“Fresssssh meat!” a wet voice snarled as Krysty’s left arm was bent painfully back and the makeshift torch was snatched from her hand. Red embers flew as the lighted head of the stolen torch was shoved into a cloth bag, and instantly the world of the hospital stairwell went black.
Doc cried out briefly in the darkness, then was lost in the new images that seemed to swirl out of the night of forgetfulness and come alive in his mind, taking him back to another time.
Chicago, Illinois Redoubt, 1998
As A SLENDER YOUNG MAN Theophilus Algernon Tanner had spent many a lazy summer afternoon swimming in the nearby Connecticut River to escape the surprisingly damnable Vermont heat. The summer of his twelfth birthday was humid and sticky and made one almost yearn for the subzero cold snaps of the long winter months. Never much for active sport or physical activity, the boy did enjoy spending hours in the water, sometimes practicing a clumsy dog paddle, other times just content to float gently on his back, his face directed upward at the cloud-filled skies.
Theo rarely paid attention to the sky. His eyes were usually closed, his keen young mind lost in thought and as adrift as his lanky preteen body. Since the river was quite still at the point where Theo liked to relax and play, he was able to idly doze in this floating position, cooled by the water from the back while warmed from the front by the sun overhead.
But this day the water suddenly sucked him down, holding him helpless beneath the surface by an unexpected undertow. Young Theo’s eyes popped open in shock, horrified and confused to discover the blue sky above had been replaced by a swirling mass of dim blue and brown, and in his ears was a terrible roaring as his eardrums were assaulted by the onrush of water now enveloping his helplessly prone body.
He scrambled madly, trying to pull himself back to the world above. His arms pumped and his legs kicked and still he stayed in place, almost as if he were being held down by some elemental water demon who’d claimed him as a sacrifice to the river gods.
Then the grip was loosened, and the boy was able to thrust himself free of the water and into the air, where his lungs gratefully sucked in life-giving oxygen in between bouts of coughing up the stomachful of the Connecticut River he’d swallowed.
“Look here, Mark! We done come upon Algae Tanner!” a tenor voice said, cracking slightly on the word “upon” in a betrayal of the end of adolescence and the beginning of maturity, not that his actions were any indication of impending adulthood.
“Right where you’d expect to find him,” a slower speaker replied, his words coming out in a nasal tone.
“What do you mean?” the tenor asked, setting up the joke.
“Floating on the water, just like any old kind of pond scum.”
Bullies. Even as an adult he would still remember their names. One had been dubbed Merlin by his parents; the other a more pedestrian Albert.
With his keen intellect, slight build and strange hair color (even as a teen the sandy brown had already started to transform into the eventual gray he would possess as an adult), Theo was used to being the butt of humor from the less gifted, and while he never took such pranks meekly, he wasn’t the type to dwell upon concepts of revenge.
As a result, he’d spent much of his youth isolated. Luckily he hadn’t minded solitude. In fact, he’d grown fond of keeping his own council.
Isolated. Yet he could still hear snippets of conversation swirling around him, like the blue water and brown silt of the Connecticut River of his youth…
“Any diseases we should be worried about?” Theo didn’t know that voice.
“Negative. Cryo sleep kept him on ice. Nothing to fear, at least, nothing from his era. Still, I hope everyone in this operating room has had his shots.”
Laughter. Bullies again? Theo didn’t know.
“No, I’d say he’d be the one we should be concerned with. There are bugs floating in the air our guest has never had the joy of breathing.”