he would be free in four days. That was it, he just had to hold in four another four days. Then he would be free. Free to roam the unpopulated grasslands, he supposed.
Forget that shit, I’m not getting cut open again. David thought, avoiding movements which irritated his stitched wounds. He looked around the room for something he could use but wasn’t sure what he was looking for. A weapon probably wouldn’t be much help against any of the soldiers, the non-combatants, however? Maybe he had a chance.
He could probably break a leg off the wooden chair or table. A bit of sharp wood was probably the best he could hope for. The maid was his only guaranteed visitor, he could take her hostage. However, if his escape attempt failed, they might not even feed him anymore. It was something for him to consider carefully.
David looked at the wooden chair, it was well constructed, and the wood wasn’t weak. He didn’t think he would have much luck at breaking it, and he had little chance prying the nails out with only his fingernails.
He looked around the room again, the wooden closet had several shelves in it that he could easily lift out, and they were quite thin. Perhaps he could snap one into a smaller, sharper fragment.
He removed the contents from the top of a shelf and lifted it out of the closet. This wood seemed older and weaker than the wood that made up the table and chair. He looked over at the table again. He also had a wooden spoon from the morning meal, the maid wouldn’t remove it until the afternoon, when she would replace it with another one. Would she notice it missing? It would be better to stick to something less visible, David thought.
He hadn’t seen anyone restock the closet, and there were still around four unused outfits, so he guessed he had four days until anyone would. That would give him a longer period before anyone detected his plans.
He took the shelf and slammed it down over his knee. David grit his teeth and grunted in pain as the shelf was much harder than it looked. He sat there for a moment, regaining his senses before he gave it another shot.
This time it hurt even more, since his knee had just been injured from his previous attempt. He took another moment to consider his actions before he slammed his other, uninjured knee into the shelf with more vigour than before. It split into two pieces, but they were far too large to wield or stab someone with.
He needed something small and sharp, similar to a dagger. Regarding daggers, he knew that the armoured man had a real dagger in his belt. Unfortunately, he didn’t think that he would be able to pickpocket the massive, armoured man.
David was tired from the surgery and sick of hurting his knee. So, he put the two halves of the shelf mostly together again and placed it back in the closet, obscuring the break using white uniforms.
***
Another day in captivity had passed for David, and he had awoken to silence. The rumbling in his gut reminded him that the maid was still yet to return to his room. He didn’t have the energy to scream and bash against the door. Instead, he looked back outside to see soldiers patrolling the wall in squads. Did he really have any chance of escape?
David looked at the window seal, there wasn’t any obvious way to open the window, it seemed to be built into the wall. At the top of the window however, there was an open portion with angled pieces of glass stuck into it like blinds that couldn’t be rotated. That was evidently the source of ventilation for the room.
David stood up on the wooden chair to try and get a better look at the angled glass, none of the soldiers below seemed to notice or care about his new vantage point, they were busy inspecting the wall and surveilling the premises.
The glass was lodged in firmly, but with several wiggling attempts, one of the pieces dislodged. He held it in his hand, it would be easy to smash on the hard tiled floor across the room. Once it was smashed, he would be able to wrap it in fabric as a makeshift handle to prevent himself from being cut.
David looked around the room again, now that he theoretically had a knife, he was looking for something to cut. The bedsheets, the clothing, and maybe the grout between the tiles, they all seemed like things he could cut.
He looked at the door again, the hinges were on the outside of the door, so he couldn’t try and dislodge them. There was no room between the door frame and the door to slip something through either, except at the bottom. Nothing to cut there, he thought. But there were more things he could cut, like himself, or the stiches on his body.
He didn’t see a point in committing suicide yet, so he ignored those. What about the metal on his neck? He felt its construction again, there was a hinge on the right side, and some sort of locking mechanism on the left side, but there was no way he could cut though the metal with his glass knife.
David kept thinking, he could break glass, so he could break the window. He would just need to wrap some fabric around his fist and punch it hard enough. It would be loud though. Perhaps he could make some sort of rope to rappel down the side of the building with the bed sheets and clothing?
He could break the glass and then climb down the side of the building. He would probably have to do it at night, so that he could hide in the shadows during his escape. He didn’t know how quickly the soldiers might react to his escape attempt, nor whether they would send search parties after him. Regardless, the planning calmed him, it let him imagine that he had a chance in this crazy new world that wanted to cut him apart.
David looked at the empty bowl that was still on the table, he was still starving. If he was going to attempt an escape, he would need to do it soon, before he lost more strength. It was more than hunger thought, David was parched.
There was no tap or shower in the room. There was, however, a toilet which could be flushed. David considered whether he was thirsty enough to drink out of a toilet and decided that he probably wasn’t. But it didn’t stop him from investigating.
The toilet was ceramic, and almost the same as those back on Earth, except that the top wasn’t removable, instead the entire ceramic body was a single part. It wasn’t very useful.
It was getting dark, and David decided to make the glass knife that he had devised. He picked up the glass piece that he had left on the wooden table and went back to the tiled part of the room.
He crouched down, turned his head away and closed his eyes before bringing the arm holding the glass down on the hard tiles. The impact sent a vibration through his arm, but it didn’t break.
David gave it another shot and was glad when it shattered into several fragments, one of which was the right shape, size, and sharpness for his intentions. He went back to the bed, careful to not step on the few glass fragments that he had sent around the room.
He spent some time gathering the fragments into a shirt which he took from the closet. He didn’t think he could flush them down the toilet, but he could easily hide them in the bottom of the closet, no one would notice until it was refilled.
David got to work preparing his descent rope, he cut two long strips of fabric from his bed sheets. He twisted the two strips individually and then twisted them together into a rope. There wasn’t anything to keep the ends together, so he made do with a simple knot on either side.
The result probably did not adhere to international safety standards, but David hoped that it might handle his body weight. It was getting late, and he knew he couldn’t possibly finish making the rope and escape the facility in the same night.
Instead, he made as many fabric ropes as he could, hid them in the closet, and went to sleep.
***
Morning came while David was sleeping. He was startled awake by the entrance of the maid. The same maid who had been missing for the past day or so.
He quickly hid the glass knife, which he had forgotten about, behind him. If the maid was suspicious, or had noticed the torn bedding, she hid it well. Once the maid had left, David hid the glass knife in the closet, with the rest of his incriminating items.
In response to his gut rumbling yet again, David sat down at the wooden table to eat. The food was the same as before, he couldn’t understand why they didn’t feed him yesterday.
Once he was finished with the meal, and the water, David took a moment to stare into the distant plains that peeked over the stone wall that enclosed the facility. His peace was brief, however, as the cultist lady and her pet guard appeared yet again.
They entered the room, and David thought of walking over to the closet and grabbing his glass knife, maybe he could kill the bitch before her guardian struck him down.
He had no chance however, as the lady gestured, and David’s neck lit up in pain. At the cultist lady’s command, several soldiers entered the room as they had done before. There was no nonsense this time, they didn’t give him any chance
David was quickly restrained and removed from the room with a bag secured over his head. He was moved through the building again. He thought it was the same path as before, but he couldn’t be sure.
David furiously fought against his captors, but they didn’t flinch, he was far too weak. He screamed but his throat quickly became sore. He wound up on the operating table again. This time, his captors moved quickly to inject him with the chemical cocktail.