You wake to the stench of sweat and vomit clogging your throat, the ground shuddering beneath. The filthy hood over your head clings like a second skin, resisting your weak tugs. Gripping the crumbling concrete walls, you stagger toward a door you can’t see. Sharp debris stabs into your bare legs, and you collapse, the floor grinding against your knees. The earthquake is worse than any you’ve endured here, yet you barely care.
It’s too quiet. No screams from neighboring cells, no guards barking orders, no distant animal cries. Just you, the shaking, and the reek of your own filth—urine, excrement, whatever else that leaks from your broken body. “It’s not so bad,” you think. The earth might free you, grinding your existence to dust. "Better this than what they would've done".You weren’t always this resigned. Once, you preferred this place. They treated you better than the other—terrorists, criminals, and monsters in this place. When you first arrived, it was calm even. You were just an "innocent man with unusual talents", they said. They sat you on a stool while evil around you burned, and though their tests hurt, there were rules. They starved fed you, smothered clothed you. It was fine.
Then the dreams began. The dreams were vague, a jumble of images you couldn’t parse. You told the guards, thinking they’d help you understand. They tried too hard. Probes under your skin, needles behind your eyes, scans prying into your brain. Their desperation was palpable, a bitter tang in the air. When they found nothing, they stopped trying. The beatings started, the food grew scarce, and clothes became a luxury. You regretted ever speaking.
You crawl now, hood scraping the floor, fraying just enough to let slivers of light through. The shaking is constant, a repetitive drone you’ve grown numb to. Your head clips a doorframe, unnoticed until your body halts. Dragging yourself forward, you spot a faint fluorescent glow on the floor—an exit, maybe. You claw toward it, arms trembling. The light comes from a glass panel, flickering weakly. You pound it, not with rage but with the mechanical force of survival. The glass cracks, your knuckles split, bone grinding against bone. The thick rope securing your hood catches on a shard, snapping free. Blinking against the dim light, you brush against a crumpled paper. The words “West Baghdad Outer R&D Cell List Of Personnel” catch your eye, scrawled a language you can't understand, But there’s nothing else here, so you crawl onward.
The dreams clarified over time. A female voice, radiant and warm, spoke of things you couldn’t fathom—foundations that bind magic and monsters beyond your cell’s walls, stories passed on by the dreams of others like her, others like you. Her form was a blur, but her words were clear: you were vital, tied to "siblings" you've never met, sharing a destiny you dreaded. She made it all bearable; she drowned out the guards’ laughter, steadied you through insatiable hunger, urged you on as you froze at night. “They won’t kill you,” she promised. You believed her. Trust is all you have left. You don’t want to die by your own failure. So you crawl, muscles screaming, toward a brighter light ahead. It’s close now, blinding. “She’s waiting,” you tell yourself. You can make it. You must make it. The light swallows you whole.
You wake to sizzling against your scalp, sprawled on a desert expanse. The shaking has stopped. Every nerve screams as sensation returns, louder with each breath. You can’t move, you can barely think.
“Get up,” a gruff voice says behind you. You don’t respond. Breathing is effort enough.
“I know who you are,” the man continues, his tone sharp. Silence is all you can muster.
“I’m not asking again.” Frustration creeps into his voice.
“You alive down there?” Assuring himself more than anything.
He checks a stopwatch—23 minutes, he mutters—then grabs an object from beside you. With a sigh, he hooks an arm under your chest, hauling you over his shoulder. You cough, ribs aching. A patch on his sleeve shows a sunset coddling an eye. “Guess you’re not talking yet,” he says, slipping an empty canteen into his pocket. He presses an earpiece. “We’ve found our saint. Critical condition. Over.” As the man's rhythmic steps lull you into a daze, the desert stretches endlessly before you, but her voice still echoes in your mind: “You’re almost there.”
