21st January 2017

Xavier

My return to consciousness was gradual. Through the fog that filled my thoughts I slowly became aware of voices.

“Leave. He’s waking up,” a upper class English accented voice said, the other voices went silent. A door closed.

“Mr Costella, can you hear me?”

“Mmm…?” I volunteered.

“My name’s Doctor White, I’m a psychiatrist. I’m afraid you’ve had a bit of an episode.” The reassuring voice said.

“What?” I opened my eyes. Above me were ceiling tiles and I could just see an empty drip stand to one side. I tried to move and found I couldn’t.

“I’m afraid we had to strap you down, Mr Costella. You were being a danger to yourself and others.”

“Where am I?” I asked, testing the straps holding me to the bed, there was a creak from beneath me and something metallic pinged.

“Please don’t do that Mr Costella, we don’t want you to hurt yourself,” the voice said, a hint of alarm colouring his voice. “You are in a psychiatric assessment unit, you have been sectioned under the mental health act.”

“Can’t this wait until I get home. I can’t afford US healthcare.” I replied woozily.

“Exactly where do you think you are Mr Costella?” The voice asked curiously.

“Orlando… Florida?” I replied getting a sinking feeling.

“Mr Costella, you are in London. in England.” I shrugged as if this was of little interest. As I’d hoped, one of the straps loosened minutely, freeing my right arm a little.

“What happened?” I muttered, wondering which London hospital or psychiatric assessment unit I was in. I thought they told you.

“What do you think happened?” I tried to think but my thoughts kept slipping away from me. There was the flash of memory, I was walking across a car park full of American style cars, then nothing.

“I don’t know. Where’s Nat?” I asked.

“Errr… who’s ‘Nat’?” the warm voice asked, sounding concerned.

“Doctor Natalie Chang… My… girlfriend.” I replied realising something was wrong, very, very wrong.

“You live with Melissa, Mr Costella and she is very worried about you.” I opened my eyes again and tried to move my head to look at Dr White, wanting to protest that Melissa was unlikely to be worried about anyone but herself, but the straps holding my head wouldn’t budge.

“You have been living with her since you were medically discharged from the army. There was that incident in the minefield I believe?”

“The penguins made me do it.” I couldn’t resist saying. If I was having an ‘episode’, whatever that was, I might as well have a bit of fun.

“The what? made you do what?” the voice asked, suddenly sounding worried.

“Whatever I did. What did I do anyway?” I flexed my arm, the bed creaked again and I felt something snap beneath me.

“Mr Costella, you are not being very helpful, we are trying to help you and we can’t help you if you don't take this seriously.” The calm voice was back but this time it had some steel in it. I sighed.

“Can I see Melissa?” I asked, deciding to call the voice’s bluff.

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea, do you?”

“Why? You said she was worried about me.”

“Worried… and scared. Your episode was quite… violent. You broke her wrist.”

“She broke her wrist on my face…” I paused as the humiliating memory of Mellissa smashing me across the face with a dumbbell came to me. But that had been almost a year ago… hadn’t it?

“That is not what happened, is it? Tell me what really happened Mr Costella.” I dredged my memories and then smiled as I remembered... Standing next to Natalie in the rain as we faced down a dragon the size of a house... Fighting Captain Blackthorne in the ruins of an abandoned town, his look of surprise as I broke his huge greatsword and rammed my sword into his belly... The Knight's airship exploding on my command, the fire turning the sea blood red as it plummeted towards the Iron Brotherhood battleship. I decided if I was delusional, I was quite happy to stay that way.

“Best. Episode. Ever.” I murmured.

“Breaking your girlfriend’s wrist?” The voice asked, a note of shock colouring his voice. I didn’t reply as further memories flashed through my head. The voice tried a different tack.

“Tell me about your mother.”

“She died when I was eight. Of hypothermia.” I said with a bit of force. There was a long pause as if whoever was doing the questioning hadn’t expected the answer which was strange. If I was in London they would have my medical notes.

“And your father?” I had a sudden flash of memory, possibly my earliest, of being carried in my arms by my mother. She was sobbing as she ran down a long corridor intricately decorated with painted flowers and vines.

“I never knew my father.”

“Tell me Mr Costella do you hear voices?”

“Oh, yes, I can hear you quite clearly.” There was a pause as if the owner of the voice was counting to ten in an effort not to swear.

“I mean, voices in your head, Mr Costella, internal voices, telling you what to do.” The voice said through gritted teeth, and I caught the slight twang of an American accent.

“I don’t tell you what to do, I just make ‘suggestions’,” said a voice in my head and the fog in my mind dissipated.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet after the thing with the penguins. And when you made me destroy the airship.” I thought back.

“Oh come on, I’ve been waiting for centuries for someone to ask one of my chosen ones if they heard voices, and don’t worry, unlike some of the others you’re sane. And all those memories are real.” I swallowed. Having an unfathomably ancient alien intelligence sharing my conciousness was something I really tried not to think about and having them talk to me in my mind was disconcerting in the extreme. Natalie seemed perfectly fine with it though.

“Mr Costella?” The voice asked, sounding concerned. A skinny, bearded, white man lent over me, moving something on my forehead. I wrenched my right hand out of the restraints, grabbed him around his scrawny throat and squeezed.

“The voice in my head tells me I’m as sane as you are.” I growled.

“Let go of me… You can’t… escape,” the man gasped, trying to sound commanding. This irritated me hugely, who was he to try and order me around. I wrenched my left arm free and tried to undo the strap securing my head as I continued to crush the man’s throat with my right hand.

“Let go,” the man wheezed desperately, his face turning red as he scrabbled desperately to break my grip round his neck and I felt my grip slipping. I pushed him as hard as I could across the room in the direction of where he’d been sitting. There was a crash as he fell over his chair and another, even more satisfying crash as he hit what must have been a trolley full of medical paraphernalia.

I grabbed the head strap with both hands and, concentrating hard, I undid it, then, with a lot more effort than a simple strap should require I undid the one around my chest and sat up. There was a metallic clatter as one of the sides of the hospital bed fell off.

I looked around as I struggled with the strap around my waist. I was definitely in a hospital but the other medical bed and beige décor was unlike any NHS hospital I’d ever been in. The place didn’t look nearly battered enough.

Next to me was a machine sprouting wires that led to pads stuck onto my forehead. I ripped them off, glancing at the screen where the readout looked like the scribblings of a very disturbed child. Then I followed the power cord back to its socket, it was an American style power socket confirming my suspicions that I wasn’t in the UK.

I’d just started undoing the strap securing my legs when a man wearing medical scrubs burst through the door holding a Taser. He saw ‘Doctor’ White lying on the floor holding his throat then looked at me struggling with the straps. He raised his Taser. I grabbed the brainwave monitor and threw it at him. It shot across the room and crashed to the floor a metre from its intended target, brought up short by the power cord. I rolled to one side just before the Taser bolt discharged itself into the padded, beige headboard. The strap holding my feet came undone and I fell out of the bed.

I disentangled myself from the blanket covering me and stood up, moving towards Taser guy, planning a roundhouse kick to his face, instead I lost my balance and staggered across the room, colliding with the wall.

I pushed myself off the wall staggering back in the direction of Taser guy who panicked and threw his Taser at me. I dodged clumsily, grabbed his left arm for support and we spun around the room like the world's most uncoordinated dance couple. I let go, he continued flying across the room and hit the wall headfirst, falling backwards onto the floor with a satisfying thud.

I glanced at my former questioner lying on the floor, holding his throat and struggling to breath, he cringed most satisfyingly when he saw I was looking at him. From the corridor came the sound of running feet.

I grabbed the broken side of the bed, staggered over to the door and rammed the piece of bent metal under the bottom of the door to the sound of splintering wood. Seconds later someone tried to enter the room. It was only then I realised I was wearing a slightly too small hospital gown, one of the ones that only does up at the back.

“Joe? Randy? Are you okay in there?” A voice called.

“Everything’s fine. Mr Costella got a hand free. And you call me Doctor White,” I replied in the best approximation of my questioner’s voice as I crossed to the window and threw up the blackout blinds. Bright sunlight streamed in. I was around three floors up in a large multi-story building. Just below me I could see a corrugated white metal roof. As I watched, a bright red ambulance pulled out from underneath it. Definitely not in the UK.

“Why can’t I open the door?” The voice asked.

“Something must have gotten wedged under it in the struggle. Give us a minute to finish restraining Mr Costella and we’ll open it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? He’s one big, scary bastard.” I grinned. It was nice to be appreciated.

“A Tasering quietened him down nicely. Now if you would be quiet, I might be able to salvage something from this mess.” I replied, lifting up the table the monitor had stood on and swung it at the bottom corner of the window. The laminated glass cracked but failed to break, instead the whole window frame shifted with the sound of cracking render.

“What was that?” The annoyingly persistent voice asked. I sighed in irritation, grabbed the Taser off the floor, staggered over to the door, pulled the wedge away and pulled it open. A man in his twenties, clad identically to his colleague, fell into the room and I discharged the Taser into his bare neck. He screamed and arched his back in a most satisfying manner. I bashed his head on the floor and he went limp.

I lurched back over to the window and gave it a good push. Whoever had fitted the window hadn’t bothered to bolt it to the walls and it was held in solely by the render on the walls outside. It fell out, landed with a massive crash on the metal roof and cartwheeled off into the road. Hot, humid air from outside rolled in as shouts of shock and alarm came from below. I clambered up into the window opening, meaning to carefully hang off the window ledge and land cat-like on the roof below. I’d forgotten I was drugged up to the eyeballs and had all the coordination of a drunken elephant on ice. I lost my grip, fell out the opening and hit the metal roof with an even bigger crash than the window had made.

For a moment I sprawled on the uncomfortably hot metal roof, glad it was in the shade as I stared woozily at the cloudless blue sky, wondering what the hell had happened, then I tried to move. It hurt, but in an ‘everything still works but you’re going to suffer tomorrow’ kind of way. I rolled over, pulled my way out the crater I’d made and crawled to the edge of the roof. Directly underneath me was the red roof of a stationary ambulance.

The ambulance driver had opened his door and was peering up at me, as were a couple of other people in medical scrubs and an armed security guard was speaking urgently into his radio. To my surprise there didn’t appear to be anyone filming on their phone.

“Are you okay, sir?” the ambulance driver asked.

“Oh, yes I’m fine,” I replied more brightly than anyone who’d just fallen out a third story window had any right to do. “You might want to avert your eyes,” I warned, dropped onto the ambulance’s roof and slid off the bodywork until I hit the ground in front of the ambulance, giving my audience an eyeful

I picked myself up. The security guard, a beefy white guy with cropped hair, put away his radio and put his hand over his gun.

“Really?” I said to him, raising my hands to show him there was no way I could be armed. The security guard relaxed.

“Hey, I’m just doing my job, buddy, I don’t want no trouble.”

“Do I look like trouble?” I asked, trying to look harmless.

“You look like you’re a whole load of paperwork for someone… Oh please, not him…” The security guard sighed, looking at another guard barging through the hospital doors towards me. He was skinny, sallow, had lank hair and bad teeth. A poster boy for Florida man.

“Can he even write?” I asked the first security guard who shrugged.

“Hold it there.” the new guard shrieked, drawing a massive pistol. It was too heavy for him to hold straight and the gun waving in front of my nose was just too much of a temptation. I grabbed his arm, gave it a sharp twist and took the gun off him. There were screams and the sound of people running away.

“Oooh nice, a Desert Eagle” I said examining the gun.

“Arrghh… what the fuck are you doin’,” the scrawny guard whimpered as I continued to push his face into the floor. I glanced at the other guard who was watching his colleague’s distress with every sign of enjoyment from behind the Ambulance.

“You told me to hold it, so I am.”

“Narrrgh. Let go of me.” The guard wailed. I looked around me. The bystanders had disappeared and from the end of the hospital access road I caught a flash of a brown car heading down the ambulance only access road. I smiled.

“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I really must be going. My lift is here,” I let go of the Guard and he collapsed onto the floor whimpering.

I looked at the gun, considered keeping it for a second, then reluctantly decided my skin was the wrong colour to wander around Orlando with any form of weaponry, especially lurching around like an incompetent zombie in a hospital gown. I threw the pistol up onto the roof just as a brown 1981 Rolls Royce Corniche Convertible with the roof down pulled up in front of me.

A stunningly beautiful woman of Asian ancestry lowered her dark glasses to look me up and down, her long, black, plaited hair had a Minnie Mouse headband in and she was wearing a long green dress giving the impression she'd been attending a Disney themed Renaissance Fayre. She smiled showing slightly uneven teeth as her eyes lingered on my bare legs.

“Hi honey” Natalie said in her gloriously sexy voice, then she pulled out a walkie talkie and said into it in a slightly more business-like tone, “the asset has secured himself.” I opened the passenger door and fell into the soft cream leather seats. A few seconds later four sinister black Police SUVs with their red and blue light bars flashing sped down the access road stopping dramatically outside the Hospital entrance and several men armed with automatic rifles piled out.

"Friends of yours?" I asked Natalie.

"I was worried. I thought you might need some help," she replied.